Election 2014: Minnesota State House, Districts 63A and 64B

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So I’m just going down the ballot in order, and next up on your ballot will be State Rep. I used to live in 63A, where I was represented by Jim Davnie. Now I live in 64B, where I am represented by Michael Paymar but won’t be for very much longer because he’s retiring.

All the interesting stuff in 64B actually happened back in March, when there was an endorsing convention. I went. It was, to my surprise, significantly faster and more efficient than the endorsing conventions in Minneapolis have ever been. The DFL endorsed candidate is Dave Pinto, who I like quite a bit, though he wasn’t my first choice going in. (My first choice going in didn’t even make it to the second round of voting, alas.)

Anyway, I’ll do Minneapolis first. For State Representative District 63A, your choices are:

KYLE BRAGG – REPUBLICAN
JIM DAVNIE – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

Kyle Bragg appears to have no website. When I googled for his name, I found a union organizer who lives in Queens; I’m thinking this is probably a different Kyle Bragg. (I mean, there are Republican union members — it does happen — but you can’t run for the Minnesota House of Representatives if you life in New York.) The New York Kyle Bragg actually sounds pretty damn cool

The Minneapolis Kyle Bragg has a LinkedIn profile that says he’s a lease specialist for an office machines company; his Facebook page has a lovely picture of Minnehaha Falls in winter, so I’m pretty sure I’m looking at the right guy.

Anyway, the bottom line is, he’s not a serious candidate; if you can’t even be bothered to set up a Facebook page for your candidacy, you’re not actually running for office even if you’ve filed for it.

Jim Davnie

I have known Jim for over fourteen years; I was pregnant with Molly (and his wife was pregnant with their older daughter) when he ran for office the first time. Jim is smart, funny, honest, thoughtful, and an amazing speaker. If you live in his district, not only should you vote for him, you should seek him out at neighborhood events to chat. Jim is freaking awesome. I would vote for him for anything. Well, maybe not Attorney General. I think you’re supposed to have gone to law school to be AG.

On to St. Paul.

This district has been represented by Michael Paymar since 1996. Paymar is stepping down at the end of this session, so there’s no incumbent. You might think this would have led to a bunch of people filing, but nope. For State Representative District 64B, your choices are:

DANIEL SURMAN – REPUBLICAN
DAVE PINTO – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

According to the Pioneer Press, Daniel Surman is an office director for a Republican campaign office covering the 4th Congressional District. In the MNGOP notice about the endorsing convention they held in July, they note that Daniel Surman is the only candidate who filed, and adds, “With the retirement of former-Rep Michael Paymar, he hopes to rally Republicans in our community to make sure our next State Representative will be a Republican!”

So possibly the problem is “rallying Republicans in our community.” I mean, I know there are a few. But you’d be hard-pressed to find them. Even though Daniel is so Republican he works for the party, and even though he has a Twitter, a blog, and another blog (this one’s with a group of bloggers), he doesn’t seem to have a campaign site of any kind. In other words, like the guy in 63A, he filed but he’s not actually running.

If you’re a Republican you’ll probably vote for him anyway, although you might ask yourself, don’t you want a State Rep who acts like he wants the job of representing you?

Dave Pinto is a county prosecutor. During endorsement season he held “conversations” (with topics) rather than meet-and-greets, which was an interesting idea. He doorknocked us at least once and I also talked with him on the phone; I found him thoughtful and engaged. When he doesn’t have an answer, he’ll ask for your ideas (as opposed to pulling buzzwords out of his ass to try to make it sound like he has all the answers.)

Anyway, I think Pinto’s going to be an excellent State Rep, and I’m planning to vote for him.

Election 2014: U.S. House in District 4 and District 5

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Both District 4 (St. Paul and some suburbs) and District 5 (Minneapolis and some suburbs) are rather solidly DFL districts. The 4th District was last represented by a Republican in the late 1940s; the 5th in the 1960s. We do have Republicans running in both these districts this time around and strange things do happen, but these are not generally considered to be competitive races.

