The QC Report was noting in her most recent post how annoying it can be when your blog and real lives interact (or don’t, as the case may be). I could certainly sympathize when she observed the frustration she feels as she relates an anecdote to a friend only to be met with a barely stifled yawn and, “I know. I read your blog.” Then, because someone (someone, mind you, I had no idea even knew my blog existed) has rolled her eyes and said that to me, I’ll encounter another friend and preface my story with “Let me know if you already read this on my blog,” only to be told, dismissively “I don’t get blogging. So, don’t worry. I haven’t read your blog” (this being the friend who works in the IT department and is the master of text messaging one-handed on a cell phone that’s in his pocket. Why Tech Whiz doesn’t “get blogging” is beyond me). Anyway, I was glad to read that at least one other blogger has such friends.
This may sound like I have obnoxious real-life friends. I don’t. It’s just that, after a year of doing this, I’m still not sure how to blend my blog into the rest of my life. I mean, it does seem pretty obnoxious to assume people are logging on and visiting my blog first thing every morning. By the same token, it seems that one of the nice things about having a blog is being able to say to friends I rarely get to see, “If you want to keep up with what’s going on with me, just read my blog.” But then Ms. Accuracy who resides with all those other characters in my brain (the ones some of you have been reading about for a year now) will worry, because my blog doesn’t exactly relate my day-to-day activities. This means I usually end up saying something more along the lines of “I have a blog, and if you sort of want to keep up with what’s going on in my life, you can read it.” Then, of course, I immediately forget I’ve said anything about it. One day I get an email from someone of a certain age who used to go to church with me, and when she mentions my blog, I realize she has access to such things as what I think is the sexiest part of a man’s body (okay, that hasn’t actually happened yet, but I’m always fearing it’s going to).
For a long time, I just assumed none of my real-life friends (well, with the exception of you, Danny, at whom I practically threw my URL) were reading my blog. I found out the hard way that this was a stupid assumption on my part. Let’s just say, don’t tell one friend about your blog without telling all other friends and acquaintances you share in common, or one might just get a little pissed. I’d still wager a large sum of money that most of my real-life friends don’t read my blog, but I’ve come to realize some do, and a few of those have even come to rely on it.
That adds pressure of the, “Ohmigod, if I don’t hurry up and blog about the fact Bob and I are moving, nobody’s going to know” sort. Believe me, blogging creates enough pressure for someone who teeters on the brink of an OCD diagnosis without adding more, but then there’s this one, “If I blog about this before calling everyone in the family, are they going to be upset, because they had to find out about it through my blog?” My family members, whom I initially thought would be the only ones who read my blog, haven’t let me down and, I’m pretty sure, are still my most faithful readers, which introduces a new pressure. Are my siblings and I being too cliquish, as I’ve been told by real-life friends we’re wont to do, making others who visit the blog uncomfortable?
Then, of course, I’ve complicated matters further by turning blogging friends like Dorr and Hobs into real-life friends. Actually, I highly recommend these sorts of friends. They comment on your blog; you comment on theirs. No one ever has any doubt about what the others do or don’t know. One of the first things we say to each other, if it’s the case, is, “I didn’t get to read your blog post yet today (or this week or whatever).” It’s those sneaky friends who read your blog and never comment you have to watch out for. And what’s with these people who visit my site on computers that don’t register location on my site meter, so they remain complete mysteries. Sitemeter even denotes them as ?Unknown, like I’ve got some CIA agent on my trail or something.
Oh yes, and then there’s the other thing I do. I’m like an overzealous reformed smoker or drinker who’s had her corpus callosum cut or something. One part of my brain doesn’t know what the other part is doing, and instead of telling everyone to quit, I’m telling everyone to start. I beg my friends to start blogs (as if I need more blogs to read). I’ll tell complete strangers on the street that they ought to start a blog. I tell everyone I know that the best thing I ever did was start blogging, how good it’s been for my writing, what great people I’ve met. I’m beginning to judge people, people about whom I know absolutely nothing, based on their answer to the question “Do you have a blog?” I’m completely obnoxious, I know, but I just can’t help myself.
If you’ve been blogging for a while now, and you recognize yourself in any of this, I’m hoping I’ve provided the same service for you that Ms. QC provided for me: you are not alone. You are in the company of at least one other crazy fool who is still trying to figure out how this blog life fits in and around the rest of her life. If you don’t recognize yourself in any of this, could you please let me know where you went to get help?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 28, 2007
F-F-F-Fears and Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
I’ve made some rather startling discoveries about myself during this whole process of discerning Bob’s call to the ministry. Isn’t it always interesting when you think you know so much about yourself, and then you discover, given certain circumstances, that nope, you are just as clueless about the real you as that stranger sitting across from you on the subway? As a matter of fact, he may even know you better, if he assumes certain traits of all human beings, those that six months ago you would have hotly contested were not traits of yours.
I don’t mind too much when my discoveries turn out to be good ones, when, for instance, I find I was wrong to think I’m not the sort of person who will say, “What do you mean? That’s not a square. It’s a triangle,” when everyone else in the group is calling a three-sided, closed figure a square. I like discovering I’m not a sheep who just follows the crowd the way I generally assume I am. I like knowing I’d probably be the neighbor who would call the police if I heard Kitty Genovese screaming.
But the discoveries I’ve made during this process haven’t been such noble ones. For instance, I’ve discovered I’m terrified of leaving my comfort zone. Me. The cheerleader who’s favorite line for all her friends is, “Rah! Rah! Change is good!” (I guess that means I’m also discovering I’m one of those awful people, full of advice for others she never follows herself.) I’m the one who’s always looking at others with that oh-so-critical eye, thinking, “How can she possibly still be living there/with that loser/sticking it out at that dead-end job? Isn’t she bored/frustrated to tears? She should move/kick him out/find something that allows her to use all her great talents.”
I’m the one who never understood how my parents could have lived in the same house for 24 years, leaving it occasionally for stints in other places but always coming back. I was especially amazed by my mother, the diplomat’s daughter, who’d lived in all kinds of exciting cities all over the world before she was married. Not that I would have relished moving around as a child. Switching schools every so often was hard enough without also being uprooted. My little judgmental mind was very good at ignoring this fact, though, when it was sitting back, deciding what boring lives my parents lived and vowing never to fall into such a trap.
My parents have since made up for their years of stagnation, having moved three times since I graduated from college. Meanwhile, I, the one who was going to move every five years or so, the one who wanted as many different living experiences in this short life as she could get, have been living in Connecticut for nearly twenty years. Granted, I lived in many different apartments with many different roommates during the first seven of those years, but this July 1st will mark twelve years of living in this one house. My fourteen-year-old self is looking at me with utter disdain. Not only have I let this happen, but I don’t seem overly eager to rectify the situation.
I’m not looking at the opportunity to move as a great new beginning, my next big adventure in life. Instead, I’m clinging to things I never thought were all that important. I like the fact I know where everything is here. I like my work-day routine, in which I spend half the day upstairs and half the day down. I like the way we’ve let nature take over and let our yard grow mostly wild, despite curious looks from neighbors (looks I used to find embarrassing, constantly feeling the need to explain we’re environmentalists). And then there are the things I know are important: I adore all my friends in Connecticut and nearby New York. I love living on a quiet, dead-end street. I love, love, love New England with its picturesque towns, gentle mountains and fabulous shorelines, as well as its winters. If we’re going to move, it’s supposed to be somewhere else in New England, preferably Maine.
There we have it: the queen of change is afraid of change, so afraid she was willing to let her husband turn down a job that was practically custom-made for him, so she could stay, if not in the same house, at least on familiar turf. That’s not going to happen, though. Bob is scared, too, but we both realize fears are never a good reason to pass up a wonderful opportunity. We’ve made a decision. We’re moving to Pennsylvania.
Guess what. I’ll eventually know where everything is there, too (and I’ll have the fun of making those discoveries). I’ll settle into a new work routine. I’ll make new friends, and all my wonderful friends from Connecticut and New York can easily come visit, as it’s not that far away. We’ll have plenty of room for guests. My fourteen-year-old self has already packed up her room into the moving van and tells me she’ll be waiting to show me the ropes when we follow her in the fall.
Meanwhile, bear with me, please, as I deal with all my anxieties and fears over the next few months. Like, for example: “Ohmigod! What are we going to do with twelve years’ worth of accumulated junk?!”
I don’t mind too much when my discoveries turn out to be good ones, when, for instance, I find I was wrong to think I’m not the sort of person who will say, “What do you mean? That’s not a square. It’s a triangle,” when everyone else in the group is calling a three-sided, closed figure a square. I like discovering I’m not a sheep who just follows the crowd the way I generally assume I am. I like knowing I’d probably be the neighbor who would call the police if I heard Kitty Genovese screaming.
But the discoveries I’ve made during this process haven’t been such noble ones. For instance, I’ve discovered I’m terrified of leaving my comfort zone. Me. The cheerleader who’s favorite line for all her friends is, “Rah! Rah! Change is good!” (I guess that means I’m also discovering I’m one of those awful people, full of advice for others she never follows herself.) I’m the one who’s always looking at others with that oh-so-critical eye, thinking, “How can she possibly still be living there/with that loser/sticking it out at that dead-end job? Isn’t she bored/frustrated to tears? She should move/kick him out/find something that allows her to use all her great talents.”
I’m the one who never understood how my parents could have lived in the same house for 24 years, leaving it occasionally for stints in other places but always coming back. I was especially amazed by my mother, the diplomat’s daughter, who’d lived in all kinds of exciting cities all over the world before she was married. Not that I would have relished moving around as a child. Switching schools every so often was hard enough without also being uprooted. My little judgmental mind was very good at ignoring this fact, though, when it was sitting back, deciding what boring lives my parents lived and vowing never to fall into such a trap.
My parents have since made up for their years of stagnation, having moved three times since I graduated from college. Meanwhile, I, the one who was going to move every five years or so, the one who wanted as many different living experiences in this short life as she could get, have been living in Connecticut for nearly twenty years. Granted, I lived in many different apartments with many different roommates during the first seven of those years, but this July 1st will mark twelve years of living in this one house. My fourteen-year-old self is looking at me with utter disdain. Not only have I let this happen, but I don’t seem overly eager to rectify the situation.
I’m not looking at the opportunity to move as a great new beginning, my next big adventure in life. Instead, I’m clinging to things I never thought were all that important. I like the fact I know where everything is here. I like my work-day routine, in which I spend half the day upstairs and half the day down. I like the way we’ve let nature take over and let our yard grow mostly wild, despite curious looks from neighbors (looks I used to find embarrassing, constantly feeling the need to explain we’re environmentalists). And then there are the things I know are important: I adore all my friends in Connecticut and nearby New York. I love living on a quiet, dead-end street. I love, love, love New England with its picturesque towns, gentle mountains and fabulous shorelines, as well as its winters. If we’re going to move, it’s supposed to be somewhere else in New England, preferably Maine.
There we have it: the queen of change is afraid of change, so afraid she was willing to let her husband turn down a job that was practically custom-made for him, so she could stay, if not in the same house, at least on familiar turf. That’s not going to happen, though. Bob is scared, too, but we both realize fears are never a good reason to pass up a wonderful opportunity. We’ve made a decision. We’re moving to Pennsylvania.
Guess what. I’ll eventually know where everything is there, too (and I’ll have the fun of making those discoveries). I’ll settle into a new work routine. I’ll make new friends, and all my wonderful friends from Connecticut and New York can easily come visit, as it’s not that far away. We’ll have plenty of room for guests. My fourteen-year-old self has already packed up her room into the moving van and tells me she’ll be waiting to show me the ropes when we follow her in the fall.
Meanwhile, bear with me, please, as I deal with all my anxieties and fears over the next few months. Like, for example: “Ohmigod! What are we going to do with twelve years’ worth of accumulated junk?!”
Saturday, May 26, 2007
I Didn't Know I Was THAT Much of a Dork!
Your Score: Pure Nerd
73 % Nerd, 13% Geek, 43% Dork
For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.
The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.
Congratulations!
Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Professional Wrestling
Love & Sexuality
America/Politics
Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST
| Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Friday, May 25, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
8 Things Meme
8 Random Things about Me
I found the rules for this one over at So Many Books. Here they are:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
And here are my 8 things:
1. (Thing about my curiosity) I’m wondering why the number 8 was chosen for this little exercise.
2. (Thing about my hobbies) I love frogs. I’ve been collecting them (not real ones, of course. They belong outside, where I can hear them performing their nightly operas this time of year) since I was about five or so, and I still have the first one I got (although its head broke off and had to be glued back on).
3. (Thing about my esthetic tastes) My favorite color is green, and I just found out that the human eye can detect different shades of green better than any other color. Bob said he thinks this is because, as we evolved, we had to figure out what all those different greens in the jungle were. That’s probably true, but I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the foods we eat tend to turn green when they go bad.
4. (Thing about my gluttony) I can live without lots of things, but if someone were to tell me I could never have butter, cheese, or cream again, I think I’d have to slit my wrists.
5. (Thing about my early reading adventures) The first “chapter book” I ever read alone was Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. My aunt gave it to me for Christmas when I was in second grade, and my mother and I read it together the first go-round, but then I liked it so much, I decided to read it on my own.
6. (Thing about how I don’t fit too well into the human race) I know summer is supposed to be the best season, and everyone looks forward to it, but I’m not a big fan of summer.
7. (Thing that’s a little racy) I think the sexiest part of a man’s body is the forearm, and that forearms look best in long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves pushed up rather than in short-sleeved shirts. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how this odd fetish of mine developed, but I’m sure there’s something buried deep in my subconscious.
8. (Thing about my laziness) I’m glad I don’t have to think up anymore of these.
I can’t possibly come up with eight people to tag who haven’t already done this one, so I’ll be a copycat and say what everyone else is saying: if you haven’t done this one yet, consider yourself tagged.
I found the rules for this one over at So Many Books. Here they are:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
And here are my 8 things:
1. (Thing about my curiosity) I’m wondering why the number 8 was chosen for this little exercise.
2. (Thing about my hobbies) I love frogs. I’ve been collecting them (not real ones, of course. They belong outside, where I can hear them performing their nightly operas this time of year) since I was about five or so, and I still have the first one I got (although its head broke off and had to be glued back on).
3. (Thing about my esthetic tastes) My favorite color is green, and I just found out that the human eye can detect different shades of green better than any other color. Bob said he thinks this is because, as we evolved, we had to figure out what all those different greens in the jungle were. That’s probably true, but I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of the foods we eat tend to turn green when they go bad.
4. (Thing about my gluttony) I can live without lots of things, but if someone were to tell me I could never have butter, cheese, or cream again, I think I’d have to slit my wrists.
