Cometary Tales All That Was Asked,Blog . . . GO! “All That Was Asked” is out, now!

. . . GO! “All That Was Asked” is out, now!

The pre-midnight roll-out

One thing about the global economy…it’s January 31st in some places already. Barnes and Noble has the paper editions as well as the Nook version ready to go.

Meanwhile, Amazon is lagging behind, with just the Kindle version and it still is tagged as “preorder” . . . in the U.S. C’mon Jeff, don’t you want more money for your rocketship project? UPDATE: Amazon is up, in Kindle and Trade Paperback editions.

But you can download it from Amazon’s sites for the UK or India.

And it’s up at Canada’s Biggest Bookstore, !ndigo.

And in Australia at Angus & Robertson.

No problems at Smashwords, either.

And you can use Paper Angel as a home base, plus a place to read the sample or order a signed copy direct from the publisher.

My favorite, though, is the listing on Rakuten-Japan. Though of course it’s on “regular” Rakuten, too (i.e., Kobo).

You might also like to read:

Sunday at BayCon 2013Sunday at BayCon 2013

The last full day of the convention is truly the moment when plans and results can be expected to diverge the most.  One must combine shifts in plans from the ORIGINAL plan with adjustments in expectations resulting from events of the first few days.  Here is how this instance worked out:

Time Frame What the Plan was What really happened
Sunday morning See if there’s something different to do in the Arduino II workshop and if not, go to the Dr. Who birds-of-a-feather (BoF) get-together.  Sit in on the panel discussion on how to differentiate among various dragons–if that is boring, go on to the live podcast of Poe’s “The Raven”.

Trish Henry's Butterflytastic Arduino Organ Housing

Trish Henry’s Butterflytastic Arduino Organ Housing

And My Own Finished Arduino Project

And My Own Finished Project

 

 

Costume Swap find, ready for Regency dancing.

Costume Swap & Dealers’ Room finds, ready for Regency!

 

Actually made it to the Arduino workshop at 9:30.  They were still getting things organized for the second session, so maybe that counts as being on time.  It was the same projects, but with fewer participants (it being 9 a.m. on Sunday), so there was plenty of room for me. 

I joined a table where two others had chosen the same project–a master-crafter who put together her project in half the time I needed and an astronomer from Reno who had watched the annular eclipse not far from where I had been.

 

In time, I got my software downloaded, wiring connections made, taking advantage of help from Arduino Labs’ Larry Burch & his friend Tim Laren & the soldering wizard whose name I failed to get.  Got all my decorations done and even sort of got it working.  The mapping of the connections isn’t quite right on the scale, but I can reprogram at home.  Yay!

The costume swap took place in the back of the DIY room while we were hot-gluing our hardware.  When the swap was over, the person-in-charge called out, “Last call!  If you want something, take it!”  We tech DIY’rs were stalled waiting for turns to get software downloaded at the time, so several of us rummaged through the pile.  I found a long dress that was part of someone’s costume for something & one of the other women encouraged me to give it a try.  Hey, I could squeeze into it—so now I have a dress to wear for Regency dancing tonight!

 

And by the time we were all done, it was after noon.  I carried my prizes out to the car and ate lunch.  More peanut-butter-or-jelly, but with salad today.  Forgot to pack chips.

 

Next:  plenty of time for a purchasing visit to the Dealers’ Room.  Found a piece of jewelry (a necklace in a vaguely steampunk style) within my budget and bought it.  Sweet.  Finally feel “dressed for SF”.

Sunday afternoon Go to session on getting the “swords” right in Swords and Sorcery, then to the Cassini Mission panel–the ONLY real science panel at this con.

American 1890's belly-dancer "Little Egypt"

American 1890’s belly-dancer “Little Egypt”

 

 

NASA-CassiniTitan

Cassini at Titan? Missed this panel!

 

 

 

What the youngsters don't know about kaffeeklatsch

Can you believe what  youngsters don’t know about kaffeeklatsch?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember WorldCon 2002?

Remember WorldCon 2002?

 

 

 

 

 

 

LMB signs my copy of her first appearance in Analog! Yesss!

LMB signs my copy of her first appearance in Analog! Yesss!

 

And Installment IV--signed, too.

And Installment IV–signed, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ewww.  The Swords presentation turned out to be extremely in-your-face (literally) factual, with photographs of people with cuts and blood and so on.  Double-icky.  I exited swiftly and dashed to Mary Cordero’s belly-dance workshop.

 

Oh, now, that was so much super-fun!  Learned basic belly-dance techniques, picked up some dance history, practiced and played with movement, and had fun in a roomful of women.  Well, let’s be honest, two of the drummers were  guys and one brave man was trying the dance himself.

 

Most people think belly dance is only for women, but clearly Mary is not one to put up barriers–and there’s a strong tradition of men (and not just gay men) involved in the art form.  Check out “Whose dance is this anyway?”  I have also since learned about Tahtib, which is stick-fighting, like Eskrima, and would be a totally cool addition to this con, as it blends boffers and belly-dance.

 

This “women’s dance” is real exercise, so I pulled off my overjacket and scarf, to discover I’d put on my butterfly shirt backwards.  Oh, well, I pulled my arms in and switched it around.  We’re all “girls” here, right?  Mary kept the workload light, so we ended up a little sweaty but not exhausted.  She passed out random badge ribbons and encouraged us to come to her party later.

 

Luckily, I was already prepared for my first change-in-plan, which resulted from my stumbling into signing up for the Guest of Honor Kaffeeklatsch.  The deal is “bring your own coffee” so I took time to cool down from belly-dancing and then sought out a cup of tea (using my Inner Gail to persuade the store clerk to rummage in a drawer for more English Breakfast teabags). Others brought drinks, but coffee was not a popular choice.  While waiting to begin, the key discussion item was whether “kaffeeklatsch” is  a real thing (from which I discover I am now on the “other side” of the generation gap) and whether the activity should be renamed because no-one brings coffee.

