I am writing a post about the literature that had a significant effect in creating who I am today. And while writing it, I could not help but think of the woman who introduced me to some of the best of it: my high school English teacher, Mrs. Cogar. I wrote about her in my Live Journal in 2004, and decided to repost here what I had written then:
Yesterday, the Rocket Scientist and I and the kids went snow-tubing. It's a lot of fun -- you sit on an inner-tube like contraption which tows you to the top of the hill, and then you lie down on your stomach and slide down.
Once, when I was being towed on the lift up to the top of the hill, I looked over and saw two crows sitting in a bare-limbed tree. It was staggeringly beautiful -- two dark birds, the dark naked tree branches, surrounding by the swirling white flakes, against the white hill. And, all at once, I thought of Mrs. Cogar.
Mrs. Joanne Cogar was my high school English teacher. She walked into the first day of Advanced Composition 1 and said "All those rumors you hear about me are false. I never bite people, and even if I do, I start frothing at the mouth first, and you have a good head start on getting out the door." She did not suffer fools gladly, and was considered a holy terror by much of the student body. I adored her.
I treasured the B+ I got in her AP English class more than the As I received in History or Math. When we were told by the guidance counselor during class one day that the school board was considering making AP English independent study for second semester, available only to students who had an A in the class, I broke down and wept openly.*
She introduced me to Shakespeare and Faulkner and Eugene O'Neill and John Steinbeck. She opened up worlds to me that had I had never thought could exist. She made me understand how great literature could change lives. She taught me to read critically, but never to let that criticality get in the way of the joy of reading.
Just as importantly, she introduced me to Strunk and White, and made me see a well-crafted sentence as a thing of beauty. If I write at all well today, Mrs. Cogar is one of the biggest reasons. (If I write at all persuasively, I have various professors at Stanford Law School to thank.)
And I trusted her. She was the only teacher I told about the CAT scan that had been taken because my doctor thought the blackouts and spells of disorientation I was having could be caused by a brain tumor, like the brain tumor that had killed my older sister. She was the first person -- before my parents, even -- I went to when I received my college acceptance letters. When I told her that Cornell and Wellesley had accepted me, but that Princeton had not, her response was "Who do they think they are?" (My answer, if I recall correctly, was that they were Princeton and could refuse anyone they damn well chose.)
Being young and callow and stupid, I did not keep in touch. I have no idea where she is or even if she is alive.
But I thought of her on Friday, when I saw those two birds in that tree.
Among the poems we studied during the poetry unit in AP English was Robert Frost's "Dust of Snow". Being typical teenagers, we kept reading death imagery and angst into those few lines (after all, it had hemlock and crows -- how could that not be death symbolism?). Mrs. Cogar was nearly tearing her hair out -- "No! No! A hemlock tree has nothing to do with the hemlock that Socrates drank! You're overanalyzing, people!" -- trying to help us understand how the beauty of a black bird and a dark tree against white snow could make everything better.
We just couldn't get it. How could we? We were growing up in Florida. For most of us, snow was only something we had read about in a book somewhere. We had crows, but they tended to get overshadowed by great snowy egrets and blue herons. And let's face it, a crow perched in a pine tree against a background of kudzu just doesn't have the same overwhelming emotional appeal. And even though I saw snow in college -- a lot of it -- I was too busy being angsty and pretentious and all the other things that people who have more intelligence than common sense are prone to being to notice something as simply beautiful as birds in a tree.
But Friday, when my breath caught in my throat at the stark beauty of black birds silhouetted against swirling flakes of snow, I wished that somehow, somewhere, I could tell her:
Mrs. Cogar, I understand the poem now. And thank you.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
I'm late for the train on this one, but...
I can't say that I blame the folks at NPR for firing Juan Williams. But they should have fired him for having anything to do with Fox News to begin with.
Of course, that's just me.
As far as what Williams said to Bill O'Reilly, I am concerned that the people on my side of the fence are doing to Williams what the right did to Shirley Sherrod.
Language and opinion are funny things: the points that one thinks one is making -- by perhaps openly discussing one's prejudice -- and rebutting -- by perhaps objecting to similar statements being expressed by others -- can get lost in the shuffle of debate. When I see the entire clip, I see a man who openly expresses bigotry, but then backpedals away from it, explaining that, whatever his discomfort he understands that the real problem is extremists. I get that others see it differently -- I am still thinking about the points made by Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates (whose writing I adore and whose views on most things I agree on). I am trying to examine my own reactions to Juan Williams in light of what they wrote, and my interpretations of both the statements that got him fired and those he made later to O'Reilly.
There is a crucial difference between the Juan Williams statements and Shirley Sherrod's. Sherrod's statements were made during a speech. Speeches are crafted pieces of art: the speaker tells stories and can inject nuance and understanding. Juan Williams' statements came within an unscripted exchange on a cable show. More chaotic, less chance for nuance. A world of difference; rhetorical context matters.
All this is really neither here nor there when it comes down to the fundamental issue: dishonesty.
The dishonesty for me comes in the editing of the clip as it first appeared on YouTube. If the entirety of the exchange is damning, then let it stand on its own. Editing it to showcase the most offensive part, while ignoring the sections where Williams stands up against the bigotry of O'Reilly is unfair not only to Williams but to viewers; the underlying message is that we cannot be trusted to understand what is taking place before us. While I understand the assumption that this is true for most of the people who get all their information from Fox News, I resent being lumped in with them. If you think it needs explanation as to why it is offensive in its entirety, by all means, explain. Or don't: let people see for themselves.
I have often said that the First Amendment does not bring with it a right to any soapbox one wants to stand on. NPR was certainly within its rights to fire Juan Williams for any reason it wanted to: his comments to O'Reilly, his continuing to appear on O'Reilly's show, budget cuts, the color of the tie he wore to work. I am not shedding any tears over his departure -- I think any commentator who appears on Fox News has indelibly stained his credibility.
For heavens' sake, though, let's not become our enemies. Acting unfairly indelibly stains our credibility, too.
I can't say that I blame the folks at NPR for firing Juan Williams. But they should have fired him for having anything to do with Fox News to begin with.
Of course, that's just me.
As far as what Williams said to Bill O'Reilly, I am concerned that the people on my side of the fence are doing to Williams what the right did to Shirley Sherrod.
Language and opinion are funny things: the points that one thinks one is making -- by perhaps openly discussing one's prejudice -- and rebutting -- by perhaps objecting to similar statements being expressed by others -- can get lost in the shuffle of debate. When I see the entire clip, I see a man who openly expresses bigotry, but then backpedals away from it, explaining that, whatever his discomfort he understands that the real problem is extremists. I get that others see it differently -- I am still thinking about the points made by Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates (whose writing I adore and whose views on most things I agree on). I am trying to examine my own reactions to Juan Williams in light of what they wrote, and my interpretations of both the statements that got him fired and those he made later to O'Reilly.
There is a crucial difference between the Juan Williams statements and Shirley Sherrod's. Sherrod's statements were made during a speech. Speeches are crafted pieces of art: the speaker tells stories and can inject nuance and understanding. Juan Williams' statements came within an unscripted exchange on a cable show. More chaotic, less chance for nuance. A world of difference; rhetorical context matters.
All this is really neither here nor there when it comes down to the fundamental issue: dishonesty.
The dishonesty for me comes in the editing of the clip as it first appeared on YouTube. If the entirety of the exchange is damning, then let it stand on its own. Editing it to showcase the most offensive part, while ignoring the sections where Williams stands up against the bigotry of O'Reilly is unfair not only to Williams but to viewers; the underlying message is that we cannot be trusted to understand what is taking place before us. While I understand the assumption that this is true for most of the people who get all their information from Fox News, I resent being lumped in with them. If you think it needs explanation as to why it is offensive in its entirety, by all means, explain. Or don't: let people see for themselves.
I have often said that the First Amendment does not bring with it a right to any soapbox one wants to stand on. NPR was certainly within its rights to fire Juan Williams for any reason it wanted to: his comments to O'Reilly, his continuing to appear on O'Reilly's show, budget cuts, the color of the tie he wore to work. I am not shedding any tears over his departure -- I think any commentator who appears on Fox News has indelibly stained his credibility.
For heavens' sake, though, let's not become our enemies. Acting unfairly indelibly stains our credibility, too.
Friday, October 22, 2010
More conversation
Me: "Do you know what a group of crows is called?"
Echidna Boy: "Yes mom *eyeroll*, a murder.... There were a couple of murders of crows going after the geese."
Me: "Does that make it a serial killer of crows?"
Echidna Boy: "Yes mom *eyeroll*, a murder.... There were a couple of murders of crows going after the geese."
Me: "Does that make it a serial killer of crows?"
October
It is October now.
It has started raining here in Northern California, which means the hot days of fall are over, and we are entering into the "other season." We here in the Bay Area really only have two seasons, wet and dry. Although I hail from a city so sunny that one of the newspapers used to have a policy that if 24 hours passed with no sun shining on the corner outside their office the next day's paper was free, I am most decidedly a wet season person.
It is not that I love rain so much per se, for I don't. It is simply that I love the fall and winter.
In the fall, school has started. While October brings with it the stress of end-of-quarter grades and parent-teacher conferences, it also brings structure and familiarity. School has an established routine now, and everybody knows what is expected of them. (Whether they follow through is another thing altogether.)
The bright, sunny, oppressive days of summer are over. The clouds and the lowering darkness of the shortening days fold gently around me, comforting as a blanket. The twilight comes hard upon the setting sun, and when the stars are out they are clear and beautiful. When they are not, the clouds are like gray unspun wool, just out of reach.
There is Halloween*, a holiday which takes on much less significance now that I don't have to figure out how to make a mummy costume, or a devil, or whatever the latest video game hero wears. I still have a shirt belonging to "Link" (from Legend of Zelda) costume. I have no idea why I do not throw it away -- it does not fit anyone here any more. Sentiment, perhaps.
It gets better. The days get shorter until the solstice, and its surrounding holidays. Holidays were probably meant originally to help those for whom the dark, long nights were a threat rather than a blessing. (Yes, I know Christmas has significant religious importance: but its date was tied to pagan celebrations to help ease the pain of conversion.) But for me, they are lagniappe. The joy is in the darkness itself. (Except for Christmas music. Which my family has decreed I cannot play in their hearing until after Thanksgiving.)
I realize that I am odd; my friends are pulling out their light boxes to help them get through until the spring. I understand that, I do; I wish I could have a dark box to help ease the brightness of summer.**
But for now, the darkness is returning, and I revel in it.
*Personally, I think the extent to which Halloween has been co-opted by adults looking for an excuse to have parties and drink too much is somewhat appalling. Stick to St. Patrick's Day, and Valentine's Day, and leave Halloween for the kids.
**I tend to read in dim light too, my eyes can handle it. Yet whenever I am in even a slightly public place, a kindly intentioned person will turn a lamp on me and say "You need a reading light. You're going to ruin your eyesight." I have not yet snapped at anyone (I usually settle for waiting until they have left and turning the light off) but I've been tempted.
It has started raining here in Northern California, which means the hot days of fall are over, and we are entering into the "other season." We here in the Bay Area really only have two seasons, wet and dry. Although I hail from a city so sunny that one of the newspapers used to have a policy that if 24 hours passed with no sun shining on the corner outside their office the next day's paper was free, I am most decidedly a wet season person.
It is not that I love rain so much per se, for I don't. It is simply that I love the fall and winter.
In the fall, school has started. While October brings with it the stress of end-of-quarter grades and parent-teacher conferences, it also brings structure and familiarity. School has an established routine now, and everybody knows what is expected of them. (Whether they follow through is another thing altogether.)
The bright, sunny, oppressive days of summer are over. The clouds and the lowering darkness of the shortening days fold gently around me, comforting as a blanket. The twilight comes hard upon the setting sun, and when the stars are out they are clear and beautiful. When they are not, the clouds are like gray unspun wool, just out of reach.
There is Halloween*, a holiday which takes on much less significance now that I don't have to figure out how to make a mummy costume, or a devil, or whatever the latest video game hero wears. I still have a shirt belonging to "Link" (from Legend of Zelda) costume. I have no idea why I do not throw it away -- it does not fit anyone here any more. Sentiment, perhaps.
It gets better. The days get shorter until the solstice, and its surrounding holidays. Holidays were probably meant originally to help those for whom the dark, long nights were a threat rather than a blessing. (Yes, I know Christmas has significant religious importance: but its date was tied to pagan celebrations to help ease the pain of conversion.) But for me, they are lagniappe. The joy is in the darkness itself. (Except for Christmas music. Which my family has decreed I cannot play in their hearing until after Thanksgiving.)
I realize that I am odd; my friends are pulling out their light boxes to help them get through until the spring. I understand that, I do; I wish I could have a dark box to help ease the brightness of summer.**
But for now, the darkness is returning, and I revel in it.
*Personally, I think the extent to which Halloween has been co-opted by adults looking for an excuse to have parties and drink too much is somewhat appalling. Stick to St. Patrick's Day, and Valentine's Day, and leave Halloween for the kids.
**I tend to read in dim light too, my eyes can handle it. Yet whenever I am in even a slightly public place, a kindly intentioned person will turn a lamp on me and say "You need a reading light. You're going to ruin your eyesight." I have not yet snapped at anyone (I usually settle for waiting until they have left and turning the light off) but I've been tempted.
Collision Course, Revisited
In my first post on the subject of the case involving Fred Phelps, et al. currently before the Supreme Court, I stated that I could not figure out what way I wanted the Court to rule. Upon further reflection, I think I clearly want them to rule in favor of Phelps, as revolting as he and his followers are.
I am a firm believer that the First Amendment shields people and organizations from government action to curtail their speech. I just as firmly believe that the right to free speech does not carry with it the right to any soapbox you care to stand upon, or the right not to be confronted vociferously with people who disagree with you. (I am all for boycotts of advertisers to Glenn Beck's show, for example, to try and get the man off the air.)
Time, place, and manner restrictions have always been acceptable. I think that is both reasonable and just. However, there are just as firmly established concepts concerning places that should be off-limits to restriction. It has been twenty years since I studied this subject, but public spaces, which the Phelp's appeared to have been inhabiting, are among those.
It is clear from the record that the Phelps contingent obeyed all police instructions concerning where to stand. In other words, they seem to have complied with the time and place restrictions already placed upon them.
Then, too, is the fact that the plaintiff in this case, the Marine's father, did not see the protesters at the funeral, but only on news coverage later. To what extent is there, or should there be, a responsibility not to seek out, or to avoid, painful information? Why could he not have simply not watched?
The issue of the website becomes trickier, and not just because of this case. From what I could see of the record, the information on the site was scurrilous. Should it rise to the level of libel? This issue becomes even thornier when you consider that there have been cases of bloggers revealing extremely personal information on their sites about other people (addresses, workplaces, phone numbers) which have placed those people at risk for harassment at the least and violence in the worst case. Where would a line be drawn?