In District 4, here’s who’s on the ballot:

DAVE THOMAS – INDEPENDENCE
SHARNA WAHLGREN – REPUBLICAN
BETTY MCCOLLUM – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

Dave Thomas

So whereas the Independence candidate in the Senate race was running somewhere to the right of the Republican, the Independence candidate here (who is actually endorsed by the Independence party, unlike the guy in the Senate race) is running to the left of the Democrat. Whereas the Independence guy in the Senate race is your embarrassing bigoted uncle, the Independence guy in the Congressional race is your extremely liberal and overly enthusiastic very young cousin whose Facebook feed has more than its share dubiously sourced re-shares about the dangers of plastic water bottles or whatever it is this week. When you talk to him at family parties, he wants to buttonhole you about some ISSUE that he is currently passionate about. One Thanksgiving it was the paleo diet; another it was marijuana legalization. You don’t actually disagree with him about much of this stuff, mind you, but his passionate declarations of fervent belief make you realize that you’ve gotten old.

Dave Thomas doesn’t give a bio on his campaign website, which had me wondering if he was still in college. His Facebook page, however, says that he is “an Iraq War veteran, volunteer firefighter and works in the special education department at Brimhall Elementary in Roseville, MN. He is happily married with two beautiful children.”

Anyway! He wants a system of state-funded tuition-free public higher education, and in the meantime we should forgive all loan debt. He wants universal paid maternity leave. He wants a manned mission to Mars and a 5% increase in our National Park lands. He wants energy self-sufficiency in eleven years, he wants marijuana legalization, he wants the NSA to be defunded.

To pay for the stuff like tuition-free college, he wants a new tax code: “A sliding scale, percentage-based flat tax on all income generated (from the federal level) would rectify most of the problematic situations that our current code perpetuates.” I’m not sure what a sliding-scale flat tax is, other than contradictory sounding.

Under Veteran’s Affairs, he suggests that when members of the Armed Service go through extensive training equivalent to a technical degree, we call it an Associate’s Degree. This strikes me as possibly really reasonable (and wouldn’t cost anything extra — essentially it’s a way of upgrading the credentials soldiers are already coming home with into something employers recognize). I wonder why this isn’t what they do now?

Possibly the funniest, from the National Security section “It should be illegal to sell any seed which is unable to produce viable offspring.” So just to be clear: he thinks it should be illegal to grow seedless watermelons. (Marijuana: legalize and tax. Seedless watermelons: BAN.) (I’m sure he’s actually thinking of some of the varieties of corn developed by Monsanto that are specifically designed to make it impossible for you to save seeds. But his proposed legislation basically bans hybrid garden vegetables.) Dammit, Dave Thomas, YOU CAN HAVE MY SEEDLESS WATERMELON WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS.

Sharna Wahlgren

Sharna is the Republican. She provides a fairly standard political bio (community service on non-profit boards, work ethic honed by high school labor at the State Fair) and states that her priorities are fiscal responsibility, local solutions, and job growth. She’s got a paragraph about each. I salute her willingness to run in a race she’s going to lose, and her pragmatism in accepting that this is not a campaign worth investing a lot of time in.

Betty McCollum

Betty is liberal and hardworking, and has so far avoided embarrassing us with any scandals or criminal behavior. I kind of preferred being represented by Keith Ellison just because he upsets so many Republicans just by existing, but I really have no complaints about Betty. I’m going to vote for her.

In District 5, here’s who’s on the ballot:

LEE BAUER – INDEPENDENCE
DOUG DAGGETT – REPUBLICAN
KEITH ELLISON – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR

Lee Bauer

I clicked on Lee Bauer’s website with trepidation, eager to find out which variety of Independence nutbar I’d find.

I don’t really want to make fun of him, but I wouldn’t vote for him, either. Lee is a blue-collar, working class, gay single father. (Based on the age of his kid, I’m guessing he had a brief marriage to a woman.) He’s earnest and means well but is overly fond of exclamation points and doesn’t know much about most of the issues.

For example, here’s his comment on drug costs: “Prescription drugs, by bring down the price of will benefit the ones with chronic symptoms and the older folks. How about asthma for instance, There is a drug called Albuterol, it was put on the market 1968, the year I was born, Albuterol 5 years ago was $17.00 cash with no insurance, but today it’s $57.00, and if you were to buy in Mexico its less than five dollars for three bottles. One bottle would last a month for most and this is one drug of many that can be lowed.”

I had basically the same question last year — WTF is up with albuterol prices? This is not a new drug; why does it cost so goddamn much? It turns out that this is due to environmental regulations. The old inhalers contained CFCs. CFCs were banned by an international treaty in 1996 because they were causing ozone layer depletion; the albuterol inhalers that used CFCs were phased out in 2008. The new formulation is legally a new drug and so it’s under patent again (or maybe it’s the inhaler design that’s new? I am not 100% sure.) Anyway, that’s why albuterol suddenly costs so much. There were a lot of things that the government could have done differently to mitigate the situation; I would be a lot more interested in his ideas if he got into any of that, but he doesn’t.

