Neuromancer by William Gibson is one of my favorite novels. It was published in 1984 but I didn’t get around to reading it until 1990. By then its companion novels in the “Sprawl Trilogy” (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) were out and those I gobbled up straight away. While the book is best known for popularizing the term “cyberspace” and for its playful and inventive speculations on computer technology and artificial intelligence, it also, like the brilliant 1982 film “Blade Runner”, works as neo-noir. For one thing the plot is an elaborate crime caper not so different from a Donald E. Westlake heist story or a John le Carré espionage tale. For another, the protagonist Case is a dissolute drug addict with a criminal past. Molly, his eventual partner in the escapade, is a freelancer doing muscle work for a variety of shady underworld types. Both characters are fatalistic and world-weary, willing to take on a dangerous task for the chance of a big payoff. Noir, ultimately, is about outlook and atmosphere and is concerned more with motive and character than action or plot elements. Case and Molly are a classic noir duo—loners thrown together through no choice of their own, sexually but not romantically involved, secretive to the point of paranoia, and willing to sell out their employers if something better comes along. The dystopian near-future so beautifully rendered by Gibson’s dazzling prose (“Blade Runner” achieves the same thing visually) infuses the whole story with an atavistic longing for better times.

Re-reading the novel these last few weeks, twenty-five years later, I’m struck by its vividness, clarity, and penetrating insight into corporate branding, advertising, media saturation, and propaganda. Gibson’s vision of a vast world-wide interconnected computer network which he called “the matrix” and his description of cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination” are still surprisingly fresh despite the intervening decades. Much of the tools of Case’s trade—keyboards, data disks, electrodes, adapter plugs, etc.—are anachronisms but they don’t spoil the effect. The language is amazingly supple, particularly the imagined street slang (reminiscent of Anthony Burgess’s “Nadsat” in A Clockwork Orange) and the fanciful hacker or “data cowboy” argot. His vision of weakened governments kow-towing to an international corporate elite, shared by many post-modern writers, only gets closer to reality with each passing year.

Literature may be from a particular time and place, but if it’s good, it will still work years later. No one goes whale-hunting in sailboats any more, but Moby-Dick‘s foray into madness remains relevant. Armies don’t fight with swords, shields, and spears these days but the Iliad‘s probing of the nature of heroism still resonates. Gibson’s debut novel was the standard-bearer of the short-lived “cyberpunk” movement, but his themes of alienation and the loss of individual freedoms will never go out of style.

The forecast said eight inches could come in a day or two and that was enough to get us out the door. We are snow-starved here in the State of Jefferson and my ski buddy and I could not take another day of hoping for a big storm. “If it snows, we goes” is our motto and it was time to put up or shut up. Between pal Miller and myself, that’s a tall order. We left Yreka Monday, a week ago today, about eleven in the morning and got to Elko in Nevada over eight hours later. It never fails to amaze me how vast the arid West is. We took CA 89 through the Cascade volcanic plains with their rich timberlands and US 395 to Reno in the dry country on the east slope of the Sierras. Then it was the seemingly endless trek across the basin-and-range topography that defines the Silver State. From Elko to Salt Lake City the next day was a more leisurely three-plus hour jaunt and we found cheap lodging in Midvale. Our motel was minutes away from Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons which are home to Brighton, Solitude, Alta, and Snowbird ski resorts. That night we ate and drank at the excellent Bohemian Brewery walking both ways in the surprisingly balmy weather. SLC had record highs the days we were there. Utah has goofy alcohol laws and you can only get “3.2 beer” on tap. For some reason Utah measures alcohol by weight, not volume, and thus you have 4% abv. In the end that was OK as I like quaffing multiple pints.

