I Should have saved this for November, but I found it now

This is a post I wrote on another blog, back in 2009. I just liked it (a clue that it may have better remained lost...). Anyway, let me know if you think it's helpful.

   How do we start this novel thing? In the Danny Kaye movie (historical reference, ignore and move on…) about Hans Christian Anderson, when asked about his stories, Anderson says that he tells the stories to see what happens next. This suggests that his story-making style was to start with a character in a situation but not have the plot already outlined ahead of time. Another art that makes use of this technique is improv—actors are given a situation and who their characters are and have to make up a scene on the fly.

   In that vein, who are your main characters? This is one way to begin writing. Write down the things you know about two or three of them (the main character and the other character that is most involved with the main character). In technical terms these would be called protagonist(s) and antagonist(s), but you know what you mean. Name is a good start, but if for some reason that causes you to stop while looking for the perfect name or the name that “best fits” your character(s), just use a place-filler (like Bob or Kathy) and move on.

   Then write things you know about them—age, sex, what do they want? How do they look? What do they think about things that matter in their home, hangout, or habitat? How much do they care about what others think or about what others think about them? Do they spend time imagining cars or colleens? Dolls or danger boys? Something completely different?

   Once you have the two opposing characters put them down somewhere with something they want or don’t want the other to have or do and see what happens. Write down what you see. Rinse and repeat.

Small Amusements

Small amusements
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Word Play
Humor Test. This is only a test.

1. A character has photographic memory. That jogs my mind that I, too, have an art image-based memory. We call it "sketchy."

1.1 Marty Feldman's character in Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) had a "phonographic" memory.

2. Today I was raring to go! I got up, got ready and headed off to work. I was up and molecule! (Which as you no doubt already know is even more than "up and atom".)

3. These are tense and scary times. Two of us were getting ready to go to a work event in a colleague's car. I called, "Shotgun!" and the person with me ducked to a crouch, scanning all around and shouted, "Where??!!!"

This concludes our test. If this had been actual humor, the words you just read would have been followed by official chuckles, giggles or guffaws.

Don't Try this at Public Property

This was a somewhat imaginative & creative act on a library statue. I suppose it was technically recycling, given that the bicycle helment was actually cracked and of no further use as a protective device. There may be some mundane justification in as much as May is bike to work month.

Still, the officious one in me says this is just a step away from valdalism. If adding a bike helmet was good, perhaps one might think changine the paint scheme would be better. No.

(And in fact, as soon as person in charge realized the statue had value-added wardrobe, person at work was asked to remove it.)

Die weißen Tauben sind müde

I heard this tune and knew it was trying to be heroic/tragic/epic. I looked up the translation of the lyric (I could get, "Come here Marie" and knew that fliegen had something to do with flight, but that was about as far as my German language aptitude could get me on my own).
While I was looking, I also found a video on youtube.

The music is admittedly bombastic, but I find that to be one of its charms. In someways, this is a musical version of "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. Of course it's a good deal different, written years apart in different languages. But the emotion, the angst is spot on between them two.

It reminds me how silly I am when I'm all angsty and lonely. I still am angsty and lonely, but I know it's silly to look at. :-P





--German from lyric site, translation by google---
Hans Hartz - The White doves Are Tired
Infos Info Interpret: Artist: Hans Hartz Hans Hartz
Album: - --
Songtext-Nummer: Lyrics number: 61931
Eingesendet: Submitted: 02.12.2005
Einsender: One person: ErichG ErichG

Videos Videos Für Hans Hartz - Die Weißen Tauben Sind Müde von Hans Hartz wurden noch keine Videos gespeichert. For Hans Hartz - The White doves Are Tired by Hans Hartz were no videos.

Komm her Marie ein letztes Glas, ---Come here Marie one last glass,
genießen wir den Augenblick, --------we enjoy the moment,
ab morgen gibt’s statt Wein nur Wasser. From tomorrow, there's only water instead of wine.
Komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein,--- Come here and gift us again,
soviel wird morgen anders sein ----so tomorrow will be different
Marie die Welt wird langsam blasser. ---Marie the world is slowly faded.
Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired,
sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr. ---they fly long, not more.
Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings;
und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer,--- and their beaks are long empty,
jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further,
sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before;
und ihre Flügel werden breiter, ---and its wings are broader,
und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more
nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr. ---only white doves fly no more.

