Category: Change

  • Extinction

    It’s this sort of news that always makes me really sad.  Is it just me?  I don’t know.  I don’t really hear people talk about the loss of a species ever.  For some reason it’s always been something that hits me in the gut.

  • Scaping the Street in Downtown Youngstown

    This Saturday was Streetscape in Youngstown’s downtown. A couple of hundred volunteers from the community came out to plant flowers and to landscape the downtown together. It was a really awesome thing to be a part of, working side by side sometimes with people from your city that you know, and with people from your…

  • Electrum Novellas=Way Coolness

    Please distribute far and wide. ____________ Velocity Press Announces New Electrum Novella Series Fans of the acclaimed Rabid Transit anthology series will be excited to hear that, here at Velocity Press, we’re evolving for your reading pleasure. Our purpose has always been to bring interesting and hard to classify fiction into print, work that might…

  • On my way out

    I’m getting ready to head off to NYC for the Nebula Awards ceremony this weekend.  I’m not nervous.  I’m just excited to have been nominated.  That’s a real honor in and of itself. So this will be my last post for a while, unless I get a chance over the next week while I’m in…

  • Sunday in Millcreek Park

    We went to Millcreek Park today, to enjoy the sun and the flowers and the people who had come out to enjoy it with each other. Even the Amish came into the city today to go to the park. We snapped a shot of them taking pictures also. There was a young guy around my…

  • Beginnings and endings

    I came across this really good interview with my city’s mayor (click on the February 8th Smart City radio interview under the Broadcasts section), talking about the history of Youngstown and the current situation here, as the community attempts to restructure and revitalize after decades of economic and political disintegration.  It’s a very different story here…

  • Advice we should take now, too

    Gwyneth Jones is so smart: Much of the science-fiction establishment hated the cyberpunks. Science fiction was supposed to be about progress, and how advances in technology will inevitably create a better world. But they were right, and the truth they told is highly relevant to this new century of sci-fi come true. If a child…

  • Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84

    I’ll miss having him around.  His books have meant a lot to me at various times in my life.  He can make me laugh at suffering more easily than any other author I’ve read. New York Times article Really excellent audio interview at Bookworm

  • Today

    It’s still so beautiful outside, even if it’s late in the night.  My windows are up, the rooms are breathing with fresh air.  I love the sound of the traffic crossing my apartment building, both the vehicles and the human traffic, the cars speeding by, the human voices.  Today I heard the most lovely voice…

  • Bruce Sterling in Belgrade

    I came across this video of Bruce Sterling talking about civil engineering and economic development in his new home city of Belgrade.  Sterling, for those readers of this journal that are not somehow interested in reading or in the reading of science fiction especially, should note that Bruce Sterling is a science fiction writer who…