it's all one thing

Hello, I must be going.

2021-12-31T22:09:00.006-08:00

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you've got to be kind." - Kurt Vonnegut

This site has been working hard, so it's retiring now.

Who Am I to Write about Race?

2021-12-31T05:45:00.000-08:00

1964: My brother and I at a civil rights march. Either my sign is turned sideways to the camera or it fell off.

I first learned about race from my father when I was a small boy who had just moved to Florida in 1959. He explained that ignorant people think skin color makes a difference in whether one person is the equal of another, and the most ignorant people refer to black people as “niggers”, and if he ever heard me use that word, I would get the worst spanking of my life.

My family got caught up in the civil rights struggle in the early 1960s. I went on my first march for integration in 1964 when I was nine. At one point, we could not get fire insurance because word was out that the Klan would burn us down. They never did, perhaps because wild talk doesn’t always lead to action, perhaps because Dad let it be known that he had a shotgun and would not hesitate to use it on trespassers.

I wrote a novel about that time called Dogland. It is semi-autobiographical, which means it has more true things in it than many books that are called autobiographies. It’s my most-praised book:

“A deceptively simple story, rich with complex characters and timeless themes.” — Publishers Weekly

“In late 1950s Florida, the transplanted Nix family opens Dogland, a tourist attraction, and their beliefs in integration attract the attention of the Klan. Young Christopher Nix befriends a black man and a Seminole woman who may know the real secret to the Fountain of Youth. Shetterly captures the rhythm, feel, and language of cracker Florida, its legends, and the clash of cultures. Recommended.” — Library Journal

“A masterwork. A particularly American magic realism that touches the heart of race and childhood in our country; it’s 100 Years of Solitude for an entire generation of American Baby Boomers, and deserves the widest possible audience.” — Ellen Kushner

“Dogland is the one of the finest novels I’ve ever read.” — Cory Doctorow

Because of my childhood, race has always mattered in my life and my work. Project Implicit’s test gave me this result: “Your data suggest a slight automatic preference for African American compared to European American.” I would have preferred to be among the people who show no preference for any race, but I’m content knowing my bias.

My favorite black thinkers are W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X (after he left the Nation of Islam), Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, Adolph Reed, and Barbara Fields. Like them, I am a universalist who rejects identitarianism.

Fields provides a good example of the difference between our understanding of history and that of race reductionists:

“Probably a majority of American historians think of slavery in the United States as primarily a system of race relations — as though the chief business of slavery were the production of white supremacy rather than the production of cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco. One historian has gone so far as to call slavery ‘the ultimate segregator’. He does not ask why Europeans seeking the ‘ultimate’ method of segregating Africans would go to the trouble and expense of transporting them across the ocean for that purpose, when they could have achieved the same end so much more simply by leaving the Africans in Africa.

No one dreams of analyzing the struggle of the English against the Irish as a problem in race relations, even though the rationale that the English developed for suppressing the ‘barbarous’ Irish later served nearly word for word as a rationale for suppressing Africans and indigenous American Indians. Nor does anyone dream of analyzing serfdom in Russia as primarily a problem of race relations, even though the Russian nobility invented fictions of their innate, natural superiority over the serfs as preposterous as any devised by American racists.” — Barbara Fields

Baldwin sums up our take on racial identification:

“It’s up to you. As long as you think you’re white, there is no hope for you. As long as you think you’re white, I’m going to be forced to think I’m black.” — James Baldwin

Malcolm X explains our take on what we’re working for:

“I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don’t think that it will be based upon the color of the skin.” — Malcolm X, 1965

P.S. Identitarians insist I’m not qualified to write about race because I’m white. I’ll go with another writer’s answer:

“Being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.” — Dick Gregory

I understand why there are so many race reductionists in the world, but I’ll follow the example of Du Bois, King, and Malcolm X after he left NOI and focus on the larger picture.

My Poor Man's Fish Stew

2021-05-17T10:10:00.001-07:00

A friend makes a great cioppino (aka shellfish stew Provencale), but the ingredients are pricey and the process is time-consuming. I took her recipe and created the quick and easy version, which is still pretty great. Because it's a poor man's dish, all of the ingredients are suggestions, not requirements. I like strong flavors, so where I say a dash or splash, I'd use a heavy hand.

Ingredients:

2 cans of tuna, or any fish you have.

1 14.5 oz (411 g) can of diced or crushed tomatoes

1 or 2 onions, chopped

olive or other oil

several cloves of garlic or a dash of garlic powder

a dash of cayenne or paprika or any red pepper

a dash of thyme

a bay leaf

a splash of lemon or orange juice

a dash of black pepper

a cup of white wine

Directions:

1 Saute vegetables, preferably in olive oil, with your spices.

2 Add wine and tomato and bring to a boil.

3 Add the fish.

4 Simmer for twenty minutes or so if you've got the time, though you can eat it as soon as you're sure the fish is cooked. (Or put it in the refrigerator to eat later. The longer it sits, the more the flavors mature.)

Women ruining science fiction?