Bleib doch Marie, ---Stay but Marie,
der letzte Rest reicht für uns beide alle mal. ---the last remaining enough for both of us all times.
Ab morgen gibt’s statt Brot nur Steine, ---From tomorrow, there's only bread instead of stones,
komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein, ---come, and gift us again,
denn so wie heut wird’s nie mehr sein; ---because as today's will never be more;
Marie die Welt reist von alleine. ---Marie travels the world on their own.
Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired,
sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr.--- they fly long, not more.
Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings;
und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer,--- and their beaks are long empty,
jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further,
sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before;
und ihre Flügel werden weiter, ---and will continue their wings,
und täglich kommen immer mehr,--- and daily more and more
nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr.--- only white doves fly no more.

Sieh dort Marie das leere Bett,--- Look there Marie the empty bed,
der Spiegel unsrer großen Zeit.--- the mirror of our big time.
Ab Morgen gibt’s statt Glas nur Scherben. ---From tomorrow, there's only instead of glass shards.
Komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein,--- Come here and gift us again,
den letzten Schluck vom letzten Wein, ---the last sip from the last wine,
Marie die Welt beginnt zu sterben. ---Marie the world begins to die.
Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired,
sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr. ---they fly long, not more.
Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings;
und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer, ---and their beaks are long empty,
jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further,
sie sind so stark wie nie vorher;--- they are as strong as never before;
und ihre Flügel werden weiter, ---and will continue their wings,
und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more
nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr.--- only white doves fly no more.

Die weißen Tauben sind müde,--- The white doves are tired,
sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr.--- they fly long, not more.
Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings;
und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer, ---and their beaks are long empty,
jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter,--- However, the hawks fly further,
sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before;
und ihre Flügel werden weiter,--- and will continue their wings,
und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more
nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr. ---only white doves fly no more.

What might the Brits be reading? or How the other half reads.

associative surfing on the web

For a reason I don't remember and can't explain, I ended up on the British Council (registered charity!--remember Paul McCartney's lyric, "If I ever get out of here, THOUGHT of giving it all away / to a registered charity...") Contemporary Authors page.

I learned about an interesting author named Craig Raine. He's a poet and a literary critic. Raine has done a couple of books about T.S. Eliot--In Defence of T.S. Eliot, Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: PICADOR (2000)
ISBN-10: 0330375776
and
T. S. Eliot (Lives and Legacies Series), Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 13, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195309936

The fact that he admires Eliot and (by report, I haven't read Raine yet)has poetry techniques in common with Eliot have really attracted my interest. I'll put a hold on a Raine's collection of his poetry and see what I think.

From that web page (the Contempory Authors page) I found this link

Which as you may be able to see is something like a readers' advisory web page for people to find book titles from U.K. authors.
http://www.encompassculture.com

Anyway, I found this whole coney trail amusing and interesting and leading as ever to other things.

You always wanted to know

If Sherlock Holmes got infected and became a Zombie,

He'd be a clever cadaver.

Book Choice

If you read only one book this year...




What? Are you insane? Where are your priorities??!!! You should read at least two. They don't have to be long, but really--at least two!

A Provocative Juxtaposition

On the New & Interesting shelf, Cuffed by Candlelight : an erotic romance anthology, three stories published by Parker Publishing LLC, was sitting next to and slightly on the top of another book, 7 Steps to Bonding with Your Stepchild by Suzen J. Ziegahn.

Coincidence or conspiracy?

Fine Japanese Cookies

Fine Japanese Cookies5141
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Delicate double
Chocolate cookies enveloped elegantly
No Latex inside.

Learning 2.1!!!! I'm on it!

Just discovered the place that originated the Learning 2.0 program has moved on to Leaarning 2.1. Go The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County!

Their lessons start with Thing 24 because they originally stopped at Thing 23 for Learning 2.0. The new blog for the more amorphous continuation of learning exercises is



Whooo hoooo! I have to start doing the first 2.1 Thing yet, but I just swiped their banner and made it a link in this post!! How cool is that? I'm not sure this is the way banner links are supposed to be made, but it works. (I added a link to their blog using the ''<''a href'' thing, then in the space after the greater than and before the lesser than /a greater than I added an image link and finished with the image's own ''<''/a''>'' [remove the single quotes. You know how it should look in html.) Ummmmmm it was linking just to the image. Curses.

