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On The Road, Off The Road, In Between

Posted on July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

We attended an out-of-town convention last week, the first we have done together in many years, the first I’ve done since 2015. I made a policy not to go on the road when I have nothing to promote. The exception to that is the chance to see friends who will be at a con or who live nearby and the dates just happen to coincide. In this case, two of our favorite people live in Pittsburgh and seeing them was the deciding factor in choosing to attend Confluence.

Confluence is a small local convention that has in the past been surprising in what it offered, namely the chance to sit down with writers I respect and admire.…

Assessments, Arnold, and Aspirations

Posted on July 16, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

I recently had to find a new gym. The facility I had been going to for, oh, hell, 25 years I suppose, closed because they lost their lease. They evidently had no plans to find a new location in South St. Louis (they have one still in St. Charles). I had made friends over the years. For a time there was what might be viewed as a Geezers Club, three or four of us Of An Age and hanging on, but they all passed away, one after another. One may yet be alive. For the last several months there, going in at my usual time, I usually had the space mostly to myself.…

A Mechanics Of Grief

Posted on June 16, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

We have an emotional field, generated by what goes on inside. Much like a gravity field, the space-time field, it distorts in the presence of other bodies. The degree of distortion is relative to the size of their presence in your life, which can explain why someone we never met can be the cause of genuine grief when they’re gone. That well created in the field you project is a result of how much value you put on their place in your life.

The orbits thus created shift and jostle for equilibrium. When one disappears…

Back in the Age of Burgeoning Awareness (the Sixties through the Nineties) many introspection disciplines advised us to leave nothing unsaid.…

Hank

Posted on May 21, 2023May 21, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

He did not care for his name, either his given one—Henry—or the nickname he ended up being known by, Hank. At his last job, he became known as Hank the Crank. It was an affectionate sobriquet. He managed a department full of engineers and took care of them. One of the first things he did when he took over was get them all raises which had been long overdue.

He flourished in that job. At the end of decades of struggling, moving from one place of employment to another, seeing opportunities die, usually in the mismanagement of others, he came to a place where all his unique and quirky skills and proclivities came together.…

New Stuff

Posted on April 10, 2023May 26, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

So I had to replace my old phone. I am still a bit ambivalent about cell phones and I remain nonplussed at the gismos and gadgets (otherwise known as apps) available and the possibilities, but I now can’t really get along well without one, so…

I bit the bullet and bought a high end. One of the things I was always disappointed with my old one was the camera. I’m a photographer. I have standards. I suppose I could have learned to work with it eventually, but it never inspired me.

This one, though…

I went for a walk the other day and did a few images and played with them.…

Revisiting

Posted on January 27, 2023January 28, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

Nostalgia can be a narcotic. Lately I’ve been going through the accumulated evidence of 50 + years and wondering why I kept it even as each bit triggers memories I’m glad to have. Do I really need this gew-gaw? This piece of paper? This book or album? Part of me can’t bear to part with anyÂ of it, but the practical side of me is starting to sort and allocate in anticipation of the time I just have no more room, no more interest, and no further use. I’m already cutting back on acquiring more. I have enough music on my shelves to last another couple of decades, by which time I could start all over.…

Year One

Posted on December 23, 2022December 23, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

A year plus since retirement. October, 2021, I left the regular work-world. It was a harder decision than anyone knew, even me. I’d certainly given myself enough advanced notice, letting my employer know eight or so months in advance. Plenty of time to train replacements, let people get used to the idea. Even me.

Now it’s December of ’22 and I wonder at the time.

I’m sure most people have plans. Plans. “I’m going to doâ€”.” Sure. And then reality swallows everything and what happens happens and maybe some of those plans survive. I’m looking around an office I had every intention of thoroughly cleaning, rearranging, and updating.…

Election

Posted on October 25, 2022October 25, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

Next week it will be November. Election season.

Voting is already underway and by some reports it is more than tradition would suggest. A great deal is at stake.

I don’t have much to say here. Only that the issue this time around has little to do with what we have come to engage as normal. I do not believe it hyperbolic to suggest that our very way of living is at stake and that voting for narrow interests might be a mistake. The economy will not be fixed by splenetically throwing the majority party out of office. We’re in a fix due to factors beyond the ordinary—a pandemic, a major war in the east, and the aftershocks of certain trade decisions that were not well thought through.…

Current State

Posted on September 10, 2022September 12, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

I finished the final edits on a new novel, which is for the moment scheduled for an April 2023 release. It’s a departure for me, in that it is not science fiction. Several years ago, after finishing a novel, I considered the possibility of switching genres, so I wrote two non-SF books, both in some fashion murder mysteries. One of them, because I had done so much research on St. Louis, I decided to do as an historical. I set it in the 1780s, starting just after the Revolutionary War Battle of St. Louis. After that, I decided to try a contemporary mystery.…

The Chains Of Normal

Posted on August 5, 2022August 5, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

Over my lifetime, one concept has popped again and again to tangle things in a web of pseudo-logic. It seems to go unexamined most of the time, until it emerges as the fulcrum of issues over systemic change. Normal. We seem ever in search of Normal. To be Normal, to return to Normal, to stop deviations from Normal.

But we have a damnable time defining what that is. I mean, really, just exactly whatÂ is Normal?

Normal has changed steadily over my lifetime. And with every major realignment, a new Normal becomes established and accepted and soon enough we find ourselves contending again over that which is Not Normal.…