I'm reading novelist Barbara Kingsolver's memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I'm not even halfway through the book yet, so this is based on an incomplete reading. But so far I'm finding it to be an intriguing and well-written book about a year-long experiment in sustainable eating that she and her family undertook. (Don't worry; I'm not including in any spoilers here.)

Kingsolver, her husband, and her two daughters moved from their home in non-food-producing Tucson to a small farm they owned in the mountains of Virginia. There, they grew and raised much of their own food and bought most of the rest from local farmers. With a few exceptions, they chose to eat only food from local sources. They did it out of concern for the amount of energy consumed by processing, packaging, and transporting most of the food we eat; out of outrage at the long-reaching implications of the commercialization of the food-producing industry; and for the better taste and nutrition of produce grown locally from seeds that have not been genetically altered and animal products raise locally using humane methods.

I agree with her reasons and her concerns. And I respect what she was trying to do. I try to do some of this as well, but on a much, much smaller scale. I compost. I buy some of my produce at a local farmer's market. And I pay attention to where things are grown when I select them at the grocery store, though that doesn't mean I buy only local foods.

But it seems like such an enormous sacrifice to give up all fruits and vegetables that cannot be grown locally or that are not currently in season locally. All winter long without fresh fruit? I'd really, really, really hate that. Yes, apples that have traveled here from New Zealand may have lost some flavor en route, but I still prefer them to no apples at all. Of course, as a vegetarian, I'd never consider the raising-and-slaughtering-your-own livestock idea. But I also lack all patience and skill with gardening, let alone actual farming. I am married to someone who is a more skilled and enthusiastic gardener than I am, so we do grow some vegetables of our own. I just can't take credit for anything but picking them off the vines.

Still, this book is making me think harder about the foods we're buying and eating. I felt hyper-conscious -- and a little bit guilty -- last night as I sat here reading the book while eating a dish of grapes grown in California!

I am definitely hitting the farmer's market this weekend.

Check out this video of my friend Lawrence Schoen (also known as klingonguy) being interviewed on Swedish television. Don't worry: the interview is in English ... except for the parts that are in Klingon. If you've ever wondered why normal, smart, articulate people who are not Trek-obsessed would bother to learn the Klingon language, this might provide some insight.

I apologize to you LJers who are seeing this on both my page and Lawrence's, but I wanted to make sure my friends who are not on LJ could see it too. The video links never seem to translate into Facebook, so if you're reading this on FB and see no working video link below, use this URL: http://petrini1.livejournal.com/ to view it on my blog.

With less than two hours left in the month, I'm publicly announcing that I do not get to do the Happy Purple Bar Dance of the NaNoWriMo winner. But I'm psyched anyway. I've written plenty of 50,000-word books in a month, so I didn't need to prove to myself that I could do it. In fact, I knew from the start that this particular month, it was not going to happen. I had too many other commitments that couldn't be set aside for thirty days.

I did meet my personal consolation goal of 25,000 words! As of this afternoon, I doubted that I would make even that, so I'm surprised and pleased, despite my lack of official purple-osity.

I'm feeling that the month has been a success. I started November 1 without a plot for my Stargate SG1 book, and now I have one. Yippee! And thanks to the impetus provided by NaNoWriMo, I have seven (rough) chapters. And I actually have worked through enough of a plot to outline the rest of the book.

Not sure if I'm going to hold tonight at my current word count of 25,629 words or keep writing until midnight. Either way, I'm feeling good about the month's work.

Word Count: 25,629

I've spend most of the day sitting here in the Ballston Commons food court with two other writers, typing away at our NaNoWriMo novels. One of the other two writers here had already hit the final goal of 50,000 words before arriving today. The other reached 50,000 words during today's write-in.

And then there was me, finishing Chapter 6 and beginning Chapter 7 of my Stargate SG1 book. Today, I was glad to reach and then to surpass the big 20,000-word mark. Pitiful, I know, compared to almost everyone else I know who's doing this.

But I did manage to place the planet Earth in mortal peril, and that's something.

Also, I saw Santa Claus and the Chick-fil-A cow.

Total word count now stands at 21,081.

For Thanksgiving, I baked a cake shaped like a turkey. My Facebook friends have already seen this once, but I wanted to post it for my LiveJournal friends who aren't on FB.




( Click for instructions if you're interested in how it was made. )

Trespassing Charges To Be Dismissed
Against Virginia Organizing Project
Executive Director Joe Szakos

Judge Chooses Not to Convict a Customer
For Asking His Insurance Company a Question

Richmond, VA -- Henrico County General District Court ruled today that trespassing charges against Virginia Organizing Project Executive Director Joe Szakos are to be dismissed after six months with no incident and no visits to Anthem’s property.

