Collection

The (Not) Just No Stories ... Casey Karp tells us about yet more ways for The Internet of Things not just to run, but to ruin, our lives. Not scary at all!

Art history, religious history - on the history of the fig leaf, all the way to Instagram. Spiff.

Reider reading! I am shamefully late to getting to it, so probably anyone here who frequents the comments at Janet Reid's blog has read this already, but Jen Donohue was published recently, and her short story is very good. Hop on over to Syntax and Salt, sink into it slowly, and enjoy.

Can we please dispense with the precious little phrase "open secret" now? In the past three weeks alone, we've encountered an open secret in Hollywood - oh, and in politics - now it's academia - and media-curated regions of the world or remoter reaches of the United States - and it's been discussed about Silicon Valley for many years, at this point. "Casting couch" is a phrase probably nearly as old as the phenomenon is, which may be about a century at this point (if you only count *film*). THIS IS OUR CULTURE. Not some isolated little "secret" - open or otherwise - affecting isolated little islands of people other than ourselves. This is the world. Women have never not-known this. So who thinks this is any sort of a secret? Oh yeah. All those men who're so surprised that rape and sexual extortion/blackmail/revenge is a thing. And it's not a secret, even from them. They've just enjoyed the privilege of obliviousness.

Collection

Now, I am no Dena Pawling, but when I saw this particular legal story, I had to share. Mind you, it's gross and involves a mouse and a food product, so click if you dare. Grossest defense strategy ever? It certainly outranks the Twinkie, and may even be more unhealthy too.

Sigh. Y'all. It is 2017, and even now there exist ... well, "people" who think this is okay:  "Legs-it". Ms. May, for most women in the world, who don't have your power, this really is not "a bit of fun."

Aaaaaahh, semantics and lawers and supply and demand! On the difference between flavoured (by actual vanilla) and flavour (or, as my brother and I spell it when we're discussing horrible fake fruit tastes: flav-o, which is often to be found in extruded "fud" products). Hey, at least nobody's citing the old tulip story again. Let us applaud The Conversation for such restraint (or theconversation.com, if you are okay with just the flavour).

REALLY interesting look at bigly data. How many "Likes" does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootie Pop? Well, three of course, as we all learned from that owl. But a mere seventy can buy you an actual human being's psychology. Creepy. Anyone who still thinks it's nifty-spiffy to hand over your entire life to data-collecting corporate concerns, please raise your hand.

A kind of placelessness

Another interesting tech article - on the way Facebookification turns extreme body modification into bland (dead) commodification. The Wal-Mart of teh intarwebs.

Blue lies: how to draw some people together, while driving others away (or marginalizing them completely - FUN!). Fascinating concept. One wonders whether Cambridge Analytica is using this dynamic. Also, sigh.

Edited 3/29 to add this one, because GOOD BLOODY LORD. Calling Maxine Waters' hair a James Brown wig? Again, we are living in 2017. The million layers here of racism, sexism, entitled horsepucky, and utter, complete disrespect for a longtime public servant are more than I can unpack, and far more than I can stomach. Click again for extra helpings.

Collection

An uplifting story about a racist incident? Yes, when law enforcement and the mayor back a mother and her family victimized by hate speech. And also yes: the franchise owner has been terminated by Dairy Queen.

“There are, like, 100 pages.”

“I’m deleting Instagram,” 13-year-old Alex said, “because it’s weird.”

Another positive one - the lawyer who rewrote Instagram's Terms of Use in plain English for real users to really understand. I suspect she's way ahead of me here, but this one made me think of Dena Pawling. Also: did YOU know Insta can read your DMs? Yikes.

The other hidden Figures ... his name was Thomas, and he was Assistant US Attorney in Alabama.

It's policy on this blog not to steal images, but this image is simply too important to ask people to bother to click to, and I hope that sharing it here is fair use.

For significantly more, and what this image means, NOW click through. Can Americans even build coalitions anymore?

