Moving on Over

So it won't be long now. I'm going over to Wordpress. The blog will again be on my site (yay). The only thing I need to do now is pick out the right theme (soooo many to choose from).

Just a short note. Oh, I uploaded a mess of pictures to my Flickr account, too. Busy on an overcast day! Find them here.

Fiction is a Hungry Beast

photo courtesy of A List Apart

So I'm writing this story set on a small gentleman's farm very similar to one that my friend Andy worked at when we were in high school. There were many stories about that place: Andy and I coy dog hunting (I'm quite sure that that, too, will make it into a story at some point), swimming with friends in their man-made pond, feeding the hungry trout in said pond, ogling female friends in their bikinis (scandalous for the '80's) while we were swimming, tending to the livestock (they had cows and horses), and drinking in their front pasture (it had a heck of a view of the Albany skyline). But, of all these really fond memories, the one I'll never forget is the story he told about the day they castrated the bull. He went into great gory detail about the procedure, and I remember thinking to myself how incredibly gross and yet fascinating at the same time.

I mean, the bull was reportedly standing placidly in the pasture not fifteen minutes after the procedure (they cut him). What was he thinking? Was he ruminating on how from that point on all he was good for was some steaks and rump roasts? Was he sad over the fact that the cows just wouldn't look the same to him anymore? That all of the action in his life was completely behind him?

Fast forward twenty four years and here I am thinking about this story, this story that has really nothing to do with bull castration at all, when it comes back to me. It comes back to me so vividly that I have to start writing it down. And I have to place it in the story somewhere. It is, after all, one hell of a metaphor. It 'll all be in the story.

Which brings me to my point: fiction is a hungry beast. The blank page is a sponge for all of the weird, eccentric details that make up our lives. Whether it's bull castration or bikini ogling ( a nice juxtaposition of images, no?), all have a place somewhere in a story. So write all of the stuff down that you can; you'll never know when it will come in handy.

And as for the researching of bull castration on the web, suffice it to say that I chose the text only versions. I just didn't want to see any pictures or videos.

August and all that...

Well, another vacation down. The Cape was a blast (check out my pics on Flickr), with its share of laughs and joys and family satisfactions, but now, inevitably, it's time to roll up the sleeves and get back to work.

I'm doing a couple of summer curriculum weeks here at school, contemplating retooling my web site so I can actually have a blog on the site (thank you Blogger- see previous entries), toying with a story idea, staining my deck, staining the cedar shakes on my house, fixing a leaky toilet, reading for school, managing my social life, managing my family life, replying to emails and Facebook messages, exercising, and generally trying to end the summer in a positive way.

All the norm, but I'm in such a positive place in my life that it doesn't even bother me. Quite the switch. Now let's get to the writing...

The Writing Life

The writing life is truly a lonely one. No devastating breakthroughs there, but true nonetheless. I guess that I will continue here, although it seems kind of silly. Not sure anyone is out there reading it, anyways.

Now that's pathetic...I should know better.

Know Thyself

I think that "Know Thyself" is some of the best advice ever written. Gotta love the Greeks. It makes me sad when people don't really know themselves. A friend once told me that she wanted to stop living like a zombie, wanted to stop living alone, riding her bike alone, running alone, and then when she got what she wanted she ran from it. Really didn't know herself, I think.

And of course the problem is that there is collateral damage when you stumble and have to retract all that was said. She did it, too--neatly, quickly, and unequivocally final. No crystal balls, no commitments, just a resolve to abandon all that was made (apparently made on shaky foundation-- of course that wasn't the feeling at the time). It makes me sad, primarily because I'm the collateral damage.

But enough whining and airing of dirty laundry. It's only life after all. I'll live.

I know myself.

42

As a birthday thought, these lines that close Richard Ford's The Sportswriter:

"...one natural effect of life is to cover you in a thin layer of...what? A film? A residue or skin of all the things you've done and been and said and erred at? I'm not sure. But you are under it, and for a long time, and only rarely do you know it, except that for some unexpected reason or opportunity you come out --for an hour or for even a moment-- and you suddenly feel pretty good. And in that magical instant you realize how long it's been since you felt just that way. Have you been ill, you ask. Is life an illness or a syndrome? Who knows? We've all felt that way, I'm confident, since there's no way that I could feel hundreds of millions of other citizens haven't.

Only suddenly, then, you are out of it-- that film, that skin of life-- as when you were a kid. And you think: this must've been the way it was once in my life, though you didn't know it then, and don't really even remember it-- a feeling of wind on your cheeks and your arms, of being released, let loose, of being the light-floater. And since that is not how it has been for a long time, you want, this time, to make it last, this glistening one moment, this cool air, this new living, so that you can preserve a feeling of it, inasmuch as when it comes again it may just be too late. You may just be too old. And in truth, of course, this may be the last time that you will ever feel this way again."