5. (Thing about my early reading adventures) The first “chapter book” I ever read alone was Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. My aunt gave it to me for Christmas when I was in second grade, and my mother and I read it together the first go-round, but then I liked it so much, I decided to read it on my own.
6. (Thing about how I don’t fit too well into the human race) I know summer is supposed to be the best season, and everyone looks forward to it, but I’m not a big fan of summer.
7. (Thing that’s a little racy) I think the sexiest part of a man’s body is the forearm, and that forearms look best in long-sleeved shirts with the sleeves pushed up rather than in short-sleeved shirts. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how this odd fetish of mine developed, but I’m sure there’s something buried deep in my subconscious.
8. (Thing about my laziness) I’m glad I don’t have to think up anymore of these.
I can’t possibly come up with eight people to tag who haven’t already done this one, so I’ll be a copycat and say what everyone else is saying: if you haven’t done this one yet, consider yourself tagged.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
The Immeasurable Pleasure of Reading About Ruins (Or Litblogger Imitation #2)
Thoughts on:
Macauly, Rose. The Pleasure of Ruins. New York: Barnes and Nobles Books, 1953. This was my second book for the 2007 nonfiction reading challenge.
When I was a child, my parents dragged us to every historic site that piqued their interests throughout the British Isles, France, and Germany. During these trips, the only thing that really piqued my interest (well, besides food, candy, and books that were not accessible in my home state of North Carolina in those days. These would be real fish ‘n’ chips, Opal Fruits, and Tin Tin respectively) were castle ruins. It seems to me I asked every morning if we were going to a castle. I soon learned to say “castle ruin,” as I had been disappointed a number of times by “castles” that seemed no different from those boring old estates exhibiting plump, extremely-comfy-looking chairs and sofas we weren’t allowed to sit on; dark paintings of prominent figures that teased me with the idea of being followed by their eyes, the way they do in scary movies, but never did; and velvet drapes that just begged to be hidden behind if only, again, I were allowed. These were fake castles. A real castle had crumbling towers, archways, and secret passages, the perfect backdrop for playing knight in shining armor (surprise, surprise: I was a knight, never a princess). Most exciting was a castle with a moat that still had water and might be hiding the remains of an ancient dragon (or at least had a cool drawbridge). In my teens, I became fascinated with Stone Henge, the mystery of it as intriguing as the actual remnants; Battle Abbey, sure I might see some ghosts wandering around in the battle fields; and Hadrian’s Wall (perhaps a little too influenced by the fact I’d graduated from Tin Tin to Asterisk the Gaul by then and had become fascinated with the Roman occupation).
My love of such spots hasn’t waned over the years. Bob and I discovered Avebury. Ahh! Avebury, where the village weaves in and out and around the ancient stones, and the sheep lie down against them. (Oh, and while you’re there, you can get great scones with clotted cream and jam). Our visit to Tintern Abbey revealed it to be a place likely to make those who guffaw at the notion of inanimate objects casting spells think twice. Meanwhile it causes people like me to roll over, expose their bellies, paws in air, begging, “more spells. Please. More.” Tikal was a place that made me desperately wish, not for the first time, I had a time machine. But you don’t even have to take me to foreign lands. You can tell me you’d like to show me a ghost town in New Mexico or some rich man’s old estate on an island off the coast of Maine that was left to rot during The Great Depression, and I’m there. Needless to say: I love ruins. Nothing quite grabs hold of the reins of my runaway imagination and says “Gee!” quite the way a good ruin does.
Those of you who have followed this blog and my comments on others’ blogs know I also happen to be infatuated with Rose Macaulay. Thus, when a friend of mine lent me Pleasure of Ruins, my first thought was, “How can I go wrong with Rose Macaulay’s take on ruins from around the globe?” After all, two infatuations have got to be better than one. Happily, and for a change, I didn’t ask “How can I go wrong?” and end up in some prison in Mexico or something.
Let’s just say that, like reading Slightly Foxed, my natural tendencies to horde went off on their own little adventures (maybe to some Mexican ruins) by the time I’d reached page 15. I sat down with this book and immediately wished I didn’t have anything to do at all (eat, drink, sleep, be married…) for the next 15 hours or so until I could finish it.
In typical understated British fashion, what should have been called Pure Unadulterated Delight and Ecstasy of Ruins has been called merely Pleasure of Ruins. This fascinating hybrid of history (most especially odd historical tidbits); guide to archeology, art and architecture; travelogue; and collection of quotes from other travelers’ diaries (and I’m talking here about such travelers as Dickens and Stendhal) is pretty hard to classify. Her signature wry and witty observations (so familiar from her novels) add to the enjoyment. Imagine traveling around the world, spying on travelers from past centuries, with a less-depressed, less self-absorbed, and more-knowledgable Dorothy Parker.
I’m pretty sure the following quote from the first section was the culprit that had me thinking, “Well, maybe I’ll do those yoga stretches at 11:30 tonight instead of 10:30 and then head on up to bed.”
But maybe it was a couple of paragraphs down when I read this:
By the time I’d reached the end of the first section, though, my thoughts were more along the lines of, “Hell, who needs yoga stretches and sleep?” Unfortunately, sleep which always eludes me when I have the attitude, “I must get to sleep,” overcame me before I’d gotten much past page 50. Good thing, really. This is not a book to be gobbled. This is a book to step inside and lounge around in with a picnic, sipping your wine slowly, while admiring the surrounding beauty. Breathing is a bit of a hazard, though, as stopping to do so might cause one to miss some particularly spectacular morsel wrapped up in the prose.
Whether Macaulay is introducing us to what could be the earliest examples of historical re-enactors (Emperor Caracalla imitating Achilles in Troy) or disparaging the early popes for their ruination of artifacts from Ancient Rome, she’s the picnic’s fruit salad appetizer: the juiciest and sweetest of berries, melons, and peaches with some capers and red onions thrown in to add a little bite. You eat and eat, but you’re never full. Her appetizer marvelously fulfills its role, leaving the reader hungering for a tad more.
She made the reader in me want to go read more travel diaries of the well-known. She made the scuba diver in me want to dive down to see the ruins of Sida. She pissed off the archeologist in me, who’s still sulking in a corner somewhere, because I never pursued that career path. Anyone teaching ancient history, art, or architecture ought to have their students read this book first before delving into those huge texts full of facts. What a way to grab students’ imaginations.
I’ll just leave you with a few more perfect spoonfuls of her fruit salad:
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to board a plane, whetted appetite in search of a little meat, hearty grains, and vegetables. I’ve heard the best food is found in Turkey. Might as well start there. Oh, wait a minute, I have a job. I don’t have ten years of vacation. Better head to the library and its ancient history section instead. Meanwhile, I think my next trip around the world, offering a completely different experience, is going to have to be taken with Elizabeth Gilbert, since so many of you have been recommending her.
(Hmmm…Methinks I’m beginning to realize how much fun this litblogging stuff is. Maybe I’ll have to stop being a timid voyeur among all those running around Tilting at Windmills and finally add a post of my own.)
Macauly, Rose. The Pleasure of Ruins. New York: Barnes and Nobles Books, 1953. This was my second book for the 2007 nonfiction reading challenge.
When I was a child, my parents dragged us to every historic site that piqued their interests throughout the British Isles, France, and Germany. During these trips, the only thing that really piqued my interest (well, besides food, candy, and books that were not accessible in my home state of North Carolina in those days. These would be real fish ‘n’ chips, Opal Fruits, and Tin Tin respectively) were castle ruins. It seems to me I asked every morning if we were going to a castle. I soon learned to say “castle ruin,” as I had been disappointed a number of times by “castles” that seemed no different from those boring old estates exhibiting plump, extremely-comfy-looking chairs and sofas we weren’t allowed to sit on; dark paintings of prominent figures that teased me with the idea of being followed by their eyes, the way they do in scary movies, but never did; and velvet drapes that just begged to be hidden behind if only, again, I were allowed. These were fake castles. A real castle had crumbling towers, archways, and secret passages, the perfect backdrop for playing knight in shining armor (surprise, surprise: I was a knight, never a princess). Most exciting was a castle with a moat that still had water and might be hiding the remains of an ancient dragon (or at least had a cool drawbridge). In my teens, I became fascinated with Stone Henge, the mystery of it as intriguing as the actual remnants; Battle Abbey, sure I might see some ghosts wandering around in the battle fields; and Hadrian’s Wall (perhaps a little too influenced by the fact I’d graduated from Tin Tin to Asterisk the Gaul by then and had become fascinated with the Roman occupation).
My love of such spots hasn’t waned over the years. Bob and I discovered Avebury. Ahh! Avebury, where the village weaves in and out and around the ancient stones, and the sheep lie down against them. (Oh, and while you’re there, you can get great scones with clotted cream and jam). Our visit to Tintern Abbey revealed it to be a place likely to make those who guffaw at the notion of inanimate objects casting spells think twice. Meanwhile it causes people like me to roll over, expose their bellies, paws in air, begging, “more spells. Please. More.” Tikal was a place that made me desperately wish, not for the first time, I had a time machine. But you don’t even have to take me to foreign lands. You can tell me you’d like to show me a ghost town in New Mexico or some rich man’s old estate on an island off the coast of Maine that was left to rot during The Great Depression, and I’m there. Needless to say: I love ruins. Nothing quite grabs hold of the reins of my runaway imagination and says “Gee!” quite the way a good ruin does.
Those of you who have followed this blog and my comments on others’ blogs know I also happen to be infatuated with Rose Macaulay. Thus, when a friend of mine lent me Pleasure of Ruins, my first thought was, “How can I go wrong with Rose Macaulay’s take on ruins from around the globe?” After all, two infatuations have got to be better than one. Happily, and for a change, I didn’t ask “How can I go wrong?” and end up in some prison in Mexico or something.
Let’s just say that, like reading Slightly Foxed, my natural tendencies to horde went off on their own little adventures (maybe to some Mexican ruins) by the time I’d reached page 15. I sat down with this book and immediately wished I didn’t have anything to do at all (eat, drink, sleep, be married…) for the next 15 hours or so until I could finish it.
In typical understated British fashion, what should have been called Pure Unadulterated Delight and Ecstasy of Ruins has been called merely Pleasure of Ruins. This fascinating hybrid of history (most especially odd historical tidbits); guide to archeology, art and architecture; travelogue; and collection of quotes from other travelers’ diaries (and I’m talking here about such travelers as Dickens and Stendhal) is pretty hard to classify. Her signature wry and witty observations (so familiar from her novels) add to the enjoyment. Imagine traveling around the world, spying on travelers from past centuries, with a less-depressed, less self-absorbed, and more-knowledgable Dorothy Parker.
I’m pretty sure the following quote from the first section was the culprit that had me thinking, “Well, maybe I’ll do those yoga stretches at 11:30 tonight instead of 10:30 and then head on up to bed.”
[She’s talking here about ruins in early eighteenth-century art and literature.]
So the mood swelled and grew: ruin, horror, gloom, adders, toads, bats,
screech-owls, ivy, wasted towers, Gothic romance, multiplied cheerfully, in
poetry, prose, and paint…(p. 23)
But maybe it was a couple of paragraphs down when I read this:
..and early in the eighteenth century one charming new symptom emerged. The wind of fashion blew (who can predict when or why it blows?), and it was natural that the active and outdoor British should be blown by it from their contemplation of
ruin in pictures and literature and ancient abbeys into their gardens and parks,
where they could grow up new ruins of their own. (pp. 23-24)
By the time I’d reached the end of the first section, though, my thoughts were more along the lines of, “Hell, who needs yoga stretches and sleep?” Unfortunately, sleep which always eludes me when I have the attitude, “I must get to sleep,” overcame me before I’d gotten much past page 50. Good thing, really. This is not a book to be gobbled. This is a book to step inside and lounge around in with a picnic, sipping your wine slowly, while admiring the surrounding beauty. Breathing is a bit of a hazard, though, as stopping to do so might cause one to miss some particularly spectacular morsel wrapped up in the prose.
Whether Macaulay is introducing us to what could be the earliest examples of historical re-enactors (Emperor Caracalla imitating Achilles in Troy) or disparaging the early popes for their ruination of artifacts from Ancient Rome, she’s the picnic’s fruit salad appetizer: the juiciest and sweetest of berries, melons, and peaches with some capers and red onions thrown in to add a little bite. You eat and eat, but you’re never full. Her appetizer marvelously fulfills its role, leaving the reader hungering for a tad more.
She made the reader in me want to go read more travel diaries of the well-known. She made the scuba diver in me want to dive down to see the ruins of Sida. She pissed off the archeologist in me, who’s still sulking in a corner somewhere, because I never pursued that career path. Anyone teaching ancient history, art, or architecture ought to have their students read this book first before delving into those huge texts full of facts. What a way to grab students’ imaginations.
I’ll just leave you with a few more perfect spoonfuls of her fruit salad:
Few cities have been more often and more catastrophically ruined than Antioch,
during the last two and twenty decades. Frequent and horrible earthquakes, still
more frequent and only a little less horrible Seleucid Kings in a passion
(usually well-justified), Persian generals in victorious orgies of destruction,
Saracens and Ottoman Turks in anti-Christian hate, crusaders in anti-Saracen
rage, Bibars the Egyptian and the Mamelouks, who sacked and smashed the city
almost to pieces in 1268 – all these ruin-makers have done their part; and
finally the Turks, after their custom, let it moulder to decay while their new
town Antakia rose, full of mosques, from Antioch’s quarried ruins…Antioch itself
is a ghost, not to be seen but felt. (p. 57)
Those early travelers in Crete…went around probing ruins, copying inscriptions,
digging up and stealing statues, condemning the superficial accounts and errors
of previous observers…With tenacity and through many pages they argued about
sites. “The position of Apterd being once settled, we shall soon determine that
of Berecyntos.” All this determining of positions must have been a charming
employment. But to have them already determined saves time, and sets the
traveler free to enjoy what he sees. (p. 114)
The famous deserted Roman towns of Italy – Pompeii, Herculaneum, Ostia and
others – unlike those crumbling tropical capitals which contend against the
encroachments of forest and modern building, present to the world an aspect less
brittle, more established and secure. They have achieved ruin; they have been
disinterred, set in order, we know where we are with them. (p. 286)
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to board a plane, whetted appetite in search of a little meat, hearty grains, and vegetables. I’ve heard the best food is found in Turkey. Might as well start there. Oh, wait a minute, I have a job. I don’t have ten years of vacation. Better head to the library and its ancient history section instead. Meanwhile, I think my next trip around the world, offering a completely different experience, is going to have to be taken with Elizabeth Gilbert, since so many of you have been recommending her.
(Hmmm…Methinks I’m beginning to realize how much fun this litblogging stuff is. Maybe I’ll have to stop being a timid voyeur among all those running around Tilting at Windmills and finally add a post of my own.)
