End of Life

(Picture of Penny, 5/08/2023)

 

We have a small dog in the family, a shih tzu that we adopted as a rescue about thirteen years ago. This coming April, Penny will be seventeen years old. She was originally named “Princess” but that name just didn’t wash in the household. We renamed her Penny, keeping the hard “P” consonant to make the transition easier. 

 

We had lost all the animals in the household in just a short time. Our two cats, Nadine and Grover, died within a week of one another. We were without animal companionship for a year. Trauma takes time to overcome.

 

So, we were over at Angell Memorial Hospital looking at cats. I had pretty much finished looking over the cats but my wife and son were still considering them. I looked out the window and saw someone taking out a small dog to be walked. 

 

I had grown up with dogs. My wife had never had one. As a family, we had tried one a few years prior—a hyperallergenic dog named Tucker. This was when we found out my wife was allergic to dogs when her breathing started to shut down. Ben was heartbroken but stood for it: one mother vs one dog wasn’t a hard choice for him. That was where it stood as I watched the little dog.

 

While the dog was out there in the field, I left my wife and son and looked at other dogs in the facility. It was pretty much pit bull city as far as the eye could see. I went back to the side entrance where people were taking the dogs in and out of the play area and waited until the small dog was returned. Then, I asked if I could take the dog out.

 

They were dubious. “Princess” had not been brought into the system. But they were kind enough to let me and I walked her out in the grass. “Princess” was a nice dog. Pleasant. Attentive. A hypoallergenic breed. Small enough that I wasn’t worried about her hurting anyone accidentally.

 

I have an ironclad rule about dogs. They are not to hurt anyone. Period. It’s too much to expect of an animal with a brain the size of a child’s fist to navigate the human world. If the human doesn’t have complete control of the animal, the human shouldn’t have the animal. I felt this way when we bread collies when I was in high school and it has never changed. It certainly didn’t change when my son was attacked by a pit bull that had been retained as “protection” by the dog’s owner. I don’t blame the pit bull. I blame the owner.

 

But “Princess” would be hard-pressed to maul an orange, much less a human, so I wasn’t worried.

 

I sat with her a while and she crawled up into my lap and said in dog: I’m okay with coming home with you if you’re okay with it.

 

I introduced “Princess” to my wife and son, both of which proceeded to melt. “Princess” excelled at that. We adopted her and that was pretty much that for the next thirteen years. My son went from middle school to high school to college and now to work. Penny consoled and comforted him whenever he was home. I pretty much credit my wife and Penny with getting him through high school trauma and college. I was the enabling technology but not the direct support.

 

Now she is sixteen. Seventeen in April.

 

Age is a step function with each step going downward. Starting three weeks ago, Penny took a step. She stopped eating. She lost weight. We’ve been trying to get her back level again with medication but this is a stage in life where we have to look at the miserableness/joy ratio: is she too miserable that there is no joy left in her life?

 

Dogs—and cats, I admit—have a special place in the family. They are not human. If I had to choose between my dog and my child, the choice would be hard but inevitable. That said, that makes them no less a member of the family. They are loved no less. I expect if I were demented and drooling, my family would have to make a DNR choice about me. Hopefully, they will treat me with the same kindness. Also, hopefully, I will treat them with as much kindness as Penny has.

 

We’re in that state now.

 

Every day we’ve been watching her: did she slip or is this an improvement? If an improvement, can it be sustained? Or is this just an illusion masking the slow slide downhill? With our other end-of-life animals, it was either sudden loss (as Nadine and Grover just died on our hands) or the animal let us know. Not, “I’m ready to die.” I think that is human projection. More like, “Please make it stop.” Penny hasn’t made herself that clear. We have to be very clear-eyed about this and not project onto her our desire to keep her around for our own benefit.

 

Humans are pretty long-lived. There are few animal companions we have that we won’t outlive. (We have two tortoises that will most certainly outlive us and considerations have been made.) End of life for them is a problem we have to face for them, deciding for them when it’s too painful to continue.

