In 2011, I challenged myself to read 150 books.  I ended up reading 165; although there were a few of those which were too horrible to finish reading, and a few more that were either children’s books or manga (and thus very quick to read.)

You can check out all my reviews on Goodreads, but here are the 12 books that really stood out as amazing for me.  I really had to be tough to thin them down to 12 – it was a good year for books!

#12: Surviving the Extremes: A Doctor’s Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance by Kenneth Kamler.

Brilliant non-fiction book about what exactly happens inside our bodies when we survive (or don’t survive) extreme physical situations.  It’s just completely fascinating.

#11: In Royal Fashion: The Clothes of Princess Charlotte & Queen Victoria by Kay Staniland

Lovely and lush and interesting – a must-have for costumers like myself.

#10: Memoir of a Revolutionary Soldier by Joseph Plumb Martin

Non-fiction memoir, written by an ordinary guy who was a soldier during the American Revolution.  Wonderful to see the war through the eyes of someone who wasn’t an officer or politician.  And I really liked *him* as a person, too – I’m hoping we’re actually related.  One of my family names is Plumb!

#9: Snook Alone by Marilyn Nelson

This is one of those books that is shelved with the children’s pictures books, but is really for everyone.  It’s perfection.  Anyone who has ever loved an animal needs to read this!

#8: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

This deserves to become one of the great children’s classics, like Peter Pan or Harry Potter.  Utterly charming and quirky and old-fashioned.

#7: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

This is the first time one of Butcher’s books has made my best-of list, even though I’ve been reading him for ages.  Every book he writes keeps getting better (so unusual in a series author!) and with this one, he finally broke my heart.  In the best, most perfect way.

#6: The Jugger by Richard Stark

Stark writes teeny tiny little mysteries/thrillers, with a professional criminal as his hero.  They are very dark, very funny, and probably the best-written books I have ever read.  Each word Stark writes is perfect.  This is a series that I am reading very, very slowly, allowing myself only a book every couple of years, because they cannot be rushed.

#5: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

When he’s on top of his game, King can write about anything and anyone – even on subjects you have absolutely zero interest in – and make you love them.  He writes with such love for his worlds and his characters…and then he rips them apart and you with them.  Me, for instance – I don’t like the sixties, and I have an absolute antipathy for JFK.  I would never, ever have read this book if anyone other than King had written it.  But he did, and I did, and now it’s number five on my list of best books.

#4: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Quite simply, Morgenstern created one of the worlds I always wished I lived in.  And then she described it so lushly and overwhelmingly that I felt as though I did.

#3: Harry Potter Page to Screen by Bob McCabe

This is a must-own for any Harry Potter fan.  It’s HUGE.  And I wish it were four times as big.  Such a gorgeous book.

#2: At Home: a Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson

I got so much enjoyment from this book.  It’s one of those books where you want to read every other section aloud to whoever happens to be in the room, just so you can share the fascination.  The hands-down best non-fiction book I read in 2011.

#1: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Don’t judge it by the cover – this is definitely not a horror book.  I was completely blown away by this book, by its heart, its truth, and its story. This is a very, very special book; one that everyone should read. It had me in tears, and I am not a girl who cries easily. This is absolutely my top pick from the 165 books I read in 2011.   It also has the most beautiful and haunting artwork that is completely integral to the story.

So, on to the pictures!

Friday, I wore my new Steampunk River Song outfit.  River Song is a character from Doctor Who, and I enjoyed wearing this outfit a LOT.  Not only is she my favorite female character on the series, but I just love this steampunk version. Steamcon III built some awesome sets to play around with!

You can read about the making-of this costume here.  Most people didn’t know who I was, but for the few who recognized me…it was pure SQUEE.  My favorite was when two teen girls ran up to me all excited: “Are you River Song?????”  When I said I was and gave them the badge ribbon I had printed (it says “Hello Sweetie”) they said it was the best ribbon yet, and it totally ‘made their con’.  So cool!

