I spend a lot of my time opposing e-criminals these days, which started when I met captive women online at streaming webcam sites (http://endmafia.com).
So I have a few tips I can share with you. I've had security issues with free software generaly, but also AGV & McAfee. Also steer clear of anything assosiated Yahoo! or Google, tool bars, software, even there search engine, which return rigged results (You may remember Google were sued for promoting paedophile pornography, famously refusing to hand a weeks search terms to the US dept. of justice). Searches with live.com, ask.com are better. Ashampoo's free software has worked well for me. Microsoft software can generaly other than that it is under constant attack from these people.

No problem, Scott. People have been misspelling my name all my life, so I'm kinda used to it by now. I'm more astonished when people actually get it right.

Oops. I went ahead and fixed the misspelling of your name.

Wendy Wilkins, an MSU Dean, responded to Shunn with interesting information. She basically says that Clarion had to pay its own way:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/silvertide/105865.html

Okay, yeah that makes sense.

On the issue of how many people apply, Greg Frost said (over on the Clarion newsgroup at SFF.net): "The board of writers has to pick from 45-90 people in any given year." Which is more than I would've expected, actually...

And this just in from Lister Matheson:

Dear All,

Yes, we got a letter from our Provost (also Interim President for the moment) saying that the University would stop subsidizing Clarion because of the current budget crisis here. We're fine for this year's workshop, though. I've been thinking of alternatives -- moving Clarion elsewhere or even going independent (if financially possible).

The easiest, of course, would be for Michigan State to change its mind, or at least discuss how to cut costs. So if anyone feels impelled to express themselves to our Interim President/Provost or the Dean of Arts and Letters, we can supply email and/or snail-mail addresses. Several hundred emails have apparently been sent to them already ...

So the email campaign continues.

An update from Scott Reilly and The Write Hemisphere (though he spells my name wrong).

And here's another Save Clarion letter for genre fans to adapt and send in. So those of you readers out there who might not necessarily be writers can get in on the action too.

Thanks for the link, Nick. That is a very good letter.

Okay, maybe not hundreds, but a lot. Kelly Link was telling me that there were quite a few applicants last year, and that the stories submitted were some of the highest quality they'd ever seen there (though I imagine Tim's year was also quite good, with Dave Kirtley, Jenn Reese, Toby Buckell, Karen Meisner & Hilary Moon Murphy). All right, I admit it, hyperbole got the best of me.

And I whole-heartedly agree the Chapel Hill is helluva lot better than East Lansing. The similarities come in that they are both college towns; in other words, there would be no towns without the schools there. I like Chapel Hill quite a lot, and have said so in previous comments. I'm not sure Second Foundation is still there; the last time I actually was in there was 1992. Could be.

If Clarion has to move, would that necessarily mean the loss of Lister and Mary too? Are they employed by MSU?

Bill Shunn wrote a very good letter, which he posted to his lj, for folks looking for a template:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/silvertide/105669.html

It's a sad thing to think that Clarion might go away. I don't know where I'd be as a writer if I hadn't gone to Clarion, and I'd be short a couple of my best friends, too. But it's not like the workshop started at MSU, either; it's survived being moved in the past. And, really, who would mourn the loss of the Owen Hall cafeteria? It'd be a shame to lose Mary and Lister, though.

But, a quibble or two.

Jason wrote "...each year hundreds of people from all over the world fight for the chance to be one of the lucky twenty participants to spend six weeks in East Lansing."

Well, no. Never hundreds. Dozens, occasionally. I've heard that only about 30 people applied this year (though that was an unusually small number). Clarion is largely self-selecting, though -- you have to be serious about writing to commit that much time, so the only people who apply are likely to be somewhat qualified anyway.

Jason also wrote "Chapel Hill has a very similar feel to East Lansing, being a college town pretty much dependent on the university."

Nah. Chapel Hill is about a thousand times cooler than East Lansing, in nearly every way, including the attractiveness of the buildings and quality of the food on campus. If I'd gone to Clarion in Chapel Hill, I'd have spent every day at Hector's (Which is not on campus, I know, but it's close!) eating double cheeseburgers on pita all the way plus feta and chili, with cheese fries on the side. There are better bookstores in Chapel Hill, too, including that comic shop that has a pretty decent selection of used SF -- what's it called, Second Foundation? Though I guess some of the bookstores have closed in the past few years...

