First Snow

It's a beautiful evening with big, fat, sloppy snowflakes falling outside.  It's a hot chocolate with a giant marshmallow nuked on top kind of night, a writing night, a reading night.  It's a night for sitting in the living room with the lights turned out, watching the deck light reflect off of frosted leaves and buried deck spars.  

Happy first snow, everyone!

Orycon 32

Orycon 32-- had a wonderful time. The Endeavor Award party was packed into a pretty small room, but we managed to all squeeze in. I met some wonderful people, including a mask artist. We got into a great conversation about masks, which led to some new ideas for Masks .... I had to go to the dealer's room and not buy beautiful, wearable art that I can't afford.

Sharyn November, btw, is funny. Great interview by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Sharyn talked about her history in poetry, as a member of rock bands, and how she developed her line of books. The way she works with her authors--on a very personal and yet profession level, sharing a love of the art and the story on the page while working hard to reach the reader--really heartened me. I hope the publishing world is full of people like her. And yet, of course, they can't be. I'm sure there are tons of excellent editors, but clearly, Sharyn November is one of a kind.

Best of all, I had great talks about writing with Mary Rosenblum and Sara Mueller that may push my writing to the next level, after a long plateau.  Wish me luck!

Writing, dipped in chocolate

November is such a mess, it's a wonder I'm getting any writing done at all. But I keep on keeping on, and I think the reason has changed just a wee bit. Normally I write because I love writing. Now, writing is actually helping with my mental health.

My DH is being awesome on that front too. He's helping me focus on the right stuff instead of worrying in endless, useless circles. We're still making progress on the porch, and my office, and the house is starting to look spiffy. It's all good, though I have so much pressure from so many fronts--legal, work, social/volunteer, etc.--I'm starting to get stress symptoms. Bad dreams. Cranky tummy. Weird aches and pains.

Some of the stress will go away with Thanksgiving. The time pressure--too much to do, too little time--is not going to let up until December at the very earliest, and probably not until the bitter, cold end of December. So I have to identify and assess down time--what truly qualifies as down time, and what is the highest quality down time. For example, watching good movies really relaxes me, but that feeling doesn't last as long as when I garden.

Writing is turning out to be really high quality down time with long-reaching positive benefits. When I was writing full time, writing was work time. Really fun work time, but I had to organize stretching, snack breaks, running errands, doing housework, etc. around my BICFOK (Butt in Chair Fingers on Keyboard.) And I had to organize computer time around computer time--differentiating offline actual words on page vs. research, networking, communication, marketing, all that good stuff.

Now writing is a retreat. After a long stretch of writing, I have the energy to tackle other stuff. It's actually a subtle difference, because I always enter and then emerge from other worlds when I'm doing the novel thang. That stays the same. I guess it's one of those absence makes the heart grow fonder things. I don't take writing time for granted, therefore it feels more like a treat to be able to write. And I'm happy after I have my treat. It's as if writing suddenly got dipped in chocolate. It may also have possibly been dipped in nuts, but so far my flow still feels okay. I just hope it reads okay.

I'm looking forward to lots more treats tomorrow. I have a rare day off. Wee!

A Long Life

The boy is sad, so I brought home comfort food:  fried chicken.  I know, we're not doing it right because in order to be complete it should come with warm buns, corn, mashed potatoes and gravy.  But basically we're a bunch of carnivores around here, so we have the chicken and the rest is just extraneous.

A conversation between a mother and her teenage son at the register at work today:

The boy said,  "I know exactly what I want for my 101st birthday."

Mother: "If I'm alive, I'll get it for you."

He looked startled at the thought she might not be around.

"It's not out of the question," I offered.

The mother smiled at that.  "I suppose not."

"I plan to live to be over three hundred," the boy said.

"People don't live that long," she said.

I had to wonder, though.  Medicine is advancing at a rapid pace, though to us old people and to people with serious or terminal illnesses, it's not moving fast enough.  This kid is only in his mid-teens.