2020-08-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

Has anyone in the last fifty years actually said women are ruining science fiction? When I was a boy in the '60s, one of my first faves was the ubiquitous Andre Norton. By then, her readers knew she was female. Because of her, I thought Andre was a girl's name.

Andre Norton was SFWA's sixth grand master, chosen before Clarke, Asimov, Bester, or Bradbury.

The Red Mask, the first black masked hero?

2020-07-22T10:06:00.001-07:00

The following art is from Out Of This World: Early Black Comic Book Heroes: The Red Mask, The Comics of Syndicated Features: Adventures of the Red Mask, and Facebook's comic strip appreciation group, where Stefan Wood posted black and white scans of the Red Mask's entire story.

The newspaper strip ended there. In 1939, The Adventures of the Red Mask were reprinted in four issues of Best Comics. After the first issue, they drew him as white on the covers, but they left him black inside.

securing your garage

2020-06-22T10:05:00.001-07:00

A simple trick that thwarted someone who tried to break into our garage

Yesterday, I found the handle of my garage door was broken. Someone had twisted it hard to get in.

But we had put a bolt in one of the holes of the door's track so it couldn't be raised. A more committed thief would've broken a window or broken the door down, but most thieves want to get in and out fast. The bolt was enough to make this thief move along.

Obviously, putting a pin in the track adds a little nuisance if you have a garage door opener, but it doesn't take long to pull the pin before you go out and put it back in after you return.

the myth that John M. Ford's family tried to keep his work out of print

2019-11-15T09:55:00.001-08:00

I left this at John M. Ford’s books are being republished, but how did he fall into obscurity?:

I was one of Mike Ford's friends and editors, and I want to go on record with this: Martha Fry was extremely helpful when we wanted to keep his Liavek stories in print. The breakdown in communication between his original family, his fannish family, and his agent has many reasons, but there are no villains in that story. There are only gossips who love drama, as there are in any community. If anyone claims his first family tried to make his work unavailable, I will point to the Liavek anthologies as evidence that's not true.

The Birds of Prey creator controversy, or Why team creators may deserve more credit than creators of individual characters

2019-10-01T09:03:00.001-07:00

There will be a Birds of Prey movie, but currently, the creators of the team won't get any money or prominent credit because they didn't create the members of the team.

But in the history of comics, teams have often been more important than their members. This is most obvious with the X-Men and the Doom Patrol, whose individual members change, but the team continues, and with the possible exception of Wolverine, the team is more important than any of the members.

This also applies to the Fantastic Four. The members may not change, but alone, they're nothing special. The Human Torch is based on the 1940s Human Torch, Mr. Fantastic is a pale version of Plastic Man, the Thing is a variant of characters like the Heap, and Invisible Woman is a sex-changed Invisible Man. What makes the comic work is the team.

This applies to the Justice Society, the Justice League, and the Avengers. The line-up is less important than the team. As a kid, I didn't buy the comics of all the members of the Justice League or the Avengers, but I always bought the Justice League and the Avengers because I loved the teams.

A good team is not just a collection of characters. It is its own character, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Its name matters. Its origin story matters. Its nature matters--is it a family, a business, an association of equals, a group with leaders and followers or teachers or students?

The creators of Birds of Prey deserve the first credit on the movie.

Camilla and the Tribe with Wings

2019-05-03T09:02:00.001-07:00

More: Camilla.

Captain Marvel, the greatest Mary Sue ever? And a little bit racist?

2019-03-16T08:57:00.001-07:00

As I hope my previous post made clear, I liked the movie and will probably see it again.

But, dear God, is the character a Mary Sue.

1. She's retconned as one of the most powerful characters in the universe. (Yes, it is a problem that Fury never called her before, though a later writer can always say he did and she was too busy to take the call.)

2. She is so important that she gave the Avengers their name. (Why she was called Carol "the Avenger" Danvers, we haven't a clue, because we never saw her do anything that would inspire anyone to call her the Avenger.)

3. She immediately becomes Nick Fury's pal. (She and Fury are shown laughing together in scenes that seemed wrong to me. If I'd been directing, I would've told the actors to play the scenes more subtly.)

4. She doesn't seem to have any lovers in her past. (Perhaps because she's too amazing for any ordinary boy or girlfriend.)

5. Everything we know about her past is about things she did for herself instead of anyone else. We are supposed to believe she was a great friend because her cool black friend says she was, but we have no idea what she ever did that made her a great friend.

6. She gets her abilities not because she earned them like Wonder Woman or Batman or deserved them like Green Lantern or Captain America, but because she's the one who's standing there when the experimental power source explodes—and unlike many of the characters who have a similar origin, she wasn't even responsible for creating the thing that transformed her. She simply gets awesome powers because the writers wanted to write about someone with awesome powers.

As for how her story is a tiny bit racist, her awesomeness is established with the testimony of Nick Fury and Maria Rambeau—she's so cool, black people look up to her.

Okay, that all sounds like I didn't like the movie. I did. But I really hope the next Avengers movie manages to make her less of a Mary Sue.

ETA: Extra point on the little bit racist: Marvel had a black female Captain Marvel for a few years, but they sidelined her in favor of the white woman.