 

It was a pleasant group “visit” with Lois McMaster Bujold, though likely it was on the torturous side for our hostess.  My suspicions that she is a member of our society of introverts was confirmed, even as she was peppered with questions about the Vorkosigans and the culture Chalion and her other novels.

 

We were a very mixed bag of folks…but we had more in common than admiring “LMB”.  One guy went to ConJose for his first SF con and he described the line I was standing in to get Bujold to sign a book for me at my first con.  The “girl” across from me was also in the Arduino workshop with me–she tried to get Lois to accept her glowing Arduino badge as a gift, and succeeded in getting her to keep it for the session.

 

Bujold had already announced that she’s rather tired of working in the “Vorkoverse” but attendees were brimming with ideas of stories they’d like to hear.  Near the end of our allotted time, however, the talk ranged more freely, and the participants chatted more among themselves about television and science and child-rearing and books, so at least Bujold had a chance to not talk a little.

 

When it looked as though the session was ending, she agreed to a photo with Ruth (my fellow Arduino-ist) and to sign my Analogs. Mysteriously, (or not-so, with Analog’s mid-month issues), I was missing an issue.  But, as she puts it, I could choose to make my life mission to find that last issue and get it signed.  Or not.  I’d only asked her to sign one, and she offered to do them all.  Like me, she regrets doing the three-name routine, as it makes her name soooo long to sign.

 

But six o’clock rolled around and the last few deep fans were still reluctant to set her free.  I made my exit hoping that would provide a route out for her.  She’d taken the head-of-table chair, which left her with a difficult path to make a graceful retreat.  I nearly knocked down a one-year-old who was toddling about right outside the door, but her mother was reassuringly calm for both of us.  I have to mentioning this, as she’s one of the people I have kept meeting all weekend!

 

When the rest finally emerged, I walked along with them and we exchanged some info, as we clearly have some interests in common.  I met Ruth’s sister and daughter and the daughter’s friend.

 

Oh, well, time to go get dinner and go to boffers.  It’s a bit of driving, but I made it to a Subway and scored a tuna salad.  I was so hungry it was a challenge to not tear into the salad box on the drive back.  And then I nearly left my sword in the car!

Sunday night Go to the Firefly LARP and then do Regency Dancing, and listen to concerts if any run that late.

Who's Boffer, eh?

Who’s Boffer, eh?

 

 

 

 

Why "Lena" is already so good--this is her dad!

Why “Lena” is already so good–this is her dad!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Cordero (right), shares the fun and treats at her Belly Jam Party

Mary Cordero (right), shares the fun and treats at her Belly Jam Party

 

Tech meets Tambour at Belly Jam

Tech meets Tambour at Belly Jam

 

 

 

 

Regency dancers take over

Regency dancers take over

Representatives of PEERS turn out in the best costumes.

Representatives of PEERS turn out in the best costumes.

Our Dance Master takes a turn at the waltz.

Our Dance Master takes a turn at the waltz.

 

 

Thirteen--original artists...on Amazon.

Thirteen–original artists…on Amazon.

Well, the kids were at boffers.  That is, Ruth’s daughter and her friend.  Or their clones, anyhow.  I ate furiously, anxious to get in on the action while there were still some kids around willing to teach me how to play.  There was also an older tween-aged girl there with her mom, impatiently waiting for her dad or one of her dad’s friends to come and battle with her.  She clearly felt not well-matched with the younger kids.  So I said I’d play as soon as I finished.

 

“Lena” gave me a basic lesson and then thrashed me soundly.  So the other girls’ main battle became over who had dibs on playing the newbie next.   If memory serves, I did manage to beat one of them once.  Maybe twice.  There was absolutely no way I could have won against my tutor.  It is a very energetic game and not as violent as it might be.

Here are the rules, as taught by the Kids of Boffers:  1) No trying to hurt the other person 2) No head shots, at least not on purpose 3) If you’re hit on the arm or leg, you’ve lost that limb and have to do without it, so hop if you lose a leg, kneel if you lose both, switch hands if you lose your sword arm  4) Hits to hands or feet don’t count.  5) Torso hits are deadly.

 

I did my best performances when killed, of course, as death scenes are generally fun to do.  They all knew the old Monty Python Black Night routines and a few random Shakespeare quotes were tossed about.  These people were all around the age of 10-13.  The first girl’s dad (aha!  He’s a professional sword-fighting instructor!) finally appeared and played a couple of rounds with her.

Another of the skilled adults gave one of my smaller opponents a good lesson in using her dagger-and-shield.  She was a lot fiercer after that!  There were older (bigger) people there, kindly not taking me on.  Two members of the Silicon Valley Screwts, the quidditch team, spent the hour bashing one another.  And several were more eager to play boffer baseball.  When the kids who were battling me headed out, so did I.

I had intended to go to the Tucker and Tinney concert, but then remembered about the belly-dance teacher’s party.  She’d be disappointed if her students didn’t come.  So I found my way to the “Party Floor” (another first) and stayed a while.  She had snacks and drinks and music and drumming.

 

It was another hour of re-meetings.  The professional-swordfighter family was there–their daughter is also good at drumming.  Turns out the family is from the town next to mine.  And the Arduino guys were there.  And a writer from one of the panels I went to….whose reading I missed because I had to leave early.  And another woman from the class.

 

We all did some dancing.  Mary handed out some “Bellyrina” ribbons.  The swordfighter dad used me as a demo model to describe to the writer how traditional dance positions matched up with swordfighting moves and also how he and his wife would act out dramas in which the lady would join the fray and surprise the opponent.

 

I finally slipped out with my shoes and dress and boffer, explaining that I really wanted to do some Regency dancing, now that I even had a dress to wear.   And so spent the next three hours doing country dances.  The dance master would teach one set, guide us through the full dance, and then announce a brief waltz for a break.

 

There were plenty of people to ensure we could all appropriately switch partners around each time and, given the predominance of women in the group, to allow the women to switch genders from gent to lady and vice-versa.  We did a half-dozen or more dances before the dance master called “time” at 12:30 after his group’s signature piece, the Congress of Vienna waltz.