Anyway, a lot of his website is like that.

Doug Daggett

Doug has another fairly standard political bio (his first job was delivering the morning paper). He’s 50, married, a tech sales person, and reasonably competent with Twitter. He presents himself as a fairly moderate Republican, suggesting changes to the Affordable Care Act rather than demanding it be immediately repealed. (He thinks people should have catastrophic coverage policies and HSAs.)

The bit that made me roll my eyes and think, “so very Republican” was this bit on education:

We all want our children to have a great education and great opportunities. Yet in Minneapolis, most likely 1/2 of our children (46%) will not graduate. This is an economic and social disaster for all of us in the 5th Congressional District! We need a leader who will get Washington DC out of our schools and allow teachers and parents to decide what’s best for our children. Doug Daggett is that leader.

Minneapolis is doing a crap job, therefore get Washington DC out because local control is the answer!

Keith Ellison

Keith is a solidly liberal, hard-working Representative who so far hasn’t embarrassed his constituents with scandals or criminal behavior.

But what I really adored about Keith Ellison back when I was living in Minneapolis was being able to tell my out-of-town friends that I was represented by a pro-Choice pro-marriage-equality Muslim black guy. Keith Ellison has been making right-wing heads explode since he took his Oath of Office on Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Koran.

Were I living in Minneapolis, I would definitely vote for Keith.

Election 2014: Senate

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So let’s get this started. At the top of my ballot is the U.S. Senate race. Just to quickly recap what happened six years ago: Al Franken ran against incumbent Norm Coleman; the result was ridiculously close and had to be carefully hand-counted, and it was more than six months before Franken was able to take office. His final lead was either 225 votes or 312 votes. I could not ask for a better object lesson on the subject of, “yes, it matters that you vote, and it matters who you vote for.”

The people on my ballot for U.S. Senate:

STEVE CARLSON – INDEPENDENCE
MIKE MCFADDEN – REPUBLICAN
AL FRANKEN – DEMOCRATIC-FARMER-LABOR
HEATHER JOHNSON – LIBERTARIAN PARTY

So let’s just go top to bottom here.

Steve Carlson

Steve Carlson’s party is officially Independence. There was a brief period of time when this party was actually legit rather than a motley collection of weirdos and paranoids. Where Steve Carlson falls can be spotted very quickly on visiting his website. (The fact that the URL is “stevecarlsonforcongress2010” is also a pretty big clue.) Let’s say you have an uncle you see at big family gatherings and he’s okay as long as you stay on topics like how good his BBQ recipe is and how smart his kids are, but when you get onto politics, out come the racism, homophobia, sexism, wingnuttery, and rampant paranoia. Let’s say he made a whole bunch of videos showcasing his political ideas and put them on a website. That’s Steve Carlson.

Weirdly, he makes all sorts of statements about why you absolutely positively should not vote for Al Franken but he makes zero case (that I found — I am really not willing to sit through his videos, though, and there don’t seem to be any written statements beyond the video titles) for why you should vote for him over Mike McFadden, the Republican candidate (i.e., the guy who might conceivably beat Al in the race). I’m curious what he has against Mike that makes him so willing to act as a potential spoiler, or if he’s just oblivious to that possibility. (In 2008, the ultra-conservative Constitution party candidate got 8,905 votes. If three percent of those voters had gone for Norm Coleman instead, he’d have won the election.)

Mike McFadden

McFadden is the Republicans. If you’re a Republican, you’re probably going to vote for him. Let me just note, though, that when I pulled open the issues page, he starts out by talking about health care. The botched implementation of the MNSure site makes it an easy topic on which to take pot shots, but here’s one of the things he says:

Covering Those With Pre-Existing Conditions. Despite all the promises made during the health care debate, there are still Americans with pre-existing conditions who are struggling to find or afford coverage. This is unacceptable. When we repeal and replace Obamacare, we need to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions actually have access to affordable insurance plans that cover their illnesses.

…with absolutely zero explanation for how he plans to do that, other than the previous paragraph where he said it needs to be “a patient-centered, market-based solution that will lower costs and increase accessibility for all Americans.”