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
When Luddites Blog
I've just composed my first pencast a la Mandarine. I'm so proud. Wait. What's that you say? You don't see anything? Well, that's kind of odd, isn't it? Let me help you out a bit. Picture this: I sit down to write as legibly as I can a nice post all about why you won't be hearing a podcast from me anytime soon. It's a good post. I'm happy with it. I even tell a little story. Then, I take my post upstairs to the scanner.
I've only used the scanner once. I have this slight problem, which is that if I do something computer-related very infrequently, I don't remember how to do it. Thus, I had to take out the instruction book and remind myself how to use the scanner. All was going along swimmingly. My pages scanned beautifully. I saved them all onto my hard drive.
Now picture this: I try to get them onto blogger. Picture me calmly saying, "Hmmm...I guess that didn't work. Maybe I should try something else." Picture me trying a couple of other things. Picture none of them working. Picture me trying the same 3 things about twenty times, even though I know damn well they didn't work the first time. Picture me saying something a little harsher than "Hmmm...I guess that didn't work." In fact, picture me saying some things a pastor's wife shouldn't even know, let alone actually let spew forth from her mouth. Picture me wanting to throw the computer down the stairs.
By now, you've got a beautiful portrait that paints a thousand words. One of these days, I'll type up that blog post and post it anyway, and you can picture it as a hand-written document composed with my Mark Twain signature fountain pen.
I've only used the scanner once. I have this slight problem, which is that if I do something computer-related very infrequently, I don't remember how to do it. Thus, I had to take out the instruction book and remind myself how to use the scanner. All was going along swimmingly. My pages scanned beautifully. I saved them all onto my hard drive.
Now picture this: I try to get them onto blogger. Picture me calmly saying, "Hmmm...I guess that didn't work. Maybe I should try something else." Picture me trying a couple of other things. Picture none of them working. Picture me trying the same 3 things about twenty times, even though I know damn well they didn't work the first time. Picture me saying something a little harsher than "Hmmm...I guess that didn't work." In fact, picture me saying some things a pastor's wife shouldn't even know, let alone actually let spew forth from her mouth. Picture me wanting to throw the computer down the stairs.
By now, you've got a beautiful portrait that paints a thousand words. One of these days, I'll type up that blog post and post it anyway, and you can picture it as a hand-written document composed with my Mark Twain signature fountain pen.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Excuse Me While I Panic
I’ve been noticing that quite a number of my favorite bloggers seem to be suffering from some sort of blogging malaise. They’re noting that they’ve been losing interest in blogging. Some of them are taking breaks. Some of them are shutting down their blogs. This state of affairs has left me in a bit of a panic for two reasons.
The first reason is that it seems to me people are getting blogger burnout around the 1 ½ - 2-year mark. As I sit here writing this, less than a week from my one-year blogging anniversary, I can’t possibly imagine ever getting bored with my blog. I so love it and the navel-gazing opportunities it provides. That being said, however, I happen to know very well that I’m the same (never-learn-from-past-experience) person who has started every single job with an enthusiastic feeling that I will never be bored. Lo and behold, give me some time in any job, and I will become bored. The only exciting factor is trying to figure out how long it will be before boredom sets in (receptionist for legal newspaper = three months, acquisitions editor for reference publisher = three years, executive editor of math and science for education publisher = who knows? I’m hoping three decades). I don’t want it to happen to me. I don’t want to get bored with blogging.
Let’s face it, though. I got bored blogging about telecommuting after what? Two weeks? Something like that. I had to open myself up to other topics in order to keep going. And I know perfectly well, boredom is a feeling not limited to work environments. Bob loves to joke about how I’m constantly taking up new interests with overzealous glee (“I’m going to learn to knit!” “I’ve got a bread machine, and we’re never buying bread again!” “I’m going to learn to speak Spanish!”), and six months later, he’ll notice I’ve moved on to something else (knitting needles, bread machine, Spanish CDs banished to the backs of closets). Incidentally, this is yet another reason (let’s call it reason #1,000,007) I’m not a great candidate for motherhood. Can you see me six months into it deciding I’m bored and stuffing the baby in the back of a closet?
Of course, I’m also well aware of the fact that feeding my ego trumps boredom. Comments approving of what I write will keep me going for months; I’m sure, even if I do start getting bored. As a matter of fact, that complimentary post of Mandarine’s a while back will probably be enough to keep me going for at least five years. So maybe I shouldn’t worry about this until I stop getting comments.
My second fear is that everyone I’ve come to know and love is going to disappear. Childhood and adolescent abandonment issues are pushing themselves to the forefront of my brain. All the cool, popular people are going to leave me behind, and I’m going to be stuck hanging out with nothing but the political bloggers or the “I’m-visiting-my-friends-the-Smurfs” bloggers. Because my abandonment issues are so good at convincing me I should just be a chameleon, if I don’t want to be alone, I’ll find myself composing such articulate comments as “Oh yeah? Well, go suck an egg,” to someone blogging about what a hero Sam Brownback is and how he so deserves to be out next president. Or worse yet, I’ll start blogging about the cocktail party with the trolls I attended that was certainly more fun than anything the Smurfy-One was doing.
Wrapped up in this fear, I decided I’d better go see if I could find some new friends before it’s too late. My real-life friend Victoria informed me that The QC Report was well worth befriending. I thought I’d make my way out to L.A. and pay her a little visit. Half an hour later, my sides aching from the laughter, I was lighting incense to the gods in hopes they’ll keep this new friend of mine from ever coming down with blogger burnout. An added bonus to discovering her is that she'll be a great impetus for me to continue my weak attempts at being funny, which will surely help me avoid my own boredom. You know how in kindergarten you were so thrilled with your bright, colorful finger painting of your family (including all the pets), and then you looked across the table to see the budding Picasso, with his multiple brushes lined up, stepping back to consider his “Variations on Someone’s Family,” and then stepping back in to touch up the purple, rectangular cat with a few well-placed strokes? Then you know how I felt reading this blog. I’m going home to beg my mom for some paint brushes.
Next, I headed into New York to knock on The Alternate Side Parking Reader’s door. If you’ve ever been stupid enough to decide to live in New York with a car and no parking garage space, as some of us have been (actually, judging from the numbers of people taking up all the prime spots on the alternate side between 11:00 – 12:30 in Morningside Heights, I have to change that “some” to “many”), you will immediately be able to relate to this new friend of mine. It also helps to be obsessed with All Things New York. Neither of these traits is required, though, to enjoy this highly readable and funny blog. You may have a little trouble understanding the thrill of discovering alternate-side-of-the-street parking has been suspended due to a 7-inch rainfall, or why someone would keep dialing 311 to make absolutely certain it was really true. Just pretend you’re a kid listening to the school cancellations three times on a snow day to make sure, and you’ll be about halfway to understanding the feeling. This blog isn’t even a year old yet, so I’m betting it will be some time before blog boredom sets in. Then again, how can anyone living in and blogging about New York ever be bored? Frustrated, lonely, exhausted, anxiety-ridden, yes. But bored?
So, I’ve pushed the panic button and realized I don’t really have much to worry about. Yet. But, please, don’t any more of you tell me you’re thinking about abandoning your blog. In return, I’ll try not to be boring and not to get bored.
The first reason is that it seems to me people are getting blogger burnout around the 1 ½ - 2-year mark. As I sit here writing this, less than a week from my one-year blogging anniversary, I can’t possibly imagine ever getting bored with my blog. I so love it and the navel-gazing opportunities it provides. That being said, however, I happen to know very well that I’m the same (never-learn-from-past-experience) person who has started every single job with an enthusiastic feeling that I will never be bored. Lo and behold, give me some time in any job, and I will become bored. The only exciting factor is trying to figure out how long it will be before boredom sets in (receptionist for legal newspaper = three months, acquisitions editor for reference publisher = three years, executive editor of math and science for education publisher = who knows? I’m hoping three decades). I don’t want it to happen to me. I don’t want to get bored with blogging.
Let’s face it, though. I got bored blogging about telecommuting after what? Two weeks? Something like that. I had to open myself up to other topics in order to keep going. And I know perfectly well, boredom is a feeling not limited to work environments. Bob loves to joke about how I’m constantly taking up new interests with overzealous glee (“I’m going to learn to knit!” “I’ve got a bread machine, and we’re never buying bread again!” “I’m going to learn to speak Spanish!”), and six months later, he’ll notice I’ve moved on to something else (knitting needles, bread machine, Spanish CDs banished to the backs of closets). Incidentally, this is yet another reason (let’s call it reason #1,000,007) I’m not a great candidate for motherhood. Can you see me six months into it deciding I’m bored and stuffing the baby in the back of a closet?
Of course, I’m also well aware of the fact that feeding my ego trumps boredom. Comments approving of what I write will keep me going for months; I’m sure, even if I do start getting bored. As a matter of fact, that complimentary post of Mandarine’s a while back will probably be enough to keep me going for at least five years. So maybe I shouldn’t worry about this until I stop getting comments.
My second fear is that everyone I’ve come to know and love is going to disappear. Childhood and adolescent abandonment issues are pushing themselves to the forefront of my brain. All the cool, popular people are going to leave me behind, and I’m going to be stuck hanging out with nothing but the political bloggers or the “I’m-visiting-my-friends-the-Smurfs” bloggers. Because my abandonment issues are so good at convincing me I should just be a chameleon, if I don’t want to be alone, I’ll find myself composing such articulate comments as “Oh yeah? Well, go suck an egg,” to someone blogging about what a hero Sam Brownback is and how he so deserves to be out next president. Or worse yet, I’ll start blogging about the cocktail party with the trolls I attended that was certainly more fun than anything the Smurfy-One was doing.
Wrapped up in this fear, I decided I’d better go see if I could find some new friends before it’s too late. My real-life friend Victoria informed me that The QC Report was well worth befriending. I thought I’d make my way out to L.A. and pay her a little visit. Half an hour later, my sides aching from the laughter, I was lighting incense to the gods in hopes they’ll keep this new friend of mine from ever coming down with blogger burnout. An added bonus to discovering her is that she'll be a great impetus for me to continue my weak attempts at being funny, which will surely help me avoid my own boredom. You know how in kindergarten you were so thrilled with your bright, colorful finger painting of your family (including all the pets), and then you looked across the table to see the budding Picasso, with his multiple brushes lined up, stepping back to consider his “Variations on Someone’s Family,” and then stepping back in to touch up the purple, rectangular cat with a few well-placed strokes? Then you know how I felt reading this blog. I’m going home to beg my mom for some paint brushes.
Next, I headed into New York to knock on The Alternate Side Parking Reader’s door. If you’ve ever been stupid enough to decide to live in New York with a car and no parking garage space, as some of us have been (actually, judging from the numbers of people taking up all the prime spots on the alternate side between 11:00 – 12:30 in Morningside Heights, I have to change that “some” to “many”), you will immediately be able to relate to this new friend of mine. It also helps to be obsessed with All Things New York. Neither of these traits is required, though, to enjoy this highly readable and funny blog. You may have a little trouble understanding the thrill of discovering alternate-side-of-the-street parking has been suspended due to a 7-inch rainfall, or why someone would keep dialing 311 to make absolutely certain it was really true. Just pretend you’re a kid listening to the school cancellations three times on a snow day to make sure, and you’ll be about halfway to understanding the feeling. This blog isn’t even a year old yet, so I’m betting it will be some time before blog boredom sets in. Then again, how can anyone living in and blogging about New York ever be bored? Frustrated, lonely, exhausted, anxiety-ridden, yes. But bored?
So, I’ve pushed the panic button and realized I don’t really have much to worry about. Yet. But, please, don’t any more of you tell me you’re thinking about abandoning your blog. In return, I’ll try not to be boring and not to get bored.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
A Night with the ADHD Insomniac
(The Attention-Deficit-Hyperactivity-Disordered Insmoniac -- from here on out referred to as ADHD-I --went to bed at 10:30 and fell fast asleep. She’s not sure exactly what it was that woke her up, heart pounding at 12:30, because all she remembers dreaming about is a dog with a red bandanna playing with a soccer ball, but she’s been awake, fretting about work and other life issues ever since. Ages ago, she slipped away into the guest bedroom, so her husband wouldn't be bothered by her restlessness.)
What time is it? 2:00 a.m.? Already? S**t! I’ve got to get some sleep. Come on, sleep…Okay, not a good idea to think about sleep. Don’t think about sleep. Visualize. Take a deep breath. Count sheep. There’s a big fat sheep happily jumping over a fence. Looks like something that could outsmart Wile E. Coyote. One. One big fat sheep. Two. Two big fat sheep. Three…four…five…six. Did I remember to turn the laundry room light off before coming to bed? What about the deck light? Yeah, I think I did. Stop it. Focus on the sheep. Here comes another one. What is that six? Seven? Seven, I guess. Eight. Nine… Oh f**k! Who am I kidding? The only way I’m going to conjure up a sheep right now is if one comes through the ceiling and lands on top of me. I’d like to strangle the idiot who came up with the notion that counting sheep is a way to get to sleep.
(ADHD-I throws off the covers, because it’s too hot. She tosses and turns for a few minutes. She flips upside down with her head at the foot of the bed – that used to work when she was a kid and couldn’t sleep. She lies there for who knows how long. Feels like sleep is just on the horizon. Her back starts itching. Her legs start itching. No amount of scratching seems to help. It’s a deep-down, way-below-the-surface-of-the-skin sort of itch).
Damn! What’s the matter with me? Why am I so itchy? What’s that a symptom of? AIDS? The Ebola virus? I can’t remember. Ought to get up and look it up online. No. I am not going online. I’m going to sleep. I have to sleep.
(ADHD-I now starts to get cold. She flips back around and gets back under the covers. She lies there for what seems like a very long time, but is only five minutes.) That’s better. I can just feel my eyelids getting droopy. Look into them. Look into the darkness of them. Pretend you’re in a dark tunnel. Don’t think about anything. Remember that time in first grade when you got in trouble for talking, and Ralph was the one who was talking? That was so unfair. And don’t forget that time in junior high when nobody would let you sit with them on the school bus. And then there was the time you tripped on the stairs in high school…God.
What time is it now? 3:00!? Okay, if I get to sleep within the next ten minutes, I can skip breakfast, get up at 6:30, and that will still be a little over three hours, plus the two I got earlier, which means I'll be getting really close to six hours of sleep. Six hours of sleep isn't bad. Lots of people only get six hours of sleep a night. Hell, lots of people seem to thrive on only four hours of sleep a night. They brag about it. Wish I were one of them. If I were, I wouldn't brag. Oh, s**t, I forgot to give Lisa her book back last time I was in the office. Uh-oh, did I leave that book at the office? What did I do with it? I hope I didn’t lose it. Dammit, I’m hungry. I’m going to ignore that growling stomach. If I were asleep, it wouldn’t be bothering me. (Stomach growls a few more times.) Wait a minute. I think I read that hunger keeps you awake. Cheese and milk have that stuff in them that makes you sleepy. Better go get some cheese and milk.