Dog Land fan art by Michelle Hawran

2018-12-19T10:05:00.001-08:00

Her instagram: @mhawranillustration

Why Hourman and Dr. Mid-Nite were not in every adventure of the JSA

2018-03-11T08:22:00.001-07:00

I made this as an exercise:

"Fads" - the Legion of Super-Heroes

2018-03-11T08:20:00.003-07:00

Nighthawks at the Diner - the nerdiest comics thing I've ever made

2018-02-24T08:17:00.000-08:00

Anyone who recognizes all three should be treated with awe or fear, because the third is extremely obscure. I'll identify them from right to left:

1. In the cowboy hat: Nighthawk (DC Comics)

2. In the yellow mask: Nighthawk (Marvel Comics)

3. In the green trunks: Night Hawk (Chesler) | Public Domain Super Heroes

This video about editing the first Star Wars has good points about effective storytelling in all forms

2017-12-09T07:55:00.006-08:00

Lucas, like most of us, was at his best when he had to carefully consider the opinions of other people. The first Star Wars would have failed if he hadn't had a smart producer, Alan Ladd Jr., who forced him to go through many drafts of the screenplay, and a smart wife who may deserve a co-writer's credit, Marcia Lucas. As this video points out, he also got solid advice from fellow directors on what to cut.

Why I'm an agnostic

2017-11-09T08:05:00.001-08:00

In second grade, I understood why God approved of Samson burning the fields of the Philistines, but I couldn't understand why he approved of Samson doing that by setting fire to the tails of foxes. That was just mean.

Florida's schools were segregated in the early '60s, and Bible-reading was mandatory at the start of the day. I spoke up against both—think of me as the chibi version of the Klansman's favorite opponent, a godless commie niggerlover. By the end of the decade, the movements for civil rights and the First Amendment had been won in public schools: the Bible was out, black people were in. As I came into my teens, my side of my generation was famously focusing on sex, drugs, and rock and roll. People like lists of three, so the fourth usually gets left out: we were also trying alternatives to conventional Christianity and Judaism. I studied Theravada Buddhism and tried meditation and was fascinated by gnosticism and desperately wanted to know the answer to the great question, what's it all about?

Sometime in my teens, I learned about agnosticism. While I knew then that both theists and atheists included people who had doubts, agnosticism seemed the best description of what I was: I didn't know the truth, I was open to learning more, and since religion was no longer imposed by the government and public schools, I was concerned with other struggles.

I began seeing something that atheists mention while missing its full implication: if religious beliefs have little to do with whether we're good or bad, that applies to theists too. Their belief does not make them behave badly; their mistaken beliefs about goodness do. If that was not so, there would be no good people in any major religion, yet there are good people in all of them.

Lately, I've been thinking about something else: Only 3% of the US identifies as atheists and 4% identifies as agnostics. No one will make a better world without the help of the other 93%.

And I've been wondering about this: Why is the economic class I oppose the class that is most receptive to atheism?

It comes to this:

1. I don't feel obliged to take a side on something that can't be known.

2. I don't feel obliged to convert people to what I believe. If your understanding of the universe pleases you and you don't force it on others, I'm happy you found something that comforts you.

William Sanders is dead. He was a better man and a better writer than his haters.

2017-06-30T07:35:00.015-07:00

I never met William Sanders, but I admired his work, and after I began studying mobbing and call-out culture, I admired the man, too. I wrote about him in The Powwow Dancer vs. the People of Privilege - Mobbing William Sanders.

The story of his that is most likely to be remembered is online: "The Undiscovered" by William Sanders (pdf).

He retired from writing, then wrote a couple of stories. I'll always wonder what more he might've written if fandom's identitarians had not decided to drive him from the field.

ETA: I learned of this from Gardner Dozois's Facebook post.

Why writers should treat fans the way teachers treat students

2017-05-29T07:19:00.001-07:00

I was once in a flamewar where, to my astonishment, people were angry that I was disagreeing with them as though they were my equals—they behaved with the curt rudeness that's common in heated arguments, but they expected me to treat them the way good adults treat ignorant youths, with a gentleness that hides the awareness the person being addressed simply hasn't a clue. I mention that now because the phenomenon's described at Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog: Funny--On Academic Bad Manners:

Philosopher Tad Brennan at Cornell writes with an explanation:

Journalists are surprised that academics can be short with them because they last met academics in the classroom, and most professors are kind and generous when dealing with students. Serious academics save their scathing put-downs for colleagues and equals--I doubt that those quotes from Fodor and Sterelny document interactions with students.

Instead of feeling pained and affronted, the bloggers and journalists should take it as a compliment: 'hey, those academics are treating me like an equal!' That can help to salve the bruises, anyhow. And it also shows why a sharp-tongued critique directed at a non-student is no betrayal of the "tone" appropriate to an "educator". If you are my student, then I have an obligation to be your educator; if not, not.

Why there are no expiration dates on spoilers

2017-05-04T07:14:00.001-07:00

A novel is literally a "new thing". This is why there are no expiration dates on spoilers—everyone should have the chance to experience a story as the writer intended. If you don't know how Oedipus Rex ends, I won't be the one to tell you. I envy people who don't know the endings of great stories.