As obsessed as I am with pattern welded steel swords, it's impossible not to give a nod to The History Blog's look at and links to the even more ancient *bronze* sword unearthed in China - still shining and polished after 2,300 years.

Collection

Let's start off today's Collection post with several members of Janet Reid's community ...

Paul Lamb takes a look at one particular anachronism (interpolated spectacles) in a piece of art, and I am brought to mind of the way people like to go all guitarist and whinge about modern anachronisms in drama, art, or writing, like it's some sort of newfangled SIN. Which: sigh. No, we've always brought ancient tales into our own worlds. (I'm also of the opinion that Interpolated Spectacles would make a great name for a band.)

Julie Weathers, possibly the Head Reider at Janet Reid’s blog/community, has a nicely in-depth post on the mid nineteenth-century riding habit (and her work!). With a variety of images, for my fellow costume nerds!

I want to thank E. M. Goldsmith for this link … Chuck Wendig, Huffpo, cake-eating, and monetizing Stockholm Syndrome. On the ethics and economy of a billion-dollar enterprise and unpaid writers. (Worth a click beyond for The Tale of the Depends Duping.)

CarolynnWithTwoNs, or 2Ns as we call her at Janet’s world, has an insightful post about those who provide service every day. I’ve never been a restaurant server nor worked in retail, but as a secretary, and especially in my job now, customer service is my bread and my work was for years something I apologized for, so: yeah. Before preppies, yuppies, and the Reagan years, it was a point of PRIDE to be a union member, a factory worker, a person who actually produced something or served people.

To go along with Julie's historical costume research, The History Blog has a post on an 11,000-year-old engraved  shale pendant, found in Yorkshire. I always love the theoretical decoding attempts of prehistoric artifacts.

Speaking of decoding, in my ongoing fascination with Ötzi the Iceman, the recent mapping of his sixty-one tattoos has struck me with the significance of the tattoo as talisman/healing magic. His ink marked the spots, where he suffered various painful ailments and injuries. The simple lines - incisions pigmented with charcoal - were not drawn as art, but represent the work of prehistoric medicinal practice. The mention of correlation with acupuncture points is an excruciatingly intriguing entre' to the eventual discovery we'll make, that ancient tattoo practices do present modern scientific value.

DIY, repurpose, upcycle - it's the new "Reuse, Recycle, Reduce" - and the old, old reason a fifteenth-century panel survived the Reformation, Also the reason I love palimpsests.

... and back to the Reiders. One of the things about her community is that, if you click on the commenters' profiles, you find the most devastating array of great blogs and pages. And so I share two posts from J. J. Litke: on primate skulls, and traffic, sorta. PLEASE do yourself the favor of clicking both of these: she's a great read, and a better writer. Be it on your own head if you miss the gift shop link in there somewhere.

Finally today, a blog I've been meaning to share for the movie lovers, and love-to-hate-rs (ish), Dreams are What le Cinema is For. I ran into this when looking for an image to use on a recent post where I mentioned the literal grace of Grace Kelly and got a bit schmoopy about memories of my dad. (Or I may not have posted that one; sometimes posts do shrivel and waste away.) Anyway, I quickly became addicted to the archives, and bookmarked it, because: camp! movies! a little cattiness! SHEER FUN! Woo!

My Stepfather Pronounces it Linka-DIN (*)

LinkedIn is like that friend with a pickup truck. You don't call them much, but when you have to move, suddenly you remember their number.

Worse ... maybe you kind of wish they wouldn't call YOU, either.

When I was worried about my job two years ago, I quietly updated my LinkedIn profile, reached out to a couple connections; managed to get an interview from one of them. That interview didn't pan out, but they called me back a couple months later - and here I am. (I met the woman who did get that first job, and she is made of solid OSUM gold, and no way should I have gotten that gig. I like mine best in any case.)

Every now and then, recruiters get frisky on LinkedIn, but that seems reasonable.

Over the last month or so, a salesman got silly and tried (a) to connect with me there and then (b) kept messaging me about "who is the right person to talk with about such-and-such" at my company. And (c) got himself DISconnected, because - ugh. No.