I saw the Tenth Doctor at Steamcon as well, and I badly wanted to get a picture with him, but I only ran into him twice and both times he was rushing in the opposite direction with his arms full of supplies, so I couldn’t stop him for a photo.     I loved wearing this so much that I also wore it Saturday morning.

Saturday afternoon, I changed into my Victorian Bathing Costume for the Tea Costume Contest.  I knew going in that I wouldn’t win (my outfit didn’t match any of the three catagories) but I thought it would be fun to enter regardless.   It turned out they only got four entries, so they went out into the hotel and rounded up a few likely folks to pad out the competition.  There were a bunch of jellyfish, a fish with flippers, a mermaid, and my personal favorite: the deep sea diver.  Meet Jilynn:

She’s one of the ladies who reads my costuming blog, so it was fabulous to get to meet her at the con.  She made her entire costume.  The helmet is made from a globe!  The finned boot spats, the specimen jars, the breathing apparatus…all made from found objects.  And she told me she’d never done anything like this before!  I was Very Impressed.  And pleased when she won one of the awards.  Congrats, Jilynn!

This is one of the things I love about steampunk….the pure creativity.

Oh, and here’s a couple pics of my Bathing Costume.

I didn’t have the time or desire to make something really fantastic, so I just went silly, colorful, and multicultural.  I’m glad I don’t have to actually swim in this thing!

After the contest, I changed into my Chinese Cabaret Costume.  When I walked out onto the floor, it was amazing.  Steampunkers really, really like the multicultural costuming right now.  It was honestly like I’d turned into a minor celebrity of some sort!  People instantly started stopping me every few feet for pictures.

Click here for a short video of the sleeves in action!

I ended up being asked by a professional photographer to do a photoshoot.  So I walked up and down the grand staircase a half dozen times while he took shots from various angles.   Later, I did a second professional shoot as well.  I like celebrity in small doses like this! 

One thing that really amazed me was the fervency of the ribbon collectors.  After I’d handed out a few, word started spreading and soon I had people running up and saying they’d heard I had ribbons.  I made two different ones: “Hello Sweetie” for my blog followers and Doctor Who fans who recognized me as River Song, and “Dragonfly Designs by Alisa” for everyone else.  Giving out ribbons is going to be a regular thing for me now…I need to think of some good ones for Gallifrey and Costume Con!

Sunday I wore my Ottoman Steampunk, largely because Steamcon was holding a “Wayfarer’s Brunch” with a multicultural theme.

After the corseting of the previous days, it was nice to wear something really cozy for the final day!  The vest is embroidered with beetlewings, and is definitely one of my favorite things I’ve made.  I won “Best Female Costume” with this at the Wayfarer’s Brunch, and was called up to the mike to speak a little about my costume and its inspiration.  That was fun too!  There were some really fab multicultural outfits at the brunch, here is just a few:

Jon and I pretty much only saw each other at lunch, dinner, and bedtime; the rest of the time we wanted to see completely different panels and events.   We did meet up to take pictures, though….

And I finally got him out of the white tennis shoes he always wears with his steampunk outfit, and into what he calls “old man shoes”.  Much better!

One of the highlights of the con for me was having my silhouette cut by the artist from Paper Shadows.  I wished I had been able to watch it being done, but of course I had to face away from her and sit still.  It turned out so fabulous!  I can’t even tell you how gorgeous and amazing her work is.  She just picks up a sheet of paper and uses tiny scissors to snip and cut…no patterns, no preparatory sketching, nothing but freehand art.  I liked mine so much I also am having her make it into a piece of jewelry.  Of course, that meant she had to take it with her, so I won’t be able to show you pictures for a couple of weeks, when she mails the original silhouette, plus the pendant, back to me.  I can’t wait.  I went back later to watch her cut someone else’s:

Steamcon is really so much fun.  I love the panels (I got to handle actual extant corsets and bustles!) and meet authors and artists.  I met fans of my blog (which was a surreal and delightful experience – it’s incredible to me that people are so interested in what I do. Teya, you totally made my day with your enthusiasm!)  And best of all, I got to see the most amazing costumes and meet the most talented people.  Here are just a few of my favorites I saw (when I had my camera – several escaped me because I didn’t have my camera available!)

