August 1989 
August 1989 A young girl learns to finger-spell. A not-so-young man gets not-so-younger. The Tooth Fairy works overtime. And serendipity is discussed.
AwGhost 4, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Okay, I’m back on the downstairs system, with the conventional address macro. I had the day all planned out: In the morning I would answer the woman whose husband left her for the Other Woman after twenty years, and then answer the woman who is pondering leaving her alcoholic and abusive husband after a similar period, and then get on to this letter, and wrap everything up before horsefeeding time. Ha! I had two calls from my literary agent—he’s talking to the folk who hope to make Xanth into video movies so you can see them (well, maybe some other folk will see them too, if that’s okay with you), and I had to note some figures in my computer files because I got statements on seventeen fantasy novels yesterday—yes, Xanth novels are still selling well—, and we had a visit from relatives of the folk who own the property next to us, which acreage we would like to buy so that it can never be despoiled by encroaching houses, and the bunnies and possums and box turtles and all will never be disturbed, so of course we were polite to them but they aren’t interested in selling the property, and well, here it is horsefeeding time and I’m only this far along in this letter. Ever thus! STOP SNIGGERING!
Stop it, or I’ll stick my tongue out at you. I’m not bluffing. See? OPEN YOUR EYES! You think I can’t make you do that? Just watch:
My first enclosure is a photograph of a painting of a cute little cat. I CAUGHT THAT! YOU PEEKED! On the back it says “This I did for one of Jenny’s friends …” No, that’s coincidence; this woman paints, and her daughter is named Jenny, but I’m showing you this—I can’t give it to you, because it’s a gift to me, and, well, you probably understand the ethics of that. But I thought you’d like seeing it. And your eyes are wide open now, aren’t they! You keep trying to get the better of me, and you should know better.
Okay, I’m back from horsefeeding. I have to move this letter right along, because my daughters and wife mean to drag me off to eat out, because they won’t all be here for my birthday, so I’ll lose the last part of the day. So—what? What do you mean, what do the horses eat? Grain and hay, that’s what. Oh, you mean what are we going to eat? Well, when I do go out, I take a little bit of everything edible (non-meat) from the salad bar. So let’s get back to this letter—what? Oh, all right, I’ll make a report when we get back. I’ll have to do that tomorrow morning, because it’ll be too late tonight.
Now to business: my daughter Cheryl found a baby turtle along the drive a couple of days ago. It was a water turtle, and it was far from water, so she brought it to the house—she was driving, and so it got a car ride—and I took it down to the lake. Then we went out and looked for more, in case they had hatched and were similarly lost, but didn’t find any. Well, we saved one, anyway. This morning, or maybe yesterday morning, I saw another turtle, right by the barn door; I had to open the door over her shell. She was laying eggs there. That was a land turtle. Well, if some predator doesn’t dig them out, we’ll have more turtles in due course. Turtles are fun, and we encourage them.
Actually, my contacts with wildlife are fairly frequent.
Sometimes a bunny doesn’t know which way to go to get off our drive when I’m pedaling my bicycle out to get the newspapers, and a couple days ago, during my run, I went full-face into a spider web. Remember that clipping I sent you? No, I got all of it except the spider, though I suspect the spider wasn’t exactly pleased with the loss of her web. Stop smiling; it’s not that funny. Meanwhile we have one magnolia tree that had a bloom on the first day of AwGhost last year. Guess what: not this year. But we have two azaleas, which normally bloom only in early spring, with flowers now. Maybe plants take turns.
Did you know that Neptune has three more moons? That makes six, now, though the new ones are all baby moons. In my novel Macroscope, which you don’t have to read, I have Neptune’s big moon Triton having a little moon of its own; I’m waiting to see if they spot that moon, in which maybe I’ll be famous for having described it first. Maybe in a few million years those little moons’ll grow up to be big moons. Which reminds me: there was an item about a couple who had a dwarf child. Something in the genetics. So they adopted a Korean child with similar dwarfism. I don’t know those folk, but suspect I’d like to.