Alta was our primary destination and our over-anxiousness had us there an hour before opening the next morning. About six inches had fallen and we were ready for some fun. Explosions from the dynamiting of cornices and other avalanche hazards is pretty common at ski areas but the thundering booms coming down from above unnerved me anyway. The lifts loaded about 9:15 and we were off. I noticed the altitude right away as the top is over 10,000 feet. I had a hard time catching my breath and I also got a little vertigo from the steep pitches the lifts raced up. I’m just a small-town boy these days—I haven’t been to a big-time resort in decades. The size and scale at Alta were dazzling and I got a bit overwhelmed. It was tough going as the runs are challenging and my partner on the slopes is aggressive and adventurous. I only fell twice and one was in a narrow off-piste chute that I should have avoided. Falling was the safe thing to do! The other was just a little slip on some hardpack. In neither case was I hurt and my skis stayed on both times. It was warmer than I expected and I was over-dressed and sweated quite a bit. I was soon dehydrated from the exertion and took a long break but managed to get it back together and catch a few more runs. The snow was a little wet and heavy much like we are used to in California and Oregon but there were plenty of fun patches and the ever-elusive “freshies.” Much of my first day in the Cottonwoods is a blur, though. I worked hard and got worn out but it was all good as I was ready as ever the next morning.

We decided on Brighton as the climbing temperatures and lack of new snow in the forecasts meant we should avoid the steep stuff. I can only do the advanced/expert runs when there is a soft layer on top. Rather, they are easier then and thus I have more fun. On groomed slopes I stick to mostly intermediate and look for spots in the trees where there’s exploring to do. I don’t like the tight places and look for openings. I struggled with vertigo again and even a bit of acrophobia on the fast chairs and once again amazingly steep climbs but taught myself to overcome it by slow breathing and looking straight ahead. Eventually I could ride up and down without gripping the bar in fear! By the end of the trip it was a piece of cake and I had fully adapted. The third day we took a break and drove over to Park City for some sightseeing. The Wasatch Brewery was an obvious goal and we checked out the fancy and expensive galleries and shops. The snow cover is far lower than normal and locals told us over and over what a lousy ski season it was. We of course had nothing back home so it was great to be able to ski at all. It was obvious all over the mountains that the coverage was poor and the depths nowhere near where they should be. The Wasatch Range is amazing, especially from the west side as the relief is spectacular. From the flats of SLC it looks like the mountains jump straight up. Unfortunately the dun-colored hillsides are ugly and the city itself suffers, as do the other towns, looking drab and forlorn in the wide-open shrubby landscape. I’m biased, I know, but the barren highlands of California have prettier shades and more greens!

We skied Brighton again on the fourth day and found lots of fun spots in among the aspen groves. The groomed runs were smooth and fast and I got in lots of relaxed turns. Both days there were sunny and visibility was great. That first day at Alta was overcast and we struggled with the flat light which made it hard to read the slope and pick out a line. I worked on trying to ski the lines the mountain gave me rather than making my own way down. My goal was to use the terrain to control my speed and not just my turns. That worked well on the gentler slopes but was harder on the steeper stuff. Nonetheless I had a lot of fun and got to play around with different things. My new skis are more maneuverable and forgiving than my old ones but tend to chatter and run off-line on the straightaways so I had to stay upright and balanced all the time which is good practice for powder days. Another storm was brewing for Monday but it looked to be less of an event than the one that brought us out so we decided to pack it in and head home. Heavy rain pelted us on the second day as we returned to California and high winds earlier had littered 89 with shattered trees. Fortunately the crews had been out working hard and the road was clear but it was a long haul in the at times blinding downpour. My buddy did all the driving which made it easy on me but it is still hard to sit in a metal box for hours at a stretch. The journey was not completely satisfying as we got no taste of the famous Utah powder but it certainly was enjoyable to get in some real skiing. I expect we’ll give it another shot next month as the locals told us that March often has big storms. We scouted more lodging options and feel confident we can find a comfortable spot whenever we go. Of course while we were gone our local park got nearly two feet and re-opened! I hope to take a trip there as well real soon. Perhaps the snow gods are finally answering our prayers.

Here’s photo of part of the Wasatch from the top of Preston Peak at Brighton:

Not bad, eh?