There is a statute of limitations on spoilers for critical pieces that assume the reader or viewer knows the piece in order to analyze it. But even then, the ending shouldn't told be in the title of the critical piece—it's more considerate to title something "About That Big Star Wars Reveal" than "About R2D2 Having Hitler's Brain."

That said, the accidental revelation of an ending is no big deal. Like stepping on someone's toe, it happens. Only jerks do it on purpose.

The intentional revelation, though? A story spoilered cannot be unspoilered. I oppose the death penalty, but I'd make an exception for those who love to spoil.

PS: If you wouldn't reveal the end of a mystery, don't reveal the end of any story. All stories are mysteries when first experienced.

The campfire scene: the heart of every team movie and the greatest weakness of Rogue One

2017-04-03T07:00:00.009-07:00

The campfire scene gets its name from stories in which people on a journey stop for a meal and have nothing to do but talk. Campfire scenes reveal character, both to the audience and to the other characters. They give the members of a new team a chance to bond. They make us believe a story is about individuals rather than archetypes. The campfire scene is to a story about a team what the falling in love scene is to a romance: it makes us want to see the characters succeed.

Rogue One would've been much better with a campfire scene. There might be one on the cutting room floor—one character calls another "little sister", which only makes sense if they'd had time to form a bond. There were plenty of opportunities for campfire scenes—a story can have many—and yet the few attempts did nothing to convince me that any of the team members came to care for anyone they had not already cared for, except the guy in charge of the mission, who apparently liked the hero because she was of the desired sex and reasonably competent.

Useful:

The Rebel Jesus

2017-01-23T23:18:00.001-08:00

The Rebel Jesus

You know the end of this story.

The rebel goes to the city ruled by the empire’s governor. He attacks bankers. He is arrested. The rich decide he must die. The governor sentences him to the traditional death for rebels, fastened to a stake called a crux in a public place where his suffering will tell passersby what happens to those who defy the empire.

How rebels die is a common story. I will not tell that part.

This is the story of the life of the rebel Jesus.

1. One Thousand Years in a Land with Many Names

Every story about a rebel is a story of a place and power. The place in this story is a strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Its neighbors are Egypt in the southwest, Arabia in the southeast, and Syria in the northeast. Egyptians called it Peleset. Assyrians called it Pilistu. The Greek historian Herodotus called it Palaistine. The Bible’s Hebrew writers called it Peleshet, and some English Bibles translate it as Philistia. Its common English name is Palestine.

Its history is a story of conquest and independence and conquest again. When its people called it Canaan, its city-states became vassals of Egypt. As Egypt grew weak, independent kingdoms grew again, including Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Archeology tells us they were small, but the Bible says they were great.

The Book of Samuel calls David, their most famous king, a messiah, a Hebrew word that translates into Greek as Christos. It means “an anointed one”, a person who has scented olive oil poured onto his hair by a priest to show he is God’s choice to lead the people.

The land was conquered by Assyria, then Babylon. Hebrew became a language for scholars. The people adopted the Aramaic that their conquerors spoke.

Babylon fell to Persia. The Persians believed in one god, Ahura Mazda, whose priests were called magi and whose prophet was Zoroaster. Persia’s Emperor Cyrus was a Zoroastrian, but the Book of Isaiah calls him a messiah because he let Judah’s exiled nobles return to Jerusalem and built a Temple so Judeans could worship the one god in their own way.

Persia’s empire fell to Alexander the Great. The Seleucid Empire brought Greek culture into many parts of Palestine. In the region that had been Judah and was now Judea, the Hasmonean dynasty ruled as vassals of the Seleucids until civil war weakened that empire. The Hasmoneans united Palestine to form an independent kingdom called Judea after its Judean rulers

Then Rome came.

Judea became a client state of the Roman Empire. The Hasmoneans rebelled with help from the Parthian Empire that had risen in the east. The Romans defeated them and installed a new vassal in Judea, King Herod the Great, who built forts and palaces and expanded the Temple of Jerusalem.

When Herod died, three rebellions broke out. Each leader claimed to be a messiah who would drive out the Romans. The largest revolt was in the region of Galilee. Rome crushed it, and two thousand people were crucified

The kingdom of Judea was divided among Herod’s children. Philip got the north. Salome got the southwestern coast. Herod Antipas got the center, including Galilee. Herod Archelaus got the south, including the original land of Judea.

Ten years later, Rome banished Archelaus for incompetence. The province of Judea was put directly under Rome’s control. The first of many Roman governors ordered a census to count and tax the Judeans. Rebels led by Judas the Galilean opposed it. To complete the census, the governor of Syria brought troops to restore peace, and so the census is remembered by his name as the census of Quirinius.

The Book of Acts of the Apostles says Judas the Galilean was killed and his followers scattered. His influence did not end with his death. The historian Josephus says Judea had three sects before that rebellion, and a fourth one after

Judea’s rich liked the Sadducees, whose name means they were descended from Zadok, the first High Priest. Sadducees welcomed Greek and Roman customs.

Judea’s middle class liked the Pharisees, whose name means “the separated.” Pharisees rejected foreign ways.