I had a call from your mother, right after they took her face apart. She informed me that my address of Twenty-Tooth Extraction Drive was wrong; they took out twenty-three teeth. Sigh. But it was the tooth of the month, just as I predicted. No, a drunk driver did not run his trailer-tractor rig over her face, it only looks that way. She’ll be better any month now, and she means to come in and make you look at her face before it becomes uninteresting again. That way you’ll know what kind of a glare to expect if you misbehave. She also warned me not to be too affrighted by the letter she had just mailed; it was written when she was mostly out of her mind. Today that letter arrived—and it was perfectly sensible and interesting. Maybe that’s what she meant.
Next enclosure is for your roommate, Cathy: it’s a Cathy comic I thought she’d like, about how people train dogs and how dogs train people. You’re a cat fan, so Cathy must be a dog fan.
Oops—I must have forgotten to clip out the Alligator Children’s page last Sunday. Will you ever forgive me? Here’s Curtis, anyway.
Today I received ten letters, a number of which were also birthday cards. I don’t know how so many folk found out about my birthday. Are you sure you haven’t squealed? Some even send gifts, which I’d prefer they didn’t, because I’m not sending them gifts. One woman says she’s madly in love with me, and no, she’s not my wife, she’s someone else’s wife, but she keeps sending letters of adoration. Humorous ones, fortunately. I guess it’s easier to love me from afar. STIFLE THAT SNIGGER! Once she wrote “I just turned forty, and I’m still mad about it!” Her last card showed a purple dragon, and said “I know how you like to fantasize. On your birthday, may all your dreams come true!” And a sign to hang on the doorknob: “DO NOT DISTURB—unless you’re part of my fantasy!” This time she sent me a device you’d like: it’s the Traffic Buster, which is a little box with an ON/OFF switch that turns on madly blinking lights, and four buttons marked Auto Machine Gun, Grenade Launcher, Death Ray, and Rifle Gun. The idea is to scare impolite drivers out of their wits, and of course that means just about every other car on the road. You want to listen to one? Okay here’s the Grenade Launcher:—— = = POW! Did you hear it? Tell your daddy to put the device on your Christmas list. Then you can visit the hospital and scare all the nurses with it.
I understand you’re learning sign language now. Would you believe: there is sign language in Xanth #12, Man From Mundania. Because Ivy can’t understand Mundane speech, but signs work okay. I also have sign language in my Indian novel, Tatham Mound. That’s not quite the same, but similar. It’s a universal language, really; with it you can talk to anyone who knows signs. My daughter Penny has done some work in signs. So I wish you well. All the same, if you can connect up one more nerve in your head so you can talk directly, that’s okay too.
Which I guess brings me to a more serious item. Two days ago I had a good day’s writing going, but in the afternoon it washed out because of phone calls and the mail. A letter asked me to send one of my dreams—the night kind—as they are collecting dreams of famous folk. Who, me? WATCH THAT SNIGGER!! Trouble is, the only really dramatic dream I can remember I already described, in Bio of an Ogre, and I don’t like to repeat myself. Then the first call: from the guy who is working on the Xanth video movie. He said a studio is interested, and might send down a jet plane to bring me there and show off the first sample. I won’t sign a contract, see, until I actually see a bit of it, to be sure it’s of the quality I want. But they must be pretty sure it’s good. So it’s an exciting prospect; maybe Xanth really will be animated. Then, later, your mother’s call, sounding as if they hadn’t gotten quite all her teeth out, because she could still talk, and that reminded me that you still can’t walk or talk or eat. It didn’t seem fair that good things should be happening to me, when I really don’t need them, while you are the one who really needs something good, like a burst of healing in the nerves. I mean, you have the brain and you have the body, you just don’t quite have enough of a connection between them. That night I dreamed a sort of mixed-up melange that faded as soon as I woke and tried to remember it—you know how dreams are—but it was as if I took a jet plane and visited you and you couldn’t talk to me. That didn’t cheer me much either. So I described that dream, and its background, and maybe the dream-book folk will be satisfied. I penciled it out for my secretary, which means it’ll be about ten days from now before it’s actually typed up and ready to go, so if you or your mother object I can intercept it then.
