ColumbusGuy

Hmm, I'm not sure what to think about Timothy M's comment--in some ways it makes sense when you take into account my maternal line, though I can't trace it back very far...My mother's parents had four daughters and no sons I knew of growing up, but since there were cousins with the last name means her grandparents had to have had other boys besides her father. So, my mom was one of four daughters, all of whom had three boys and one had a girl too, but my mother was the only who had three daughters, then me by a second marriage six years later. How does this relate? I don't know if any of my male cousins were gay or bi, but all had musical interests; my oldest sister had three boys, the middle sister had two boys that lived, one of whom is also gay, and the third sister had one single girl. Is the occurrence of two gay boys in the same family significant though in separate generations? Perhaps fertility makes the odds greater only because of more children? I'd wager on it being something in the particular genetics since it's all in the same lineage in my mother's family....The fact I used to baby sit my nephew when I was a teen doesn't seem to matter as I did it for several of them from my sisters and none of those others were gay. Wonder if the location of my mother's family in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with its isolation back in the 30s-40s had any impact? There are roads up there that still bear family names to this day.....

I'm a bit surprised by comments of what Col and Rosh did being unnatural since Pern doesn't seem to have kept any form of religion; I guess custom has taken the place of it in forming attitudes as emphasis would have been on increasing numbers since the earliest days of the colony.... The idea that most empathic people have gone into the weyrs is possible, but even there not everyone is equally accepting--eccentricities can be blamed on mating flights and then ignored by those who wish to remain close-minded. It's best to remember that insular communities like Holds can often be grim places as they can be more easily swayed by the opinions of one strong leader such as Vikkel. I'll just say that my small rural home town was not openly hostile, it just never discussed anything like homosexuality, the mid 70s wasn't a time to talk about such things except in big cities and even crusaders of 'family values' like Anita Bryant were only on the news if they got particularly vocal. My older sisters could recall no gay kids in their years at school for the decade before I went there, and I knew of only myself. To this day, so far as I know the student handbook makes no mention of sexuality based discrimination, and there are still no groups like the GSA in the district.

Just realized I hadn't read this, and I'm glad I found it. Craig and James are so wonderful to catch up with!

Maurice is a font of information so long as you filter it carefully. We have to consider that this all predates the cinema's construction as we now know there had been an abandoned Victorian house there before, and who knows just when that well was dug? Perhaps his mother told him never to mention the well? Perhaps it has roots far back into pagan times....

Jevikel is just the kind of person you don't want to see in a strictly controlled place like Pinnacle, one who is curious and seeks more out of life than just the basic to get by. Thank the gods for Grandmother Val who does what she can to encourage her grandchildren. I grew up in farm country outside a small town, but at least my parents encouraged me to read and took me into the nearest big city monthly to buy books I couldn't get at our local library!

This just gets better as it goes along! Weird connections seem to pop up for me: the Tarot cards in the first chapter, and now dowsing in this one; back in the late 70s when I was at university, my Sociology professor taught me how to dowse, walking the main quad to locate the old steam tunnels there from the last century. It seemed to work for me, though I never tried to make a living at it. :) Denison was a small private university with lots of personal interaction between students and staff and open discussion was a hallmark of the place where I first told someone I was gay and was accepted with no problems at all. My class of '81 was the 150th to graduate from this rural Ohio college whose students and staff came from all over and from all levels of society.

I'm intrigued already, and can't wait to see how the psychic powers work into things. I used to have an interest in Tarot and other forms of divination like the Norse Runes, even having several sets of cards with various designs and a set of runestones I picked up at a local shop near downtown along with my Thor's hammer as a symbol of protection...

Awesome, a new queen and Zalna and T'san's legacy will live on! Eager for the final snippet and looking forward to the next saga...you have made Pern yours in my opinion and it's in excellent hands.

Well, we know they've discovered a longer Interval, but the records may reveal another 400 Turn one. A small variation might be common, but it can't be too much or the Star Stones wouldn't be of much use. I wish we could have had them check out whether the other two weyrs were still occupied, but I think that may have been abandoned by the time the normal Interval came, otherwise some mention might have been made of them... Just a couple more to go, eh Mawgrim? What's in the cards for the next tale?

Good planning for this expedition, but we have to wonder about the outcome because no records survive documenting it, and we know no other dragons came from the posting of Benden dragons at any other weyrs...so, at what point was that plan abandoned? When Zalna and T'san discovered the others did come forwrd, or when they didn't return? Wouldn't they find themselves unable to go beyond the mid point of the Interval since they figured on only 200 Turns rather than the actual 400 we know passed?

So many questions beyond the meaning of the Teaching Ballad... :) What's that old saw about a chicken or an egg? Eager for the next chapter and reading about the two boys finding a new home at the weyr!

I love the intertwining threads in this chapter...I wonder how long having dragons at some other weyrs will last? The shortage of queen eggs may help to curtail that in a few more Turns. I'm not sure about the Crafthall positions being hereditary--I rather thought at least the Masters were found by talent, and that may run in families, but that's not a guarantee of it....Lower ranks are probably a mix of talent and heredity, but with more positions talent would seem to be a more deciding factor. Eager for more, Mawgrim!

Dang, invited to a party and we're left standing at the gate... :) I'm glad Amy is now part of the family, and can't wait to see how she helps out. I wonder what part of Bavaria Robin's castle is in? There's something genetic in me that has always loved hiking, forests and mountains though I've only been to the Appalachians. See, I've traced my father's line to a small village I can't find on a map now--it belonged to Thuringia, but was ceded to Bavaria at the end of WWII; maybe it doesn't exist anymore as that ancestor was born there in 1813 and came to America in 1841. That town was called Sankt Georg, but I have been told his parents might have been from Switzerland, which I need to check if I can figure out what Ancestry account to get...Anybody got any clues?

