Birding in Blue Heron Park, Staten Island

Jim and I deciding to do a bit of birdng today, but rather than to go Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve (our usual destination), we ventured across the Verrazano Bridge and into Staten Island. Along the south-western shore of the borough are a line of parks and nature preserves, most of which we'd never visited. 

A couple of years ago, somebody recommended that we visit the North Mount Loretto State Forest, but instead we decided to first check out Blue Heron Park, mainly because it has a visitor's center and we thought that we might get some information about the surrounding areas.

Well, we had a marvelous time. We walked into the visitors center and introduced ourselves to the ranger there, and said that we wanted to bird. The ranger was very welcoming, and told us that Mike over here knew all about birds, and would be happy to take us around.

It turned out that "Mike" was Michael Shanley, an archeologist and naturalist who has worked in the Staten Island system for several years, and who knows the local fauna and flora about as well as anyone can. We went for a walk through a forest dotted with marshes, looking for a Prairie Warbler which, he said, he had been hearing all day and wanted to try to find.

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We never found the Prairie Warbler, and in fact, only saw a few birds. But those included several Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Hermit Thrush, a Hairy Woodpecker (which immediately disappeared into a hole in a tree; apparently, it was nesting there), and a Red-bellied Woodpecker. He also pointed out some plants and told us a bit about local history (pointing out, for example, a sidewalk that had been built in the 1930s by the WPA, but never finished).

We had a fine time. I'd recommend Blue Heron Park as a great place to visit for anyone who wants to experience a bit of nature in NYC and who is unfamiliar with the area; they also have a variety of programs, workshops, etc. 

We set out looking for some of the other areas before going home; we found but didn't really enter North Mount Loretto State Forest, but we did visit Wolfe's Pond Park, which is a more family-oriented park (with sports fields, etc.), but with access to a beach where we sat and watch a bunch of Brant Geese and various terns.

It was a nice Sunday.

Panel on how to write about tech at the ASJA Writers Conference

If you're looking to earn a few dollars and enjoy playing with tech toys -- and can write a coherent paragraph -- it's possible that you can become a tech writer. At least, that's the theme of the panel I'll be sitting on tomorrow -- Saturday, April 28th -- at the ASJA 2012 Writers Conference. It takes place at NYC's Roosevelt Hotel; the panel starts at noon.

The name of the panel is You Don't Have To Be a Geek to Write About Tech and it will be moderated by ASJA VP Minda Zetlin; I'll be there with fellow panelists Jason Tanz of Wired and Lex Friedman of MacWorld. It should be interesting (and fun); if you're a member of ASJA and looking for something to do around mid-day, stop by.

Something new to read: Passing, by Nella Larsen

Just saw a review of the anthology Broken Time Blues: Fantastic Tales in the Roaring '20s in the blog Random Stuff from a Random Person. It mentions my story as follows:

While the problem of passing has frequently been an implicit theme of supernatural literature, Barbara Krasnoff’s “Button Up Your Overcoat” explicitly connects the dots between Nella Larsen’s Passing and fantasy narrative.

Which makes me simultaneously pleased and embarrassed, because I've never read (or, to be completely honest, even heard of) Nella Larsen's novel Passing, about a woman in the 1920s (it was published in 1929) who is passing as white and married to a racist white husband -- and who may be trying to win away the narrator's husband instead. And there's a murder in there as well. So I have to immediately run out and get a copy....

Escape Velocity anthology -- free Kindle version

A couple of years ago, I sold a story called "First Class" to a science fiction magazine called Escape Velocity. It was a straightforward space travel story (well, about as straightforward as I can manage, anyway) about a tourist who is stranded on an alien planet. Unfortunately, Escape Velocity only lasted a couple of years, but its editors have gathered some of the stories -- including mine -- into an anthology, and the Kindle version is currently available free of charge. So if you're a fan of traditional science fiction, you may want to give it a try -- you can find it here.

Huffington Post bloggers lose round one

Remember when the Huffington Post was sold to AOL -- and all the bloggers who had been writing for free got, well huffy? They said that because their contributions was part of the value of the product, they should get some of the proceeds. Unfortunately, the judge didn't agree. According to an article in The Guardian:

John Koeltl, who presides over a US district court in New York, rejected the argument outright. He ruled that the bloggers had been fully aware that their work was to be unpaid when they signed up for it, and so any compensation would be to rewrite the terms of their engagement retrospectively.
via The Guardian

Much as I feel for all those disappointed writers, and sympathize with their feeling of betrayal, I can't help but consider that they voluntarily worked for HuffPo without an expectation of payment. The moral of the story, I think, is that if you want to be paid for your work, make sure that it's part of the deal in the beginning.

Poetica Magazine's spring issue now available

About three months ago, I found out that I had actually had a poem accepted by a small-press poetry magazine. Well, it's actually out: The poem is named Memorials, and it appears in the spring issue of Poetica Magazine: Contemporary Jewish Writing.

I've only glanced through it, thus far; I think I've lost the knack of reading poetry. But the poems in this small volume seem to concentrate on family; on new lovers and young mothers and holiday get-togethers and old people remembering what it was like to be children. Nothing abstract or difficult to absorb. And the cover illustration, by Melanie Lewis, is lovely. I'm glad I was able to contribute to it.