What will we discover in ten years?  Twenty?

What will our life expectancies be in a hundred years?

Dream on, boys.  The world is always changing.

November

It's Nanowrimo time again.  The whole month of November I'll be working on not one, but two novels.  Normally Nanowrimo is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth, but I'm stupid so I'll be working on two, with a goal of 100,000 words by the end of the month.

Is there any reason to suppose I can pull this off?  Not really.  I've done high word count months before, but I've also fallen on my face, and this year I've got a full time job.

Perfect time to up the stakes, says I.

What happens if I lose?  I hang my head in writerly shame.  And if I win?  I get a nice little certificate.  I've got a few of them laying around, and I'm rather proud of them.

The one thing I won't promise to do is to work equally on both books.  Whichever is working for me better on a given day, that's the one I'll be writing on.  Will I be able to keep them isolated in my head?  Will the voices stay true to each other?  Will Lonni ever be able to live in the rapture of true love?  I have no idea.  I think I'll be okay, though.  I've done multiple projects before.  And if it starts to not work, I'll just work on one book.

Hopefully that'll be my 'main squeeze'--the book I've got listed as my novel on my Nanowrimo profile.

If you too would like to try to write 50,000 words in a month (a pretty short novel) you're very welcome to join me.  I'm kzmiller.  Let's buddy up and do this.  Why?  Well I know why I do it.  'Cause I'm a writer.

You're probably crazy to want to.  Me--it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  

No, really.

It's what I do.

Leaves

I've been working on Masks again.  I have this giddy feeling that comes from visiting favorite places combined with new explorations.

It's a good thing that there is giddiness because I've received a ton of rejections this past week.  Editors must be reacting to the change of seasons and are clearing out all the leaves from their yards.

Speaking of which, most of our trees have all their leaves and only a few have started to turn.  That means I have to wait before I fertilize.  This is, however, oddly, a great time to do a bit of shaping and pruning if you have plants you need to reduce.  They'll go to sleep remembering that they're a smaller plant, and won't go as crazy in spring trying to regain the size you want to bring them down to.  Once the leaves turn and fall, though, the tree is essentially dormant and won't remember a thing except that it used to be X number of feet tall and wide and oh noes!  Must grow all the missing bits back!

Plants are kewl and weird.  Writing is kewl and weird.  Rejections ... best thing for me to do is to sweep them into a pile and send out the manuscripts again.

Crime and Punishment

Locally a woman who shot her husband four times is trying to use a defense that she was essentially in a disassociated state when she learned that he was having an affair.  Additionally, she wants to plead that she has a disorder that basically makes her react in an exaggerated fashion in order to gain attention.

I'm really uncomfortable with this and similar defenses.  What if someone is a sociopath--other people basically aren't real and the only thrill this person feels is when they hurt or kill others or break the rules by stealing millions, etc.  Maybe they're considered insane.  Does that excuse them from their crimes?  What if they don't know what they're doing?  Does that mean that they should go free?  What then does such a person have to do in order to be removed from society so that they don't commit more crimes?  

This all just makes me think about our justice system.  I don't think any system is perfect.  I think there are issues no matter what you do.  I am concerned about the fact that in our society, violent predators thrive (or seem to.)  Is it because violent predators have always thrived, is my perception skewed, or is it because in our relatively safe society, we've intellectualized crime and justice so much that we haven't kept up with dealing with the reality of it?  In the process of being fair, have we forgotten the ideal of protecting people from crime?

I have no answers, only more and more questions.

Changes

I've been crazy busy at work, and the rains they are a-comin'.

Woke to the sound of rain this morning.  Been a long time since that's happened.  Our torn-apart porch is just a painted skeleton in pieces, waiting for a carpenter/paleontologist to put it together somehow with parts missing and all.  Poor old Dakota is having trouble getting back in the house after we let her out.  Her hips twinge when she tries to duck under the framework and it's a scrabble to make it up the slanted cement steps that collapsed into rat tunnels ages ago.  Those steps are actually pretty neat-o, but I bet the insurance company wouldn't like it if we just used them and gave up on the whole porch project thingy.  So something has to happen.