8:30:40 P.M.—Well, I’m back tonight, to my surprise, so I’ll tell you about it. We headed off at 7:00 to RAX, and I loaded up on a bit of everything. When I came to the broccoli soup I had a problem: they had forgotten to cut up the broccoli, and it was all in huge branches. I had stems sticking out over the edge of the bowl and dripping cream soup on the floor, and when I tried to tilt the bowl the other way the soup crept up to burn my fingers. (Was that a titter?) To eat it I had to pick it up by a soupy stem and chew off the ends, which tried to dangle like clam stomachs—I don’t know how meat-eaters can stand to eat clams!—and though the ends I held were ice cold, the ends I was trying to eat remained ouch hot. (That sure sounded like a titter.) But the soup was good and so was the mixture of everything else I had on my plate. Do you like onions and hot pepper? No? Well I do, in moderation, so I had them, and of course finished with three flavors of pudding with peach and pear slices and apple sauce on top. We were a party of six—Wife and I, and our daughters Penny and Cheryl, and their two boyfriends—and naturally I was the last to finish. I always am. Everybody else in the world eats at hectic speed. I tried to hurry, but that just gives me gas—well, never mind. Just be glad you weren’t there. We got to talking about how it was in school. In my day, when they served that kind of large-curd tapioca we called fish-eyes, folk would put a fish-eye in a spoon and use it as— you know what a mortar is? It shoots a shell up, so it loops down and hits someone else on the head? That’s the idea. These big sticky fish-eyes, those innocent teachers … (now that sounded like a laugh!) More insidious was the butter. I had a pat of it once that was so cold it clinked as it hit my plate. But when it starts to soften, well, if you use a spoon to flip it up so it sticks to the ceiling, over someone else’s head, and slowly melts—oh, that’s old stuff to you? Ah, well. Maybe you should tell the nurse that you and Cathy want to practice eating, starting with butter and spoons. Maybe the nurse will be dull enough to fall for that.
Harpy therapy! Be a good girl, if you can’t get any butter. (Hey—I think that’s a pun! It was accidental.)
AwGhost 11, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Well, my days have been hectic again. Yesterday the phone started ringing, and I was calling New York and California and points between, and—but I guess you’re not interested in that. So—what’s that? You say yes, you’re not? Oh. Well. Um. If you feel that way …
But one thing yesterday will interest you: we found a skink in the living room. A skink is a sleek local lizard. Nothing wrong with it, except that it won’t find many bugs to eat in the living room. So we shooed it out, but it hid in a closet, and it was a job to shoo it out from there. We finally got it out the door, and closed the door—and later in the day there it was in the living room again. We pondered and concluded that either there had been two skinks, which seemed doubtful, or it had a secret entrance and had come in again. In which case it wasn’t trapped and could find its own way out again. So we left it alone, and it disappeared. Okay. We don’t mind it inside, we just didn’t want it starving there.
Yes, I finally had my birthday, and no the world did not come to an end. My wife gave me a compact disk player, and my daughters and their friends gave me assorted disks to go with it. So I’ve been listening to Pete Seeger songs and Simon & Garfunkel and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture—hey, on my stereo system, the cannon sound from different directions!—and his “Marche slave” whose marching beat I like. Funny thing, it seems that “slave” is not capitalized though it derives from “Slav”; he wrote it to help raise funds when the Russians were aiding the Slavs fighting the Turks. Anyway, having learned about compact disks, I find I like them. So we saw this ad to buy about 60 disks with most of the light classics cheap, and— ah, well, it’s hard to resist a sale. Meanwhile I have also been listening to cassette tapes of Jim Reeves, about my favorite male popular singer, and Crystal Gayle, well, you know, that hair.
We were getting bit something awful by the chiggers. Those are a Florida phenomenon: tiny mites, so small you can’t even see them. They are on the foliage outside, and when you walk by they brush off on your socks, and climb down into them and then burrow into your skin, and you get an itchy welt that can take a couple of weeks to clear, and some get infected. I got blisters from them on my ankles, which I had to puncture so I could run without a problem. My wife gets bitten more than I do, though she spends less time outside. Well, it’s a fact that women taste better than men. So the past few days I’m been dousing my socks with bug spray or repellent, and that seems to be stopping it. So if you ever visit Florida, watch out for chiggers.