Evidence submitted by the defense showed that customers are permitted in the main entrance where Szakos attempted to enter Anthem’s Richmond headquarters in July. Evidence also showed that Szakos was connected by cell phone at the time of arrest, waiting for an Anthem representative. Judge Neil Steverson chose not to convict Szakos for trespassing on his own insurance company’s property.

The trial lasted an hour and included the testimony of four witnesses, including the arresting officer who testified that Szakos was “cooperative and a gentleman” during the arrest. The judge viewed video footage of the arrest despite objections from Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Kristen Knudsen.

Szakos was charged with trespassing on Anthem’s property in Richmond on July 24, 2009 when he and three Virginia Organizing Project board members attempted to meet with Anthem officials to discuss their concerns about a 14.1 percent insurance premium increase. Anthem officials locked the front door to their corporate headquarters when the group approached the building, and called police to have Szakos arrested. The Virginia Organizing Project spends $25,000 per month on health insurance premiums with Anthem.

Joe Szakos, Executive Director of the Virginia Organizing Project, issued the following statement following the trail:

“I am relieved that Judge Steverson recognized that I was well within my rights to visit my own insurance company and ask them a question. I look forward to the official dismissal of these charges in six months so that we can all move on. Until that six months is up, I am barred from visiting Anthem’s property. This is not a problem since they rarely listen to their customers concerns anyway. Being officially barred is perhaps a more formal exemplification of Anthem’s existing customer service policy: ‘Don’t ask questions, just pay your bill.’

“Anthem has succeeded in wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on this charade. Anthem has used the time and resources of the Henrico County Police to arrest a paying customer who visited their building during normal business hours. Today, an hour of the court’s time was spent providing no real benefit to the County. Instead, the court’s time was spent deliberating on whether or not it is legal for a paying customer to walk up to their own health insurance company and ask to speak to a live person. It is absolutely absurd that this has gone this far.

“Virginians are already paying outrageous health insurance premiums through Anthem. They should not be forced to pay for the court costs involved with Anthem’s crackdown on customers who question their business practices. I think that Anthem should apologize to the people of Henrico County for making them foot the bill for this nonsense. And then Anthem should apologize to the Virginia Organizing Project for taking up our time and resources with this trial.

“The private health insurance industry has given us a health care system where customers have to deal with skyrocketing premiums, denied claims, and even trespassing charges for asking to speak to a representative in person. I am glad that Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb voted Saturday to begin debate on health care legislation that will force insurance companies like Anthem to be competitive and improve their service. We all deserve better than this.”

# # #

Watch the video:

www.youtube.com/watch

Help us hold big insurance companies accountable.

Call your Senators!

If you live in Virginia, call Senator Mark Warner and Senator Jim Webb.

Ask them to support the Reid Bill, and tell them why health care reform is important to you and your family.

1-877-264-4226

I was able to turn in the school's winning Reflections entries to the City Reflections chairperson on Sunday. Yippee! They were originally due last week, but the Chairperson was sick and couldn't accept them then. I did enjoy meeting her finally.

Now, if everything is OK with the entries I submitted, and if I haven't left out any information, then my role in the get-the-entries-judged phase of the contest is over. Not that I don't have plenty to do to get ready for the next phase, the recognizing-the-winners phase.

***

Not all the news is good. My husband started running a fever Sunday, and it looks as if he might have the flu. H1N1, I presume. He is the only one in the family who hasn't received the vaccine. I hope he's not sick for Thanksgiving. He's upstairs in bed and will be staying home from work today.

I attended two write-ins today and now have a total of 17,358 words written of the Stargate novel. That means I'm still way behind where I should be in order to make it to 50,000 words by the end of the month. But I never actually expected to get to 50,000 this month, anyway. In fact, I've already surpassed my total for November of last year, and that feels pretty good.

I've planned write-ins here in Alexandria for the next two days. I don't know if anyone else will come, but I'll be there tomorrow afternoon, continuing Chapter 6. I'm really hoping that sometime before then, my characters would only clue me in on what happens next in their storyline....

As you may recall, this is the book I started even though I hadn't come up with a plot yet. And it's showing. I realized this week that I need a bigger conflict at the center of the story, something huge that's at stake: a planet threatening to explode, a race of people facing imminent death, or the SGC being sabotaged by evil aliens or possibly the U.S. Senate. Some writers like the spontaneity of making it all up as they go along. But I'm much better at this when I come up with the plot BEFORE I write the book.

Here is my Book Club reading list for the next six months. We read fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary. Meetings are the second Tuesday of each month, in Alexandria, Virginia. You're welcome to join us if you're in the area! Contact me for time and location. Book descriptions below are adapted from Amazon.com and book-jacket copy.