As I said, I have not studied the constitutional issues for far too many years, and have not kept up with the legal status of blogs and other electronic means of communication (with the exception of the Internet Neutrality issues and workplace privacy issues). I know I should, given how much electronic communication I do, but I haven't. So my opinion on these matters may be worth squat.
And then there is the issue of private versus government action. Ah, one might say, this is a individual suing to recover damages, not the government acting to curtail Phelps. But private rights of action can only exist within the framework of a government. Some branch of government, usually law enforcement or the judiciary, will be called upon to back up those rights. The effect of such rights can be just as chilling to free speech as a the threat of arrest.
So I will continue to watch this case, hoping for a ruling in favor of the First Amendment. And in the meantime continuing to rail against the Phelps and all their hateful ilk.
I am a firm believer that the First Amendment shields people and organizations from government action to curtail their speech. I just as firmly believe that the right to free speech does not carry with it the right to any soapbox you care to stand upon, or the right not to be confronted vociferously with people who disagree with you. (I am all for boycotts of advertisers to Glenn Beck's show, for example, to try and get the man off the air.)
Time, place, and manner restrictions have always been acceptable. I think that is both reasonable and just. However, there are just as firmly established concepts concerning places that should be off-limits to restriction. It has been twenty years since I studied this subject, but public spaces, which the Phelp's appeared to have been inhabiting, are among those.
It is clear from the record that the Phelps contingent obeyed all police instructions concerning where to stand. In other words, they seem to have complied with the time and place restrictions already placed upon them.
Then, too, is the fact that the plaintiff in this case, the Marine's father, did not see the protesters at the funeral, but only on news coverage later. To what extent is there, or should there be, a responsibility not to seek out, or to avoid, painful information? Why could he not have simply not watched?
The issue of the website becomes trickier, and not just because of this case. From what I could see of the record, the information on the site was scurrilous. Should it rise to the level of libel? This issue becomes even thornier when you consider that there have been cases of bloggers revealing extremely personal information on their sites about other people (addresses, workplaces, phone numbers) which have placed those people at risk for harassment at the least and violence in the worst case. Where would a line be drawn?
As I said, I have not studied the constitutional issues for far too many years, and have not kept up with the legal status of blogs and other electronic means of communication (with the exception of the Internet Neutrality issues and workplace privacy issues). I know I should, given how much electronic communication I do, but I haven't. So my opinion on these matters may be worth squat.
And then there is the issue of private versus government action. Ah, one might say, this is a individual suing to recover damages, not the government acting to curtail Phelps. But private rights of action can only exist within the framework of a government. Some branch of government, usually law enforcement or the judiciary, will be called upon to back up those rights. The effect of such rights can be just as chilling to free speech as a the threat of arrest.
So I will continue to watch this case, hoping for a ruling in favor of the First Amendment. And in the meantime continuing to rail against the Phelps and all their hateful ilk.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
I have never read the work of China Miéville. I had heard of him -- I read a lot of blogs with a high concentration of SF/Fantasy fans. I am not reading much of either genre these days (I'm probably missing a lot, I realize) as I tend to be a mystery reader.
However, his letter to Facebook, as reported in this blog post, makes me want to.
However, his letter to Facebook, as reported in this blog post, makes me want to.
Gone to that great silicon pile in the sky....
Jan* has died. Or, at least the hard drive has. Attempts to run Disk Repair resulted in a message that the disk was beyond repair. With the exceptions of iTunes, any software would crash within seconds of being opened. (Hey, my computer knows what's important.) I am now operating from the external hard drive I had been using for backups, named Francisco.* Yes, I name my computers.**
Being the good addict, I made sure that my stash was secure: the first thing I did was copy over Bejeweled and made sure it could run off Francisco. Only after that did I deal with less important matters, like copying over my Job Search folders with some job leads and the latest versions of my resume.
And Firefox. The thought of coping without the 'net was making me panic.
Because what could I stand on without a soapbox?
* Jan is named for Johannes (Jan) Vermeer. Francisco is after Goya. I had contemplated naming Jan Vincent, but was talked out of it. Maybe my next computer will be Leonardo, or Domenikos (Theotokopolous, better known as El Greco). Or Artemisia (Gentilleschi). Or Edward (Hopper). Or Eduard (Munch). Or Henri (Toulouse-Latrec). So many artists, so few computers.
**I also name my cars: the minivan is Bruce, after the shark in Finding Nemo (which was in turn named after the fake shark used by Steven Spielberg in Jaws) and the Mustang is Vincent, after Van Gogh. (Early on its life, Vincent had a knack of dying without warning. "Let's name it Vincent," I told my husband. "After Vincent Price, since it's black and mysterious?" "No, after Van Gogh, since it keeps trying to kill itself.") I am still pondering a name for the used green Mazda.
Being the good addict, I made sure that my stash was secure: the first thing I did was copy over Bejeweled and made sure it could run off Francisco. Only after that did I deal with less important matters, like copying over my Job Search folders with some job leads and the latest versions of my resume.
And Firefox. The thought of coping without the 'net was making me panic.
Because what could I stand on without a soapbox?
* Jan is named for Johannes (Jan) Vermeer. Francisco is after Goya. I had contemplated naming Jan Vincent, but was talked out of it. Maybe my next computer will be Leonardo, or Domenikos (Theotokopolous, better known as El Greco). Or Artemisia (Gentilleschi). Or Edward (Hopper). Or Eduard (Munch). Or Henri (Toulouse-Latrec). So many artists, so few computers.
**I also name my cars: the minivan is Bruce, after the shark in Finding Nemo (which was in turn named after the fake shark used by Steven Spielberg in Jaws) and the Mustang is Vincent, after Van Gogh. (Early on its life, Vincent had a knack of dying without warning. "Let's name it Vincent," I told my husband. "After Vincent Price, since it's black and mysterious?" "No, after Van Gogh, since it keeps trying to kill itself.") I am still pondering a name for the used green Mazda.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Give me a child...
The Jesuits were fond of saying "Give me a child until seven, and I will give you the man."
It don't know if they're right, but I think there was one man who may have believed that: Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess.
There is an amazing amount of politics and "life lessons" hidden among the smart rhymes and strange artwork. Geisel doesn't even try to hide most of it, although if you aren't paying attention it can slip right by you.
The Cat in the Hat is a story about living life to the fullest, as long as you clean up after yourself. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is about all the marvelous things in the world. Green Eggs and Ham is about trying new things because, you never know, you might like them after all. (There is also an unfortunate lesson in there about nagging people until they do what you want, but nothing is perfect.)
There are the obviously political books. Horton Hears a Who is about protecting those society doesn't care about, regardless of the consequences: "A person's a person, no matter how small." The Sneetches is about how we aren't so different after all, and how we base our sense of superiority on irrelevant things. The Lorax is about environmentalism and industrialism and the necessity for protecting the world. (This so upset logging interests that they wrote a competing book called The Truax.)
And then there is the Butter Battle Book. It is a parable about the arms race, written during the Cold War. Pretty heavy material for for a book to read to pre-schoolers, yet presented in a way that they can understand and digest. Adults figured this out : there was a reason it was pulled from library book shelves during the Cold War.
Clearly, not all Dr. Seuss is so formative: I don't think there is any real message to The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins or Fox in Sox. Nor is Dr. Seuss the only children's writer to produce books with strong moral messages: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein immediately comes to mind.*
I read these books to my children. I strongly suspect that they developed their views of the world based on them. (Except maybe Green Eggs and Ham. In that case, the wrong message got through, the one about nagging.) I firmly believe this to be a good thing.
I'm not sure if other people's children were so affected. I wish they were. And I wish more adults would read and internalize Dr. Seuss's carefully crafted messages.
It would be a better world in the end. And I think that was what Theodore Geisel may have been working towards, after all. At least I hope so.
*Although quite a number of Silverstein's poems are downright subversive towards adults, such as my favorite, "How Not To Have To Dry the Dishes."
It don't know if they're right, but I think there was one man who may have believed that: Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Suess.
There is an amazing amount of politics and "life lessons" hidden among the smart rhymes and strange artwork. Geisel doesn't even try to hide most of it, although if you aren't paying attention it can slip right by you.
The Cat in the Hat is a story about living life to the fullest, as long as you clean up after yourself. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is about all the marvelous things in the world. Green Eggs and Ham is about trying new things because, you never know, you might like them after all. (There is also an unfortunate lesson in there about nagging people until they do what you want, but nothing is perfect.)
There are the obviously political books. Horton Hears a Who is about protecting those society doesn't care about, regardless of the consequences: "A person's a person, no matter how small." The Sneetches is about how we aren't so different after all, and how we base our sense of superiority on irrelevant things. The Lorax is about environmentalism and industrialism and the necessity for protecting the world. (This so upset logging interests that they wrote a competing book called The Truax.)
And then there is the Butter Battle Book. It is a parable about the arms race, written during the Cold War. Pretty heavy material for for a book to read to pre-schoolers, yet presented in a way that they can understand and digest. Adults figured this out : there was a reason it was pulled from library book shelves during the Cold War.
Clearly, not all Dr. Seuss is so formative: I don't think there is any real message to The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins or Fox in Sox. Nor is Dr. Seuss the only children's writer to produce books with strong moral messages: The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein immediately comes to mind.*
I read these books to my children. I strongly suspect that they developed their views of the world based on them. (Except maybe Green Eggs and Ham. In that case, the wrong message got through, the one about nagging.) I firmly believe this to be a good thing.
I'm not sure if other people's children were so affected. I wish they were. And I wish more adults would read and internalize Dr. Seuss's carefully crafted messages.
It would be a better world in the end. And I think that was what Theodore Geisel may have been working towards, after all. At least I hope so.
*Although quite a number of Silverstein's poems are downright subversive towards adults, such as my favorite, "How Not To Have To Dry the Dishes."
I love John Scalzi.
The notion of privilege can be a difficult one to explain sometimes in terms that people can feel viscerally. All too often, the discussion exists at a safe distance, at least on the part of those having the privilege. (For those without whatever privilege it is, the discussion is all too real and all too close.)
John Scalzi has put into simple words that anyone can understand the feeling of what it is to be privileged. As one who walks on both sides of that line, a lot of his words resonate with me, both as things I experience and things I really need to be mindful of.
There are a few I thought he might have added (one of which I left in his comments):
Today I don't have to worry about whether the person I'm interviewing with will toss my resume in the trash because I'm over fifty.
Today I don't have to worry about whether disclosing my disability to my boss, and my need for accommodations, will materially damage my work environment.
Another highly recommended piece by Scalzi: On Being Poor. He wrote this in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, hence the last line of the piece.
John Scalzi has put into simple words that anyone can understand the feeling of what it is to be privileged. As one who walks on both sides of that line, a lot of his words resonate with me, both as things I experience and things I really need to be mindful of.
There are a few I thought he might have added (one of which I left in his comments):
Today I don't have to worry about whether the person I'm interviewing with will toss my resume in the trash because I'm over fifty.
Today I don't have to worry about whether disclosing my disability to my boss, and my need for accommodations, will materially damage my work environment.
Another highly recommended piece by Scalzi: On Being Poor. He wrote this in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, hence the last line of the piece.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Here we go a-wandering ...
Adventure day!
I was ostensibly conducting research for a novel I may or may not be writing during NaNoWriMo. The novel begins with the heroine standing on the shore at San Simeon state beach. Since I could not actually remember what the beach at San Simeon looked like, it was of course necessary to take a road trip to see it. And to relive the experience of driving Big Sur.
Not that I really need an excuse to drive Big Sur. I just need an excuse to give everybody else, when they ask why I am spending an entire day driving Highway 1 to San Louis Obispo.
Actually, from the novel standpoint, it was a good thing I did. The beach (which is not San Simeon State Beach, but W.R. Hearst Memorial State Beach) is not nearly as pretty as I remembered it. It is in a cove, so it has small quiet waves, rather than big crashing dramatic ones. It also has a pier, which I totally did not remember, as well as a couple of very nice cypress trees off to one side with very low hanging branches, which I have plans for, fictionally speaking.
Still, not so pretty. Considering that the heroine ended up there by tossing a coin between San Simeon and Mendecino, maybe I should shift course and relocate her to the Sonoma Coast. Which would mean a road trip north next weekend. Hmmm. Something to ponder. And a great excuse to drive Highway 1 north, at least as far as Mendecino. Or at least a great excuse to tell everyone else as to why I simply have to drive up that way.
Herewith, some notes from today's journey:
Rats, getting a late start. That means I'd better not drive 1 south from Santa Cruz to Monterey. Oh, well, I can do that at a later time, and it is not nearly as critical as driving 1 south from Monterey.
Dear KFC: That thing with the two pieces of chicken, bacon, and cheese? Not bad. But it's NOT A SANDWICH. It has no bread. No bread, ergo no sandwich. Got it? If you can't hold it and play whist at the same time (you can't - you'd get grease on the cards), it doesn't count.
Dear lady in the pale blue late-model Toyota: If you cannot both drive and look at the scenery, use the vista points. If you are not looking at the scenery, but are white-knuckling this stretch because you cannot handle driving both hills and curves -- and drop-offs with no rails -- use the turnouts so those of us that actually can drive this are not stuck behind you. Going 30 mph on piece of highway marked 50 creates a lot of very irate drivers in your wake. Including me. Which is totally harshing my squee and making me cranky, when I had been hoping to enjoy this. Oh, and if the turn says suggested 30? You do not have to slow down to 15. Or if you do, you should be letting someone else drive.
Actually, driving this is so much better than being a passenger, because you are watching the road (and occasionally the distant waves) and not looking over to your right thinking "That's a looooooong way down there."
Dear guy in the white pickup truck: Not you, too? See advice to the lady above. And I thought that, having managed to pass you once, I would have gotten far enough ahead of you that I could stop at the state park to use the restrooms. I was wrong, but a person's gotta do what a person's gotta do. So here I am, stuck behind you again.
Dear lady in the maroon minivan, and guy driving the camper: You use turnouts. You win your good citizen points for the day.
Oooooooohhhhhh! Condor! Condor! Has to be. The wingspan is too massive, the wingspan/body/head ratios -- it can only be a condor. I've seen one once before on this stretch, and I love watching them. I just wish I had been near a vista point so I could have stopped.
The sky is cloudy, and the clouds lie close to the road. On the one hand, that is making the ocean less striking than usual, on the other hand, it is making the trees in the ravines on the eastward side of the highway look mysterious and wonderful. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep..."
Just as I came down from Big Sur -- just above Cambria --- the clouds lifted so that the ocean turned its normal deep Pacific blue, from the slates and silvers it had been earlier. I could feel every muscle in my body joyfully relax.
All these people looking at the elephant seals. I guess I can understand that, if they've never seen elephant seals before, but really, they're just smelly, noisy brown blobs lying on the beach. They do absolutely nothing for me.
The zebras, on the other hand..... Zebras. Lots of zebras. Baby zebras. Oh, William Randolph Hearst, you may have had more money than sense (you certainly had more money than taste), but the zebras you imported are just so way beyond cool.