You know, I have some trouble with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. No, that’s not when you carp at tunnels. It’s a problem with the hands. The nerves leading to them go through the Carpal Tunnel in the wrist, and if it’s tight, your hands and fingers start getting numb. I wear my watch on my right wrist, though I’m right handed (well, what I was taught, I do right handed; what I learned myself I do left handed. Folk with ambiguous handedness are said to be confused mentally too. Now you know) because the slight pressure of the band on my wrist turns my hand numb. As it is, my left hand only tingles a little and perhaps is a bit weak, but I normally have no problem. Sometimes my right hand has trouble too, but not too much. Anyway, what I was thinking is that it is as if you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, only your whole body is affected. Now if only you could take off your watch and have everything better— well, it was only a notion. Stick with the dull therapy. I keep hoping that you are about this far // from making a key nerve connection, and suddenly all circuits will light up and you’ll be able to do everything. Well, it’s a nice hope, isn’t it?
While we’re on the subject of you (how did that happen?): the Xanth Pinup Calendar is now getting published, and I’ll send you a copy, maybe next week when I get my copies. Maybe I’ll send one for your daddy too, so he doesn’t get jealous. Men have a better notion what pinups are, for some reason. You will see that we have gotten a bunch of good artists together, and there are some nice pictures. But I’m only leading up to my subject. The artist who handled the project for me—you see, I did this calendar myself, paying for all the art, and then found a publisher for it, but I needed someone to actually do the job, who knew the artists and all—his name is Ron Lindahn, and he and his wife will be at a convention near you this NoRemember. I told him about you, and he said he and his wife Val might visit you and show you some more art. He knows you’ll probably be in your wheelchair and not able to jump up and down and scream in typical teengirl fashion. In short, these are nice folk, and you will know them through their art in the Calendar, and if you would like to meet them, they will come to your house or the hospital or wherever you happen to be at the time. Now don’t get the galloping shyness! I just thought that here’s a chance for you to meet some artists—Xanth artists, really, and since you may some day be an artist yourself—well, think about it, and if you say you’re not interested, I’ll write you another paragraph about it.
I lost an hour here: phone call and horsefeeding. Oh, yes, the horses are fine, but a bit perturbed because the call made me about fifteen minutes late for their feeding. I got neighed at, and they had pushed the gate somewhat. The horses have firm rules about feeding time. As for the call— now don’t say you’re not interested, how do you know that, until I tell you what it was? It was about the Xanth video movie. Yes it was; I’m not making this up. So a year or two from now, when you see it, you’ll know what this was when it was getting going. We haven’t signed a contract yet, but it looks good to me, and if the animation and integration of live and animation figures works well, I’ll sign, and we’ll be on our way. This isn’t any big Hollywood outfit see; this is a guy way out in Washington state, who was cued in to Xanth by one of his children—I guess you know how that happens—and he’s in the business of making video commercials, and he wanted to do something creative and fantastic and fun for a change, so he approached me about Xanth, and I like what he is showing me. Today it was about twenty-five artist’s sketches of the things of A Spell for Chameleon, of the chameleon lizard at the beginning who assumes wild other forms, of Sabrina— she was Bink’s first girlfriend, remember?—Justin Tree, Chester Centaur, Cherie Centaur, and so on. We were discussing important aspects at length over the phone, such as here is a full-busted lady centaur, and what happens to her front when she goes at full gallop? No, this is a legitimate question. A human woman that big in the bosom would have a real problem galloping naked, because, well, take my word for it. Also, we don’t want to bring the censors down on our heads. So we concluded that lady centaurs are surely evolved to gallop bare-breasted without knocking themselves up, er, without flopping—well, anyway, they could probably handle it, and their firm flesh would move just a little. Remember that, when you see it, because I think we are going to make this video, and it may be the start of a great video series. Yes, I know he shouldn’t have interrupted this letter for it, but he didn’t know. Maybe you will grow up to be a fantasy video animator, drawing the original art for the computer to work on. Keep it in mind.
