Thanksgiving and Traditions

Happy American Thanksgiving! Ordinarily we spend the weekend after Turkey Day at ChessieCon, formerly Darkover Grand Council, which has traditionally occurred every Thanksgiving weekend for several decades. Last November they held their first in-person con since 2019. At that time it moved from the hotel where it's been held for many years to a different one in the same general area, north of Baltimore. Attendance turned out to be dismayingly low. Doubtless in part for that reason, the committee decided to cancel this year's event and take time off to regroup and rethink the con's future. On top of that, the hotel it had moved to abruptly closed a few months ago. Where will ChessieCon go next, if anywhere? Will we lose this venerable local SF/F tradition?

Thanksgiving traditions typically include the familiar turkey and its required accessories, e.g., stuffing, potatoes, and gravy. Some households, however, depart from the conventional menu for more adventurous fare. For instance, our second son and his family eschew turkey in favor of entrees such as homemade sushi. Many Americans also consider TV football essential on that day.

In mainline Christian churches, the first Sunday of Advent, the build-up to Christmas, falls on or near the first weekend of December. Most of us now accept as inevitable and proper that the winter holiday shopping and decorating season begins on the day after Thanksgiving. However, when Christmas and other winter-themed displays in stores overlap with Halloween merchandise, and internet merchants advertise "Black Friday" sales starting over a week early, many of us think the extension of the season is going too far. Commercialization of Christmas gifting, though, started almost simultaneously with the invention of the family-centered Christmas as we know it in the nineteenth century. Moreover, people have been complaining about it almost as long.

The popular film A CHRISTMAS STORY, aka the BB gun movie, set around 1940, based on Jean Shepherd's fictionalized memoir IN GOD WE TRUST: ALL OTHERS PAY CASH, illustrates how even before the middle of the twentieth century intensive holiday gift advertising and department store Santas already pervaded the Christmas-season consciousness of American children. Our parents and grandparents didn't experience some newer Christmas traditions that existed in our childhoods and those of our children, because those customs depend on new technology, mainly television. Many people watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, culminating in the arrival of Santa Claus. They also enjoy favorite Christmas specials over and over. Nowadays we don't have to wait for those treasured memories to show up in reruns; we can view them on home video media or streaming services at will. I always watch at least two versions of A CHRISTMAS CAROL every year, usually more. We can also look forward to original programs reliably appearing every December, such as one of my favorites, the annual new CALL THE MIDWIFE Christmas episode.

If our grandparents had been able to peer into the future and note these novel customs, they might have disdained them as soulless products of technology, violating the true spirit of the season. For us and our children, recurring winter holiday movies and TV shows simply became an expected part of the celebration, cherished traditions as much as the tree, the feast, and the presents.

When some earthlings live in artificial habitats on the Moon or Mars or in generation-spanning starships, what holiday traditions will they bring along, and what fresh customs will life in extraterrestrial environments demand? It seems likely that even in locations vastly distant from Earth's solstice cycles, human beings will cling to the core elements of their seasonal celebrations.

Margaret L Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy American Thanksgiving! It's the only day of the year when we roast a whole turkey and make mashed potatoes. (Mashed potatoes are messy to clean up from, and I don't get a great thrill out of them anyway. Their main appeal is that they provide an excellent base for turkey gravy.)

This year we'll be attending the first in-person ChessieCon since 2019. We received the programming survey much later than usual, because of the confusion involved in restarting the live con after the hiatus, so we're eagerly awaiting the schedule. While we know we'll participate in the mass author signing event, everything else remains to be seen. Also, the con has moved to a new hotel. I'm wondering about the chance of getting elevators that run quickly and efficiently or a restaurant with fast service so we can get to evening panels on time. Maybe? Sometimes miracles do happen!

Fortunately, from our viewpoint, since the new venue is in the same general area as the old one, the drive from home to there shouldn't take any longer.

Whatever your plans, I hope you have a great weekend!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Thanksgiving Day

Happy American Thanksgiving!