 

There was supposed to be open filking in the main music hall, so I slipped in there just as they were starting a new song.  The Bohnoff’s sang a couple of pieces, someone sang something I can’t name but which went up very high indeed while accompanied by Betsy Tinney playing “the flute part on the cello”, and someone else did the old silly song about writing a science paper and stuffing it with drivel to get published.

 

There was a request for something within the theme, so Maya sang Vixy & Tony’s “Thirteen”.  Someone’s daughter jumped up to sing one her own favorites from the same album (“Emerald Green”) and then two of the adults did their parody versions, one of which was a gentle bit of humor about the Emerald City but the other one upset the first singer as “horrible”, being a song about Soylent Green.

 

The musicians all had their computers and tablets out, pulling up lyrics and chords.  I even got to make a tiny contribution, rescuing from under a chair a small accessory the guitarist dropped under his chair.

 

But then it was nearly 1:30 and boffers would close at 2.  I ducked into a restroom on the way downstairs and swapped from dress to pants again, but the doors to the convention center were already locked–to my disappointment and the sharp dismay of one of the boffer organizers who wanted to get their stuff out of the room.  I followed her back to the lobby, where she sought help from the hotel staff and I added a contribution to the Welcome To BayCon whiteboard.  “Allons-y” has 2 ells in it, kids.

 

Time to grab a Coke from the Gaming Room’s Charity Soda Machine and get home.

 

The Eight-Sentence ParagraphThe Eight-Sentence Paragraph

Apparently there is some sort of internet rule that all pages must have pictures. Even tweets, which were supposed to be the haiku of the internet now have to have photos attached.  Sorry, but this post has no pictures.  Wouldn’t be appropriate, as you’ll see.  Please don’t report me to the internet police.  Oh, I’ll put in some links.  Will that help?

This is a story I wrote for my son after a school lesson like to killed his interest in writing, fiction or non-fiction.  Given that he’s going to be spending the next semester writing a senior thesis in biology at UC Berkeley, I feel it’s only fair to take credit for saving his writer’s mind back in fifth grade.  Of course, his favorite writer is Charles Darwin.

 

THE EIGHT-SENTENCE PARAGRAPH

 

Thomasina Keck sighed, looking out on the chaos of her fifth-grade class. There were too many questioners in this year’s group, too many boys who objected when girls gave them the business, too many girls who preferred to talk in class. Her hopes of getting thirty decent essays on her desk by the end of the month were fading fast. And the stupid standardized tests were scheduled for the week after that. No one would be paying attention to anything that week; the stress of Test Week wiped out everybody, including the teachers.

Mark Peterson sighed, squeezing into the back-corner desk surrounded by chattery girls. An aura of doom hung over his head. Sooner or later today, he knew, he would tell Maura or Sue to knock it off, and his name would be up there on the board. “How can I help it if the only one she hears is me?” he had moaned to his best friend Drew only yesterday.

It didn’t help that Sue kept track of his Detention Count, as sort of an anti-charitable act. She giggled as he slid into his seat. “One more time, Markie-Mark,” she said, just loud enough for Maura to hear. Eight times up on the board, and it was Detention. Mark gritted his teeth and tried to focus on laying out paper and pencils from his binder. The last thing he wanted to do this afternoon was sit in the office writing about how he could have been a better student.

Mark tipped his chair back, so he could see around Sue, and made a face at his best friend, Drew. The Evil Ms. Keck had put the friends as far away as possible. Drew pulled a face of his own, his trademarked Sick Fish impression, made their secret sign for “crazy”, and pointed dramatically to the front of the room.

When he looked, Mark’s heart sank even lower. Ms. Keck had written across the board “The Eight-Sentence Paragraph.” Oh, no. Writing time. Dimly, Mark remembered a time not so long ago, in third grade, when writing had been his favorite subject. Fourth grade had been a bummer. Not only had he and Drew been stuck in separate classrooms, but Drew got Ms. Houlihan, the teacher who had all her kids write their own books as a class project. He, Mark, got stuck with Mr. Black, whose idea of language arts was an endless series of grammar worksheets, word finds, and spelling words written three times each. Mark had only survived by writing in his journal every day while Mr. Black went through the worksheets one question at a time every morning.

Now, here was this Ms. Keck, trying to teach him, Mark, how to write a paragraph! Mark grunted, picked up his pencil, and laboriously wrote out the now-familiar list:

  1. Introduction.
  2. Reason.
  3. Explain.
  4. Another reason.
  5. Explain that reason.
  6. Another reason.
  7. Explain that reason.
  8. Conclusion.

Then Mark wrote:

Eight-sentence paragraphs are pointless. They are really dumb. It is a way for stupid people to pretend they are writing paragraphs. They are really fake. Real books have paragraphs with lots of different numbers of sentences. They are boring. No one wants to read the same thing over and over in one paragraph. Only really bogus brainless dweebs write eight-sentence paragraphs.

Sue was leaning over. She was reading his paper. That made Mark mad. He glared at her, just barely keeping his mouth shut. But she just made the peace sign at him. What a bogus brainless dweeb! he thought.

Up at the front of the room, her nose twitching with the smell of the dry-erase marker, Ms. Keck tried to pretend she didn’t see the little exchange going on in the far corner. She knew Mark was in a bad spot, but she just had to have someone between those two jaw-waggers, Maura and Sue. This month it was Mark’s turn. He deserved a little slack. So she pretended not to notice how he’d scooted his chair back so he could read the book on his lap.

“All right, now, class,” she said, trying to inject a little energy into her voice. “Can anyone remember how we build our eight-sentence paragraph?” After eight weeks, you’d think they’d have it down. A few kids raised their hands.

“Alyssa.” That girl usually had an answer.

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

Ms. Keck felt like whapping herself in the head with the dry-erase eraser. That’s just what she needed—a procession of girls tripping off to the washroom.

“Alyssa, surely you can wait until recess. You just came in from lunch.”

“But I really really really have to go.”

All right then. She didn’t want to play the ogress today. But she could use her teacher power. Alyssa’s pal Katie was already standing up. The bathroom, like everything else in this cockamamie California school was reached from outside the building. So school rules were that all bathroom trips required buddies. Ms. Keck pointed to the big girl at the back of the room.