Meanwhile I’m still writing Tatham Mound, my archaeological/historical novel. My hero married two Cherokee women: a mother and her daughter. No, this sort of thing happened; men could marry sisters or mother/daughter or whatever, because they got along better. If they married two wives who were not related, they had to set up separate tipis for them so they wouldn’t fight. Both of them gave him sons—and then the white man’s plague came through and killed them. Don’t read this novel; it will sadden you. What? Oh, the daughter was thirteen when he married her. No, that’s coincidence; she’s not like you at all.
This past week I saw a pure black dragonfly. In fact, it sat on the tap handle when I needed to turn on the water to refill the horses' drinking tub. It wasn’t pleased when I put my hand on the tap, so it sat on my hand and told me so. What a handsome dragonfly!
We have a swimming pool, which we seldom use, mainly because we’re busy and the water seldom gets up to 85°. It is paved all around, but in the winter a blade of grass decided to try its luck at the edge. We let it be. After all, if it is willing to try growing in such an inhospitable spot, who are we to interfere? Now it’s about three feet across, dipping a stem into the pool—and another plant is starting at another corner. I guess the word spread that it could be done. We really don’t want to take them out, but how far should we let this go?
Back in FeBlueberry when our tree farm was mowed and I first heard about you, we transplanted several wild rosemary plants to be around the house. They all died; apparently the soil or climate was wrong for them here, or maybe the shock of transplanting. But this past week I looked at one, and it had a single living sprig growing! It is recovering, when we thought it lost. That reminded me of you, because—
And we’ve been watching some movies on video. When they gave me the CD player and disks, one of the songs was “Mrs. Robinson,” and I remarked that I’d always wanted to see the movie that was associated with. My wife and daughter said the movie was dull and we’d seen it before anyway, but since it was my birthday they humored me and rented The Graduate. No, I’d never seen it before; my memory for names and faces and dates may not be much, but I remember story lines very well, and know in a few seconds whether I’ve seen a movie before. No, it wasn’t dull, either; it’s about this twenty year old young man, who is seduced by this forty year old woman—am I running afoul of the Adult Conspiracy? Sigh. Anyway, she may have been forty, but she was one attractive woman. I guess my wife and daughter find such themes dull, but I found it fascinating. Actually, the age of forty may be considered old for a woman, but young for a man; President Kennedy was 43 when elected and they kept saying how young he was. But this business of assuming the older women can’t be attractive—well, ask your daddy whether it’s possible for any woman over thirty to be attractive. See? I told you. Another night we saw The Accused, which.
********************
Oops, that time the Adult Conspiracy censored me out. Sigh. Well, anyway, have a halfway decent day, Jenny, and blow your mother a kiss—it will reach her even if she is twenty miles away—and tell Cathy not to goof off on her exercises. Oh—I found out why I didn’t have the Alligator page enclosed, because this time I looked for it and THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT. The wretches! I’ve half a mind to sic your mother on them. But here’s “Curtis,” anyway.
PS—now the skink is here in the study. Okay.
AwGhost 18, 1989
Dear Jenny,
I didn’t expect to hear from your mother this week, because of her ongoing game of Tooth or Consequence— she lost the first, so pays the second about 29 times over— but I had one last Saturday and another this Thursday. She returned the picture of the cat painting, which she says you enjoyed, and says your wheelchair and computer are still in the works, with varying degrees of frustration and progress.