You know something I have very little patience for from politicians are solutions woven from fairy dust and unicorn farts. Political solutions that look like this classic math proof:

That math comic where step three of a proof is,

And then a miracle occurs…

You know the solution that will ensure that every individual with a pre-existing condition will actually have access to health care they can afford? Single-payer health care. Socialized medicine. I guarantee you that this is not what McFadden is advocating. The market-based Republican solution for covering the uninsured and uninsurable was Romneycare. It was almost exactly the program that was implemented, which they liked fine before the Democrats said, “okay, fine. You know what? we’ll take it.”

So if you’re a Republican politician who’s going to go after Obamacare by saying that people with pre-existing conditions are still having trouble getting insured (true, for some, because some people still can’t afford insurance) but you’re not actually going to spell out how you’re going to fix this even in the most rudimentary way, people need to call you on it.

Al Franken

I voted for Al six years ago but with some trepidation, to be honest. I struggled with who to support in the primary. Al the candidate was combative and confrontational and frequently negative. The moment I found myself really liking him, to be honest, was when he was asked about gay marriage. “I love my wife,” he said. “Frannie is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I want EVERYONE to be able to marry the person they love because no one should be denied this sort of happiness.” That’s Al at his best: personal, ethical, and committed.

I’ve been a lot happier with Al-the-Senator than I was with Al-the-Candidate because I feel like we’ve seen a lot of Al at his best. He’s avoided showboating and grandstanding; he’s put a lot of time and energy into dealing with constituent services; he’s pursued some small-scale stuff that solve problems. (He authored the amendment to the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to spend at least 80-85% of premiums on actual health care costs, and to give rebates if they’re failing to meet that benchmark.)

Heather Johnson

If you pick your politicians based on how attractive they are, Heather Johnson would be your clear choice. Mike McFadden looks like the guy in the movie who will turn out to be evil in the third act; Steve Carlson looks like your uncle who mainlines Fox News; and Al Franken looks like Al Franken. Heather Johnson looks like someone you’d cast to play the femme fatale in a movie made by Evangelical Christians about the dangers of going to poetry readings with heathens.

Anyway, she’s a libertarian. I was just the other day looking at this political cartoon, the 24 types of libertarians: http://leftycartoons.com/the-24-types-of-libertarian/

I would say she’s probably mostly the “Naive” kind (on welfare and human services: “I support direct effort through voluntary community charities, locally led initiatives, and the free market with all individuals having responsibility and free choice regarding the exchange of goods and services for goods and services”) with a side of “Briefly Tempting” (On the prison system: “The privatized prison system does not work. Our prison population exceeds other developed nations and rivals underdeveloped nations. This is alarming in a country that claims to support liberty, was built to preserve personal liberty and leaders as servants to we the people.”)

The decision here for me is not at all hard: Al Franken.

Election 2014: Missed the Primary

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I was ambushed by the August primary and failed to post anything.

I also, for the first time in many years, failed to vote in the election — I was out of town that week, and by the time it dawned on me that the primary was going to be in freaking AUGUST, it was too late to get an absentee ballot.

Fortunately, the only actual contest happening on the DFL side of the ballot was for State Auditor. For reasons that in retrospect only seem even more mystifying, former State Rep Matt Entenza ran against the endorsed incumbent, Rebecca Otto, on a platform that seemed to suggest that he didn’t really understand the job functions.

I’ll note that a former State Auditor race is one of the handful of times I’ve voted for a Republican. I voted for Judi Dutcher against a DFL incumbent — although Judi had switched parties before the next election, which I thought vindicated me rather thoroughly.

Anyway, Matt spent busloads of money in order to get about 324 votes total. (OK, I am overstating things, but only slightly; Rebecca got 80% of the vote. Though in an August primary with no real headliner races, only the party diehards are even paying attention.) Over on the Republican side, the endorsed candidates for Governor and Senator took it. I’d say the early evidence suggests that moving the primary back a month has made the party endorsements significantly more important.

I’ve been thinking I should get started with my election blogging; I’ll probably go top to bottom. The thing about starting early is that there’s less information available. “Less” in the context of the U.S. Senate race is not a problem given that there’s no shortage of data out there about Al Franken and McWhat’shisname, the Republican running against him. (I’m not being snarky here, I am legitimately having trouble remember his name. I got a push poll the other day and they asked me what I thought of McWhat’shisname and I said, “um, I’m not sure who that is. Is that the guy running against Al Franken?” Yes. And now I’ve forgotten it again. McConnell, maybe?) ANYWAY. Down-ticket races, “less” sometimes means “none.” There are apparently some competitive judge races this time, though, so I’ll definitely try to get to those.

