old journals

Unclutterer gives this advice about what to do with old journals. I have debated that question with myself for years (started in 6th grade keeping a journal and have done it in fits and starts for over 40 years.) I hate most of them because they show me just how shallow and non-introspective I have always been...and sometimes there are secrets that have totally screwed me when someone decided to read them.

I'm not Anais Nin, nor Virginia Woolf...nobody is going to be interested in reading them in the future. Even though I love reading diaries and memoirs of famous and not so famous people, I am getting more and more fond of the idea of burning them. Maybe I will take a day or two and do that. Every time I decide to do it, though, the librarian/archivist part of me cringes and I think of A Canticle for Leibowitz.

my new diet--courtesy rk millholand

http://somethingpositive.net/ (feb 26, 2009)

If only it would help me lose weight.....

i'm nobody-who are you?

I am in the midst of The Diary of Emily Dickinson by Jamie Fuller...a fictional diary based on the letters and poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson's poetry and life have been interesting to me for years...her poetry is stark, lean. It's not ornate, but it has delicate designs carved into it, like a piece of silver jewelry.

I'm also a fan of the diary and memoir form of storytelling. I've kept a journal off and on for most of my life, but it wouldn't be much use to anyone trying to write a biography because I only record the mundane, lists and what's going on around me that causes me to be crazy. I am afraid of being clear about what I am feeling to the point that I literally can't tell a blank page what I am feeling. It's hidden from me.

Also, I'm not Emily Dickinson, nor Virginia Woolf, nor any of the other women diarists I have read or heard of. I feel silly saying the cirrus whisp across the sky like lace trimming an Alice blue gown. (are the white whispy clouds cirrus?) When Emily says it, it sounds like a hymn. When I say it, I sound pretentious and like a pseudo-intellectual...

Work beckons...

guess the google

http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google/

a small string (possibly meta)

Someone, I don't know who now, mentioned that Fred Pohl had a blog. I immediate jumped to it and then immediately requested The Last Theorem, which is collaboration with Sir Arthur Clarke. Last night he posted about traveling in the South Seas and a near miss with the Heinleins and I adore any stories about the Heinleins. He mentioned his memoir The Way the Future Was, so I bought it from Amazon because I couldn't ILL it. If I could only remember who first mentioned it I would have a loop instead of a string...

...I do this all the time. There are string fragments floating around in my brain and sometimes I can weave them and sometimes I can't. I ran across this book:

Words in air : the complete correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell at one of the local bookstores and promptly emailed Barnstead...he had the book already because another friend of ours had sent it to him. He is a fan of Bishop's, and the reason I bought her book One Art.

I know that making connections like is isn't really remarkable in any way, shape or form...but the process in my brain fascinates me.

(Now I am reading Camille Paglia because of something vague that happened last semester....but don't ask me what.)

virtual zen retreat

Mary Jaksch of GoodLife Zen is offering a Virtual Retreat and I have signed up. Not exactly sure what a virtual retreat does, but I am preparing for it by checking out her blog (I discovered her because she did a guest post on Leo's blog.)

Mary gives a list of 5 things that one can do to "finding islands of ease" and that is what I need. She recommends silence (hard to achieve...there is noise everywhere); mindfulness (not multitasking); walking (it hurts); meditation (not possible when no one leaves me alone) and retreats (time).

I must not want to achieve peace, because I whine so much about the cost. I want to achieve peace, because I will die otherwise...maybe not literally, but may be. I hurt so much, even after PT, that I feel like one big bruise...but it is so easy to blow off exercise. I think Jo March talked about being in the Slough of Despond, like the pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress. I have to pick myself up and pull myself together and continue on the path (Yes, I can) to borrow a phrase.

"Mindfulness means being present with a clear mind, and an open heart.

Mindfulness means bringing full, soft attention to the task at hand."

25 things

facebook, livejournal and blog...so I only have to do it once.

25 Random Things

I've been tagged more than once, and I wasn't going to do this because I usually don't do memes, but I read an article in Salon by Robert Lanham called The Random Beauty of 25 Things and decided what the hell.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/02/07/25_random/?source=newsletter

25 random things about me

1. I've always wanted to be a cross between Jo March and Scarlett O'Hara, but I've never been as cool as either one.

2. I've kept a journal off and on since the 1960's (6^th grade) but I have trouble being honest with myself in it.

3. I've been wide awake unconscious more than once.

4. The first time I was wide awake unconscious was in grade school. I fell out of a mulberry tree while I was playing Superman and Lois Lane with the kid next door.