Meanwhile, I got my Author’s Copies of the Xanth PinUp Calendar, and am enclosing two. One is for you, because you like Xanth, and the other is for your daddy, because he likes—never mind, just shut up and let him look at the cover, okay? Men are the only ones who really understand pinup calendars, for some reason. I didn’t want to unseal them in order to autograph them for you folk, so I’m enclosing autograph labels for each of you, hoping I got the names right. You can stick the labels somewhere safe, where they don’t show. No, not on the toilet seat! On the Calendars. Anyway, if you read the credits on the back you can see that the Calendar’s design is by Ron Lindahn, and that he and his wife Val painted the picture of Chex Centaur and the Xanth center-map. They’re the ones I mentioned last time, who might visit you in NoRemember if you’re interested. They are now assembling the one for 1991, the Question Calendar, featuring Grundy golem and Rapunzel. The deal is, I pay for it and they do the work. Well, I also develop the basic theme, and I approve the final pictures, but I’m not in there dealing with all the artists. Having set aside any hopes I had to be an artist myself, I now came at it as a sponsor. What? You want to do a Calendar picture? Well, first you have to get through the dull therapy, and learn to use your computer. If you get so you can make a really good picture—well, we’ll see, when. Not this year, though. Which reminds me: they hired a model for Rapunzel, and photographed her so they could send copies to all the artists, because she’ll be in the background of most of the Question Calendar pictures. She turned out to be a Xanth fan, who was thrilled with this assignment. Not the real Rapunzel, silly—the model. Wasn’t that a nice coincidence! No, her hair wasn’t that long naturally; she had to wear a wig. The truth is, very few girls have hair that long. Oh, you already knew that? Meanwhile, keep growing yours back.
My agent is working out a deal for a couple of hard-cover editions of Isle of View, which may be published at the same time as the paperback edition, in OctOgre 1990. One would be a limited MORROW edition, for folk who just plain like hardcovers. The other would be a limited showcase edition, for folk who like beautiful books, with a cover painted by Wendy Pini showing Jenny Elf. No, don’t go screaming the news all over the hospital; this is in the formative stage, and by no means certain yet. It’s just what we’re trying to set up if things work out. Richard Pini has expressed interest, but they are mighty busy folk, and we don’t know what will happen. I just thought you’d like to know, since you’re the one who made an Elfquest elf come to Xanth.
Meanwhile, how are things here? I’ve been going over my daughter Penny’s college papers. She has this crazy professor who is grading off for things like having paragraph indentations of six spaces, when he thinks five are right. This is nonsense; the computer default settings establish such things—your mother will tell you all about that, in due course—so Penny was getting graded down from A level to D level because of things that were out of her control. So we have had to get into the programming and revamp the default setting on her computer, and we have corrected every possible syntax or spelling error or confusion, setting it up the professor’s way even when it’s wrong—as a pro writer and former English teacher, I do know what’s right—so she can get through that course. But it does things to my blood pressure. So when you get to college—what do you mean, you’re having second thoughts about that? You’re afraid you won’t be out of the wheelchair yet and folk will laugh at you? No they won’t. Yes I know it’s a long way away. So watch out for that kind of professor. I don’t want to have to go over your papers like that.
Out at the horse stalls—we never shut them in there, we just feed them there—there were six and a half big spiders this summer. You know what I mean: one was small. Gradually they disappeared, until now there is only one and three-quarters spiders. No, I don’t know where the others went; I didn’t ask them.
I saw a listing for a fanzine—that’s an amateur magazine in the SF genre—called PIRATE JENNY. No, I’ve never seen a copy of it. I suppose I could order one for you, but it probably doesn’t relate well to your interests. I just thought it had a cute title.
Cat News: the newspaper says Miss Kitty of the old Gunsmoke program died. Too bad. I guess that program was before your time, and probably not to your interest either. Oh, well.
Did you know there was an eclipse of the moon this past week? Frightened the night mares something awful. We went out and looked, and there it was: the moon half eaten away. Fortunately it grew back again by morning.
Book Review time: I’m reading this one titled New World, New Mind. It’s a serious book—deadly serious. You know how I don’t like to see our global environment damaged, or animals rendered extinct. But Man is doing it at a horrendous rate, so that the greatest extinction is not the time of the end of the dinosaurs, but right now. Why is man so shortsighted? This book explains it. Man evolved to handle a more natural world, with reflexes to fight the sabre-tooth tiger and such, rather than to sweat the slow stuff like advancing glaciers. It was a matter of survival, and it worked. But now those slow things are becoming important, like ozone depletion, and Man needs to do something about them before our world is ruined. But he just ignores them, as he did the glaciers, figuring that if it isn’t pouncing on him, it can’t hurt him. So we need to retrain our thinking to match the needs of the day—but are we going to? I don’t much like the answer I see. So when you have nothing better to do, you might ponder that, and see if you can work out a way to save our planet before it’s too late.