If you're interested in getting a copy, you can purchase one at http://www.poeticamagazine.com/. 

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Clockwork Phoenix 2: Now an ebook

Remember Clockwork Phoenix 2? Well, I do -- the first Clockwork Phoenix anthology was a series of really fine short stories, and I really wanted to be in the second. The first story I sent wasn't quite right, but luckily I was able to squeak in at the last minute with "Rosemary, That's For Remembrance."

The anthology is now available as an ebook (along with Clockwork Phoenix 1), and I would recommend this one even if I weren't in it -- it's got some really fine stuff in it, including several that were finalists for a number of awards.

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You can find the ebooks either at Amazon or at Weightless Books (in ePub and Mobi formats).

Lunacon - this weekend!

I'll be attending Lunacon this weekend, which is taking place at the Hilton Rye Town in Rye Brook, NY -- and am very much looking forward to it. I'll be doing a reading there, along with two panels, so if you plan to be there, come on by and say hello.

Here's my schedule, along with descriptions of the panels:

Friday

8 p.m. - 9 p.m. 
Turning the Villain into the Hero (Westchester Ballroom A1)
Turning the villain into the hero - or at least the main character - is a common modern trope, from Wicked to Hook. Why does this have such appeal to modern audiences? Recently works from SJ Tucker and Seanan McGuire have done the opposite - turned heroines like Wendy into darker figures. Would that work with male heroes as well, or is it the passivity of classic female characters that makes their empowerment appealing even when it comes at a moral price? 

Saturday

10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. 
Reading (Bartell)
Right now, I'm planning to read the story that has just come out in the anthology Fat Girl in a Strange Land, called "Marilee and the S.O.B." That could change, though, depending on my mood (and that of the audience!)

2 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Dr. When (Elijah Budd)
How has Dr. Who changed with the times it was filmed in? Does every generation get the Doctor it deserves? 

Sounds like a lot of fun -- hope to see you there!

Fat Girl in a Strange Land is now available

I'm happy to announce that the anthology Fat Girl in a Strange Land -- which includes my short fantasy story "Marilee and the SOB” -- has now been officially released and is available from a variety of sources in print and ebook formats, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Enjoy!

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Coping with a cancellation - a rant

Has anyone else here had a theater performance cancelled at the very last minute? It happend to me yesterday, and I’m still a bit upset over it.

A bit of background: My mother and I usually subscribe to one theater group per season -- it’s become a rather important ritual in our life. I usually spend Saturdays at her place helping her with various things, but this is a time we can spend together just to do something cultural, for fun.

We had been subscribing to the Atlantic Theater for several years, but this year, for several reasons, we decided to give them a year off and instead chose a small company called the Abingdon Theatre, which was putting on three plays that looked interesting. We enjoyed their first production (“Blame in on Beckett”) and I was looking forward to the next one, called “Lost on the Natchez Trace,” a two-man play about a confrontation between a slave auctioneer and a runaway slave.

Now, understand, my mother is a woman “of a certain age” (she doesn’t like people to know her age, and I’ll respect that) and lives in Nassau County, and so going into the city for a play isn’t a casual thing. She goes to the LIRR train station the day before to pick up a round-trip ticket, then on the day drives to the station, takes the train in, and I meet her at the theatre; afterwards, we go back to the station and I wait with her until her train is announced.

So. We get to the theatre, meet, go up in the elevator, and are greeting by a woman who tells us that the performance has been cancelled.

Excuse me?

It seems that one of the two performers called in sick 20 minutes earlier and that they don’t have any stand-ins for the two-man performance, so it’s been cancelled. They’ll be happy to reschedule us. Even for this evening’s performance if we like.

Now, I understand that people do get ill, often at the most inconvenient times -- but not to have any stand-ins? “We can’t afford it,” says the woman.  

The tiny lobby was filled with people (it was a matinee, after all) trying to figure out how to handle the situation, many of whom were older people for whom rescheduling a trip to a theatre was not a smal thing.

When we got to the box office, the young women there asked if we’d like to come to the evening perfomance. Obviously that was out of the question; my mother couldn’t spend five hours hanging around Manhattan and then go at night. But I was curious. “What are the chances of that being cancelled?” I asked.

“Oh, he’ll be there,” one said confidently. Which made me even more annoyed; if the actor was down with food poisoning or some such and was puking his guts out, how could they be sure he’d be ready for the evening performance? Or if he was simply hungover or tired or whatever -- then why was this performance being cancelled?

And how could any theatre company not have understudies? As Jim said later, even if they have to have somebody standing there with a script in their hand, they should have somebody there to pick up the slack. Hell, I would have been happy if they had apologized and said they were going to do a reading of the play for those who couldn’t (or chose not to) reschedule -- it wouldn’t have had the full drama of the production, but at least we would have seen a performance.

My mother and I ended up going to see a movie. (We saw Woman in Black with Daniel Radcliffe, which was actually a nicely old-fashioned ghost story.) We took an alternate date in two weeks. However, I’m not sure if I want to go. I really wanted to see this play, but I also have a lot of things I need to help my mom with. It’s hard to put aside another Saturday.

And how much do I want to take the chance that we’re going to show up and be told that we’ve gone through all that trouble for nothing -- again?

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