 

For me, at least, it’s even more poignant with dogs. Cats are still pretty close to wild. They are far more independent and seem clearer that when they are done with life, they are done. This is my own subjective view but it is based on my experience.

 

It appears that dogs diverged from wolves and started hanging with humans more than 30,000 years ago. The earliest possible domestication is 23,000 years ago and the earliest evidence they were part of the family was the Bon-Oberkassel dog found in a grave dated 14+ thousand years ago. Dogs didn’t get dragged in like cattle. They volunteered. It is my opinion that dogs domesticated us every bit as much as we domesticated them. I think they opened up potential in us that enabled us to live together as we never had before. Agriculture, cities, castles, and pyramids happened after dogs domesticated us. Not before. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

 

A dog in the family comes from a heritage as deep as fifteen hundred generations. It doesn’t surprise me that we bury them with honors. That we shed tears when they leave us. That we grieve over them for years.

 

Penny has gotten a little better in the last few days. She’s eating without the aid of medication. Not enough but some. She seems a little stronger. We’re hopeful she may weather this storm. But the step has been taken. Penny of March 2024 will not be the Penny of May 2023. The end may not be this time but the end is now in sight.

 

We’re enjoying her company as long as we can.

 

Arisia: Graphic Novels of Prose Works

I’m on the Arisia panel: Beyond Classics Illustrated—Comic Book Adaptations of Prose Works.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

Now, I would prefer that this be Graphic Novel Adaptations of Prose Works. But you can’t have everything.

 

By the time you read this, Arisia will be over and I’ll be home in the shop or something. But, let’s get on with it.

 

I’ve read comics pretty much my entire life. Some of them were Classics Illustrated. CI wasn’t bad—I liked it as a kid. But the “classics” that were illustrated weren’t generally works that I needed to see illustrated since I read them myself such as Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, etc. (I had issues with Huckleberry Finn but then I have issues with all adaptations of Huckleberry Finn. Someday, I’ll do a post about it.) Works that I didn’t read on my own, I didn’t necessarily need to read illustrated since they didn’t hold my interest—I’m looking at you, Ivanhoe. 

 

All that said, it does seem fertile ground for an adaptation. In the interest of research, I read the following graphic novel adaptations of prose material with which I was familiar:

• 1984: The Graphic Novel, George Orwell, Fido Nesti
• To Kill a Mockingbird: A Graphic Novel, Harper Lee, Fred Fordham
• The Odyssey: Homer, Gareth Hinds
• Macbeth: Shakespeare, Gareth Hinds
• Ringworld: Larry Niven, Robert Mandell/Sean Lam
• The Stars My Destination: Alfred Bester, Byron Preiss/Howard Chaykin

All of these are intended to be full explorations of the work. They are not reimagining the work but presenting the work as representative of the original. That said, they are adaptations—as a film or a play might be. They cannot be the original—the original is available to be read. I think—I hope—they are intended to present a different dimension of experience to the original. In addition, I chose these because I thought they were not works that required the original to be understood.

 

These are all fine works. They are well-produced and well-illustrated. Each individual work had an interesting visual approach. In 1984, Nesti took almost an almost Edvard Much approach to the illustration. Howard Chaykin took a sort of fifties serial illustration approach to The Stars My Destination. Hinds took a different approach between The Odyssey and Macbeth. In The Odyssey, the figures looked robust and strong—almost material ideals though they were clearly real people. However, in Macbeth, the figures looked more differentiated and less ideal. Ringworld is in a manga style. Fordham used a sort of Andrew Wyeth sensibility when he drew Mockingbird. 

 

I mention the art because the visual creation is what’s brought to the table in the graphic narrative. One is not imagining Scout in Mockingbird; one is seeing her right there on the page. Imagination is not required.

 

Visual narrative is completely different from prose narrative. I’ve been working on adapting one of my stories into a comic. The original was 1200 words—barely a story at all. At this point, the story is twelve pages long and only a little over half done. Things that could be glossed over in a sentence might take six panels in a comic. Conversely, a scene that might require 200 words could be shown in a single panel. It’s a different medium.