More recently, a restaurant reached out to me and at least two of the other Executive Admins at my employer, offering us free lunch. This sounds lovely - and I have it on excellent authority the purveyor sending these notes with connection invites makes great food - however, I work at a food distributor. And they are not clients.

How it looks to some folks when we bring in non-client food to our corporate HQ: not super.

So no free lunch for me, sad to say.

Every now and then I see the old "guess who's looking at your profile!" previews, and sigh quietly. Yes, Virginia, there ARE people I spent years losing touch with, and it was not easy.

Nobody really uses LinkedIn as a social network. It's a nicely distant quasi-tool to occasionally keep up with former coworkers, really. You can get their real contact info off 'em if need be, maybe send the odd bland "congrats" or holiday message or whatever.

Or you can let them know ... you might need that pickup truck. And maybe a spare pair of arms to carry a few boxes. And couches.



(*And I don't make fun of his way of reading the name. First time I ran across the website Plenty of Fish, I read it as Plenty Offish ... which strikes me as a hilarious name for a dating site.)

Traffic Source

I'm used to seeing Russian sites and even the occasional Reider blog in my stats, directing traffic this way. Can't quite figure out, though, why the Wikipedia page for Jehovah has been sending hits to this blog a bunch lately.

Insert Quizzical Puppy Face here.

I don' geddit. But I'm bein' rilly RIIILLY good for G-d.

Internetworking

So this thing where Janet Reid took Holy Week off blogging to pray, and then on Thursday opened the floor to all her Reiders (not just the usual commenters, but yay for all the lurkers who came forth with a word!), has been days of unexpected reading fun. She's got us networking, and it's bumped up my STAGGERING number of followers (31 to 33 now - yes, hold your breath in awe!) and led to some comments I've been so tickled to see.

I must apologize for being slow to say hello back to Maggie Maxwell. *Waves enthusiastically some more* Thank you for the follow!

Off for a bit of WIPping ... See y'all soon.

*Waves Enthusiastically!*

My thanks to Colin, for being kind enough to add me to the list of bloggy folks at Janet Reid's community - and for my new Reidy follower, Donna Everheart - AND for my new visitors, Lilac Shoshani, Elizabeth Crisp, and Lilly Faye, my first poodle visitor, and a mighty fine canine authoress.

I'm still digging through the links from this past Thursday, but have had Elizabeth in my bookmarks for a while, and I think Lilac is in there too (have certainly hit up her profile before!). Adding Lilly Faye, because who can resist a puppy blog? Not. I!

Now Gossamer's going to ask me why he hasn't got a blog ...

Edited to add AJ Blythe's blog, which I think I've linked to (in any case, I meant to!) coz I loved this post when I first peeked over there ...

Easter Grass

Church was short one Diane today; I've been spotty in attendance since we lost our priest, and I have a thing about being one of those people who only show up at the high holidays. So yesterday, I spent time with my family. Today, I am spending time alone.

Image: publicdomainictures.net

Just came in from mowing the grass. It is a beautiful, breezy, and sunny day; and, for me, there is as much (and perhaps sometimes more) worship in the act of maintaining my greatest material blessing apart from my body - in doing something around my home that is for my neighbors too, which going to church is not. And in simply being outside, my happy Yella Dawg watching and berating the mower when it comes too near her, the wind in my hair and using that body which is my first and last material blessing; working it and sweating and waving at occasional passersby.

Coming inside, I visited Janet Reid's blog for the firs time since last Sunday (she was taking time for prayer and worship of her own this week), and saw that she'd opened a forum for the community of her Reiders to get to know each other by posting links to their blogs and sites - and the comments section is nearly 200 responses deep.

And so, now I shall observe the holiday by adding links to my bookmarks, by reading a few individual pieces to add to upcoming Collection posts, by learning a bit about the lurkers, by learning more about those who comment most.

I haven't put up my own link - per usual, a bit late to the party; and there is so much to swim through as it is I can't add to the ocean. Sometimes it is better reading.

