Dispatches from the Flying M

Norm is toast

Norm Coleman has finally conceded his eight-month battle to prevent top vote-getter Al Franken from taking his rightful place in the US Senate, and Governor Tim Pawlenty's sigh of relief could be heard and felt around the world, because he didn't have to certify Franken's victory while Coleman was still fighting.

Franken's victory gives Senate Democrats a theoretical (because to be actual, they have to use it) filibuster-proof 60 seat majority.  Don't screw it up, Senators!

FiestaCon/Westercon

While I'm in Phoenix for the Independents Day signing at Samurai Comics (see below) I will also make an appearance on Friday afternoon at FiestaCon, aka Westercon 62, at the Tempe Mission Palms in Tempe, AZ.

I'll be doing an autographing session from 4-5 pm, along with writer Diana Gabaldon and Stanley Schmidt, a writer and the long-time editor of sf magazine Analog.

Following that, from 5-6, I'm doing a Kaffeklatsch. I'm not sure what all is involved--I gather drinking coffee or some similar beverage, ideally with one or more other people, and quite possibly talking at the same time. I hope there are people who want to klatsch with me.

So if you're in town for Westercon, you don't have to make the trip to Samurai on Saturday (unless you want the new Obama comic or the other comic stuff mentioned, since I doubt those will be available at the con, although books will be)--but you should anyway, because it's a great comic shop.

Phoenix in July

A week from tomorrow--July 4th--I'll be in Phoenix to sign Barack Obama: The Road to the White House at Samurai Comics, 5024 N. 7th Street, from 11 am-1 pm.  The event is Samurai's "Independents Day," part of a full week of activities at various independent businesses promoting the idea of buying locally and patronizing independents rather than chain stores when possible.  As an independent bookstore owner, the cause is obviously close to my heart.

There will be other books available at Samurai, too, so if you don't have your Desperadoes Omnibus or Graveslinger or Zombie Cop yet, you can probably get 'em there.

FiestaCon, which is this year's installment of the traveling convention WesterCon, will be taking place in Tempe that weekend.  I was invited to take part months ago, and declined because I had no intention of going to Phoenix in July, or going anywhere until Comic-Con later in the month.  Now that I'll be in Phoenix anyway, I'll try to swing by the con, but at this late date it might be impossible to get on any programming, which would make it kind of pointless. So unless there's a further update, the only certain place to catch me will be at Samurai on the 4th.

UPDATE: LocalFirstAZ, the organization of Arizona independent businesses behind Independents Week (June 29-July 5) has created a Golden Coupon good for 20% off at any of 80 participating businesses (including Samurai Comics, and many other great stores) during that week.  The list of businesses is here, along with a link to view and print the coupon.  Or you can use the one below.  Or both--you can use 'em as many times as you want, you just have to print as many as you need and take them into the stores.

Sanford Must Go

I really don't care who SC Governor Mark Sanford sleeps with.  That's not my business, or anyone else's, and I don't think having extramarital sex impacts upon a person's ability to do even a complicated job like governing a state.

I am enough of a language geek to delight in the fact that we now have a new euphemism for extramarital affairs, though--"Hiking the Appalachian Trail."  It has a certain ring to it that we wouldn't have got from "Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail," for instance.  So we're indebted to the governor's staff for that one.

He also told the first reporter who confronted him at the airport that he had been "driving the Buenos Aires coastline," which would be more convincing if Buenos Aires had much of a coastline and wasn't a mostly landlocked city of 14 million people with some of the worst traffic in the world.  That one won't catch on, though, because it doesn't have as mellifluous a flow as "hiking the Appalachian Trail."

So Sanford has done us the favor of brightening up the language.  That's not why he should resign immediately, nor is the affair.  (Nor is his idiotic response to the federal stimulus program, although that's a good reason never to vote for him for any other office). The reason he should go is that he lied to his staff about where he was going.  It's good that they weren't in the position of having to lie to the press, but the governor of a state can't be out of touch with his staff for five days.  Should some sort of emergency requiring instantaneous action have developed, they had to be able to reach him.  On top of that, he left a state vehicle sitting at the airport while he was away, so he seems to have misused state funds for his "hike."  Did he used state funds to pay for his plane ticket?  We'll find out.