“Antoinette,” Ms. Keck called out, and the oversized girl in the back row jerked her head up from a page of doodles. “Please go with Alyssa.” Katie plopped back into her seat with a dark look.

Mark, despite his surreptitious reading, followed this little battle with some pleasure. Katie and Alyssa were the official class Popular Girls. They were fond of hanging out in the corner of the playground and calling the boys names when Yard Duty wasn’t listening. Some of the names were so rude that Mark wasn’t entirely sure what they meant.

But The Evil Ms. K. did not let her victory distract her from the task at hand. She turned immediately back to The Eight-Sentence Paragraph. Mark closed his eyes and felt a familiar feeling rush through him. First he felt hot, then cold, then all fluttery. He had a funny feeling recess would be bad today. It was always bad when he was feeling angry like this.

He opened his eyes and stared down at his book. It was the library’s copy of The Prince and the Pauper. Ms. Keck’s classroom copy was some bland kiddie version. It left out all the good stuff, like just exactly how mean and nasty the pauper’s dad was. He scanned over the two pages that were visible. Not one paragraph had eight sentences. He turned the page. No eight-sentence paragraphs here, either.

“I bet,” he thought, “there isn’t one eight-sentence paragraph in this whole dang book. Someone should show Ms. Keck.” And although he didn’t believe in wishing any more, Mark silently wished with all his heart that someone big and impressive and really convincing would really truly show Ms. Keck a thing or two about her stupid eight-sentence paragraphs.

Suddenly, he was aware that a large hand, a grown man’s hand, was resting on his desk. Half of his official eight-sentence paragraph was covered by the hand. It was rough, a little wrinkled, with short fingernails. He could see flecks of dirt under two of the fingernails.

“What’cha reading there, boy?” a low, masculine voice said behind him. Mark could feel all the hair on the back of his neck stand right up on end, as if he were a cat. Numb with surprise, he simply lifted up the book so the person behind him could see the cover.

A hand to match the first appeared from behind his head and picked up the book. The man chuckled. It was a pleased, contented chuckle, the kind you hear when your dad catches you picking up your room before he’s told you to.

“That’s not the best one. Written to make a point, as I recall, not just to tell the story.”

“Oh, but I really like it. And it doesn’t go all gloomy in the end, like Connecticut Yankee does.” Drawn into an argument, his favorite kind of conversation, Mark forgot he had the creeps and twisted around to look at the visitor.

The man was kind of tall. He had fluffy salt-and-pepper hair and a funny puffy mustache. He smelled strongly of tobacco smoke, which was kind of unpleasant but not quite as bad as the smell of Mark’s aunt’s cigarettes.

“Excuse me?” Ms. Keck’s voice struck its coldest, firmest level. “And you would be…?”

“I would be, madam, that most unwelcome of creatures, the unexpected visitor,” the stranger answered with a cheerful grin. His long, gangly legs carried him up to the front of the room in a few relaxed strides. “I’ll not be any bother. I’ll just set myself in the corner here. You just go on with what you were doing.”

The visitor wasn’t exactly in the corner when he said this. And it was hard to believe that Ms. Keck would not be bothered. He had planted himself at her desk. What’s more, he leaned back in her chair and parked his feet on the corner of the desk, right next to her Styrofoam mug full of Sharpie markers.

The class could not help itself. It gasped. It was a very soft, collective ah! And this meant Ms. Keck had to stifle her urgent need to tell this fellow off. By no means was she going to unbottle the energy of this class by giving any indication that she was bothered. She forced a smile.

“Welcome to our classroom, Mr. — ?” And she made it a pointed, direct question.

“Clemens, ma’am. That would be Mr. Clemens. I’m visiting from Connecticut, now, but I spent some time out here in California some time back, when I was in newspapers.”

“Is that so? Well, Mr. Clemends, if you can bear with us, we are reviewing our latest lesson in writing. Hassan, would you tell our guest what we have been studying?”

Hassan was usually quick off the mark. He was a short-term student, the son of a Nigerian engineer who had been brought over to the states for some big project up at IBM. Hassan had previously attended rather upscale private schools. But today, the boy was too dazzled by the tooled cowboy boots resting six feet to his left. He only turned his head slowly back to the front of the room and said, totally Americanized, “Huh?”

Corrina raised her hand and waved it vigorously. Having won the right to speak, she rattled off, “We’ve been studying paragraphs, because all our old essays are all just one big paragraph and you told us that was bad and so we have to learn to write paragraphs and the way to write a paragraph is to write eight sentences.”

“Very good, Corrina,” said Ms. Keck, actually allowing herself to feel a little pleased that the girl seemed actually to have absorbed the lesson.

The visitor shifted, making the old chair squeak. When the students’ heads swiveled his way, he asked, “And how long might those sentences be?”

“Oooh! Oooh!” It was Mayella’s turn to reach for the ceiling. “I know!”

“All right, May,” Ms. Keck said. “How long should each sentence be?”

“Short and sweet!” So that was two correct answers in a row. Ms. Keck felt a warm happy glow. Maybe things were going all right after all.

“Wonderful!” she said. “Let’s just go round the group and see if we remember our sequence. Neal, why don’t you start us off?”

Neal, a thin nervous boy who looked like he ought to be wearing glasses, coughed out, “Introduction.” Ms. Keck turned and swiftly wrote the word next to the number “1” she had ready on the board.

Oh, she was in her element now. Without looking over her shoulder, she called out the names and wrote their answers.

“Elena, what’s sentence number two?”

“Um, a reason?”

“Yes. Sasha?”

“Explain.”

And so on through Carmelita, Edgar, Isaiah, Adnan, Paul, and Nick, until Mark could look up at the board and see his list replicated in orange marker. Ms. Keck finished her list with a flourish and turned with a smile.

“There now! I think you have it! Very good, class!”

