Moving

Before a great vision can become reality there may be difficulty. Before a person begins a great endeavor, they may encounter chaos. As a new plant breaks the ground with great difficulty, foreshadowing the huge tree, so must we sometimes push against difficulty in bringing forth our dreams. Out of Chaos, Brilliant Stars are Born.

I Ching, Hexagam #3

I’m moving. I’ve been in the process of moving for the past eight weeks, but the truck actually pulls up on Thursday. Granted, I’m only moving three blocks, but as I learned back in my aquarium days, the worst parts of moving, be it a home or a fishtank, apply whether it’s moving across a room or across country. No, that isn’t really true, but it’s close.

I packed my books first, over the course of a month. That’s sixteen boxes. Everything else pretty much fits into another five boxes, give or take (some stuff I’m just carrying over in shopping bags over the course of a few days) which gives some sense of my priorities. For that matter, when I listed the furniture to be moved, five of the eleven items were bookcases of various kinds.

The new apartment has slightly less square footage (and 30% less rent), but a lot of built-in storage space, and I’ve been feeling like its time to downsize anyway, so I’m getting rid of a few things. My dining room hutch/buffet, and my mother’s wedding china, which was in it. My couch, which is tired and needs replacing (with the rent reduction, I can afford to replace some things down the road). My rolltop desk, which I have loved dearly; it took months of looking to find one I loved and could afford (there was a blonde oak antique with porcelain drawer pulls that I drooled over, but it was way out of my range). I figure, I’ve enjoyed it for 40+ years, that’s good enough. The hardest part was finding out the Salvation Army didn’t want it. “It has a lot of scratches and worn spots.” Well, duh. Every time I deal with the Salvation Army, I end up pissed off. I admire the organization and they do important work, but damn, they’re just annoying as hell.

I’ve thrown out buckets of stuff. It’s amazing to me that, in such a small space, I’ve generated so much junk.

In any case, I’m unable to read, so I’m declaring a moratorium on posting. I’ve been trying to read Tony Hoaglund’s Twenty Poems that could Save America to prepare for next year’s Pushcart read, but my concentration is elsewhere. I jump up in the middle of the night thinking, “I have to clean the vegetable bin!” or “I need to make up the footprints to figure out where things go!” so my mind is on, shall we say, the distinctly non-poetic. I should have chosen something much lighter for this time.

I don’t do well with change. So I’m expecting a few rough weeks. And it’s summer; dealing with heat and humidity is not my strength (though today is beautiful, and the forecast promises more for the immediate future; this is why I live in Maine, the truly awful stuff is kept to a minimum, and six months of winter seems a fair trade).

I’ll be back, probably sooner rather than later.

7/12/19 Update:

The hard part’s over; all that’s left is unpacking and readjusting, which is… come to think of it, the other hard part. Everything requires mindfulness, from coming around a corner so I don’t knock the dictionary stand into the wall or remembering where I put the laundry stuff or adjusting windows and shades for a different light pattern.
Everyone I dealt with, from junk-removal people to moving people (I met my first female mover! So happy!) to the cable installer (I played the old lady card and paid the $50 fee) was wonderful – pleasant, capable, on time, helpful.

What I love so far: looking out a huge window and seeing people! My window overlooked a parking garage before, and while I was grateful the top of a large tree gave me something to look at besides cars and asphalt (and the occasional illicit drunken-teenager party), this is so much better. There’s a rooftop garden across the street with some art sculptures and apparently some kind of doggie patch, not sure how that works, but that’s someone else’s problem. If I turn a little I can see Back Bay in the distance; turn a different way and there’s the harbor, or at least a glimpse of it. And below are sidewalks with people, so I can tell if the snow is sticking or if it’s colder than the temperature indicates.
I also love how they’ve painted: it’s basically beige, but before you groan, there are accent walls of a lovely deep earth-tone blue and darker brown, and there’s little wall space anyway what with all the cabinets and built-in-shelves and windows and closet, so it’s really quite nicely done. Much better than the typical cheap-apartment-eggshell-white. The building skews towards artists since it’s in the heart of the ArtsDistrict and near the art school (the lobby offers exhibits for First Friday art walks), so maybe that was a way to make it more appealing.

What I’m not sure about yet: I don’t understand the shower. I don’t get the aversion to cabinet doors; all the cabinets (and there are tons of them) are open, which is fine, but… does that mean I have to dust daily to keep ahead of it?
Back to unpacking. Then I’m going to need to evaluate needs, now that I’ve thrown out a bunch of stuff. Right now, I’m thinking I need a good reading chair with a nice standing light and table, a small kitchen/dining table, and a microwave, which I finally have room for.

7/23/19 Update:

Ok, I’m calling it: I am officially moved. I’ve bought all the stuff I need to buy (with a couple of minor exceptions), have changed all my addresses, have all my books better organized than they have been in years (language/writing on the dictionary stand, contemporary fiction in the corner by my reading chair – yes, I have a reading chair, where I can look out at Back Bay or at Congress Street, the best of both worlds), nonfiction over there, all the books I’d rather not display to just anyone on the shelves in the corner (you know, garbage novels, murder mysteries, golden age science fiction, Miss Manners), and I’ve cleaned up, thrown away all the boxes and packings and detritus. I’m very, very pleased with it all.
But I’m still monumentally confused. Not about anything in particular – I’ve got the bus routes down (not that they’re that different), I finally figured out the shower (and really like it now that I understand how to use all the weird stuff), it’s all a familiar neighborhood, the neighbors I’ve met are really nice. I’m just… disoriented, anxious. I guess two weeks isn’t enough to de-acclimate twenty-plus years. Imagine what people who move a lot farther, and for less voluntary reasons, go through.
I’ll try to remember to look back on this in a few months, see if I’ve calmed down yet.

What’s Next? A Preliminary Reading List for the next Five Months [IBR2019]

As I did last year, I plan to fill the time between now and whenever BASS 2019 drops (expected in October; the guest editor is Anthony Doerr) with assorted readings: novels, story collections, nonfiction books and essay collections or anthologies, maybe even a little poetry.

The “For Later” list on my local library account contains over 120 entries of books I’ve seen along the way and thought, I might want to read that; some of them were put there eight or ten years ago. In addition, I have a bookmark list for the interlibrary loan catalog with several hundred items, and an Amazon shopping list with another 50 or so ideas. So I have a lot to choose from.

While the books I’ve selected for this “long list” are eclectic, many fall into a few noticeable categories:

● Fiction using God/religion/spirituality for plot;
● Nonfiction about work, including a few about jobs seldom written about;
● All genres by established authors, and reading-list standards I’ve never read;
● Plus an eclectic assortment of more recent releases that caught my eye, though often I can’t remember when or how.

I doubt I’ll get to them all. I expect to be moving at some point in the next month or two, so that will disrupt things for a while. I may give up on some, swap in others. But it’s a start. I’m already in possession of nine of the titles, with two more on the way. Most of the rest will be library borrows (moving is expensive).