Most Judeans liked the Essenes, whose name means “the holy”. Essenes were also called Ebionites, which means "the poor", because they lived simply in communes in the cities and the country, sharing all they had.

Josephus called Judas the Galilean the father of a fourth sect, the Zealots, who "agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." In pursuit of their goal, Zealots killed Romans as well as the Judeans who worked with them.

Into this troubled world, the rebel Jesus was born.

cc by 3.0 Andrew c.

2. Two Stories of One Birth

Matthew's Birth Story

The Gospel of Matthew says the life of Jesus begins while King Herod rules Judea.

In Matthew’s story, Joseph the son of Jacob lives in Judea in the town of Bethlehem. He learns his wife Mary is already pregnant when she comes to live with him. Wondering if he should send her away, he goes to sleep. When he wakes, he decides to keep her and raise the child as his own.

After Jesus is born, three priests come from the Parthian Empire and give the baby presents of gold and rare perfumes. They say he will be the king of the Jews.

King Herod the Great hears about this. Believing the boy may be a threat to his rule, Herod sends soldiers to kill every boy in Bethlehem who is two years old or younger.

Joseph and his family flee to Egypt. When they hear Herod is dead and his son Archelaus rules Judea in his place, Joseph wants to go to home but fears Herod’s son is a danger to Jesus. So Joseph settles in Galilee in the town of Nazareth.

Luke's Birth Story

The Gospel of Luke says the story of Jesus begins when Quirinius orders everyone to go to their family homes to be counted in a census.

In Luke’s story, Joseph the son of Heli lives in Galilee in the town of Nazareth. He takes his pregnant wife Mary on the long trip south into Judea. When they arrive in Bethlehem, Jesus is born. A feeding trough is used for his bed.

Shepherds come to see the baby. They say he will be an anointed one, a savior of the Jews like King David in the Book of Samuel and the Emperor Cyrus in the Book of Isaiah.

Joseph and Mary take the child to the Temple at Jerusalem and dedicate him to God. A holy man and and a holy woman at the Temple each say the boy will grow up to do great things.

The problems with Matthew’s story?

1. When Judea was divided after Herod's death, his son Antipas became the tetrarch of the central region, which included Galilee. If Herod's children were a threat to the baby, he would not be safe there.

2. The historian Josephus wrote about many horrible things Herod did, but Josephus does not mention babies being slaughtered in Bethlehem.

The problems with Luke’s story?

1. Luke says Herod was alive at the time of Quirinius's census, but the census was ordered ten years after Herod’s death, when Archelaus was banished for abusing his power and Rome installed the first of many Roman governors in the province of Judea.

2. Quirinius’s census, like any census, counted people where they lived. Having people travel to the place their families would be an unnecessary disruption in people's lives.

3. If the census had required people to travel to be counted, it only affected people in the province of Judea. No one would have had to travel from Galilee.

3. The Childhood and Appearance of the Son of the Father

Matthew says when Jesus was twelve, he and his family went to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Joseph and Mary began to go home, then realized Jesus was not with them. They spent days hunting for their missing son. They found him in the Temple courtyard, sitting with the religious teachers.

The Aramaic word for father, Abba, was a common name for God. Jews still use it when they recite the kaddish, the traditional hymn of praises. The Bible mentions a rebel named Barabbas—Bar Abba is Aramaic for “son of Father.” The Essenes called themselves sons of God. When Judean rebels used the term, it separated them from the Romans who worshiped many gods.

The Bible does not say what Jesus looked like. Being the son of a Palestinian woman, he would have had dark skin and dark hair.

The Bible does not say how he dressed or wore his hair. In Mark’s Gospel, he’s called a tekton, a builder, and in Matthew, the son of a builder. His hands would have been hard from labor. He may have cut his hair short in the Greek and Roman fashion like most Judeans of the time.

But Palestine had holy men called nazirites who let their hair grow long. Some took vows to live as nazirites for a period of time. Some, like the Bible's Samson, lived as nazirites their entire lives.
The Bible says Jesus was called the Nazarene because he came from Nazareth. But early Christian writers may have failed to understand that he was a Nazirite, a long-haired son of God. Or he may have been both a Nazirite and a man from Nazareth.
Long hair did more than identify a holy man in Palestine. It showed the world he rejected the ways of Rome.

4. Before the Rebel Jesus, the Rebel John

The story of one rebel starts with the end of another, John the Baptist. His title means he baptized people, washing away their sins in a ritual bath.

Mark starts his story by telling about the Baptist living in the country near the Jordan River. He wears simple clothes and eats simple food. Many people come to hear him teach and be cleansed of sin. John washes Jesus, and then Jesus goes into the desert to meditate.

John also starts his story by telling about John the Baptist. Rich Judeans send priests and Temple guards to John, demanding to know who he is and what he is doing.

John answers by quoting Isaiah, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

That's a rebel’s answer, a cry that the maker of the universe has declared the current order is wrong and must be set right.

Matthew starts his story with Jesus's birth, but before Matthew tells about the adult Jesus, he tells about crowds going to the Baptist. Among them are Sadducees and Pharisees. The Baptist calls them “children of vipers” and demands they change their ways.