(ADHD-I makes her way downstairs to the kitchen to get some cheese and milk, making sure not to look out any windows on the way, lest she sees some scary-looking face looking back in at her. She cuts herself a chunk of cheese and pours a glass of milk, spots a Cooking Light magazine on the kitchen table and takes it back up to bed with her anything-but-light, wee-hours-of-the-morning snack. She props herself up in bed, eats, drinks, and reads recipes until she’s sure she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. The magazine is slipping from her hand. She turns off the light and curls up under the covers. She’s beginning to dream. Suddenly, there’s an unidentified thump from downstairs.)
What was that?! (Heart pounding again, she sits up in bed and listens.) Is it someone in the house? If someone’s in the house, do I have time to slip into the closet and hide? No, wait a minute. The closet was a terrible hiding place in Halloween. I wonder if I’d hurt myself if I jumped off the second-floor deck? Is that someone coming up the stairs? (Listens intently, but all she hears is the sound of the morning newspaper being delivered.)
S**t! The paper’s already being delivered. I’m never going to sleep now. I’ve got an hour at best. Should I just get up? Nah. Might as well just lie here and make the best of it. Lying still is almost as good as sleeping according to that one article...
(Twenty minutes before the alarm goes off, she slips into a near-comatose state.)
What time is it? 2:00 a.m.? Already? S**t! I’ve got to get some sleep. Come on, sleep…Okay, not a good idea to think about sleep. Don’t think about sleep. Visualize. Take a deep breath. Count sheep. There’s a big fat sheep happily jumping over a fence. Looks like something that could outsmart Wile E. Coyote. One. One big fat sheep. Two. Two big fat sheep. Three…four…five…six. Did I remember to turn the laundry room light off before coming to bed? What about the deck light? Yeah, I think I did. Stop it. Focus on the sheep. Here comes another one. What is that six? Seven? Seven, I guess. Eight. Nine… Oh f**k! Who am I kidding? The only way I’m going to conjure up a sheep right now is if one comes through the ceiling and lands on top of me. I’d like to strangle the idiot who came up with the notion that counting sheep is a way to get to sleep.
(ADHD-I throws off the covers, because it’s too hot. She tosses and turns for a few minutes. She flips upside down with her head at the foot of the bed – that used to work when she was a kid and couldn’t sleep. She lies there for who knows how long. Feels like sleep is just on the horizon. Her back starts itching. Her legs start itching. No amount of scratching seems to help. It’s a deep-down, way-below-the-surface-of-the-skin sort of itch).
Damn! What’s the matter with me? Why am I so itchy? What’s that a symptom of? AIDS? The Ebola virus? I can’t remember. Ought to get up and look it up online. No. I am not going online. I’m going to sleep. I have to sleep.
(ADHD-I now starts to get cold. She flips back around and gets back under the covers. She lies there for what seems like a very long time, but is only five minutes.) That’s better. I can just feel my eyelids getting droopy. Look into them. Look into the darkness of them. Pretend you’re in a dark tunnel. Don’t think about anything. Remember that time in first grade when you got in trouble for talking, and Ralph was the one who was talking? That was so unfair. And don’t forget that time in junior high when nobody would let you sit with them on the school bus. And then there was the time you tripped on the stairs in high school…God.
What time is it now? 3:00!? Okay, if I get to sleep within the next ten minutes, I can skip breakfast, get up at 6:30, and that will still be a little over three hours, plus the two I got earlier, which means I'll be getting really close to six hours of sleep. Six hours of sleep isn't bad. Lots of people only get six hours of sleep a night. Hell, lots of people seem to thrive on only four hours of sleep a night. They brag about it. Wish I were one of them. If I were, I wouldn't brag. Oh, s**t, I forgot to give Lisa her book back last time I was in the office. Uh-oh, did I leave that book at the office? What did I do with it? I hope I didn’t lose it. Dammit, I’m hungry. I’m going to ignore that growling stomach. If I were asleep, it wouldn’t be bothering me. (Stomach growls a few more times.) Wait a minute. I think I read that hunger keeps you awake. Cheese and milk have that stuff in them that makes you sleepy. Better go get some cheese and milk.
(ADHD-I makes her way downstairs to the kitchen to get some cheese and milk, making sure not to look out any windows on the way, lest she sees some scary-looking face looking back in at her. She cuts herself a chunk of cheese and pours a glass of milk, spots a Cooking Light magazine on the kitchen table and takes it back up to bed with her anything-but-light, wee-hours-of-the-morning snack. She props herself up in bed, eats, drinks, and reads recipes until she’s sure she can’t keep her eyes open any longer. The magazine is slipping from her hand. She turns off the light and curls up under the covers. She’s beginning to dream. Suddenly, there’s an unidentified thump from downstairs.)
What was that?! (Heart pounding again, she sits up in bed and listens.) Is it someone in the house? If someone’s in the house, do I have time to slip into the closet and hide? No, wait a minute. The closet was a terrible hiding place in Halloween. I wonder if I’d hurt myself if I jumped off the second-floor deck? Is that someone coming up the stairs? (Listens intently, but all she hears is the sound of the morning newspaper being delivered.)
S**t! The paper’s already being delivered. I’m never going to sleep now. I’ve got an hour at best. Should I just get up? Nah. Might as well just lie here and make the best of it. Lying still is almost as good as sleeping according to that one article...
(Twenty minutes before the alarm goes off, she slips into a near-comatose state.)
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Ch-ch-ch-changes?
Right now, it seems, Bob and I probably have three choices. We can move to a little town in Lancaster County, PA (if you’re like me, you knew nothing about this area of the country until Harrison Ford oh-so-attractively brought attention to it in the movie Witness, and still basically know nothing about the area, but would love to run into him walking down the street); we can move back to the much bigger town in Connecticut where we met; or we can move down to an even littler town in Augusta County, VA., where my forebears staked out their turf before migrating to Albemarle County, VA. Augusta County and Lancaster County are breath-takingly beautiful spots, places where many Americans vacation every year. The town in Connecticut is basically a utilitarian suburb of New York City (I know, because I used to live there. To announce you were going to vacation there would be like announcing you were going to vacation in Trenton, NJ). However, it’s a mere 40-minute train ride from Grand Central Station. And if someone were to invent truth serum and inject me with it, of all the places I say I’d love to live in the world (Edinburgh, London, Maine, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Bonaire…), under this serum’s influence, I’m sure I’d blurt out, “Are you nuts? There’s no better place in the world to live than New York City!” Screw warmer climates. When I retire, I want to be on the Upper West Side with a view of the Hudson.
So, why am I even considering living anywhere else? Well, first of all, I’m well aware of the fact that blah suburban towns are not Manhattan, and that they can suck you in to such an extent that you rarely hop on that train to the city. Secondly, we haven’t yet received an official call in Connecticut. I won’t bore you with the details of the tedious process of “receiving and accepting a call” (church speak for being offered and accepting a job) in the Presbyterian Church USA. Suffice it to say I don’t want to put you to sleep, nor do I want to have to produce what we in the publishing world would refer to as a 120,000-word manuscript. Pennsylvania has “called Bob” (and we have two weeks to accept). Virginia has informed him he’s their first choice; they’d like him to come back and preach in a neutral pulpit (required formality), which basically means that if he doesn’t stand up in front of a congregation and pick his nose, they’re going to call him.
Imagine, if you will, then, a 200-year-old church in farm country where the Amish and Mennonites (quaint and fascinating to you at this point, from an outsider’s point of view) trot by in their buggies pulled by horses. Farm markets pop up out of the landscape the way Wal-Marts do in other areas of the country. Focus for a moment on that four-bedroom, 100-year-old manse next door to the church. While I write this, it’s being renovated. A brand new kitchen, brand new bathrooms, and new appliances, as well as sanded and polished hard-wood floors await the new residents. Said residents don’t have to pay for anything in the way of upkeep of this house, except the telephone. Someone else will worry about such things as cutting the grass, adding water softeners, salting the driveway when it snows, and plumbing concerns. Imagine me (if you’re familiar with my more macabre side) living in a place with a back yard that’s basically a cemetery. Those of you who are more familiar with my animal-loving side can picture me on my morning and evening “commutes” (the walks I take twice daily), encountering cows, horses, goats, chickens, and even mallard ducks waddling across the street, purposefully quacking which each step, as well as an occasional bunny chowing down on someone’s bush in a front yard (I know. I took this walk last Sunday). Wouldn’t that be hard to resist?
Now, imagine another church. The cows are still very much in the picture in the fields that surround the church. Some of them are lying down, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the way they all stop and turn and stare at you as you come along. This is a stone church built in 1740, and those cows, apparently, sometimes like to come join the service when it’s summertime and the congregation is sitting out on wooden pews in front of a makeshift wooden pulpit in the oak grove on the property. Across the street from this beautiful and historic church is an old clapboard farmhouse, built on the original logs of the original manse with stunning views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can live there if you want, or if you don’t (say you’ve gone online and have discovered a beautiful log cabin for sale), you can get a housing allowance to pay for your mortgage.
I’ll ask you to imagine one more thing. You’ve sat down and have even shared meals with the members of the pastor nominating committees for these churches. They were all so ingenuous. They all wanted so badly for you to like their churches. They all raved about your husband and his ability to write and to communicate. Many of them indicated that they just wanted to hug him. How can you possibly say to them, “Sorry, but we don’t want to come to your church?”
Meanwhile, what do you do when, after a week of traveling in Pennsylvania and Virginia, the minute you cross back over the Connecticut (a place where you moved 20 years ago just until you could figure out a way to work and live either in NYC or Boston) line, you find yourself realizing you love this state? You find yourself wondering how you can ever leave. You enter the doors of the house with which you’ve had a twelve-year-long love-hate relationship and regret ever having said one nasty thing about its magnificent being. What do you do when you suddenly discover that 23-year-old you who always relished the idea of moving every few years, never staying in one place, and discovering new places has been squashed by a 43-year-old you who thinks 23-year-old should have been locked away years ago?
I don’t have any answers. I’ll keep you posted. Oh, and by the way, we’ve just discovered the church in the San Francisco Bay area that we thought had lost interest hasn’t…
So, why am I even considering living anywhere else? Well, first of all, I’m well aware of the fact that blah suburban towns are not Manhattan, and that they can suck you in to such an extent that you rarely hop on that train to the city. Secondly, we haven’t yet received an official call in Connecticut. I won’t bore you with the details of the tedious process of “receiving and accepting a call” (church speak for being offered and accepting a job) in the Presbyterian Church USA. Suffice it to say I don’t want to put you to sleep, nor do I want to have to produce what we in the publishing world would refer to as a 120,000-word manuscript. Pennsylvania has “called Bob” (and we have two weeks to accept). Virginia has informed him he’s their first choice; they’d like him to come back and preach in a neutral pulpit (required formality), which basically means that if he doesn’t stand up in front of a congregation and pick his nose, they’re going to call him.
Imagine, if you will, then, a 200-year-old church in farm country where the Amish and Mennonites (quaint and fascinating to you at this point, from an outsider’s point of view) trot by in their buggies pulled by horses. Farm markets pop up out of the landscape the way Wal-Marts do in other areas of the country. Focus for a moment on that four-bedroom, 100-year-old manse next door to the church. While I write this, it’s being renovated. A brand new kitchen, brand new bathrooms, and new appliances, as well as sanded and polished hard-wood floors await the new residents. Said residents don’t have to pay for anything in the way of upkeep of this house, except the telephone. Someone else will worry about such things as cutting the grass, adding water softeners, salting the driveway when it snows, and plumbing concerns. Imagine me (if you’re familiar with my more macabre side) living in a place with a back yard that’s basically a cemetery. Those of you who are more familiar with my animal-loving side can picture me on my morning and evening “commutes” (the walks I take twice daily), encountering cows, horses, goats, chickens, and even mallard ducks waddling across the street, purposefully quacking which each step, as well as an occasional bunny chowing down on someone’s bush in a front yard (I know. I took this walk last Sunday). Wouldn’t that be hard to resist?
Now, imagine another church. The cows are still very much in the picture in the fields that surround the church. Some of them are lying down, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the way they all stop and turn and stare at you as you come along. This is a stone church built in 1740, and those cows, apparently, sometimes like to come join the service when it’s summertime and the congregation is sitting out on wooden pews in front of a makeshift wooden pulpit in the oak grove on the property. Across the street from this beautiful and historic church is an old clapboard farmhouse, built on the original logs of the original manse with stunning views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. You can live there if you want, or if you don’t (say you’ve gone online and have discovered a beautiful log cabin for sale), you can get a housing allowance to pay for your mortgage.
I’ll ask you to imagine one more thing. You’ve sat down and have even shared meals with the members of the pastor nominating committees for these churches. They were all so ingenuous. They all wanted so badly for you to like their churches. They all raved about your husband and his ability to write and to communicate. Many of them indicated that they just wanted to hug him. How can you possibly say to them, “Sorry, but we don’t want to come to your church?”
Meanwhile, what do you do when, after a week of traveling in Pennsylvania and Virginia, the minute you cross back over the Connecticut (a place where you moved 20 years ago just until you could figure out a way to work and live either in NYC or Boston) line, you find yourself realizing you love this state? You find yourself wondering how you can ever leave. You enter the doors of the house with which you’ve had a twelve-year-long love-hate relationship and regret ever having said one nasty thing about its magnificent being. What do you do when you suddenly discover that 23-year-old you who always relished the idea of moving every few years, never staying in one place, and discovering new places has been squashed by a 43-year-old you who thinks 23-year-old should have been locked away years ago?
I don’t have any answers. I’ll keep you posted. Oh, and by the way, we’ve just discovered the church in the San Francisco Bay area that we thought had lost interest hasn’t…
Friday, April 27, 2007
Ian's Meme
I know. I know. One of my 2007 blogging goals was to quit being enticed by memes, and this makes two in a row. But, I just had to run with Ian’s satirical meme (especially since his descriptions of my memes made me laugh out loud). And since it's satire, it doesn't really count as a real meme. So here it is.
Oh, and Ian, P.S. you must have picked up all my bad spelling habits while copying your sisters, because I didn’t even realize you’d misspelled “gnat” (silent “k,” silent “g,” who came up with these ridiculous things? Why not just spell it “nat?”) until my spell check caught it. Then again, I think that bad spelling gene just runs in the family, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re in good company. Gerald Durrell was a self-described notoriously bad speller.
If you fell through the rotten boards on your front porch and got stuck and became parched with thirst, what would you rather have to drink, chilled dirty sock water or warm flat Sierra Mist?