So, what one really does is use the "a href" bit for the url link, and then in the space where the text would be if it were a word link, one inserts ''"[img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5074868428055059554" style="CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwhM9awXF_l1dANvBrb0HG-aKqI918Rg5IEo6qjTT66S3XGyO63tiXhDeLRtwR-diObJCcNFzce8yILynkmiC50hlrqLBiS4hyZcM7_ddELtOWsdPLyEhFpK28cpcX4didO7h3jKEJTg/s320/learning2a.jpg" border="0" /]. replace square brackets with the point ones.

This seems to work, now. (Understanding of course that the specific above stands in for the general technique of making banner links.)

Life isn't all Beef Steak and Skittles

Omnivore’s Dilemma
By Michael Pollan

Known among book clubs as the author of Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan follows up on his fifteen minutes of fame with another book about how millions of years of evolution can’t be all wrong while 60 years of industrial farming development certainly may be. That is, once people have moved away from being their own hunter-gatherers, deciding what to eat becomes a trickier question than seems readily apparent to most consumers.

The strong points of this book are its lively presentation of information, both researched from sources and from personal experience; the interesting and sympathetic people—both industrial food source producers and non-industrial food source producers and a problematic hybrid of the two, large-scale organic food producers—that Pollan introduces to readers. Pollan’s humor and reasoned approach to his topic are also refreshing.

A weakness of the writing is that some phrases and words are repeated more than felt felicitous for me. Pollan identifies his sections of the book as he investigates the different paths that food might take from living entity to food on the table, but in his reporting, he sometimes makes some large leaps in geography and time back and forth through his experiences. The repetition of phrases and words and ideas gives the book an aura of being a collection of articles on this topic. Still, while this weakens the book if one is reading straight through, it also means that one could read in any one section and have a coherent presentation of Pollan’s ideas and discoveries about the topic(s) under consideration.

I listened to the recorded book (on CD), and I think the redundancy was helpful in that format (even though I noticed it and it disconcerted me enough that I had to examine what I really felt about the repetitions), because if I missed a point, he would remind the reader about it a little later on. (Not as a reminder, as such, but just in the course of bringing the same point to bear in another sub-topic.)

I’ll feel differently about what I eat from now on. I won’t necessarily stop eating over-processed foods based on unnatural uses of corn and corn by-products, but I’ll be more conscious when I do eat them. In any case, Pollan is persuasive without being strident and reasoned without being boring.

#26 Reflections of a Chocolate Bunny & 27--One more Thing

3169_ChocBunny "I'm thinking, '27 Things, but
at least no one bit off my ears!'"
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Ah, I remember that Learning 2.0 project, 27 things to learn and play. In terms of affecting my lifelong learning goals, I couldn't say that it has, because I'm always looking to learn new and amazing technologies--at the level of playing.

As in, "What do you play?"

"Oh, I play the cassette player; I play the MP3 player; I play the CD player." (I actually play the guitar as well, but that's a litter deeper than I would say I can do with technologies. I also play the word processor, but I don't play assembly language, C, C+, C++, nor any of the other current computer languages. I do dabble in HTML, of course.)

Having said that, L2.0 has assisted my lifelong learning goals in that I have now done several things I hadn't done before even if I had known about them or not. I had never put any photos online--although having gotten a digital camera in late December, it is likely I would have posted soon, but this program provided the impetus (not to be confused with the Pompitus [of Love] which is a mysterious phrase in a song lyric that is not clearly defined, even at this moment! Oops: This just in.
http://www.algebra.com/algebra/about/history/Pompitus.wikipedia is an article about what the word means and where it probably came from. Amazing). I'm also easily distracted at times, and the multiple lessons and exercises assisted me in the sense that I had no time to get bored by anything. (I hope the readers take longer than I deserve to become bored with my blog entries.)

I've been captured by this blogging thing. And the ability to start posts off with a picture, somewhat like an allusion to illuminated manuscripts or to stick a picture in the middle of a post to illustrate some point or just to relieve the readers' eyes from all this text has been great fun for me. I think the combination of Flickr and Blogspot is much better than either of them by themselves. I'm also pretty addicted to LibraryThing, although I must say my cataloging much more resembles copy-cataloging than original cataloging. (When I see a book in someone else's LibraryThing that I've read or own, there's a button that allows a signed in user to just add the book to her own library catalog! Whoooo hooooo!!!)