But then there was a weird noise over at Ms. Keck’s desk, and everyone looked away from the teacher. The visitor was leaning over, tapping something on his boot. That was what made the strange thocking noise. Mark leaned over his desk to see past Sue’s bangs. It was a pipe. The guy had a pipe in school. Did he have the nerve to light it up?

But Mr. Clemens just tucked the empty pipe between his teeth. He may have had the nerve, Mark decided, but he just plain wasn’t that rude. He had claimed everyone’s attention, though. And once he knew all eyes were turned his way, the tall man stood up, grasped the edges of his vest with those big, gnarly hands, and said, “Poppycock.”

Ms. Keck made a squeaky noise. Then she swallowed and said, very coldly and politely, “I beg your pardon, sir?” She stood up very straight and stiff, somehow managing to be looking down at him, even though she barely topped five foot three.

“I said, ‘Poppycock’,” Mr. Clemens repeated, extracting the pipe from his teeth and tucking it into the pocket of his vest. “By which I mean, floptwaddle. Malarkey. Or, as the English fops so elegantly put it, stuff and nonsense.”

Ms. Keck, you had to give her credit for that, stood her ground. “And I said, ‘I beg your pardon?’, meaning ‘Have you forgotten that I am the teacher in this room?’”

But the big man was only revving up. “That’s confoundedly easy to forget, madam, when I hear you spouting such a load of tomfoolery. What in the blazes do you mean to accomplish here? The single-handed degradation of the art of American letters?” And he strode right up to the front of the room, picked up the eraser, and wiped The Eight Sentence Paragraph clean out of existence. Three of the boys at the back of the room actually burst into applause.

Ms. Keck stared at the invader. She honestly didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t leave the class to get help, not with a stranger in the room. Shouting for help could not be effectual, not in her hard-won self-contained classroom at the far end of the building.

Besides, what would she say? “This terrible man just erased my whiteboard”? She would be the butt of staff room humor for weeks to come. Nothing for it but a fight to the bitter end. She squared her shoulders, and stepped right up to the smart-alecky so-called visitor.

“Mister Clemends. You seem to have forgotten your promise. Observing classrooms is permitted. Interfering in lessons is not.” She glared up at him. He smiled down at her, with a twinkle of laughter in his eye.

“Very well then, madam. How about you provide some evidence of this spider-shaped paragraph, eh? You there, boy,” Clemens said, crooking a finger at Mark. “Let’s have a look through that book you have there.”

Mark passed the book forward, suddenly anxious that his sneak reading was now front-and-center with Ms. Keck. The visitor would be gone by the end of the day, for sure, well before she handed out detention notices.

Mr. Clemens took the book into his big hands gently, almost affectionately. “Says here,” he said with evident satisfaction, “that this book is one of the great classics of American literature.” And he slapped the slim hardcover right into Ms. Keck’s hand. “I dare you. Count the sentences in those paragraphs. Mark my words. I wager that you’ll not find even one, but even if you do, it will not read anything like this…” and he proceeded to quote Mark’s “bogus dweeb” paragraph, verbatim. Mark turned bright pink. He could feel it, like a fever. For once, he was relieved to be at the back of the room, with only Sue close enough to see. And her eyes were riveted to the front of the room.

But Ms. Keck was not giving up. “The children are learning to write essays, not fiction, sir. And you must realize that they are just beginning to learn about the structure of writing. The eight-sentence structure teaches children to organize their thoughts as they write and to justify the arguments they present in an essay.”

“Just beginning?” Mr. Clemens cast a skeptical eye around the room. “These great big boys and girls are only just beginning to write? What kind of a sorry excuse for a school is this?”

“A school with a well-ordered curriculum, Mr. Clemends. Now, if you don’t mind, we have very little time to complete our lesson today.” Ms. Keck felt herself in command again. She stepped back and glanced significantly toward the door, giving the ignorant interloper a fair opportunity to leave the room.

From his corner seat, Mark actually had a good angle on the action. He could see Ms. Keck with her head high, her chin in that commanding attitude that usually presaged a Name on the Board. But he could also see the bright gleam in Mr. Clemens eye as he took two steps towards the door, and then turned sharply, taking up position at the left side of the whiteboard. Once more, he had captured the attention of the class. Ms. Keck was totally upstaged.

Mr. Clemens reached down and picked up a marker, and pointed it at Mark.

“You there, boy. What’s your name?”

“Er…” Mark took a second to glance over at Ms. Keck. She was turning pink, too, but slowly. Would she explode? No one had ever seen Ms. Keck actually lose her temper. But then Mark realized that for now, he didn’t care about whether the teacher would break down and have a tantrum. He wanted to hear what this Mr. Clemens had to say, if only because the mysterious guy liked his book. “I’m Mark Peterson.”

“Good. Now, then, Mr. Peterson.” No one had ever called Mark “Mister” before. “Why don’t you stand up, so the other pupils can hear you? That’s better.” Mark felt a little funny standing up in the corner with everyone’s eyes flicking back and forth from him to Mr. Clemens. “Now, let’s hear from you. What’s a paragraph?”

“Um.” Mark felt desperate. Suddenly, he was sure he’d forgotten everything he ever knew. All that actually came to mind was Ms. Keck’s eight-sentence flapdoodle.

“Come along, come along. Madam, do these children also not know how to speak up?”

That helped Mark, because it revved up a little of his mad. Of course he knew how to speak up. “A paragraph,” he said, fumbling around in his head for those slippery words, “is when you have a lot to say on an idea and it just doesn’t fit into one sentence.” And he stopped to think a little more. What was even more amazing was that no one interrupted him. “But it could still be one sentence, if it has an idea that doesn’t fit with the ones around it. Or it could be really really long, like maybe a description. Or …”and his eye caught the poster of the Declaration of Independence at the far side of the room. “Or a list. Like a long series of …of…trials and usurpations.”

Mr. Clemens favored him with a grin, and turned that grin full force on Ms. Keck. It actually made her step back a little. “You see, madam? These children know what a paragraph is. Don’t you, boys and girls?” He pointed to Charlie, who sat smack in the middle of the room, because Ms. Keck could be sure he’d never say anything to anybody. “Why bother using paragraphs? Speak up, boy.”