I vote for magical things happening in the middle of the night and we wake up to it all done perfectly with red and white intermingled roses growing all over a trellis on it.

The chickens are doing really well.  The Wyandottes will go on sale soon, hopefully to go to good homes though I wouldn't be offended if someone just wanted a really nice (though work-intensive) holiday dinner.  They're neat birds, but we've got two roosters too many and they're starting to stress each other out.

So, not much going on, and yet lots going on.  It's been a full week, and I'm looking for a day off so that I can make some headway on the home front.  And writing?  All I can say is, thank goodness for one hour lunches.

Students Learn, Birds fly, and Writers Write

I helped (just a wee bit) with the girl's senior project.  She had to (with the help of her mentor) learn how to collect, catalogue, and preserve a plant collection.  I hadn't done anything like this since 2002-2003.  I'd forgotten how much fun it was.  

I remember many days just like today, soaked from the knees down under the not-really-adequate shelter of a red and white golf umbrella (the same one I used today, in fact) while my horticulture instructor led us through various gardens and rattled off common and latin names. I used a waterproof notebook and wrote in pencil.  I collected bags and bags of plants, which I then had to sort, re-identify, and press within a few hours or they'd be too wilted to be useful.  Sometimes the specimens kept okay overnight in the refrigerator.  I still have books and books of pressed plants.  Some are in better condition than others.  Anyway, although the girl is a bit overwhelmed, she seems to be learning, and having fun too.

This morning I let the chickens out into pouring rain.  They make different noises during different conditions that sometimes imply language to me.  "Cluck cluck, what weather we're having today!  A little rain is just fine, but this is going a bit far, don't you think?"

I gave them a handful of black oil sunflower seeds, their favorite, to help stave off the morning damp (soaking) and chill.  It definitely feels like autumn, with warm, beautiful days and the gentle storms.  Much as I love summer, autumn is special too, and I'm happy with my orange pumpkins and ripening corn.  The chickens don't seem to mind either.  They've been raiding the tomatoes.  So much for a chance at getting some ripe ones here at the end ... but it's just so much fun watching them disassemble fruit and raid the compost pile for bugs that I wouldn't dream of keeping them away.

Not that I could.  They can really fly now.  Trim their wings?  I could, but if I didn't want creatures flying around here, I wouldn't have gotten birds in the first place.  Besides, we still have rats, and this way my chicks-all-grown-up will be a little safer.

I hope everyone local is enjoying a cozy, rainy day.  I'll be programming, and writing.  Tomorrow it's back to the day job, so I'm hoping to really make this day count.

News of the blue&white, black&white, and green&white

The boy painted (nearly) the entire house!!

In other news, a story of mine got held-onto (again, still, or something like that) for final selection for a magazine.  It makes me happy.  I should know in a couple of months if the story will be in or out.

In the garden:

Autumn has arrived on the hill, announced not so much by leaf-fall, colors, or even the scent in the wind but by powdery mildew.  To fight this dastardly disease, you can spray, prune, or both.  (I recommend both, but prune at minimum.)  Removing diseased leaves not only helps slow the spread of the disease, but allows more airflow into the plant.  Powdery mildew likes moist, warm conditions to grow.  Pruning takes away some of the moisture.  Most people notice it on their squashes first, but keep an eye on those grapes.  Now is a fine time to reduce your grape canopy--before problems set in--to help protect your ripening grapes from all kinds of fungal problems.

Ex-Siding Developments

Our siding has some rotten places.

I discovered this when I prepped to paint.  I went up with caulking, started injecting ... and found that a few hand-sized places were essentially painted veneer with sponge-like wood underneath.  I stopped caulking immediately, realizing that I was basically trying to glue together sawdust under a thin coat of wood held together with paint.