I did the obligatory stop at the Castle Visitor Center. The night tour was sold out (just as well, the place does have a strange fascination for me). I nonetheless paid my eight bucks and caught the last showing of "Hearst Castle: Building the Dream." I am a sucker for all things Imax, even forty-minute love-letters to megalomaniacs. Which it was, considering that they basically stated that WRH was a co-architect of the place with Julia Morgan. And they ignored the seamier parts of the man's life (such as the actress he left his wife for).
Speaking of Morgan, I've seen other pieces of her work, and she really is a better architect than this. The conflict between the various influences at the Castle is simply jarring, and her other work is so much more coherent. I do love both the indoor and outdoor pools, though, even if the rest of the place makes me want to scream a little bit.
Ahhh.. time to go. It actually is a good thing that I got such a late start, otherwise that last line on the highway sign in SLO -- "Los Angeles 200 miles" -- would be oh so tempting....
Let's see... I know people in Pasadena, and G & D live in Riverside, and even if that didn't pan out I could always crash in my car. I know! I could drive "Route 66" backwards! San Bernadino.... Barstow.... Kingman... don't forget Winona!.... Flagstaff, Arizona... I could be in Flagstaff tomorrow evening. Oh, Sarah.....
But no. It's late. Too late to head further south, and besides, I am needed elsewhere tomorrow.
As the man said, "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."
I was ostensibly conducting research for a novel I may or may not be writing during NaNoWriMo. The novel begins with the heroine standing on the shore at San Simeon state beach. Since I could not actually remember what the beach at San Simeon looked like, it was of course necessary to take a road trip to see it. And to relive the experience of driving Big Sur.
Not that I really need an excuse to drive Big Sur. I just need an excuse to give everybody else, when they ask why I am spending an entire day driving Highway 1 to San Louis Obispo.
Actually, from the novel standpoint, it was a good thing I did. The beach (which is not San Simeon State Beach, but W.R. Hearst Memorial State Beach) is not nearly as pretty as I remembered it. It is in a cove, so it has small quiet waves, rather than big crashing dramatic ones. It also has a pier, which I totally did not remember, as well as a couple of very nice cypress trees off to one side with very low hanging branches, which I have plans for, fictionally speaking.
Still, not so pretty. Considering that the heroine ended up there by tossing a coin between San Simeon and Mendecino, maybe I should shift course and relocate her to the Sonoma Coast. Which would mean a road trip north next weekend. Hmmm. Something to ponder. And a great excuse to drive Highway 1 north, at least as far as Mendecino. Or at least a great excuse to tell everyone else as to why I simply have to drive up that way.
Herewith, some notes from today's journey:
Rats, getting a late start. That means I'd better not drive 1 south from Santa Cruz to Monterey. Oh, well, I can do that at a later time, and it is not nearly as critical as driving 1 south from Monterey.
Dear KFC: That thing with the two pieces of chicken, bacon, and cheese? Not bad. But it's NOT A SANDWICH. It has no bread. No bread, ergo no sandwich. Got it? If you can't hold it and play whist at the same time (you can't - you'd get grease on the cards), it doesn't count.
Dear lady in the pale blue late-model Toyota: If you cannot both drive and look at the scenery, use the vista points. If you are not looking at the scenery, but are white-knuckling this stretch because you cannot handle driving both hills and curves -- and drop-offs with no rails -- use the turnouts so those of us that actually can drive this are not stuck behind you. Going 30 mph on piece of highway marked 50 creates a lot of very irate drivers in your wake. Including me. Which is totally harshing my squee and making me cranky, when I had been hoping to enjoy this. Oh, and if the turn says suggested 30? You do not have to slow down to 15. Or if you do, you should be letting someone else drive.
Actually, driving this is so much better than being a passenger, because you are watching the road (and occasionally the distant waves) and not looking over to your right thinking "That's a looooooong way down there."
Dear guy in the white pickup truck: Not you, too? See advice to the lady above. And I thought that, having managed to pass you once, I would have gotten far enough ahead of you that I could stop at the state park to use the restrooms. I was wrong, but a person's gotta do what a person's gotta do. So here I am, stuck behind you again.
Dear lady in the maroon minivan, and guy driving the camper: You use turnouts. You win your good citizen points for the day.
Oooooooohhhhhh! Condor! Condor! Has to be. The wingspan is too massive, the wingspan/body/head ratios -- it can only be a condor. I've seen one once before on this stretch, and I love watching them. I just wish I had been near a vista point so I could have stopped.
The sky is cloudy, and the clouds lie close to the road. On the one hand, that is making the ocean less striking than usual, on the other hand, it is making the trees in the ravines on the eastward side of the highway look mysterious and wonderful. "The woods are lovely, dark and deep..."
Just as I came down from Big Sur -- just above Cambria --- the clouds lifted so that the ocean turned its normal deep Pacific blue, from the slates and silvers it had been earlier. I could feel every muscle in my body joyfully relax.
All these people looking at the elephant seals. I guess I can understand that, if they've never seen elephant seals before, but really, they're just smelly, noisy brown blobs lying on the beach. They do absolutely nothing for me.
The zebras, on the other hand..... Zebras. Lots of zebras. Baby zebras. Oh, William Randolph Hearst, you may have had more money than sense (you certainly had more money than taste), but the zebras you imported are just so way beyond cool.
I did the obligatory stop at the Castle Visitor Center. The night tour was sold out (just as well, the place does have a strange fascination for me). I nonetheless paid my eight bucks and caught the last showing of "Hearst Castle: Building the Dream." I am a sucker for all things Imax, even forty-minute love-letters to megalomaniacs. Which it was, considering that they basically stated that WRH was a co-architect of the place with Julia Morgan. And they ignored the seamier parts of the man's life (such as the actress he left his wife for).
Speaking of Morgan, I've seen other pieces of her work, and she really is a better architect than this. The conflict between the various influences at the Castle is simply jarring, and her other work is so much more coherent. I do love both the indoor and outdoor pools, though, even if the rest of the place makes me want to scream a little bit.
Ahhh.. time to go. It actually is a good thing that I got such a late start, otherwise that last line on the highway sign in SLO -- "Los Angeles 200 miles" -- would be oh so tempting....
Let's see... I know people in Pasadena, and G & D live in Riverside, and even if that didn't pan out I could always crash in my car. I know! I could drive "Route 66" backwards! San Bernadino.... Barstow.... Kingman... don't forget Winona!.... Flagstaff, Arizona... I could be in Flagstaff tomorrow evening. Oh, Sarah.....
But no. It's late. Too late to head further south, and besides, I am needed elsewhere tomorrow.
As the man said, "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."
Jan may be dying....
Jan (my computer) may be dying. He's crashing every five minutes, from an "unresolved kernel trap." I do not know what that is and the people in my house who do are not currently home. We will see.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tonight, after the 100,000th time seeing an ad for paper towels, I came close to losing it.
See, in each of those ads, whatever the brand, you see kids, or even worse, a dad, making big messes, that Mom then cleans up, using the brand of towel being pitched. A smiling Mom. Who looks as though she had nothing better to do than clean up the salsa that Dad and son spilled playing counter hockey with a condiment bowl.
Sorry, but any child over the age of six should be handed the roll of towels and told, "Gee, it's a shame you spilled that. Let me know when you're done cleaning it up."
And that is especially true of children in their mid-thirties.
Sheesh.
See, in each of those ads, whatever the brand, you see kids, or even worse, a dad, making big messes, that Mom then cleans up, using the brand of towel being pitched. A smiling Mom. Who looks as though she had nothing better to do than clean up the salsa that Dad and son spilled playing counter hockey with a condiment bowl.
Sorry, but any child over the age of six should be handed the roll of towels and told, "Gee, it's a shame you spilled that. Let me know when you're done cleaning it up."
And that is especially true of children in their mid-thirties.
Sheesh.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tackling stereotypes
My father, who died in 1996, was a football player. He played for Georgia Tech, and had half a season with da Bears before he blew out his knee. He loved the game.
He had three daughters and two sons. His sons have no interest in football. At all. Or at least they did not have the last time I talked to them about the sport. Oh, my older brother watches it because he hangs out with my eldest sister and...
The three daughters? Football fanatics. Both college football (Mississippi State and LSU for my sisters, Georgia Tech and Stanford for me) and pro football (The Saints for them (although I have a strong fondness for the guys from N'Awlins as well) and the Buccaneers and Dolphins for me). Fans who can scream "It's a blitz! Watch out!" at the television and know what we're talking about. Visiting around Christmas last year when the Bucs played the Saints* was exhilarating, and we all managed to talk to each other afterward. (My mother, bless her heart, learned to watch (and like) football in large part to be able to share it with my Dad, and is a die-hard Buccaneers fan.)
When I was about six my goal in life was to be a linebacker for the Bears. I gave it up once it was explained that this was not, in fact, a viable career path for a girl.**
And as for the next generation... my sons have about the same amount on interest in football as their uncles. Two of them came in last Saturday in the midst of a tense Stanford - USC game to tell me to stop yelling at the television set. As if that was likely to happen.
And my nieces? Yes, another set of women who can - and do - comment "screen pass!" or who groan when the other team runs back the kickoff to our team's twelve-yard line. All of whom absolutely adored the onside kick the Saints carried off to perfection to start the second half of the last Super Bowl.
Funny thing, though. You would think, looking how football is marketed, that women such as me and my sisters do not exist. We are completely invisible. The ads during the games rarely or never show women as active participants -- even when the game in question is touch football -- or interested and knowledgeable observers. Women are window dressing, designed to sell beer or cars or flat-screen mega-tv sets. Or we are shown as complainers, whining about how the game is cutting into our time watching the latest rom-com on Showtime.***
It's enough to drive one batty. It makes me angry that there is a whole demographic out there -- of which I am a part -- which for all intents and purposes is treated as freaks by advertising agencies. And the explanation which seems to make the most sense, at least to most people, that women have never played football, applies equally well to a great many men who watch the game religiously.
It is getting better in one respect, though. There are now women sportscasters, women who show depth and intelligence about the sport, even though none of them had the good fortune to play it. There are enough of them now (i.e., more than one) so as to be relatively unremarkable.
Who knows? Maybe the next generation -- my sons' and my neices' daughters -- will be taken seriously as the serious football fans we are.
*The Bucs won. Hee hee hee.
**Of course, about that time I decided that my other favorite team was the Rams, because they had such cool-looking helmets. My father seemed okay with this, saying who I rooted for for whatever reasons was my business, as long as I pulled for them through thick and thin. He had little patience with fair-weather fans. This attitude has seen me through countless seasons with the Bucs, Saints, Rays, and Mets.
***Baseball has similar problems, but not, it seems to me, to the same extent as football. Somewhere it must have occurred to someone on Madison Avenue that hey! there really are female baseball fans.
He had three daughters and two sons. His sons have no interest in football. At all. Or at least they did not have the last time I talked to them about the sport. Oh, my older brother watches it because he hangs out with my eldest sister and...
The three daughters? Football fanatics. Both college football (Mississippi State and LSU for my sisters, Georgia Tech and Stanford for me) and pro football (The Saints for them (although I have a strong fondness for the guys from N'Awlins as well) and the Buccaneers and Dolphins for me). Fans who can scream "It's a blitz! Watch out!" at the television and know what we're talking about. Visiting around Christmas last year when the Bucs played the Saints* was exhilarating, and we all managed to talk to each other afterward. (My mother, bless her heart, learned to watch (and like) football in large part to be able to share it with my Dad, and is a die-hard Buccaneers fan.)
When I was about six my goal in life was to be a linebacker for the Bears. I gave it up once it was explained that this was not, in fact, a viable career path for a girl.**
And as for the next generation... my sons have about the same amount on interest in football as their uncles. Two of them came in last Saturday in the midst of a tense Stanford - USC game to tell me to stop yelling at the television set. As if that was likely to happen.
And my nieces? Yes, another set of women who can - and do - comment "screen pass!" or who groan when the other team runs back the kickoff to our team's twelve-yard line. All of whom absolutely adored the onside kick the Saints carried off to perfection to start the second half of the last Super Bowl.
Funny thing, though. You would think, looking how football is marketed, that women such as me and my sisters do not exist. We are completely invisible. The ads during the games rarely or never show women as active participants -- even when the game in question is touch football -- or interested and knowledgeable observers. Women are window dressing, designed to sell beer or cars or flat-screen mega-tv sets. Or we are shown as complainers, whining about how the game is cutting into our time watching the latest rom-com on Showtime.***
It's enough to drive one batty. It makes me angry that there is a whole demographic out there -- of which I am a part -- which for all intents and purposes is treated as freaks by advertising agencies. And the explanation which seems to make the most sense, at least to most people, that women have never played football, applies equally well to a great many men who watch the game religiously.
It is getting better in one respect, though. There are now women sportscasters, women who show depth and intelligence about the sport, even though none of them had the good fortune to play it. There are enough of them now (i.e., more than one) so as to be relatively unremarkable.
Who knows? Maybe the next generation -- my sons' and my neices' daughters -- will be taken seriously as the serious football fans we are.
*The Bucs won. Hee hee hee.
**Of course, about that time I decided that my other favorite team was the Rams, because they had such cool-looking helmets. My father seemed okay with this, saying who I rooted for for whatever reasons was my business, as long as I pulled for them through thick and thin. He had little patience with fair-weather fans. This attitude has seen me through countless seasons with the Bucs, Saints, Rays, and Mets.
***Baseball has similar problems, but not, it seems to me, to the same extent as football. Somewhere it must have occurred to someone on Madison Avenue that hey! there really are female baseball fans.
Good News and Bad News
Good News: I seem to be getting over whatever it was I had. No fever, only minimal sore throat. I was out and about today, going to a DOR jobs workshop and to the library.
Bad News: The Rangers beat the Rays to knock them out of the postseason. And I didn't even get to see any of it.
I don't know who to pull for from here on out. The Rangers, I guess, since the only other option would be the Yankees, which is totally unthinkable. On the other side, perhaps the Phillies -- although they have already won the Series once this decade. But rooting for the Giants....
Ah, well. There is college football (Stanford beat USC in an absolutely amazing game on Saturday) and pro football.
It could all be worse, I suppose; I could be a Cubs fan.
Bad News: The Rangers beat the Rays to knock them out of the postseason. And I didn't even get to see any of it.
I don't know who to pull for from here on out. The Rangers, I guess, since the only other option would be the Yankees, which is totally unthinkable. On the other side, perhaps the Phillies -- although they have already won the Series once this decade. But rooting for the Giants....
Ah, well. There is college football (Stanford beat USC in an absolutely amazing game on Saturday) and pro football.
It could all be worse, I suppose; I could be a Cubs fan.
Monday, October 11, 2010
I need a fairy jobmother.*
I hate job searching.
I suspect -- correction, I know -- I am not alone in this.
There are a lot of things I hate about it, other than the sense of failure and rejection that keeps hitting me over time. I hate trying to sell myself -- I'm very bad at that. (The Rocket Scientist gets frustrated because he says I routinely underestimate my abilities. By a lot.) I hate networking: I am introverted by nature, but more than that, I am really terrible at talking to people about career matters.
