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Wednesday, September 12, 2018

The Wild and Hungry Times

The Wild and Hungry Times

By Patricia Russo


It was a gray day in summer. (Gray days were not confined exclusively to winter). The wind, sharp as a rasp, laden with grais of calcite abraded from the ruins of the Resennan lighthouse (the people of the coast has dismantles most of it, using the stones to repair walls and outbuildings, leaving the sailors to their own devices – but them sailors had been left to their own devices ever since the last lighthouse keepers had departed, taking the lamp oil with them) (delete comma.) blew strogly from the north. The north winds were the worst. His father, sitting by the fire, said nothig. His mother looked grim. His sister, pretending to be busier than she was, wiping her son’s chin when the boy’s face was clean enough, taking the spoon out of her daughter’s hand and stirring the porridge in her bowl after the child had already started to eat it, muttered, « it’s gray today. »

« It is, » Peero said. The kerchief tasted of old sweat; that bastard Bairen had probably borrowed it, as he had borrowed so many things, sneaking it bacl into Peero’s clothes-chest before slipping away. Peero supposed he should be glad Bairen had returned it at all.

The Wild and Hungry Times. Photo by Elena

Baby brother Bairen, with his hooded eyes and his liar’s tongue. He had started filching as a toddler – scraps of food, their mother’s thimble, a button from their father’s coat. And when he was caught, he would laugh, even when father beat him laugh like the very devil, though his eyes remained cold. As he grew older, he stopped being caught so easily; eventually he stopped getting caught at all. But this time he had been seen, in a public place, ripping a chain from a woman’s neck, then dragging her off who knew wheere, to do who knew what. The shame of it had struck his father speechless, until Peero had gone to the old man and said, « I will find the woman and make compensation to her. »

His sister stopped fussing with spoons and bibs and stray bread crumbs. « You don’t have to go today. »

« And what if it’ gray tomorrow, as well? »

« You can wait. »

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.

Being wild. Photo by Elena

Overlooked Deductions

Overlooked Deductions

Forty Easily Overlooked Deductions



Expenses for everything from contact lenses to dry cleaning could help you lower your tax bill. IRS regulations allow many personal and business expenses to be deducted from your gross income before you figure your tax liability. The more you can substract , the more you reduce the amount of your taxable income. Here’s a list from Ernst & Young, one of the nation’s largest accounting firms, of 40 deductions that are easily overlooked.

1. Apprisal Fees: When paid to determine value of a charitable gift or extent of a casualty loss.
2. Breach of Employment: An employee who paid damages because he or she broke a contract can deduct the damages.
3. Business Gifts: No more than a certain amount to any one person per year.
4. Casualty Loss: An unreimbursed loss exceeding $100 is deductible when the loss exceeds 10 percent of your adjusted gross income. This also applies to losses from theft.
5. Cellular Telephone: When used in your business, or required by your employer, the cost of the phone may be deductible, plus phone calls made.
6. Charitable Expenses for Volunteer: Twelve cents a mile for use of your car, plus out-of-pocket spending for such items as uniforms and supplies, but the value of your time is not deductible.
7. Commission on Sale of Assets: Brokerage or other fees to complete a sale are taken into acount when you figure your profit or loss, generally by being added to your cost for the asset.
8. Contact lenses: You can also include the cost of eyeglasses or cleaning solution.
9. Contraceptives: Prescriptions, including birth control pills, are legitimate medical items. So, too, are abortions.
10. Contributions to Public Parks: Help funding a park or recreation site can qualify as a charitable gift.