I don’t have a front porch, so, thank God, don’t have to make such decisions.
What would you rather do, make love in an outhouse or win free tickets to see the Eagles?
Are the Eagles playing somewhere like Hawai’i? And are all expenses paid? If so, then, I’d take the free tickets. (I ask, because these are the kinds of deals offered by a lot of the “classic rock” stations in Connecticut: be the ninth caller and go see some has-been band you never liked in the first place – in The Bahamas!)
When you were a child, what would you rather do, climb a tree or copy your sisters?
Copy Tarzan by climbing trees (hey, Ian, we should do a post on such games as “Tarzan and the Jungle Boys” over on Ian and Emily one of these days).
If you were stuck on a desert island would you rather have a TV/ DVD player that doesn’t work because there is no electricity on a desert island, or ten of your favorite books that are unreadable because they were drenched by the monsoons?
The TV/DVD player, because I don’t have as much hope and expectation wrapped up in TV/DVD players as I do books. Thus the disappointment wouldn’t be as great.
Of all of your neighbors, who is your favorite?
Cheyenne and Riley, the two huge mutts who live across the way and always race out to bark at me ferociosuly, even though they know perfectly well who I am.
How many gnats do you think have bitten you while you have been out on the porch writing this post?
None. The gnat problem in CT isn’t nearly what it is in NC. Besides, it's still winter up here.
How far are you willing to go for a cheap laugh?
I would start a blog that was supposed to be on-going commentary about my first year of telecommuting, realize that didn’t provide me with enough funny material, and then just start blogging about anything that came to mind, if I could make it funny.
How far would you go to get more people to read your blog?
Shhhh. I don’t want any more people reading my blog. Don’t tell anyone about my blog. Only a very special select group of people gets to read and comment on my blog.
Why do you blog?
It’s an addiction almost as bad as reading.
If you get to heaven and you can find out how many times you did something throughout your lifetime, what would it be?
How many times I've stubbed my toe.
If you were making up a fake meme and you ran out of ideas for questions, what would you do?
Ask my brother for some ideas.
If you were sitting in a hard wooden chair with the gnats biting you would you be: a) uncomfortable, b) ready to end this post, c) hungry and very itchy, d) torn between your desire to get attention through humor and your desire not to be consumed by little flying ants?
I'd probably be pissed, because I'd paid a fortune to come to this gnat-infested place on vacation, thinking I'd get to sit out on a front porch, sipping Sierra Mist, and enjoying myself.
If you are secretly superstitious and have a fear of the number 13, how many lame questions would you add to your fake meme in order for it not to end on the number 13?
I’d add 2 to make it look like I meant to have 15, as so many things come in multiples of five.
If you had the opportunity to drop Dick Cheney in the middle of an extremist Sunni militia encampment in only his briefs, would you take it?
I know I’m supposed to be a Christian, but…
Meanwhile, in keeping with this being an evening focused on Ian, I've also posted over here. Two posts in one night. Can you tell I'm procrastinating? I'm supposed to be packing for the nearly week-long whirlwind trip Bob and I are about to make down South to visit with two churches that are interested in him and squeeze in some time with family members (unfortunately, not far enough south this time to get all the way down to Ian's)? Tell you all about it when we get back.
Oh, and Ian, P.S. you must have picked up all my bad spelling habits while copying your sisters, because I didn’t even realize you’d misspelled “gnat” (silent “k,” silent “g,” who came up with these ridiculous things? Why not just spell it “nat?”) until my spell check caught it. Then again, I think that bad spelling gene just runs in the family, and there’s nothing we can do about it. We’re in good company. Gerald Durrell was a self-described notoriously bad speller.
If you fell through the rotten boards on your front porch and got stuck and became parched with thirst, what would you rather have to drink, chilled dirty sock water or warm flat Sierra Mist?
I don’t have a front porch, so, thank God, don’t have to make such decisions.
What would you rather do, make love in an outhouse or win free tickets to see the Eagles?
Are the Eagles playing somewhere like Hawai’i? And are all expenses paid? If so, then, I’d take the free tickets. (I ask, because these are the kinds of deals offered by a lot of the “classic rock” stations in Connecticut: be the ninth caller and go see some has-been band you never liked in the first place – in The Bahamas!)
When you were a child, what would you rather do, climb a tree or copy your sisters?
Copy Tarzan by climbing trees (hey, Ian, we should do a post on such games as “Tarzan and the Jungle Boys” over on Ian and Emily one of these days).
If you were stuck on a desert island would you rather have a TV/ DVD player that doesn’t work because there is no electricity on a desert island, or ten of your favorite books that are unreadable because they were drenched by the monsoons?
The TV/DVD player, because I don’t have as much hope and expectation wrapped up in TV/DVD players as I do books. Thus the disappointment wouldn’t be as great.
Of all of your neighbors, who is your favorite?
Cheyenne and Riley, the two huge mutts who live across the way and always race out to bark at me ferociosuly, even though they know perfectly well who I am.
How many gnats do you think have bitten you while you have been out on the porch writing this post?
None. The gnat problem in CT isn’t nearly what it is in NC. Besides, it's still winter up here.
How far are you willing to go for a cheap laugh?
I would start a blog that was supposed to be on-going commentary about my first year of telecommuting, realize that didn’t provide me with enough funny material, and then just start blogging about anything that came to mind, if I could make it funny.
How far would you go to get more people to read your blog?
Shhhh. I don’t want any more people reading my blog. Don’t tell anyone about my blog. Only a very special select group of people gets to read and comment on my blog.
Why do you blog?
It’s an addiction almost as bad as reading.
If you get to heaven and you can find out how many times you did something throughout your lifetime, what would it be?
How many times I've stubbed my toe.
If you were making up a fake meme and you ran out of ideas for questions, what would you do?
Ask my brother for some ideas.
If you were sitting in a hard wooden chair with the gnats biting you would you be: a) uncomfortable, b) ready to end this post, c) hungry and very itchy, d) torn between your desire to get attention through humor and your desire not to be consumed by little flying ants?
I'd probably be pissed, because I'd paid a fortune to come to this gnat-infested place on vacation, thinking I'd get to sit out on a front porch, sipping Sierra Mist, and enjoying myself.
If you are secretly superstitious and have a fear of the number 13, how many lame questions would you add to your fake meme in order for it not to end on the number 13?
I’d add 2 to make it look like I meant to have 15, as so many things come in multiples of five.
If you had the opportunity to drop Dick Cheney in the middle of an extremist Sunni militia encampment in only his briefs, would you take it?
I know I’m supposed to be a Christian, but…
Meanwhile, in keeping with this being an evening focused on Ian, I've also posted over here. Two posts in one night. Can you tell I'm procrastinating? I'm supposed to be packing for the nearly week-long whirlwind trip Bob and I are about to make down South to visit with two churches that are interested in him and squeeze in some time with family members (unfortunately, not far enough south this time to get all the way down to Ian's)? Tell you all about it when we get back.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Does Size Matter Meme
I got this one from Charlotte. It seems she and I could have a contest to see who walks the loudest.
How do you feel about your height?
I wish I were taller. I’m not particularly short for a woman (5’3”), but I was short all during my youth and still think of myself as short. Besides, we live in a man’s world, and in that world, 5’3” is short. 5’8” seems like a good height for a woman to me. But knowing my luck, if I were suddenly to wake up 5" taller, that five inches would be added to my neck or my forehead, say, rather than to my legs, which is where I want them.
Has your height helped or hindered you in your professional life?
Neither, that I know of, as far as promotions, etc. go. I will note, though, that at my former company, for a period, I was the only female manager in my department, and three of the four men with whom I worked towered over me. There were a few times when I can remember walking into a managerial meeting before everyone had sat down and taking a mental gulp, despite the fact I adored all these men and wouldn’t have called any of them threatening in any way. I chalked this feeling up to leftover instincts emanating from the oldest region of my brain, which still believes we all live in caves and might get knocked over the head and dragged to one that’s not so nicely decorated, and convinced myself I was ignoring it. In reality, when we got down to the business of talking, I probably spoke up and stood my ground more firmly than they would have thought I could to compensate for these feelings, so maybe my short stature has helped me.
Is society biased against short people?
“Yes,” says the one who wishes bookstores and libraries would spring for more than six stepstools and ladders to cover their thousands of stacks and who recently had the very embarrassing experience of having to ask a tall man (okay, he wasn’t even really that tall, but he was tall enough to reach it) who was walking by to please reach for her the last coconut cake on the back of the top shelf of the grocer’s freezer. Of course, now I’ve just embarrassed myself further by proving how desperate I was for a frozen coconut cake.
Is society biased against tall people?
Against tall women, I think so, but not against tall men. Again, it’s a man’s world.
Do people make annoying remarks about your height?
Not really annoying, but because I always seem to fall in love with men who are at least a good ten inches taller than I am, I have always been attached to men who have come up with some sort of nickname that incorporates the fact that I’m short. For instance, Bob affectionately refers to me as “The Midget,” but I call him “The Giant,” so no harm done in our politically incorrect name-calling.
How do you feel about your height?
I wish I were taller. I’m not particularly short for a woman (5’3”), but I was short all during my youth and still think of myself as short. Besides, we live in a man’s world, and in that world, 5’3” is short. 5’8” seems like a good height for a woman to me. But knowing my luck, if I were suddenly to wake up 5" taller, that five inches would be added to my neck or my forehead, say, rather than to my legs, which is where I want them.
Has your height helped or hindered you in your professional life?
Neither, that I know of, as far as promotions, etc. go. I will note, though, that at my former company, for a period, I was the only female manager in my department, and three of the four men with whom I worked towered over me. There were a few times when I can remember walking into a managerial meeting before everyone had sat down and taking a mental gulp, despite the fact I adored all these men and wouldn’t have called any of them threatening in any way. I chalked this feeling up to leftover instincts emanating from the oldest region of my brain, which still believes we all live in caves and might get knocked over the head and dragged to one that’s not so nicely decorated, and convinced myself I was ignoring it. In reality, when we got down to the business of talking, I probably spoke up and stood my ground more firmly than they would have thought I could to compensate for these feelings, so maybe my short stature has helped me.
Is society biased against short people?
“Yes,” says the one who wishes bookstores and libraries would spring for more than six stepstools and ladders to cover their thousands of stacks and who recently had the very embarrassing experience of having to ask a tall man (okay, he wasn’t even really that tall, but he was tall enough to reach it) who was walking by to please reach for her the last coconut cake on the back of the top shelf of the grocer’s freezer. Of course, now I’ve just embarrassed myself further by proving how desperate I was for a frozen coconut cake.
Is society biased against tall people?
Against tall women, I think so, but not against tall men. Again, it’s a man’s world.
Do people make annoying remarks about your height?
Not really annoying, but because I always seem to fall in love with men who are at least a good ten inches taller than I am, I have always been attached to men who have come up with some sort of nickname that incorporates the fact that I’m short. For instance, Bob affectionately refers to me as “The Midget,” but I call him “The Giant,” so no harm done in our politically incorrect name-calling.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Invitations and Some Very Nice Pens (Oh Yes, and a Book or Two)
Having been someone who’s loved to write since she first started tracing letters onto paper at age five, I’ve always had somewhat of a pen fetish. Deliver any bad news you have to deliver (“your house is being repossessed,” “I’m leaving you for a nineteen-year-old exotic dancer,” “the company is reorganizing your job out of existence…”) accompanied by a fine new pen just dying to be rolled across blank pages, and I’ll probably smile, give you a hug, and go in search of said pages.
When I write stories (and sometimes even blog entries), I almost always write the first draft in pen (or pencil). I’m not exactly sure why: I can just as easily compose with a keyboard. I suppose, though, I find composing without one more soothing. And I do love the convenience of it. I can write anywhere without having to worry about plugs, power cords, batteries, sun glare, etc. It stands to reason, then, that if this is my preferred method of creative writing, I need nice pens, right?
I married a man whose pen fetish is as bad as mine. Worse, really. I worry if I spend too much money on a pen, always aware of my absent-mindedness and the fact that I could very easily lose it. Bob, on the other hand, has no such worries, and he collects fine pens the way some people collect fine jewelry (or rather, I give them to him on present-giving occasions, which makes such occasions nice and easy for me). I’m often sent into a state of panic when I see him casually slip one of these into a shirt pocket and walk out into the big, wide world where I am sure it wants to leap, never to return (mine aren’t allowed to leave the house, except on very special occasions, and then only in boxes in tightly secured bags).
A week ago Saturday, we had a real dilemma. I got an invitation to go to a tea in Manhattan hosted by Persephone Books. Bob got an invitation for a special pen expo at The Fountain Pen Hospital, also in Manhattan on the same day. We hemmed and hawed, considered going to both, but since there were other things we also wanted to do while in the city, finally decided being tempted to buy more books was a bad idea, since we're going to be moving soon (at least we hope. A post on that is waiting to be written, and it's bigger than the telecommuting ones that are still lined up, so it will probably beat its way to the front of the line soon). Pens are much easier to transport than books. Besides, the Persephone Tea cost money, and the pen expo was free.
Big mistake to think we’d be saving money. You can’t take two pen fanatics, put them in a store full of mouth-wateringly beautiful and heart-attack-worthy expensive pens and expect to get off cheap. I’m proud to say I did not succumb to the $3000 glass and sterling silver pen that made me understand why some people feel the need to push others to their deaths on their way to the top of the corporate ladder where they can rake in my yearly salary in a mere month.
I did, however, decide I needed to complement the Faber-Castell pencil my former boss gave me as a Christmas gift a few years back with a similar roller ball and ball point. I mean, doesn’t everyone need a complete set? And then there was the Mark Twain signature fountain pen. Everything was 25% off. When else would I ever find these pens at these prices? We got Bob a beautiful Caran d'ache pencil (this purchase was not the least bit influenced by the delicious Swiss chocolates the Caran d'ache woman was giving away). I love Caran d'ache. I used to get those metal boxes of colored pencils (the ones with the Swiss Alps painted on the top) when I was a child, and I wouldn’t have any other. So, we bought four writing instruments and didn’t even come anywhere close to spending even a quarter of the cost of that silver and glass pen. What a bargain!
We left Fountain Pen Hospital, and I decided we needed some nice, new, blank books on which to test our new purchases. I wracked my brains (I mean, we were in the middle of Manhattan, where it’s just so difficult to find anything you want) and couldn’t think of any place better to buy these than the Strand Bookstore. After all, it was so conveniently located a mere forty blocks up on Broadway. While there, I decided I might as well check to see if a few books on my TBR list were available. The Strand, although a fabulous place to browse, with its “18 miles of new and used books” is typically disappointing if you arrive with specific titles in mind. Wouldn’t you know it? This was the day, of all days, I hit pay dirt when I checked the shelves for Rose Macaulay (some of you may have figured out that I’ve become quite obsessed with her lately). Last time I was there, they had nothing of hers. This time, they had five books, The Towers of Trebizond being the only one I’d read. I chose two. I toyed with T. of T., because I love it so (it was lent to me, and I don't own it), but then I decided against it. You know, that would have been conspicuous consumption. Bob, not to be outdone by me, found two books of his own: a short story collection by Wallace Stegner and another by Raymond Carver. And, then of course, there were the blank books.