And, indeed, it can be instructive. Like writing, the best way to learn how is to READ. So with blogging; curating and cre-ating the most worthwhile content takes understanding what works!

The only thing missing today is pancakes. But, come to think of it, I have the fixin's for daddy's biscuits, so that might work.


And so. Hello to my Reiders. And my readers, too. And blessed weekend to all - whether it was in learning why this night is not like other nights ... or whether it was in contemplating what exactly "fondant" really is, as defined by the good folks at Cadbury ...

New Followers!

Wanted to say hi and thanks to the most recent followers here at the blog - Angie Brooksby-Arcangioli and Colin, friends from the community at Janet Reid's blog, and Gabriela Salvador, of Pour La Victoire.

Thank you for coming!

Oh, and - Colin - happy late birthday! With the way I shy off of Janet's flash fiction contests, I completely failed to give you many happy returns - hope it's been a good start to a smashing year!

Gossamer Love on FB

Some of my Janet Reid loving pals will notice that Gossamer has none of his mommy’s tech-nerd qualms about FaceBook, and visits his friend Jet le Shark there when he can. Today he took a little excursion, and some of the comments have me grinning. The QOTKU herself likes the bright true-red trim in my kitchen, which is gratifying as I can tell you putting vivid trim like that up against surgical white is a JOB and I’ll never forget doing it all by myself, watching DS9 and wearing the same clothes for a week, as my “vacation” before I started my previous job (wow, now approaching five years ago!).

James Ticknor, not only a pal via Janet’s community, but an author I’ve met at James River Writers events, likes the orange lilies behind Goss’s perch. I’m not positive they’re meant to be stargazers specifically, but I do know they’re fake as can be, but darn if they don’t last like crazy, and they won’t poison our little grey pearl-headed boy. Those do grow pretty rampant in our neck of the woods, though, James – late summer and into Indian Summer, keep your eyes peeled and you’ll see ‘em!

Donna Everheart kindly noticed the soft brown of my living room. I did THAT job (also all by myself! Wah!) a bit less than three years ago, when Goss had lived with me less than a month. He was an almost inconceivably good boy while mommy wrought chaos in his new house, and got only the weensy-est dot of paint on one single toe, his right passenger side foot if I remember. The one without the lightning bolt. And he knocked nothing over! While I was painting anyway (some of the things he has destroyed still make me woozy, but we’re talking about his being GOOD so we’ll leave those tales untold).

Janet’s affection for him tickles me to pieces, because her sharing him means I get to share him with a lot of people who’d never have known him without her. I’ve had four cats now, and he is a special little guy, and his little corner of the internet where people know him as Gossamer the Editor Cat is my happy place. If he makes anyone else happy, especially the QOTKU, I’m grateful. I’ll never deserve his unstinting OSUMness – nor Penelope the Publishing Pup’s either. But, as with Sweet Siddy La – I’ll spend our whole lives together trying to.

And now it is time for a walk with the PPP. You know, so she can PP. Hee.

Like This Weekend Wasn't Good ENOUGH ...

... my policy for some time has been not to specify any of the agents who've been kind enough to read me, and that's kind of hard sometimes, especially in the heat of the moment when they have the MS in hand.  However, today one of them self-outed.

I wouldn't even quote her on this much, but ... a highly talented professional has stamped my work as darn good.  There's only so much willpower in this world, and it'd be a bit of a trick for me, keeping that to myself.

The end of the story was a pass, of course.  But I never imagined I'd even get a read (or, in fact, two), from The Query Shark!  So making a friendly acquaintance online has been an extra bonus; for me, AND for Gossamer the Editor Cat.  I'm pretty sure he'd leave me for her, but he and Penelope do kind of like gnawing on each other from time to time.

So, yeah.  All this, a little bit of Christmas money, my winsome and talented friend K coming over tonight, and everything from the post *just* south of this one.  And my house is clean and smells like cookies.


Best wishes to all ... and to all a good night!