Overlooked deductions can help buy a new dress. Photo by Elena

11. Disabled Person’s Job Expenses: A normal commute isn’t deductible, but getting to a job for occupational therapy is deductible as medically related transportation.
12. Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment: Includes measls and lodging when staying at a treatment center, but not programs to quit smoking.
13. Educational Expenses: To improve or keep up your skills at your current job, but not to prepare for a new occupation.
14. Employment Agency Fees: Whether you get a new job or not; but not if you’re looking for your first job or switching occupations. Résumé and travel costs also are deductible.
15. Foreign Tax: If you pay tax to another country on income from foreign investments, you can get a deduction or credit for those payments when figuring your US tax.
16. Gambling Losses: Only up to the amount of reported winnings.
17. Guide Dog: For the blind or severely impaired. Include dog’s food, care.
18. Hearing Aids: Includes batteries.
19. Home Computer Depreciation: If it’s used in your business or to manage investments, or if your employer requires you to have it.
20. IRA Trustee’s Fees: Administrative charges (but not brokerage commissions) when billed and paid separately. But not when taken from the IRA balance.
21. Labor Union Dues: Deductible by members and by workers required to pay dues though not union members.
22. Laundry Service On a Business Trip: You needn’t pack for an entire trip.
23. Moving Expenses: When changing jobs or starting work for the first time. To be eligible, new job must mean a 50-mile or longer extra commute if you don’t move.
24. Premium on Taxable Bonds: Investors who buy taxable bonds for more than face value can gradually deduct the excess each year they own the bond.
25. Medical Transportation: If driving, you can claim nine cents per mile plus tolls and parking.
26. Mortgage Prepayment Penalty: Charge for early mortgage payoff is deductable.
27. Orthopedic Shoes: The extra amount over the cost of normal shoes.
28. Penalty for Early Withdrawl of Savings: When a certificate of deposite is cashed in before maturity a penalty is deductible as an adjustment to income.
29. Personal Property Tax on Cars: Include licensing fees when based on the value of the car.
30. Points on a Home Mortgage: Deductible as a lump sum when paid on a loan to buy or remdoel a main residence, deductible gradually over the life of the loan when paid to refinance a mortgage.
31. Property Tax After Real Estate Is Sold: Buyers and Sellers must allocate a year’s tax, so a buyer can get a deduction for the part of the year after a sale even though the seller paid the property tax.
32. Safe-Deposit Rental: When box stores stock certificates or other taxable investment documents.
33. Self-Employment Tax: Adjustment allows those who work for themselves to reduce taxable income by half their self-employment Social Security and Medicare tax.
34. Special Schooling: For the mentally or physically impaired to help them deal with their disability, even though the day included regular education. Meals and lodging may also be deductible.
35. State Disability Fund Payments: California, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington State, Alabama, West Viriginia and other states’ workers can deduct mandatory payments to disability and unemployment funds as state income tax.
36. Support for a Visiting Student: Up to a certain amount per month in housing, food, and support for live-in exchange student is deductible, as long as you receive no reimbursement.
37. Tax Preparation: Accountant’s fees, legal expenses, tax guides, and computer programs.
38. Uniforms and Work Clothes: When required for work, but not suitable for ordinary wear.
39. Wig: When is essential to mental health, but not when used only to enhance appearance.
40. Worthless stock: Claimed as a capital loss in the year it first has no value (Less than one cent per share generally is considered worthless).

Note: Some deductions are limited. For earnings, only the portion of tota medical expenses exceeding 7.5 percent of of your adjusted gross income is deductible. « Miscellaneous » deductions, including most employment-related and investment expenses, are deductible only to the extent they exceed 2 percent of adjusted gross income.

A Keyhole in Time

A Keyhole in Time

By James Powell (excerpt)



… Voyce smiled at the young man’s confusion. “No, of course you don’t understand. Keyholes in time won’t be discovered for another five centuries.”

Hogarth giggled and sat down on an arm of his easy chair. “Yeah, sure. Keyholes in time.”

‘John’s great-great0grandfather found the first one,” said Mary Voyce proudly.

“On a picnic,” said Voyce. “While the others hunted wildflowers and morels he chose to wander off alone. The day was humid. Suddenly he felt a curious puff of dry air against his cheek. He raised his hand and felt it on his palm. Putting his eye to the little breeze, he saw spread out before him ancient Ninevah, “that rose-red city half as old as time,” as the poet tells us.”

“Petra, dear,” said Mary Voyce. “The “rose-red city”, et cetera, was Petra, not Ninevah.”