Who doesn’t want a mechanical raven?

Yes, I know, not technically steampunk.  But her 18th century outfit is gorgeous, and she has a ship on her head.  I love it.

Beautiful bustle, beautiful colors.

So simple, so gorgeous. I want one!

Great detail.  I love monochromatic costumes with lots of detail!

Another great bustle and color combo!

If you don’t want to paint your Nerf gun, you just match your outfit to Nerf colors…

This family is a perfect example of why I love steampunk. It’s so awesome to see parents and teens enthusiastic about the same thing!

This lady’s outfit was so ornate.  And you can’t really see in this pic, but she had these amazing contact lenses.  This was hands-down my favorite costume, until I saw the female aviator costume:

I am such a sucker for wings that work!  So cool!

This is only a teeny sampling of the costumes I saw.  It was a wonderful weekend, and I’m already plotting my costumes for 2012.  The theme is “Victorian Monsters” which is SO MY THING.

The other videos were done by amateur cameramen, using a small storage unit as the sound stage.  For this one, we had a professional cameraman (Michael Lienau of Global Net Productions) and our crew built a massive stage in the Commercial Aircraft Interiors warehouse.

I knew what they were planning to do, but it was still awesome to see when I got a sneak peek of the set the day before! Huge green screen!

The costumes I made were for the Harlot, the Apostle John, and the Seven-Headed Beast (more about the Beast later.)  Since I literally only had a few days to put this together, only the Beast was made from scratch.  The Harlot was scavenged from my own personal costumes…we’re very lucky the actress we ended up with (Val Thomas) was pretty much my size!

Points to anyone who recognizes parts of my Steampunk Saloon Girl and Renaissance Courtesan in her costume – plus my Red Queen wig! Behind her in this shot is the Red Dragon. The director wanted her to be very rich and trashy looking, so I piled on a bunch of stuff that didn’t really match, along with just about every piece of costume jewelry I own (plus some pieces that belonged to her.)

For the Apostle John (Tim McLaughlin), I made his “vacation outfit” of flowered robe and headdress.  I don’t think you can quite tell in this shot, but he’s wearing a full head mask of an old man.  It’s *very* realistic!  The actual actor is only in his 30s, so it was odd to see the transformation.

Checking the scripts one last time….the guy in the yellow shirt is our director/pastor Bruce Wersen.  If he hadn’t become a pastor, he would have been a filmmaker – he was a finalist on the tv reality series “Project Greenlight”.

And here is a video of one of the practice runs:

After we shot this scene, we returned to our old storage unit stage to film the rest of the video.

The Harlot checked her makeup, and we were set to go:

See the Seven Headed Beast in the trunk?  That is seven teenage boys, wearing costumes made out of leopard print pantyhose, horns made of tape, and masks made of plastic, fabric, and paint.

(This is a test of the mask/stockings – we later changed the horn color)

The hardest part was keeping the boys from completely destroying the masks while they waited for their part to be filmed!

Between takes, they relaxed in the Route 66 car:

The whole thing took about 9 hours to film, so it was a long day, but was quite a unique experience!

The most amazing part is that the professional visual effects guy who works on television shows like “Lost”, “Terra Nova” and “Alcatraz” is doing our visual effects as well!  Eric Chauvin, of Blackpool Studios. He is JJ Abrams’ go-to guy, and an original member of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic.  He’s been nominated for 8 Emmy awards, and won twice!  Bruce Wersen, our pastor/screenwriter/director has some contacts in the film industry, and he just contacted this guy and asked him for help.  At first Chauvin said he was just too busy with all the new shows coming out, but then he agreed to go out for lunch with Bruce, and next thing you know, he’s saying he ‘really wants to be a part’ of this series.  So cool.

And here is the finished video (be sure to watch through the credits to see my name!