And Charlie did better than that. He stood up, like he’d seen Mark do, and then he spoke up. Mark saw Ms. Keck’s mouth actually flap open in surprise. “Well, it would be a mess, wouldn’t it, if all the words just kept going and going? It would give you a headache.”

Then Maura raised her hand. The big man pointed and she stood up. “When the paragraphs are big, you have to read slower and when they’re short, you read faster. Do writers do that on purpose?”

“Aha!” laughed Mr. Clemens. “You have caught us out! See here, madam, you have children here who actually read books!”

Maura sat down, but she also twisted around to look back at Sue. This is so cool! she whispered.

And then Alyssa and Antoinette appeared in the door. Ms. Keck took her chance and marched across the room to meet them. “Girls,” she said, keeping her voice level and clear. “Please run up to the office for me and ask Mr. Cochrane to come over here.”   The pair were more than willing to skip class a little longer, not having been entranced by the Unwelcome Visitor.

Ms. Keck had every right to be in a panic. She had every justification to be calling in the heavy artillery. But as she stood there in the doorway, watching her students take turns standing up and speaking up, she took the time to give herself three nerve-calming breaths. No sense wasting all those hours in yoga class. She ran her eyes over the border strip on her whiteboard, which read, “Every new day is an opportunity, not a challenge.” It just one of those Classroom Inspiration decorations that ate into her meager salary. But maybe, just maybe, there was a grain of truth in that fatuous message.

Very calmly, Thomasina Keck walked up to her whiteboard. Mr. Clemends was still holding the orange marker, so she picked up the green one. She took a moment to think, and to listen, and then she began to write.

Mark’s brain had been working on overdrive ever since Mr. Clemends had answered Maura’s question. He had said “you caught us.” This guy was a writer, a real writer. Who in the class knew a real writer? Was someone’s Mom or Dad just as sick of the Eight-Sentence Paragraph as all the kids were? Did he know of any writers named Clemens? Had they heard him right?

Mark flipped over his paper and started scribbling down the names of writers: LeGuin, Konigsberg, Pilkey, L’Engle, Shakespeare, Sachar, Tolkein. No, too many women. Too many dead guys. Wait, he told himself, the bookshelf is right here. So he shifted his chair just enough to get a clear angle on the spines of the books in Ms. Keck’s classroom library. It didn’t take long.

Mark felt like his arm was going to pop out of its socket, he was holding it up so high. But Maura and Eleanor also had their hands up, and Eleanor was waving hers back and forth eagerly.

Suddenly, Mark realized that Ms. Keck was at the board, writing away feverishly in bright green marker. Mr. Clemens and she seemed to be working together, as if he were in fact an invited visitor. Every time a student spoke up, Ms. Keck scribbled something new on the board.

Mark couldn’t help being interested. He switched to holding up his right arm so he could write. Below the crossed-off names on his paper, he tried to copy what Ms. Keck was drawing. Somehow, it just looked cool, way cooler than the old eight-sentence list.

Finally, Ms. Keck tapped Mr. Clemens on the shoulder and spoke very quickly in a low voice that nobody else could hear. He pulled the cap off the orange marker, wrinkled his nose at the smell of the ink, and tested it on the board. Satisfied with the stinky tool, he wrote across the top of Ms. Keck’s green writings “The Authentic Paragraph”. Both adults stood back to admire the result. They both seemed happy. It even looked as though the Evil Ms. Keck was starting to smile.

When they turned back to face the class together, Mr. Clemens immediately pointed to Mark and said, “All right, Mr. Peterson. You have something more to say?”

Mark had nearly forgotten he had his hand up. But what he had to say was still on the tip of his tongue. “You’re the writer, aren’t you? Andrew Clements?” And he was careful to pronounce the t right before the s. “I really like your books. I read Frindle back in third grade and Drew and I made our own newspaper last summer, like in The Landry News, only we didn’t do it in school and we didn’t get famous, or even in trouble either.”

The visitor managed to look surprised, but he didn’t say anything. He just cleared his throat.

Ms. Keck whirled back around to stare at him. “Oh! I had no idea! And to think we have all your books in our class library! Why didn’t the PTA tell me you were coming?”

And just at that moment, Mr. Cochrane appeared at the door. He paused for an instant to assume what Ms. Keck thought of as his Aura of Mastery, that mixture of pose, gesture, and superior eye contact that declared him top dog in his little territory. Then he sailed into the room with a cheery “Good morning, fifth-graders!”, Alyssa and Antoinette marching behind him like a pair of half-size bodyguards.

One sharp look from Ms. Keck, and the girls fled to their seats. A word from Katie Lynn and Alyssa was back on her feet squealing “Oh, Mr. Clements! Can I have your autograph!”

Ms. Keck met Mr. Cochrane halfway. “Is there a problem here?” he intoned quietly, favoring the class with a deceptively cheerful smile.

By now, Ms. Keck could hardly remember why she had thought it necessary to send for the principal. “Not at all, Steve,” she said soothingly. “It’s just that we had an unexpected visitor in class today, and I knew you would want to be in on the excitement. Did the PTA President fill you in already?”

Mark had his eyes glued to the teacher and the principal. From here, it actually looked as though Ms. Keck was heading him off. Then a wave of oohs and aahs from the girls in front of him alerted Mark to something new. Mr. Clements was headed his way.

When he stopped next to Mark’s desk and Mark looked up at him, the author seemed even taller than he had up at the front of the class, towering over little Ms. Keck. He had Mark’s book.

“Glad you enjoyed the book, son,” he said. “Do me a favor. Try out my favorites. There’s a lot of Tom Canty in that old Huck Finn.”

Mark took the book back almost reluctantly. It seemed to spell an end to this adventure. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll check out Tom Sawyer. Mom says I should wait some before I read the big one.”

He was rewarded with one last deep chuckle. “Don’t wait too long. Huck’s not much older than you are, leastways with his life frozen in those books.” And he squeezed Mark’s shoulder as he moved on behind the row of desks.