I recently watched a fascinating episode of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS, about the Pilgrims' early years in Massachusetts, very enlightening in contrast to the simple narrative we were exposed to in elementary school. You can rent it to watch on Amazon Prime Video:

American Experience: The Pilgrims

On the opposite end of the Thanksgiving seriousness spectrum, of course there's the Charlie Brown special, celebrating all the familiar tropes from black hats with buckles to the courtship of Priscilla Alden. In the final scene, when they sing "Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House," Charlie Brown remarks that his grandma lives in a condo. When I was a kid, we stayed home for Thanksgiving but went to my grandmother's every year for Christmas day dinner. We rode in a car, of course, not a sleigh, and in our case the route went "along the highway and through the older neighborhoods of the city."

If you aren't familiar with Art Buchwald's hilarious column about explaining Thanksgiving to the French, which was reprinted annually for many years, take a look:

Explaining Thanksgiving to the French

As usual, ChessieCon will occur on Thanksgiving weekend. They planned on a live convention, but they lost their hotel (taken over as a quarantine facility) and couldn't arrange a new one in time. So, like last year's, this year's con will be strictly online. I'll report on it next week. They did a great job in 2020, so I trust this virtual con will be entertaining, too.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it today!

This will be the first Thanksgiving weekend since sometime in the 1990s when we won't be attending Chessiecon (formerly Darkover). That's because it went on hiatus this year while preparing to move to a different hotel in 2020 (still in the Baltimore area). I'll be sorry to miss it this weekend. On the plus side, we'll get to participate in the first Sunday of Advent at our church, which usually conflicts with the con. There's always an Advent-wreath-making session, which we enjoyed when our sons were little.

Here's a page with some background and interesting facts about Advent:

Advent Explained

It explores the way customs surrounding Advent, like those associated with Christmas, have been embraced by large numbers of Americans who aren't religiously observant. Clever marketing has expanded the family fun of the season in directions I hadn't heard of before. For quite a few years we and our kids opened daily windows on Advent calendars to reveal pieces of chocolate candy. We also had one that told the story of Dickens' CHRISTMAS CAROL day by day. Many calendars, though, follow unusual themes or dispense other kinds of treats. A FROZEN Disney Advent calendar should be expected, I guess. But how about a Star Wars LEGO Advent calendar? And for adults—designer nail polish? Whiskey?

These phenomena aren't too surprising, considering the millions of Americans who celebrate holidays such as Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, etc., without reference to their religious roots.

Thanksgiving, in a way, is the ideal holiday for a secular, multi-cultural society. Almost everyone can enjoy a feast and be grateful to somebody for something. Surely when we venture out beyond this planet, we'll take a similar festive occasion with us.

Best wishes!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Is the Internet Revolutionary?

Happy American Thanksgiving!

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column discusses whether the Internet qualifies as "revolutionary":

What the Internet Is For

His answer: The Internet runs on a revolutionary principle but is not, in itself, revolutionary. The principle, as he describes it, is "the 'end-to-end' principle, which states that any person using the internet can communicate with any other person on the internet without getting any third party’s permission." We've become so used to the capacity to do this that we forget how mind-boggling it is. He goes on to examine computers and encryption from the same perspective. Finally, he asserts that the Internet is "a necessary but insufficient factor for effecting revolution" and offers support for that view. An exciting and optimistic article, recommended reading for the detailed explanations I haven't summarized.

This weekend, as usual, ChessieCon will be held just north of Baltimore, and my husband and I will appear on the program. I'll report on the panels and other events next week. Jo Walton will be this year's Guest of Honor!

ChessieCon

Meanwhile, happy turkey day (or whatever your feast of choice may be).

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Defining And Using Theme Part 2 - Love vs Politics by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

 Defining And Using Theme

Part 2

Love vs Politics

by

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Part 1 of Defining and Using Theme, listing some previous posts that are relevant to Theme, is here:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/05/defining-and-using-theme-part-1.html

We touched on A Spoonful of Magic by Irene Radford in Part 1, continuing the focus from Dialogue Part 14 - Writing Inner Dialogue of Person Being Lied To.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/04/dialogue-part-14-writing-inner-dialogue.html

This post is an exercise in generating usable theme statements, not advocating a particular political position.  But a theme-statement is, grammatically, an advocating of a position.  So read this with your writer's glasses on.