Having finally gotten into the Pottermore Beta testing, I have been sorted by JK Rowling herself, and have been put into House Hufflepuff.  This was a big shock, as I had always assumed I was Ravenclaw.  It’s not that I think I’m particularly smart, or had any emotional attachment to that house, it’s just that whenever I ordered something in Slytherin colors for my Bellatrix Black school uniform, I was ALWAYS mistakenly sent Ravenclaw colors instead!  Seriously, this happened over and over, with my sweater, my scarf…whatever I ordered.  I just took it as a sign: I was Ravenclaw.

Despite this, I always did cosplay as Slytherin, not because I value ambition or sneakiness, but because I love Snape.  Completely, totally adore him.  So secretly (or not so secretly) I was hoping to be sorted into Slytherin.  I didn’t really expect it to happen though, because I don’t share Slytherin’s “values” in my real life, and….darn it!….the universe had already proclaimed me Ravenclaw!

But Rowling believes me to be Hufflepuff.  Okay, fine.  I wasn’t *thrilled*, but…okay.

And then I did some research (guided by Pottermore’s new revelations from Rowling) and discovered something really interesting.  Everything I value in real life, the way I really believe and think…is reflected by Hufflepuff.

For instance, there’s this article: Are Hufflepuffs Duffers?

For my own views, I’ve never quite liked Rowling’s definition of bravery, or her insistence that it is the most important of all virtues. Gryffindor’s bravery is fine and good – and needed – but the sort of “bravery” her heroes demonstrate is most often pure stubborn recklessness and disregard for the rules.  What is brave about charging forward regardless of the odds?  So often in Rowling’s world there would have been a much better way of handling the problem, and yet her heroes are always rewarded for their “bravery” instead of disciplined.  One example is in Goblet of Fire.  Harry Potter has to pass an underwater test and “save” his friends.  He made the unfounded and reckless assumption that his friends are actually in danger and blows the test by rushing headlong into the situation.  He does “save” them, yes, but they weren’t actually in danger, and if he’d taken a bit of time to think, he’d have realized that.  He always rushes in, on his own – or with his friends, thus endangering them – when he might have asked for help and thus resolved the situation much more easily.  This is not my definition of true bravery.  This is my definition of reckless arrogance.  Since this their defining characteristic, I am not a Gryffindor.

House Slytherin, while not an overall “evil” house, has problems with their definition of ambition.  Ambition isn’t wrong, but your goals have to achieved in the moral way.  Slytherins take the easy way, they are at heart lazy, wanting their desires to come to them without having to work for them.  Plus, they have those issues of entitlement and class working against them.  I am not a Slytherin, however much I adore Snape (and for the record, HE was my definition of a brave man.)

Ravenclaw is a little too obsessed with intelligence.  The smartest people are not always the best people, and I have a real distaste for those who look down at people because they don’t possess the same skills or abilities as themselves.  Granted there are great people in Ravenclaw (I love Luna, for example) but there is no way I can put “book learning” over emotional well-being.  I am not a Ravenclaw.

What I am is a badger. This is what I want to be, and the values I believe in:

Hufflepuff is the most inclusive among the four houses, valuing hard work, patience, loyalty, and fair play rather than a particular aptitude in its members. Students belonging to this house are known to be hard-working, friendly, loyal, and rather impartial. It may be that due to their values, Hufflepuffs are not as competitive as the other houses, or are more modest about their accomplishments. Hufflepuff appears to have the least rivalry with the other houses.

Ambition, bravery, and intelligence matter not a whit if you aren’t in your core a happy person, a good person, a fair person, and a hard-working, loyal person.  People get so wound up sometimes in wanting to be great, that they forget how important it is to be nice.  Hufflepuff’s virtues are old-fashioned virtues, which is why they are mocked for being ‘duffers’, but these are values that people everywhere need to hold onto.

Plus, Hufflepuff has the most awesome common room.  While the other houses have grand rooms I’d love to visit, Hufflepuff’s is where I’d genuinely like to live.  Listen to this description from JK Rowling:

The Hufflepuff common room is entered from the same corridor as the Hogwarts kitchens. Proceeding past the large still life that forms the entrance to the latter, a pile of large barrels is to be found stacked in a shadowy stone recess on the right-hand side of the corridor. The barrel two from the bottom, middle of the second row, will open if tapped in the rhythm of ‘Helga Hufflepuff’.* As a security device to repel non-Hufflepuffs, tapping on the wrong barrel, or tapping the incorrect number of times, results in one of the other lids bursting off and drenching the interloper in vinegar.

