A speculative mind

  Fear is a choice It is a choice for the person inflicting the fear. Whether it is a church or a government or a populist gadfly, they have chosen to inflict fear because it brings them power: Fear Hell Fear brown people Fear environmental collapse Fear the rich people Fear the poor people Fear the racists Fear the antiracists Fear the asteroid Fear the fascists Fear the socialists Fear nuclear annihilation Fear the future Fear anyone who is different In the words of Frank Herbert, “Fear is the mind-killer.” If you give into fear, you are giving “them” power over you. Understanding is antifear Knowledge is antifear Compassion is antifear Love is antifear I shall fear no evil Star Liner

  If I told you The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about an orphan girl who watched her brother die and is then given over to foster parents who are dirt poor (the mother calls her names and swears like a sailor) and that all this takes place in NAZI Germany starting on the eve of World War II, you would think that sounds like a depressing book. You would be wrong. The narrator of this story is Death. This seems fitting for a story that takes place in NAZI Germany, but this Death is at times sensitive and even, dare I say it, likeable. He/she/it does their job, no question about it, collecting souls in record numbers. Death has spent quite a bit of time watching Liesel (our main character). Liesel is thrown into an unfamiliar world. Even though her foster mother, Rosa, is hard and berates her, Death assures us that Rosa loves her in her own way. The fact that Liesel’s family is poor does not mean that she leads an uninteresting life. She has adventures with her friend Rudy and s...

  I wouldn’t really call Sarah Pinsker’s novel A   Song for a new Day a post-Apocalyptic novel because the apocalypse isn’t all that apocalyptic. But then that might be because I have become sensitized to it. The problems start with terrorist strikes, but then there is a global pandemic. You say, this is science fiction? Sounds just like the past couple of years. And it is, except that this book was written in 2019, just before we had a global pandemic. There are two main characters: a singer named Luce Cannon (great name for a rock singer). She was an up-and-coming talent when everything went south. She gave up music for a while but then found the irresistible pull calling her back.   The other main character is a young wide-eyed talent scout named Rosemary. Rosemary has lived in her bubble for most of her life. She learns to push back some of her fears to grasp new opportunities. Her naivete is endearing but also lands her in trouble. There are two other ever-present...

  We currently live in a time that is unprecedented in its unprecedentedness. You don’t usually realize you are living through history. History is something that just happens whether you are paying attention or not. It doesn’t feel like history. It just feels like today. Yesterday was just a little bit different than today, which will be just a little bit different than tomorrow. You never grasp that you are living through history until you look back at it. There are focal points in history. Times when the world was forever changed, but we don’t always recognize them as focal point. Homelessness in the modern sense of the world didn’t exist in America until the 1980’s. There have always been a few people who choose to be homeless, vagrants, tramps, or hobos. But homelessness as an institution began in the 1980’s. Policies were enacted that promoted homelessness: tax cuts, housing cuts, and turning mental patients loose (shutting down institutions). Since then, the homeless prob...