I’m adding a new category to this blog today. I have on other blogs written about Age of Consent, Age of Maturity, child labor, and children as participants in war — as well as related topics.

Today I came across a mention of Acting Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. His father, a hero of the War of 1812, took him along on ship with him. At 14, well trained as a sailor on his father’s ship, he was transferred to another vessel. Shortly before his fifteenth birthday, he was captured in a battle with a Spanish warship and spent six months as a prisoner of war in a prison ship in Havana Harbor.

As those who read this blog will learn, I am a pedant about historical and cultural accuracy and dislike genre work that tries to paste a modern perspective on previous historical eras and cultures that imitate the levels of those cultures.

Waking up to accusations of homophobia and trying to deal with it before having my first cup of coffee made for some exciting moments. My lesbian daughter found the irony hilarious for obvious reasons. Leave it to Sovay to put me in a better frame of mind.

The majority of the war was over while I was still sleeping. I had gone to bed early.

Since then, I have received two emails from Adam Lowe. I am going to post the first one here, because they have led me to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Hi Janrae,

I would like to extend my apologies if I offended you on The Rusty Nail. I guess I jumped the gun a little. What I saw was a bunch of attacks on two authors by a group of individuals, which then began to include my publishing company. Whether people like or dislike Philbin and Dagstine is irrelevant to me, but from what I’ve seen of the posts regarding them, there does appear to be an unfair level of abuse and ridicule aimed at them. If people don’t like them, can’t they be adults about them?

Anyway, it was not my intention to start a flame war or anything of the kind.

Regards,

Adam Lowe

You do not have the most basic common sense (oh, that’s right, common sense is not common) to even find out if I were male or female before jumping on me Hence the his/her in your comment.

comment #25 by Adam Lowe

More of Adam

You simply jumped to an unfounded conclusion and were rather nasty about it.

I’ve always been rather outré.

But I have encountered many people over the years who can not perceive the obvious. That includes you.

I am anticipating your handing me the old rant about how bi-sexuals do not exist. We’re fence-sitters.

I’m a Lettuce Bacon Tomato Sandwich. If you’re as gay as you claim, then you know what I’m talking about.

It is well known that male gays have little sympathy for bi-sexuals.

So what accusation will you make next?

Are you going to call me a fag-hag?

That’s an oldie, but goody. Gay bigotry toward straights is as well documented as the reverse. There are many things we say in private that we would try to deny having said in public. Doesn’t remove the aspect of bigotry.

What? Are you going to say that you’re not a bigot? Or that I should give you the names and addresses of my previous lesbian lovers so you can check my bona fides?

Do your bloody research before you start making asinine accusations.

I admit to the existence of my homophonic hatreds. Homophones drive me nuts. No matter how hard I try, they just get under my skin. I do not believe that homophones should have the right to marry. Marriage should be limited to a verb and a noun. God did not create homophones, Webster did.

Adam Lowe, a new member of the Legion of Nitwits, just accused me of bigotry against homophones.

Actually, the word he said was “homophobe.” I want to know just how a bi-sexual gender queer who makes an innocent remark using the term “gay-dar” is automatically a homophobe? I have been out of the closet for twenty years.

He should have googled me before going off on that rant.

My awareness of the situation began with a phone call. It was February of 1986. Roughly two weeks after my second piece, War of the Worlds came out in the Washington Post Bookworld. A friend of H’s called to congratulation him on several articles he had out in prestigious spots.

To my knowledge, H had not had anything out in several months. So I asked which articles H’s friend was referring to. As the answers tumbled out of the fellow’s excited mouth, into the phone, and down my ears; I became sick to my stomach. I was so stunned I could barely speak and my mind stopped working. I excused myself from the conversation and hung up the phone. I barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up.

H was telling his industry friends that every article with my byline on it was written by him, including the Washington Post pieces.

H had robbed me of my name.

It’s All in Your Head was ostensibly written by Jean Stine and Camden Benares. It sold very well and went into several reprintings and book club editions. I’m mentioned in Jean’s dedication and acknowledgements. The truth is that I did all of the research. At the last minute, Camden did not want to do the extensive library research required and, although his name is on the book, he did absolutely none of it. He turned in outdated and unusable research that he dug up from his magazine collection and then refused to do anything more.

I did Camden’s end as a favor to Jean, and basically saw nothing for it except that mention.

That’s life.