In Minnesota this time around, we are voting for a U.S. Senator, a Governor, all the big state offices (people! pay attention to these! it really does actually matter who our Secretary of State, State Auditor, and Attorney General are!), all our U.S. Congressional Representatives, all our State Senators, and all our State Reps. Also a bunch of judges, and Minneapolis is having a school board race, and we have County Commissioners and County Sheriffs and (naturally!) Soil & Water Commissioners. AND, for your additional reading pleasure, Minneapolis has TWO yes/no ballot questions — one that’s hoping to solve the Mayoral Clown Car problem for future years, and one that seeks to make it easier for wine bars to operate, I think. (“REMOVE MANDATORY FOOD REQUIREMENTS FOR WINE LICENSES. Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to remove the requirement that businesses holding on-sale wine licenses in the City must serve food with every order of wine or beer and to remove mandatory food to wine and beer sales ratios?”)

If any city resident outside either my St. Paul precinct or my old Minneapolis precinct has a special request for a race for me to cover, let me know via e-mail or comment. (I don’t generally do anything outside the core cities, because I am inadequately informed on the crucial issues. It just takes me a long time to get up to speed on what people are talking about, in the local races. It’s been hard enough getting up to speed in St. Paul — in Minneapolis, I could look at the people endorsing someone and know a bunch of things right off, whereas in St. Paul I totally lack that knowledge base. But I LIVE here now, so I’m actually motivated to acquire it — whereas for New Hope or Eagan, that’s just never going to happen.)

And for new readers who don’t know how this works: I research the candidates, make fun of them, and do endorsements. Most people actually reading these for information are here for the down-ticket writeups; there are very few sources for information about the down-ticket races like Soil & Water Commissioners. (Okay, and last year, I had the distinction of being one of the ONLY one-stop sources for ALL the Minneapolis mayoral candidates.)

For candidates who want to make a case for my endorsement (which you totally should; I am pretty sure I swing DOZENS of votes) or anyone else who wants to get in touch with me about this, my e-mail is totally not a secret. My username is naomi dot kritzer, and I use Gmail. You can also find me on Facebook, and I know about the Other message folder now so I will probably see your message within a day or two.

Convergence programming schedule

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Convergence — our ENORMOUS local summer con — is this weekend, and as usual, I’m going and will be on some panels. Should you wish to find me, here’s where to look:

Thursday, July 3rd

5 p.m. Sci-Fi Mirror

How does the sci-fi of an era reflect society’s concerns, hopes, dreams, and politics? Panelists: Elizabeth Bear, Naomi Kritzer, Haddayr Copley-Woods, Ozgur K. Sahin, Kenneth Konkol. Atrium 4.

10 p.m. Ultimate Evil Overlord 101

An interactive guide to becoming the ultimate evil overlord – with audience participation. Panelists: Naomi Kritzer, Brian Salisbury, Craig Cormick, Laura Thurston, Christoforo Pasquarette. Atrium 6.

Friday, July 4th

8:30 p.m. Tell Me That Again

Most stories have been told before! What folktales, myths, and legends did Shakespeare tell in his plays? What classic stories are being retold in episodes of Star Trek, the Avengers, or the Big Bang Theory? Panelists: Naomi Kritzer, Sarah Prentice, Joseph Erickson, Tex Thompson, Aimee Kuzenski. Atrium 7.

Saturday, July 5th

I have nothing scheduled but might do the Steam Century mystery. Molly, having played the mystery LARP for years and years now with great enthusiasm, has now joined the cast. Ed is predicting that I will lose miserably because Molly will conscientiously refuse to tell me ANYTHING.

Then again, if the weather’s nice, I may try to lure my friends into coming and hanging out with me on the patio (last year the RadishTree had a lovely, lovely patio off the back end of the hotel, with comfortable furniture and fresh-grilled food for reasonable prices. There was even a bar out there. Smokers were all off in their special corral where their fumes would not irritate anyone else.)

Sunday, July 6th

2 p.m. Women in Genre Not Talking about Women in Genre

Panelists talk about everything EXCEPT what it’s like to be a woman working in genre! Which is better, Star Wars or Star Trek? What YA series will be made into a TV show next? Audience questions will be drawn randomly and answered by the panelists. Panelists: Martha Wells, Damarra Atkins, Lynne M. Thomas, Danielle Indovino, Naomi Kritzer. Edina Room.