5. I still miss my grandpa, even though he's been dead since 1972.

6. I lost my virginity at the age of 16 on my grandmother's living room floor.

7. I am easily hypnotized.

8. I weigh almost 100 pounds more than I did when I graduated high school.

9. It is very hard for me to give up on a person; it is very hard for me to maintain a relationship.

10. I was very bad at being a lesbian, so I gave up.

11. I love shiny rocks and I have a marble egg that I have carried around since high school.

12. I've never been pregnant, nor have I ever wanted to be.

13. I was in both my junior and senior high school plays and I have a minor in theater arts.

14. I was once a sports reporter

15. When I was in junior high I used to go to the railroad trestle near our house and sit in the middle of it (there was only 1 train, at 6am, so it wasn't dangerous)

16. I never missed a basketball game (and only 1 football game) my last 2 years of high school.

17. Even though I'm not close to my siblings, I would do anything for them if they needed me.

18. I once got stranded for 2 days in Toronto.

19. I have a pink kitchen

20. People are very important to me, but I prefer being alone.

21. When I first moved to Champaign I had cats named Patience and Sarah after the lesbians in the book.

22. My birthday is the day the Alamo fell.

23. I was named for a nurse (I have no idea who she is or where she is)

24. I once planned on being a missionary, but I am very bad at proselytizing

25. I once got caught shelving books topless in Mumford hall

...but i'm not a gamer

Smile Politely, a local online magazine for C-U and the surrounding area, has a lovely article on Winter War which is one of the longest running gaming conventions in the country. Prominently quoted in the article is my daughter who, with her husband, owns Armored Gopher which is one of the two major game stores in town.

It's great to see the publicity, and it's nice to see the Gopher being advertised...and it's amazing that Winter War is still going strong. When I met my senior husband (in 1984) he explained to me what "gaming" means and just how important it is to him. It was okay that I wasn't interested, as long as I was willing to arrange my life so it didn't interfere. In fact, when we went to the courthouse to get married (in 1987) we got married on Thursday, so it wouldn't interfere with Wednesday or Saturday gaming.

I played occasionally. I was in a Twilight 2000 campaign with him and the boys (he has 3 children, and they are all gamers), and I played Traveller:TNE at Bear Productions with him and some of the gang. Played in a couple of different Vampire: the Masquerade campaigns...D&D (3, 3.5 and 4), Gamma World for D20...but I have always sworn I wasn't a gamer. It was okay for everyone else, but I wasn't going to be one of those people who didn't have a life.

Can't really say that any more...I play in 1 game per week on a regular basis on alternate Sundays...that probably wouldn't be enough to make me a gamer...neither would buying dice (they're pretty), but driving 3 hours 1 way in the snow...I think that makes me a gamer.

I'm not going to Winter War, though. I am going to rescue my granddaughter and take her to see Coraline. Even though she is the same age her mother was when SHE started gaming, Ria is just not that into geek boys yet.

strawman

I try very hard to say exactly what I mean. I’d appreciate it if you’d bear that in mind and not try to “interpret” my posts to fit your own preconceived notions if I’m posting in a serious thread. Remember: If you throw a strawman into a heated debate, flames are likely to be the result.

— Speaker-to-Minerals, AKA Carl Lydick

because i forgot his birthday (jan 10, 1956)

how to make a blog Web 2.0 Things

See http://ilw2.blogspot.com for more information.

Robert Slater is teaching the first 2.0 session, "how to make blog." There is a simple user interface for blogger to create posts in your blog but you can use html as well. If you copy a list, for example, from Word you get a bunch of bad code. Today we are using blogger.

Pick a good title for your blog. Make sure the URL is easy to remember. Make sure the title is meaningful and compelling.

It is possible to use Word 2007 but you have to create the doc in the new version of Word .docx. If you compose in word you will get a lot of html junk, lose formatting and the content won't be accessible. Could break the blog. It is easier to compose in blogger.

it is possible to embed image or video in a blog using edit html. If you insert /embed picture or video you won't see it in the post, you need to use preview.????

It is possible to edit posts in blogger as long as you are logged in to blogger. you can unpublish a post by going back and saving the already published post in draft form. There is no easy way to recover a deleted post (it just can't happen most of the time)

new models: from web comics to libraries

if: future of the book made note of jeph jacques' description and defense of the web comic business model in his Live Journal and provides a link. If you don't read jeph, I highly recommend his web comic Questionable Content. It revolves around the lives of a group of post college age kids in a college town...nothing like "Friends" at all.

If you read and understand the web comic model and the other new business models that are more and more successful as traditional models go down the tubes, and if you accept that it is okay to do things differently, as long as you get the results you want, then maybe you (whoever you may be) will understand that new service models for libraries actually might be a good thing.

I am going to crosspost this in Creative Zen, which is actually my library blog, and use it as an example in Illinois Library Web 2.0 which starts tomorrow and which is our version of 23 Things.