Most of all, I hate the recurring question: just what do you want to do when you grow up?
"Beats the hell out of me" is, frankly speaking, a totally inadequate answer. And more to the point, it is a dishonest answer. I do know what I want, I just don't know how to get there.
I want to write. Every single vocational assessment I have taken over the past oh, so many years has come up with "Writer" at the top of the list. Followed by the vocational counselor saying "Umm, I don't really think that that is a viable career path...."
I am a good writer. I am an interesting writer. I have been told this again and again, and more to the point (and unlike many of the other things I have been told over time about myself) I happen to believe it to be true.**
The best job I ever had, in terms of the nature of the work, hands down, was a spell when I wrote trivia questions for Pogo.com. (Sorry, guys at the Census Bureau: I love y'all to bits, but the work left a great deal to be desired. You win the "best work environment" award, which is like Miss Congeniality, only better.) I researched odd things. I wrote - and I had to write clearly and concisely, which made my writing better. My only frustration was the questions that got kicked back: any world in which "Who was the last of the Stuart monarchs?" is considered too obscure but "Who was Jennifer Aniston's godfather?" is not is a world with serious educational issues.***
The reason I loved law school is that I had to write a great deal about interesting subject matter. (You get the best cases in law school.) I was able to bring my ability to a new venue (and somehow managed not to be infected with lawyerly writing -- although I can do that on occasion if necessary). One of the reasons I hated practicing is that the subject matter was a great deal less interesting, and the writing I do best was not called for. (There is also a certain level of moral elasticity needed to be a good lawyer, with which I had a lot of trouble.) While I recognize that this is probably as much an artifact of the field of law I chose to practice as anything else (I really should have become a criminal lawyer), a great deal of it was just the nature of the legal beast.
So, what should I do? I write. I write here. I write on my (probably-never-to-be-published) book. I have to write to be whole. The long periods I have not written have been stretches where I was most certainly less than all together.
So the question then becomes: what do I do that will challenge me, keep from going crazy, pay me a decent wage, and still leave me time to write?
And that's the question to which "Beats the hell out of me" is a truthful answer.
*At the time I wrote this post, I was unaware that there is, in fact, a new show called "Fairy Jobmother." It looks dreadful.
**A strong tendency towards run-on sentences nothwithstanding.
***In the odd chance you actually care, the answers are Queen Anne and Telly Savalas.
I suspect -- correction, I know -- I am not alone in this.
There are a lot of things I hate about it, other than the sense of failure and rejection that keeps hitting me over time. I hate trying to sell myself -- I'm very bad at that. (The Rocket Scientist gets frustrated because he says I routinely underestimate my abilities. By a lot.) I hate networking: I am introverted by nature, but more than that, I am really terrible at talking to people about career matters.
Most of all, I hate the recurring question: just what do you want to do when you grow up?
"Beats the hell out of me" is, frankly speaking, a totally inadequate answer. And more to the point, it is a dishonest answer. I do know what I want, I just don't know how to get there.
I want to write. Every single vocational assessment I have taken over the past oh, so many years has come up with "Writer" at the top of the list. Followed by the vocational counselor saying "Umm, I don't really think that that is a viable career path...."
I am a good writer. I am an interesting writer. I have been told this again and again, and more to the point (and unlike many of the other things I have been told over time about myself) I happen to believe it to be true.**
The best job I ever had, in terms of the nature of the work, hands down, was a spell when I wrote trivia questions for Pogo.com. (Sorry, guys at the Census Bureau: I love y'all to bits, but the work left a great deal to be desired. You win the "best work environment" award, which is like Miss Congeniality, only better.) I researched odd things. I wrote - and I had to write clearly and concisely, which made my writing better. My only frustration was the questions that got kicked back: any world in which "Who was the last of the Stuart monarchs?" is considered too obscure but "Who was Jennifer Aniston's godfather?" is not is a world with serious educational issues.***
The reason I loved law school is that I had to write a great deal about interesting subject matter. (You get the best cases in law school.) I was able to bring my ability to a new venue (and somehow managed not to be infected with lawyerly writing -- although I can do that on occasion if necessary). One of the reasons I hated practicing is that the subject matter was a great deal less interesting, and the writing I do best was not called for. (There is also a certain level of moral elasticity needed to be a good lawyer, with which I had a lot of trouble.) While I recognize that this is probably as much an artifact of the field of law I chose to practice as anything else (I really should have become a criminal lawyer), a great deal of it was just the nature of the legal beast.
So, what should I do? I write. I write here. I write on my (probably-never-to-be-published) book. I have to write to be whole. The long periods I have not written have been stretches where I was most certainly less than all together.
So the question then becomes: what do I do that will challenge me, keep from going crazy, pay me a decent wage, and still leave me time to write?
And that's the question to which "Beats the hell out of me" is a truthful answer.
*At the time I wrote this post, I was unaware that there is, in fact, a new show called "Fairy Jobmother." It looks dreadful.
**A strong tendency towards run-on sentences nothwithstanding.
***In the odd chance you actually care, the answers are Queen Anne and Telly Savalas.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Just shoot me. Please. It would be a change, at least.
Temp just hit over 100 for the seventh day in a row. The sore throat is omnipresent. It is known not to be strep, or Epstein-Barr, and the mumps titer has not come back yet. Whatever it is, it's not terribly contagious: nobody else in the house has come down with it. Even Echidna Boy, who gets sick if you look at him wrong.
I am so freaking tired of all of this.
Time to hunt down something soft to eat and go watch Mythbusters and nap. My brain is fried.
I am so freaking tired of all of this.
Time to hunt down something soft to eat and go watch Mythbusters and nap. My brain is fried.
Well, that's better
The Rays have just announced a lottery for single post-season tickets for ALCS and/or World Series tickets at Tropicana Field. Unfortunately, the way they've been playing against the Rangers, it may be a case of too little, too late.
Update: Well, on the other hand, the Rays beat Texas today to tie the series and send it back to St. Pete. (Note to media: The Rays do not play in Tampa.)
Update: Well, on the other hand, the Rays beat Texas today to tie the series and send it back to St. Pete. (Note to media: The Rays do not play in Tampa.)
Happy Binary Day
Today is Binary Day: 10.10.10. Hurrah! As the guys at ThinkGeek point out, "There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't."
It gets better, though.
101010, when converted from binary to decimal, is.....
42.
A perfect day.
It gets better, though.
101010, when converted from binary to decimal, is.....
42.
A perfect day.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
Just heard on Animal Planet...
"[My dog] is like a boyfriend and a child, all wrapped up in a package that won't talk back to you."
I love Fred Clark
Fred Clark writes one of my favorite blogs, Slacktivist. He is interested in the intersection between religion -- and faith -- and politics, economics, and everything else. Although he has a number of religious posts, he also has many that deal simply with issues of social justice. A self-proclaimed "liberal evangelical," he attracts people of all religious persuasions (including agnostics and atheists) to his comment threads, which have some of the highest signal to noise ratios around (probably only exceeded by Making Light).
But, mainly, one of the reasons I love Fred is sentences like this:
But, mainly, one of the reasons I love Fred is sentences like this:
But this triumphalism also doesn't seem to offer much of a reward even in the next life. It's not anticipating the glory of heaven, merely the bitter pleasure of seeing others get their comeuppance. It's a vision of heaven as a place of eternal schadenfreude.
When you're forced to describe heaven using untranslatable German words, then something has gone very wrong with your spiritual weltanschauung.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Philosophy 101
EchidnaBoy (on FB): IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE REALITY, BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PROVE IT DOESN'T EXIST THEREFORE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE SURE WE ARE NOT SOME WIERD CREATION OF SOMEBODY'S MIND
Me: First: don't shout. Secondly: Read Descartes.
Me: First: don't shout. Secondly: Read Descartes.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Collision Course.
With a few exceptions, I do not believe in human monsters. I hesitate to use the word evil when referring to a human being. (A human being's actions are another thing entirely: it is quite possible for otherwise decent people to commit atrocities under the right -- or wrong -- circumstances.) Although I will occasionally tell someone to "go to hell," I don't mean it, nor do I claim to have any knowledge of whom will be allowed to enter heaven in the hereafter. Eternal punishment and reward are God's doing, not mine; I am not God, and it is blasphemy to assume otherwise.
Nonetheless, I believe Fred Phelps to be evil.
When they picket funerals of service men, he and his followers at the Westboro Baptist "Church" (the quotation marks are deliberate on my part) inflict grievous emotional harm upon people when they are at their most vulnerable: when they are mourning the loss of loved one. In their demonstrations at the sights of other tragedies (such as at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, following the suicide of four students), they show a disregard for human suffering that is monstrous in its scope. Their heretofore successful strategy of provoking people to attack them, and suing for damages, is abhorrent. They warp and twist beyond all recognition the God of the Old Testament and the New, creating a picture of a hateful, vengeful diety. They have the unmitigated gall to call themselves Christians when their behavior is an affront to every word Jesus spoke.
They are currently parties in a case presently before the Supreme Court, involving a lawsuit for damages from the family of a dead soldier whose funeral they picketed. And -- deep breath -- I cannot tell which side I want the Court to come down on.
The emotional side says this is a no-brainer. It was a funeral of a soldier, after all, a private event, and the families had a right to bury their kin in peace. Phelps and his followers had no right to be there, perhaps, and allowing the family to sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress is only just.
The facts in the case were largely undisputed, according to the appeals court: that the protesters complied with all police instructions about how far they could stand from the funeral. It was also established at trial that the father did not see the signs until he saw television coverage afterwards. The attacks on the dead Marine continued on the Westboro Church site.
In its questions to the lawyers at oral arguments, the court seemed far more favorable to lawyers for the family of the dead Marine than the lawyers for the hate-mongers.
And yet... I am very nervous about creating lines which limit what people may or may not say in public. I am worried about stifling what may be legitimate free speech.
For me, it is a case where deeply held beliefs about the inviolability of the First Amendment ran smack into abhorrence at the grief caused by Fred Phelps and Co. and sorrow that families of servicemen who gave their lives in service to their country have to experience this additional pain.
There have been many times in this country when those who spoke the truth were vilified and subjected to legislation which curtailed what they could say and to whom. The women's suffrage and the civil rights movements of the 1960s immediately come to mind. Which is not in any way to compare those righteous causes with the excrement that the Westboro Baptists produce, simply to observe that we need to be extemely careful what precedents are set here.
I will be following this case with a great deal of interest. I have an odd feeling that, whatever way the Court decides, I will be both satisfied and displeased at the result.
Nonetheless, I believe Fred Phelps to be evil.
When they picket funerals of service men, he and his followers at the Westboro Baptist "Church" (the quotation marks are deliberate on my part) inflict grievous emotional harm upon people when they are at their most vulnerable: when they are mourning the loss of loved one. In their demonstrations at the sights of other tragedies (such as at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, following the suicide of four students), they show a disregard for human suffering that is monstrous in its scope. Their heretofore successful strategy of provoking people to attack them, and suing for damages, is abhorrent. They warp and twist beyond all recognition the God of the Old Testament and the New, creating a picture of a hateful, vengeful diety. They have the unmitigated gall to call themselves Christians when their behavior is an affront to every word Jesus spoke.
They are currently parties in a case presently before the Supreme Court, involving a lawsuit for damages from the family of a dead soldier whose funeral they picketed. And -- deep breath -- I cannot tell which side I want the Court to come down on.
The emotional side says this is a no-brainer. It was a funeral of a soldier, after all, a private event, and the families had a right to bury their kin in peace. Phelps and his followers had no right to be there, perhaps, and allowing the family to sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress is only just.
The facts in the case were largely undisputed, according to the appeals court: that the protesters complied with all police instructions about how far they could stand from the funeral. It was also established at trial that the father did not see the signs until he saw television coverage afterwards. The attacks on the dead Marine continued on the Westboro Church site.
In its questions to the lawyers at oral arguments, the court seemed far more favorable to lawyers for the family of the dead Marine than the lawyers for the hate-mongers.
And yet... I am very nervous about creating lines which limit what people may or may not say in public. I am worried about stifling what may be legitimate free speech.
For me, it is a case where deeply held beliefs about the inviolability of the First Amendment ran smack into abhorrence at the grief caused by Fred Phelps and Co. and sorrow that families of servicemen who gave their lives in service to their country have to experience this additional pain.
There have been many times in this country when those who spoke the truth were vilified and subjected to legislation which curtailed what they could say and to whom. The women's suffrage and the civil rights movements of the 1960s immediately come to mind. Which is not in any way to compare those righteous causes with the excrement that the Westboro Baptists produce, simply to observe that we need to be extemely careful what precedents are set here.
I will be following this case with a great deal of interest. I have an odd feeling that, whatever way the Court decides, I will be both satisfied and displeased at the result.
Odds 'n' Ends
My doctor is 95% certain I have strep throat. (Still waiting for culture results.) Damn. I should only be contagious for another 24 hours, and the fever has abated, but I still feel awful. I have not had strep in years, I have no idea where I got it, and I just hope I didn't give it to anyone in the past week. Note to self: next time you might not want to wait a day to contact your doctor when your temp does not go below 102.5 in 12 hours, in spite of pumping yourself with Tylenol and/or Nyquil. And hitting an impervious to drugs 103 with a very sore neck is definitely a bad sign.
The small bright side in all of this is I can eat as much Ben and Jerry's as I want (which is not really all that much -- I lose my appetite when I run a fever) and not feel guilty about it, and the Rocket Scientist brought me red beans and rice from a local Cajun restaurant last night. He also reported that a) the food is relatively cheap, b) they have a bar where I could possibly just sit and drink cokes and c) they have a big screen television where they will be showing the baseball playoffs.
Speaking of baseball, the latest attempt by teams to extort money infuriates me. The Braves, Rays, and Giants -- the only three teams in the playoffs that anyone in this house cares about (the Giants only because they are playing the Braves) -- have all pulled their tickets from their websites. The way to purchase playoff tickets is to pay a nonrefundable deposit on season tickets for next season. Right. Like the Braves' fan in the house is going to pay a deposit on season tickets for a team he actively despises. We had been planning to splurge and get one ticket for a game during the division series -- that's not going to happen. Likewise, were the Rays to end up in the World Series against the Giants, we were going to buy one WS ticket for the Rays' fan in the house. Likewise, she has no intention of ever even considering buying season tickets for the Giants --- she probably dislikes them even more than he does.
Of course, given the Rays 4-0 loss to the Rangers yesterday, that latter scenario may well be moot.
Although I still feel awful, my head has cleared enough today that I did an online skills evaluation provided by the NOVA Connect Center. I still cannot get the MS Word and Excel evaluations to run, in spite of the nice young man at the job center insisting that they should run on my Mac. They won't run, dude. Unfortunately, I cannot go tell you this in person, yet.