A sloping, earthy passage inside the barrel travels upwards a little way until a cosy, round, low-ceilinged room is revealed, reminiscent of a badger’s set. The room is decorated in the cheerful, bee-like colours of yellow and black, emphasised by the use of highly polished, honey-coloured wood for the tables and the round doors which lead to the boys’ and girls’ dormitories (furnished with comfortable wooden bedsteads, all covered in patchwork quilts).

A colourful profusion of plants and flowers seem to relish the atmosphere of the Hufflepuff common room: various cactii stand on wooden circular shelves (curved to fit the walls), many of them waving and dancing at passers-by, while copper-bottomed plant holders dangling amid the ceiling cause tendrils of ferns and ivies to brush your hair as you pass under them.

A portrait over the wooden mantelpiece (carved all over with decorative dancing badgers) shows Helga Hufflepuff, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School, toasting her students with a tiny, two-handled golden cup. Small, round windows just level with the ground at the foot of the castle show a pleasant view of rippling grass and dandelions, and, occasionally, passing feet. These low windows notwithstanding, the room feels perennially sunny.

Doesn’t this sound like a hobbit hole…my formerly favorite place in all of fiction?  Views of dandelion lawns!  I love dandelions – I refuse to dig mine out of my yard, and every time I pass by an overgrown field I sigh at the beauty of those bright golden heads.  And, right now, my real life studio is painted yellow.  Everything in that description feels like home to me.  I have always felt very strongly connected to gardening, to the earth, and Hufflepuff is the house associated to earth.

Also, the badger is our animal, and badgers are awesome.  There is a lot of meaning behind the badger being chosen as our mascot.  Badgers are calm…except when they or their family are attacked. Then they turn into one of the most terrifying creatures on earth, well capable of fighting off a lion.  Check out this video of a Honey Badger if you don’t believe me!

And to crown it all off, there are some really cool people in Hufflepuff, Tonks and Rowling herself being two of them.  So NOW I’m actually really excited about being chosen a Hufflepuff, and while I don’t understand Rowling’s system for sorting, I think it works.  The only thing about Hufflepuff I don’t like is the Robert Pattison connection, and that isn’t Rowlings’ or Hufflepuff’s fault.

I am a Hufflepuff, and there’s no other house I’d rather be in.  (Sorry Severus…but we can still be friends, can’t we?)

And just an fyi on Matt Smith’s Doctor…okay….okay….I’m liking him now. David Tennant was still better, but I’m coming to the conclusion that mostly why I *thought* I disliked Matt’s version was because of my VAST hatred for Amy.  I hate her.  I hate her interactions with the Doctor, I hate who the Doctor is when he’s around her, and I in opinion the only thing good to come of Amy Pond was River Song.  I can’t wait for Amy to leave the show.

That said, Moffat has totally redeemed himself by his writing on this season, and love River Song so much I’d totally forgive him even if the writing did suck.

And, I’m putting this in writing: the Doctor who was killed in The Impossible Astronaut? That was a ganger…specifically, ganger #3.  Hence that Doctor calling himself “1103″.   There’s a reason you never saw that Doctor with the TARDIS -  and it’s not because station wagons are….cool?  

Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing

1. Never open a book with weather.  This one should be obvious.  Unless you’re writing a parody.
2. Avoid prologues.  I have used prologues.  I think there are a few occasions when they are necessary.  But I think most of the time they are used as either info dumps or a way of hooking the reader when your first chapter isn’t strong enough to do that on its own.  (Maybe because you started that first chapter with the weather?)  Re-writing the first chapter is usually the better option.
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.  I think you could get away with using “asked” now and again – if the character is questioning someone.  Otherwise, please don’t.  Please.  I hate this practice.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said”…he admonished gravely. A sure sign of sloppy writing.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.  Unless I’m on some social media site (in which case exclamation points are mandatory) I find it so difficult to use one of these in my writing.  On the rare occasion I do use one,  I normally end up going back and taking it out, because just knowing it is there disturbs my peace of mind.  They are just so amateurish.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”  Okay, I am guilty of using ‘suddenly’.  But I’m rapidly getting to the point where it bothers me nearly as much as an exclamation point, so I expect soon I won’t be able to use it at all.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. I hate reading them, and I don’t like writing them, so this one is easy.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.  The best descriptions are short, simply and perfect.  And astonishingly difficult to do well. 
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” — Elmore Leonard

In my own writing, I’ve been struggling with Breathing Ghosts, my time travel novel.  I have to introduce two new characters in this current chapter, and a new plot point.  The first character I’m writing is difficult simply because she is Molly’s mother, and Molly (my main character) doesn’t get on with her mother.  In fact, she doesn’t want to talk to her, talk about her, or even think about her – and this makes it really hard for me, because everything I know about Breathing Ghosts is filtered through Molly’s knowledge and perspective.  I’ve said before that I have no choice about being a writer.  I write because I have to write, because otherwise my head would be so packed full of other people’s lives that I’d have no room in there for my own.  Most of the time when I’m writing, it’s the easiest, most natural thing in the world, because it feels exactly as though these imaginary characters of mine are real, and they are dictating their lives to me.  Writing surprises me and delights me, and I don’t understand at all how it works, only how it feels.

But every so often, writing frustrates the heck out of me.  And this chapter was one of those times.  Molly did not want to tell me anything about who her mother actually was, and every time I tried to muscle through and write something, it was always wrong.  For me, writer’s block is simply the Othermind’s way of telling me: You’ve got this wrong.  I’ve taken a wrong turn and the only way to fix it, is to delete everything up to the last point when the story was going well, and rewrite from there.  On this chapter, I lost track of how many pages about Molly’s mother I wrote, then deleted.

And what made it worse, was that Molly’s mother had the important job of introducing a secondary character, and raising a new plot point.  First I wrote the secondary character (SD) as a man named James.  And that was very wrong.  So SD became Katherine.  And Molly and she had a face to face meeting that was one of the loveliest bits of writing I’ve done.  I really, really liked it.  But it was wrong.  So…I deleted that, although it hurt.  Then Katherine was only spoken of, but that wasn’t right either.  Finally, Katherine ended up being dead, and I think she’ll stay there; the chapter finally feels right.    Alas, poor Katherine.

So, I think the chapter’s finally working out, which is good, because I don’t want to struggle with this book.  I’ve put a lot of me into this book; Molly is closer to being me than any other character I’ve ever written.  I’m not sure how or why that happened, but it’s…interesting to write.

Anyway, I didn’t intent to unload all this introspection when I sat down to post Leonard’s Rules, but…there it is.  All the crazy.

I have this idea for a Lovecraftian world of ancient monsters and magic – basically the place where all our world’s legends began.  Victorians have managed to create a Gate into this world, and colonized/subdued it with brick, technology, and social mores into a semi-civilized place they call “New London”.  They are happy to use the inherent magic as another sort of power/science.  But when the Gate unexpectedly closes, the people trapped on New London discover their transported science and technology is dying, and the ancient magic of the world beneath New London is rising up against them….

There will be no vampires or werewolves here.  I like the idea of digging out lesser-used creatures, such as the vodyanoy and the banshee.  There will be magical bartitsu, sewer krakens, criminal masterminds, and more-than-slightly-cracked inventors.  There might even be a pair of zombies (but only two…no zombie plagues in this book, sorry!)

I *think* I will post chapters online, but I haven’t quite decided.  In the meantime, I came across this picture of the real Victorian London, by Gustav Dore.  I’ve just ordered a book containing all his London drawings, because this is my image of New London:

I just love how cramped and…brick…it all is.  If you were an ancient Lovecraftian beastie, wouldn’t you rise up against this?