I plan to rotate through the categories, though I don’t have any order in mind. I welcome anyone who’d like to read along; I’ve been using Goodreads more regularly than I used to, so when I start a book, I’ll post it there under “currently reading”. But to start: I’m already halfway through Ellen Litman’s story collection, and plan to read Morrison next.

The long list:

God, religion, spirituality:

• Wilton Barnhardt: Gospel (St. Martin’s, 1993). This is sort of cheating, since I’ve read it several times, but not recently. It drove this mini-group of God-centered books, in fact. Borrows a lot from clichés, but I can’t help it, I miss God (the character, in a small but pivotal part) every time I come to the end.
• Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God (Pantheon, 2010). This is a novel in 36 chapters, each an argument for… well, you get the idea.
• C. Michael Curtis, ed. : God Stories (HM, 1998) Everyone from James Baldwin to Philip Roth to James Joyce chips in.
• Youssef Ziedan: Azazeel (Atlantic, 2001). Along the lines of Gospel but set in the fifth century, recounting a monk’s travels in Egypt in the early days of Christianity.

Jobs, especially those rarely written about:

• Finn Murphy: The Long Haul (Norton, 2017). Murphy took a summer job as a trucker after his third year of college, and kept going.
• Stephanie Land: Maid (Hachette, 2019). The hardest-working people around get the least money, and the least respect.
• Jacob Tomsky: Heads in Beds (Anchor 2016). The Kitchen Confidential of the hospitality industry.
• Sandeep Jauhar: Doctored (FSG, 2015). Yes, doctor books abound, but I can’t resist them, especially, given my recent close encounters with doctors, disillusioned ones.
• Nell Painter: Old in Art School (Counterpoint, 2018). Not exactly a job, but close enough.
• Kwame Onwuachi: Notes from a Young Black Chef (Knopf, 2019). Ok, so chefs also write a lot of books. I can’t resist an occasional nibble.

Filling in my literary gaps: literary standards and established authors

• Walker Percy: The Moviegoer (RH reissue, 1998)
• Donald Barthelme: Sixty stories (Penguin reissue 2003)
• Sinclair Lewis: Main Street/Babbitt/It Can’t Happen Here (LOA reissue 1992)
• Umberto Eco: On Literature (HB 2004)
• Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye (Vintage Reissue 2007)
• Hannah Arendt: Essays in Understanding (Schocken reissue 2018) . Yeah, I know, everyone’s reading The Origins of Totalitarianism but I thought this might be a better place to start.
• Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections (Picador reprint, 2002). No, I’ve never read Franzen. So shoot me.
• Nathanael West: Miss Lonelyhearts/Day of the Locust (LOA reprint 1997). I’ve always wanted to read these.
• Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man (RH, 1982 ed.). Yeah, again, no I haven’t read it, stop judging.

Miscellaneous fiction and non, with the possibility of a hint of poetry

• Ellen Litman: The Last Chicken In America (Norton, 2007). A novel-in-stories about a community of post-Soviet Russian Jewish immigrants in Pittsburg.
• Simon Winchester: The Professor and the Madman (HC 1998). Because I’d rather read the book than see the movie.
• N. K. Jemisin : How Long ‘til Black Future Month? (Orbit, 2018). I try to read a little fantasy now and then, and this sounds intriguing.
• John Boyne: A Ladder to the Sky (Hogarth 2018). I tend to like writers as characters.
• Michel Lincoln: Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press, 2015). I’m scared (the one story of his I encountered in Pushcart was bizarre, in a good way) , but I’ll give it a shot.
• Julie Schumacher: The Shakespeare Requirement (Doubleday 2018). A follow-up to last year’s Dear Committee Members.
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: Friday Black (Mariner, 2018). How cool is it that there are two widely-discussed fantasy collections by writers of color.
• R. Jay Magill: Sincerity (Norton, 2013). A history and philosophical investigation of the trait.
• Emily Wilson: The greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (OUP, reprint 2018). I know surprisingly little about the Stoics, and almost nothing about Seneca, so I thought this might help.
• Mark Kurlansky: Salt: A World History (Penguin, 2003). I love books that use something simple as a way to tell broad stories about people, histories, and places.
• Victoria Chang: Circle (SIUP, 2005). One of the Pushcart poets from this year.
• Tony Hoaglund: Twenty Poems that Could Save America (Graywolf, 2014). Another Pushcart poet; this is a book of essays about poetry; I may combine it with one of his poetry collections.

Gotta go – I have reading to do.

This unscheduled interruption was brought to you by…

… the electroconductive properties of sodium in the body, a system so finely tuned that even a small depletion brings on a state of confusion in which the smallest problem seems like an insurmountable obstacle; the pneumococcus family of pathogens; and a special appearance by my right iliopsoas muscle who, feeling unappreciated and unrecognized, finally decided to get some attention after having guided every single step for over 60 years.

In other words, I’ve been sick. Even got myself admitted to the hospital for a couple of days. Nothing serious, but a confluence of events that kept snowballing until someone who knew what they were doing – and had some nice IV antibiotics in stock – took over.

I’m still recovering, various parts trying to remember what normal function is like. I still have a lot of follow-up appointments coming up this week (including one of those things that sounds incredibly scary yet nearly always turns out to be a lot of drama over nothing), so I probably won’t have a lot of energy to devote to blogging for a week or two.

I haven’t taken a scheduled break for a while now, so I guess an unscheduled one will do.

Later!

Fourth of July

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.

~~ Joni Mitchell

I’ve never really thought much about patriotism, or about what it means to be an American. I’ve never been anything else, but I assume people who live in other countries love their countries too, for the most part, or at least love what their country used to be before something terrible happened that changed everything.

I know how that feels now.

What do – did? – I feel America was about? That it’s a messed up combination of the best and the worst from the very start (the man who wrote “all men are created equal” owned slaves and slept with one of them from the time she was 14 years old), but that we always have had this idea of “being better” at our core. We always aspired to be that city on a hill, though we often fall short. Even though we believe ourselves to be the best country in the world, one of our patriotic hymns includes the line “God mend thine every flaw” acknowledging our imperfection and our intent, fumbling and misguided as it sometimes is, towards the betterment of all.

That intent has changed. Our intent now is perhaps best described as “Me first, and screw everybody else.” Compassion, generosity, and honor have been overshadowed by greed, corruption, and hatred. Our public face to the world is some macabre cross between a joke and a vicious horror. How do we explain to the world that this – the product of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and very possibly the criminal disruption of democracy in favor of power harvesting at the highest levels – is not who we are? The scarier question, for me: What if it is exactly who we are, who we have become?

I grew up in the 60s. My parents were terrified at the changes blowing in on the wind: Negroes (that was the polite term at the time) as regular people? Women as bosses over men? Communes, drugs, frankly sexual music (popular music was always about sex – come on, what do you think Glenn Miller was in the mood for? And by the way, lots of medieval madrigals are downright obscene), natural foods, meditation, they thought the world had gone crazy. I wonder if I’m just seeing the other side of that now. But I don’t think so. I think this is qualitatively, quantitatively, fundamentally different. I think this was a coup. I think America isn’t America any more.