So, last week I did an InDesign CS3 assessment, and a Legal Assistant Assessment, and today I did a Paralegal Skills assessment. I got 50% on the InDesign assessment, which sounds awful, until you realize that I used the program for all of about four months eighteen months ago, and the global average on the test was 51%. I am pretty certain I could pick it up quite easily.
As far as the Legal Assistant Skills, I got an 80% (global average was 70%). In the Paralegal Skills, I got 88% (the global average was 70%) which put me in the 90th percentile. It's been twenty years since I looked at this stuff, and I still did well. So, if I had to, legal-related jobs are a possibility. (I would have to renew my bar membership -- including paying back bar dues -- in order to actually practice law, which I am pretty sure I am no longer competent to do. I wouldn't hire me to represent me, that's for sure.)
I am waiting until my head clears a little more to do the "Persuasive Writing" evaluation.
I wish there were some way to forward these results to perspective employers and say see? See how smart I am?
While sick I have been spending time on Facebook (along with watching old movies), and have run across a number of links I just love: Indiana Jones loses his bid for tenure, John Scalzi (the science fiction writer) takes down Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and, finally, an important scientific paper. The Scalzi piece has me thinking about writing something about what literature informed my political views, but I haven't crystallized my thoughts yet.
Today, I will do job-search related work, and nap a lot.
So, what's up in your world?
The small bright side in all of this is I can eat as much Ben and Jerry's as I want (which is not really all that much -- I lose my appetite when I run a fever) and not feel guilty about it, and the Rocket Scientist brought me red beans and rice from a local Cajun restaurant last night. He also reported that a) the food is relatively cheap, b) they have a bar where I could possibly just sit and drink cokes and c) they have a big screen television where they will be showing the baseball playoffs.
Speaking of baseball, the latest attempt by teams to extort money infuriates me. The Braves, Rays, and Giants -- the only three teams in the playoffs that anyone in this house cares about (the Giants only because they are playing the Braves) -- have all pulled their tickets from their websites. The way to purchase playoff tickets is to pay a nonrefundable deposit on season tickets for next season. Right. Like the Braves' fan in the house is going to pay a deposit on season tickets for a team he actively despises. We had been planning to splurge and get one ticket for a game during the division series -- that's not going to happen. Likewise, were the Rays to end up in the World Series against the Giants, we were going to buy one WS ticket for the Rays' fan in the house. Likewise, she has no intention of ever even considering buying season tickets for the Giants --- she probably dislikes them even more than he does.
Of course, given the Rays 4-0 loss to the Rangers yesterday, that latter scenario may well be moot.
Although I still feel awful, my head has cleared enough today that I did an online skills evaluation provided by the NOVA Connect Center. I still cannot get the MS Word and Excel evaluations to run, in spite of the nice young man at the job center insisting that they should run on my Mac. They won't run, dude. Unfortunately, I cannot go tell you this in person, yet.
So, last week I did an InDesign CS3 assessment, and a Legal Assistant Assessment, and today I did a Paralegal Skills assessment. I got 50% on the InDesign assessment, which sounds awful, until you realize that I used the program for all of about four months eighteen months ago, and the global average on the test was 51%. I am pretty certain I could pick it up quite easily.
As far as the Legal Assistant Skills, I got an 80% (global average was 70%). In the Paralegal Skills, I got 88% (the global average was 70%) which put me in the 90th percentile. It's been twenty years since I looked at this stuff, and I still did well. So, if I had to, legal-related jobs are a possibility. (I would have to renew my bar membership -- including paying back bar dues -- in order to actually practice law, which I am pretty sure I am no longer competent to do. I wouldn't hire me to represent me, that's for sure.)
I am waiting until my head clears a little more to do the "Persuasive Writing" evaluation.
I wish there were some way to forward these results to perspective employers and say see? See how smart I am?
While sick I have been spending time on Facebook (along with watching old movies), and have run across a number of links I just love: Indiana Jones loses his bid for tenure, John Scalzi (the science fiction writer) takes down Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and, finally, an important scientific paper. The Scalzi piece has me thinking about writing something about what literature informed my political views, but I haven't crystallized my thoughts yet.
Today, I will do job-search related work, and nap a lot.
So, what's up in your world?
Monday, October 04, 2010
We write letters...
October 4, 2010
Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner
Address: 245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167
Dear Commissioner Selig:
For decades before I was born, baseball has been “America’s Pastime.” I have been a baseball fan for many of my forty-nine years. I have been a Tampa Bay Rays fan since before the franchise actually started playing baseball.
I was delighted that my beloved Rays won the AL East. I was looking forward to watching them beat the Rangers. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that all the postseason games were to be held on TBS, a channel that my cable provider (Comcast) refuses to provide in their digital economy service.
We are in the middle of a recession. I am myself out of work. The only reason that we have any cable at all is because it is the only way to get broadcast channels such as ABC and CBS, etc. with any real sort of clarity. We have had to cut back and economize, with the result that we now need to purchase the most basic package Comcast has to offer. As a result, we are frozen out of watching all of the postseason play before the World Series.
So many of us struggle with finances these days. Eighty dollars a month (which is what the lowest cable package ComCast offers which has TBS on it) is a problem. And my family is weathering this economic storm better than many – we are not in danger of losing our home, and we have food to eat.
Across the country, average everyday people support baseball in a whole myriad of ways. And now they are being rewarded by being deprived of seeing the most important month of games in the baseball year. So much for baseball being “America’s Pastime.”
It is too late for this year. Please make changes next year and thereafter so postseason games can be available to everyone, and not place fans at the mercy of cable providers.
Please put the good of the game – and loyalty to its fans – above mercenary considerations. Thank you.
Sincerely,
[Me]
Allan H. (Bud) Selig, Commissioner
Address: 245 Park Avenue, 31st Floor
New York, NY 10167
Dear Commissioner Selig:
For decades before I was born, baseball has been “America’s Pastime.” I have been a baseball fan for many of my forty-nine years. I have been a Tampa Bay Rays fan since before the franchise actually started playing baseball.
I was delighted that my beloved Rays won the AL East. I was looking forward to watching them beat the Rangers. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that all the postseason games were to be held on TBS, a channel that my cable provider (Comcast) refuses to provide in their digital economy service.
We are in the middle of a recession. I am myself out of work. The only reason that we have any cable at all is because it is the only way to get broadcast channels such as ABC and CBS, etc. with any real sort of clarity. We have had to cut back and economize, with the result that we now need to purchase the most basic package Comcast has to offer. As a result, we are frozen out of watching all of the postseason play before the World Series.
So many of us struggle with finances these days. Eighty dollars a month (which is what the lowest cable package ComCast offers which has TBS on it) is a problem. And my family is weathering this economic storm better than many – we are not in danger of losing our home, and we have food to eat.
Across the country, average everyday people support baseball in a whole myriad of ways. And now they are being rewarded by being deprived of seeing the most important month of games in the baseball year. So much for baseball being “America’s Pastime.”
It is too late for this year. Please make changes next year and thereafter so postseason games can be available to everyone, and not place fans at the mercy of cable providers.
Please put the good of the game – and loyalty to its fans – above mercenary considerations. Thank you.
Sincerely,
[Me]
Sunday, October 03, 2010
I've been meaning to write something every day. Unfortunately, I tend to have a habit of not posting in a week, then posting six items in one day. Sorry.
Today, I am trying to figure out what to write about. Of course, since I have been writing a lot this week, I could just take a break, but that would lack discipline (a particular failing of mine).
Any suggestions?
Today, I am trying to figure out what to write about. Of course, since I have been writing a lot this week, I could just take a break, but that would lack discipline (a particular failing of mine).
Any suggestions?
Woohoo!
Rays win the AL East! Rays win the AL East! Damn Yankees go down.
This is not to say that the Rays won't tank in the first round of the playoffs, but it's still nice.
This is not to say that the Rays won't tank in the first round of the playoffs, but it's still nice.
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Ellen Degeneres has come out with an important video about a tragedy affecting our society, specifically our youth, especially youth who identify (or who are believed by their peers) to be gay.
This is an important issue. Bullying of all kinds goes on, and to a great deal is excused as being just a part of teenage life, but that aimed towards gay youth tends to be the nastiest.
This is an important issue. Bullying of all kinds goes on, and to a great deal is excused as being just a part of teenage life, but that aimed towards gay youth tends to be the nastiest.
Addendum.
It occurred to me this morning that my post on Terry Pratchett and identity was incomplete: I didn't even touch on Angua (rejection of identity by nature), Cheery (rejection of other people's demands for how you self-identity), William de Worde* (the flip side of Jeremy and Lobsang -- rejection of identity by family), Sam Vimes later on in the series (the clash between public identity and personal identity) and most of all Vetinari (whose identity is the most intriguing. Who is he?).
Don't worry, I'm not going to inflict a detailed explanation on all of you. : )
*I always assumed that "William de Worde" was a completely made up name, ironically reflecting his position as a publisher. I was delighted to find out that there was a Wynkyn de Worde who was an important figure in the history of printing. Among other things he introduced the use of italics into English printing, for which I am very grateful. Terry Pratchett is simply brilliant.
Don't worry, I'm not going to inflict a detailed explanation on all of you. : )
*I always assumed that "William de Worde" was a completely made up name, ironically reflecting his position as a publisher. I was delighted to find out that there was a Wynkyn de Worde who was an important figure in the history of printing. Among other things he introduced the use of italics into English printing, for which I am very grateful. Terry Pratchett is simply brilliant.
Friday, October 01, 2010
Bearing Arms
I thought of appending this to my previous post, but decided it deserved it's own:
The College-Of-Arms in England has issued Sir Terry Pratchett a coat of arms. It includes an ankh, a knight's helmet, and an owl (in the Discworld books, one of the heraldic animals of Ankh-Morpork). The motto is "Noli Timere Messorum," which means ...
"Don't Fear the Reaper."
The College-Of-Arms in England has issued Sir Terry Pratchett a coat of arms. It includes an ankh, a knight's helmet, and an owl (in the Discworld books, one of the heraldic animals of Ankh-Morpork). The motto is "Noli Timere Messorum," which means ...
"Don't Fear the Reaper."
Identifying Identity.
Two of my favorite authors are Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I know of people who think of them as, not interchangeable, but linked, primarily because of the absolutely wonderful Good Omens.
I read them for different reasons. Neil Gaiman I read for his words -- smoky or brilliant, or enveloping like burgundy velvet. (I knew I was in love when I read "Richard knocked back the green liquid, which tasted of thyme and peppermint and winter mornings" in Neverwhere.) Who can see such wild and wonderful worlds as that found in Neverwhere, or characters as deep and interesting as in American Gods. Who can show us the the other side of what we know, as the in short story "Snow, Glass, Apples."
His words, above all, are pretty, often jewel-like.
Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, I read for ideas. Not that he can't knock back a good phrase himself: from Reaper Man comes "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." But his books, clothed as they are in the comic relief of the Discworld denizens, often have at their core profound reflections upon the world.
I have not read all of the Discworld books; for one thing, I have tended to concentrate on those revolving around the City Watch and Sam Vimes. (Sam Vimes may be my favorite character in literature, after Elizabeth Bennett.) Those I have read, I have tended to reread and re-reread, and each time I am struck by how deep they go, while on the surface appearing to be light and frothy.
And a central issue that arises again and again is of identity. Who are we, exactly? Are we who others define us to be? Are we who we appear on the outside? What about those other selves, those other parts of self?
[Cut for spoilers.]
I read them for different reasons. Neil Gaiman I read for his words -- smoky or brilliant, or enveloping like burgundy velvet. (I knew I was in love when I read "Richard knocked back the green liquid, which tasted of thyme and peppermint and winter mornings" in Neverwhere.) Who can see such wild and wonderful worlds as that found in Neverwhere, or characters as deep and interesting as in American Gods. Who can show us the the other side of what we know, as the in short story "Snow, Glass, Apples."
His words, above all, are pretty, often jewel-like.
Terry Pratchett, on the other hand, I read for ideas. Not that he can't knock back a good phrase himself: from Reaper Man comes "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." But his books, clothed as they are in the comic relief of the Discworld denizens, often have at their core profound reflections upon the world.
I have not read all of the Discworld books; for one thing, I have tended to concentrate on those revolving around the City Watch and Sam Vimes. (Sam Vimes may be my favorite character in literature, after Elizabeth Bennett.) Those I have read, I have tended to reread and re-reread, and each time I am struck by how deep they go, while on the surface appearing to be light and frothy.
And a central issue that arises again and again is of identity. Who are we, exactly? Are we who others define us to be? Are we who we appear on the outside? What about those other selves, those other parts of self?
[Cut for spoilers.]
One of those days...
Four hours sleep. Breakfast, but no lunch.
On days like this I start obsessing about things; my mind has a mind of its own, it seems. Today, as it often is, it is focused on my mistakes.
On the slights I have committed, on the casual woundings and unintended thoughtlessness I have inflicted on people. Of sins of omission. Of the words "Thank you" and "I love you" and "Can I help?" left unspoken, sometimes through timidity but more often through carelessness.
I find it easy to forgive others; forgiving myself is a much harder proposition.
I would say "you know who you are" to all the people whom I have failed to remind of their importance in my life, but you can't know, can you?
On days like this I start obsessing about things; my mind has a mind of its own, it seems. Today, as it often is, it is focused on my mistakes.
On the slights I have committed, on the casual woundings and unintended thoughtlessness I have inflicted on people. Of sins of omission. Of the words "Thank you" and "I love you" and "Can I help?" left unspoken, sometimes through timidity but more often through carelessness.
I find it easy to forgive others; forgiving myself is a much harder proposition.
I would say "you know who you are" to all the people whom I have failed to remind of their importance in my life, but you can't know, can you?
The song remembers when ... and whom.
You may have noticed that I will sometimes (these days, rather frequently) write about music. I write about music, or use song lyrics to speak for me.
My music takes a lot of personas: there are songs that I simply like (and some that seem to like me -- they show up a lot on my iTunes when I hit shuffle). There are songs that carry profound intrinsic meaning.
There is the very small subset of music that, if it came to a choice between never hearing it again or remaining celibate the rest of my life, I'd have to think long and hard about which path to take -- and on some days, I'd be more than willing to give up the sex. (To wit: Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," Aaron Copeland's "Rodeo" and "Appalachian Spring," and "Asking Us to Dance" by Kathy Mattea. Oddly enough, there is a piece of a song that probably also fits in this classification: on the Beatles' Abbey Road, the bridge between "Polythene Pam" and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.")
And then there are memory songs. The soundtracks which reflect so much of my life.
Memory of places. Memory of people. Memory of feelings.
"Mambo No. 5" is the back roads of Normandy, where I first heard it. The album Graceland is southern Nevada, where I and the other person who was driving West with me had a fight and let the tape roll over three times while not speaking to each other. "Hotel California" is not merely California, but the border between California and Arizona -- which I was weeping over when the song came on the radio, because I never wanted to return to the state. ("You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...." ) Jimmy Buffet's "Boat Drinks" is Wellesley, Massachusetts in February. For self-explanatory reasons, if you've ever heard the song.