After a lot of tapping and testing, we've found all the bad spots, so we'll replace the siding in those areas and paint them while we still have dry weather.  I'm disappointed that we won't have the painting done in time to beat the incoming wet weather, but that's okay.  Another dry spell will come along.  

Eventually.

I hope.

That's both dry and above freezing.

The good news is the vast majority of our siding is surprisingly sound.  Yay!  I'm looking forward to how the house will look when it's all done, and I'll sleep a little easier knowing that we'll be in good shape to weather the next long stretch of years.  All in all, the house really is getting into really good shape.  When I look back at how it was, both home and property, and how it is now, I'm amazed.  

It's hard to realize how far we've come when I discover a problem like this, until I start to think about how major some of our problems were (like my office flooding) compared to what they are now (a little bit of rot that will only take a few hours to deal with.)

I think we're going to be more than okay.  I think this house is turning out great.

Painting ... the House

Normally when I say I'm painting, I mean on canvas or watercolor paper.  This time it's the exterior of our house.

But you know, the finesse-stuff is kinda all the same.  Sure, I'm not going to put a mural on the side of the house or anything (though I'm tempted to put up the occasional 1/4" ladybug here and there like little physical Easter eggs) but paying attention to brush stroke and line is still the same.  The main thing that's different is structure.  I don't have to worry too much about the canvas/paper/ground on a painting.  Prepping surfaces like that for the main event is really pretty easy.  On the house, we have to wash, and scrape off flaking paint, and fill in those little holes that bugs occasionally make in siding.  

It's looking really nice.  I like it, anyway.  And it feels like a familiar task, even though I've never done it.  Sure, I've done the inside walls, but never the outside except for some trim touching-up I did at our prior home.  I'm comfortable with this work, like I've done it a lot.

By the end, I will have done it a lot, I guess.  It's a big house.  Maybe when I'm done, we'll have a grand re-opening or something.  Toast the accomplishment.  Speaking of which, here's a big thank you to my son, who has done most of the work this time.  Did I just say most? you ask.  Yep.  I've had to work, and he's taken up the brush and roller in my place.  Thanks, kiddo.  I very literally couldn't have done this without you, especially with the rainy season looming.

Yay boy, yay painting, yay new-looking house.

Courtesy, Part 2

Some people, when they return stuff, unintentionally give me a clear picture of their house.  Two cases in point recently--two sets of sweats covered in dog and cat hair, and the sweatpants that had been through the wash were hairier than the rest.  The green had a kind of roan or frosted look.  The other case were camo-hunting pants coated in dog hair, with less near the waist band and a ton around the cuffs.  In the camo-pants situation, I had a striking image of the person trying the pants on one leg at a time on avocado carpet with a good quarter inch thick of dog hair felted into the surface.  Am I psychic?  You decide. 

Anyway, when you need to return clothes that don't fit, bear in mind:

If the merchant can't resell them because they've been washed or covered in dog/cat hair or sweated out/smell like perfume/smell like you've been in a cigar bar all night, you're basically asking them to eat the cost of the clothes because you made a mistake.  They usually won't get a credit from the manufacturer.  If the clothes are in good enough condition to hang back on the shelf, though, the merchant will be happy to accommodate you.

In marginal economic times, it doesn't take long before merchants have to decide whether to accommodate errors in size-choice (which we all make, and is a courtesy on their part) or to decide whether to keep their doors open.  Returns are built into business plans, but it's not hard to see how increased returns, or just normal rates of return when the business is struggling due to greatly decreased sales, could kill a store that managed to survive up until this point.

I do understand that lots of people don't really care if the little clothing boutique dies or their local drug store closes ... but they better not complain that the only places still open are Fred Meyer and Walmart.  And on the other side of the table--the best way to ensure you'll be able to return clothes that don't work for you is to take good care of them.  More and more businesses are refusing to take back stuff that's been misused.  They simply can't afford to take the hit anymore.