I keep thinking of Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”: “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” I didn’t know I loved my country until I lost it.

A few thoughts

It’s now day 3 of The New Normal and I still can’t focus, can’t think, burst into tears at odd moments, don’t give a damn about anything I enjoyed a few days ago. I live with depression. I’ve lived with depression all my life. This isn’t depression. It’s that BSOD message: “Windows must shut down to prevent damage to your computer.” A self-protective paralysis overlying incipient hysteria.

I had a moment of beauty yesterday when someone reminded me of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” – “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” I thought I might be turning a corner. Then I found out he died. Moment’s over. That was quick. He may have died on Monday, or on Thursday. I hope it was Monday. Before.

I went through the supermarket today, wondering: Which ones? Which ones decided I wasn’t worth keeping alive any more? Was it her? Who was it that decided my friends and neighbors should be deported, was it him? Who was it that decided bragging about sexual assault and a life spent viewing women purely in terms of their sexual utility wasn’t disqualifying, who felt like telling a crowd things were better when they could just beat the guy up, who wants to muzzle the media unless they only say nice things about him, didn’t matter that much – was it you? Did you decide you liked the bigotry so much, you’d ignore the bankruptcies and the potential for war and the chumming up to a Russian autocrat? Do fetuses matter so much more than living, breathing people who were once fetuses? And if there’s any doubt that people will suffer, check out Shaun King’s timeline, check the news about Penn, or just ask me for the 15 clips I randomly pulled to show you the hatred you have implicitly approved.

Those who voted for bigotry (and they will insist they voted for other things, but if you vote for a bigot, you don’t get to wave it away and claim purity) have made it clear they’ve been revolted by the person occupying the Oval Office for the past eight years. I’m going to understand that feeling, for the first time in my life, a lot better in the next four years (oh, let’s not sugar coat this, it’s eight years, and who knows, with all three branches of government firmly in his control, it might end up more than that). But my distaste does not spring from what the new President Elect is, but from what he’s said and done. If you can show me anything President Obama has ever said or done that’s as offensive as [insert favorite example of bigotry here] that will help me to understand. If you can show me instances where President Obama has been as selfish, as mean-spirited, as vindictive, as crass, as greedy as the new President Elect, that will help me to understand. I’m still waiting for someone to explain to me how anything President Obama did affected their lives in a negative way. I’m not saying everything was peachy-keen, but he always maintained an air of grace and rationality. I never doubted his sincerity, and I always felt, even when I was disappointed by some action he did or didn’t take, some degree of trust in his judgment. I was proud to call him my President. Given my age and health, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to say that again.

Some casual online friends of mine were commenting on the election from that place of white privilege (which, I admit, I also enjoy) where everything’s an academic exercise and somehow both candidates were equally distasteful because it isn’t our rights, freedoms, and safety that’s threatened by one of them. I’ve been ignoring this attitude for weeks from all sides (my dental hygienist, a bus driver, a neighbor). But yesterday I cracked. I ended up the bad guy. I don’t like being the bad guy, and it does nobody any good. My intentions were good, and I can’t say I regret what I posted, but I made a fool of myself, and I was ineffective.

People of color have been saying white people don’t like to be made to feel uncomfortable about racism; I never knew what they meant before. I still don’t understand it: I’m always uncomfortable about racism (I’m always uncomfortable about a lot of things, for that matter), fully aware I don’t have any idea what it’s like to be the only black woman in the room, to be the black guy on the street when a police car comes around. I’ve tried to include more diverse voices into my earshot over the past several years. I still have a lot to learn. But fact is, I’m not comfortable with confrontation, so I tend to stay quiet until I’m pissed off to the point of erupting, and that’s never a good approach.

I’ll probably regret this post at some point, maybe even delete it; it’s way too “hot-take”. But right now, it’s something I need to put out here.

I hear a lot about liberals and other Democrats (funny, I always thought they were the same thing) being angry at each other, at individual Democrats, at the news media, at this and at that. Me, I’m angry at Jon Stewart. Yes, the Daily Show guy, the flaming liberal who’s been campaigning his heart out for the side of sanity and reason, the guy who’s show I watched religiously for years, the guy I still miss (though Trevor’s doing a fantastic job and brings an angle Jon simply couldn’t). Because I remember a show he did, just before he left TDS, where he and a bunch of other comedians got together on stage for a simulated circle jerk over the announcement of a certain candidate. They saw jokes making themselves for two, three months, maybe six. They never thought it would go beyond that. They never thought it could happen here.

Guess what – it happened here. And the KKK is throwing parades. This is who we are now.

Time for a break

It’s time for another blogging break. I’ll be back in early October when BASS 2016 is released; Heidi Pitlor is already tweeting lines from each of the stories, so my mouth is already watering.

I thought about doing a few other things between now and then – a wonderful annotated edition of Flatland I read last Spring, an observation about hits going up as students returning to school discover, oh no, you mean I have to read a story? For some reason they’d rather read about a story. Happens every year, though it’s nowhere near as fun now that privacy filters have reduced the search terms section to a shadow of its former hilarity. And there’s always politics, but I doubt I have anything to say that isn’t said better elsewhere by those more qualified and informed than I am. Besides, I’m already a nervous wreck about this potentially disastrous election, and it’s only going to get worse.

I’ve got my hands full with a couple of monster moocs (math and bio), plus one I just love and want to spend plenty of time with (more Chinese philosophy) plus a few others, so taking the time off seems like the best option. Besides – how can anyone miss me if I don’t go away?

Be back soon…

I’ll be back…

I just realized I haven’t even thought about blogging for a week. My Pushcart is getting dusty…

No, I haven’t lost interest or given up, but I’m paying the price for the candy-store mentality I have when it comes to MOOCs. You know what I mean: “Ooh, that looks good, I think I’ll try it!” Do that six or eight times, and then someone else says, “Hey, did you see this?” and before you know it, you’re moocing 24/7.

I’m particularly overwhelmed with three highly intense courses, two of which should be clearing in three weeks, but then there are the three courses starting next week… so, UNCLE! I can do all the things I want to do, I just can’t do them all at once.

I will be back, probably in mid-March, and pick up where I left off.

Just how did I manage before the Internet Age?

I’m still disoriented from my technologically-enforced 48 hours without internet access.

Hard to believe how much I depend, day to day, on those clicks. Practical things, sure: my calendar reminds me of appointments and things-to-do I’d otherwise forget (not to mention the weather; you’d think I’d just look out the window, but the temperature in my apartment is not necessarily indicative of the temperature on the other side of the glass). My browser’s bookmarks bar is a kind of work schedule, a listing of projects and current MOOCs; I’m grateful this interrupt happened at a time between MOOCs, because if it’d happened when I was taking 8 at the same time, I would’ve been hysterical; a lost hour back then was a problem, two lost days would’ve been catastrophic.