"The Sound of Music" is my father. As is the Marine Hymn. Sarah Mclachlan's cover of "The Rainbow Connection" is my friend Sarah; Eddie From Ohio's "Number Six Driver," my friend Cathy. "Rocky Raccoon" is my older brother. A lot of people who stay in my life for any length of time (although not everyone), and even some who pass through quickly if they have been memorable or important enough, end up with songs attached to them in my mind.
There are the lullabies, "Sweet Baby James" and "Baby Mine" (from Dumbo) and "Deliver Us" (from the Prince of Egypt). Lullabies that in their own odd way ended up being reflected in the souls to which they were sung -- restless, sweet, and dramatic.*
There are the songs that describe me to me: "The Moon & St. Christopher" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Travelin' Thru" by Dolly Parton, the Byrds' "My Back Pages," among others. There are the songs I wish I could sing to other people, and the songs I wish others would sing to me (chief among them being "Bridge Over Troubled Water.")
There are songs that, no matter how happy or beautiful, are for their own reasons difficult to hear, like picking a scab off a wound that has long been closed: Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl"; "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her," by Simon and Garfunkel. Which does not keep me from listening to them, because they are beautiful and were once important to me, but there are days when I cannot bear to, when I deselect their boxes from my playlists.
I often wonder how weird I am, whether other people have this almost obsessive need to create soundtracks for all the parts of their lives. Not that it matters, much: I don't think I can stop doing this even if I wanted to.
How about you? How does your music resonate to your life?
*A tiny part of me is insanely happy that Sweet Baby James has gone off to the wilds of Western Massachusetts, and will end up, if not already, quite familiar with the "turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston" being covered in snow.
My music takes a lot of personas: there are songs that I simply like (and some that seem to like me -- they show up a lot on my iTunes when I hit shuffle). There are songs that carry profound intrinsic meaning.
There is the very small subset of music that, if it came to a choice between never hearing it again or remaining celibate the rest of my life, I'd have to think long and hard about which path to take -- and on some days, I'd be more than willing to give up the sex. (To wit: Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," Dave Brubeck's "Take Five," Aaron Copeland's "Rodeo" and "Appalachian Spring," and "Asking Us to Dance" by Kathy Mattea. Oddly enough, there is a piece of a song that probably also fits in this classification: on the Beatles' Abbey Road, the bridge between "Polythene Pam" and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window.")
And then there are memory songs. The soundtracks which reflect so much of my life.
Memory of places. Memory of people. Memory of feelings.
"Mambo No. 5" is the back roads of Normandy, where I first heard it. The album Graceland is southern Nevada, where I and the other person who was driving West with me had a fight and let the tape roll over three times while not speaking to each other. "Hotel California" is not merely California, but the border between California and Arizona -- which I was weeping over when the song came on the radio, because I never wanted to return to the state. ("You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...." ) Jimmy Buffet's "Boat Drinks" is Wellesley, Massachusetts in February. For self-explanatory reasons, if you've ever heard the song.
"The Sound of Music" is my father. As is the Marine Hymn. Sarah Mclachlan's cover of "The Rainbow Connection" is my friend Sarah; Eddie From Ohio's "Number Six Driver," my friend Cathy. "Rocky Raccoon" is my older brother. A lot of people who stay in my life for any length of time (although not everyone), and even some who pass through quickly if they have been memorable or important enough, end up with songs attached to them in my mind.
There are the lullabies, "Sweet Baby James" and "Baby Mine" (from Dumbo) and "Deliver Us" (from the Prince of Egypt). Lullabies that in their own odd way ended up being reflected in the souls to which they were sung -- restless, sweet, and dramatic.*
There are the songs that describe me to me: "The Moon & St. Christopher" by Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Travelin' Thru" by Dolly Parton, the Byrds' "My Back Pages," among others. There are the songs I wish I could sing to other people, and the songs I wish others would sing to me (chief among them being "Bridge Over Troubled Water.")
There are songs that, no matter how happy or beautiful, are for their own reasons difficult to hear, like picking a scab off a wound that has long been closed: Van Morrison's "Brown-Eyed Girl"; "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her," by Simon and Garfunkel. Which does not keep me from listening to them, because they are beautiful and were once important to me, but there are days when I cannot bear to, when I deselect their boxes from my playlists.
I often wonder how weird I am, whether other people have this almost obsessive need to create soundtracks for all the parts of their lives. Not that it matters, much: I don't think I can stop doing this even if I wanted to.
How about you? How does your music resonate to your life?
*A tiny part of me is insanely happy that Sweet Baby James has gone off to the wilds of Western Massachusetts, and will end up, if not already, quite familiar with the "turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston" being covered in snow.
On this day...
October 1st is a significant day for me. Three organizations that have had profound impacts on my life celebrate anniversaries:
On October 1, 1891, Stanford University opened its doors to students. Go Cardinal!
On October 1, 1958, NASA became operational (after being created by an act of Congress on July 29 of the same year). Happy Birthday -- it's been fun being (indirectly) associated with you the last, oh, twenty-three years.
And finally, on October 1, 1971...
Disney World opened.*
*Believe me, growing up within easy driving distance of the House that Mickey Built can have lasting effects; when one of the questions of the day your senior year becomes "You wanna cut school and go to Disney World?" it sort of warps a person.
On October 1, 1891, Stanford University opened its doors to students. Go Cardinal!
On October 1, 1958, NASA became operational (after being created by an act of Congress on July 29 of the same year). Happy Birthday -- it's been fun being (indirectly) associated with you the last, oh, twenty-three years.
And finally, on October 1, 1971...
Disney World opened.*
*Believe me, growing up within easy driving distance of the House that Mickey Built can have lasting effects; when one of the questions of the day your senior year becomes "You wanna cut school and go to Disney World?" it sort of warps a person.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
We (got) email....
Yesterday, while discussing email addresses over coffee with a friend, I found myself reminiscing about my early days as an AOL subscriber. This was relatively early in the email game for most people outside of technical or academic settings. Back then, for most people, Spam was simply a pressed meat product produced by the Hormel Company and the subject of a rather bizarre Monty Python sketch.
I have a fairly common name which was adopted into a fairly common sounding email address, and as a result found myself the recipient of emails clearly intended for others. Most of them were routine, and I generally ignored them. A couple struck me as being important enough to notify the sender that their email had gone astray.
There was the very nice retired commercial pilot who was trying give advice to his hoping to be a commercial pilot son. I sent him a reply, wishing him and his son luck, and received a lovely answer.
But my all-time, very favorite mis-sent email ran something as follows:
Dear Pat:
It turns out that we can't be in Miami next month after all. Would you be interested in the Super Bowl tickets?
Eric
************
My reply:
Dear Eric:
I am not the Pat you're looking for. But I would be more than happy to take the Super Bowl tickets off of you.
Pat
***********
Eric wrote back thanking me for letting him know that his email had not reached its intended target, then said that he had already disposed of the tickets.
Rats. Just when I was thinking that something really cool might come from all this electronic communication.
I have a fairly common name which was adopted into a fairly common sounding email address, and as a result found myself the recipient of emails clearly intended for others. Most of them were routine, and I generally ignored them. A couple struck me as being important enough to notify the sender that their email had gone astray.
There was the very nice retired commercial pilot who was trying give advice to his hoping to be a commercial pilot son. I sent him a reply, wishing him and his son luck, and received a lovely answer.
But my all-time, very favorite mis-sent email ran something as follows:
Dear Pat:
It turns out that we can't be in Miami next month after all. Would you be interested in the Super Bowl tickets?
Eric
************
My reply:
Dear Eric:
I am not the Pat you're looking for. But I would be more than happy to take the Super Bowl tickets off of you.
Pat
***********
Eric wrote back thanking me for letting him know that his email had not reached its intended target, then said that he had already disposed of the tickets.
Rats. Just when I was thinking that something really cool might come from all this electronic communication.
Aha!
The commenting problem is fixed. Sort of. Turns out it was not so much a Blogger problem as a FireFox problem. When I use Safari, I can actually comment. Thanks to datagoddess who mentioned that she had to change from Firefox to IE to get a comment box. Being a Mac user, that was not an option, but I tried Safari, and violá! Commenting commences!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
The best statement of faith I have read in a very long time...
I just wish I had seen it when it was first written in 2004 -- I could have used it a lot since then:
Teresa Nielsen Hayden's "Things I Believe."
There is far too much to quote extensively, but one statement stands out: "I believe that the God who made (among other things) light, and space, and number, and time, and the spiral curve of Fibonacci numbers, must be acknowledged to understand more than I do about why there’s pain in the world."
Teresa Nielsen Hayden's "Things I Believe."
There is far too much to quote extensively, but one statement stands out: "I believe that the God who made (among other things) light, and space, and number, and time, and the spiral curve of Fibonacci numbers, must be acknowledged to understand more than I do about why there’s pain in the world."
"In the room the players come and go, talking of their scores on Halo..."
We here at WWF love T.S. Eliot.* And good parodies of T.S. Eliot, too. Having already presented "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, as Rewritten for Frat Boys" some time ago, it now falls to us to introduce all of you to... "The .doc File of J. Alfred Prufrock." (From the absolutely brilliant copperbadge at Live Journal, by way of Making Light.)
*DO NOT get us started on the musical Cats. Just don't. Unless you have time for a very lengthy diatribe about Andrew Lloyd Weber.
*DO NOT get us started on the musical Cats. Just don't. Unless you have time for a very lengthy diatribe about Andrew Lloyd Weber.
To the lizard currently hiding underneath the dishwasher...
As it stands, your choices are either 1) keep hiding, and die a slow death of starvation, or 2) wait until nightfall, try to escape, and die a quicker but much more violent death at the paws of one or both cats. (I would be most worried about the black and white one: she once killed a snake much larger than you.) The fact that my youngest son has named you "Charlie" in no way changes the fact that you are now as good as dead.
You should have let us capture and release you when you had the chance.
You should have let us capture and release you when you had the chance.
Note to Self...
You really need to start posting about something other than your psyche. You may be interesting, but you're not that interesting.
Bleh...
All I can hear in my brain is Cole Porter's "It's Too Darned Hot," from Kiss Me, Kate. (No thanks for the earworm, Cole.) This post both sums up how I'm feeling today, and reminds me how much worse things could be.*
*Except since I wrote that, the tech industry -- along with a lot of others -- have tanked and Barry Bonds has retired. Which leaves the price of real estate as the major thing to whine about.
*Except since I wrote that, the tech industry -- along with a lot of others -- have tanked and Barry Bonds has retired. Which leaves the price of real estate as the major thing to whine about.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Searching for the rainbow
I have a lot of music on my iTunes. Maybe not a lot by most people's standards, but I think so: 1953 items (and that after I purged about 100 songs this morning, to make room for the latest episode of America's Next Top Model), not including television shows; four days, nineteen hours, fifty-six minutes and 19 seconds worth of music. A scary amount of that is locked up in Broadway show tunes and movie soundtracks (33 complete soundtracks, from one to four songs from 58 other shows/movies). That still leaves a lot of room for my other music, which runs from hard rock/heavy metal (Led Zeppelin and Metallica), through country (any one of a number of artists) through rock, and alternative, classical, standards, jazz and even Newfoundland folk rock (Great Big Sea).
Like most people I know, there are a few songs I have multiple versions of; Christmas music, mostly: I've heard a lot of different interpretations of "Silent Night." There are a couple of non-holiday songs I have multiples of -- I have four versions of "Route 66" (not one of which is by Nat King Cole), and I have eight versions of "Over the Rainbow."
"Over the Rainbow" may be the quintessential song of childhood. Recognition that life is not always lollipops and Santa Claus, that dreams don't come true -- except in that mythical land which all of us assumed existed when we were very young. In the original, it was sung by a child, or a teenager at least: Judy Garland was sixteen when she starred in the Wizard of Oz, even though her character, Dorothy Gale, was supposed to be only twelve. Her rendition is given special poignancy if you know anything about the life of child stars at that period -- in many ways they were anything but children.
For the most part, the versions of the song that I have, other than the original, seem mostly aimed at adults. (The only exception may be Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole's cheerful yet wistful take on the song. The ukelele is a large part of its charm.) Harry Nilsson's soaring version was even used in the soundtrack of a romantic comedy which was very much not about children.*
My youngest son, while listening me play each version in order while writing this, made the astute observation that all of the versions after the original were slower and sadder. (Again, the exceptions would be Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole's and Eric Clapton's. Quite frankly, I bought the Clapton version mainly because the words "Eric Clapton" and "Over the Rainbow" wouldn't fit in my brain at the same time.) "The original was not sad, because you could get there someday," he said. "These say 'life sucks' and although I would like it to be different it won't be." He hit the nail on the head.
While I admit this may be as much an artifact of the covers of the song I ended up buying as anything else, as all one's music is a reflection one's psyche, something is happening here. In the hands of these more sophisticated singers, the song moves from a wistful ballad of possibilities to a sad reflection upon lost childhood.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than to note how adults often reimage childhood things -- songs, toys, holidays (I could do a whole post on the co-opting of Halloween) -- to suit their emotional needs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we recognize what we are doing.
Revisiting childhood as a foreign country is okay, as long as we remember it is a foreign country, and we can't stay there forever, and that there should be limits on how much baggage we carry away.
*You've Got Mail. I've said before how this movie is one my favorite romantic comedies. Although it's not the only reason, its use of this and other pieces by Nilsson is part of its charm.
Like most people I know, there are a few songs I have multiple versions of; Christmas music, mostly: I've heard a lot of different interpretations of "Silent Night." There are a couple of non-holiday songs I have multiples of -- I have four versions of "Route 66" (not one of which is by Nat King Cole), and I have eight versions of "Over the Rainbow."
"Over the Rainbow" may be the quintessential song of childhood. Recognition that life is not always lollipops and Santa Claus, that dreams don't come true -- except in that mythical land which all of us assumed existed when we were very young. In the original, it was sung by a child, or a teenager at least: Judy Garland was sixteen when she starred in the Wizard of Oz, even though her character, Dorothy Gale, was supposed to be only twelve. Her rendition is given special poignancy if you know anything about the life of child stars at that period -- in many ways they were anything but children.
For the most part, the versions of the song that I have, other than the original, seem mostly aimed at adults. (The only exception may be Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole's cheerful yet wistful take on the song. The ukelele is a large part of its charm.) Harry Nilsson's soaring version was even used in the soundtrack of a romantic comedy which was very much not about children.*
My youngest son, while listening me play each version in order while writing this, made the astute observation that all of the versions after the original were slower and sadder. (Again, the exceptions would be Isreal Kamakawiwo'ole's and Eric Clapton's. Quite frankly, I bought the Clapton version mainly because the words "Eric Clapton" and "Over the Rainbow" wouldn't fit in my brain at the same time.) "The original was not sad, because you could get there someday," he said. "These say 'life sucks' and although I would like it to be different it won't be." He hit the nail on the head.