“Children, can I have eyes front now, please?” came Ms. Keck’s commanding voice once more. Mark jerked his eyes up from the cover of The Prince and the Pauper to see the teacher pointing at a bunch of squiggles on the whiteboard. “Let’s show Mr. Cochrane what our visitor helped us work out today. Mr. Clements, would you like to…? Mr. Clements?”

There was no one in the classroom but twenty-seven students, one teacher, and one principal.

Brianna leapt from her desk and leaned out the door. “He’s gone!” she gasped. “Where did he go?”

“Now I’ll never get my autograph!” Alyssa whined.

Mark leaned back and tried to signal Drew. Mr. Clements had been heading in that direction. He must have slipped past Drew and out the door while Ms. Keck was getting fired up to show him off. Who knew a guy like that would be too shy to talk to the principal?

Up in the front of the room, Ms. Keck found herself still on balance, going with the flow. She only had to raise her voice just slightly, injecting a bit of calm and certainty. “Mr. Clements had to leave,” she said. “Our lesson did, after all, run much later than planned. But we still have our results, don’t we? Let’s take these last few minutes before math time to share them with Mr. Cochrane.”

The new paragraph-teaching approach was a huge hit. Steve Cochrane bought into it primarily because he was there when it was invented, and he used it to great effect in his political machinations up at the District Office. The kids bought into it because they, after all, had invented it. The teachers, as usual, were willing to try anything that worked.

It was Drew who named it, Mark Peterson’s buddy, the one kid who hadn’t actually had much to say that day. He’d sat there in the back of the room, stewing over all the attention “Mr. Peterson” was getting. And so he was the first one to notice the pattern Ms. Keck’s scribbles had made.

The biggest scribble said simply, “One Main Idea”. She’d circled it, so it made a big blob in the middle of the board. Then she had “Topic Sentence” in parentheses right next to the blob. The parentheses were big and swoopy, nearly meeting at the top and bottom. If you squinted, that made a blob with a head. So that made the New Improved Paragraph into some kind of creature. It was a live animal, crawling across the board.

It looked like it was crawling because there were all these words written as if they were springing out of the sides of the blob. Some made sense from what Drew remembered the kids saying in class, like “Details” and “Dialogue”.   Others made sense later, when they all copied the creature into their language arts notebooks and Ms. Keck explained why she chose certain words. For instance, “Pacing” had to do with Maura’s question about whether authors used paragraph length to get readers to slow down or speed up.

But long before he had the meaning of all those words clear, the shape of the whole thing was obvious to Drew. It was a spider, just like Mr. Clements had called Ms. Keck’s Eight-Sentence Paragraph. And he couldn’t help adding his own little observation, when he put in his suggestion for the Official Name, “It’s not really all that different from what Ms. Keck was trying to get us to do all along. The one big idea is the introduction and conclusion and all the other stuff is details and explanations. They just don’t necessarily add up to eight sentences every time.”

So Spider Paragraphs they were, all the rest of that year and for the rest of the years that Ms. Keck taught fifth grade. And she never tired of pointing out Andrew Clements’ books on her shelves at the back of the room. There were a few times that she wondered if it had really happened, such as the time she clipped a newspaper feature about the author.   He looked rather different than he had that day in class.

But Drew earned several shoulder-punches at afternoon recess that day, for sucking-up to the teacher. Only his best buddy gave him a break. Mark dragged him free of the guys and over to their personal hideout, in the shade of the bushes behind the backstop.

“Just look at this,” he said, urgently, pushing a hardcover book into Drew’s hands.

“What?” Drew protested. “I’m not on detention. I don’t have to read during recess!”

“No, no. Look here.” And Mark was eagerly flipping the pages at the front of the book, just as far as the title page.

“Oh, man,” Drew frowned. “You are in for it. This page is scribbled all over. You know what they make your parents pay for a damaged book?”

“Come on, come on,” Mark said impatiently. He bit his lip, he was so excited. He couldn’t stand it much longer. Drew was his best friend, the only one he could possibly trust with this. And he had to show somebody. “Just read it, will you?”

And Drew read it. The scribbling was actually pretty tidy for cursive writing. It looked smooth and even, as if it were done by someone who actually wrote by hand more often than by computer.

And he read it again. And again. Why was the last bit in quotes like that? Oh, yeah. Oh.

Mark watched him, tasting the metallic saltiness of the blood from his lip. Did Drew get it? Did he see?

“Oh, man,” said Drew. “Listen, I’ll help you pay the fine. No way do you want this book to ever go back to the library. Wow.” And he looked Mark in the eye. “Mind if I borrow it, sometimes, just to look at it?”

“Yeah, sure. Just don’t ever tell. Swear?”

“Swear.” And Drew handed back the precious book, with the long inscription on the title page. Mark knew this was one book he’d be keeping forever. While the end of recess bell squealed outside the hideout, he turned once more to read that loopy, elegant autograph:

To my dear friend and colleague,

Mark Peterson,

all the best of luck in the future.

Samuel L. Clemens

“Mark Twain”

 

Chasing CometsChasing Comets

As a  re-entry activity, let’s fall right into the project which inspired the overarching theme for this so-called blog:  cometary tails.   That is, in this instance, we’ll be “studying” the behavior of the tails of actual comets falling along their orbits about a star.    But of course, this is a “Messy Monday” project, so it  involves running, arguing, and playing with scissors (not all at the same time).

So far, the only star whose comets we’ve observed have been those of our own Sun, but as our star is not particularly unusual, it’s likely that comets ply their trade throughout the cosmos.  We’ll not be delving too deeply into astrophysics, instead we’ll be building fun models of comets and playing games which illustrate the apparent motion of a typical comet’s tail.  If you’re running this project as part of a school science program, you can double-count the activity as a P.E. session, as the central game involves more than a bit of running, though not likely moving as fast as a comet.

Just as a reminder, what I want to give you in these “Messy Monday” project descriptions is 1) enough background on the science that you’ll be prepared for questions and have resources to draw on if your own curiosity is triggered, 2) a play-by-play description of running the project with a group, recognizing that your time and resources are limited and your participants will vary in both interest and prior knowledge, and 3) a shopping list detailed enough to help you minimize your costs as well the time you have to spend assembling supplies.