 

This presents the first hurdle for the visual adaptation: what to leave in. What to leave out. Does the prose work in the confines of the comic? What to do if it does not.

 

Film and television adaptations have similar problems but different tools. For example, the outside narrator has a long and honored history in comics. Most narrators in films are at best redundant and at worst distracting. In film/television, the scene has to show real people in a sequence of time. Sequence—even timing within a given panel—is under much tighter control in comics. In Bruno, Chris Baldwin drew nearly every strip as one long horizontal panel, unbroken by any divisions. He managed to show both character interaction and the movement of time in a single image.

 

Given the premises that 1) the adaptation cannot be the original, and 2) the adaptation must stand on its own without requiring the original, how do the example adaptations measure up?

 

Macbeth, 1984, and The Stars My Destination all seem to have a similar problem: they are being too faithful to the original material. In 1984 and TSMD, a significant amount of prose is lifted directly from the original work and entered into the graphic novel. This means that the reader is getting overlapping information. A lot is coming from the page—the interior of the broken ship in TSMD and Winston’s apartment in 1984—and a lot is coming from the embedded prose. It feels conflicted. I see the Winston’s apartment. I don’t need to see it described. I see the Foyle’s ship. I don’t need it to be described.

 

What I want is the information I’m getting from the imagery and the information I’m getting from the prose (if any) to complement one another. Not repeat and not conflict. Macbeth has a similar problem—we read Shakespeare for the language as much as anything else. A graphic novel of a Shakespeare play without the beautiful dialog doesn’t seem to have much point. That said, it seemed to me that a graphic novel of Macbeth should go where a play wants to but can’t. Not sure Hinds’ effort did that for me.

 

Hinds was more successful with The Odyssey. The work was still dialog-heavy but in this case, the characters were all talking to each other. I do think he would have been better off leaning more on the visuals and less on the prose.

 

Mockingbird is much better. There is some narrative prose but not all that much of it—some could have been cut but that’s just me. Lee’s book contains a great deal of dialog which transposes well to the graphic novel form. Most of the prose Lee uses is to set the scene and that is well done with Fordham’s art.

 

Finally, Ringworld. The art/prose balance is very good here. There’s a bit of leading prose to set up the Known Space concept—it worried me when I started it. But it disappears pretty quickly. That said, I don’t like the art. This is not an objective observation. I just didn’t like it. Adaptation’s good. Dialog is good. Hits the story points properly. But I kept getting bogged down in the actual visual character representations.

 

I think the first issue to be handled with any visual representation of a prose work—be it film, television, or comic—is if the art works for the reader. As I said in the very beginning, comics are primarily a visual medium. If the eyes don’t like the work, you can stop there. That is an entirely subjective—and I suspect, unconscious—response. For example, I like the roughness of Miyazaki’s Nausicaä manga. It’s very different from the smooth imagery of the film.

 

This is one thing one can get from just looking at the work.

 

The second hurdle is how to represent the prose work structurally. As is pretty obvious from what I’ve said previously, I’m in favor of letting the art do the heavy lifting. There’s a lot of narrative description and observation that can just be shown rather than told. That said, artistically, showing appears to be much more difficult and requires a higher level of creativity than telling. Too much telling turns the comic into illustrated prose. That’s fine but I don’t think it’s the goal. Barry Moser is one of the finest illustrators I’ve ever seen but his work is absolutely dependent on the surrounding text. I think graphic novels should be something different.

 

The third hurdle is the same as for any visual media: how to visually represent the characters. I consider this separate from the artistic approach of the work. Chaykin’s choice to represent TSMD with a retro sensibility is one thing. But how he chooses to draw Gully Foyle’s face is independent of that.