While I admit this may be as much an artifact of the covers of the song I ended up buying as anything else, as all one's music is a reflection one's psyche, something is happening here. In the hands of these more sophisticated singers, the song moves from a wistful ballad of possibilities to a sad reflection upon lost childhood.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than to note how adults often reimage childhood things -- songs, toys, holidays (I could do a whole post on the co-opting of Halloween) -- to suit their emotional needs. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we recognize what we are doing.
Revisiting childhood as a foreign country is okay, as long as we remember it is a foreign country, and we can't stay there forever, and that there should be limits on how much baggage we carry away.
*You've Got Mail. I've said before how this movie is one my favorite romantic comedies. Although it's not the only reason, its use of this and other pieces by Nilsson is part of its charm.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Blogger commenting FTL
Blogger is not letting me make comments. I have heard from other people that it is not letting them make comments, either. Looking at the help boards, it appears this has been affecting a number of blogs and there has been no fix yet.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
A novel idea...
I have an idea for a NaNoWriMo plot! It's not very good, tending toward the maudlin and soap-operish (and I'm not going to reveal it here). It should be fun to write, though.
I already have rough physical descriptions of the two main characters. I have to do research, though -- about PTSD, about DADT, about battered-woman syndrome, and, on a more mundane level, how much of a car could you get if you traded in a brand-new Lexus SUV. I told you it was not going to be a bunch of roses.
The rough outline runs to 606 words.* Given the 50K word requirement, I just have to extend it by a few orders of magnitude in November and I'm good to go.
*According to the rules, you are allowed to do outlines, character sketches, and research before November 1. You just can't start writing before then.
I already have rough physical descriptions of the two main characters. I have to do research, though -- about PTSD, about DADT, about battered-woman syndrome, and, on a more mundane level, how much of a car could you get if you traded in a brand-new Lexus SUV. I told you it was not going to be a bunch of roses.
The rough outline runs to 606 words.* Given the 50K word requirement, I just have to extend it by a few orders of magnitude in November and I'm good to go.
*According to the rules, you are allowed to do outlines, character sketches, and research before November 1. You just can't start writing before then.
Come on, come on
It's getting late now
Come on, come on
Hold my hand
Come on, come on
You just have to whisper
Come on, come on
I will understand
Mary Chapin Carpenter "Come On, Come On"
I am not an album person. I don't have the patience, generally, to listen to an entire album worth of songs by a single artist. The number of albums I like as albums could probably be counted on one hand.
One of those is Mary Chapin Carpenter's Come On, Come On.*
It was a very successful record: seven of its twelve tracks hit the Billboard top twenty country charts. Songs such as "The Hard Way," "I Feel Lucky," and "I Take My Chances" became big hits, and gained Chapin Carpenter new fans -- myself included.
The past day or two I have been listening to the underrated title song. It is melancholy, about losing things you never fully appreciated at the time, about loneliness and desire for things that you cannot quite name.
Some people remember the first time
Some can't forget the last
Some just select what they want to from the past
Memory is a tricky thing. The faces blur, remembered pain remains, and the memory of hope. Hope about the future, hope about who you would be, and what life would hold. Memory of dreams. Memory of longing.
I am getting older -- nearing fifty. Lately I have been aware of how much closer my life is to its end than its beginning. Not in a morbid way, simply in a sense that time is slipping and if I am to become whatever I am to become, I should probably do it soon.
I am just as confused by life, by dreams, by hope, as I was when I was twenty. I am not as afraid of the confusion, no longer believing as I did then that the world is an understandable place, and that my confusion simply indicated a failure on my part to adequately comprehend things around me. At some point I came to the conclusion that however crazy I may be, everything else is still crazier. Confusion is a sane response to an insane world.
And yet...
It's the need you never get used to, so fierce and so confused
It's the loss you never get used to, the first time you lose
Mary Chapin Carpenter is talking about love, or its handmaiden, sex, but she might as well be of so many other things. Desire takes many forms, for many things: for security, for certainty, for joy, and yes, for love. And the loss of the feeling that all things are possible, that God is in His heaven and all is right with the world, is a heavy loss indeed.
The song understands.
* Sheryl Crow has an album called C'mon, C'mon. MCC's is better.
It's getting late now
Come on, come on
Hold my hand
Come on, come on
You just have to whisper
Come on, come on
I will understand
Mary Chapin Carpenter "Come On, Come On"
I am not an album person. I don't have the patience, generally, to listen to an entire album worth of songs by a single artist. The number of albums I like as albums could probably be counted on one hand.
One of those is Mary Chapin Carpenter's Come On, Come On.*
It was a very successful record: seven of its twelve tracks hit the Billboard top twenty country charts. Songs such as "The Hard Way," "I Feel Lucky," and "I Take My Chances" became big hits, and gained Chapin Carpenter new fans -- myself included.
The past day or two I have been listening to the underrated title song. It is melancholy, about losing things you never fully appreciated at the time, about loneliness and desire for things that you cannot quite name.
Some people remember the first time
Some can't forget the last
Some just select what they want to from the past
Memory is a tricky thing. The faces blur, remembered pain remains, and the memory of hope. Hope about the future, hope about who you would be, and what life would hold. Memory of dreams. Memory of longing.
I am getting older -- nearing fifty. Lately I have been aware of how much closer my life is to its end than its beginning. Not in a morbid way, simply in a sense that time is slipping and if I am to become whatever I am to become, I should probably do it soon.
I am just as confused by life, by dreams, by hope, as I was when I was twenty. I am not as afraid of the confusion, no longer believing as I did then that the world is an understandable place, and that my confusion simply indicated a failure on my part to adequately comprehend things around me. At some point I came to the conclusion that however crazy I may be, everything else is still crazier. Confusion is a sane response to an insane world.
And yet...
It's the need you never get used to, so fierce and so confused
It's the loss you never get used to, the first time you lose
Mary Chapin Carpenter is talking about love, or its handmaiden, sex, but she might as well be of so many other things. Desire takes many forms, for many things: for security, for certainty, for joy, and yes, for love. And the loss of the feeling that all things are possible, that God is in His heaven and all is right with the world, is a heavy loss indeed.
The song understands.
* Sheryl Crow has an album called C'mon, C'mon. MCC's is better.
Friday, September 24, 2010
More than you really want to know about my email address...
I was sitting looking at a friend's email address this morning and going.... "Hmmm. Oookay.... I really wonder where that came from?" While a lot of people have variations on their names and or initials, followed often by whatever string of numbers their mail provider has chosen to saddle them with to differentiate them from everybody with the same name/initials, some are more distinctive. Even then, people can often figure out a name's provenance -- or so they think. At least most people think they can with me. It's not quite straightforward, though.
Once upon a time, in oh, the early '90s, there was this company called America Online. It was based in Vienna, Virginia, which was but spitting distance, more or less, from where we lived in McLean. (Okay, it was down at the other end of Fairfax County, but still.)
It was still a young company, even though it had been around in some form for nearly a decade. This was before it was acquired by Time Warner, before those damned ubiquitous CDs that appeared in mailboxes and magazines with dismaying frequency. Back when they would trumpet "we've just added our 50,000 member!" (And oh boy, was it a big deal when they hit 100k!) Before the sonorous tones of "You've got mail" became a pop culture joke and a touchpoint for a silly Tom Hanks - Meg Ryan movie.*
I was a habitué of the AOL's Trivia Forum chat room. It was a good group of people: Tiger123, Jeopchamp (who had never actually been on Jeopardy!) and BDG (BigDumbGuy -- he was anything but) and many other wonderful people. It was my first experience of large scale psuedonymity, such as is the rule today on the Internet. People would get to know each other, ask about each other's kids, or how the weekend in Atlantic City went, that sort of thing.
Each evening one or more of the hosts would run games. (My favorite was "Dog's Breakfast" by Tiger123.) There were no prizes, no glory, simply the satisfaction of having beaten twenty other smart people. (One of the greatest challenges, actually, was getting into the room. Each Forum had room for only 22 participants at a time, and 2 of those had to be the Host and the Scorekeeper.)
After a few months, and quite a bit of success as a player, I decided that what I really wanted to do wasdirect host games. This was not necessarily a simple task -- the hosts wrote the games as well as ran them. This was fine with me: I loved the challenge of writing the questions, especially the need to trade off clarity and difficulty.
I ran several games on a weekly basis over the next few months. I started off with the rather mundanely named "Trivia with Pat." I then decided to run a game focused solely on history: "The Time Machine." (For anyone out there who played a game named the "Time Machine" on the AOL Trivia Forum that was not run by me: it was taken over by other hosts later.) It is amazing what you can shoehorn into the category of "history."
And then I started "Madame Verdi's Information Parlor." Aha! most people say. "Mrs. Green. We get it."** Let's get one thing straight: I am not, nor have I ever been, Mrs. Greene. That's my mother. Or my aunt. Or my brother's wife. Not me.
No. "Madame" was in homage to this woman:
Anna Louise Germaine de Staël, known by most people who have heard of her as Madame de Staël. (Many people have heard of her because of her most famous quote: "The more I know men the better I like dogs.") She was a novelist, influencer of literary tastes, and ran the hottest salon with the best intellectuals. Napoleon disliked and distrusted her so much that he had her exiled . According to a contemporary source, Napoleon said that she "teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think." My kind of woman.
I am nothing like her, really. She wrote very well, was incredibly influential, and had style to spare. But this is cyberspace, after all, where, to paraphrase the Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you can dream it, you can be it. And so the Information Parlor was born.
I called it the Information Parlor because I wanted to deal with more serious subjects than in some of my other games, things that people really should know. As fond as I am of the fact, that Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright and were based upon the foundation that his father Frank Lloyd Wright developed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, is trivia. What the Kristallnacht was, or who Alice Paul was, most decidedly is not. And somewhere along the line, I decided I liked this alter-ego, who was smart and stylish and who had simply the most interesting people hanging around her (electronic) parlor.
After a while, the time-requirements of being a full-time mother of two small children caught up with me. Something had to give, and trivia hosting went. But I kept Madame Verdi in the back of my head: I used it in email addresses, I had a Live Journal where I asked trivia questions under that name. My (as-yet and probably-forever) unfinished trivia book had her name in the title. The portion of said book which was sent around to friends several years back as a seventy-eight-page Christmas Card did likewise. When I started this blog, I used the name as part of the URL.Each time I see that name, I think not only of my doppelganger, but the remarkable woman whose honorific she shares.
I hope Anna Louise would approve.
*You've Got Mail is one of the few romantic comedies of the past thirty years I actually like, in spite of Meg Ryan being in it. Maybe because Tom Hanks is just so wonderful and lovable.
**Usually followed by "So, why did you mix French and Italian? Shouldn't it be either 'Madame Vert' or 'Signora Verdi'?" The answer to which is a most unstylish and unintellectual "beats the hell out of me."
Once upon a time, in oh, the early '90s, there was this company called America Online. It was based in Vienna, Virginia, which was but spitting distance, more or less, from where we lived in McLean. (Okay, it was down at the other end of Fairfax County, but still.)
It was still a young company, even though it had been around in some form for nearly a decade. This was before it was acquired by Time Warner, before those damned ubiquitous CDs that appeared in mailboxes and magazines with dismaying frequency. Back when they would trumpet "we've just added our 50,000 member!" (And oh boy, was it a big deal when they hit 100k!) Before the sonorous tones of "You've got mail" became a pop culture joke and a touchpoint for a silly Tom Hanks - Meg Ryan movie.*
I was a habitué of the AOL's Trivia Forum chat room. It was a good group of people: Tiger123, Jeopchamp (who had never actually been on Jeopardy!) and BDG (BigDumbGuy -- he was anything but) and many other wonderful people. It was my first experience of large scale psuedonymity, such as is the rule today on the Internet. People would get to know each other, ask about each other's kids, or how the weekend in Atlantic City went, that sort of thing.
Each evening one or more of the hosts would run games. (My favorite was "Dog's Breakfast" by Tiger123.) There were no prizes, no glory, simply the satisfaction of having beaten twenty other smart people. (One of the greatest challenges, actually, was getting into the room. Each Forum had room for only 22 participants at a time, and 2 of those had to be the Host and the Scorekeeper.)
After a few months, and quite a bit of success as a player, I decided that what I really wanted to do was
I ran several games on a weekly basis over the next few months. I started off with the rather mundanely named "Trivia with Pat." I then decided to run a game focused solely on history: "The Time Machine." (For anyone out there who played a game named the "Time Machine" on the AOL Trivia Forum that was not run by me: it was taken over by other hosts later.) It is amazing what you can shoehorn into the category of "history."
And then I started "Madame Verdi's Information Parlor." Aha! most people say. "Mrs. Green. We get it."** Let's get one thing straight: I am not, nor have I ever been, Mrs. Greene. That's my mother. Or my aunt. Or my brother's wife. Not me.
No. "Madame" was in homage to this woman:
Anna Louise Germaine de Staël, known by most people who have heard of her as Madame de Staël. (Many people have heard of her because of her most famous quote: "The more I know men the better I like dogs.") She was a novelist, influencer of literary tastes, and ran the hottest salon with the best intellectuals. Napoleon disliked and distrusted her so much that he had her exiled . According to a contemporary source, Napoleon said that she "teaches people to think who never thought before, or who had forgotten how to think." My kind of woman.
I am nothing like her, really. She wrote very well, was incredibly influential, and had style to spare. But this is cyberspace, after all, where, to paraphrase the Rocky Horror Picture Show, if you can dream it, you can be it. And so the Information Parlor was born.
I called it the Information Parlor because I wanted to deal with more serious subjects than in some of my other games, things that people really should know. As fond as I am of the fact, that Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright and were based upon the foundation that his father Frank Lloyd Wright developed for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, is trivia. What the Kristallnacht was, or who Alice Paul was, most decidedly is not. And somewhere along the line, I decided I liked this alter-ego, who was smart and stylish and who had simply the most interesting people hanging around her (electronic) parlor.
After a while, the time-requirements of being a full-time mother of two small children caught up with me. Something had to give, and trivia hosting went. But I kept Madame Verdi in the back of my head: I used it in email addresses, I had a Live Journal where I asked trivia questions under that name. My (as-yet and probably-forever) unfinished trivia book had her name in the title. The portion of said book which was sent around to friends several years back as a seventy-eight-page Christmas Card did likewise. When I started this blog, I used the name as part of the URL.Each time I see that name, I think not only of my doppelganger, but the remarkable woman whose honorific she shares.
I hope Anna Louise would approve.
*You've Got Mail is one of the few romantic comedies of the past thirty years I actually like, in spite of Meg Ryan being in it. Maybe because Tom Hanks is just so wonderful and lovable.
**Usually followed by "So, why did you mix French and Italian? Shouldn't it be either 'Madame Vert' or 'Signora Verdi'?" The answer to which is a most unstylish and unintellectual "beats the hell out of me."
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Why yes, we do need the Post Office.
I really should never watch clips of Fox News, even when they are being offered by friends to show that even Republicans know racism when they see it.* Because I get distracted. In this case by the fact that everyone in this clip argues that the Postal Service should be abolished.
