"Only A Shadow of My Former Blahg..."

Caen-Normandie Mémorial Musée

So, somewhere along about the end of December 2011, as New Year's Eve was drawing nigh, it just so happened that when I attempted to comment at a number of blogs that I still manage to keep up with intermittently, even though I was properly logged into both the Gmail address that corresponds to the blahg "Spit and Baling Wire" and the blahg itself, as well as when I attempted to respond to comments that had been left for me at "S&BW," I was prompted by the Blogger Comment Section gawds to "choose a profile"--WTF!--which I did, cooperatively, and redundantly, I thought.

Nevertheless, my comments did not upload and display in the comment section of the blogs of others, nor in my own, as responses to comments I had received in my last two posts... Frankly, at that time, and now, I just don't have the wherewithal to investigate why that anomaly has transpired. In addition to being unable to comment, I am also unable to "edit" my posts from the post itself using the little pencil icon prominently, no longer, displayed at the bottom right of my completed and published posts. Historically, when "viewing" my blog(s) I have been able to see my email address posted on the top right in the "nav bar" area, but, for the time being, I can no longer even see that.

Anyway, the upshot of all that mysterious and annoying crap is that for the first time in almost 3 years, through innumerable permutations of my blahg, I have no idea what's up and cannot do anything about it for the moment since I also suffered through the "white screen of death" with my trusty black MacBook back in mid-December and I need to leave the house shortly for a rather extended period. Thus, everything is back up in the air and I have no idea where the pieces will be landing when they ultimately do fall back to earth. I'll be out here gimping along, as usual, come to think of it, and I'll be checking up on you now and then, but if you don't hear from me for awhile it won't be because I didn't try...


The Shadow of Your Smile
Written by P F Webster & Johnny Mandel
performed by Marie Villion

The shadow of your smile
When you are gone
Will color all my dreams
And light the dawn
Look into my eyes, my love, and see
All the lovely things you are to me
A wistful little star
Was far too high
A teardrop kissed your lips and so did I
Now when I remember spring
All the joy that love can bring
I will be remembering
The shadow of your smile
Now when I remember spring
All the love that joy can bring
I will be remembering
The shadow of your smile...

"Happy New Year's Eve 2011"

where there's a puzzle, there's a way...

I intended to post about "The Year of Living Aimlessly" tonight but that was before I stayed up until 3:45am this morning--having begun at around 5pm yesterday--working on a piece of the genealogical jigsaw puzzle that I started just about this time last year.

...ALONE

My Frencher Half had taken to the road toward points north of the Middle of Nowhere, France, on Dec 26th for a week, which gave me the opportunity to singlemindedly devote myself to my ongoing family tree project. The first 4 days of work were long and routine, however, yesterday in the late afternoon I followed a hunch, consulting Ancestry.com and Find A Grave, simultaneously, and I finally found out where my mother's father's father, who died in 1903 shortly after his two sons' birth, was buried in Tennessee.

I had nothing on which to go but my paternal great-grandfather's name, William Thomas Wright, which is listed on my grandfather's death certificate. However, I had a potential ace up my sleeve--my maternal grandfather's middle name, Perrien, is exceedingly rare in this galaxy. Consequently, using Find A Grave's database sorted by country, state, and county, I followed a hunch and entered the name of the county in which it was thought, and never known for sure, that my grandfather was born in Tennessee and...

Bingo! I found a William T Wright with the correct approximate birth and death dates whose mother was listed as being Sarah Adeline Duke. I was sure that she could not have been his mother, but rather his stepmother, because of his date of birth relative to those of her other sons. Her children's birth dates quickly turned out not to matter in the least when I read that her husband's name was Perin Wright.

If your eyes have started to glaze over, fear not. I have no intention of going on and on with this. What I want to note for the record though is that it took me the entry of 8,500+/- individual names, 16,000+ cited record links, the uploading of 500+ photos to that family tree, and a year's--2011, to be exact--grindingly tedious keyboarding for up to 10 hours a day 4-5 days a week to find the traces of those human beings.

No one could have paid me to do that work. It was a labor of love and this morning at almost 4am when I laid myself down to sleep, Chuck Yeager, as channeled by Sam Shepard, had nothin' on me.


