I hope all of you are having a nice weekend!

As you probably know, the web edition and the Kindle edition of issue #31 are now available.  I’ve been waiting on a final recording for the audio edition, and the print edition gave Ken some problems.  But long story short, the Nook, audio, and print editions should be available this weekend.  I’ll keep you posted.

Emphasis on should, because this weekend my family and I are moving to a new town.  So I won’t be able to focus on Lovecraft eZine very much in the next few days.  Sorry about that.  We’re excited, though.  My wife is a teacher, and she’s been working at a school 45 minutes away from where we live now.  We’ve been looking for a place in the town she works in, and we finally found one.

(It’s pretty cool, too.  It’s an inexpensive loft apartment “downtown”.  You know, one of those cool small-town downtowns that I thought only existed in the movies.  There’s a cafe three doors down, an antique store, and much, much more.  We’re very happy with the location.)

And last… after advice from friends in today’s “Lovecraft Circle”, and because of my family’s move, I have decided not to do the HPL racism show.  There are several reasons.  One is that I’m supposed to stay away from stress as much as possible because of my illness.  And this certainly has been stressful.

The other reason is that I don’t think it will be productive.  I brought up this topic because I thought it was important and that we should talk about it, and not ignore it.  But I was very surprised at how some people reacted.  There’s a lot I could say about that, but I won’t say everything on my mind.

I will only say the following: When I am called a moron and a dipshit for saying that we should talk about this in a calm way, it’s probably an indicator that a discussion will accomplish nothing.  Some people were upset at me for bringing up HPL’s racism at all, and others were upset at me because I feel that while we should talk about it, it’s not the only thing worth talking about.

In other words, both extremes were taking it out on me, and I felt like I was in a “damned if you do”, “damned if you don’t” situation.

I do think it should be discussed… and I do think it should be discussed calmly.  Yelling and screaming will accomplish nothing.  The words “calm” and “balanced” are not code for “minimize Lovecraft’s racism”.  The words “discuss it and move on” are not code for “I want to talk about this once so we never have to talk about it again”.

I was truly shocked at the conclusions that some people jumped too.  Maybe I’m naive.  In fact, I know I am.  I always expect the best from people.

I am learning that some people are more interested in drawing attention to themselves than they are in really discussing this productively.  I don’t have all the answers, and I’ll never pretend that I do.  But I do know that when emotions are running high, nothing will get accomplished.

People need to reach a point where we can talk about things like this without emotions getting out of hand.  I hope that happens someday.

I’m not saying I’ll never do a show on this topic.  In fact, I probably will.  But not now.

In the meantime, the best thing we as humans can do is to treat each other with kindness.  We are all children of this planet… we all come from the same place.  That might sound hokey and “new-agey”, but it’s also true.