Distracted because all of these white professionals are so completely out of touch with the realities of many people's lives -- especially poor people. Older people. Or people in rural areas where there is not a lot of broadband availability.
According to the commenters on Fox, the Postal Service can be shown to be obsolete because of the threefold path of FedEx, the Internet, and cell phones.
Yes, of course, FedEx makes a lot of money each year, certainly more than the post office: they charge a lot to ship things, that's why. An overnight letter from FedEx is $33.87. That same letter from the US Postal Service is $18.30. And before anyone complains of quality of service, I have had problems with FedEx as well as USPS.
What bothered me most, though, was the idea that the Internet and cellular phones have made the postal service obsolete. Because, of course, everyone has Internet service.
Except my mother. She's 82, and not very comfortable with technology. And she is not alone, at least in not having Internet service: according to figures released earlier this year, 40% of Americans do not have Internet access in their home. Public libraries can offer some people access, as can schools, but both of those institutions are being increasingly squeezed by budget cuts in most parts of the country.
So, lacking Internet access, how do people pay their bills, or order goods, or communicate with their loved ones? Through the mail. Contrary to popular belief, the letter and card is not completely obsolete: I get them all the time from relatives. (We live in different time zones, so phone calls become tricky.)
And as for cell phones... right. I was galled at the woman who brought up depositing checks by phone: I have a decent phone, with a good camera, but I can't do that. You need an iPhone -- current retail price for the cheapest model $99. While that is a far cry cheaper than they were originally, you still need to have a two year contract with AT&T. Which means switching carriers -- not necessarily a inexpensive proposition. If you rely on sell-phones without a contract, that you can add minutes to as you need them, you're simply out of luck.
The mistake -- or deliberate ignorance -- that all of these people make is to examine their own experiences and extrapolate from there. They show a profound lack of understanding of how other people -- the poor, the elderly, the rural -- live their lives.**
And it is those people who would most suffer from any scheme to kill the Postal Service. Personally, I think that the Postal Service should be like roads, or sewers, or the services that help support the populace in their daily lives. We all benefit from having a service which allows people to manage their affairs in a responsible fashion.
But then what do I know? I'm not on Fox News.
*But yes, kudos to Senator D'Amato for calling out racist bullshit when he saw it.
** This is at its heart a lack of empathy, that quality so decried by the Republicans during the Sotomayor hearings. But, as I seem to keep saying a lot these days, that's a rant for another day.
Distracted because all of these white professionals are so completely out of touch with the realities of many people's lives -- especially poor people. Older people. Or people in rural areas where there is not a lot of broadband availability.
According to the commenters on Fox, the Postal Service can be shown to be obsolete because of the threefold path of FedEx, the Internet, and cell phones.
Yes, of course, FedEx makes a lot of money each year, certainly more than the post office: they charge a lot to ship things, that's why. An overnight letter from FedEx is $33.87. That same letter from the US Postal Service is $18.30. And before anyone complains of quality of service, I have had problems with FedEx as well as USPS.
What bothered me most, though, was the idea that the Internet and cellular phones have made the postal service obsolete. Because, of course, everyone has Internet service.
Except my mother. She's 82, and not very comfortable with technology. And she is not alone, at least in not having Internet service: according to figures released earlier this year, 40% of Americans do not have Internet access in their home. Public libraries can offer some people access, as can schools, but both of those institutions are being increasingly squeezed by budget cuts in most parts of the country.
So, lacking Internet access, how do people pay their bills, or order goods, or communicate with their loved ones? Through the mail. Contrary to popular belief, the letter and card is not completely obsolete: I get them all the time from relatives. (We live in different time zones, so phone calls become tricky.)
And as for cell phones... right. I was galled at the woman who brought up depositing checks by phone: I have a decent phone, with a good camera, but I can't do that. You need an iPhone -- current retail price for the cheapest model $99. While that is a far cry cheaper than they were originally, you still need to have a two year contract with AT&T. Which means switching carriers -- not necessarily a inexpensive proposition. If you rely on sell-phones without a contract, that you can add minutes to as you need them, you're simply out of luck.
The mistake -- or deliberate ignorance -- that all of these people make is to examine their own experiences and extrapolate from there. They show a profound lack of understanding of how other people -- the poor, the elderly, the rural -- live their lives.**
And it is those people who would most suffer from any scheme to kill the Postal Service. Personally, I think that the Postal Service should be like roads, or sewers, or the services that help support the populace in their daily lives. We all benefit from having a service which allows people to manage their affairs in a responsible fashion.
But then what do I know? I'm not on Fox News.
*But yes, kudos to Senator D'Amato for calling out racist bullshit when he saw it.
** This is at its heart a lack of empathy, that quality so decried by the Republicans during the Sotomayor hearings. But, as I seem to keep saying a lot these days, that's a rant for another day.
Walking the Path: The Lessons of the Labyrinth
On Monday, I walked the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Like the sea, this is a centering ritual for me.
In popular argot, "labyrinth" is synonymous with "maze." It is not, not in the spiritual sense. A maze is a puzzle, a trap. The best ones are confounding riddles in which their joy lies in defeating their creator.
A labyrinth is a discipline. You need not worry about getting lost, for the way is before you, as long as you follow the path set out. All you need is patience, and a quiet mind, The latter is, for me, the most difficult part of the exercise.
Like usual when I walk the labyrinth, I have a specific issue that I am wrestling with. This time it was letting go: letting go of people (and a reminder not to do so quickly or easily), letting go of things, letting go of time. Most of all, letting go of outcomes. I can only do what I do in the world; the result of that lies beyond my control.
The first time that I walked the labyrinth, I was struggling with fear: fear of the future, most important of all. Not so different as this time, perhaps. I wrote a Live Journal post of things I thought during the experience. Rereading it, while it seems now rather pretentious, I find great parts still ring true. Allowing for a little tweaking, an addition or two, they are lessons I am still learning.
In popular argot, "labyrinth" is synonymous with "maze." It is not, not in the spiritual sense. A maze is a puzzle, a trap. The best ones are confounding riddles in which their joy lies in defeating their creator.
A labyrinth is a discipline. You need not worry about getting lost, for the way is before you, as long as you follow the path set out. All you need is patience, and a quiet mind, The latter is, for me, the most difficult part of the exercise.
Like usual when I walk the labyrinth, I have a specific issue that I am wrestling with. This time it was letting go: letting go of people (and a reminder not to do so quickly or easily), letting go of things, letting go of time. Most of all, letting go of outcomes. I can only do what I do in the world; the result of that lies beyond my control.
The first time that I walked the labyrinth, I was struggling with fear: fear of the future, most important of all. Not so different as this time, perhaps. I wrote a Live Journal post of things I thought during the experience. Rereading it, while it seems now rather pretentious, I find great parts still ring true. Allowing for a little tweaking, an addition or two, they are lessons I am still learning.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Ahoy, there, matey!
So once again we reach September 19th, "International Talk Like a Pirate Day."
It is a stupid idea. Real pirates raped and pillaged and, in their present day incarnations, continue to threaten ships and seamen, primarily off the coast of Africa. They are not by any stretch of the imagination worthy of celebrating or emulating.
Except, that's not really what ITLAP Day is about, as far as I can tell --- and certainly not for me. It is a celebration of the caricature of the pirate as it has moved into popular culture. Paging Jack Sparrow.
At it's heart, it's about doing something supremely silly.... just because we can. Because every once in a while you need to have a holiday which is not in the least solemn and which has no religious significance or redeeming social value whatsoever, other than giving someone a chance to throw a really good party.*
So, let's party. If only in our small way. Here's hopin' the Buccaneers, Raiders and Pirates** win their games today (as of this writing, both the Bucs and Pirates had). And a great ahoy and huzzah there! to the extremely hard-working ITLAP web-wench. We be met the lady, and a winsome wench she be, too.
So maties, here's hopin your seas and grog both be smooth. Save any storm clouds on the horizons for the morrow.
* One of my other favorite holidays is Bloomsday, June 16th.
**But not the Vikings. Vikings are not pirates.
It is a stupid idea. Real pirates raped and pillaged and, in their present day incarnations, continue to threaten ships and seamen, primarily off the coast of Africa. They are not by any stretch of the imagination worthy of celebrating or emulating.
Except, that's not really what ITLAP Day is about, as far as I can tell --- and certainly not for me. It is a celebration of the caricature of the pirate as it has moved into popular culture. Paging Jack Sparrow.
At it's heart, it's about doing something supremely silly.... just because we can. Because every once in a while you need to have a holiday which is not in the least solemn and which has no religious significance or redeeming social value whatsoever, other than giving someone a chance to throw a really good party.*
So, let's party. If only in our small way. Here's hopin' the Buccaneers, Raiders and Pirates** win their games today (as of this writing, both the Bucs and Pirates had). And a great ahoy and huzzah there! to the extremely hard-working ITLAP web-wench. We be met the lady, and a winsome wench she be, too.
So maties, here's hopin your seas and grog both be smooth. Save any storm clouds on the horizons for the morrow.
* One of my other favorite holidays is Bloomsday, June 16th.
**But not the Vikings. Vikings are not pirates.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Sometimes, they get things right...
In the past, I have often railed against what I have seen as the idiocy of the Supreme Court of the United States. Over the past few years, they have engaged in some decisions that made me froth at the mouth. (Let's not discuss Ledbetter v. Goodyear, or even worse, Kelo v. City of New London.)
In an effort to be more upbeat, I am going to ignore discussions of decisions such as the Citizen's United case, allowing unfettered corporate spending during elections, or the detainee pictures issue. Instead, there was at least one case to be happy about, at least from my perspective.
This case I am most happy about, Holland v. Florida, seemed to be the sort of thing that would be obvious to any layperson. An inmate, on death row in Florida, desperately tried to communicate with his lawyer about his case. All attempts to get the lawyer's attention failed. The defendant even went so far as to petition the circuit court directly, only to be told that such an appeal was improper since he was already represented by counsel. The lawyer subsequently missed the filing deadline for the habeas corpus petition.
The question raised before the court was whether the defendant's actions were sufficient to suspend the deadline for submitting habeas review petitions under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. (The deficencies of which are a rant for another day.) The court failed to answer that question, instead saying the circuit court's decision that lawyer negligence was never enough to suspend the tolling of the statute was wrong.
Well, duh. If an inmate does all he can and the lawyer is a blithering idiot, it's the inmate's life on the line, not the lawyer's. Sadly, two justices -- two of the usual suspects, Scalia and Thomas -- dissented, stating that the Court was powerless to make any changes.*
Clients are at the mercy of lawyers. In most cases, it is the lawyers who determine if appeals get filed on time. There are strict statutes of limitations for a reason: without them, the judicial system would grind to a halt, and no one could ever be sure that something in their past would not force them before a court to answer for past actions. (Whether those limits are in fact fair, in any given case, is determined by the particulars of the law. In some cases, like limits on when an appeal may be filed in a capital case, I find unconscionable; in others, such as limitations on when tort actions may be filed, not so much.)
Lawyers given to handling capital cases are occasionally underpaid or incompetent. Until 2000, Alabama attorneys were paid $1000 to defend defendants in capital cases; now they are paid $60 an hour for out of court work and $30 for in court work. While this may seem like a great deal, for a lawyer, whose has office overhead, and whose capital defense work would affect his ability to work on other, more lucrative cases, it is a pittance. Not to mention the costs of investigators to probe into the case and the background of the client to find questionable facts or mitigating circumstances.
To preclude an inmate who has done his desperate best to forward his case is to allow technicalities to trump any notion of justice.
There were other cases whose outcome I applauded, such as the Florida beach ownership case, Stop the Beach v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, (from the viewpoint of someone who believes --- admittedly perhaps socialistically -- that all beach access should be public)** and, more reservedly, the juvenile justice cases (see previous post).
I am looking forward to seeing what the court does next. The term begins October 4. No doubt I will rant about the stupid decisions, but hopefully I will also be able to find time to cheer the good ones.
*There is another rant in here about how some of Scalia's statements in other cases can be construed to imply that there is no constitutional right to prove one's innocence, but again, that's a rant for another day.
** They left the whole judicial takings issue for another day. Given the makeup of the Court, that's a little worrisome, but in any case we don't have to deal with it now.
In an effort to be more upbeat, I am going to ignore discussions of decisions such as the Citizen's United case, allowing unfettered corporate spending during elections, or the detainee pictures issue. Instead, there was at least one case to be happy about, at least from my perspective.
This case I am most happy about, Holland v. Florida, seemed to be the sort of thing that would be obvious to any layperson. An inmate, on death row in Florida, desperately tried to communicate with his lawyer about his case. All attempts to get the lawyer's attention failed. The defendant even went so far as to petition the circuit court directly, only to be told that such an appeal was improper since he was already represented by counsel. The lawyer subsequently missed the filing deadline for the habeas corpus petition.
The question raised before the court was whether the defendant's actions were sufficient to suspend the deadline for submitting habeas review petitions under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. (The deficencies of which are a rant for another day.) The court failed to answer that question, instead saying the circuit court's decision that lawyer negligence was never enough to suspend the tolling of the statute was wrong.
Well, duh. If an inmate does all he can and the lawyer is a blithering idiot, it's the inmate's life on the line, not the lawyer's. Sadly, two justices -- two of the usual suspects, Scalia and Thomas -- dissented, stating that the Court was powerless to make any changes.*
Clients are at the mercy of lawyers. In most cases, it is the lawyers who determine if appeals get filed on time. There are strict statutes of limitations for a reason: without them, the judicial system would grind to a halt, and no one could ever be sure that something in their past would not force them before a court to answer for past actions. (Whether those limits are in fact fair, in any given case, is determined by the particulars of the law. In some cases, like limits on when an appeal may be filed in a capital case, I find unconscionable; in others, such as limitations on when tort actions may be filed, not so much.)
Lawyers given to handling capital cases are occasionally underpaid or incompetent. Until 2000, Alabama attorneys were paid $1000 to defend defendants in capital cases; now they are paid $60 an hour for out of court work and $30 for in court work. While this may seem like a great deal, for a lawyer, whose has office overhead, and whose capital defense work would affect his ability to work on other, more lucrative cases, it is a pittance. Not to mention the costs of investigators to probe into the case and the background of the client to find questionable facts or mitigating circumstances.
To preclude an inmate who has done his desperate best to forward his case is to allow technicalities to trump any notion of justice.
There were other cases whose outcome I applauded, such as the Florida beach ownership case, Stop the Beach v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection, (from the viewpoint of someone who believes --- admittedly perhaps socialistically -- that all beach access should be public)** and, more reservedly, the juvenile justice cases (see previous post).
I am looking forward to seeing what the court does next. The term begins October 4. No doubt I will rant about the stupid decisions, but hopefully I will also be able to find time to cheer the good ones.
*There is another rant in here about how some of Scalia's statements in other cases can be construed to imply that there is no constitutional right to prove one's innocence, but again, that's a rant for another day.
** They left the whole judicial takings issue for another day. Given the makeup of the Court, that's a little worrisome, but in any case we don't have to deal with it now.
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