Bursting through to Mach 2...

Happy New Year's Eve y'all. I'll see you on the other side...



My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)
written by Peggy Lee
covered by Regina Spektor

My dear acquaintance,
it's so good to know you
For the strength of your hand
That is loving and giving
And a happy new year
With love overflowing
With joy in our hearts
For the blessed new year

Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

All of those who are hither and yonder
With love in our hearts
We grow fonder and fonder
Hail to those who we hold so dear
And hail to those who are gathered here

And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, young, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year
Happy New Year

"All In A Night's Scrolling..."

NOTE: I have not been blahging, as anyone who was interested could see. I have been holding my peace. However, I have been reading and endeavoring to purchase material to read on my Kindle. Which explains the written utterances below. Please forgive the herky jerky nature of the actual posting. I prepared the post, published it, and ran into what appeared to be formatting problems to which I preferred not to subject any innocent reader. As it turned out, a couple of people--The Stickup Artist and my amazing cousin Sara--saw the post in one of its crappy effortful incarnations. So, I'm just going to go ahead and post it, warts and all... I am also going to try to get Sara's comment to upload properly. If it won't, I'll do a workaround.

I know. I shouldn't have even bothered. But, there are limits and I try to offer a considered alternative if my preferences are not being met...

1.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

I have been a satisfied and delighted owner of Kindle since Feb/March 2010 and have about 180 ebooks in my Kindle library. I also recently purchased a Kindle for my French husband and began filling it up with books.

I use my Kindle when I travel, which is a lot of the time, and enjoy having the opportunity to scroll through your inventory in exactly the same way that I would stroll through a browsing library when it was more feasible. I can look at titles that catch my interest and curiosity, I can read the summaries of the books, I can read reader reviews, I can build a wish list, I can think about books that I will ultimately buy for others in paper via Amazon and have delivered. So far, it has been a win/win experience.

However, beginning last night as I spent an entire Kindle battery doing just what I've described above, I found, for the very first time, that an inordinate number of the titles/covers that I was encountering were tits 'n' ass--more ass, if you ask me--if not downright pornographic. Although, under the circumstances--the anonymous nature of what is actually being read on any Kindle--I should not be surprised, or, rather, I should have expected that it would ultimately come to this. Nevertheless, I was annoyed at having to wade through any number of tacky titles/covers in order to find a memoir of value, as defined by me.

Having no desire to resort to polemics, I would like for you to tell me how I can adjust my Kindle to avoid being exposed to those titles. It already takes enough real time to wade through the good work that is available and waiting for G-strings-up-the-buttcracks-of-headless-women book covers to upload is a huge waste of my time and energy.

I'll be waiting here beside my laptop for word from your representative at his/her earliest convenience. I'm sure that this is a question that has already gotten old for those of you in the trenches of customer representation. I'm not on The Right. I'm not a Christian. I'm not even particularly prudish. I've exchanged my share of epithelial cells with strangers and husbands (my own) of marriages of varying lengths, with greater or lesser discrimination--much to my own chagrin--but speaking of f'ing, "How f'ing tedious it was to scroll through all that trying to find, entirely by happy accident "The Hare with the Amber Eyes."

Very best regards and good luck weathering the sh*tstorm that is no doubt coming your way when Bill O'Reilly and Sarah hear about this. Ha! Ha! Ha! May I suggest that you all have a meeting to start figuring out how you are going to structure your inner-workings (no pun intended) to allow for a serious "search list" adjustment.

I'm all in favor of freedom of the virtual squiggles, but I don't want to have to wade through the porn section of Kindle anymore than I want to spend my time in an X-rated bookstore's aisles. Maybe you should offer Samuel R. Delaney's "Hogg" or Hardy Peters's (Carolyn See's father, George Newton Bowlin Laws), for ""seventy-three cheery volumes" of pornography, aimed at the paperback-reading crowd" for greater literary interest. In any event, be scrupulously honest, make a separate category called Soft- & Hard- (no pun intended) Pornography where those who are looking for it can find it without making me scroll through it on my way to "The Good Daughter," "The Memory Palace," or "Reading Lolita in Tehran..."

Sincerely,

Hello,

Thanks for writing about your experience with your new kindle.
 