I’m the world’s worst fisherman. I catch my hook on logs or haul in weeds. The lures get stuck in bushes and the bait gets eaten without me knowing. My line always seems to get tangled and the reel makes funny noises half the time I’m working it. If I had to fish to eat I’d starve. Good thing there’s SC Guide Service. My pal Scott Caldwell, owner/operator of said service, promised me a fishing trip as a retirement present. I finally took him up on it and we fished the Upper Klamath yesterday for steelhead. Scott is one of those hook, line, and sinker wizards. He gets the fish to bite and then talks the damn thing into the boat. Here’s the inimitable Mr. C at the helm of his drift boat:

It was a beautiful if somewhat unseasonable day. Too warm for January, that’s for sure. Regardless, I nailed a couple of really nice ones. Scott had me working one bank where there was a little eddy and I kept missing the spot with my casts, just coming up short of where I wanted to be. I finally launched a good one that arced around the spot and just downstream of it and all of a sudden I got that great WHAM! that steelies are famous for. Even I couldn’t miss that. When the fish jumped out of the water right after I hooked him I almost fell out of the boat I was so excited. He kept squirming around after we landed him while Scott was trying to take a picture but somehow we managed. Later, further downstream, I got number two who was hiding behind a big rock. He fought hard and Scott had to move the boat to get a good angle and finally he appeared in the riffle, flashing his colors while he struggled. He was a really hard one to get a handle on but we pulled it off. They sure are beautiful fish! You can only keep the hatchery-raised ones (the adipose fin is clipped so you know) and these were wild so we released them. I’ll have to catch some local lake trout if I want to make a meal!

Thanks again, Scott, for a great day on the river.

That’s numero uno.

And that’s numero dos.

There’s no snow here. Mount Ashland is reporting nine inches at the base (6338′) and thirty-two at the top (7500′). Can’t ski that. This is my local spot as the parking lot is only thirty-eight road miles north of my house. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s going to take two good storms, a foot or more of snow apiece, to run the lifts. It’s depressing. I got to hit the slopes twice right at the end of December and that’s it. We’ve been cold and dry or warm and wet here since then. Here’s a look at Mount Shasta Ski Park (5500′ to 6890′), fifty miles south of me:

Lack of snow accumulation isn’t just bad for skiers, it’s bad for everyone. Mountain snowpack melts in the spring and summer and fills our streams, lakes, and reservoirs. It recharges our aquifers. It doesn’t rain much at all from May through October and the people, plants, and animals need more and more water as the weather warms. By the end of the dry season the region is parched. And a tinderbox, as we’ve learned these last few summers. Winter rains and snow make life in the arid West possible and these unusual conditions are disturbing. Is it the impact of climate change? Or just a fluky stretch of weird weather? We know global temperatures are going up, that’s not arguable at this point. We can’t causally link every local event to worldwide changes, but those of us who live in rural, mountainous areas sense things are trending the wrong way. Overall that’s true, and it is well-documented over the last decade.

What’s a powder-hound to do? I could join an advocacy group, and I just might, but right now my thoughts are more selfish. I want to ski, damn it! These days my focus is eastward—to Utah—where they say they have The Greatest Snow on Earth. That’s not bragging. It is a copyrighted trademark. My ski buddy likes Alta and we are planning a trip out there as it looks increasingly like there will nothing here or at best a truncated season. Alta lies in the Cottonwood Canyons area of the Wasatch Range, home to Snowbird, Brighton, and Solitude as well. Alta is a skier-only resort, gets five hundred inches of snow annually, and is only minutes from Salt Lake City and environs where there is plenty of reasonably priced lodging. Sounds good to me! We are waiting for the next big storm to move in so I am obsessively watching the forecasts and reading ultra-nerd weather blogs. If it snows, we goes.

The crew came back early this morning to finish the job of removing our Douglas-fir. I got a nice sequence of the topping:

Just about to holler “timber!”

And there she goes! I love that these saw-meisters can fall a tree in a tight spot and land it where they want.

So that’s it. The tree was nearly forty years of age and was just too big for the site, not to mention the damage from the twig borers or whatever pest was attacking it. Here’s a shot of the growth rings on the stump:

I really hated to take out the big fella but it had to go and I’m happy it is done. The guys from Elite Rigging did a great job—neat and efficient. Check out the lovely pile of firewood they left:

I suppose it is more accurate to say “potential” firewood as it will have to season for a while and then I’ll have to split it up. I actually enjoy the splitting part. Chainsaws are scary. I’ve bucked up a few logs in my time and even felled a few small trees and those two-cycle beasts can do some serious work seriously fast. I’d just as soon leave them to the professionals and not slice through one of my body parts (I wear kevlar chaps when I use my saw!) or drop a tree on someone or something important. I’ve always loved trees and forests and I have a real appreciation for the folks who work in the woods or are part of that industry. So, hat’s off to foresters and timber fallers and log truck drivers and cat skinners and millwrights and all the rest who keep us supplied with timber products. Wood is the ultimate renewable resource and the vast coniferous forests of the West are not only our playgrounds but the guardians of our air, water, and soil. I don’t mean to sound like a Forest Service brochure, but in this age of fossil fuel frenzy and climate change it is good to remember the importance of our trees! And I also appreciate the efforts of those who work to protect those trees and conserve our resources for the future. Environmentalism and extraction ought not to be antagonistic notions but partners in an on-going effort to husband our earthly bounty. Now I really am sounding like a damn brochure!