Blogkeeeping

Inspired recently by some discussion in the comments at Janet Reid's blog, please note we have a new feature here at the old homestead.  A slight scroll down on the right will show a Contact the Owner widget in the sidebar.

This emails me anything you have to say directly, without public commenting, and I stay on top of my messages on my personal time.

Thanks to French Sojourn for being my first contact!  Cheers.

Corresponding, Funny Things, and Love

Some years ago, I was privileged to correspond briefly with Roger Ebert, the late critic with whose assessments of movies I scarcely ever agreed, but who remains one of my favorite writers.  I also emailed with Donald Harington several times during the period when he was writing Enduring, a novel whose title alone sends a shiver down my neck and arms it’s so wonderful.  On Twitter, I’ve had the odd drive-by-Twitting with writers from Lore Sjöberg to Elizabeth Chadwick.  I’m an uppity cuss, and most of this has come via the speaking-up-at-a-party method.  They say it’s one way to network, as an unpublished author.  Certainly, it’s fun (I had to restrain myself from going off on a “and I know these Trek designers and actors” tangent, as this post actually has a topic).

I also like ongoing parties, and at one of the many places I like to hang out, I yipped up and sucked up and got the attention of Janet Reid (a.k.a. The Query Shark) with, if not my manuscript (WAAAH!), at least the adorable Gossamer the Editor Cat.  Thanks to that little loverboy, I’ve hit her with the occasional grey Goss pic, many of which have made it to her Facebook, blogs, and so on, and we have a very occasional but very amusing correspondence as well.

After the latest Gossamer shameless-shot, we swapped a bit of silliness and she concluded with “you crack me up.”



Now:  given that she makes a living knowing her way around a witty word … if I used a few of ‘em well enough to give her a giggle, I’m pretty spankin’ pleased with myself.

Laughterface

Something more like seventeen or eighteen years ago now, I had a similar piece of praise, when the goddess of the boards I once belonged to online sent me a private message, “I just wanted you to know I think you are a f***ing riot.”

This came from my gut-deep, wonderful, lunatic, loving friend Zuba, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, that PM.  I pulled up my funny girl pants, PM’d her back, began bantering with her on the fora we shared, and ended up becoming something of an institution there myself.  Not even entirely thanks to reflected glory.  (I’m an institutional smartypants.)

Mellow I may be, is the point, but shy is something I lost my talent for long ago.  Innocence and wonder and even fear I have held on to, but … an inability to speak?  Not me.  All of the significant romantic relationships of my life seem to have started with me conking some poor, helpless boy on the head and dragging him off to my cave.

Or, you know – saying hi to him.

I can still remember the first time I made my brother laugh – really belly laugh, so hard we both ended up half falling over.  It was something or other about Double Stuft Oreos neither one of us can EVER recall anymore.  I remember making Zuba laugh, that first time – or, at least, her telling me about it.  I remember just two years ago, the way it felt to be in the same room with Mr. X, to laugh together, for it to be a physical experience shared for the first time in a long time, and how transformative the moment is.  And how much we both missed that.  And now miss it again.


The most indelible, important images in all my memories seem to be of laughter – ex boyfriends’ beautifully crinkled, contorted faces – actual photos I have of Mr. X laughing – that Oreos moment with my brother – the gruff, wonderful sound of my dad’s voice in mirth – my mom’s laugh; and how, throughout my life, I’ve been told my laugh is like hers.  I’ll take that.

One of the pinnacle compliments of my lifetime was Mr. X’s “You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance has no power, and the effect is devastating.”  “I just want you to know I think you are a f***ing riot” is right up there on the list, too.  And now we have the up-cracking of someone I highly respect.



Perhaps I should be a comedy writer instead …

Twit

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
-- Blaise Pascal

Loving a good pun, this headline taking an opportunity to abbreviate “Twitter”– a veritable art form in condensed expression, sometimes – was too self-gratifying to resist.

Most contemporary writers know:  the irony of editing is that reducing word count once the “actual writing” is barfed out can be much harder work.  Revision can be so painstaking as to paralyze us outright.  What research to remove, what scenes to sacrifice, what action to abbreviate?  Down in the forests with our trusty butter knives, chasing dragons, it can get harder and harder to see the trees.