The exceptions, of course, are obvious manufacturing defects.  The manufacturers make good on those.  

Courtesy

Courtesy is ...

When a toilet seat you've purchased two weeks ago breaks when you sit on it, it's polite to clean it before you return it to the point of purchase.

At least wipe off the drippy stuff and the little curly hair.

Mother, Son

I'm sicker today, with a long work week ahead.  Wish me luck.  The good news is that the rest of the fam is getting better.

The boy was particularly sick last night.  I stayed up, watching while he slept.  I haven't been that worried about him, or felt the need to do that, since he was about half his current size.  I expect as he goes out into the dangerous world, I'll worry about him even more.  A rational part of me understands that any sense of safety and security I feel or feel that he has while he's in our house is false security.  Still, it's a peaceful feeling, and one I'm sure I'll miss when he leaves home.

At the same time I'm excited to see what he does with his life when he's completely on his own.  This is the one area that I think he worries more than me--I think he fears he'll flounder.

I think he'll be brilliant.  Not immediately.  Even the brightest, most motivated of us had to start with uncertainty, with little or no experience, with little or no confidence.  I know I judged my own first steps into the 'real world' really harshly, comparing myself endlessly to what my parents had achieved during the various stages of their lives.  Even the way they started out, with little or nothing, left me in awe, because they escaped Communism and survived in a nation without a good grasp of English, never mind employment qualifications.

The boy has to jump some hurdles I never had to face at his age.  I think, if anything, that'll make him a better, stronger person than me in the long run.  And that's a great thing.  My DH and I had always hoped that our kids would be stronger, faster, smarter, and more adaptable than we are.  I don't think a person like that can be patched together with genetics and upbringing (though those things help.)  I think a person has to make themselves, to become the adults that they hope to be.

That's all fine and good, but last night, watching his quick, shallow breaths as he slept uneasily with a hard fever, I wanted to protect, and help, and shelter him.  That won't ever go away.  He'll always be my son.

The Bright Side

I'm at the library doing writing research-y kind of stuff. Coming down with a cold. Feeling disheartened about the whole marketing thing. But I love to write. I will always love to write.

I finished writing a short story yesterday and it felt great. I was all smiles all over the house, practically farting happy faces that floated around like soap bubbles.

It's a beautiful day, and I have time to write this evening. Getting snurky and my throat hurts? So what. Marketing is hard? Tough. I can make myself some tea, settle on the bed and immerse myself in story.

I have a very good life.

The Business of Work

The house has been needing an overhaul for a long time, and we've finally been able to put some serious work into it.  The boy is prepping my office for reconstruction. I've been refinishing some of our badly-neglected woodwork like the window seat and windowsills.  The girl and my DH are keeping the rest of the chores up while this happens.

I've been trying to introduce the boy to the concept of an eight hour work day.  He hasn't gotten it yet.  Fortunately, I've got three days off in a row next week, so I'll be able to supervise more realistically--letting him know when his breaks and lunch fit in, helping him stay on task without needing a step-by-step breakdown, helping him learn how to be self-directive and learning to pay attention to details.  He's already getting better.  Areas I've asked him to clean out have needed only a little touch-up.  Only one spot really needed serious work after he'd cleaned it, but that was only because he didn't listen to instructions (using chemicals instead of clean water to prep an area for refinishing, so I had to wash it again.)

He's growing up fast, and I think he'll start to realize his own progress and grow even faster when he learns how to learn.  

This is a really rewarding time to be a parent.  I'd like to take pride in creating a functional human being, but I can't take credit for very much except some rudimentary teaching, but even that ... in so many ways, he's created himself.  I just gave him a few materials, and away he went.  

If only the house could clean itself over time ... hmm.  That gives me a story idea.

Squash Heaven

I made a yummy soup today because I had a bunch of squash of reasonable size in my garden.  Finally!

Here's the recipe.  Warning--these are Kami-style instructions.  I don't usually measure very much.  