That's a rebel’s answer, a rejection of the elite who prey on Palestine's people like snakes.

Luke also starts his story with Jesus's birth, but Luke links Jesus and John before either is born. Luke says the pregnant Mary goes to stay with her pregnant relative Elizabeth. When Elizabeth sees Mary, the unborn John leaps in her womb to acknowledge that Jesus in Mary's womb is a miraculous child. In Luke's story, John is only six months older than Jesus, but, as in the other gospels, John is still the first to become famous, and Jesus goes to him to be washed.

Luke tells what the Baptist teaches.

The crowd asks, "What should we do?"

John answers, "If you have two shirts, give one to someone who has none. If you have food, do the same."

A tax collector asks, "What should we do?"

John answers, "Take no more from people than you're supposed to."

A soldier asks, "What should we do?"

John answers, "Don’t take bribes. Don’t accuse people of things they haven’t done. Be content with your pay."

Telling the rich to share equally?

Telling their servants, the tax collectors and soldiers, to be honest?

That's a rebel’s answer, an accusation that the current social order is not just.

The Baptist’s teachings, his isolation from Judean society, and his criticism of Judea’s two largest sects imply he was a member of the third, the Essenes. Only one detail argues against that. Matthew says John lived on locusts and honey. If so, he was an unusual Essene because Essenes were vegetarians.

But the oldest copies of Matthew are in Greek, and the Greek word for locusts, akris, is very close to the Greek word for flatbread, egkris. What John ate may have been misspelled in an early manuscript and faithfully copied ever since.

Or perhaps John's group of Essenes were not strict vegetarians.

This we know: The Baptist's teachings made poor people love him and rich people fear him. He lived by the Jordan in Perea, where Rome's servant was Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Perea and Galilee. Antipas married Herodias, the former wife of his brother Philip, and the Bible says John called that incest.

Insulted, Herodias asks Antipas to kill John. In Mark's story, Antipas refuses because he believes John is a good and holy man. In Matthew's story, Antipas refuses because he is afraid killing John will spark a rebellion.

Then Herodias's daughter, Salome, dances at a feast. Antipas is so pleased that he tells her, "Whatever you ask, I'll give you, up to half of my kingdom."

Salome asks her mother, "What shall I ask?"

Herodias replies, "The head of John the Baptist."

Antipas is not willing to go back on his word in front of his guests, so the Baptist’s head is given to Salome on a platter.

Josephus tells a simpler story. He says Antipas was afraid the Baptist would raise a rebellion. He had John imprisoned at Macherus near the Jordan River, then killed.

Some of John's students went with Jesus. Others stayed true to John and his teaching. Today, the Baptist is revered by Mandaeans, a gnostic sect numbering about 70,000 people worldwide. They call Jesus an apostate. Considering how Jesus's path diverged from John's, that's understandable. The gospel writers are reluctant to say why Jesus was washed by John like all who went to went to hear him, but the Mandaeans say clearly that Jesus was a student of John's who went his own way.

What Jesus did when he was young and why he felt he needed to be washed by John, the Bible does not suggest. Mark, whose gospel is the oldest in the Bible, tells his story without explanations:

In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Immediately coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. A voice came out of the sky, “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

In Mark's story, Jesus is not called God's son until John washes him. The later gospel writers were clearly troubled by what that implied. That Jesus was washed by John must have been too well known for the writers to omit, so they said Jesus was washed by John to fulfill a prophecy. That was enough of an answer for them. They never asked why one son of Abba needed to be washed by another before he could do what God expected.

All four gospels make one thing clear: Jesus began under the influence of a man who died a rebel's death, killed by Rome's approved ruler for criticizing the ways of the rich.

5. The Rebel Followers of the Rebel Jesus

The Bible says Jesus had a core group of twelve followers who were called apostles, a name that comes from the Greek word for messenger. The Gospels disagree on their names. The number twelve may not be meant literally—it may simply be meant to evoke the belief there were once twelve tribes of Israel—or some apostles may have been known by two names.

Where "brother" is used below, it may mean a literal brother, a relative such as a cousin, or a best friend.

The Zealot

Simon, called the Cananean by Mark and Matthew, and the Zealot by Luke, is not mentioned by John. Cananean comes from the Hebrew kanai which was translated into Greek as zelotes. The Zealots were zealously devoted to God in their desire to drive the Romans out of Judea. The historian Josephus says the Zealots became Judea's fourth major sect after Judas of Gamala led a rebellion against Rome at the time of the Judean census.

The Sicarius

Judas Iscariot is identified by John as the son of Simon Iscariot. His epithet suggests he was a member of the sicarii, radical Zealots whose name came from their sicas, sickle-like daggers that they hid in their robes and used to kill Romans and Judean collaborators.

Some writers insist Iscariot meant Judas came from Kerioth. They note that Josephus says the sicarii appeared while Felix governed Judea, twenty years after the Gospels say Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus to death.