I've been surprised at how easy some of these Web things are; I've been surprised that some sites (like Myspace) strike me as less useful than I had hoped.

Moving to the next landing of this controlled wandering, I can say that I had enough help when I needed it, but I didn't necessarily feel that I was approached as much for help as I had imagined I might be. Most of my colleagues either had a different schedule from me or else didn't need much help (or possibly found me less than approachable, but people I've asked have said that's not the case.) I have had a few people ask questions, just not as many as I expected.

Improving the format or the concept:

I think I would have appreciated a written transcript of the podcasts (although, someone would have had to have transcribed them and that would have been a drag!). I don't quite know how to justify that feeling--I listen to audiobooks all the time, I listen to other mp3 files on my Palm. I guess that it has to do with perceptions of time pressures: I felt I needed to keep moving to the next activity, to the next lesson, and the information at the speed of sound (podcasts), was slower for me than information at the speed of sight (text, duh!). Also, the one time I had to use dial-up access, even the loading of the website and the loading of the links was slower than I could endure. I used dial-up for longer than many people, but now that I'm on faster connections at home and in libraries, it is a stress to operate at the speed of dial up. (Although one thing libraries should keep in mind is trying to have alternative services for those with slow Internet. The text-only version of the catalog is one of those dial up compensations that I think is still a good idea.)

One other format improvement would have been if the progress logs had had room for more than one URL, given that several weeks actually comprised two or three of the 27 Things each. The current progress log required that these two and three things be in one post in order to list the response in just that one URL.

I thought the concept of Learning 2.0 itself was sound, albeit somewhat second-round trendy. But I'm more of a second- or third- stoner* myself in relation to technology, so the drifting close to "me too!" nature of this program was probably just right. (*allusion to the proverb/quotation "[L]et ... him cast the first stone.")

I would like to see similar training opportunities when some new library-relevant technologies emerge, but I think we should try to come up with some steps or protocols for determining which things should be explored and taught, and which things are likely to be analogous to 8-track tape technologies. Libraries that had vinyl disc collections, that had (and have) cassette collections, and that have CD collections turned out to have guessed/bet right for the most part. Any libraries that had 8-track tape collections, I think probably had them go obsolete sooner than it was worth to have them. It's easy to say, but we should avoid adopting 8-track tape technologies.

In closing this ever-so-long post, I'd like to thank my parents, without whom I wouldn't even be here. And if I could go back in time and tell me stuff, I'd freak out. Er, no, that wasn't the question.

If I could go back in time and tell me to either participate in this program or skip it, I'd still tell me to participate. I'd also tell me to be careful of typos in naming my blog's URL so that I wouldn't lose all my readers when I fixed the typo of the URL and then no one could find where I had "gone."

#27. One more Thing.

At first I couldn't think of "one more thing." I re-read the wiki article on Web 2.0. Still nothing else. Then I gazed at the comments on the KCLSU #27 blog entry, and someone mentioned Second Life. An excellent example of how this collaborative can work: other people working together can help give ideas that we recognize as great but we might not have thought of on our own. (I'm thinking of a Venn Diagram here with overlapping and discrete areas of coverage.) So, anyway, my one more thing would be training and collaborative activities in SecondLife (which I had briefly looked at earlier in the program but didn't proceed on my own yet, because of so many other choices to look, learn, and play with.

Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh! Shiny!

Review of Un Lun Dun

I just finished Un Lun Dun a couple hours ago. I found it engaging from the beginning. I think Mieville has done some really interesting things in his book. It reminded me of a lot of other other books, but in a good way.
A laundry list:The first and most obvious is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman the whole UnLondon of Mieville is very like Gaiman's London Below. Richard Mayhew becoming invisible to people in London Above because of his association with the people from below is like Deeb being nearly forgotten by her family and friends while she's away because of phlegm.

I did think it was too bad that Zwazzy was so quickly essentially written out of the novel (that's an admittedly a bad writing choice--similar to what Orson Scott Card does with the real estate agent in Homebody.) Nevertheless, Deeb is like Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle,--she's not the one who's supposed to be the hero/savior, but she's the one whose intelligence and bravery solves things anyway.I thought the Wraithtown was a lot like the City of the Dead from Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead. It was especially similar given that people either go to Wraithtown or sometimes go straight to the other place. UnLondon is also like Narnia in that one route to get someone there may not work to get back there the next time.