Some other enclosures: some time back a fan sent me some play money he made up, and I thought it might amuse you. I wrote his name, Hellerstein, on the No Dollar bill, so I’d remember who made it. The guy has a fun imagination. Also a picture of a snow leopard plate; I didn’t care to buy such expensive plates, but I thought you’d like the picture of those big cats. This time I cut out Calvin & Hobbes along with Curtis, because it’s a cute one all about Hobbes, just in case your mother didn’t send that one in for you.
Now I have to go back to my chapter about thirteen year old Tappy, the blind girl who is now in a strange science fiction adventure I’m collaborating on with Philip Jose Farmer, and to Tatham Mound, where my nine year old girl has grown up to age 24. Such things happen. Say Hi for me to Cathy; I hope she’s doing okay. I hope you’re doing okay; you’re not slacking off on those therapy exercises, are you?
AwGhost 25, 1989
Dear Jenny,
Well, I’ve done it again: I have foolishly frittered away my time, and now am late writing to you. I was trying to figure out why my file handling program DirMagic would copy readily from Drive C to Drive D, but balk at copying from Drive D to Drive C. Over an hour gone, but I finally did figure it out. When I get hold of a puzzle, any type, grrr, I can’t let go. I don’t suppose you know anyone like that? More in a moment.
Several Big Events this week. One is that they are getting close pictures of the planet Neptune and its big moon Triton. Another is that I had to shovel a bag full of horse manure. But the most important is that I GOT YOUR LETTER!! Laurie sent it, together with a letter of her own. Rather than write to her directly (mainly because I frittered away that hour) I’ll just tell you to tell her I got it. She says it took you five hours on your Scan Pac to do it. It says that you appreciate my writing to you, and are thrilled that Jenny Elf is in a novel, and you thank my wife Cam for the beautiful pillow. You also say you like the Elf Letter. I think that’s a confusion; I didn’t send you an Elf Letter, Richard Pini did. But next time I’m in touch with him, I’ll relay the message. I may have mentioned that we hope to have a special hardcover edition of Isle of View with a Pini cover showing Jenny Elf. We’ll see how that works out; it gets complicated because we have to negotiate with the publisher. Anyway, thanks for the letter, but next time you have five hours to spare I hope you’ll spend them eating chocolate pudding; that’s surely more fun for you. Laurie showed me your Scanning Boards too, with all the letters and words you can point to. Hey, I see my name is there! Right next to your cats. I like your messages “That’s Not Fair” and “I Don’t Like This.”
Now I was going to tell you why I frittered away that hour. It started when I made a serendipitous discovery, and—what? Oh, you don’t know that word? Okay, I’ll tell you about Serendipity. Serendip is the old name for Ceylon, a big island off the south of India. The new name is Sri Lanka. There is a story that there were three princes of Serendip who were always finding good things that they weren’t looking for. So they made it into the word serendipity. Yes, it’s true—there really is such a story, and the word does derive from the name of that island. So when you look for a lost penny and find a dollar instead, that’s serendipitous indeed. It’s pronounced seren-DIP-ity; I know you’ll like that word.