But I could still prepare Pushcart posts for the coming week, and I could still work on my Euclid project, certainly, out of the Heath book. Right?

Um, it’s not that easy.

The Euclid project, I could understand; that’s 90% research, and while I do have a great paper source, the second of my primary sources is a website written for a more contemporary audience.

But I do a fair amount of research for my literary posts as well. Interviews with the authors; other reviews of the work in question; finding the work online or a reading on YouTube; collections containing the work, and publication dates. And then there’s the related material. I want to support facts with references – what was that article questioning the efficacy of Fair Trade practices? – and I want to get details right (nobody makes a turquoise cello, right? Oh wait, they do? Hmmm….). And of course, art. Images often play an important role as I formulate my thoughts. Sometimes I find an image that gives me a new insight entirely. That’s why these aren’t “reviews” – I don’t know how to do reviews – but explorations of where the work takes me.

And without the internet, the work doesn’t take me as far.

That’s an important realization. I start with the work, of course. But am I relying too much on other things? Right now I have an impulse to look up (because I can’t remember and I’m afraid I won’t get it exactly right; but I’m not going to check, so caveat emptor) just what school of literary criticism it is that insists, it’s not about the historical context or the author’s intent or the genre, it’s strictly about what’s on the page. How many times have I heard, “The story has to stand on its own,” that the origin or knowledge about the author or an event that inspired the story can’t enter into the evaluation of the work? Do I believe that?

Not for a second.

Reading is a cooperative act between author and reader. Non-fiction writers are of course advised to consider their audience: a technical crowd, progressives, Australians, teenagers? Fiction writers do the same thing: it’s called genre. You don’t send a science fiction story to a literary mag, or a minimalist piece riffing on Ginsberg (god I hope I spelled that right… e, u? … I’m not checking) to Highlights for Children (does that still exist? Do they even publish fiction? I’m not checking…). So if I want to incorporate the world into my reading, via the internet – if I want to find out what the author intended, or make the story more meaningful to me by better understanding the events it references – no one can tell me it’s cheating. It’s enhancement, sure (maybe, for example, I would’ve found a better example than Ginsberg or HfC). But I find out more about the work, about the world, and about myself, with everything I read. And if that isn’t the purpose of reading – what is?

All this started because of computer trouble. In two days, I learned about my dependence on modern technology; about a really nice cable guy who went above and beyond his assigned task of replacing my modem to help me discover my antiviral software was protecting me from the entire internet, putting into very concrete, practical terms the whole safety/freedom debate we’ve lived daily since 9/11. (and replaced my ethernet cable so it doesn’t jiggle loose every time I shift my computer); about one Symantec rep who crashed my machine by remote control (one of the scariest things I’ve ever done was giving control of my computer to a stranger… wow, I really do have trust issues: I’m insanely, absurdly trusting; but unless you’re a systems engineer, you’ve got to trust someone, sometime, and they’re already in my computer); about another Symantec rep who picked up the pieces (you have no idea what a mess I was…); and that I still, after all these years, have a very slow return to baseline (the sense of chaos remains long after the source of chaos has ended).

I process things – get them out of my head – by writing about them. So I’ve written about this, and now I’ve got to get back to work. Now that the world is, once again, just a click away.

I told you I’d be…

I know, I wasn’t all that gone. But I didn’t expect to be as gone as I was, for as long as I was.

I’m down to one MOOC, and that’s turned out to be the easiest math course ever devised; and when I say a math course is easy, you know it’s easy. Truth be told, I’ve been taking it easy for the last week-plus. It’s nice to be able to spend a day on something that may turn out to be a blind alley, without feeling like I need to be getting-something-done. It’s nice to read a book I know I’m not going to blog about. It’s nice to spend a couple of hours formatting images for posts. It’s especially nice to stretch out on the couch at night and watch something mindless on TV for an hour, without knowing I really should be working on a paper or finishing an assignment or reading or watching or or or. I’ve enjoyed goofing off.

I’ve been working on some Pushcart posts in the past couple of days; I’d forgotten the Word macros I use to format text for posting (let’s see, I don’t need ctl-p for pi, ctl-2 for exponents, or ctl-r for radical any more, but what was the code for the blocktext formatting again…); I’ll start posting later this week, and I hope to move through it pretty quickly for a couple of weeks, until my next calculus course starts in 18 days, a bible-history course in 21 days, an ancient mythology course in a month, music theory in two months, and in between there’s my Euclid project, my Whitman/Dickinson project, the books I stacked up “for later,” a half-dozen Vidpo ideas…

Like the man said, break’s over. Better get crackin’.

Be back soon…

I’m trying to keep up with too much coursework on the MOOCs I’m taking to pay proper attention to the Pushcart winners, so I’m going to put that project on hold for a few weeks until things settle down.

Catless

This morning, as every morning, I roll out of bed, slap on my slippers, hit the bathroom, start the coffee, wake up the computer. But this isn’t every morning.

This morning, for the first morning since 1976, I am catless.

This morning, I do not check, before rolling out of bed, for a cat between me and the edge of said bed. No: in all honesty, I do. I suspect I will continue to check for many mornings to come. Perhaps I should say, there is no longer any need to check, as there is no cat not to crush.

This morning, as I shuffle down the hall towards the bathroom, I do not check for black cat on dark wood floor in my path. And yes, again, I do. The next few weeks are going to be full of learning new behaviors and habits.

This morning, I do not (and this time, I truly do not) check the bathroom floor for tracked bits of cat litter as I sat on the toilet. I do not check the litter box for nocturnal deposits. Instead, I stare at the empty space where the litter box used to be.

This morning, I do not clean the food and water bowls on the kitchen floor while the coffee pot runs. Those bowls, I cleaned up for the final time yesterday. I did not discard them, however; they are lovely Mary Alice Hadley earthenware bowls from a complete dinnerware set my then-in-laws gave my then-husband and me when we married. I kept the cat-related parts (different cat, at the time) when we divorced. I let my ex keep the rest, out of some sense of fairness (his parents, his stuff). He is dead now, too, as are his parents. The bowls live in my china cabinet.

This morning, I do not split tiny thyroid pills into halves and then one half into quarters, nor crush one-half plus one-quarter pills into a tiny amount of Friskies Liver & Chicken Dinner Classic Paté (the Friskies label includes the accent aigu but not the circumflex, for some reason) and wait to be sure every fraction of a milligram was ingested; nor do I rinse and refill the bowl with Purina Fancy Feast with ocean fish & salmon and accents of garden greens. All feline medications, as well as Friskies and Purina products, were removed from my kitchen yesterday, for disposal or donation.

This morning – and this afternoon, and this evening – I will no doubt still listen for any rhythmic hacking sounds that might indicate reverse peristalsis occurring down the hall. I still marvel that, despite the legendary untrainability of cats, there exists a cat who learned to head for such easy-to-clean hard surfaces at such times. No: there existed.