But two better explanations exist. Josephus may be wrong. If so, the sicarii were less active before Felix's time and Josephus simply overlooked the earliest examples of Zealot assassinations. Or Josephus may be right. If so, early Christians may have identified the Zealot Judas, the sly betrayer of Jesus, with the sicarii, the most secretive and brutal of the Zealots. Then, a decade or two later, Mark recorded what he knew using the epithet for Judas that his readers would recognize.

The outlaw followers of the executed Baptist

Simon Baryona is best known as Peter, the Greek translation of the Aramaic name, Cephas, that Jesus gave him. Both Peter and Cephas mean "rock". Peter was a married fisherman in the town of Bethsaida, though we do not know if his wife died or he left her. (Yes, it is odd that for the last thousand years, celibate Catholics Popes claim they follow Peter's tradition.) Peter's death is not recorded in the Bible. Early Christians believed he died the rebel's death of crucifixion.

Jesus calls Peter baryona Matthew's Gospel. Traditional Christians say this means Peter was a son of Jonah, but baryona or biryona is the Aramaic word for outlaw or ruffian—in the Talmud, the Zealots are called biryonim.

Peter's brother Andrew was also believed to have died the rebel's death of crucifixion. The Gospel of John says Andrew was a student of the Baptist's who recognized Jesus as a messiah and introduced him to his brother.

The Sons of Thunder

James, son of Zebedee, is called one of the Boanerges. Strong's Concordance says that's an Aramaic term from bēn ("sons") and regesh ("of thunder, tumult"). James is the only apostle whose death is recorded in the Bible—in Acts, Rome's agent Herod Agrippa has James killed with a sword.

The other Son of Thunder is John, James's brother, the only disciple believed to have died of old age.

Who were the Sons of Thunder? Thunder was the voice of God, so Sons of Thunder were Sons of God who opposed the Romans with their many gods.

The tax collector and five others

Whether the remaining six apostles were associated with rebellion, the Bible doesn't suggest. They were Philip, Thomas the Twin, Bartholomew who is named in three Gospels and may be Nathanael to John, James the son of Alphaeus who is not mentioned by John, Thaddeus who appears in Matthew and Mark and may be Jude to Luke and John, and Matthew the tax collector who is not mentioned by John.

But Matthew's former job gives him a whiff of rebel—he went from serving Rome to serving the rebel that Rome would kill.

The Minnesota writer enjoying the sweet life

2016-12-20T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Ones Who Stay and Fight in Omelas

2016-05-12T21:36:00.006-07:00

The ones who walk away from Omelas will tell you of the glorious city built on the suffering of a child who lives in hunger and darkness. Their words are beautiful because they were taught at the great universities of Omelas. Their bodies are beautiful because they were treated at the great hospitals of Omelas. They come into the world beyond Omelas as the ones who walked away from Omelas, and they are praised for walking away when they could have stayed.

The ones who walk away from Omelas rarely speak of the city they left. When they do, a sadness settles lightly on their beautiful faces that makes them more beautiful. They know all they have left. Part of them will always wish they could have accepted the comforts of Omelas without accepting the cost.

But the ones who walk away from Omelas will not tell you of the ones who stay and fight in Omelas. When the ones who walk away are alone, some will whisper in tones of sad, wise beauty, What is won by fighting when you cannot win?

But once in a rare while in the hunger and darkness at the heart of Omelas, a child smiles, thinking, Somewhere are the ones who stay and fight in Omelas. Someday they will win.

My father, Bob Shetterly, died last night

2015-09-21T09:57:00.002-07:00

No need to offer condolences. Dad lived life on his own terms and came very close to dying under them. While I have some regrets, I'm generally content.

He had wanted to die on his farm and had a bottle of pills on hand that he intended to take if he ever thought he could no longer live unassisted, but a neighbor found him after a heart attack. He spent his last weeks at the clinic in Tofield, where Mom died. He always hated hospitals and nursing homes, but if he couldn't die at home, that was probably the next best place. He died last night between being checked on by the nurses.

My niece was surprised that he went so quickly after being admitted. Emma's mom went quickly too when she knew she could not go home again. They were both strong-willed people, and if I filled out the death certificates for them, under "cause", I would write, "cantankerousness."

My dad and I always had a difficult relationship. I respected him enormously, and loved him too, but I don't think I'll cry about his death. I'm a little sorry a great psychiatrist never got a chance to study him, because I suspect he was either the best sort of sociopath or unusually autistic. He always tried to do right by others, and so far as I know, he never lied. He could be extremely charming, but he had no interest in conforming to anyone's expectations, and he always lived very simply, wearing old clothes and eating cheap food. He had an extreme sense of duty and a great discomfort around emotion—he didn't like to be hugged and I don't remember him telling anyone that he loved them. He had no use for pretensions of any sort. He was an atheist for as long as I knew—my first regret now is that I never asked him when he became one—and I am sure he died one. I could tell you things I hated him for, but in the larger scheme of things, they weren't important. He was a flawed man like any man, but he was ultimately a good man, and maybe a great man. If you want a slightly—and only slightly—romanticized version of him, read Dogland.

Here are my main blog posts about him:

In the 1960s, he ran a tourist trap in Florida: about Dog Land, the place, and Dogland, the novel

And he was involved in the civil rights struggle: Bob Shetterly, the only liberal in Levy County

He and my mom and my sister moved to northern Ontario, where he crashed two planes, but only one was written up in the National Enquirer: Crashing a plane.