Yeah, that's where I am. 42 is really an odd age after all- not bad, just odd.

Birthday Gifts

Sometimes the best birthday gifts are the ones that are given freely. Thanks, Yanks. We can use all the help we can get.

Last Post, for now...

So the Blogger deadline is upon me, and, as usual, I have no idea what to do. Should I just live with the blog being hosted on Blogger, install WordPress on my server and generate the blog from there, or find some free PHP script that allows me to customize the blog's appearance while still maintaining some form of independence?

Whatever the answer, I now that this will probably be the last update for a moment or two. Who knows, when you see me next I may be new and improved.

Or I could really look crappy. It's a toss up.

Bye, for now...

Wordpress and the Blogger FTP debacle

So I have to move and I hate to move. Don't we all?

I mean, sometimes moving can be cool. A new house, new apartment, new car, new spouse: all examples of movement. But this is a different type of moving. I have to move my blog, and it's causing me all kinds of anxiety. I've been with blogger for nearly four years (the first post hit the web in August 2006), and I've either used their site to host my blog or have used the Blogger FTP service to post my stuff to my own web site (now nearly two years old). So I haven't really had to do too much differently at all.

But now Blogger is doing away with FTP services and so I won't be able to use the service to populate my website. I could use the migration tool provided by Blogger that will move my posts to a new custom domain URL, a process that has its limitations, or I could jump ship and do what I figured I would do eventually anyway: try WordPress.

So I'm embarking on installing WordPress on this site and moving all Sharper Thesis over to the new platform. Since Blogger is making me either change or leave by May 1st, I have little time. If the blog is down for awhile, I apologize now. I'll figure it out, but it may take time.

Change is scary, but usually good. Let's hope.

Blogs and the Problem with Writing

Blogging and "Jaws" have a lot more in common than we think.

But this isn't a post about sharks; it is a post about blogging, or e-writing, or web logging, or whatever you call this thing that I'm doing right now. So, to get right to it, I think I've figured out why my students don't want to blog. Not like it's a great mystery, after all, but bear with me. First, they don't like to write. No-brainer. If a person doesn't like to swim, don't give them a high tech bathing suit and tell them that it will make swimming anything other than the terrifying activity it can be. Or, to tie in a bit closer to the image on the left, don't tell a person who is deathly afraid of sharks (*ahem*- who could that be?) that he or she will be safe from the beast sitting in a twelve and a half foot sea kayak that is shaped unmistakably like a seal, the shark's meal of preference. Just because blogging is glitzy and shiny because it's online- which, in all truth, only appeals to us older digital immigrants, not to the younger natives- doesn't mean it will make the endeavor any easier.

Second: they don't see the point. Much like I don't see the point in doing what the suicidal bloke in the picture is doing, my students don't see the point in writing long posts that resemble, gasp, real writing, when they can fire off rapid fire Facebook status updates that hit closer to the audience they are looking to reach: their friends. Blogs are for the long winded. Text messages and Facebook and Twitter all force brevity, a more natural state of being for them.

So why should I force them if they really are scared or can't see the point? Because, unlike sea kayaking, real writing- be it technical writing, or memo writing, or penning the great American novel- is a life skill they will need to survive. Real job related writing will not be done in 140 character outbursts, but in thought out, logically structured, clear paragraphs. Not that shorter forms aren't valuable and will arguably take on a more prominent role in our collective communication (already have, really; look at the rise of Twitter in journalism), but to abandon the longer forms of discourse would be like giving in to the shorthand of the day, and, inevitably, would be doing my young thinkers a disservice. So blog we must. And write essays we must, and research papers, and position papers, and abstracts, and all of the things that made our high school and college writing classes torture.

But, hey, no matter how bad they got, they had to have felt better than that guy in the kayak feels. OMG!

Spring Break

I love Wallace Stevens (sooooooo applicable right now)...

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for a small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly around us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous,

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Wallace Stevens, Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Procrastination

Brilliant. I found this on Twitter, which led me to the blog where it was housed. Pretty funny and smart, it nails the phenomenon on the head.

Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Friends

I need to keep reminding myself that I can't forget my friends. I get caught up in things, you know? I don't multi-task well. I mean, I can handle students and papers and curriculum, web sites, blogs, and wikis, because that's what I've been trained to do. But my personal life, that's another story.


I've been neglecting my friends lately. I'm horrible at Facebook, something I could attribute to a Gen X lag with all things tech, but for the fact that I'm pretty tech savvy- I can Twitter and Flickr and blog with the best of them, and that I have lots of friends who have fallen into the FB trap- some have even fallen and climbed out, a sort of FB rehab, if you will. So I guess it's not my age or my lack of technical acumen. It must be me.