Today is the Winter Solstice (3:03 p.m. PST) so say goodbye to Fall.

We are having Wes the tree guy (Elite Rigging) take out the big Douglas-fir in our backyard this weekend. Today he and his assistant Casey are limbing:

Tomorrow they will bring the bucket truck and finish the job. I hate to take down a tree but sometimes it has to be done. This one has dead branches near the crown, we figure it is tree borers. And the limbs touch the roof of the cottage and have to be cut back every year. The spot between the fence and the cottage is really too small for the tree and it is crowding the pear tree next to it. The shade it provides is not very useful in the hot summer due to its location—the box elder to the right is much better for that. The debris (cones and needles and small branches) clogs up the rain gutters and litters the yard. And Pseudotsuga menziesii is not exactly native to our location. It’s hot and dry and the hardpan soil makes it tough for anything but juniper. We’ve two ponderosa pines and an incense-cedar and even those guys need help in the summer. We planted a deodar cedar, Italian cypress, and a blue spruce over the years and they seem better adapted to the local climate. We’ve had to remove two black walnuts and two honey locust trees from the property as well. Just the usual on-going yard maintenance.

I’ll post an “After the Fall” tomorrow!

I’ve been looking for a standing desk. There are a lot of benefits to working while standing, mostly due to the fact that you are not sitting. I’m a pacer anyway and I have to get up and move around when writing or typing or net-surfing so a stand-up desk seemed like the thing for me. Unfortunately they can be expensive. I thought about taking an existing table and mounting it on some crates or cinder blocks, the classic college kid furniture solution, but couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the idea. About a week ago I had a flash of insight, one of those moments when the problem is instantly clarified in your mind, and the answer becomes obvious. It’s funny how sometimes you just need to ask a better question to get the right result. Instead of “where can I get a reasonably priced standing desk?” I asked “where do people do a lot of standing around by high tables?”. In bars, of course. Lots of pubs, bars, and lounges have tall tables that you stand at or sit on stools or long-legged chairs next to while sipping drinks and quaffing pints. It’s standard fare for those places. I’m not sure why, maybe bar patrons get drunker and stupider if they sit restaurant-style at conventional dining tables. Maybe the weird geometry makes customers thirstier. I don’t know. I do know that I spend enough time at my local pub that the high table is part of my social DNA. Soon after my burst of brilliance I got on Amazon, that mega-corp shopping site with tentacles everywhere, and searched for bar tables. I found a 42-inch high wooden table with a 36-inch square top for $125 bucks. Here it is:

Those are my brewing supplies underneath and to the right. Storage space is always at a premium. I don’t think this is the final configuration but it’s good enough to get started. I can put my laptop on there as well when I need to process words. When I stand with my elbows bent at ninety degrees (forearms parallel to the floor) they are about 44 inches high. I can lean comfortably forward and put my weight on the table top, or better yet, relax in a tai chi horse stance in front of either open side and my arms are at the right height for writing or typing. The top being a full yard square gives me lots of room:

This is in the small back room in my cottage which I have converted into my writing den. It doubles as my brewery, of course, that’s not going to change. My library in the main house with my desktop computer and wireless router and everything is too close to the kitchen and too distracting of an environment for me to focus and get my projects finished. Plus my lovely bride is used to me being out of her hair during the work week and now that I’m retired and home all the time I need to give her back the space she is used to. The cottage, which I’ve dubbed The House of Mark (or sometimes La Casita), will be my getaway. I’ve got a large room in there where I can do my workouts and I also have a conventional office chair and and standard size table when I need to sit and work. It was funny—I assembled the table in the big room and Sue came in to look at it and said “you sure it will fit through the hallway into the back?” Sure enough, she nailed it. There was no way to get the thing through the narrow doorways and past the refrigerator in the tiny connecting room. So, I took the legs off and re-assembled it in the back! The legs and top shipped in separate boxes and they gave you eight bolts with washers and nuts to secure them together. The bolts needed a 4 mm Allen wrench, which was in the kit, but the cheap brass heads wore down quickly and I thought I’d never get the the damn thing back together. Fortunately I had two stout wrenches in my bicycle gear that gave me more leverage and I found that a T25 torx head on my electric screwdriver could do much of the work as well.

Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday, will soon be upon us. I hope all of you enjoy safe travels and good times!

We got a pile of freebies when we attended NoirCon and we have SOHO Crime to thank for most of them. If you’re like me, you have an endlessly growing “to read” pile and I thought I’d let you know about a few of the new arrivals. One of the books in our bag was Henry Chang’s Chinatown Beat. Looks like this is the first in his Detective Yu series. Gary Disher’s Hell to Pay is next on the list, he’s an Australian crime writer. Next in alphabetical order is Leighton Gage’s The Ways of Evil Men, part of his Mario Silva series. The late Mr. Gage lived much of his life in Brazil where the stories are set. Timothy Hallinan checks in next with Crashed, the first of the Junior Bender series. The Danish duo of Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis close out the set with The Boy in the Suit Case, the first of the Nina Borg series. Like I said these were all freebies and that was very generous of the SOHO folks.

One of the other things we were treated to was a presentation by Bronwen Hruska, SOHO’s Publisher. She talked about the challenges of being an independent in a world dominated by the big corporations. She was quite interesting, intelligent, and charming, as was her Associate Publisher Juliet Grames. I got to meet them both, just enough to say hello, and was impressed by how much they loved their work and how passionate they were about promoting their stable of writers. (One of them was Irishman Stuart Neville who was kind enough to pose for a photo and autograph his debut novel The Ghosts of Belfast for me—that one I bought!). They focus on international mysteries and have authors from all over the globe. They publish up to ninety titles a year under the SOHO Crime imprint. Ms. Hruska was presented with the Jay and Deen Kogen Award for publishing excellence at Saturday’s banquet. Seems well-deserved!

I found a bunch of other write-ups about the events in Philadelphia. K.A. Laity did a four-part series on her blog and Carole Mallory contributed a story to Huffington Post. Pulp Curry’s Andrew Nette added his thoughts to his blog and Marshall Stein chipped in on the NoirCon site. Finally T. Fox Dunham shared his thoughts about his participation in the Existential Noir panel (he also linked to my post for OOTG). I certainly had a stimulating experience and its nice to know so did some of the other attendees. 2015 will be my Year of Noir as I intend to write my own rather than just read other people’s stuff and blog about it. I’ll be happy to loan out any of the books I mentioned above so drop me a line if you are interested. In fact, I’ve got heaps of noir books that deserve a wider audience. Expand your horizons and start reading more degenerate fiction!

It feels good to be back home in humble Yreka. The house is still standing and all the stuff still works (thank you, Otto, for tending things!). The leaves on the Japanese maple and the Liquidambar have turned to their autumnal hues of magenta and scarlet. The pointer on the thermometer outside dipped below freezing last night. It really is November. It was over 80ºF when we were in LA mere days ago! It’s pretty clear we’ve had some rain up here since we were gone, we sure needed it and we’ll need a lot more before the year ends. Living in what is close to a desert makes me appreciate rain even more than ever. Rain isn’t always a blessing, though. My friend Betty Rosen Ziff lives in Lomita, part of what Angelenos call the South Bay. We stayed with her and her husband Stuart on both sides of our journey and they have the misfortune of sitting on a parcel that floods when the rains come. A few years ago they were nearly wiped out—emotionally as well as financially—by the storms that hit SoCal. Some crappy engineering of the city’s storm drains, not to mention indifference by the powers-that-be, set them up for a huge, watery mess. And how about some proper disclosure from the previous owners, the real estate agents, the finance people, the title company, and the government inspectors who’ve got their paws all over the purchase of the home? Yeah, we all know about “caveat emptor” but our capitalist economy works better when ethics and honesty are part of transactions. So I’ll be tempering my prayers to the rain gods with “soft and gentle and a little at a time for my friends down south, please.” I’ve added the link to the Lomita Flood Relief Facebook page to my blogroll. They’ve got a lot of work ahead of them to convince the City and County that they have a responsibility to residents to properly channel the floodwaters. Seems obvious, I know, but unresponsive elected officials are the latest fashion. They’ve also got lots of work to do on their place to prepare for future storms, and are always on the lookout for smart, creative types who can imagine potential solutions that won’t require a small fortune to implement.