And speaking of writing to the administrators, this plea just in from Eileen Gunn (courtesy bOING bOING):

In case you haven't heard, the Clarion Writer's Workshop has lost its university funding from Michigan State University. (This is the original Clarion, not Clarion West in Seattle, which is supported by donations.) Please see the forwarded message below for details. The survival of both Clarions (not just one) is immensely important to the quality of writing, criticism, and editing in the field of science fiction. I am writing to ask you to send an email to MSU's Interim President and Provost, Dr. Lou Anna K. Simon at laksimon@msu.edu, and the Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Dr. Wendy K. Wilkins at wwilkins@msu.edu. Please copy any messages to clarion@msu.edu.

In your letter, please mention what your interest in the SF field is -- as a reader, writer, or critic. If you have won awards in the field, please mention them. The people to whom you're sending mail may not read science fiction, or know who you are.

Clarion's funding has been threatened in the past, and successfully defended. It may still be possible to save it if enough messages from writers and readers are received by the heads of the college. I suppose I don't need to say that speed is of the essence here, but I will anyway.

Thanks for any help you can give in this. Sorry about the mass mailing, but this is a mass-mailing kind of situation. Also sorry if you get this message twice, due to my lack of attention or obsessive enthusiasm.

Please feel free to forward or send out your own plea. A quick, massive, intense response is the goal.

Ugh. Got this info today and just now had time to think about it. I hate the idea that other writers won't have a chance to enjoy 6 intense weeks of writing boot camp. Urgh.

Time to write some emails to the administrators, I guess. They had a similar thing happen a couple years ago, and a bunch of writers wrote about the importance of Clarion and convinced those in charge to continue funding it.

Though it may be too late to do that now, it couldn't hurt. And we do have those emails, conveniently...

I like the idea of Clarion at UNC, though.

Well, yeah, I guess that's true. Though it's technically not really "Clarion East". It's just Clarion. People started adding the "East" after Clarion West was formed. Clarion is the first, the original, baby.

Actually, all it would really need to be to remain Clarion East is just stay east of Seattle. Oh, sure, it wouldn't have the range if it went to Pullman, Washington, say, but still.

(I'm kidding; I do sympathize, even as a nonClarionite, and I hope it finds another home)

Plus, if they're moving Clarion, they'd need to keep it on the east coast. I'd certainly lobby to move it to North Carolina, maybe to UNC-CH. Chapel Hill has a very similar feel to East Lansing, being a college town pretty much dependent on the university. I agree that it really should be on a college campus; there's something about that environment that really stimulates creativity and learning.

Off-topic, here are a pantload of more pictures of this years's Sycamore Hill, courtesy that lensmaven Jim Kelly.

Cool, I've potentially started something.

It would make sense for another university to take it up. I just can't picture Clarion (East) in an environment other than a college campus. Though you would still need a boring town, some cool bookstores (one with cat), and bad food. Murky brown river with ducks preferred but not mandatory.

Something else just occured to me. If Clarion East moves, will the subsequent 5-year-apart Clarion anniversary reunions move with it? That would suck!

And after reading from a few other sources, it appears that it may already be a done deal. It just pisses me off. Damon Knight started Clarion 36 years ago, and the year after he dies, the funding gets pulled. I'm going to bitch about it anyway.

Cory Doctorow (via bOING bOING) also made the point that "this is an incredible opportunity for some university to snatch up one of the most culturally signficant academic writing programs in the world." I'll pass the news along to John Kessel (though I'm sure he's heard it already). I was playing the "what if" game with Andreas in the comments of yesterday's entry, but I really like the idea of the workshop moving down here to North Carolina. We have a huge university system, with three excellent university writing programs right here in the Triangle. Twould be cool.

I hope they do figure out a way to keep it going within a university environment; that was one of the best things about the location.

The problem, I suspect, is that to the university, we're not really a concern. We don't give money to the university if we donate, we give money to Clarion itself. So they have their expenses, but they don't recoup any money on it. It really sucks, and I don't like it at all, but on a purely financial basis, it's a sensible option for them, and I don't know how we could convince them otherwise. 36 years of Clarion grads is still probably not many more people than an intro bio course (I'm figuring about 540 based on 36 years, 15 a year. It's probably more, but still not signficant on their scale).

By all means, I think we should complain, but I think that the size of MSU will work against us here.