All right, so we decided to save money by going to the free pen event. We decided we shouldn’t add to our book collection when we expect to be moving sometime in the next half year or so. We spent a fortune on pens, and we came home with four books. There’s something wrong with this picture.
When I write stories (and sometimes even blog entries), I almost always write the first draft in pen (or pencil). I’m not exactly sure why: I can just as easily compose with a keyboard. I suppose, though, I find composing without one more soothing. And I do love the convenience of it. I can write anywhere without having to worry about plugs, power cords, batteries, sun glare, etc. It stands to reason, then, that if this is my preferred method of creative writing, I need nice pens, right?
I married a man whose pen fetish is as bad as mine. Worse, really. I worry if I spend too much money on a pen, always aware of my absent-mindedness and the fact that I could very easily lose it. Bob, on the other hand, has no such worries, and he collects fine pens the way some people collect fine jewelry (or rather, I give them to him on present-giving occasions, which makes such occasions nice and easy for me). I’m often sent into a state of panic when I see him casually slip one of these into a shirt pocket and walk out into the big, wide world where I am sure it wants to leap, never to return (mine aren’t allowed to leave the house, except on very special occasions, and then only in boxes in tightly secured bags).
A week ago Saturday, we had a real dilemma. I got an invitation to go to a tea in Manhattan hosted by Persephone Books. Bob got an invitation for a special pen expo at The Fountain Pen Hospital, also in Manhattan on the same day. We hemmed and hawed, considered going to both, but since there were other things we also wanted to do while in the city, finally decided being tempted to buy more books was a bad idea, since we're going to be moving soon (at least we hope. A post on that is waiting to be written, and it's bigger than the telecommuting ones that are still lined up, so it will probably beat its way to the front of the line soon). Pens are much easier to transport than books. Besides, the Persephone Tea cost money, and the pen expo was free.
Big mistake to think we’d be saving money. You can’t take two pen fanatics, put them in a store full of mouth-wateringly beautiful and heart-attack-worthy expensive pens and expect to get off cheap. I’m proud to say I did not succumb to the $3000 glass and sterling silver pen that made me understand why some people feel the need to push others to their deaths on their way to the top of the corporate ladder where they can rake in my yearly salary in a mere month.
I did, however, decide I needed to complement the Faber-Castell pencil my former boss gave me as a Christmas gift a few years back with a similar roller ball and ball point. I mean, doesn’t everyone need a complete set? And then there was the Mark Twain signature fountain pen. Everything was 25% off. When else would I ever find these pens at these prices? We got Bob a beautiful Caran d'ache pencil (this purchase was not the least bit influenced by the delicious Swiss chocolates the Caran d'ache woman was giving away). I love Caran d'ache. I used to get those metal boxes of colored pencils (the ones with the Swiss Alps painted on the top) when I was a child, and I wouldn’t have any other. So, we bought four writing instruments and didn’t even come anywhere close to spending even a quarter of the cost of that silver and glass pen. What a bargain!
We left Fountain Pen Hospital, and I decided we needed some nice, new, blank books on which to test our new purchases. I wracked my brains (I mean, we were in the middle of Manhattan, where it’s just so difficult to find anything you want) and couldn’t think of any place better to buy these than the Strand Bookstore. After all, it was so conveniently located a mere forty blocks up on Broadway. While there, I decided I might as well check to see if a few books on my TBR list were available. The Strand, although a fabulous place to browse, with its “18 miles of new and used books” is typically disappointing if you arrive with specific titles in mind. Wouldn’t you know it? This was the day, of all days, I hit pay dirt when I checked the shelves for Rose Macaulay (some of you may have figured out that I’ve become quite obsessed with her lately). Last time I was there, they had nothing of hers. This time, they had five books, The Towers of Trebizond being the only one I’d read. I chose two. I toyed with T. of T., because I love it so (it was lent to me, and I don't own it), but then I decided against it. You know, that would have been conspicuous consumption. Bob, not to be outdone by me, found two books of his own: a short story collection by Wallace Stegner and another by Raymond Carver. And, then of course, there were the blank books.
All right, so we decided to save money by going to the free pen event. We decided we shouldn’t add to our book collection when we expect to be moving sometime in the next half year or so. We spent a fortune on pens, and we came home with four books. There’s something wrong with this picture.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Blogging for Newspapers
Yesterday morning, I was listening to a story on NPR about a newspaper in Boston that’s looking for bloggers who live in the city to act as local news reporters. It’s a very interesting idea, and I immediately perked up, even though my coffee hadn’t yet finished its own perking. The argument was that bloggers know more about their communities than some reporter coming from outside does. What an interesting idea. I bet many bloggers know more about certain subjects than many reporters do. Here’s an example, just off the top of my head: math educators might happen to know a little more about the “math wars” going on in the American education system than a self-declared-math-hating journalist. If papers like The Wall Street Journal tapped into math educators blogging on the subject, and got one of them to write their articles, maybe I wouldn’t be so infuriated every time I read an article on the subject and would stop coming away thinking, “That reporter doesn’t have a clue. How could she have written that? Didn’t she do her research?”
Now, I know, reporters are supposedly more objective than those in the field, and maybe it’s a good idea to try to have an objective voice when discussing controversial topics like: why do American students lag so far behind students in other countries when it comes to mathematical ability? But let’s take a different sort of example. Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about chimpanzees in its Science Times section. One can’t have an article about chimpanzees without mentioning Jane Goodall. Wouldn’t it be cool if that article had been written by someone who’d actually worked under her rather than some reporter who was just researching her? I’m not saying there’s someone out there blogging about his/her experiences working with Jane Goodall, but there could be (honestly, I haven’t looked). Think about how much more information that person would have. The possibilities for this sort of reporting seem endless when one thinks about the vastness of the blogosphere.
Even more interesting about this report was that the bloggers for this Boston paper would actually see their names in print. The idea, as I was able to gather, is to print their blog entries in an actual newspaper. What a nice transition for those who are eager to be published. They wouldn’t have to abandon their comfortable blogging zones.
It doesn’t sound like there could be a downside to this for the blogger, does there? Well, then I listened on to find out that this paper doesn’t plan to pay the bloggers. Maybe. Eventually. But not yet. What? Can you imagine a paper approaching someone and saying, “We’d like you to write stories for us, but we’re not going to pay you?” Unless you’re a college intern, doing it solely for experience, or happen to be independently wealthy, you’d be nuts to agree to that. I hope any blogger approached by them realizes this, especially if he or she wants blogging legitimized. Everyone knows that the key to legitimization is cold, hard cash. I mean, lawyers don’t run around providing free legal representation in the hopes that they’ll become recognized in the field. Aspiring writers shouldn’t either. And imagine how much money the owner of a paper can rake in if he doesn’t have to pay his reporters (or at least is only having to pay those few he hires who aren’t bloggers). Even more important, though, is: what’s in it for the blogger at all? Bloggers already get to blog about anything they want with no pay. Suddenly, people are going to be asked to blog about things someone else dictates, and still not get paid, all for the slight chance that they might be recognized and maybe then be able to publish something that pays? As far as I’m concerned, Corporate America strikes again. Only this time, the worker bees aren’t getting even a tiny drop of the Queen (or King) Bee’s honey.
Now, I know, reporters are supposedly more objective than those in the field, and maybe it’s a good idea to try to have an objective voice when discussing controversial topics like: why do American students lag so far behind students in other countries when it comes to mathematical ability? But let’s take a different sort of example. Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about chimpanzees in its Science Times section. One can’t have an article about chimpanzees without mentioning Jane Goodall. Wouldn’t it be cool if that article had been written by someone who’d actually worked under her rather than some reporter who was just researching her? I’m not saying there’s someone out there blogging about his/her experiences working with Jane Goodall, but there could be (honestly, I haven’t looked). Think about how much more information that person would have. The possibilities for this sort of reporting seem endless when one thinks about the vastness of the blogosphere.
Even more interesting about this report was that the bloggers for this Boston paper would actually see their names in print. The idea, as I was able to gather, is to print their blog entries in an actual newspaper. What a nice transition for those who are eager to be published. They wouldn’t have to abandon their comfortable blogging zones.
It doesn’t sound like there could be a downside to this for the blogger, does there? Well, then I listened on to find out that this paper doesn’t plan to pay the bloggers. Maybe. Eventually. But not yet. What? Can you imagine a paper approaching someone and saying, “We’d like you to write stories for us, but we’re not going to pay you?” Unless you’re a college intern, doing it solely for experience, or happen to be independently wealthy, you’d be nuts to agree to that. I hope any blogger approached by them realizes this, especially if he or she wants blogging legitimized. Everyone knows that the key to legitimization is cold, hard cash. I mean, lawyers don’t run around providing free legal representation in the hopes that they’ll become recognized in the field. Aspiring writers shouldn’t either. And imagine how much money the owner of a paper can rake in if he doesn’t have to pay his reporters (or at least is only having to pay those few he hires who aren’t bloggers). Even more important, though, is: what’s in it for the blogger at all? Bloggers already get to blog about anything they want with no pay. Suddenly, people are going to be asked to blog about things someone else dictates, and still not get paid, all for the slight chance that they might be recognized and maybe then be able to publish something that pays? As far as I’m concerned, Corporate America strikes again. Only this time, the worker bees aren’t getting even a tiny drop of the Queen (or King) Bee’s honey.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Not Much to Say
I don't think much can be said this evening except that my heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with all those in The Virginia Tech community and their friends and family members. I hope others will pass on thoughts as well.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Sense of Humor: R.I.P.?
Somehow, somewhere, over the last few months, I seem to have lost my sense of humor. I just can’t figure out what’s happened to it. I’m a bit suspicious, knowing it, that “lost” may not be the word I want. I think it’s playing a trick on me and is hiding somewhere, because every so often, for a few special occasions like on Thursday nights when 30 Rock is on or when Bob and I go see a performance of The Cocktail Hour on stage, it materializes. But most of the time, it seems to be hiding in some deep, dark tunnel underneath a city street somewhere, the sort of place that echoes with mysterious voices and maniacal laughter where it knows I won’t dare set foot to try to find it.
I first realized it was missing when I picked up the audiobook version of Little Children by Tom Perotta a few months back. The jacket on the CD cover declared that this book was nothing short of brilliantly funny (granted, the subject matter didn’t scream “funny,” but I’ve been surprised in the past by good comic authors who can make any subject laughable). I was looking for a good laugh and eagerly inserted it into the CD player as soon as I got out to my car to find myself somewhat amused by the opening playground scene and its depiction of suburban motherhood. But that was the only amusement I was able to squeeze from what I found to be a hauntingly sad portrayal of 21st-century suburban life where people haven’t a clue what they want or need, and everyone is looking for a scapegoat for his or her own unbelievably wretched unhappiness.
Shortly after that, I picked up the audiobook version of Prep, a book about which I’d been curious for some time. This one also promised to be “funny.” I found absolutely nothing – seriously, N-O-T-H-I-N-G – funny about this gut-wrenchingly poignant portrayal of one of the most painful periods of a girl’s life. I did, one morning, find myself crying while listening to this book on my morning walk, but not once did it elicit even a slight chuckle. When I returned it to the library, I decided to take a look at the print book to see what its jacket copy had to say. Guess who endorsed it as funny. Tom Perotta. Well, if those two think they’re funny, I’d hate to see what they’re like when a loved one dies, and I hope I don’t ever end up in their company at a dinner party.
Thinking that maybe my sense of humor is just becoming wary of audiobooks, I decided to try a DVD. Holy Smoke was hailed as a comedy. Okay, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call a movie that takes me from butterflies-in-the-stomach in the beginning to cats-with-sharp-claws-in-the-stomach at the end a rip-roaring comedy. Maybe I’m odd, because although it was a very good movie, it just wasn’t the sort of thing I would describe to a friend thus, “Ohmigod, I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t stay in my seat while watching this one.” That’s the sort of thing I might say about, oh, I don’t know, There’s Something about Mary, maybe (I’m waiting to read somewhere that that one is a three-hankie tear-jerker).
Finally, encouraged by rave reviews in The New York Times and The New Yorker, Bob and I, desperately in need by this point of some gut-bursting laughter, decided to watch The Sarah Silverman Program. After the first episode we watched, I decided I was just being a bit dense or dumb. I must have missed something, because it had promise. It seemed like it could be so funny. So, I waited a week and watched it again, which is when I decided “dumb” was the right word but not to describe me.
You don’t know how much I’ve been missing my sense of humor. I count on it, especially when I’m down. I don’t understand why it’s chosen to desert me. Oh, wait a minute…hold on…I think I hear something. Was that it peeking through the pages of Rose Macaulay’s Crewe Train? Oh, and there it seems to have been flashing subliminally across the TV screen as we watched Casanova. It even came along and popped up to say “boo” a couple of times while I was sitting in the theater watching The Queen. I guess it’s not really gone after all. Maybe it’s just chosen to be a little more subtle these days, which is something I can truly appreciate.
I first realized it was missing when I picked up the audiobook version of Little Children by Tom Perotta a few months back. The jacket on the CD cover declared that this book was nothing short of brilliantly funny (granted, the subject matter didn’t scream “funny,” but I’ve been surprised in the past by good comic authors who can make any subject laughable). I was looking for a good laugh and eagerly inserted it into the CD player as soon as I got out to my car to find myself somewhat amused by the opening playground scene and its depiction of suburban motherhood. But that was the only amusement I was able to squeeze from what I found to be a hauntingly sad portrayal of 21st-century suburban life where people haven’t a clue what they want or need, and everyone is looking for a scapegoat for his or her own unbelievably wretched unhappiness.
Shortly after that, I picked up the audiobook version of Prep, a book about which I’d been curious for some time. This one also promised to be “funny.” I found absolutely nothing – seriously, N-O-T-H-I-N-G – funny about this gut-wrenchingly poignant portrayal of one of the most painful periods of a girl’s life. I did, one morning, find myself crying while listening to this book on my morning walk, but not once did it elicit even a slight chuckle. When I returned it to the library, I decided to take a look at the print book to see what its jacket copy had to say. Guess who endorsed it as funny. Tom Perotta. Well, if those two think they’re funny, I’d hate to see what they’re like when a loved one dies, and I hope I don’t ever end up in their company at a dinner party.