This morning, afternoon, and evening, I will no doubt look around periodically to make sure everything is ok with the feline member of this household, only to remember there is no longer a feline member of this household. I will not need to push the laptop back or close it when I leave it unattended to forestall unpredictable cat-on-keyboard effects. I will not need to sweep up, pick off, or wipe down cat hair from any surface or fabric. I may even retire the giant green blanket that has covered the sofa that was so new six years ago I did not want it shed upon, the sofa whose beautiful warm grey-blue is only seen on special occasions. The sofa that, remarkably, bears not a single scratch mark. Because there exists – existed – a cat who was willing to live with that restriction, as long as other options were available.

This morning, afternoon, and evening, when I stretch out on that sofa to read, watch TV, do a crossword puzzle, or listen to a course lecture, I will no doubt anticipate a cat jumping up to lie on my hip/stomach/ribs, to purr in my ear. No such jump will occur. My coffee table no longer bears a slicker brush for such moments. I will not need to find a way to slither out from underneath to get coffee or tea or answer the phone, then attempt to recreate the cooperative positioning when I return.

This evening when I get into bed, I will not need to slip under the covers around a cat sleeping squarely in the middle of the bed, only to have said cat move to the space immediately to the left of my pillow as soon as I’ve negotiated that task. I will not have a warm purr machine at the ready, waiting only for a few strokes of the fur to engage. I will not scratch the underside of a chin, nor will I tangle my forearm amongst feline legs and tail. I may whisper, “Good girl,” but no one will hear me.

Or maybe someone will.

Literary Death Match: PtldME3

Thank you, Adrian Todd Zuniga, for bringing LDM to PtldME for the third time. And for doing it now. I really needed that – it’s been a bad October.

[irrelevant rant] Everything broke this month: my phone/internet connection (leading to a missed package delivery); my cat (leading to $189 in tests that showed that even at age 19 she’s not quite done yet, even if she can’t walk straight, as long as she can jump up on the bed and the couch and me and if we can just get more methimazole into her we might plump up that hyperthyroid post-apocalyptic starvation look); the government (don’t get me started; I’m not even able to do my evening soak in the Chris Hayes/Rachel Maddow Liberal Hot Tub of Consensus every night [except for Click-3 and the ten minutes around the toss] because I get too angry at what’s going on); and me (I am just not going to get mathematical induction this time around, and this breaks my heart). And then there’s the real stuff, but I can’t talk about that publicly.[/irrelevant rant]

Of all the participants last night, I only knew of Bill Roorbach, having just read (and very much enjoyed) his most recent novel, Life Among Giants. However: After one change of seats (I just sensed that the first seat I picked wasn’t the right one), I ended up next to the parents of Jessica Anthony, another contestant, and author of The Convalescent, which McSweeney’s calls “the story of a small, bearded man selling meat out of a bus parked next to a stream in suburban Virginia . . . and also, somehow, the story of ten thousand years of Hungarian history.” Hot damn, add that puppy to my read list, especially since Jessica’s read was a hilarious bawdy space romp. And educational: I never knew butternut squash was anything but a gourd.

Also contenting: Crash Barry carried a suitcase lettered “Sex, Drugs & Blueberries” (the title of his first book) and passed a sprig of marijuana around the room show-and-tell style (it somehow disappeared, hmmmm…) in honor of his upcoming book Marijuana Valley, Maine: a true story (Crash is a “card-carrying medical marijuana patient” so it’s legal). Let me just say this: marijuana’s a lot stinkier than it was in the 70s. And that’s before it’s lit. Rounding out the foursome: Mira Ptacin, who read her entry from Goodbye to all That, a collection of essays about writers who got the hell out of New York and moved to places like Peaks Island, Maine, as any sensible person would.

The judges: Joshua Bodwell of MWPA focused on literary merit; director Sean Mewshaw critiqued performance, and artist Chelsea H. B. DeLorme handled intangibles. If you’ve ever been to an LDM, you know those category names are illusory. Judges’ critiques included notes about bandaids, American Girl dolls, and what it means when a woman wears a dress with hearts on it, or a velvet blazer that matches the one worn by the host.

It seems the nerf darts have been discontinued, so time limits were announced by bell-ringing and threats of hugs. I was seriously disappointed that no hugging commenced, as every reader went over her allotted seven minutes. Not that time limits mattered; everyone would’ve been happy if they’d each read twice that long. I just wanted to see what it’d be like to have a bunch of people hug a reader-in-progress. I guess we’re too shy around here; it is New England, after all, though most of us come from somewhere else these days.

As it happened, Bill and Jessica ended up in the final round. I’d started out rooting for Bill, but you can’t sit next to a contestant’s parents and not feel some degree of kinship, so I would’ve been happy whoever won. In a highly intense game of Lone Star Lit, they and a couple of volunteer team members had to figure out to which top-ranked book a one-star Amazon review referred. I love those reviews; Least Helpful is on my Cool Sites page, in fact, though lately they’ve been featuring more product than book reviews. It’s always hilarious to discover people who think Dr. Seuss is liberal propaganda (though I suppose it is) and Jane Eyre is boring (I’ll admit, I’d always assumed it was, until I actually read it). I think ATZ was disappointed that the crowd wasn’t making more noise, but we were concentrating – it was hard!

In the end, Bill won, but that wasn’t really the point, was it. Everyone had a blast, and I found out about a whole new bunch of local writers. The only down side was trying to explain what was going on to curious passers-by while the entrance line stretched out the entrance down the sidewalk (yes, it’s that popular). There’s just no quick way to accurately convey just what goes on at these things. Or how much fun it is.

Maybe that’s the appeal. LDM: label-resistant. Coming soon to somewhere near you. The perfect way to recharge the batteries when you’ve been ashened and sobered by your lonesome October.

The truth about MOOCs

Photo-collaboration by Kristin Nador and Lux05

[Addendum 6/11/2016: Much has changed since I wrote this 3 years ago, but the basics still apply: Every mooc is different; some will work better for certain students than others; peer assessment can be weird so don’t take it personally; forums are your friends but it depends on the course how good they are; and tech shit happens so don’t worry, whatever it is, it can be fixed. However, the details have changed a great deal. One of these days I’ll post an updated version of this post]

With no short story prize anthologies due until Fall, I filled up my summer with MOOCs.

I’ve finished six courses so far through Coursera (I’ll be branching out to EdX in October, so it’s not a brand thing), am currently enrolled in one, and I am, as anyone who’s been following can tell, a huge fan of these free online college classroom platforms. It’s a terrific opportunity to study a wide range of subjects at any level of involvement, from watching a few lecture videos to spending hours figuring out the details. And did I mention they’re free?

That doesn’t mean they’re perfect, however. There are a few things you should know.

First: Peer Assessment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, you will spend hours writing a detailed 800-word essay on a complex topic, incorporating references in appropriate MLA format, carefully constructed to introduce, explain, and summarize a few key points then synthesize them and prove your opening thesis statement, and you will spend a considerable amount of time reading the assigned (anonymous) essays you must evaluate in return, and you will carefully consider the assessment rubric and provide the required number score (erring on the positive side if there’s leeway) and you will write a paragraph of detailed comments beginning with a positive, transitioning into areas that need strengthening, and closing with encouragement. Yes, this will take up to an hour for each of the three essays you (anonymously) assess.