We were only gone for three weeks on this trip, which is about average for us. Seems longer, though, as we were quite road-weary yesterday and still recovering today. In 2001 we went overseas and were gone for eight weeks, and we did a ten-week trip in 2005 which was my entire summer vacation. So this one ought to have been easy. I think the uniqueness of the train experience (which was mostly great) and the unusual event we attended (NoirCon) made this trip more challenging. The Giants being in the World Series certainly added a level of anxiety—only fans as emotionally attached as we are can appreciate that. I refuse to say it was harder because we are both older, I prefer Bob Dylan’s “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” refrain from “My Back Pages” when thinking about aging. Travel, for me, has never been about just getting somewhere. I’ve always appreciated the transformative nature of journeying and seek to learn more about myself and grow in new and unexpected ways. These things don’t show up immediately as they need time to percolate and I’ll be musing on them over the next few months. Speaking of musing, here’s me in an apparently contemplative mood: I notice when I don’t smile I look grim. I was far from grim—I was relaxed, happy, and eager, in fact. We were just about to de-train in Chicago when Sue snapped this. I smile a lot actually so it’s odd to see myself with a neutral look. One of the things I came home with was twenty pounds of books. You can’t go to a literary event without accumulating more books! I’ve too many books as it is, integrating the new ones into the collection will take some time. Here’s a picture of my new acquisitions: That’s a signed hardcover first edition Walter Mosley on the upper left! “Easy” Rawlins is back at it in the mean streets of Los Angeles. Mosley is a remarkably versatile and accomplished author—crime fiction is only one of his specialties. The other hardcovers and the rest of the top row were all freebies. The bottom row were all purchases. I’m especially excited by the new Hard Case Crime (Samuel Fuller’s lost novel “Brainquake”) and the two in the middle from Jonathan Woods (“Bad Juju” and “A Death in Mexico”). Gutter Books, naturally, is also represented with the “Noir Riot” and “Trouble in the Heartland” collections. A surfeit of literary goodness!

I’m still moving. Being on Amtrak for nearly four days has set up a current in my cerebrospinal fluid that has me lurching westward even when I’m sitting still. I suppose I’ll get over it eventually. Meanwhile I’m dosing myself with simple molecules like CH3(CH2)OH. There are some perks to train rides: That’s a moonrise over the New Mexico badlands from the window in our compartment. Not bad for a quickie snap, eh? And we got a look at the Southern Rockies a little earlier: Yeah, I know, it’s far away. Hey, we were on a train. Did I explain that already? Most of the goddamn country is flatlands. Seriously. Iowa? Kansas? Illinois? Fucking flat. We Californians have no idea how flat the rest of the nation is. The train to LA was late so we got to go through the southern desert in the morning twilight instead of at night. Cajon Pass from the Victor Valley to San Bernandino was goddamn amazing! I was too excited to take pictures. Get your own lazy asses down there and check it out. I can’t do everything for you, fer chrissakes. Anyway, it was awesome. The Joshua Trees and yuccas to the east, the fault scarps and exposed cliff faces near the summit, the broad vistas of the San Gabriels as we descended west, it was just beautiful in that sparse, haunting way that only a brutally arid landscape can be. Speaking of brutal, the train tracks don’t discriminate. They take you alongside both the hardscrabble hillbilly shanties and the gleaming boulevards of manicured lawns in front of multi-million dollar developments. The trash strewn barrios and the neat suburban cul-de-sacs. The strip malls and the freight yards. The shiny, freshly-minted school sports complexes and the battered, abandoned warehouses of once-thriving commercial centers. If you want to see the great bifurcation of American society between those that have and are getting more versus those that don’t and are watching it slip away, get out of your cars and off your airplanes and ride the ‘trak. p.s. If anyone can tell me how to do subscripts in WordPress I’d love ya forever.