Tuesday, December 8
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
by Barbara Kingsolver
This book chronicles the year that novelist Barbara Kingsolver, along with her husband and two daughters, made a commitment to become locavores–those who eat only locally grown foods. This first entailed a move away from their home in non-food-producing Tucson to a family farm in Virginia, where they got down to the business of growing and raising their own food and supporting local farmers. For teens who grew up on supermarket offerings, the notion not only of growing one's own produce but also of harvesting one's own poultry was as foreign as the concept that different foods relate to different seasons. While the volume begins as an environmental treatise–the oil consumption related to transporting foodstuffs around the world is enormous–it ends, as the year ends, in a celebration of the food that nourishes us: body, heart, and soul.

Tuesday, January 12
The Reader
by Bernhard Schlink
Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns much about her, and when she disappears, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and Michael soon wonders if she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As he follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? (Yes, this is the novel upon which last year's well-received Kate Winslet film was based.)

Tuesday, February 9
Anthem
by Ayn Rand
This dystopian novella by Ayn Rand, first published in 1938, takes place at some future date when mankind has entered another dark age as a result of the evils of irrationality and collectivism. Technological advancement is carefully planned, when it is allowed to occur at all, and the concept of individuality has been eliminated (for example, the word "I" has disappeared from the language). Many of the novella's core themes are echoed in Rand's later books, such as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Tuesday, March 9
The Nineteenth Wife
by David Ebershoff
This ambitious novel tells two parallel stories of polygamy. The first recounts Brigham Young's expulsion of one of his wives, Ann Eliza, from the Mormon Church; the second is a modern-day murder mystery set in a polygamous compound in Utah. Unfolding through a variety of narrative forms—Wikipedia entries, academic research papers, newspaper opinion pieces—the stories include fascinating historical details. We are told, for instance, of Brigham Young's ban at his community theater on dramas that romanticized monogamous love; as one of Young's followers says, "I ain't sitting through no play where a man makes such a cussed fuss over one woman." Ebershoff demonstrates virtuosity as he convincingly inhabits the voices of both a 19th-century Mormon wife and a contemporary gay youth excommunicated from the church, while also managing to say something about the mysterious power of faith.

Tuesday, April 13
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
It’s difficult to tell if critics’ reactions to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies should be characterized as praise or astonishment. Some reviewers treated the book as a delightful gimmick. Others found that, beneath the surface, the book actually constituted an interesting way of looking at Austen’s novel. Zombies answer certain puzzling questions: Why were those troops stationed near Hertfordshire? Why did Charlotte Lucas actually marry Mr. Collins? (She had recently been bitten by zombies and wanted a husband who could be counted on to behead her—of course!) But critics also pointed out that this parody shows that Austen’s novel has remained so powerful over time that even the undead can’t spoil it.

Tuesday, May 11
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
This debut thriller is a serious page-turner about Mikael, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until he receives an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name. The catch is that he must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. This one has been racking up rave reviews.

Today I had my most productive NaNoWriMo day yet, writing 3,222 words. Most of that was at a write-in at the Ballston Commons food court, where I spent six or seven hours early today. I managed to write some more tonight at home, as well.

Probably due to extreme sleepiness and a dearth of caffeine, I did have some weird moments this morning when one scene in Chapter 4 kept trying to turn itself into erotica. I wrestled it back under control after assuring Lance Corporal Ramirez that he does not, in fact, have a crush on Dr. Jackson, and is not, in fact, gay. Sometimes you just have to tell your characters who's boss.

Now I'm in the middle of Chapter 5. I'm still not entirely sure where this is heading, but I keep managing to find the scenes I need when I need them, so I'm just going to keep plugging on.

Total Word Count: 13,227.

Second- through fifth-graders at my son's elementary school are due to get their first round of the H1N1 vaccine on Monday. But it's an injection. He hates shots, so he's been begging me to let him get the Flu Mist H1N1 nasal spray instead. The nasal spray won't be available at school, so I'd been watching for a chance to get it elsewhere for him. For me, too, if I could manage it.

I heard about an H1N1 vaccination clinic being run today by the City's Health Department that would be giving out only the Flu Mist spray, not the injection. I was disappointed to learn that it was only for children. But I was happy to drive over with my son today so that he could get it. The clinic was from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. He was due home from school at 3:00 and had a piano lesson at 3:30. So we rushed straight over from his piano lesson, and arrived a few minutes before 4:30.

As I was signing him in, the person taking his registration asked if I wanted the vaccine for myself, too. Yay! Response wasn't as heavy as expected, so they had enough vaccine to open it up to adults. I filled out the paperwork and waited our turn. Everyone was friendly and competent. The clinic was well-organized. And we were out of there in a half-hour.

My son will need another dose in a month or so. If I can find him the spray again, I will. Otherwise he'll have to get the injection in the second round of vaccinations being given at his school, sometime in December. As for me, I'm finished. And hoping to stay flu-free.