3:30 p.m. Urban Legends: Myths, Facts, and Half-Truths

From alligators in the sewer to clowns in the attic, urban legends walk the line between total absurdity and being just so outrageous that they might be true. Where do these stories come from, and why do they capture our imaginations so effectively? Panelists: Jason Thibeault, Anne Sauer, Naomi Kritzer, Bug Girl, Shawn van Briesen. Atrium 6.

In the try-on room at the thrift shop

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1. How did I not notice the enormous stain on this item when I took it off the rack? Oh, AND it’s ripped. Excellent.

2. When it won’t even go on over my hips, that makes it easy.3. This makes me look fat. Ginormous, in fact.

4. What on earth happened with this seam? Skirts should flow down over your hip, not stick out at a right angle. Was this an intentional design or some sort of sewing mistake?

5. I can envision a woman of my exact size and shape who would totally ROCK this item of clothing. And I sort of wish I were that woman, but I think I need to just accept the fact that I’m not.

6. This doesn’t even REMOTELY come CLOSE to fitting….oh, that would be because it’s a children’s item that got hung with the adult women’s clothes by mistake…

7. What was I even thinking when I took this one off the rack and put it in my cart?

8. It fits me and feels good, but I wanted pockets and a different color. I’d be sold if it were $5, but it’s $10.

9. Wait, this item I grabbed impulsively actually looks AWESOME on me! …naturally, it’s one of the $14 items instead of one of the $7 items.

(Shout out to Erin Jeffreys Hodges, who could probably add to this list.)

 

MarsCon Schedule

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I’ll be at MarsCon this coming weekend, March 7th – 9th.  If you’re hoping to see me there, here’s my schedule:

Getting into the mind of a religious fanatic
Saturday 11:00 a.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
Uber villain or bit player, what are they like? Are there any useful generalizations? Are they likely to be suicidal and does that depend on the religion or the person? How can they make for interesting novels and stories without being stereotyped and one dimensional? 
With: Naomi Kritzer, mod.; P M F Johnson, Lyda Morehouse, G. David Nordley, David E. Romm, Ozgur K. Sahin

The Press vs. Science
Saturday 1 p.m., Atrium 2 (Re(a)d Mars)
What are some of the greatest howlers in science coverage? What’s the most common kind of reportorial error? What happens when scientists try to write their own press releases? What happens when institutional PR departments do it?
With: Rob Callahan, mod.; Dr. Tom Gardner, Naomi Kritzer, G. David Nordley

Timing and Pacing
Sunday 11 a.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
What does timing have to do with writing? How do you know where to put your action/dialogue/sex scene? How can you tell if you have it in the wrong place? How does this differ between novels and shorter works? What horrible things can go wrong? Why do writers’ groups have trouble gauging pacing in novels? Is there such a thing as too fast in pacing?
With: S.N. Arly, mod.; Naomi Kritzer, Lyda Morehouse

Finding the Key to Your Imagination
Sunday 1 p.m., Exec Lounge (Krushenko’s)
What is imagination? Where does it come from? Some of us are blessed (or cursed) with an excess, and others have very little. Most folks think it’s okay for kids to engage in imaginary play and exercise their imaginations, but a lot of folks think it’s odd of grownups to do the same. Does our culture hinder and damage creative impulses? How do you find your imagination if it’s gone missing? How do you keep it engaged and strong? Is it a use it or lose it proposition?
With: Esther Friesner, S.N. Arly, mod.; Haddayr Copley-Woods, Stryder Dancewolffe, Naomi Kritzer

I will also be around, possibly with kids in tow (I apologize in advance if someone wants to chat with me and I get dragged off by a demanding ten-year-old).

Ravenclaw Kiera, Gryffindor Molly

An old photo of the girls dressed in costumes.

Stories Published in 2013 (that you can nominate for awards, should you feel moved)

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This is an Award Awareness Post, where I’m going to tell you, “Here’s what I published last year! In case you want to nominate it for shiny prizes!”)  I will note in my defense that when nominating stories, I appreciate being able to find out easily whether things I liked were Short Stories or Novelettes and precisely where they got published in which month (since you always have to write that stuff down).  So.  In case you think I’m awesome, are nominating for one of the genre awards (or non-genre! heck, feel free to nominate my penis story for the arty-est most thoroughly literary award out there, if you’re on the nominating committee) and want to know what all I published last year so you can nominate for me for ALL THE THINGS… here you go!