I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy with some of the items that were 
recommended to you on your Kindle. Your Kindle recommendations are 
based on the items you've purchased, items you've told us you own, 
items you viewed while browsing our site, items you've liked, and 
items you've rated. 

(blah, blah, blah...)

2.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

The email below, which I sent you to give you feedback on the inefficacy
of bombarding customers with porn items in the category of biography/memoir
has nothing to do with recommendations.  My recommendations in Amazon in my
account are perfect. The problem is the ubiquity of porn titles in places
they do not belong.  They belong in a CATEGORY called PORN or, if you must
use a euphemism,"EROTICA."  They do not belong in MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY.
Thus, in this case, your response was not at all helpful, "F" for effort.

Thank you very much,

Hello,
 
I've reviewed our previous correspondence with you, and I'm sorry
about the misunderstanding.
 
When you use our search engine to look for items, our system attempts to
find the products you're most likely to be looking for based on the words you entered.
Our search methods go beyond simple keyword matching and may also be using information
not visible on the search results page,including attributes provided by the publisher
or manufacturer. 
 
However, I've forwarded this issue to our concerned department regarding
assigning the category and they will work on it. We'll consider your feedback
as we plan further improvements.
 
Customer feedback like yours really helps us continue to improve our store
and provide better service to our customers.
Thanks for taking time to offer us your thoughts.
 
We hope to see you again soon.
 
Thank you for your recent inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

3.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

I just sent you an email regarding the endless number of porn titles that appeared in the category listing on memoir/biography that I chose to scroll last night. I was not aware that that list had anything to do with "recommendations"--which is what I received in response to my feedback on the problem--a barge of canned info on how "recommendations" are provided. I do not, and have not, scrolled any porn at your site. I have purchased psych, lit, travel, memoir, history, in abundance, however. Consequently, I do not see how your response to my email is going to allow me to totally avoid your vast new sea of suggestions for soft- and/or hard-porn.

Please advise.

Also, please create an honest title in your categories "Pornography, Soft- &/or Hard-" and keep it out of scrolling unless deliberately demanded. Your system obviously doesn't know how to "fine tune" its recommendations. Which means you have incompetent programmers, among other things.

Thank you very much,

Hello,

Thanks for writing about your experience with your new kindle.

I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy with some of the items that were
recommended to you on your Kindle. Your Kindle recommendations are
based on the items you've purchased, items you've told us you own,
items you viewed while browsing our site, items you’ve liked, and items
you've rated.

If you believe that you were recommended inappropriate content
unrelated to products or content you’ve purchased, rated or browsed
on Amazon, please write back and we’ll be happy to follow up on your specific issue.

Customer feedback like yours is always important to us as we continue to determine ways
to improve the shopping experience for everyone who visits our website or uses their
Kindle to purchase new content. I'll be sure to pass your message along to the Kindle
Team.  The Kindle Team will carefully review your comments and suggestions.

Thanks for using Kindle.

4.
Dear Friends at Amazon/Kindle,

For the 4th time, let me say, I am not
complaining about "recommendations."
At Amazon in my account on my laptop,
all my "recommendations" are perfect.
My Kindle has never been touched by another person.
The CATEGORIES that you have listed in the KINDLE STORE
do not include PORNOGRAPHY, SOFT- &/or HARD-.
You should install such categories and
keep PORNOGRAPHY out of all other areas
including MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY; HISTORY; ART; LITERATURE; etc.
That is my message for you. I do not want to scroll
through endless listings of porn while looking for
good biography.

That is not a "recommendation" problem.
That is an inventory listing problem...
Which, as I mentioned, is ultimately a programming problem.
You have crappy programming associated with your inventory display.
Fix it and you will save your customers the trouble of sorting
fatherhood/parenting books from your new incest/anal sex-oriented
works with titles like "Daddy's This" and "Daddy's That".

Thank you very much,

"Happy Birthday, mon cher..."

All grown up with lots of places to go...

Every year, just about this time, at my house we start hedging into birthday territory. If it's your birthday and you have a low tolerance for celebrating it, you'd better keep it a secret from me because I'm an equal-opportunity celebrator of birthdays, one and all.

The class of 1940...