And yes, you will (maybe) get three peer assessments in return, one of which be one sentence on how brilliant you are, one of which will be one sentence about how stupid you are, and one of which will tell you nothing but give you a lousy score anyway. You will score somewhere in the middle (unless you’re creative with the assignment, in which case no one will get what you’re doing). Fortunately, the bar for “passing” these courses is pretty low, probably because the instructors are aware that peer assessment can be capricious. You will probably get one, possibly two, superb and helpful assessments for every three or four assignments. You will feel immense gratitude.

They are making efforts to improve this system, but in the meantime, they’re passing it off as “personalized feedback even in classes with thousands of students… which education research suggests is highly effective.” Realistically, look at it this way: you’re learning to assess course information presented in what might be an unusual way, to analyze good and bad points, to provide constructive criticism, and to handle disappointment.

If you want real feedback for an assignment, find a study group (every course has them, both online and in person if enough students from the same area sign up), or post your paper in the forums (see “About those forums…”), but it’s still peer assessment, though it tends to be more detailed. Not every course uses peer assessment; science and math, obviously, use other methods, but even some humanities courses use multiple choice tests. Course descriptions usually specify the evaluation criteria. Don’t be afraid of peer assessment – I find the assignments useful, since writing helps me think – but don’t get overly invested in “grades.”

Second: About those forums… Some courses have great message boards, like the Calculus class I took; it was a great place for a quick “I don’t get why Step 4 works,” and a lot of people used it for far more advanced purposes, like programming, discussion of mathematical theory, etc etc (sorry, I had my hands full just getting the coursework done). Considering there are tens of thousands of students enrolled in these courses, very few post on the boards; maybe 50 people make up the bulk of forum posts, with another 50 making up virtually all of the rest. Staff involvement in discussions varies but is usually limited at best (there are exceptions). Most of the course message boards are civil; there’s an occasional squabble, but nothing serious. Then you’ve got those classes where it’s off to the twilight zone. The most common issues:

– Where there are message boards, there will be trolls. As with in-person classes, it can be tricky distinguishing between who’s making a controversial but valid point (which is useful), who’s testing the limits of the argument (also useful), who’s trying to be in one of those categories but isn’t quite making it there (useful but requiring more work to access the usefulness), who’s making a valid point in a highly aggressive or offensive way (not usually worth the effort but potentially useful) and who’s just looking for attention (not useful not anything at all). Because of the class size and makeup (students with none to extensive experience in the topic, from all over the world, with varying levels of written English proficiency and computer expertise), it can be hard to tell the difference. There are methods for reporting outright abuse, but when the guy wrote a response to “Who are you as a writer” explaining how his background as a practicing sadomasochist was central to his writing, say, in the same way a business owner might see writing client letters as central to his writing, was he making a good point or enjoying class a little too much?

– The same questions will be asked, over and over again, in every class. This can provide an element of humor. My personal favorite: “Do I really have to read this whole chapter/book/story/article?” Questions and complaints about grades abound; I’m not sure if there’s some mechanism by which these courses are taken seriously by employers or the universities from which they emanate, but a lot of people seem to think it’s life or death. There will be frequent requests to extend assignment deadlines (“my internet went out” may seem like the new “the dog ate my homework” but, considering there are students in areas of the world with uncertain internet connectivity, it’s far more legit than it sounds), and insanely detailed questions about assignments (“Do we have to use a particular font?”). Most of this stuff can be ignored.

– Don’t let the above discourage you from trying a MOOC; if you don’t like the message boards, you can more or less ignore them; I’ve done that in two classes, with no problems, since announcements are conveyed via email from the instructor and contain all the practical information you’ll really need. But they’re often very worth checking out, and they greatly raise the engagement level. And if you’ve got a dumb question about the material (I had many in math) chances are someone else is wondering, too, but is too timid to ask.

Third: Some classes are “better” than others (hey, just like real college!), and the only way to really find out is to enroll (or ask someone who’s taken it for detailed information). The “about this course” screen is good, particularly in outlining topics and instruction methods (but the estimated time required per week is always very low; double it), but not definitive: one professor seemed very boring in his intro video, and yes, he was quite monotone throughout the class, but it was still a great class because the information was well-organized and clearly presented, with plenty of supplemental material. I’ve had two classes that seemed to be great from the energy of the instructors in the introductory video: one, for a subject in which I had great interest, turned out to be the “worst” course I’ve taken so far, and one, in a subject that scared but intrigued me, turned out to be perfectly fine but way over my head, to the point where I dropped it in week 2 (I’m planning on getting more experience in the topic, then trying again; that’s what’s great about Coursera).

Take home message: don’t judge all of the courses by one bad (or good) experience, and don’t judge any course by someone else’s reaction. Some students loved my “worst” course, and there were plenty of complaints about my favorites. I was disappointed by the content in two courses; I completed them, and I did learn some things, but nowhere near as much as I’d hoped; they weren’t really worth the time investment. I haven’t figured out a pattern yet, though my initial impression is that more “prestigious” universities produce better classes. However – I’ve taken two courses from the same university using the same technical team; one had a few technical issues but was excellent nonetheless, while the other was an organizational mess (and yet I did learn something, like the true meaning of “Less is More”).

Fourth: Technical issues will happen. After all, your computer crashes every once in a while, doesn’t it? New courses rolling out for the first time are particularly vulnerable, and some instructors and staffs are more comfortable with the technology than others. Some students are more comfortable with technology than others, too. You can’t submit an assignment? A video won’t play? Keep calm and check the forums; there’s a technical issues thread for each class. Chances are someone else has had the same problem, and it’s probably a simple one: you’ve overlooked a tiny box you need to check to submit (I overlook the “honor code” box about half the time) or you just need to switch video players from flash to html5 or vice versa, or close and replay (I have to do that about half the time, too). If it’s more complicated than that, post the problem and you’ll get help, but remember: the internet may be open 24/7, but schools and tech support departments aren’t.

I’ve completed (or am in the last throes of) six courses – math, science, history, writing, literature, art; each one has had value, and some have been inspiring. I’m in a philosophy course that just started, and I have courses in poetry, math, philosophy, and science coming up; a couple of others are extremely tempting, but as it is I’ll probably have to drop at least one when the story anthologies drop in the Fall (possibly all on the same weekend in November, at which point I’ll have a nervous breakdown). I’m having a blast. Because MOOCs, whatever else they may be, are addictive.

I’m not getting into any debate about whether MOOCs are the answer (what was the question again?) or the future of education (the way things are going, I just hope education has a future at all) or any theoretical underpinnings. I’m not an educator, nor am I depending on these courses for any practical purpose. I suppose that makes me a dilettante; so be it. I’ve long railed against confusing education with job training; anything that expands my view of the universe is a good thing. For my purposes, MOOCs are terrific. But there are a few things you should know going in.