He is probably the oldest solo circumnavigator.

In 2004, he wrote a letter to my very conservative brother about American politics.

My life would've been easier with an easier man for a father, but all things considered, I was incredibly lucky that he was my dad.

ETA: My niece just informed me, "Edmonton accepted his body for science. They should be picking him up today or tomorrow." No memorial ceremonies are planned, but I'll probably toast him this evening, and the next time I'm near a large body of water, I'll toss in a rock or sail a paper boat in his memory.

On Toby, the best cat in the universe, and Barnabas, the worst

2015-09-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

No, this is not about The Worst Cat (which you should click if you don't know the site). This is about Toby, who was the best cat in the universe, and a little bit about Barnabas, who is still the worst cat because Toby set the bar so high.

I have been crying a lot in the last 24 hours, and I am a man who almost never cries. This is the reason why:

I suspect Toby was always the best cat in the universe, even when he was a kitten whose owners called him Spider because he climbed everything. He wasn't a Spider when they gave him to us because he was a young adult cat then who had been declawed, but I'm sure he was already the best cat in the universe. Even without claws, he ruled a couple of large dogs and leaped onto tall surfaces to mock them when they chased him. We spent the night in his owners' guest room, and he came in to sleep with us, and soon after that, they had to move to a smaller place and asked if we would like to have him.

Of course we would like to have him.

We drove 500 miles to pick him up. On the way back, we were very aware of his only major flaw, extreme car sickness. But when we got back to Bisbee, we discovered that his car sickness left almost as soon as the car stopped, because he immediately surveyed his new domain and found it satisfactory.

I'm not sure why we named him Toby. We hadn't been people who gave human names to cats, but he just seemed like a Toby. He had all his virtues then. He liked people and always came to greet strangers. He had dignity: he liked to be petted and to sit with or on people, but he had a Minnesotan reserve too—he rarely demanded affection, and he usually didn't like to be held for very long, though he would happily sit in your lap. I don't remember him swatting or biting anyone, except for vets, who deserved it on principle. He was almost always near Emma or me. He had sleeping places that were nearby—the chair by my desk, the window seat by Emma's—so he could open an eye to check on us and go quickly back to sleep. When one of us was in the kitchen and the other in the living room, he would lie near the doorway so he could investigate if one of us did something interesting.

I think I miss him so much because he was always near.

He rarely spoke, and when he did, he tended to speak politely. He knew that to get respect you should give respect, and that people who respect themselves treat everyone with respect. He also knew that dignity is not an absolute goal, and sometimes you just have to chase something. He was in all ways such a gentleman that the only other name I could imagine for him now would be Mr. Steed.

He loved to sleep under the covers. I've gotten in the habit of napping, and he usually came to curl against me. Today's nap was very hard without him.

He liked to hold hands by hooking his paw with your finger.

Interruption: A friend just rang the door and fled, leaving a tupperware container of Asian comfort food on the step, and I may've cried harder than I have yet, because Toby was the kind of cat whose passing deserves all the things a human passing deserves. When we knew he was going, we joked about giving him a Viking funeral, and it wasn't entirely a joke. A wake isn't quite appropriate—yesterday, when Emma wanted to toast him, I thought she would want whiskey, but she chose a glass of milk. We buried him in the backyard in his cat bed, wrapped in a blanket with his favorite catnip mouse between his paws.

Sunday, September 13

Now, a perfect cat can't be perfect, so here are Toby's annoying traits:

1. He loved to dash outside any chance he could get. He never went far—he loved to run down the back stairs and lie in the sun on the warm cement, or go onto the nearest bit of lawn to sniff and chew the grass. I usually said something like, "Oh darn, the cat got out" and sat on the steps for a minute or two before bringing him back in.

2. He loved to shred paper with his teeth. This could be annoying in a writer's household. But it wasn't that annoying. I would give almost anything to be annoyed by him tearing up paper again.

A version of this occurred most mornings for over a decade:

I'm glad Emma never had to choose to give up Toby, coffee, or me. A good spouse knows where he can't compete. My favorite morning duty was making her coffee and feeding the cats so she and Toby could have their time together.

The hole in our lives is enormous.

We are back to being a one-cat household. Barnabas, the worst cat in the univere, has begun to work at becoming the best; here he's in the chair by my desk where Toby usually sat.

Barnabas is not very good at being a house cat. He came to live in the barn in Arizona, so for the longest time, his name was simply Barncat, but then Emma decided to coax him indoors, a process she or I may write about sometime, and calling him Housecat didn't seem to make sense. Oddly, even though his manners are atrocious, we have never asked him if he was born in a barn, perhaps because we suspect he had human owners briefly, then spent ages being semi-feral in the desert, where he would talk loudly to himself and make self-respecting coyotes flee in disgust. Though he is still the worst cat in the universe, when I saw him sleeping curled against Emma the morning after Toby died, I thought he might only be the second or third worst cat in the universe now, and he may even work his way up to best cat status when we least expect it.