Kami's Squash & Potato Soup

4-6 average summer squash

4 medium potatoes

3 tbsp butter

about 3 tbsp flour

water

2 cups milk (at least 1 percent though I guess it might turn out okay with skim--2 percent or whole will make a richer soup)

a dollop (a tsp or tbsp) of olive oil (optional)

dill, salt, pepper and garlic to taste

optional: 1-2 dashes each cumin, ground allspice, ginger

optional: grated cheddar cheese, bacon bits and/or sour cream (or yogurt) for garnish

In a medium or large sauce pot, roughly cut up the squash and potatoes, add water until they're just barely covered.  (Make sure you have plenty of room to add the milk/roux later--if you don't, use a larger sauce pot.)  Bring to boil, then turn down to a simmer.  Add olive oil if you want, salt and pepper.  Simmer until potatoes are soft.  (Do not drain the water!  It's part of the soup.)  

In a small sauce pot (must hold at least 2 cups liquid comfortably!) melt the butter.  Add flour in small amounts until there's a somewhat crumbly texture when stirred, but it settles into a molten puddle after a moment.  If you add too much flour, add a small amount of butter, but don't stress about the texture too much--it's not terribly important.  Cook over low heat until the flour begins to brown.  (For more detailed instructions, look up roux in cookbooks.)  The scent should be rich, like buttery biscuits.  Remove from heat.  While stirring, add the milk, and then return to heat and turn up to medium.  If there are large lumps, use a whisk to break them up.  Bring slowly to a boil, stirring constantly (as you would making pudding on the stove--avoid letting a bunch thicken at the bottom because it'll start to brown and then burn.)  The milk/roux mix should reach peak thickness when it starts to bubble.  

Add the thickened milk/roux to the water/squash and potatoes and stir.  Since both are hot, the soup should remain at or quickly return to a simmer.  Add dill, garlic, and more salt and pepper.  You may use the optional seasonings instead, or in addition to the dill and garlic.  Taste.  The soup may require more salt than you anticipate because of the unseasoned roux, but don't give in to temptation and add a whole bunch of salt at once.  Come into the flavor a pinch or two at a time, and be sure to cleanse your palate--that much tasting can wear your tongue out and you can make this much too salty on accident.  (One fix for salty soup is to add more potatoes --it's best to let the soup cool on the side, boil the extra potatoes until they're soft, drain, and then add them in.)

Garnish with cheese and/or bacon bits and/or sour cream and/or yogurt.  

Other fine touches/variations:  

You can brown some onion, then add the potatoes and summer squash to the hot pan and let them mingle for a few minutes before adding the water.  This works nicely with celery as well, and celery/onion combo.

Paprika, sour cream and fresh chives make a very dressy garnish.

You can substitute the potatoes with cauliflower for a really nice change of texture and taste.

Celery salt works nicely in this soup too.

Fattening addition--substitute some of the milk with a little heavy cream.

Note:  The roux can take a while to make.  By the time it's done, the potatoes and squash should start to fall apart nicely, leaving only small chunks by the time you combine them with the roux/milk.  I think the chunks are wonderful, but if you want, you could easily turn this into a smooth puree.

Long days, and darkness comes sooner

We had a big day today, the boy, the girl and I.  At the end it doesn't seem like that much, but we're all pooped.  We barely got through it all--as the season turns the days grow noticeably shorter.  It already smells like autumn.

We got a shovel, bought three automotive belts on two trips (and returned two,) got a toilet part, and a shovel.

We installed the correct belt (finally) on the rototiller so that I could prep for leeks and kohlrabi (I know, I know, I'm about a month late.)  I managed to condition soil in a 20'x20' plot, which is a nice start, before it got too dark to work.  

I got the part into the toilet so that we'll have no more ghost flushes several times an hour.  Ah, silence.