My Frencher Half, on the other hand, born on 10 November in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, arrived shortly before the Paris labor strikes of 1936, in which his working-class, slate-roofing-installer father participated fully--which was going to mean frequent periods of interrupted employment and an economically-austere beginning for the nouveau-né.

Not to mention being right on time for the German Army's invasion of France and the occupation of Paris from 14 June 1940 to 25 August 1944, which was going to mean that his father would be way out in the woods for an extended period of his life, before his family was safely reunited with a roof over its head and no one trying to ship his father off to a work camp in Germany. All of which was going to put a serious crimp in whatever sort of celebrating might have been done under other, less dire, circumstances leaving my Frencher Half and his family with a tradition of being on the Birthday Party Austerity Plan forever after.

The serious little girl with the long dark curls
still has a protective hand on his shoulder...

What are you doing the rest of your life?
North and South and East and West of your life?
I have only one request of your life
That you spend it all with me

a cold bottle of Vouvray Brut and
a finger or two of crème de Cassis
can make you forget pricey champagne
faster than you can scrawl "Dear John,..."

"A book is a present you can open again and again..."

With a birthday in the offing, and at the risk encountering a look of total incomprehension or, worse, a cranky mini-rant along the lines of how many physical books we already own that remain, indeed, yet unread on our many wooden bookshelves, I chose to follow my impulse to gift my soon-to-be 75 year-old husband with a copy of Graham Robb's, newly translated from British English to French, history of France, "The Discovery of France: A Geographical History from the Revolution to WWI," AKA "Une histoire buissionnière de la France." However, never one to stop while she's ahead at the obvious, and always interested in getting the most expansive experience for my gift-giving buck, I decided to couch the book itself in context of the first commercially available AmazonKindle in France.

Consequently, one week ago today, the very day that I received this week's Télérama with the first full-page Amazon.fr Kindle ad on the inside-cover, I logged onto Amazon.fr and ordered the ebook, a cover/case with car-charger (creative bundling), and a 2-year breakage/theft insurance plan. And then, once the ordering transaction was complete and the Kindle paid for, I had a severe attack of buyer's remorse, frequently experienced chez moi as a surge of adrenaline, burning stabby pains in my body, and a voiceover shrieking assertions such as "That's the stupidest gift you ever constructed! It's all wrong! He's going to make a pained fake smile upon receiving it and not really like it at all." accompanied, naturally, by images of my sweet husband trying to read for relaxation, dozing off as he is wont to do when reading, and the new Kindle slipping from his grasp onto the floor, as often do his livres de poche, followed by a crunchy breaky sound. That was fun...

I want to see your face in every kind of light
In fields of dawn and forests of the night
And when you stand before the candles on a cake
Let me be the one to hear the silent wish you make

The day the doorbell rang signaling the arrival of the egift by courier, I was alone in the house and able to reach the front door downstairs before the deliveryman had made a complete getaway. Actually, I didn't see him when I opened the door, he saw me, although he was in the process of walking down the street, away from the house--it takes time to get to the front door from my perch up here in front of my laptop--and he came back with a smile and handed over the most recent worst mistake I was convinced I had ever made.

I had already told my husband earlier in the week that if the door rang he wasn't to answer it, I would answer it. But, as luck would have it, he was not even near the house. He was out and about at the Saturday public market which meant that I had plenty of time to open the shipping packaging, check out the merchandise, plug in the Frencher Kindle, start its battery charging, and pre-fill the little sucker with enticing reads, above and beyond the keystone work by Graham Robb. Upon investigation I found out that the Frencher Kindle came with free dictionaries in 5 languages already uploaded--French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and German.

I also discovered that it was smaller than the U.S. basic Kindle that I have been walking around with for almost 2 years. It is actually the size of a normal paperback pocketbook. What a surprise! What wasn't a surprise, compared to the offerings on Amazon.com, was the current dearth of books available in French for the FK. I already knew how little there was, but I don't for one minute believe that the situation will remain that way. It was actually the presence of Graham Robb's book in French via Kindle, simultaneously with its French publication in paperback, that convinced me to go ahead with my idea for the gift and gives me hope that the flood gates will open and waves of wonderful and varied material will become available soon. For the moment I am limiting myself to writing about a birthday gift for my Frencher Half, later I hope to write more about the seismic shifting that the whole matter of ereaders is causing in France, on general principle...

any excuse for a party will do...

