Here, Have Some Lava

Taken Nov 22, 2011. I drove as far south as one could go south from Pahoa, which is south of Hilo on the big island of Hawai’i. The road ends near Kalapana, then there’s a dirt road that other cars were going on, so I went too. (Never a great idea.)

The “dirt” road turns out to have been a paved road that lava flowed over. A few hundred feet back, there’s a bit of road again, leading out to a parking lot ending in a guard shack with a bunch of scary signs. I parked there and got out, went to the guard shack. He made sure I knew where the safe boundaries were and that I had water, sunscreen, and a hat.

Walking in the sun on a Hawai’ian day is brutal enough, but the black lava just soaks up heat. As if that weren’t enough, you’re not actually that far above the actual real hot lava flows that are probably radiating even more heat.

Despite my SPF 85 haole basting sauce, I managed to get a sunburn.

Oh, and I’d been very close, only a few hundred feet away, the year before. Here’s what the view looked like from offshore back on Nov 23, 2010:

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

2013 Reading Summary

Finally got around to reading this post, The Women We Don’t See.

Last year, my reading habits shifted as I was looking to publish in another genre. As that genre happened to be romance, I read a whole bunch of female authors (some of whom may be female in pen name only, granted). To my knowledge, none of the authors I read last year fit in a non-binary category, though some of the works I read did.

Books read: 243
Books by female authors: 220
Books by male authors: 28

91% female authors

(Sum is greater than total because of co-authors, e.g., Witt & Voinov.)

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.

Society6 Art: Iceplant

Based on seeing a friend’s pieces on Society6, I decided to start uploading photos there for sale in various forms. They have prints, iPhone cases, computer cases, pillows, tote bags, and stuff like that.

My first piece (my plan is to upload one per week) is called Iceplant.

I know, I know, it doesn’t look like iceplant, right? I prefer to think of it as iceplant in someone’s acid trip.

Actually, the photo is really of iceplant. Rick and I were walking around Pigeon Point Lighthouse one day. I had my finger on the shutter button, as you do, and misstepped, setting off the trigger. I got a lovely streaky blurry photo of a patch of iceplant.

Honestly, it really wasn’t very fetching, but there was something about it, so I played with it.

My friend Joe (zeruch) also has a shop on Society6, and I like this piece in particular. Note that some of his figurative work is NSFW, but I’ve linked to an abstract. I think it looks pretty awesome as a pillow or clock.

Originally published at deirdre.net. You can comment here or there.