 

This problem is addressed head on in Fordham’s Mockingbird. The strongest image almost anyone has of Atticus Finch is his portrayal by Gregory Peck in the film. Peck was six foot/two and towered over many people in the film. Fordham chose to portray Finch as average sized—in some panels smaller than some of those around him. The courtroom scenes often show people sitting or from shoulder to the top of the head, with only a single individual in a given panel. This makes it impossible for Finch to tower over anyone. His face is broader than Peck’s and he has the look of an accountant: an ordinary-looking man containing extraordinary strength of character.

 

I have a problem that I have a great deal of trouble transitioning from a film or television representation of a character to a representation of that same character in a comic. Spock or James Kirk? Can’t read the comics. Mal from Firefly. Nope. I think it’s an uncanny valley problem—they look enough like the human that inspired them that I can’t accept the differences. It’s curious that I don’t have the same problem with actual people—a comic containing Barack Obama doesn’t bother me at all.

 

I had no such problem with Fordham’s Finch. His Finch could not be mistaken for Gregory Peck. Gold star for Fordham.

 

In conclusion, do not let me put you off of any of the works I’ve discussed. These are completely subjective opinions. They’re mine. They don’t have to be yours.

 

I’m just pointing out some considerations.

Steven Popkes to be at Arisia this weekend

 I'll be at Arisia this weekend. I have two panels:

Saturday, January 13, 2024
17:30: Beyond Classics Illustrated – Comic Book Adaptations of Prose Works
19:00: Invertebrates and Entomology in SFF

Come have fun.

Fossil Fuels: Price at the Pump

I’ve been thinking about how we’re going to get shut of fossil fuels.

 

(Picture from here.)

 

Oh, yeah. Why? We have an increasing carbon dioxide footprint in the atmosphere. It’s causing the earth to grow warmer than it has ever been in the history of our species. We have built our civilization based on that temperature range including housing, food, transportation, and other infrastructure. With the increase of temperature, all of those adaptations are at best at risk and at worst doomed. The earth will abide but what we’ve built will not. The biggest contributor to that CO2 footprint is burning fossil fuels. 

 

Therefore, stopping the input into the atmosphere is a necessary first step.

 

So...

 

First, a quick overview of the technical issues.

 

The biggest technical issue is that we have an entire industry built to supply fossil fuels and an entire economy built to consume them. Power? Right there with natural gas. Transportation? Cars. Trains. Trucks. Ships. Construction? Tractors. Backhoes. Bulldozers. Industry? Power, for one. But also furnaces. Kilns. Forges. Smelting. Ore refining. Mining.

 

Sure, some of these can convert to electricity. Aluminum refining is already one of the larger consumers of electric power. But mining? Heavy construction? All of them are built on fossil fuels. The container ship bringing your Christmas presents?

 

I’m pretty sure we can convert light transportation such as cars and trains to electricity. Pushing the combustion back to a central source means the source can be transformed from using something like natural gas to nuclear or renewables. Electricity is fungible.

 

I’m less sanguine for more intense uses such as air travel, ships, and construction equipment. That said, Volvo has an electric compact electric excavator. Some electric mining equipment is now available. I haven’t seen a lithium powered crane yet. And it’s not clear to me what the duty cycle is. It’s also possible to create artificial fossil fuels that do not come from petroleum—to me that’s the likely path for things like air travel and ships. Things that don’t have a ready plug to charge up and expend a lot of energy.

 

If we just say that it’s possible that we can replace all combustion-based systems with electric equivalents, what’s the problem? Now, we get into the social aspect of things.

 

The problem is, as always, cost.

 

This is where to my mind we have a social issue that is masquerading as a technical problem. Cost is required currency (read money, energy, or other like material) in order to cause an action. Filling up the Buick to drive to Grandma’s house represents the required currency to visit Grandma. The monetary representation of that is the numeric quantification of that cost commonly called price.

 

The problem is that quantification.