A Spoonful of Magic 
is mostly about liars in love, so it can be regarded as about lies and when it is OK to use them.  Think about today's politics and the first element that leaps out at you is Fake News.  Thus family politics is a related subject.

Theme is a very slippery element in Art, generally, but fiction writing in particular.  As in music, "theme" usually means some snippet that is repeated at specific and identifiable points throughout the piece.

Themes recur in real history, as we discussed in the context of the cycle of Generations based on the signs Pluto (profound change) occupies during each 20 years.  Some themes surface only once or twice in thousands of years, and are predicted by some prophetic writing.

Here is a video about the spooky similarity between the story of Purim and the story of Hitler, using a mystical explanation, illustrating how the motif of "recurring theme" has to be used in novels because it happens in reality - you need the drumbeat of recurrence to create verisimilitude.

https://www.facebook.com/JTVTheGlobalJewishChannel/videos/583579778644015/

And it is exactly that in fiction, too, slippery and recurring in spooky ways.

Theme is especially prominent in Romance genres in general, and in Paranormal and Science Fiction Romance as well.

When you mix genres (any 2 or 3 genres), the "spoonful of magic" you use to make the ingredients blend is Theme.

Each genre is defined by theme -- and subdivided by "setting" (time, place, social status) -- and then subdivided by plot type (Mystery, Romance, Western, Horror).

For example, the theme of "Horror Genre" is "Evil Can Not Be Conquered."  The theme of Romance is "Love Conquers All."  It is very hard to mix those two equally, so in any work of art, one of those themes must yield (at least temporarily) to the other - as in "Happily Ever After, For Now."  Evil can be sequestered, buried, put away for centuries or millennia but it can not be vanquished and will come back to bite you.

Theme is the invisible substance of the lens through which a Character views reality, life, the universe and everything.  Theme both limits and expands that view.

So "theme" essentially defines the market, the target audience.

Thus publishers create "imprints" or "lines" of product all with the same core theme, artfully dressed up in surface detail to seem like different products, but appealing to and satisfying a specific readership.

One example is Star Trek's intro: "...where no man has gone before."  The change in target audience is illustrated in the shift of that phrase to: "...where no one has gone before."  Either way, exploration of the unknown is both the theme of Science Fiction and of Westerns -- face it, of Romance, too.

Mastering "theme" is the writer's secret to selling fiction, and so to become a prolific writer, a person should ponder what the theme of their own life is, then look at other people's lives and find themes (by reading biographies.)

The other source of themes that tie our society and civilization together is, of course, Headlines.

The business of journalists is to spot themes surfacing in society and present a "narrative" that defines and sticks to that theme.  The result is reinforcement.

As mentioned previously in these blogs, one of the ties that bind us together is the animal-human (the basic primate) need to "blend in" and to "belong" to a Group (Tribe, Pack, Gang, Family).  There is a physiological basis in the brain -- a compartment of sorts -- designed to contain this material of unconscious assumptions, and beliefs that are not your own, but that you MUST adopt to survive.

We, on a basic animal level, believe what those who protect us believe.  We oppose, fight, reject, and run from other beliefs because those "ideas" impact the neurological system of the body as "killing blows."

Once cemented, our "theme" of life, the outline and framework, a honeycomb of compartments designed to contain information, and the lens through which we "see" and understand survival, can not be distorted, shifted, altered, expanded, or re-shaped without experiencing "fear-fight-flight" responses.

For some of us in the most recent generation (say, born from the 1990's on) politics has been one of the honeycomb compartment walls that defines the notion of the shape of reality and how to survive in it.

The conflict (essence of story, remember?) is rooted in the theme of "what is government"  -- and also, "what is the purpose of government."  Ayn Rand was catapulted to world fame with her work, Atlas Shrugged, as she challenged the basic notion that groups of humans "need" government.