Finally, in a really far reach, Un Lun Dun is like Watership Down in that each of the characters on the good team contributed their part. I don't know that I'll read ULD every other year and get teary-eyed like I do with Watership Down, but Deeb will definitely be in my list of strong, clever, admirable female characters along with Sophie from Howl's, Coraline from Coraline, Lyra from the Dark Materials Trilogy, Thursday Next, Ruth Thomas from Stern Men and others.

Number 17

Catch-up and Play Week: Play with an online image generator.

done and done. But now, a word from our sponser, the Number 17.

The Japanese verse form known as Haiku contains exactly 17 syllables. Note that it consists of 3 lines, with 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively.
Back to our show.
This poster was made at the Do It Yourself tab at
the Parody Motivator Generator at Despair.com. (The do it yourself part included the picture, which is mine, and the aphorism, which is also mine, all rights reserved!)

At long last, Trading Card from flckrtoys

I was finally able to make a trading card on the flickr toys thingy. It seems that way back before when I was having the trouble--I couldn't get the flickrtoys to see my Flickr account and load an image--it was because my computer/browser wasn't accepting cookies from the flickrtoys site. It didn't know that I had signed in and given it permission to see and use my photos.

But I solved that problem by telling the browser I trust flickrtoys. This has transferrable concept skills, because when a patron is having trouble using the licensed databases from home, or having trouble downloading audiobooks, one problem may be their level of security protection/sheilding. It could be their browser isn't accepting cookies from the library webpage or from the licensed content provider.

Some problems are harder than others to guess and solve over the phone.

Playing with Words

My colleague gave me a nifty pin to wear announcing that King County has a new program series called Playing with Words. Branch libraries can book individual programs on "[m]usic, poetry, rhymes and stories ... coming to a library near you!"
I'm whimsical in my connections myself--once in an alphabetical list of library gardening resources, I included Dewey numbers for "Knees, hygiene and health," and "hot tubs," for example. But in as much as I was thinking of playing with words just this morning (what a coincidence, but more on that later), I have to admit I didn't see an immediate connection between
American Spirit
Presented by Gerald Fierst
Ages 5 and older
What would the oldest man in America be able to tell you about our Founding Fathers (and Mothers)? This renowned storyteller recreates some of the characters who helped shape our country and shares some hilarious folktales, too.
Bellevue Regional Library, Monday, May 7, 7pm
Federal Way Regional Library, Wednesday, May 9, 7pm

and playing with words. I suppose, for the sake of argument, words had a big influence on how our country was shaped. Nevertheless, the kind of play with words I think of is more in line with the other programs. If this group of Spring programs was a mystery, American Spirit would be the red herring clue--or else the red herring clue that is really the important clue after all.

Now, about playing with words from this corner of my mind. I was thinking about how "one" goes to "once," "two," goes to "twice," and "three" goes to "thrice" (although admittedly, is not often used). What about four or five? I know English doesn't really follow consistent patterns--that it seems to start a pattern of one kind or another and then break out--"-ed" past tense and irregular verbs, for example. But that doesn't stop me from trying to think "what would follow next" in the pattern.

The pattern seems to be take the beginning of the number--on-, tw-, thr- and combine it with -[i]ce. Soooooooooooooo fource? fivice?

As amusing as I find all this, it usually isn't very long before I have to rain on the fun and look up the words in question to see what's really going on, and why the pattern stops. ("oh, that's an 'irregular' verb" [in the case of irregular verbs, time and less use by speakers of the language seem to be the verb laxitive, making verbs regular].)

Anyway, the Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd e, says in the case of once, twice and thrice their etymology comes from Middle English, ones; Old English, twiges; and Middle English, thries (from old English thriga). The -es was changed -ce to "retain the unvoiced sound of the final consonant." So, Old English four is feower. Old English five is fif. In the stream of time, I guess single words for "four times" or "five times" either disappeared or didn't come into existence because they weren't used as often.

Well. That certainly killed that play date...

Oops.

(Inner critic: this doesn't even rise to the level of pretension; it's merely pedantic. But yeah, I think like that.)