 

The cost of a tank of gas is the cost of the drilling process, transportation and refinement of the crude, transportation of the gasoline to the station. It includes the maintenance of the equipment to process all of them. It includes a bit of profit for each stage of the process. There’s a tiny amount to maintain the roads embedded in the final cost. So, if you’re up here in Massachusetts and paying $3.09/gallon (which I just did), about 9% of that went to fix those potholes. It works out to barely ten percent of what Massachusetts spends on transportation.

 

What that $3.09 does not include is the remaining 90% for transportation, the cost of cleaning up oil spills, CO2 emissions, health effects of CO2 and non-CO2 emissions, effects on the food supply, and the rebuilding from climate-change caused storms. These are external costs—costs not borne by the producer of the product. The cost of CO2 is not borne by the producer of the product that creates the CO2, either the user of the fossil fuel consuming product or the producer of the fossil fuel itself. Essentially, both the producers of fossil fuels and the products that consume them get these external costs for free.

 

Sometimes, external costs are good things. Roads and bridges are a good example. In this case, society has made a decision that the benefits of having roads and bridges are of sufficient value that the costs are better absorbed by society as a whole. That’s a good example but I have a better one.

 

Unlike most countries, the USA does not require most airports to charge landing fees. (It’s a little different for large airports like Boston or Chicago. This applies more to mid-to-small-sized airports.) If I am a student pilot in Canada and I want to do a set of practice landings, I have to pay for each one. Not in the United States. The natural consequence of this is that student pilots do a lot more practice landings in the USA than in Canada. The FAA made the conscious choice that this was a good thing and decided that absorbing the external cost of practice landings was worth it.

 

However, usually external costs are not good things. The societal costs of smoking were not borne by tobacco companies until they were forced to by the courts. Similarly, the health costs of patients with mercury poisoning from coal power plants, their lost revenue, and the trauma to their families is an external cost—not borne by the coal power plants. The increasing destruction by storms, floods, and sea level rise caused by rising CO2 are external costs not borne by fossil fuel manufacturers or fossil fuel burners even though they are responsible for that CO2.

 

I went and tried to find out what the true cost of gasoline was including these externalities. One article I read suggested it would more or less double the cost/gallon. Another article suggested closer to three times. Personally, I think these are underestimates.

 

Regardless, these indicate that the actual cost of gasoline—incorporating environmental and health costs—would be much, much higher than we’re experiencing. Forget the direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, they also get a subsidy in the form of these external costs. I bet if the construction industry had to choose between a somewhat more expensive electric bulldozer and a cheaper one that costs twice as much to operate, that calculus might be interesting.

 

A similar sort of economic approach to the Tesla semi-truck was analyzed here, indicating the economics of repair along with cheaper electricity could make the Tesla superior to traditional diesel trucks, provided the supporting infrastructure was done correctly. This would be an even better outcome if the actual cost of diesel was included in the calculations.

 

A significant part of the problem, then, is these hidden, external costs. We think we’re paying the right price for gasoline but we are, in fact, subsidizing the health and environmental costs of that gasoline. We are either ignoring the cost, hoping it will go away, or pushing the cost onto a societal mechanism like government or the courts—not the most efficient mechanism.

 

We could incorporate those costs into the price of the product. Given that we’ve ignored this issue for over a century, it would be painful to just do it now. But I think there’s an interesting side effect. Let’s say that we phase in these costs over a long period in the form of fuel taxes. That tax can be used to subsidize the cost of EV purchase. In addition, the EV (or electric construction equipment) owner will never have to pay the tax. We could even have intelligent pricing at the pump by gas mileage, where the vehicle class drives the amount of tax paid for by the owner.

 

This would push the cost of the product back on both the producer and consumer of the product. This is not at all unheard of. Recognizing an external cost as the price of doing business is something that happens all the time. It’s called regulation.

 

That tax revenue doesn’t have to be spent by the government directly. Governments rarely do anything themselves. Instead, they sub-contract out. There’s no reason the fossil fuel corporations couldn’t bid for a remediation contract like anyone else.

 

I just had this lovely vision of Exxon and BP bidding for a contract to reforest the fracking fields of Pennsylvania.