So finally, I let her out to garden with me.  I’d tried having all six Girls out in the garden at once last summer, when they were very young hens.  It hadn’t worked out too well, since they promptly scattered in six directions.  This wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I didn’t want them in certain parts of the garden, digging up my more fragile plants, and I can’t watch six hens AND garden at the same time.  Molly (my Rhode Island Red) had a particular knack for going exactly where she shouldn’t be.  But I’d taken one hen out at a time, and that was perfect.  Ellie, Antoinette (my Delaware), and Josie (my Barnevelder) were great at sticking right beside me, and providing conversation and spider control for their arachnophobic owner.

So Ellie was allowed out.  But then, of course, the other Girls could not only see me, but they could see her.  And they didn’t approve of such special treatment.  Sophie (my Silver Cuckoo Maran) was especially vocal, standing high on her perch and delivering a constant stream of arguments for why this wasn’t fair.  So then Sophie was allowed out too, and then Molly, and then Josie (to distract her from being broody), and then….before I knew it, all six were out.

But they were good!  They stayed close to me, working industriously, and it was only after they’d been out several hours that Molly started doing her disappearing act.  When I put them back in their yard (except for Ellie and Antoinette) they were contented.  And Ellie and Antoinette were soon tired too, and mostly wanted to sit on my lap while I weeded.  They love to squeeze in tight against my chest. and reach their heads up under my hair so that their beaks are against my neck.  We call this a “chicken hug”, and sometimes they are so happy while hugging and being petted that they actually purr.  Antoinette has a very growl-y rasping purr – it can be startling when she puts her beak close to my ear and purrs without warning!

One benefit of the chickens helping to garden is that almost all of our slug population seems to have vanished.  My friends who live nearby are complaining about having to put out slug bait, and I’ve barely seen a slug since we got the hens.  For the first time EVER, my violas are blooming without being eaten!  I love my chickens for so many reasons!

There are three secular standards historians apply to ancient documents in order to test for authenticity and accuracy:

1) The number of surviving copies (for sake of comparison)

2) The age of the earliest copies (how close to the original)

3) Consistency between the existing copies

When you have several different copies (whether complete or partial) from different locations and generations, you can discover a lot.  Let’s look at three secular manuscripts that modern scholars have no reluctance treating as both authentic and accurate:

A: Plato’s Works (400 BC):  7 copies and 1.200 years from earliest fragment to original.

B: Aristotle’s Works (350 BC):  49 copies and 1,100 years of “gap”.

C: Homer’s Iliad: (1200 BC):  643 Greek copies and 900 years of gap (the most copies of any ancient writing outside of the Bible.)

D: The quantity of New Testiment material is almost embarrassing in comparison with other works of antiquity: 24,000 copies and the earliest fragment has a 30 year gap!

There’s simply nothing else like it….or even close.  The Iliad has 643 Greek copies; the New Testament has 6,000 Greek copies AND 8,000 Latin copies AND 10,000 copies in other languages; from various locations and generations to be compared and cross-referenced.

The consistency between the 24,000 copies is staggering: only 1/2 of 1% variation.  They are virtually, unbelievably identical!  the .5% variants are easily accounted for by comparing them to the multitudes of samples that don’t contain the typo, the single word omission, or the double word repetition.  And these minor issues never affect the central content or the message of the Gospel.

Our Bible has an unequaled reputation of fidelity.

- Bruce Wersen, Pastor of His Place Church

Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.

- Matthew 24:35

“There is a growing mass of evidence from archaeology that the Bible accounts deal with real people living in real places…..If the Bible was false, we would expect new archaeological discoveries to (disprove) this.

“In fact, there is no known case where archaeology decisively disproves the Bible. This itself is strong evidence for the truth of the Christian message.”

http://www.facingthechallenge.org/arch2.php

-David Couchman

I’m an Eternalist.  I believe that time is a dimension, the same as space is a dimension, and that all points of time (the past, present, and future) exist simultaneously.  Theoretically, according to Einstein’s Law of Relativity, this makes time travel possible.  The only catch is that, this also makes time travel fairly pointless -  if the whole reason you want to time travel at all is to change something from your past.  I’ll talk about that later; first I want to explain time as a dimension.