Strange Fruit

‘Strange Fruit’ by Anthony Armstrong

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

~~ Abel Meeropol, “Strange Fruit” as sung by Billie Holiday

I keep telling myself: history is a pendulum. The Civil Rights act followed The House Committee on Un-American Activities. A gradually increasing degree of Marriage Equality followed embarrassed governmental indifference on AIDS. The Peace Corps outlasted the Vietnam War (at least for those who survived the latter). Israel rose out of the Holocaust, Nelson Mandela from apartheid.

Is it over yet? Can I open my eyes? Is this as hard as it gets? Is this what it feels like to really cry?
~~ Kelly Clarkson, Cry

It gets better. It will get better. Right? There will be a day when the stalking against police instruction and subsequent killing of an unarmed teenager will not be excused by the hoodie he was wearing, by the presence of a sidewalk. We can do better. We must do better. May God forgive us for taking so long.

The Tie was Just the Last Straw

This was a scary week – and it had nothing to do with the NSA.

Sorry, I have trouble getting worked up about the government spying on me – not because I take privacy lightly (I don’t) or I think it’s a good idea to trade freedom for safety (not that either). No, it’s just that I’ve assumed all along that everything is being recorded somewhere by someone, so I’m not surprised or alarmed to find out that’s the case. When I first started using the internet, someone told me, “Assume everything you type on your keyboard might end up on 60 Minutes (yes, I am that lame, and that old, to consider Mike Wallace the scariest interviewer around).

But because of the insanity, lots of people have been sending around stuff that is scary. I thought I’d share, so we can all be scared together. Countdown, please:

#4. Spambot Conversations

From Dr. Ricardo Battista (who is a real person – I think) of SocialDeadZone tumblr posted this:

“the delightful spectacle of two spambots being polite to each other”

A couple of weeks ago I wondered out loud (if Twitter can be considered “out loud”) why miscellaneous people were favoriting miscellaneous tweets of mine – I find it hard to believe some European SEO guru was that impressed with my tweet linking to comments on Benito Cereno – but it’s really scary when bots start talking to each other, however politely. I promise I am a real person. I’ll be less polite if that will prove it.

#3. You Don’t Know What You’re Missing from Joe Holmes of Vidthoughts

It’s not news that search results turn up different things for different people, and that searching for, say, a cheap table might result in ads for tables cropping up everywhere you go for the next six months. The Filter Bubble is not new; Eli Pariser invented the term in a TED Talk (followed a year later by a book) more than two years ago. But Joe put it a different way – or maybe he just reminded me, at a time when it seemed to matter more, of something I’d forgotten about – and yeah, he managed to scare me with stuff like this:

“…how much your computer costs influences what results you see…”

“…the result of promoting these algorithms to the office of internet curator is an effective censorship that heavily favors the status quo…”

Joe’s perspective is that of a Youtube newbie trying to find an audience. That’s not something I care about much; I’m perfectly happy being obscure, and if I ever thought anyone was reading this stuff I’d be paralyzed with fear and never write another post. But I am a consumer of electronic information, and censorship bothers me.

And it is censorship – showing us only what we probably already like – and sounds like calcification to me. I think I have eclectic tastes – but is that just what Google thinks? Am I just playing around in the same sandbox over and over again, unaware there’s more out there?

#2. We’ll Dream of Being Blind

From CTHEORY: Cyberwar, God And Television: Interview with Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio: There is a great science-fiction short story, it’s too bad I can’t remember the name of its author, in which a camera has been invented which can be carried by flakes of snow. Cameras are inseminated into artificial snow which is dropped by planes, and when the snow falls, there are eyes everywhere. There is no blind spot left.

Louise Wilson, CTHEORY: But what shall we dream of when everything becomes visible?

Virilio: We’ll dream of being blind.

I have no idea who Paul Virilio is, but it’s obvious why this made the rounds this week. If that isn’t scary enough- this was written in 1994.

#1. And the scariest thing I saw this week:

Chris Hayes has started wearing a tie on air. Forget the government in my internet: get the network out of Chris Hayes’ closet.

I suspect, see, that MSNBC has decided he needs to look more authoritative. The effect, however, is the opposite: he looks like he’s on his way to his Bar Mitzvah. Yes, it’d have to be a Catholic bar mitzvah, but you get the idea: he’s trying to convince the world “Today I Am A Man” and we’re all giggling at how cute it is, in that completely off way when a kid tries to put on grownup clothes. Now, I don’t pay much attention to clothes unless they leap out and demand attention. This change is glaring to those of us who’ve been following him on TV for the past several years. You can’t buy cool – but you sure can sell it for ratings. And yes – I am far more upset about this than I logically should be.

I’m glad I’m not twenty-two. I don’t like the way this ride is going, so I’m glad I’ll be getting off sooner rather than later. Maybe that’s the truly scary thing: my own apathy. Kids in the 60s were saying, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” By golly, they were right.

Literary Death Match: PortlandME, Ep. 2

Take one part literary reading, two parts cheesefest, generous splashes of quiz show and wrestling match, suffuse with humor, spread on local writers/performers, then blend that concoction into the population of a tiny city always overshadowed by its more popular west-coast twin in the mixing bowl that is the Space Gallery, and you’ve got Literary Death Match, Portland (ME), Ep. 2 from May 10.

The specifics are available on the LDM Journal so I won’t bore with links and biographies. LDM is anything but boring. Even if you have no interest in “Literature” it’s fun. After all, out of an hour and a half, only 28 minutes is actual reading; the rest is hilarious commentary that manages to combine roast and feedback (Ron Currie, Jr.’s bicep vein was a major factor, as were diaphragms).

Zin commented on Ep. 1 back in October, but why should Zin have all the fun (not to mention, Zin has declared Sunday with Zin is on hiatus for the duration of Food Network Star, but that’s another issue). Ep. 2 was just as good, even if my comments are not as, um, colorful. Lewis Robinson came away with the Title of LDM Champion.

LDM is a lot of fun, but they respect literature (come on, Pulitzer Prize Pictionary?). I’m all for whatever makes reading more accessible. And they’re everywhere, including Iceland, so they’ve probably been in your neck of the woods. They made a TV pilot last December, which, hey, I’d subscribe to HBO just for that, and I didn’t subscribe for Aaron Sorkin (though it was close), so that tells you something.

Oh, the Humanities!

“Literature” by James Koehnline (2007)

A little detour

Chris Hayes – political commentator, formerly UP, now ALL IN (I shudder to think what his next show will be called) – usually tweets about, obviously, political stories, the economy, climate change, that sort of thing. Occasionally, basketball. But Monday night, as the Memorial Day weekend came to a close, he sent out something unusual for him:

I thought maybe I was misunderstanding the term “cover,” but what the hey, I clicked on the Youtube link. And found my obsession for the week: LP.