We have, as humans (consider how your Aliens might differ) generated various governmental forms for maybe 8 or 9 thousand years (maybe more).

Perhaps we could do without government, but apparently we don't want to.

So we always make one.

And then we make another.

And then we fight over which is better -- trying our best to kill everyone who disagrees about the role of government in reality.

Government ranges from Head of Family living in a cave to Kings governing an area with arable land and peasants working it, to High Kings like King Arthur, to Emperors like Napoleon or Alexander The Great.

Hitting on the Emperor model, humans lived centuries with wars, conquering, and marrying off daughters to opposing Kings to make peace by blending families.

Then in the 1700's the world rebelled and overthrew monarchs, after weakening their position with the "Constitutional Monarchy."

And a bunch of nerdy science fiction writers geeked out on Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman Literature and then-modern French thinkers works and wrote the Constitution of the United States of America, a work that should have won a Hugo for inspired imagination.  It is all about humans governing themselves -- neither democracy or republic, but self-governing hybrid form.

It was the first (and so far pretty much the only) attempt to structure a government that is prevented from governing but works just fine, thank you.

Many Amendments have diluted that structure so it is hard to discern now.  For example, having Senators elected by a State's voters instead of by State Legislators dilutes the "Republic" aspect and emphasizes the "Democracy" aspect.

The US Constitution was constructed by two opposing groups that agreed to disagree.  Remember, one group wanted George Washington to be King!  The other wanted to do away with the very concept King in favor of a chief department manager (president).

The disagreement was over the essential question of "what is government for?"

They did not have time to argue that into the ground and hammer out an answer because the little, individually weak, colonies were about to be "brought back under the King's control" by the British soldiers.  They needed a "common defense" so that's what they created.

As a result of not being able to settle this question of the function of government (in the abstract) thus chasing away everyone who couldn't adopt this "unconscious assumption" as part of their mental honeycomb structure, we currently have BOTH types of believers in the USA voting public and at the family dinner table.

As with the warring Kings of old, families have intermarried.

Thus Thanksgiving Dinner has become the flashpoint of the year for many families, a political holiday with warring factions married.

No longer does everyone in the family adopt the Head of Family's politics.  Conflict ensues, and conflict is not so great for digestion.

An entire Romance novel could unfold during Thanksgiving Day!  (and has).

There is the situation where you bring home a new boyfriend for Thanksgiving Dinner, the political discussion erupts, and the new boyfriend is revealed -- either outspoken and opposing the Head of Household, or obviously trying to blend in and pretend to adopt the acceptable view.  Which is lie, and which is true?

Dating a guy is one thing - bringing him home another thing altogether, as that brings into play the physiological human need to belong, to be accepted.

As a result, today we have Internet Dating Sites dedicated to matching people by political persuasion (this is serious business; I know marriages that broke up over politics.)

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-singles-trump-dating-websites-for-maga-supporters-2018-2

----quote-------

• A Tinder study found 71% of online daters consider differing politics a dealbreaker in a relationship.

------end quote-------

But most people who argue one side or the other at Thanksgiving Dinner are advocating or opposing answers, plans of action, and maybe the rightness or wrongness of the answer to the problem chosen for Headlines by Journalists.

Defining the unconscious parts of these cemented, do-or-die, political positions on issues is the job of the fiction writer -- not the journalist who is trying to write non-fiction.

The fiction writer, the artist, can pare away the surface decoration and reveal the eternal truths behind beliefs -- e.g. describe the honeycomb size, shape, transparency, and above all the structural integrity and strength of the "belief system" for which my "honeycomb" metaphor stands.

So stating the theme of these family arguments is our job as purveyors of the Happily Ever After Ending.

There are many (many-many) correct answers to the question, "What are they really arguing about?"

Each correct answer can be a theme for a novel, or series of novels, in any genre.  It all depends on how you state the theme.

The writer's (artist's) trick is taking a complex mess of a warring situation and reducing it to its bare bones, then re-clothing it in different packaging.

So let's just take some examples, and then you can search for other examples in the Headlines.

THEME: "Humans want government to protect them from Alien Invaders."