Beta readers, of course, are a wonderful thing.  The great and inimitable Leila Gaskin (herself an expert on dragons) nearly got kissed, once, when she simply told me to jettison sixty pages.  She’d been afraid to say it, but the instinct correct – AND shucking like that is a pretty easy job, compared to line-by-line word-shaving and migraine-by-migraine character analysis, scene analysis, structural retrofitting after deletions of same (lawzy, ask me how long it took to get rid of Clovis’ older sister, an historical figure by the way, who added nothing but bulk to our story!).  In revision, continuity can become a pernicious problem!

In microcosm, a lot of Twitter users – especially amongst my writer friends, I know – suffer pangs of a similar sort, getting everything into 140 characters.  I have witnessed that same Leila, sweating out a Tweet or three, sitting in panels at #JRW and sharing wisdom with the world.  Watching the process of paring but preserving voice and conveying a point was not merely entertaining, it was instructive.  I’ve felt that pain.  I’ve REHEARSED Tweets – not because I’m that anal-retentive, but because I know exactly how I want something said, and the limitations on my loquatiousness.

“That awkward moment when you exceed 140 and have to choose which grammar crime to commit.”

Those limitations on my loquatiousness are damned useful little beasts, though.  They keep you alert as hell, and, over the course of a couple years or so relearning how to communicate in microblog form (“Must! Leave! Room! For the BLOG LINK!”) illuminates for analytic eyes a new perspective.  And I still use the two-spaces-after-a-period system in most of my Tweets.  … Most …

Before I ever joined – and I only did so out of some curiosity about the medium, much-touted as one outlet to reach out to people as an author – I tended to stand with those snobs who pooh-pooh Twitter, under the idea that nothing worthwhile can possibly be shared in a 140-character entry.  The name itself hardly dispels this notion, evoking nothing but the confused, crowded noise of a flock of birds, and onomotopoeically silly to boot.  Much as I do with “secretary”, I intentionally call myself a Twit when mentioning my usage, because that’s what it sounds like the population should be called, for layered reasons.

It didn’t take me long, though, to come to appreciate both my friends there and the medium itself.  It forces my yapping-puppy mode of communcation into a harness, a discipline I’ve come to appreciate.  And it also affords me lines of communication with people who are almost universally intelligent and interesting.  I jump in and chat with men and women both sharing my interests and ideas, and exposing me to new ones.  Life there isn’t too hard to keep troll-free, and with the standard that anything I say online I would be willing to allow my mother or my nieces to read, I don’t think I’m too hard on anyone else, either.

The brevity of Twitter, too, means that even as your timeline rushes by – which, even with only about 700 followers, and following over 800 myself, provides quite the dizzying rush of links, observations, rallying cries, and incredibly funny posts and retweets – and conversations don’t get much bogged down.  I once live-tweeted Highlander with a couple of pals, we had a good time, then it was over – and you can do much the same with television and so on.  In much the same way I work crosswords with my mother over the phone, sharing entertainment virtually can be diverting, particularly when your IRL companionship is snuggly and furry, but still sub-verbal.

Twitter has provided moral support and encouragement under the #AmWriting, #AmEditing, and #AmQuerying hashtags more than once, and the occasional insight into the way I write.  This is no advertisement nor exhortation to join; just an observation, because all this interests me, and anything that changes or even develops my use of our language does too.

Do you belong?  (Let’s find each other there!)  Have you found it crystallizes in your own eyes the way you express things and share them?

I’d have written a shorter post … but that is for Twitter.

Collection

Janet Reid's love affair with Gossamer has extended just a little bit further, and Penelope has now popped up at her blog.  If Gossamer is The Editor Cat, shall we say that Penelope is the Publisher Pup?  Suggestions welcome (alliteration not required).

(And NOW to find an agent who'll love me for my *manuscript* ...)