Novelette

“Solidarity,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March/April 2013.  This is a seastead story, with the same setting and characters as “Liberty’s Daughter” and “High Stakes” (which were published in F&SF in May/June 2012 and Nov/Dec 2012.)

Short Story

“The Wall,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2013. This is my time-travel-Berlin-Wall story, in which a college student in 1989 is approached by a woman claiming to be her, from the future, and trying to persuade her to go to Berlin to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Bits, Clarkesworld, October. This is the penis story. It’s online and it’s free, so you could go read it right now if you haven’t already. I realized the other week that if you look me up on the Internet, it’s currently the third hit. So this means that the lady I was chatting with at the parent coffee at school, who found out I was an author and wrote down my name: if she googled me, she’s probably now read it.  

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

Bits, Clarkesworld, October. There’s an audio version!  Read by Kate Baker.

Otherwise, perhaps I can interest you in a lovely picture of one of my cats:

Cat Picture
Blogs are for cat pictures.

 

Yuletide Fanfic

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For years, I’ve enjoyed reading Yuletide stories.  Yuletide, for those who are not aware of it, is an annual fanfic exchange.  When you sign up, you request a story (you actually have to give multiple possible options) and you also offer to write one (ditto). You volunteer and request based on “fandoms,” which in the context of Yuletide can sometimes be as narrow as a single blog post or a TV commercial.  Yuletide does require that the fandoms be small, or at least smallish — you can’t request or offer Harry Potter-based stories, Avengers, anything that has a huge amount of fanfic already.

Stories have to be turned in by late Christmas Eve, and everyone gets their story on Christmas Day.  Authors remain secret until January 1st. All the stories are in an archive and can be sorted by fandom, so you can poke through and read all the stuff that appeals to you.  (A Little Princess?  Allstate’s “Mayhem” commercials? Georgette Heyer’s Venetia?  They’re all in there.)

This year I decided I wanted to play. I was assigned to write for someone who wanted Code Name Verity fanfic, and wrote a story called Damask Roses (it’s also Rose Under Fire fanfic) and I wrote a Treat (an unassigned story I wrote because I looked at a bunch of prompts and felt inspired) about Disney Princesses at a college called Four Things That Weren’t Adequately Covered in Mulan’s RA Training.

The story I received was Addams Family (the movie) fanfic called College First.  It’s perfect — filled with spot-on bits of deadpan dialog.

Lucifer Cast to Earth

Lucifer, as depicted in John Milton’s well-known derivative work, “Paradise Lost.”

I’ve written derivative work before — in fact, I’ve sold it, as you can totally do if you’re deriving from something in the public domain.  “In the Witch’s Garden” (published in Realms of Fantasy in October 2002, available now in Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories) is loosely based on “The Snow Queen” by Hans Christian Andersen.  “The Golem” (published in Realms of Fantasy in October 2000, available now in Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories) draws on the Jewish legend of the golem created by Rabbi Loew.

I’ve also written straight-up fanfic, but not on AO3 and not in Yuletide, so that was really a new experience.

“Four Things” … was really popular.  And here’s the thing about fanfic — no one’s writing it for money, obviously, so there’s this whole culture surrounding it where people are rewarded for their writing and encouraged to write more with compliments. You do get compliments with pro writing; I’ve gotten some really lovely e-mails over the year, and my most recent published story, Bits, has a comments section with eight comments. By contrast, “Four Things” has 353 kudos (basically like a Facebook “like,” only more specifically adulatory) and 40-some comments, all of them saying things like, “you are SO AWESOME.”

You just do not ever get that sort of feedback in pro writing normally. Unless you are so famous that you are also getting stalkers. It’s a funny thing.

And the weird flip side of this is that with pro writing I also always feel slightly embarrassed and awkward about compliments. (I avoid reviews, even good ones; they tend to paralyze me. The bad ones make me think, “oh my god, she’s totally right: I DO suck.” The good ones make me think, “oh my god, I’m totally going to let this person down.” This is totally neurotic, and yet I know a lot of other writers with this same problem — it’s not just me.) Whereas with the fanfic I read every comment and let everyone’s opinion of my brilliance buoy me up. It felt good.

Anyway. Yuletide was fun. Whether I do it next year will once again depend on whether I remember to sign up, though.

Election 2014 already

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Apparently it’s election season again ALREADY.

Over on my old blog, I conscientiously and obsessively blogged about the Minneapolis mayoral race.  (It was an interesting year.)  The election came and went, they counted (which took a few days) and I hung up my political-blogging hat thinking, “done with THAT for a while.”