And the boy and I cut down a not-insubstantial tree, both to thin our woods (for health, the tree was sick) and for firewood.  I'll mark more trees for thinning/firewood sometime in the next few days, with strict instructions not to cut them down w/o my supervision (with cell phone in hand in case there's an accident.)  One that I'm hesitating on has dead tips of branches all over it and dropped all around it on the ground, but it appears to be recovering.  It's a very nice-sized tree, so I would hate to lose it, but if in infects the others, well, I'll be a lot more sad.  I'll try to discover what ails it, but these things are notoriously tough to do.

Tomorrow will be another long day of hard labor, and then in the evening, writing!  But now, to bed, and my half-hour of reading.  My latest book:  How Not to Write a Novel.  I borrowed it from the library, and I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Your Police Force and You

I had an interesting discussion with a coworker of mine yesterday that got me thinking.

I believe that high school children should be taught:

About arrest and powers of arrest--not just mentioned, but they should be tested on it.

About rights and responsibilities while communicating with police officers--everything from a meeting them on the street to arrest.  Not just Miranda rights stuff, but practical advice and steps they can take to avoid injury and legal issues.

About police work, especially things like duty-to-act, use of force, and securing an area that may not be intuitively obvious, and will affect what will happen to you when police are on the scene.

And especially about personal safety when in a situation where there are police officers called to the scene.

I don't care about creating obedient little citizens who do everything a police officer says.  I don't think anyone wants that.  But I do care about people understanding enough about what police work is about to handle themselves--not just from the rights/responsibility standpoint, but safety.  I don't expect the classes to teach how to be safe in every situation where a uniform appears, but a few added percentage points on the grand scale of survivability would be nice.  After all, we're not perfectly safe from predatory humans, or car accidents--but self-defense awareness and defensive driving will give you an edge.

This is in response to an article about a man who was shot by police.  Regardless of whether this is deemed a 'good shoot' or not or whether he believed the officer was a bad guy disguised as a policeman or not ... the man is dead.

 I want my kids, and all kids, to have all the information they need to make an informed choice.  Maybe they will make the same choices, and be at risk from the people sworn to protect them, even die because of bad policing or because a bad guy impersonated a police officer.  But I want them to have choices--real choices, options, knowledge, and an understanding of the consequences of the choices they make.  I don't want them to die at the hands of a good police officer simply because they didn't understand how policing works, or chose to believe in a fantasy where all cops are bad ...

Which reminds me of an aside.  There are people who seem to believe that they have unlimited rights on their own property, including using a gun to warn off a police officer who is trespassing on their property.  (I'm not saying that this is what happened, though many commentators seem convinced that the pastor had every right to carry and even draw a gun on a police officer because he was on his property.)  Of course we don't have unlimited rights on our own property.  Child abuse, spousal abuse, kidnapping, rape, torture ...   We don't have the right to do anything we want in our own homes, and police have to be able to deal with investigating disturbances somehow while infringing on as few rights as possible.  That interplay is not as simple as some people would want you to believe.  They may not understand, or not want to understand why situations like this aren't easy to judge, even if we knew exactly what happened.  I don't believe anyone, including the officer involved, knows (and no one may ever know) what went wrong.  

Anyway, it's not too hard to understand why education is so crucial.  When someone collapses in cardiac arrest, are you more likely to be able to perform CPR when you've already learned how to do it, or, not knowing CPR, will you be able to do it while the 911 dispatcher tries to explain it to you on speakerphone?  It's not rocket science, but ...

When you're scared or angry, you usually can't choose, or learn, or even think very well.  You react.  The best thing to do is to have your choices already made--to know in advance what to do.  Hopefully, when the adrenaline is flowing, and all you can hear is the rushing in your ears, you'll remember your class lessons.

When you're pulled over for a traffic stop, do you:

A. Get your driver's license and registration out.

B. Get out of the car and approach the officer.

C. Get out your gun or other weapons so that they're in plain sight.  Be sure to wave them around so the officer sees them, and refuse to cooperate until you see an official badge and picture ID.

D. All of the above ...