John Voyce’s look was only momentarily severe. He gave er a grateful smile. “Correction duly noted, my dear.” Then he turned back to Hogarth. “For the next few yars, Great-great-grandfather roamed the countryside palm vertical, searching for more keyholes in time. They weren’t all that rare once you knew where to look. Ancient battle sites were a good place. In fact he once considered a compliation, Voyce’s Keyhole Guide to the Battlefields of the American Civil War, that would doubtless have made his fortune. Instead…”

“Strange, isn’t it, Raymond?” asked Mary Voyce. “Without the Civil War few of your male contemporaries would know any history at all?”

A keyhole in time. Image by Elena.

“Instead,” repeated Voyce firmly, “Great-great-grandfather kept the keyholes a secret, sharing them only with other seruoys observers of the slow unraveling of the daily life of the past. They soon discovered that for every keyhole there was a door, an entry into the past. And so the science of yester-engineering was born. Of course it was years before we actually tried tinkering to alter history’s course.”

Mary Voyce said, “Raymond, don’t thing of history as a highway you could travel if you only had Time’s winged chariot with the odometer ticking off the years. No, the past, present, and future are right here only a keyhole’s thickness away. This very spot which you call Powder Horn Hill and the Indians called Mattawasa or High Gathering Place, we call Junkyard Ridge. Here, during the Second Genetic War, Seven-Toes the Foot and his Mongrel Horde crushed the Tin Dragoons and early prototype of the Robot Greandiers. This battle…”

Hogarth swallowed hard and turned white before their eyes. “I used to get these nightmares,” he whispered. “First it’s pitch dark. Then this terrible racket starts up, like some distant battle coming my way and coming fast. Suddenly, whammo, it’s blood and fire everywhere and men and machines and body parts, cogwheels, boilerplate, and pistons flying through the air. Then clang! clang! In jumps thish big hairy guy, bare to the waist and bashing left and right with this crazy-looking mother of all hammers.”

“A sledge laser,” said Voyce. “That was Foot. And the machinges he was basjing looked like dumpsters with nineteen fifties Pontiac tail fins, right?” Voyce returned Hogarth’s nod. “The Tin Dragoons,” he said.

“Anyway, this Foot guys sees me,” said the young man in a tembling voice. “And he lets out a roar and heads my way. I want to run but my legs won’t work. I scream myself awake.”

“A pity your mother wasn’t around to rock you in her arms and comfort you,” said Mary Voyce.

Hogarth sat frightened and breathing heavily.

“The matrix between past and future can wear thin,” explained Voyce. “Sometimes the future bleeds through into dreams. Someties the past casts those night shadows men used to call ghosts.” He looked at the clock. “All right,” he said quickly, “here”s what’s going to happen. When Edgar arrives you’ll both start shouting insults. Then he’ll give this laugh like you’re dirt.”

“That’s Edgar, all right, said Hogarth bitterly.

Papers for Taxes

Papers for Taxes: What to Bring Your Accountant

The better prepared you are, the more efficient the process will be


Whether you prepare your own tax return or let an accountant do all the work, the task of gathering your tax information together is unavoidable. In general, you should have documentation that supports all income, deductions, and credits that will appear on your return, but supporting documentation can come in many forms, as this listing, adapted from The Ernst & Young Tax Guide 1995 (John Wiley & Sons, 1994) makes apparent.