Shoemaker-Levy panoramic (courtesy NASA-NSSDC)

Fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy heading for Jupiter (courtesy NASA-NSSDC)

So, What Do You Want to Know?

For thousands of years, humans have wondered at the strange visitations of comets.

Natural philosophers of the middle ages studying comets.

Natural philosophers of the middle ages studying comets.

In our time, people now understand that comets are not harbingers of doom or annunciations of the births of kings but fellow travelers in our solar system, icy bodies wheeling in towards the sun and shedding a fraction of their substance as they approach the sun.  However, a key aspect of the comet’s tail remains counterintuitive to us earthbound air-dwelling creatures.  The tail of a running horse flows behind her as she gallops, so we naturally expect that the tail of comet simply flies behind it as it plunges along its course.  But a comet’s behavior plays tricks with such expectations.

Where do comets come from?  The Solar System is a big place, but for most of us, the territory ends with Pluto, the Object Formerly Known as The Ninth Planet.

Great_Comet_of_1577 by Georgium Jacobum von Datschitz public domain

The Great Comet of 1577

However, if you’re a fan of Cosmos (either Carl Sagan’s or Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s version) or if your school is lucky enough to have new textbooks, then you’ll know about the Oort Cloud , that sphere of orbiting material from which most comets emerge.  Do you realize how much farther out this region is? On a scale of one inch per 100,000 miles, in which the orbit of Pluto would be one mile across, the distance from the Sun to the Oort Cloud would be the length of the state of California.  It’s even been hypothesized that the Oort clouds of neighboring stars may physically interact, exchanging comets.

The Oort cloud is a long way out, but it’s still a part of the Solar System, because the objects there are still subject to the Sun’s gravity.  Occasionally, a piece of this clutter is jostled from its orbit and begins the long fall towards the sun.  Depending on the path it takes as it zooms around the sun, the comet may slingshot out of the solar system entirely or it may settle into a new orbit, returning to loop around the sun on a regular schedule.   For instance, Comet Halley returns every 86 years.  The last time round, it actually came in ’86–1986 that is.  I was lucky enough to visit New Zealand that year, so I can confirm that Comet Halley was extremely unspectacular that year–only just barely visible.  Fortunately, New Zealand itself is spectacular every single day of any given year.    NASA was more successful, having a noticeable advantage in telescope access.

Babylonian Astronomers Wrote Down Their Observations of Halley in BCE 164

Babylonian Astronomers Wrote Down Their Observations of Halley in BCE 164

Comet Halley's Appearance Dooms King Harold in 1066

Comet Halley’s Appearance Dooms King Harold in 1066

Comet Halley in 1910

Comet Halley in 1910

Comet Halley in 1986 (Courtesy of NASA)

Comet Halley in 1986 (Courtesy of NASA)

                                                                                                                                                                                        But why do comets even have tails?  We don’t see shiny tails glowing in the wakes of our planets.  Well, it all has to do with the change in environmental conditions as the comet moves towards the Sun.  Comets are composed of water ice, frozen gases, rocky matter, and even traces of organic compounds.  As this frozen jumble approaches the sun, it warms up enough that the various ices in the outer layers of the comet become gaseous—water vapor, ammonia, carbon dioxide.  These gases bubble and boil into a misty cloud, so the comet will have an atmosphere of sorts, called the coma, for the duration of its passage through the inner Solar System.  The gas expulsions may even shoot out of the comet’s rocky layers like jets, causing the comet itself to tumble as it falls along its inward path.  At the same time, very small-scale “dust” particles are swept from the cometary nucleus.  This is not the heavily-organic dust we find under our furniture here on Earth (if you really want to know what’s in household dust don’t use “Google images”;  stick to text searches or just ask your friendly neighborhood allergist).  What we mean is that the particle size—a few microns—is extremely fine, about the same size as the particles in cigarette smoke.

We get our fabulous cometary tail once these newly-ejected gases and dust of the coma approach the sun just a bit closer, enough that the various solar emissions can have their ways with the comet’s atmosphere.   First, there is sunlight itself, which acts in several ways to provide us with the visual spectacle of the comet’s tail.

The simplest role of sunlight is to shine on the cloud of dust ejected from the nucleus.  That’s the main tail we see.  But that still doesn’t explain why the dust forms a tail at all:  the secret is that light, as electromagnetic radiation, actually exerts pressure on objects, and with tiny objects like cometary dust this radiation pressure force is enough to fan that  material out from the core.  Plus, there is a cool bonus “secret”: that most comets actually have two tails—one formed by the gases and one formed by the dust.  The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight blasts the gas particles, stripping away electrons, and so creating a mass of ionized gas, which fluoresces (mostly blue) in sunlight. Then those glowing blue ions are blasted in a straight line away from the sun by the solar wind, a stream of high-energy particles hurtling at supersonic speeds through the solar system.  The solar wind is a wonderfully intricate system in its own right, but for our purposes here it is most important to convey that, like earthly winds, it consists of particles moving at high speeds and that its direction is away from the Sun.

The result of all these combined forces is that a complex, continuously shifting cloud of gases and dust streams out from a comet during its time in the inner solar system and that tail—or, rather, pair of tails—points away from the sun, even when the comet is on its way back out to its origin.  (If you’re a die-hard comet enthusiast, you’ll know that the dust tail does curve inward a bit, as the small particles of dust battle with the solar forces, striving to curl into their own individual orbits about the sun, but from our earthly perspective, the outward forces have the upper hand.)

In the next installment, we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty of building our own comet models and playing a game of As the Comet Tail Flies.

Oh, yeah, and I’m not making things up about radiation pressure.  Consider the prospects for spaceflight under the power of light!

The Japanese IKAROS spaceprobe in flight (artist's depiction by Andrzej Mirecki).

The Japanese IKAROS spaceprobe in flight (artist’s depiction by Andrzej Mirecki).

© 2012-2025 Vanessa MacLaren-Wray All Rights Reserved