By Sunday morning "The Gift" was ready for giving, never mind that the FH's birthday wasn't until the following Thursday--tomorrow. So, I asked him if he had anything against celebrating his birthday a little bit early since, in fact, we already had a movie, "Habemus Papam," planned for later the same day. (I almost always went to the movies to celebrate my birthdays.) All we needed was some semblance of a birthday cake, two champagne flutes, some kir royalesque libation, some music on the boombox, and an assortment of pastries from Mme Blasquez's patisserie across the way. She's open on Sundays, so I just put my London Foggy raincoat on over my sleeping T-shirt and beat a path to her shop before everything on display was sold off. Next time you need an early birthday party forced on you give me a holler...

I've been bangin' my glass up against his for more than
a quarter of a century and it hasn't broken yet...

Fortune smiled on me at the insta-party and my Frencher Half's eyes sparkled as he spied the contents of the little carrier that I had invented for his Frencher Kindle--until the real thing comes along. He didn't offer me a resigned expression of thanks for something that he really didn't want. Instead, he caressed his little ebook in wonder and watched with a certain respect and attention as I gave him a quick tour of its potential. And he was very pleased to find Graham Robb's history of France preloaded and ready for him to start reading at his earliest whim. Generous soul that he is, he was particularly happy when I told him that I had downloaded a Norwegian book, in English, entitled "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder that I had wanted to read for 15 years and couldn't download to my own Kindle because it is a European publication and not available to the U.S. market. Now, I'll just have to catch his FK when he turns back to a traditional delivery system for expanding his mind!

a few minutes of quiet contemplation
before the birthday movie...

"What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?"
music by Michel LeGrand
words by Alan & Marilyn Bergman

old books, new books,
my books, your books,
paper books, ebooks...

"Sometimes A Great Notion..."

Just before I left the Left Coast for central France on March 6, 2010, I forked over enough money to Amazon.com to get its representatives to rush me a Kindle via UPS. It was not an impulse buy. I had been toying with the idea for quite a while and had waited until the very last week, before taking to the friendly skies of Air Tahiti Nui, to let my fingers do the online shopping.

It was, however, a panic, buy...

Even though I had what would eventually amount to about 25-30 feet long by 6 feet high's worth of books once they were all unpacked and shelved strategically throughout our humble abode, I was, unrealistically, as it turned out, afraid of finding myself without as many books as I thought I would "need." There's probably a name for that particular fear in the DSM.

And given that I was going to be living on a modest, "fixed" income, I was also afraid that I would not be able to afford to purchase books as easily and freely in France, once I got around to having to buy them in euros. French books in France are expensive and English books in France are more expensive. And at that time I had yet to be convinced that 1) I had enough books to last a lifetime and 2) that books were a dime a dozen at French brocantes, vide greniers, and Emaus.

But that's a story for another day.


Today's story concerns an incident that occurred over breakfast recently. I was eating my toast and slurping my coffee when my husband darted from the room to grab a copy of Le Canard Enchainé, his favorite newspaper. When he came back to the table and sat back down, he said something to me along the lines of "There's a book reviewed in here that you would really like."

And then he started to read to me the following article, which I have thoughtfully posted here in its entirety for your reading pleasure, ladies and gentlemen...


Of course, he only got about 5 words out of his mouth before I chimed in with "It's about damn time! That's the book by Graham Robb that I've been telling you that all of France and her distant relative Francophilia must read!" Well, it was true.

"The Discovery of France: A Geographical History from the Revolution to World War I" was one of the very first books that I read using my Kindle, lying in my bed of an evening before going to sleep, and I haven't quit talking about it since I finished it! If you only read one book about France in your life, do yourself a favor and make it Graham Robb's book. You won't regret it. The first thing I did upon completing it was to check to see if it had been translated into French so that I could buy for my Frencher Half. Before now, it hadn't, but apparently someone in a high place has as exalted an opinion of its value as I do.