It was very confusing at first. What’s LP? I’m old enough to read it as long-playing; is it the name of the group? And gee, forgive me if I’m being politically incorrect, but… is that a girl or a boy? The song, unfamiliar to me (like most contemp music) is “Halo.” The singing is not always “pretty.” But the longer it went on, the more mesmerized I was. I listened to it again. And again. It’s seven minutes long, but I couldn’t stop watching.

Here it is: When I watch the original, by Beyonce, I see a pretty woman singing a pretty song about a pretty man. It’s nice. But when I watch LP perform it, I believe in salvation. And I really, really want a cigarette afterwards.

I finally tore myself away to look at what else LP had posted, and randomly clicked on “Into the Wild,” and, about a minute in, went slightly insane.

Chances are, even if you’re as out of touch with contemporary music as i am, you’ve heard LP’s voice, though you may not recognize the name the singer goes by. Think: commercial. Rock climbing… got it? “Somebody left the gate open…” Yeah. That’s LP. That’s “Into the Wild.”

In a CNN interview, LP talked about performing that song, like at SXSW, how she (finally got that figured out; now all I have to do is figure out why it mattered in the first place) struggles to not smile just before she sings that line. Because she knows what’s going to happen:

Always after that line, she knows, the murmurs start.
“I see a few of them, every time, look at their friend and go, ‘Ohhhh.’ It’s kind of funny and embarrassing at the same time,” LP said during an interview at SXSW. “And awesome.”

I spent some time, quite a while ago, hunting down the song that went with the ad, and wasn’t able to find anything back then – not surprising since all I had to go on was a single phrase. The mystery is finally solved. But I’ve been spending way too much time on YouTube this week. LP, you’re amazing, but this old lady needs her life back.

I do this sometimes, get stuck on a song, listen to it obsessively. My previous record was 36 iTunes plays over 3 days for Ballboy’s “I Gave Up My Eyes To A Man Who Was Blind.” I think, if I combine views of both “Halo” and “Into the Wild,” I surpassed that by a wide margin this week.

Thanks, Chris.

Sunday with Zin: The Books Artists Make

Sissy Buck: “Inextricably Woven”

Hello I am Zin and what could be better than books and art? Bookart!

These were not illustrations for books or books about art or books containing art but books as artists conceive them so they are not traditional books they are art pieces! This was an exhibition of the students from the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts at USM!

This was part of the Portland First Friday celebration for April and happened the same day as the Edible Book Art Festival! I could not find many pictures online so I had to rely mostly on my own pictures which are not great but they may give you an idea of what happens when artists create books and reading them becomes part of an artistic statement!

Some of my favorites were by Sissy Buck who did the piece in the header photo. She also made a piece from her series “Fitting Words:”

In this series, “Fitting Words”, I have used the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles that I have done over the years (in varying degrees of completion) for my imagery. By enlarging the crosswords and printing them in layers of different colors using Xerox lithography, the abstracted images take on a different meaning and quality…another riddle or puzzle.

I love the NYT Sunday puzzles and no other puzzles will do! I photocopy them every week at the library so this was a convergence of all sorts of great things for me!

Artist Rush Brown also did a piece called “Susie Dancing” which I liked a lot it was like a cutout mural hung across the wall! He said he was the only man in the workshop at the time! I wonder why women are more interested in making books as art objects than men?

Many of the books took unusual form! Cynthia Ahlstrin made “Without Consent” which was an actual book turned into a shoe and because of the title hints at a very interesting story! In an “introduce yourself” video she talks about “getting away from rendering what you actually see and it becomes more of a conversation between the layers” and yes this piece did that! She also made a piece about a shoe and books that won an art show titled “Every Shoe Tells A Story” which is very clever!

Bonnie Faulkner is a glass artist but she played with book art and made “The Journey’s Angst” which was more of an accordion shape out of paper.

Libby Barrett (who has a fantastic website of wonderful book art where each piece is amazing) made “Summer Day” which is also like an accordion shape with haiku. Libby also made a wall hanging “30 Days” a wall book of postcards for a month!

I wish there was an album of professional pictures for all the pieces because many of them were wonderful! Elizabeth Berkana made a book out of playing cards and Tessa Jeffers made “Little Gold Dress Book” which was a dress made out of the folded pages of a book! Catie Hannigan made a weaving on one page with “I don’t think about you” on the other page! That was brilliant! Susan Colburn-Motta made a wonderful piece titled “Leaf Floating on Water” and she makes a lot of book art but I do not have a picture so you will have to take my word for it or keep an eye on the Center for Book Arts for their next exhibit or workshop!

Sunday with Zin: Edible Book Festival

Hello I am Zin and I am back from my vacation! I hope everyone missed me!

While I was on vacation (and I did not really go on an actual vacation I just took a few weeks off from Sunday with Zin) I went to the Edible Book Festival at the Library!

I had a lot of fun with this last year and I did try for a while to come up with an entry but last year the guy who did the Banana Kareninut Bread with the little smashed banana Anna on the train tracks intimidated me especially since the year before he did Beer and Loathing in Las Haggis the year before and set a very high bar! But he was not there this year which was sad. There were other wonderful things though!

Pi(e) was very popular this year! The winners for both the Children and Adult divisions were about pi(e). But they were very different kinds of pi(e)!

A nine-year-old girl won for “Lord of the Pies” complete with broken eyeglasses and a pie-dough pig head bloodied with strawberry-rhubarb juice! I voted for it because I could not help but vote for it, but I was surprised other people voted for it! And I was most surprised that nine-year-olds are reading Lord of the Flies! She must be very special and I think her parents are probably very special too!

The adult winner was for Life of Pi which of course featured the life cycle of a pie arranged in a circle from the apples and flour to the completed pie! She had to put warnings on one pie to say it was not baked and should not be eaten (we were allowed to eat everything after the judging so taste was not a factor at all). But I had a soft spot for the book and she was clever so I voted for her too! I am so surprised I voted for the winners in both divisions!

Stinky Cheese Man came in third maybe not because it was such a cool rendition but because it is such a cool book! It is a Post Modern Book of Fairy Tales and right there I wonder if I have become so very old, that children are reading post-modern literature! But it is very funny and I enjoy watching the video because I like all that meta stuff! I wish we had meta fiction when I was little!

One of the prettiest entries was Gingerbread Man and it won a prize too. It was a very well-done gingerbread house book!

I voted for an entry that was not very pretty and did not involve any baking or really any food work at all but I appreciated the sign that accompanied it: it was an ordinary fruit salad in a plastic tub from the grocery store with a little note:

Literary Fruit Salad
One Pound of Cantaloupe, Ezra Large
one Sun Dried Raisin
A Half Cup California Grapes, Imported from Oklahoma
Five Small Peppers
One Diced Mango from South America (I think maybe it should be Mexico but I could be wrong)
Peach Jam from Giant Peaches

Now I have to come up with ideas again for next year! I still have this idea to actually make a book out of fruit leather and licorice laces and maybe big bars of chocolate. Except I probably will not but it does not hurt to think about it. It is always fun to see what people come up with.