THEME:  "Humans want government to protect them from their fellow citizens."

THEME: "Humans want government to protect them from government."

Each of these stated purposes is, of course, subject to "mission creep."  As a result, dinner table arguments wander far afield.

One reason family dinner table arguments wander is simply that to remain a protected member of the family (i.e. to survive) you must all be organizing your perceptions of the world into the same (or very similar) honeycomb structures.

Of course, famously, the Battle of the Sexes
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/08/theme-conflict-integration-part-1.html
 and the Battle of the Generations,
https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-3.html
happen because the honeycomb shapes that we brutally hammer our information into are just a bit different.

So by gender and generation, we believe differently even if we think alike.

For the most part, Romance happens within a generation.  Yes, there are exceptions where Soul Mates have been scattered more than 20 years apart in age, and that makes for High Drama, but we usually dream of a mate closer in age.

So look at those 3 theme variants on the nature and purpose of Government.

Consider how imicible Romance and Horror genres are, why they conflict.

Romance belongs to the broad theme bundle, "Love Conquers All."

Horror belongs to the broad theme bundle, "Evil Can Not Be Conquered."

Now look at the statements about government in terms of conquering not protecting.

THEME: Government exists to Conquer Alien Invaders.

THEME: Government exists to Conquer unruly fellow citizens.

THEME: Government exists to be Conquered by its citizens.

THEME: Love Conquers All.

THEME: Evil Can Not Be Conquered.

This juxtaposition reveals a whole set of themes that are (perhaps) uniquely human.

THEME: Humans Must Conquer.

Being human, living a human life is ultimately about conquering.  The "what" that is to be conquered is irrelevant.  As long as there is something to pretend to conquer, we're fine with it, even if it is another human.

Now, suppose your Aliens do not have that seminal urge to "conquer" -- that is, do not dominate (human sexuality seems these days to pivot on dominance).

Consider meeting up with a species that simply does not "versus" -- does not oppose, or contest.

Since, for human audiences, the essence of story is conflict, could you write about a Romance with an Alien without conflict?  What cognitive dissonance would that create?  Could you make art out of lack of conflict?

Romance is not about sexuality -- the experience of the physical body.  Romance is about the Soul.

The physical body has a mind of its own.  Sexually fueled urges to dominate, conquer, exhibit prowess, and be the "Defender" of all that's mine form one side of the argument raging in all humans (think about your Aliens with different biology).

The Soul has a mind of its own.  The Soul yearns for its mate, fueled by beliefs about the Soul's own unique identity and thus what size-and-shape the mating identity would take.

In other words, the body seeks to hammer other bodies into a desired shape, obedience and compliance, while the Soul seeks that which is already shaped to fit.

The Soul has no desire to conflict, conquer, prevail or dominate.

The body must conflict, conquer, prevail AND dominate.

The Soul and the body are are odds, just as Romance and Horror genre themes are at odds.

Conflict is the nature of this Reality -- the Soul seeks a different reality.

Love conquers All, not by reshaping by force but by inspiring the body to reshape itself.

Love makes the body want to fit in, not hammer down.

Love changes what the body wants.

Change is the essence of plot, and plot (conflict) is the essence of story.

So the details of how a Conquering Hero is Domesticated by Love is our Novel of Choice.

Do we want to "be protected" -- or do we want to "be the protector."

Is "government" about "protecting" or is it about mating, fitting together, covering each other's flanks?

The Happily Ever After Ending is about attaining a joined-state in marriage, in mating, where the two individuals become "one" -- become unconquerable, impervious to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

If "unconquerable" is the essence of "Evil," is it also the essence of "Love?"

If "Politics" is about hammering others into accepting your beliefs so you can be a "member of the Group" and satisfy the body's urge to belong, is "Love" the urge to belong without hammering or being hammered?

To generate even more fascinating questions about the nature of Love and the impact of Romance, ponder the Biblical Commandment to Love The Lord Your God With All Your Heart and All Your Strength."

If Love Conquers All, and you Love God, then what happens?

There is so much more to be said on Love vs. Politics.  Say it in fiction.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com