I spent nearly an hour at the eye doctor’s yesterday. I thought it was going to be a simple matter of getting new glasses. It turned out that I’m in the early stages of cataracts. I won’t have many details until I see my regular doctor on the 10th.

One of my uncles was born with cataracts and went completely blind by age two. Mama owned a dog that would sometimes snap at Pete. Since he could not see, he could not easily handle the dog’s reactions. One day, when he was about three or four, the dog bit him. Pete grabbed the dog and held on very tight and bit the dog back … and kept biting. After that the dog never so much as growled at him.

The situation is a pisser, but there are more options for dealing with cataracts today than there were when my uncle went blind from them. Odds are that, while this is going to be a rocky ride, it will all turn out okay in the end.

http://rapidshare.com/files/119839478/number.wmv.html

http://rapidshare.com/files/119834497/the_real_truth_behind_the_burnings_i_mean_reviews.zip.html

Natalie and I went grocery shopping yesterday. My head never works right when I’m shopping. The effort to make my left leg function properly (I have to remember to lift it) and the pain in my lower back from the spot where the spine is twisted causes my alertness to suffer and my mind to feel as cottony and diffuse as if I were taking pills of some kind. I usually leave my muscle relaxants off or space them at least several hours away from shopping trips.

I have a doctor’s appointment on the 10th and I’m making a long list of complaints. I’m just going to hand her my print out. I think that most of it is minor, but I have let matters go again for too long and they have accumulated (BAD JANRAE)

Dennis rode with us to the supermarket and kept worrying about being a problem for asking for a lift as far as Demoulas and kept trying to get out of the car prematurely (every stop light, and so forth). Finally I turned around and pointed at him, and barked, “Stay! Sit! Sit! There ya go, Good Dennis.”

He froze and gave me a startled look, muttering, “Men I can fight, but I know better than to mess with the ladies.” And he stopped trying to escape from the car. So we dropped him off at Demoulas grocery store and continued on to office max.

There has been some trouble in the building and several people were attacked. Dennis is a former roofer and construction worker. He’s lean and rangy. HIs hair is steel gray with white at the temples. The attacks have gotten him very worried. His purpose for going to the store was to replace the battery in his hearing aid, so he could hear if something went wrong in the hallways. He kept muttering, “Louie is my friend (he was attacked), and I’m gonna hear them next time. I’m gonna hear them and we’ll see if this old man still has it.”

I think that Dennis might be able to put someone through a wall. He still has those heavy muscular forearms from all the work he did when he was younger.

This is one of my bad days. The day after a lengthy run to the store is always difficult. I can feel the humming in my legs and feet that the doctor said was bouts of tachycardia. Hopefully that can be resolved on the 10th. The roaring in my ears is intense, but I can sometimes make that seem lessened by putting on music. I have been reading more about it. The are a lot of new methods for controlling it. However, it does appear to have an allergy cause. My smoking level seems to correlate with the tinnitus symptoms. Whenever I stress out and smoke too much, the next day the roaring is worse. Days that I don’t smoke as much, the roaring goes down to a manageable level.

I’ve put all of that into my print out I’m taking to the doctor.

Tuesday is the appointment for my glasses. When my eyes get tired, I have trouble concentrating on the computer screen and everything gets blurry with eye strain.

I remember a book that came out a few years ago, “Getting old is not for sissies.” Great book. The title says it all.

Sooner or later, everything comes home to roost. We accumulate physical issues as we get older. And if we started out in our youth with them, it just complicates the process of aging. Sooner or later, to greater or lesser degree, it overtakes all of us.

They say “write what you know.”

At this point it should be self-evident why the books I write are so dark and violent. I am writing what I know.

I chose to write dark fantasy as a metaphor for my own experiences to a degree. I tried to write both mainstream and at once point a real memoir, rather than just tossing the bits and pieces into a blog.

However, I can’t get too close to the memories without putting myself into a bad state of mind accompanied by flashbacks. The memoir posts are as close as I can get to lancing the septic wounds.

I have started putting them into drafts and saving them there, trying to just post them one or two at a time as the need is on me to talk about them. My demons won’t let go of me.

A close friend of many years was reading them yesterday and he said, “I don’t know the half of it, do I?”

I replied, “You probably don’t know a third.”

I lived in fear for many years that my family would find me again with an eye to settling old grudges.

There are periods when I write obsessively in an attempt to outrun the memories. Sometimes I can and more often I can’t.