Robin is a remarkable man to have not turned his gifts to revenge on all society after what was done to his village, but then he was young when he did strike back and that left an indelible impression on him to avoid rash actions in future. I'm sure we'll see Kinsborough again in future, and now that we have a hint of many more skwish users around, perhaps we'll meet them too....

Ah, the root question of reality! This is all a creation of Robin's mind, not a universe of its own like the Vampire World...so, are these really people with their own identities or players dancing to Robin's tune? Further, is Jackin truly Robin's brother from his own past, or another figment? A perfect SCA recreation of the Middle Ages, my friend!

So are we now seeing another facet of Robin's character, a less jovial one? What other ethical questions has he learned to step around in his eight hundred years....

In a way, N'rax is lucky because it sounds like a tumor rather than Alzheimers...relatively quick compared to the slow degeneration of the latter which leaves no room for choosing before it becomes too late. I watched my late stepfather slowly become just a shell of his former self and knew he hated the whole process but could do nothing to combat it...my mother died first due to complications of her diabetes, and that was the last time I saw him after nearly six months of being taken over by his daughter. He was in a wheelchair hooked up to oxygen and spoke to no one, not even recognizing his favorite grandson who he'd fished with for years...the only sign of emotion came when he was wheeled up to my mother's coffin, then he looked at her and he began to cry, though he still wouldn't speak to anyone. I was told he died within the next year in his mid 80s. What saddened me more was that I'd met his mother who died in her late 90s with a mind still clear as a bell....

I don't know what twists and turns this story will take yet, but with the ethical question of opposing philosophies, we know it's going to be a ride to remember. Damn it, now I have the old Daffy Duck cartoon of him playing Robin Hood running through my head! Thanks loads, Geron... :) ''...actually it's a buck and a quarter quarterstaff, but I'm not telling him that..."

Hmm, one man? I was thinking it would be a group, but does this mean a reduction in the danger quotient? Somehow I don't thik so...

One tiny bit of confusion here: initially the boys' firm was called Third Planet Inquiries, and now several times it's referred to as Planet Earth Inquiries? Sure, a rose is a rose by any other name, but it's not like our mystical magical Muse to make such a blunder... Curiosity is ramping up...can't wait to read what's next in store! :)

It's great to see some new skwish developing in old friends, and I can understand Bob's reluctance to use it in his act as it would give him an unfair advantage over other magicians in a field engineered to amuse others as its hard-earned reward. Eager to find out where this will end up, Geron!

Wow Mawgrim, I never thought to check out YouTube for any songs from fictional series! Back when I first read the series first books, there was no internet, and you got music either from tv shows, concerts or recordings... Just listened to the whole playlist, and some were quite good, while others didn't quite fit, perhaps due to the limited instruments used? Of course, what would one expect in a Hold or Weyr with little chance of attracting musicians like the Harper Hall? :) One entry surprised me--Nonesuch--mainly because it's a very old tune first written down in Playford's English Dancing Master in the early 1600s, but going back who knows how much earlier before that? I've danced it many times at SCA meetings and Country Dance Meetings when I was younger. As a purely geek question, do we know how many years Pern has been settled until the current Pass?

The one thing that has always disappointed me about Pern is the lack of more cultural information about the origins of the first settlers...oh, we get some details, but for the two most developed sci-fi/fantasy worlds, Middle Earth and Darkover we have major sources to help us out. Tolkien based his works on ancient mythologies and Nordic cultures, and Darkover was settled by a mixture of Latin and Celtic peoples; thus we can glimpse the living story cultures and hear their words and music as we read along. I'd love to hear the Teaching Ballads set to music, particularly the Question Song with its introductory dissonant chord so reminiscent of Beowulf of Anglo-Saxon fame. Tolkien wrote Elvish ballads, and I saw a library copy of them with the musical notation, and we can imagine Darkover from current Iberian and Celtic folk music, so why has no one given us the 'Sounds of Pern'? A group called Synaulia has reconstructed Greek and Roman music based on the instruments used and surviving texts, so how hard could this be....

Groan...I knew ambrosia has meant a food/drink of the gods, and I seem to recall an old recipe for a dessert in one of my cookbooks for a dish named that, but didn't know it was a rice pudding. I thought it was some sort of meringue-based mixture... I can't wait for more glimpses into your shorts, my dear!

I'm not going to be too surprised if Zalna and T'san figure this mystery out...neither is lacking brains and are naturally observant; you don't take items with you that you won't need at the end of the journey, so there has to be a destination...if no one heard of it in the past, then that leaves only the future. I know the uneasiness of exploring an empty space, first after moving from the house I lived in for 26 of my first 29 years making sure I left nothing I wanted to keep...then moving into my current house which was already almost 80 years old when I moved in. It felt eerie going through spaces that had been lived in so long but were now deserted. It was more my style than the one storey ranch I'd grown up in, having tons of woodwork and three floors of finished space where many original features remained almost unchanged. In the attic storage areas I found panes of original glass to use when one broke years later, and I found a genealogical chart of the original owners' family. Oddest of all, I found a man's suit from the early 30s--double breasted dark blue pinstriped stored in an old box, and it fit me like a glove! I wore it to costume parties with a fedora and played the part of a gangster like Al Capone....