Okay, so this morning I made a serendipitous discovery when Alan finished typing the—what? Look, Jenny, how do you expect me to tell this if you keep interrupting me? Do you want me to touch the THAT’S NOT FAIR square? Oh, all right; what is it this time? Alan? You don’t know Alan? Well, he is my daughter Penny’s boyfriend. She stayed in St. Petersburg this summer, working, so we brought her boyfriend home instead. He is working for me, helping me with research for Tatham Mound. I’m a slow reader, and I’d never get this big novel written in the limited time I have otherwise. So when I need to know what was happening in Spain between the years 1500 and 1520, Alan reads the books and makes me a summary. It’s been working very well. This time I found that a computer hard disk crash two years ago had wiped out my copy of the first chapter of the novel I’m doing with Philip Jose Farmer, the one with Tappy, the 13 year old girl who—oh, you remember. Okay. One day I may read that to you. Anyway, Alan nicely typed it back into the computer, and brought up the disk, and I copied it onto my hard disk. But I messed up; when I wanted to go to my directory on the D drive, I typed C: without realizing it, and got the wrong listing. So I typed \MO for the Mound directory, and it put me there, and I was on my way. But Alan, who had been watching, remarked that I had jumped from the C Drive to a directory on the D Drive without specifying the full path name. This was unusual, so we checked it out. Yes, the program really does that, though its manual doesn’t say so; it can find a directory in a different drive, even when you don’t specify the drive. So that was the serendipitous discovery: an easy way to go to other directories. But then in the afternoon I wasted the hour, because the effect was intermittent, and I wanted to know why. I finally ran it down: DirMagic zeros in on the default drive, and can go or copy to anywhere in it, but it can’t do the same with other drives, and you have to use the full path name. Yes, I know this bores you, and you fell asleep three minutes ago, but at least your mother will understand it. In fact she probably figured out the answer long before I did.
By this time you should have your copy of the Xanth PinUp Calendar. I hope you like it. Your mother says she looks like Miss Mayhem the Ogress right now, because of her swollen face. I doubt it’s quite that bad; after all, what about the rest of the Ogress? When you get a chance, you can go through the dates on the Calendar. There’s a typo somewhere, where it says “Nymph’s Mother Frightened by a Pun”—it leaves off the final N. Frightened by a PU? That must be a foul-smelling noise.
And why was I shoveling horse manure for Penny? It seems she’s growing some plants and wants the best. So this is genuine Blue-horse manure, as similar to unicorn manure as Mundania gets. There’s a song, “Sipping Cider,” in which a man meets his wife-to-be when he joins her sipping cider through a straw. As I pitched that manure I thought of that song, but it didn’t quite fit: “So cheek by cheek, and jaw by jaw, we both sipped manure through a straw.” Ah, well.
Every so often I see those two clouds I mentioned way back when, Amorphous and Whathisname. Sometimes they have lovely bright fringes at dawn, when they are sunning themselves. Once they followed me home. They must have, because when I looked east from the house, there they were on the horizon.
I have some other readers—you didn’t know that?— and one of them has named her dog after me, “Piers.” Actually it’s a fake dog, that she puts around her house; when she takes a picture, it looks real. That reminds me of a novelty item called “Dog-Done-It” that looks exactly like dog poop. You put it on someone’s bed, and it’s almost as much fun as a Whoopee Cushion. A variant looks like fresh vomit. Think of all the fun you can have, once you get home!
So have you been keeping up with the news on Neptune? Neptune is about my favorite planet, because back in the 1960’s when I wrote Macroscope I had my characters go there and stop at its big moon Triton, and they discovered that Triton had its own little ice-moon which they named Shön. So if Voyager II finds such a moon—well, I was there first. So far they have discovered blue clouds on Neptune, with white cloudlets that cast shadows on the lower clouds (lower clouds don’t like that), and rings and ring fragments (somebody must have blundered through and messed them up), and on Triton are pretty pinks and blues. But no moon-of-moon. Yet. Nevertheless, this all goes to show how much information can come through how small an aperture; the radio that is sending all this has the power of a refrigerator bulb. I bet you think I’m about to make some sort of point here. Well …
Not as many enclosures this time, because last time Cam was taking Cheryl back to college and there was no one to mail the letter until Sunday, so I included the Sunday Curtis. However, today there were pictures of cats, so you can have those, and I cut out Calvin and Peanuts a few days ago for you because I thought they were cute and just in case you didn’t get to see them, here they are. And ditto for a Dear Abby column you should enjoy, especially when you get carsick.
So say hello to Cathy and the Therapists for me, and hang in there for another week. Who knows, something good might happen.
PS—this is my 132th (hundred and thirty-tooth) letter so far this month, on the way to over 160. I have too many readers!