A governor who is away from his desk and unreachable?  Entirely unacceptable.  Sanford should resign, and he should have done it this morning when he made his announcement.  Every day he stays in office is a slap in the face to the people of South Carolina.

John Ensign down, Mark Sanford down.  Who will be the next Republican 2012 hopeful to flame out?  Any guesses?

Health care reform

It's almost unbelievable--when it comes to politics and money, nothing is ever entirely unbelievable--that people are working so hard to block truly meaningful health care reform.  Every indication is that our current system's drain on the economy is huge, that it leaves too many people with no reasonable health care options, that the number of uninsured is growing all the time.  For what is supposed to be the most developed, open, economically strong country in the world, the state of our health care is tragically poor.

One of the key elements of true reform is a public option that can compete against the private providers, pressuring them to cover more people at reasonable rates or else lose their business.  The private insurers, supported by their lackeys in Congress, don't want to have to compete on any playing field except the one they have developed and control. That means the system doesn't change, they still call the shots--and those people in Congress continue to have their government-provided health care while denying a similar system to the rest of us.

As a self-employed freelancer, I know just what a big problem this is.  Our health care coverage is expensive and inadequate--a potent combination--and we have it better than a lot of people.

The cost to the nation of the existing situation--underinsured people using emergency rooms as their sold health care providers, with bills going unpaid, lost productivity, a giant portion of people's income going to pay for coverage that may or may not actually cover them in the event of a serious problem, a huge proportion of bankruptcies occurring as a result of medical emergencies--mean that unless this problem is fixed our economy will never recover to the extent that it should.  And yet people in Congress are standing in the way, offering up insurance industry-approved alternatives to real reform that will effectively prevent any real reform from happening. 

If you feel the same way that I do, it wouldn't hurt to drop an e-mail or make a phone call to your Senators and member of Congress to let them know that you want real reform, with a public option.

Thanks for anything you can do.

UPDATE:  There's a NYT/CBS poll from the weekend showing that 72% of people favor a public, government-run option like I discussed above, and would be willing to pay higher taxes to make it happen.  Only 20% oppose such an option.  So Americans want it, it will help the economy and help untold numbers of American families struggling with the high cost of health care, but a handful of mostly Democratic so-called centrists threaten to kill it.  The Republicans have already indicated their willingness to sacrifice anything, including the public good, to sabotage the Obama administration's efforts, so they can't be counted on anyway.  But Democrats deep in the pockets of insurance interests can still prevent it from happening.  For all our sakes, they can't be allowed to succeed.

Here's Paul Krugman on the controversy, too.

Roadrunner

Ever since the dawn of humanity, or at least since Warner Bros introduced their animated Road Runner character in 1948, the magnificent roadrunner has been a symbol of the wide open spaces of the American west.  One of the great pleasures of moving to rural Arizona was the opportunity to see roadrunners on a regular, sometimes daily basis. 

That pleasure was mitigated somewhat by the vendetta one had against me (roadrunners mate for life, and I had, accidentally and sorrowfully, hit one with my car when she suddenly darted in front of me--my theory is that the one stalking me was her mate).  He had a blood-red spot behind one eye that I believe was a badge of honor signifying the taking of at least one human life previously, and he used to try to peck his way through windows when he knew I was on the other side of them.

But he's been gone for a couple of years now, probably having joined his mate in that big desert in the sky, or else relocated by the underground roadrunner mob after taking out some other hapless human. 

This year I've been seeing a lot of a large specimen, close to the house, but it wasn't until yesterday that I found out why.  I was walking into our bedroom.  The door to the master bathroom was open and the bathroom window was open to the outside, and I heard a frenetic clicking noise, the kind of sound that if you hear it while you're driving, you should immediately address it by turning up the stereo until you can no longer hear it.  But I wasn't driving, so I knew it was a roadrunner, close by, and engaged in some sort of important activity.  I went into the bathroom and looked out the window.