In a promising move toward more of a professional platform, the next week or so here should see a couple of blog turns where I get to show off the other historical fiction authors I've gotten to know.  Tom Williams has tapped me for the One Lovely Blog tour, and his blurb about me is blush-worthy (if only I were capable of blushing).  And Faith L. Justice invited me to join a writing process blog tour.

These last two items have inspired me to follow up with Elizabeth Chadwick on the interview questions I sent some months back.  Also, though I didn't get a new interview at the Conference this year, I may revisit Victoria Skurnick, who was one of the many charming and delicious people we get at JRW, and who was most open to the idea.  So stay tuned, kids!

In closing, a link both more and less typical of these collection posts.  Because there's archaeology ... and then there's digging up DeMille ...

99,201 Pageviews

Today, I'm fewer than 800 hits from 100k, which means the counter should turn over within a week.  Sadly, of late, more of the traffic than I like is coming from Moldovan bots on supposed-blogs "how to get rid of diabetes" and "halloween witch".  Pleh.

Even so, I have worked hard for the past few years, actually trying to make this place thematic and bearable.  Twitter has also been an effective way to share, and it's been gratifying to take an active hand in building the readership here.  Still, it's the readers I "meet" at Historical Fiction Online and the authors whose blogs I follow, whose generosity has made this blathering (seem) worthwhile.  Over the years, it's been a privilege and a pleasure to connect, even briefly and at the distance of the internet, with Elizabeth Chadwick and Ben Kane and Gary Corby and others.

Less than two years ago, I had fewer than 40k views, and had been at this blog for a few years.  So this is gratifying.  Thank you, everyone, for coming by!

Gossie Again

Goss has once again run away to go visit Janet Reid, the Query Shark.  I do keep wondering where he runs off to - but am pleased he chooses good company!

ACTIVE Voice(s)

The first moments of my day this morning were spent in the usual way, but with a soundtrack that nagged me almost from the moment I turned on the TV.  I tend to listen to old movies in the morning rather than watching any news; a holdover from a schedule that had me out of the house before any news even began airing, I've learned it is a far nicer way to start the day than with the important boxes ticked off - what will the weather be, what terrible thing has happened or is about to, what pontificating on the economy can we do at this hour?  NPR always tells me exactly what the "news" does, so first thing out of bed, a gaggle of people long since dead and gone acting out stories I don't even have to look at on the screen turns out to be a peaceable starting point.

Today, though, my peace was niggled.  One of the actors in the day's pre-code romantic comedy (Oh the scandal!  A wife trying to wile her husband back into her own arms!) had a voice it took me only syllables to know I had heard before, but which I could not quite identify for a few minutes.  That sort of thing can drive you to distraction at the best of moments; at six-thirty a.m. when you've hardly washed your face, it can topple you outright.

I did get to it, though.  The voice was attached to cartoons.  I knew that almost right off - a voice I had HEARD, but knew that was the end of it.  It wasn't a familiar "actor" I was hearing, but a voice-over.  I let it percolate as I brushed my teeth, coming in and out of the room, and once I was getting dressed for work I knew it wasn't just voice promotions or narration, but cartoon work.  And yet - not character work, not per se.  This wasn't Mickey Mouse talking to  me.  It was the voice, in a cartoon, that comments upon action otherwise scripted and drawn as pantomime comedy.  It was the very particular voice of the man who had explained to me what was up onscreen in enough cartoons to stick in my head, and I sensed it wasn't Looney Toons, but couldn't put my finger on it.  Thank goodness for TCM's movie schedule and this little career summary.  As coolness goes, he couldn't have much outdone this cultural contribution.

When I got into my car to go to work, the necessity to appear as if I am not entirely ignorant generally prompts me to listen to NPR rather than music in the morning, and I was rewarded once again with a voice from my past - but not one I had heard before, this time.  Athol Fugard was a playwright during a little-known (now) period in my life, when I believed I was going to go into theater.  *Master Harold and the Boys* and Zakes Mokai were the chords through which his voice played in my life, so I knew the structure and shape of his voice without knowing its sound.  Zakes' voice was quite fine enough, and I remember it to this day - but the words and the shapes were written by Fugard.