Thinking that maybe my sense of humor is just becoming wary of audiobooks, I decided to try a DVD. Holy Smoke was hailed as a comedy. Okay, I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call a movie that takes me from butterflies-in-the-stomach in the beginning to cats-with-sharp-claws-in-the-stomach at the end a rip-roaring comedy. Maybe I’m odd, because although it was a very good movie, it just wasn’t the sort of thing I would describe to a friend thus, “Ohmigod, I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t stay in my seat while watching this one.” That’s the sort of thing I might say about, oh, I don’t know, There’s Something about Mary, maybe (I’m waiting to read somewhere that that one is a three-hankie tear-jerker).
Finally, encouraged by rave reviews in The New York Times and The New Yorker, Bob and I, desperately in need by this point of some gut-bursting laughter, decided to watch The Sarah Silverman Program. After the first episode we watched, I decided I was just being a bit dense or dumb. I must have missed something, because it had promise. It seemed like it could be so funny. So, I waited a week and watched it again, which is when I decided “dumb” was the right word but not to describe me.
You don’t know how much I’ve been missing my sense of humor. I count on it, especially when I’m down. I don’t understand why it’s chosen to desert me. Oh, wait a minute…hold on…I think I hear something. Was that it peeking through the pages of Rose Macaulay’s Crewe Train? Oh, and there it seems to have been flashing subliminally across the TV screen as we watched Casanova. It even came along and popped up to say “boo” a couple of times while I was sitting in the theater watching The Queen. I guess it’s not really gone after all. Maybe it’s just chosen to be a little more subtle these days, which is something I can truly appreciate.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Books Aren't My Only Passion
Buoyed up by my first litblogging imitation, I’ve decided to confess I have an obsession with something other than books. It seems to be one shared by most book fiends I know: music. I probably don't need to note then that books aren’t the only objects to accumulate at the rate of breeding mice in our house. CDs do as well. Say what you will about Amazon and the demise of brick-and-mortar stores (okay, if you won’t, I will, “Damn the demise of good brick-and-mortar stores where you can chat with knowledgeable clerks and flip through and hold the merchandise!”), but what a fabulous one-stop-shopping place it is. If someone had told me when I was thirteen that one day I’d be able to go to this place to order books and music together and have them delivered right to my door, I would have wished the years away at Mach speed rather than my more leisurely “please-just-a-little-faster-so-I-can-be-a-grownup-and-do-what-I-want” speed. Well, we all know that grownups don’t always get to do what they want, but it’s nice to have my own money with which to frequent Amazon.
I love all kinds of music, but what I want to discuss today is maybe the equivalent of the best of the “chick flick” or “chick lit.” Too bad I can’t think of any musical term that rhymes with “chick.” I’m stuck with “chick music.” (Feel free to help me out here if you’re aware of some clever phrase for this genre.) I’m not talking here about sappy, supposedly romantic singers who rarely write their own lyrics and who are played ad nauseam on Lite FM. I’m talking about those tough, passionate, sexy women who pull you up on stage with them and ask you to participate, making you forget you can’t carry a tune to save your life and that you weren’t even able to master the recorder when everyone was taught to play it in music appreciation class, let alone the guitar.
I thought I’d highlight five of my favorite examples. These are women who just don’t get nearly the attention they deserve as far as I’m concerned. And, in case you haven’t heard of one or two, in my eagerness to force my taste on others, I’m providing CD recommendations, so you can go sample some snippets over at Amazon.
(In alphabetical order, lest you think I have a favorite.)
Iris Dement – I actually got to meet her once: so shy and sweet. Her music is much more country than folk with, at times, a hint of the influence of rock. Thus, she’s got a bit more of a twang to her than others I like. She hits you with beautifully sad melodies, as well as an extremely critical eye focused on our culture, especially in songs with these sorts of lyrics:
“Living in the wasteland of the free
Where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy…”
If these words are striking a chord with you, wait till you hear the actual chords. Try The Way I Should.
Deirdra Flint – funny, funny, funny, funny folk (and great fun to see perform). But she also surprises with some very poignant songs. I used to walk around talking about how I wished I could be the Tin Man and have no heart. Little did I know she’d written a song about this very thing. If you’ve ever been a bridesmaid or had to escort one, you should love “The Bridesmaid Dress Song,” in which a bridesmaid’s huge, pouffie dress saves her from drowning. You can find both songs on the superb The Shuffleboard Queens.
Michelle Shocked – I had the pleasure of seeing her perform in her home state of Texas. I’d just arrived in Austin from Dallas where I’d seen Michael Stipe of R.E.M. stand up on stage and mock the audience (just a little aside here: I’m a huge R.E.M fan, but had been down on Stipe for years for his smugness until I saw him in New York two nights after Bush won the 2004 election. He was terrific! Or maybe it was just the fact that – smug or not – he looked so good when he stripped down to his underwear). Michelle was so refreshing after that evening in Dallas. You’ve never seen a performer so happy to be there and so into what she was doing. Her story-telling ability was surpassed by anyone I’d seen on stage up until that point, and we got the added bonus of her father joining her for the last few songs. She’s a wonderful combination of country, folk, and rock and has a beautiful, haunting voice. If you’ve never heard her, try Arkansas Traveler, which highlights her folk-y side (and has the added bonus that she worked with a lot of other great musicians to produce it).
Syd Straw – you don’t get much better than this when it comes to fabulous bluesy-rock with a strong and very beautiful female voice. Her songs will make you think (I love the line “My sphinx is a jinx.”) I was lucky enough to see her onstage in a small venue back when she was with the Golden Palominos, but I like her much better on her own. She’s only produced two solo efforts, and of those, I’ve only got the wonderful War and Peace, one of those rare CDs on which there isn’t a single song I don’t like. Maybe I should go buy the other one...
The Nields – their energy on stage is truly amazing. I love the way they sort of jump around to their folk-rock sound like excited children, and their strong, edgy, and sexy feminist leanings are very powerful. How can you not like a group with lyrics such as:
“I used to be young,
Now I am old,
I used to be hot,
Now I am almost cold.
I used to be hard as candy,
But I’ve been sucked on too long…”?
And their version of “Lovely Rita” is better than the one by what's their name? The Beatles? A good first listen is Gotta Get Over Greta.
In writing this, I’ve realized I’m quite partial to folk. I’ve also realized that by limiting myself to five, I’ve made this exercise quite difficult. I have many, many other favorites in the world of female performers, but these will have to be it for now. Would love some recommendations from anyone reading this who has any, especially if you know of some who are similar to these five.
I love all kinds of music, but what I want to discuss today is maybe the equivalent of the best of the “chick flick” or “chick lit.” Too bad I can’t think of any musical term that rhymes with “chick.” I’m stuck with “chick music.” (Feel free to help me out here if you’re aware of some clever phrase for this genre.) I’m not talking here about sappy, supposedly romantic singers who rarely write their own lyrics and who are played ad nauseam on Lite FM. I’m talking about those tough, passionate, sexy women who pull you up on stage with them and ask you to participate, making you forget you can’t carry a tune to save your life and that you weren’t even able to master the recorder when everyone was taught to play it in music appreciation class, let alone the guitar.
I thought I’d highlight five of my favorite examples. These are women who just don’t get nearly the attention they deserve as far as I’m concerned. And, in case you haven’t heard of one or two, in my eagerness to force my taste on others, I’m providing CD recommendations, so you can go sample some snippets over at Amazon.
(In alphabetical order, lest you think I have a favorite.)
Iris Dement – I actually got to meet her once: so shy and sweet. Her music is much more country than folk with, at times, a hint of the influence of rock. Thus, she’s got a bit more of a twang to her than others I like. She hits you with beautifully sad melodies, as well as an extremely critical eye focused on our culture, especially in songs with these sorts of lyrics:
“Living in the wasteland of the free
Where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy…”
If these words are striking a chord with you, wait till you hear the actual chords. Try The Way I Should.
Deirdra Flint – funny, funny, funny, funny folk (and great fun to see perform). But she also surprises with some very poignant songs. I used to walk around talking about how I wished I could be the Tin Man and have no heart. Little did I know she’d written a song about this very thing. If you’ve ever been a bridesmaid or had to escort one, you should love “The Bridesmaid Dress Song,” in which a bridesmaid’s huge, pouffie dress saves her from drowning. You can find both songs on the superb The Shuffleboard Queens.
Michelle Shocked – I had the pleasure of seeing her perform in her home state of Texas. I’d just arrived in Austin from Dallas where I’d seen Michael Stipe of R.E.M. stand up on stage and mock the audience (just a little aside here: I’m a huge R.E.M fan, but had been down on Stipe for years for his smugness until I saw him in New York two nights after Bush won the 2004 election. He was terrific! Or maybe it was just the fact that – smug or not – he looked so good when he stripped down to his underwear). Michelle was so refreshing after that evening in Dallas. You’ve never seen a performer so happy to be there and so into what she was doing. Her story-telling ability was surpassed by anyone I’d seen on stage up until that point, and we got the added bonus of her father joining her for the last few songs. She’s a wonderful combination of country, folk, and rock and has a beautiful, haunting voice. If you’ve never heard her, try Arkansas Traveler, which highlights her folk-y side (and has the added bonus that she worked with a lot of other great musicians to produce it).
Syd Straw – you don’t get much better than this when it comes to fabulous bluesy-rock with a strong and very beautiful female voice. Her songs will make you think (I love the line “My sphinx is a jinx.”) I was lucky enough to see her onstage in a small venue back when she was with the Golden Palominos, but I like her much better on her own. She’s only produced two solo efforts, and of those, I’ve only got the wonderful War and Peace, one of those rare CDs on which there isn’t a single song I don’t like. Maybe I should go buy the other one...
The Nields – their energy on stage is truly amazing. I love the way they sort of jump around to their folk-rock sound like excited children, and their strong, edgy, and sexy feminist leanings are very powerful. How can you not like a group with lyrics such as:
“I used to be young,
Now I am old,
I used to be hot,
Now I am almost cold.
I used to be hard as candy,
But I’ve been sucked on too long…”?
And their version of “Lovely Rita” is better than the one by what's their name? The Beatles? A good first listen is Gotta Get Over Greta.
In writing this, I’ve realized I’m quite partial to folk. I’ve also realized that by limiting myself to five, I’ve made this exercise quite difficult. I have many, many other favorites in the world of female performers, but these will have to be it for now. Would love some recommendations from anyone reading this who has any, especially if you know of some who are similar to these five.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Telecommuting: One Year (and a Bit) On
On Thursday, I had a couple of meetings with people from my sister company, where I used to work, so I decided to spend the day working from that office. Doing so made me very aware of thoughts and questions I have pertaining to telecommuting, which I have now been doing from my home for just over a year (to be exact, I moved home on April 1, 2006). These thoughts and questions have decided they belong somewhere other than inside my head where no one can see or hear them. They’ve been pounding on my skull, reminding me that I once created a blog that was supposed to be all about them. They were supposed to have a special home where they could reside and not be overcrowded by worries and sudden cravings and depressing thoughts, all of whom seem to think they own the inside of my head. So, I’m letting the telecommuting thoughts free this morning, and let me tell you, they are some very happy campers, as they line up, ready to take the plunge from brain to computer screen. Here’s what they have to say:
1) Please, please, please don’t ever make me go back to working in an office again. The 45-minute-turned-one-hour-for-some-mysterious-reason commute with all those idiots on the road, tailgating me and trying to get ahead of me (why? So they could hurry up and get to their places of employment, which I’m sure 90% of them complain about being so awful?) left me in anything but the relaxed state I’m used to being in these days when I sit down at my computer in the morning. I didn’t get my morning walk. Listening to NPR while those same tailgaters are coming dangerously close to head-on collisions in their eagerness to get around me in no-passing zones is not the same as listening to NPR while making coffee and getting breakfast together. For that matter, drinking coffee from a travel mug is not the same as drinking coffee from my favorite flowered mug.
2) How does anyone ever get anything done in an office? Did I really used to be able to tune out all those conversations going on around me, along with the ringing telephones and the urges to look up every time someone walked by?
3) Why didn’t I go broke when I worked at an office? At the moment, I don’t tend to leave the house unless I have to. Thus, I’m not tempted by those things on the “outside” nearly as often as I was when I had to leave the house every single day and drive to a place that’s dangerously close to a Barnes and Noble (the closest super bookstore to my home is a 25-minute drive away). Granted, on Thursday, my former boss took me to lunch, so I wasn’t tempted to forego the perfectly good lunch I’d packed in order to run out and get some sushi (something I was prone to do back in the day), but B & N was calling my name when I hit some traffic trying to get home and decided it might be a good idea to just wait for the traffic to subside. After all, I’ve been meaning to pick up a new moleskin notebook. Of course, once through the door, I had to pick up a book as well (Ella Minnow Pea, for those of you who are curious, a book I’d forgotten I wanted to read until I found it just staring me right in the face, asking to come home with me). Oh, I also had to go to the drugstore to buy a sympathy card for a friend. While there, being a good capitalist, I decided I’d better get some Easter candy before it’s all gone, because, after all, I’m sure all the Cadbury Cream Eggs in all the stores around here are going to sell out by Easter.
4) Telecommuting is something best done when husbands are not home all day ostensibly job hunting, but really wanting your undivided attention, or at least wanting your help with mailing things, writing letters and essays, and finding the leftover soup in the fridge. But, I’m beginning to realize, he’s less of a nuisance than all that noise in the office was. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m looking forward to the day when he’s gainfully employed in a non-telecommuting position. Of course, then everyone can look forward to hearing me, The President of The Grass-Is-Always-Greener Society, complaining about how a pastor’s wife should really just call herself a widow.
5) I love my “celebrity” status when I do visit the office (either my old one or my new one). These are people who would probably all be whining about me and sick to death of me if they had to see me everyday, but instead, I get greeted with warmth and affection whenever I’m around. It’s like the long-distance relationship in which two lovers never see each others’ faults, because they’re always on their best behavior when they do get together.
6) That being said, this long-distance lover still wishes she could hang out more with her colleagues. I always have such a great time when I do.
7) My early fears of not being able to balance work and home life in an effective way have proven to have been completely unfounded. I suspect this is because I so enjoy what I do, I’m not tempted to avoid work and become a daytime-TV addict who never changes out of her pajamas. What I’ve discovered is that I also value my personal life enough to be thrilled to have more of it now that I don’t have to commute to work and work on other peoples’ schedules instead of my own. That’s not to say I don’t have the occasional day in which I’m still at work at 9:00 p.m., but I also have the occasional day in which I’m really not very productive at all (things which happened even when I wasn’t telecommuting).
8) I’m more of a loner than I ever thought. I love the solitude telecommuting gives me. Now, if I need or want to interact with others, I have to schedule those interactions, which gives me more control over them, and more time to prepare for them.
9) I still hate telephone meetings. I much prefer face-to-face meetings, even when it means a long drive. But I want to have my meeting and immediately leave the premises.