I think at some point in your life your friends stop forgiving you your quirks and start resenting you for them. In the end, I'm sure they just stop being your friend. I mean, life is very short and I know how I feel when I'm being ignored. So here I am, at the end of February, having not spoken to dear friends for over two months now, and I'm feeling pretty low.

I resolve, then, to stay in touch. I think I have to, because a friendless, forty something year old man is just sad.

Hey, I know. Maybe there's a Facebook group that can help me...

What Do Teachers Make?

Found this video of Taylor Mali, slam poet, teacher, voiceover artist, reading his poem entitled "What Teachers Make." Pretty sharp, strong, this slam poem is now at the level of the iconic. Nice to listen to, though, especially in these times when budgets are tight and some people wonder what we even do with our 180 days of work a year.

Aviary

Aviary is just cool. I made this mix with my daughter using this image/sound editing software...it's addicting!

hannahs mix.egg on Aviary.

Check out my article on Aviary at TechTimes (http://ves.neric.org/techtimes/index.html).

Pre-Valentine's Day Signage

Appropriate. Truth. Love.
(Thank you, Gaping Void)

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Man I like Ray Carver stories. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is just one of those fantastic Carver rides into perceived normalcy, faulty reality, and the beautiful thing is we get to go with the messed up individuals that inhabit those weird places. Here is the brunt of the issue: what is the nature of true love? Here's our protagonist's answer, in its glory.

"’What do any of us really know about love?’ Mel said. ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day today caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed.’ He thought about it and then he went on. ‘There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Ed. Okay, so we’re back to Ed. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself.’ Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass. ‘You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day to day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did. So I suppose I am like Terri in that regard. Terri and Ed.’ He thought about it and then he went on. ‘There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone could tell me. Then there’s Ed. Okay, so we’re back to Ed. He loves Terri so much he tries to kill her and he winds up killing himself.’ Mel stopped talking and swallowed from his glass. ‘You guys have been together eighteen months and you love each other. It shows all over you. You glow with it. But you both loved other people before you met each other. You’ve both been married before, just like us. And you probably loved other people before that too, even. Terri and I have been together five years, been married for four. And the terrible thing, the terrible thing is, but the good thing too, the saving grace, you might say, is that if something happened to one of us—excuse me for saying this—but if something happened to one of us tomorrow, I think the other one, the other person, would grieve for a while, you know, but then the surviving party would go out and love again, and have someone else soon enough. All this, all of this love, we’re talking about, it would be just a memory. Am I wrong? Am I way off base? Because I want you to set me straight if you think I’m wrong. I want to know. I mean, I don’t know anything, and I’m the first one to admit it.’"

Sometimes I read stuff like this and I want to just stop trying to put anything down on paper for fear of looking small in comparison. But then I remember that Carver started late, too, and he turned out stuff like this. That keeps me going.

Oh, Happy Valentine's Day...I guess.

Issuu

Trying a new publishing service for the school literary magazine. This is a trial.

RIP JD Salinger

First Zinn, now Salinger. Arguably both old enough to have lived "full lives," and both influential in their respective fields, it is, nonetheless, saddening to report their passings. And yet, two in two days. This report from "The Onion" is simply brilliant. Thought it'd be fun to reprint here:

CORNISH, NH—In this big dramatic production that didn't do anyone any good (and was pretty embarrassing, really, if you think about it), thousands upon thousands of phonies across the country mourned the death of author J.D. Salinger, who was 91 years old for crying out loud. "He had a real impact on the literary world and on millions of readers," said hot-shot English professor David Clarke, who is just like the rest of them, and even works at one of those crumby schools that rich people send their kids to so they don't have to look at them for four years. "There will never be another voice like his." Which is exactly the lousy kind of goddamn thing that people say, because really it could mean lots of things, or nothing at all even, and it's just a perfect example of why you should never tell anybody anything.

All I want to know is: who will be there to catch us before we fall off that crazy cliff?

RIP Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn, the influential historian and writer, died today at the age of 87. His controversial "A People's History of the United States" was required reading in a course I co-taught called AP US History/English 11 Honors, and became a staple of status quo challenging rhetoric for the kids. Loved him or hated him, Zinn knew how to start the discussion. Perhaps my favorite bit in that book is the first chapter where he accuses Christopher Columbus of genocide as he chronicled that explorers near elimination of the Arawak Indians. Heck, we even put Columbus on trial in that class and used Zinn as a star witness. I don't remember the verdict, but I do remember that this man made us all think. That's a pretty nice epitaph, no?


Here is a panel from one of Dr. Zinn's last projects, a graphic novel based on his life (As chronicled in his 1994 memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train). Look for a movie of his life soon, as well (starring Ben Affleck).