Triage time

This time of year is triage time for charities. All year long, most of the begging letters I get from charities go into a pile. Sometime around the end of the year (and I'm a little later than usual this year) I sort through them, pile up the duplicates, and decide whether I'm going to send them money or not.

So I have to make choices like: which of the five or six nature- and wildlife-related charities do I send money to? Which of the three AIDS charities? Which museums and libraries? Why did I pay that one in July? And so on.

Luckily most of the choices are pretty easy, based mainly on whether I sent them money last year and, for the new ones, whether I believe their cause is worth supporting at all.

I still have to deal with the tax sorting, which involves a different pile. Plenty of time for that next year.

Cordwainer Smith

My order from cordwainersmith.com arrived Saturday; it consisted of "On the Sand Planet" (2 CD set) and Ria, a (non-SF) novel written under the name of Felix C. Forrest.

Spent most of Sunday reading Ria. Odd experience; some of the same narrative techniques as CS (the story is mainly told in flashbacks) and many of the same themes (cats, suffering, cruelty) applied to quite different subject matter. Not my usual fare, but I couldn't put it down.

The order also came with an extra: an All-World Travel Pass. When does the next planoform ship leave for Mizzer?