Just outside the window is our pond, and next to the pond a big, thick bush with bright reddish-orange flowers that hummingbirds love.  On top of the bush, clicking and working at something just under the upper thicket of leaves, was a roadrunner.  He or she didn't pay any attention to me but kept up the racket and the thrashing until finally settling down somewhere under that top layer.

My belief is that there's a nest in the bush, but it's too dense to see inside.  But if you spend some time in the bathroom (not the most comfortable room in the house, but pretty nice just the same, with saltillo tile and a beautiful Mexican sink and lots of reclaimed barn wood and a clawfoot tub), as I did this morning after my shower, you can hear someone moving around in there, and if you come around the corner at just the right time, as I did this morning with the dogs, you can spot it swooping down from the bush to the ground.

Here's a picture of the bird from yesterday, just before it got comfortable under the leaves.  It was a truly odd sight to see this big thing flailing around, swimming on top of the leaves.

 

Storm light

I was driving home a couple of nights ago, with the sunset behind me and a glowering storm ahead, the skies dark and split by lightning, but illuminated at the same time by the rose and lavender hues of the sun going down through a sky colored by smoke from some area wildfires.

This isn't the world's greatest photograph, but it shows Davis Road, which goes from just outside Tombstone down into the valley, eventually merging with the road that runs past our place, and it's representative of the views that sometimes distract me from my driving.

Father's Day

Today is the 100th anniversary of Father's Day (at least, according to the nice e-mail I just got from Michelle Obama). 

So to me, and to all the other fathers out there, Happy Father's Day! 

And to celebrate, here is today's Cow and Boy strip by Mark Leiknes!

Obama 2

My second Barack Obama bio-comic, Barack Obama: The Road to the White House, landed in comic book stores everywhere this week.  This issue covers the general election campaign and the transition.  The art is still by Tom Morgan, who is drawing all three issues, cover once again by J. Scott Campbell.

I said I was through with personal appearances until Comic-Con, but it appears that I was wrong, because I'll be in Phoenix for this one on July 4.  Details to come!

Sedona

We made it back late last night from our weekend of travel to and from Sedona, AZ, with some (but not enough) actual Sedona time in the middle.

Heading up, we took a back road route we have never taken before from home through Globe, then a path from Globe to Show Low that I have driven solo before, but more than twenty years ago.  This road goes through the beautiful Salt River Canyon, that in any state that didn't already contain the Grand Canyon would be considered a major landmark. From Show Low we want to Taylor to very briefly visit friends, because we were already running behind schedule. 

Heading out of Taylor, we traveled across the amazing Mogollon Rim before descending into Payson.  We had dinner there, then made the rest of the trip to Sedona through the dark of night.

When we awakened in our hotel on top of a mesa, we saw what we couldn't the night before--the breathtaking red rocks and green trees and the incredible views that greet you around every turn. After breakfast we made the short trip out to Red Rock Crossing to see Cathedral Rock across Oak Creek--there's a picture below, then browsed around the shopping/gallery area of Tlaquepaque, where there were many spectacular things we couldn't come close to affording.  After lunch and a little more shopping in Uptown, we headed for The Well Red Coyote, a wonderful indie bookstore, where an enthusiastic crowd gathered or my supernatural thriller seminar.

Later we ate at the charmingly funky Red Planet Diner, and saw The Taking Of Pelham 123 (which was really good--tight, taut, terrifically constructed, with solid, non-stop suspense).

Sunday morning (after a great breakfast at the Coffee Pot) we had to head home, via Phoenix and Tucson.  The scenery on interstate 10 wasn't nearly as grand as it had been on the way up.  But as always, we're glad to be back on the ranch, where this morning the Gambel's quail couple that lives here brought their new chicks for a drink from our pond.