Picture of the Minnesota State Capitol dome.

Minnesota State Capitol. (From http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulad/)

But…it turns out that here in my new district in St. Paul, our State Rep, Michael Paymar, is retiring.  (He’s represented this district since 1996. So — for a while, although our State Senator, Dick Cohen, has been representing District 64 since 1986.)  The caucuses are in February (February 4th, I think; I wrote it down on the calendar) and the Senate District Convention is in March (late March, thank goodness! it shouldn’t interfere with MarsCon). And if things in this district run like things in my old district, odds are excellent that it’s the Senate District Convention that will effectively pick our next State Rep.

I mean, officially there is a primary, and there’s an election.  But the DFL endorsement holds an awful lot of weight in these races, and the DFL-endorsed candidate has a definite edge in the primary. And come the general election, well, I expect that a Republican will run, but I would be pretty shocked if they won.

(DFL = “Democratic-Farmer-Labor.”  It’s just the Minnesota name for the Democratic Party.)

Anyway. I feel much less well-informed in St. Paul, mostly because I have less of a sense of who the jerks are.  In Minneapolis, there are certain endorsements that people will put in their materials that will cause me to write them off unless they are also endorsed by the people I know I like, to balance them out.  I’m sure St. Paul has a similar crowd of People I Would Hate, If I Knew Who They Were, but I don’t know who they are yet.  (Does that mean I pay more attention to who you know, than what you believe?  Well, not exactly.  It’s more that I pay more attention to who your buddies are, than I pay to what you say you believe.)

This is all preamble to note that I got a phone call this evening from Matt Freeman, a candidate to replace Michael Paymar.  He gets points for being the first candidate to call me, although mid-December is honestly a point at which even I do not really want to be thinking about elections.  We chatted a little (I told him I’d moved last year from Jim Davnie’s district; he wanted to know why I moved, and it wasn’t until I was telling him my answer that it occurred to me that I might be tipping my hand about how best he could craft his pitch.  I don’t think he did, though.)  I wrote down the caucus date and his name and then told him to go ahead and give me his pitch.

The two big issues he talked about were (1) raising the minimum wage, and (2) improving the opportunity gap with Early Childhood education.

Having listened to that amazing This American Life episode about free universal preschool as well as having read about studies, I’m on board with Early Childhood education funding as a potential panacea for the opportunity gap.  I’m also a fan of raising the minimum wage, although I was curious what he wanted to raise it to.   Matt said he thought $9.50 was achievable although he would prefer $10.50; he also wants to peg it to inflation and to work for mandatory sick leave and parental leave.  (Universal paid sick leave is one of those “everybody wins” sorts of ideas.  Totally aside from the fact that letting sick people stay home is the humane and reasonable thing to do, I do not want people with the stomach flu handling my food.)

I asked him about his stance on gun control (which has been one of Michael Paymar’s signature issues, not that he’s had much success with it.)  He talked about background checks and mental health screenings, which is actually a huge red flag for me because what exactly does that mean? Does this mean that people who seek help for mental illnesses are going to go into a database accessible to gun salespeople? Because no. I’m a big fan of medical privacy, particularly regarding mental health records.  He backpedaled when I asked for details and it was clear he hadn’t thought about this much.

One thing he had thought about was that we needed to work harder to figure out how to sell gun control to outstate Minnesotans.  And he’s right about that. Minnesota has a strong hunting culture in the rural parts of the state, and guns just have a different place in people’s lives when they live in the country as opposed to the city.

(My friend Elizabeth, who is a Quaker and a committed pacifist, bought a gun when she moved to the country, because they were raising chickens and were troubled with possums. In the city, if a possum moves into your garage, you can call Animal Control.  In the country, you have to deal with this stuff yourself, and that means either owning a gun, or having a neighbor with a gun.)

Anyway. He does not have a smooth, polished political pitch down yet, and I’m wondering now how long he’s been making these calls.  You would think people would start with the people who’ve been to caucuses in the past, but we haven’t been to a caucus in this district yet so presumably he got my number off the voter registration records and that suggests he’s cold-calling registered voters.  Seems impractical, but what do I know about this stuff?  (He was Chris Coleman’s campaign manager so I expect he knows what he’s doing.)

There are currently seven people running for this seat, I think. (All of them Democrats.) In looking for information, I discovered that someone else is already obsessively blogging about this race, relieving me of the responsibility: http://www.theracefor64b.com/  I’ll probably write about it anyway, though.