10) I still have no idea how to convince others that working from home does not mean “available in ways others aren’t.” I hope I figure out this one before I officially become “the pastor’s wife.”
There you have it: proof that I sometimes still use this blog as a forum for talking about telecommuting.
1) Please, please, please don’t ever make me go back to working in an office again. The 45-minute-turned-one-hour-for-some-mysterious-reason commute with all those idiots on the road, tailgating me and trying to get ahead of me (why? So they could hurry up and get to their places of employment, which I’m sure 90% of them complain about being so awful?) left me in anything but the relaxed state I’m used to being in these days when I sit down at my computer in the morning. I didn’t get my morning walk. Listening to NPR while those same tailgaters are coming dangerously close to head-on collisions in their eagerness to get around me in no-passing zones is not the same as listening to NPR while making coffee and getting breakfast together. For that matter, drinking coffee from a travel mug is not the same as drinking coffee from my favorite flowered mug.
2) How does anyone ever get anything done in an office? Did I really used to be able to tune out all those conversations going on around me, along with the ringing telephones and the urges to look up every time someone walked by?
3) Why didn’t I go broke when I worked at an office? At the moment, I don’t tend to leave the house unless I have to. Thus, I’m not tempted by those things on the “outside” nearly as often as I was when I had to leave the house every single day and drive to a place that’s dangerously close to a Barnes and Noble (the closest super bookstore to my home is a 25-minute drive away). Granted, on Thursday, my former boss took me to lunch, so I wasn’t tempted to forego the perfectly good lunch I’d packed in order to run out and get some sushi (something I was prone to do back in the day), but B & N was calling my name when I hit some traffic trying to get home and decided it might be a good idea to just wait for the traffic to subside. After all, I’ve been meaning to pick up a new moleskin notebook. Of course, once through the door, I had to pick up a book as well (Ella Minnow Pea, for those of you who are curious, a book I’d forgotten I wanted to read until I found it just staring me right in the face, asking to come home with me). Oh, I also had to go to the drugstore to buy a sympathy card for a friend. While there, being a good capitalist, I decided I’d better get some Easter candy before it’s all gone, because, after all, I’m sure all the Cadbury Cream Eggs in all the stores around here are going to sell out by Easter.
4) Telecommuting is something best done when husbands are not home all day ostensibly job hunting, but really wanting your undivided attention, or at least wanting your help with mailing things, writing letters and essays, and finding the leftover soup in the fridge. But, I’m beginning to realize, he’s less of a nuisance than all that noise in the office was. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m looking forward to the day when he’s gainfully employed in a non-telecommuting position. Of course, then everyone can look forward to hearing me, The President of The Grass-Is-Always-Greener Society, complaining about how a pastor’s wife should really just call herself a widow.
5) I love my “celebrity” status when I do visit the office (either my old one or my new one). These are people who would probably all be whining about me and sick to death of me if they had to see me everyday, but instead, I get greeted with warmth and affection whenever I’m around. It’s like the long-distance relationship in which two lovers never see each others’ faults, because they’re always on their best behavior when they do get together.
6) That being said, this long-distance lover still wishes she could hang out more with her colleagues. I always have such a great time when I do.
7) My early fears of not being able to balance work and home life in an effective way have proven to have been completely unfounded. I suspect this is because I so enjoy what I do, I’m not tempted to avoid work and become a daytime-TV addict who never changes out of her pajamas. What I’ve discovered is that I also value my personal life enough to be thrilled to have more of it now that I don’t have to commute to work and work on other peoples’ schedules instead of my own. That’s not to say I don’t have the occasional day in which I’m still at work at 9:00 p.m., but I also have the occasional day in which I’m really not very productive at all (things which happened even when I wasn’t telecommuting).
8) I’m more of a loner than I ever thought. I love the solitude telecommuting gives me. Now, if I need or want to interact with others, I have to schedule those interactions, which gives me more control over them, and more time to prepare for them.
9) I still hate telephone meetings. I much prefer face-to-face meetings, even when it means a long drive. But I want to have my meeting and immediately leave the premises.
10) I still have no idea how to convince others that working from home does not mean “available in ways others aren’t.” I hope I figure out this one before I officially become “the pastor’s wife.”
There you have it: proof that I sometimes still use this blog as a forum for talking about telecommuting.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich
(My apologies to all you wonderful litbloggers out there for this rather cheap imitation, but I promised Cam I’d post on this book today. Also, I’m keeping up with one of my 2007 blogging goals of embracing my inner litblogger: this is my first blog devoted solely to a book I’ve just read.)
When I read books by Barbara Ehrenreich, just as I do when I read books by Sarah Vowell, Mary Roach, or David Rakoff; I first have to get past the green hue my skin takes on as I think about the fact they all managed to catch the calling I missed while I was so busy worrying about such things as food, clothing, housing, and health insurance (like those I just read about in this book). Am I the only one who would love to be able to visit all kinds of historical sites, interview residents and tour guides, pretending just to be a very interested tourist? How about traveling all over the world to try to discern whether or not ghosts are real? And then there’s posing as a white-collar, corporate-America-type, trying to get a job, as Ehrenreich did for this book. Once the acting’s done, you get to spend your time putting together a collection of witty essays or chapters for books people have already agreed to publish (probably with a nice little advance against royalties to help pay for all that travel).
But, all jealousy and envy aside, I picked up this book thinking I wasn’t going be all that sympathetic. I didn’t think I could feel the pain of whiny, laid-off executives who have always felt a sense of entitlement, and who are having trouble finding new six-figure-salary jobs. As they so often do, my prejudices astounded me. Despite these prejudices, though, I was still well aware of the fact that it’s easy for me to be dismissive of such people, because I have no debt, have no children, and have had steady employment since graduating from college, and that means I’ve been making a decent salary for some time now. If I were suddenly to lose my job, rather than grasping for another job in the corporate world, I’d probably see it as an opportunity to explore other career paths (psychologist, nutritionist, freelance writer all spring to mind).
I had approached the other Ehrenreich book I’ve read Nickel and Dimed with a much more sympathetic and open mind. That book is about the blue-collar workers of America: people working their butts off in jobs most of us white-collar pansies could stand for maybe two hours, many of them working more than one job, and they were still unable to make ends meet. That book made me feel there’s something very wrong with America, and it also reinforced my long-held belief that “The American Dream” (like winning the lottery) is only really attainable for a very lucky few.
But then I started to get into Bait and Switch and realized that this book also reinforces my long-held belief. I gather from Ehrenreich’s experiences (she decided to pretend to be an out-of-work public relations specialist and gave herself a year to try to find a job with a corporation) and from what she tells us, we have a glut of people (many whose parents were probably those work-their-butts-off-blue-collar Americans who wanted more for their children) who are finding life in the corporate world to be tougher than the lives their parents had. Their parents probably pushed them to get an education, believing a college degree would guarantee success. They’d never lack for a decent job with decent pay. They’d move up in the world. Well, it just “ain’t so.”
Remember how in the old days, only those with the right connections got jobs? Well, it’s not the “old days.” Nothing’s changed. I guarantee if you grew up in a family in which your father was CEO of Major Corporation, and you went to Ivy League School of Choice, and joined the right clubs and fraternities, you’re not one of the ones suffering today. However, if your father worked on the assembly line of Major Corporation, and you went to State U on scholarship, and you couldn’t afford to join clubs and fraternities, but made straight A’s in all your business and communications classes, the subject in which you majored, you probably lost your job at Minor Brothers Company going on twelve months ago now, have applied for countless numbers of other jobs, and still barely get a response from anyone.
As this book got into the details of how difficult it is for these people to find jobs, my sympathies rose. Ehrenreich approaches the subject with a wonderfully wry eye (why I like her so much), but after a while, even she can’t hide the fact that hidden beneath all the absurdity (job “coaches,” “networking bootcamps,” etc.) is the incredible sadness and disillusionment. When she reveals the life of the “bootcamp” leader, it’s almost enough to make one cry.
One of the most disturbing chapters in the book is The Transformation. Here, we basically learn that women can’t win in the corporate world when it comes to appearance. They’re either too beautiful and can’t be taken seriously, or they’re too masculine when they need to be more feminine in order to be “approachable.” My question is: why aren’t men seen as “unapproachable?” Aren’t they the prototypes of “masculine?” (But that’s a subject for a post on What We Said.)
Ultimately, I came away with very similar conclusions as Ehrenreich’s, which is that despite the fact that those selling advice to people looking for jobs will say that the most important factor is “attitude,”
I also came away from this book more aware than ever that I’m extraordinarily lucky, that somehow I’ve managed to find the Summerhill of companies in and amongst all the Etons and Harrows. She quotes Steven Covey, noting that he says that to achieve a level of passion in the workplace (“passion” is apparently a very important part of “attitude”) you need to:
I work in a place where people are more passionate about what they do and more productive than anywhere else I’ve ever worked. We avoid pain. Ask any of the employees, and they’ll tell you they’re contented and happy. When our parent company conducts its employee satisfaction survey every few years, ours is the only one that consistently scores sky high, way above the rest of the pack. We’re also financially successful. We’re proving Stephen Covey wrong.
I, like Ehrenreich, believe America can change. More companies could be like the one where I work. However, it isn’t going to happen unless those who work for corporate America decide to shake it up a little, until people start joining together, putting their feet down, and saying, “this isn’t right.” Corporate unions might be a radical idea, but they just might change things for the better.
When I read books by Barbara Ehrenreich, just as I do when I read books by Sarah Vowell, Mary Roach, or David Rakoff; I first have to get past the green hue my skin takes on as I think about the fact they all managed to catch the calling I missed while I was so busy worrying about such things as food, clothing, housing, and health insurance (like those I just read about in this book). Am I the only one who would love to be able to visit all kinds of historical sites, interview residents and tour guides, pretending just to be a very interested tourist? How about traveling all over the world to try to discern whether or not ghosts are real? And then there’s posing as a white-collar, corporate-America-type, trying to get a job, as Ehrenreich did for this book. Once the acting’s done, you get to spend your time putting together a collection of witty essays or chapters for books people have already agreed to publish (probably with a nice little advance against royalties to help pay for all that travel).
But, all jealousy and envy aside, I picked up this book thinking I wasn’t going be all that sympathetic. I didn’t think I could feel the pain of whiny, laid-off executives who have always felt a sense of entitlement, and who are having trouble finding new six-figure-salary jobs. As they so often do, my prejudices astounded me. Despite these prejudices, though, I was still well aware of the fact that it’s easy for me to be dismissive of such people, because I have no debt, have no children, and have had steady employment since graduating from college, and that means I’ve been making a decent salary for some time now. If I were suddenly to lose my job, rather than grasping for another job in the corporate world, I’d probably see it as an opportunity to explore other career paths (psychologist, nutritionist, freelance writer all spring to mind).
I had approached the other Ehrenreich book I’ve read Nickel and Dimed with a much more sympathetic and open mind. That book is about the blue-collar workers of America: people working their butts off in jobs most of us white-collar pansies could stand for maybe two hours, many of them working more than one job, and they were still unable to make ends meet. That book made me feel there’s something very wrong with America, and it also reinforced my long-held belief that “The American Dream” (like winning the lottery) is only really attainable for a very lucky few.
But then I started to get into Bait and Switch and realized that this book also reinforces my long-held belief. I gather from Ehrenreich’s experiences (she decided to pretend to be an out-of-work public relations specialist and gave herself a year to try to find a job with a corporation) and from what she tells us, we have a glut of people (many whose parents were probably those work-their-butts-off-blue-collar Americans who wanted more for their children) who are finding life in the corporate world to be tougher than the lives their parents had. Their parents probably pushed them to get an education, believing a college degree would guarantee success. They’d never lack for a decent job with decent pay. They’d move up in the world. Well, it just “ain’t so.”
Remember how in the old days, only those with the right connections got jobs? Well, it’s not the “old days.” Nothing’s changed. I guarantee if you grew up in a family in which your father was CEO of Major Corporation, and you went to Ivy League School of Choice, and joined the right clubs and fraternities, you’re not one of the ones suffering today. However, if your father worked on the assembly line of Major Corporation, and you went to State U on scholarship, and you couldn’t afford to join clubs and fraternities, but made straight A’s in all your business and communications classes, the subject in which you majored, you probably lost your job at Minor Brothers Company going on twelve months ago now, have applied for countless numbers of other jobs, and still barely get a response from anyone.
As this book got into the details of how difficult it is for these people to find jobs, my sympathies rose. Ehrenreich approaches the subject with a wonderfully wry eye (why I like her so much), but after a while, even she can’t hide the fact that hidden beneath all the absurdity (job “coaches,” “networking bootcamps,” etc.) is the incredible sadness and disillusionment. When she reveals the life of the “bootcamp” leader, it’s almost enough to make one cry.
One of the most disturbing chapters in the book is The Transformation. Here, we basically learn that women can’t win in the corporate world when it comes to appearance. They’re either too beautiful and can’t be taken seriously, or they’re too masculine when they need to be more feminine in order to be “approachable.” My question is: why aren’t men seen as “unapproachable?” Aren’t they the prototypes of “masculine?” (But that’s a subject for a post on What We Said.)
Ultimately, I came away with very similar conclusions as Ehrenreich’s, which is that despite the fact that those selling advice to people looking for jobs will say that the most important factor is “attitude,”
...What they need, too, is not a “winning attitude” but a deeper and more
ancient quality, one that I never once heard mentioned in my search, and that is
courage: the courage to come together and work for change, even in the face of
overwhelming odds. (Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch, New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2005, p. 237).
I also came away from this book more aware than ever that I’m extraordinarily lucky, that somehow I’ve managed to find the Summerhill of companies in and amongst all the Etons and Harrows. She quotes Steven Covey, noting that he says that to achieve a level of passion in the workplace (“passion” is apparently a very important part of “attitude”) you need to:
...induce pain…As long as people are contented and happy, they’re not going to
do much. You don’t want to wait until the market induces pain, so you have to
induce it in other ways. (Stephen R. Covey, The Eighth Habit: From
Effectiveness to Greatness, New York: Free Press, 2004, p. 4)
I work in a place where people are more passionate about what they do and more productive than anywhere else I’ve ever worked. We avoid pain. Ask any of the employees, and they’ll tell you they’re contented and happy. When our parent company conducts its employee satisfaction survey every few years, ours is the only one that consistently scores sky high, way above the rest of the pack. We’re also financially successful. We’re proving Stephen Covey wrong.
I, like Ehrenreich, believe America can change. More companies could be like the one where I work. However, it isn’t going to happen unless those who work for corporate America decide to shake it up a little, until people start joining together, putting their feet down, and saying, “this isn’t right.” Corporate unions might be a radical idea, but they just might change things for the better.
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