Everyone accepts that space is a dimension, and that all points of space exist together, and simultaneously.  The fact that you might be living in New York  doesn’t mean that Cairo, Russia, and Milwaukee don’t exist.  You can’t see or experience those cities  from your New York apartment, but if you hopped a plane, you could change your location to wherever you wanted to be.

If time is a dimension, then all moments in time exist at the same “moment” – no matter whether you can see or experience any other moment but the one you’re experiencing now.  The day you are born (Paris) is as current as the day you die (Cairo), and so is every other moment of your life.  If you had a machine that could transport you, you could travel back and forth between moments, and each and every one would be “now” for you.  There is no logical reason (other than our subject “feeling”) that any one moment in your life is more current or “valid” than any other.  Every moment you live feels to you at that moment as the “real” moment.

So let’s say you have that time machine, and now can travel between moments as easily as you can travel between places.  And let’s also say, that, like the main character in my book, something terrible happened to your parents when you were five.  Can you go “back” in time and save your parents?  Let’s say you can.  Presto, your parents live, and nothing traumatizing happens to you.  So, if nothing happened, why would you later go back and try to stop it?  There would be nothing to stop.  So of course you wouldn’t go back, and since you didn’t, who saved your parents?  That’s a time paradox, most commonly referred to as “The Grandfather Paradox“.

The Eternalism view prevents time travel paradoxes.  If all moments in time exist simultaneously, than all moments are happening simultaneously.  Right now, you are being born, visiting the dentist for the first time (and every time – scary thought!) attending school, reading this blog, and dying.  Everything that has or will happen to you is happening to you now.  We can only experience one single second of it, but just like Paris is existing through we can’t see it, the past and future is happening, although we can’t experience it.

And because time is happening all at once, all of our decisions, all of our free will, is happening all at once, too.  We are deciding to run that red light three years ago.  We are deciding to continue reading this blog (or not!).  We are attending the Olympics in 2014.  We are putting on the socks we are wearing tomorrow, and we are going to bed last night.  It’s all now.

We know our past.  We know the date we were born, we know the things we remember really happened.  We don’t fear that suddenly the facts of our lives will scramble, that suddenly instead of going to public school, we’ll be homeschooled, or that we’ll suddenly own a dog instead of a cat.  The past doesn’t change.  However much we wish we could go back and erase that time we embarrassed ourselves in public, it’s never erased.  It always happens, because it did happen.  If Eternalism is correct, what we call the “future” works the same.  What “will” happen, has happened – it’s just that the “you” reading this blog doesn’t remember it, because that “you” is always trapped in the moment you’re living.  The future only seems full of endless possibility because you can’t see it, or remember the decisions you’re going to make.    You can tell yourself that you could win the lottery tomorrow, and find that a comforting thought, but in reality, you have already either won or lost.  I think that’s why we were created not to able to remember the future as we do the past – if we knew the entirety of our lives from beginning to end, how could we have any drive to live them?  Knowing how we either succeed or fail would mean that we wouldn’t take the chances that would create that success or dare the risks that sometimes lead to failure.  And that, folks, could create a whole SLEW of paradoxes.  Time only works if we have this linear impression of it, of time “passing” from past to future.

Everything that has happened, or will happen, is happening.  You can’t go back and kill Hitler before he killed anyone, because those people did die.  You can’t go forward and kill (unknown horrible person) before (unknown horrible thing happens) because that horrible person is already alive and because that horrible thing is already happening.  On the other hand, it’s possible you did go back and kill Richard Snodgrass Baudelaire’s mother, before he could be born, grow up, and kill fifteen innocent people.  Who’s Richard Snodgrass Baudelaire, and who are the people he would have killed?  Since you killed his mother before he could be born, we’ll never know.  He never existed, he never happened.  There’s only one way history – either of the “past” or the “future” – can be affected, and that’s through your normal everyday decisions.