    Wages and Salaries: W-2 forms, usually provided by your employer.
    Dividends and Interest: Form 1099-Div and Form 1099-Int, usually provided by the bank or company paying the dividend or interest.
    Capital Gains and Losses: Broker’s statements for purchase and sale of assets disposed of during the year and Form 1099-B, usually provided bu the broker who sold the assets.
    Business Income From Sole Proprietorship, Rents and Royalties: Books and records. Form 1099-MISC may also be provided by the payor of the income.
    Business Income From Partnerships, Estates, Trusts and S Corporations: Form K-1, usually provided by the partnership.
    Unemployment Compensation: Form 1099-G, usually provided by the governmental agency paying the unemployment compensation.
    Social Security Benefits: Form SSA-1099, usually provided by the federal government.
    State and Local Income Tax Refunds: Form 1099-G; usually provided by the state or city that refunded the taxes.
    Original Issue Discount: Form 1099-OID, usually provided by the issuer of the long-term debt obligation.
    All Distributions, Both Total, and Partial, From Pensions, Annuities, Insurance Contracts, Retirement or
    Profit-Sharing Plans, and Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRA): Form 1099-R, usually provided by the trustee for the plan making the distribution.
    Barter Income: Form 1099-B, usually provided by the barter exchange through which the property or services were exchanged.
    Sale of Your Home: Form 1099-S, should be provided by the person that is responsible for the closing of the real estate transaction.
    IRA Contributions: Form 5498; provided by the trustee or custodian of the IRA.
    Moving and Employee Business Expenses: Receipts and canceled checks and Form 4782, if moving expenses are paid or reimbursed by your employer.
    Medica Expenses: Receipts and canceled checks.
    Mortgage Interest and Points Paid on the Purchase of a Principal Residence: Form 1098 or mortgage company statement, usually provided by the mortgage company.
    Business and Investment Interest:  Cancelled checks and brokers” statements.
    Real Estate Taxes: Canceled checks and mortgage company statements (if they are applicable).
    Other Taxes: Receipts and canceled checks.
    Contributions: Receipts and canceled checks; written acknowledgement from the charitable organization is generally required for contributions of certain amounts.
    What Not to Bring to Your Accountant: You need not bring all of your documentation to your accountant. For example, if you provide a summary of your dividends or charitable contributions, just provide your accountant with the summary of your dividends or charitable contributions, just provide your accountant all of your documentation, he or she will probably feel obligated to verify the accuracy of your summaries, which, as you probably well know, can be a time-consuming process. Your fee increases accordingly. However, you should be able to provide full documentation on request.

Broadway. Photo by Elena.

Peerfect Trowels and Clippers

Perfect Trowels and Clippers

Wooden handles cause fewer blisters, anvil pruners cut most sharply


When it comes to gardening tools, the Rolling Stones are wrong : you can always get what you want – if you know where to look. The gardening rage in recent years has brought forth an abundance of top-quality tools, many of them fashioned after classic English tools. But at current prices, equipping yourself fully can be quite an investment, so you must invest wisely. Here is the advice of gardening experts, who do their spadework at public and private gardening facilities:

  • Hoses: Hoses made from rubber or Flexogen last longer than plastic ones.
  • Metal tools: Metal tools should be made from tempered, heat-treated, or forged metal. Stainless steel tools are most expensive, but they are also the strongest and should last you a lifetime. Choose wooden handled tools over metal ones whenever possible because they are less likely to cause blisters. Hickory and ash wood make the best handles. Handles made from Douglas fir will be weak and should be avoided. And make sure that there are no cracks or flaws of any kind in the wood before buying.
  • Pitchforks: Look for pitchforks with springy stainless steel tines.
  • Pruners: Anvil-type hand pruners that work like scissors make the sharpest cuts. Avoid pruners in which only one blade cuts.
  • Rakes: Bamboo lawn rakes are the lightest and easiest to handle. They're usually the best for raking leaves. But for raking leaves within flower beds, use a rake that is rubber-tipped. It won't damage the plants.
  • Rototillers: Unless you have a large garden, you should probably just rent a rototiller and chipper shredder once a year. Most rental centers now carry a variety of models. If you do decide to buy your own rototiller, look for models that you can easily handle and don't allow you to step on the area that was just tilled as you move it along the bed. Rear-tined (where wheels are in back) are best for difficult compacted or rocky soils.
  • Shears: Select hedge shears that have a self-sharpening blade. Those with short handles are lighter and easier to use.
  • Shovels: The The best shovels and spades have a Y-brace handle to add strength by increasing leverage.
  • Trowels: A narrow-bladed trowel, sometimes known as a rock-garden or transplanting trowel, will also work well for planting bulbs.
Perfect trowels and clippers help create a perfect garden. Photo by Elena.