It got me to thinking (I'm nothing if not self-absorbed) about how many people will know the shape, the structure of my voice, who may never *hear* it either.  Less and less, perhaps, as the age of information progresses - yet I have always found some charm in not "knowing" the authors of the works I love best, and suspect that the sacred-space of reading may not drive all readers into personal relationships with authors.  One may hope, anyway.

It doesn't even take the publication of the novel to create this strange, intimate remoteness either.  I think of the friends I have made online - some, over the years, have become the dearest "real" friends I have; but most are people I will never meet in life -and am struck by the realization, not that we'll never see each other in this world, but that we will never hear each other.  There is a power in a voice, which brings to immediacy people we may never meet otherwise.  I had team members at my last job - the resume phrase was "highly virtualized team" - I never met at all, but we did talk, and many of us regularly.  The number of "my kids" I never met in person was remarkable, really - and that's far from my first at-bat on vocal relationships I'll never realize face-to-face.  Back when I was the assistant to the president of the largest of four nationwide divisions, I trained the other ADMINS without ever meeting them - and still think fondly of "my guys" whom I took such care of, but who never had occasion to come to our little satellite office to visit.  I've had countless encounters and acquaintanceships which took place through work and/or strictly by phone.

The girl from a finance company who own the loan on the windows I had installed  years ago is familiar to me by name and by speaking with her "Thanks, I don't need a new loan today, but you have a good one!"  The guy who's been calling, trying to sell my boss some service or other, who keeps his follow-ups regularly enough he feels "bad" for "bothering" me "all the time" is fine by me; we're both doing what we get paid to, and he doesn't treat me like a menial, so he gets the polite treatment.  The person who once called a job I had, to report a crime relevant to my employers, who was scared ... and whose fate I will never know, but which matters to me to this day ...


I have to imagine I'm not unique in this curiously modern development; that there are more voices in all our lives than we realize from day to day.  Then one voice pops up, saying something we don't recognize, but with tones so particularly familiar we're taken back into childhood ... and another voice reveals itself, thirty years after his words spoke to us first, through others ... and a day is filled with echoes of voices, and that is a good and interesting thing.  How many people do you speak with in a day, develop lightweight rapport with, perhaps even "get to know" over time, through repeated transactions ... whom you will never meet in the way we used to think of that word signifying?

How much does it matter, if you meet them - or hear them - or never do at all?  I can say I still care about my friends on Twitter, though there are few I expect ever to know outside of the internet.  I want the best for 'em, we find encouragement together, we're cheerleaders and shoulders and wisecrackers and pals.  It may not be friendship like I have with Cute Shoes, nor engender the compassion I have for my family - but it cannot be said I'm indifferent to the fate of those I know online, either.

Are you indifferent enough not to need to comment ... ?  Or does this happen to you, too?


Edited to add:  Smart Woman is apparently the movie I was watching, with the extraordinarily familiar voice of  Mr. Edward Everett Horton.  Remarkably:  his voice did not age from 1931 to 1964 - the latter of which was the period of his career from which I came to know it ...  (Hear here.)

*Read* the Comments?

I was poking around LinkedIn earlier, and found this post on successful and unsuccessful people.  I don’t like articles like this, honestly – facile and peppy, they tend to be low on solutions but high on advice which has all the generic applicability of a bumper sticker.

Why I read it I can’t say, but – most unusually for me – I stayed tuned for the comments, which were a huge improvement on the content itself.  It’s reassuring to find people being thoughtful – and, dare I say it, even engaging each other (if real discussion isn’t easy online, at least this much is).  So the easy, if over-long, list of How to Be Simply Spiffy turned out to be thought-provoking, and it was nice to see both a bit of deconstruction and CONstructive consideration of a subject.

The real issue isn’t “success” (as it’s presumably defined here, by professional advancement/material gain etc.) but satisfaction.  And the article doesn’t address that at all, not with any honesty.