Book Festivals!

I like to think that fall is book season (along with summer and winter and maybe spring). The air is crisp, it’s a good time to curl up with a novel or, if you’re feeling more social, to head out in search of your favorite novelists.

I’ll be at two book festival in the near future:

Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books, Sat. & Sun. Sept 21-22. I’m on the panel ”OUTspoken & OUTfront: LGBTQ Writers Moving Beyond Binaries.” (At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday in N129.)

Twin Cities Book Festival, Sat. Oct. 12. I was on a panel last year and had a great time. Not sure if I’m doing anything official this year, but I’m definitely going to hang out.

Book festivals are great because they’re about books (I know, right?) and this tends to attract other book-lovers, which makes for a really great group of people to hang out with while to listen to authors say smart and/or funny things and get to shop for books. If you’re around for either book festival, stop by and say hi!

Apocalypse as a metaphor for compassion

This morning I woke up cranky and started thinking about apocalyptic stories, particularly the one in Mass Effect 3, and wondering if there’s a way in which they allow us to deal with our own sadness for the suffering we can’t fix in the world, and therefore open a path for us to become more compassionate.

The game starts with Earth under attack from an alien machine race known as the Reapers, who have come to wipe out all sentient, organic life in the galaxy. Massive robots rain down from the sky. Billions are killed.

In the midst of my bad mood, that felt comforting. I thought of Commander Shepard in the opening sequence standing in the open door of the Normandy and watching a small fraction of the evacuation, only to see the evacuation shuttles shot down a moment later. She must turn away from the destruction and go look for help for Earth.

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