This is your lucky day. It's almost Christmas. Now you have a solid lead on the perfect gift for your Anglophone francophile friend seeking enlightenment or your French-speaking history buff. It's a win/win. And for those of you who might be bilingual and looking for a challenge, you can read both versions and beef up your French and/or English vocabulary and usage.

And the book is available via Amazon.fr in Kindle format. Holy Moholy-Nagy! What next?

Graham Robb's "Victor Hugo" in Kindle?




"Ma France"
by Jean Ferrat

De plaines en forêts de vallons en collines
Du printemps qui va naître à tes mortes saisons
De ce que j'ai vécu à ce que j'imagine
Je n'en finirai pas d'écrire ta chanson
Ma France

Au grand soleil d'été qui courbe la Provence
Des genêts de Bretagne aux bruyères d'Ardèche
Quelque chose dans l'air a cette transparence
Et ce goût du bonheur qui rend ma lèvre sèche
Ma France

Cet air de liberté au-delà des frontières
Aux peuples étrangers qui donnaient le vertige
Et dont vous usurpez aujourd'hui le prestige
Elle répond toujours du nom de Robespierre
Ma France

Celle du vieil Hugo tonnant de son exil
Des enfants de cinq ans travaillant dans les mines
Celle qui construisit de ses mains vos usines
Celle dont monsieur Thiers a dit qu'on la fusille
Ma France

Picasso tient le monde au bout de sa palette
Des lèvres d'Éluard s'envolent des colombes
Ils n'en finissent pas tes artistes prophètes
De dire qu'il est temps que le malheur succombe
Ma France

Leurs voix se multiplient à n'en plus faire qu'une
Celle qui paie toujours vos crimes vos erreurs
En remplissant l'histoire et ses fosses communes
Que je chante à jamais celle des travailleurs
Ma France

Celle qui ne possède en or que ses nuits blanches
Pour la lutte obstiné de ce temps quotidien
Du journal que l'on vend le matin d'un dimanche
A l'affiche qu'on colle au mur du lendemain
Ma France

Qu'elle monte des mines descende des collines
Celle qui chante en moi la belle la rebelle
Elle tient l'avenir, serré dans ses mains fines
Celle de trente-six à soixante-huit chandelles
Ma France

"I Could Tell You More But Then I'd Have To..."

"The new phonebook's here...."

"Where's Navin R.?"

"They Don't Call It Free-Association for Nothin'..."

a view from as close to the roof
as it gets around here...

August is on the verge of leaving the year's calendar and the academic one is dragging the French children back to their desks with their overly heavy backpacks. I left the window open last night and woke this morning due only to the freezy feel of the sheets upon my skin . There may yet be a few more days of warmth before winter's chill sets in in earnest but one will most likely be able to count them on one's fingers.

This morning I trudged up to the attic to toss some of those ever-to-be-saved boxes for electronic equipment down into the courtyard below for restashing in the attic of the outbuildings at the back of the house and realized, as I was launching cardboard cartons from the 3rd floor window, just how beautiful the day was shaping up to be. And just how powerful was the free-association of images and remembered snatches of song...


"Up on the Roof"
performed by Laura Nyro

words and music
by Gerry Goffin & Carole King

When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space

On the roof it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me

Let me tell you now
When I come home feelin' tired and beat
I go up where the air is fresh and sweet
I get away from the hustlin' crowds
And all that rat race noise down in the street

On the roof's the only place I know
Where you just have to wish to make it so
Oh, let's go
up on the roof

At night the stars put on a show for free
And darling, you can share it all with me

I keep on telling you
Right smack down in the middle of town
I found a paradise that's trouble proof
So if this world starts getting you down
there's room enough for two up on the roof

Up on the roof
Everything's all right
Up on the roof
Oh, come on baby
Up on the roof
Up on the roof

"There Was Something I Wanted to Tell You on December 17, 2010..."

Untitled, Eve Arnold, U.S.A, 1950
postcard purchased in Los Angeles, California

"One Life"
performed by Lisa Ekdahl

You say we have nothing in common
I wouldn't say that if I were you
All of us come in through the same door
That much, if nothing else, I know is true

All of us will very soon be leaving
We were brought here, soon we will depart
Now I don't care if someone says I'm foolish
'Cause while I'm here I'm singing from my heart

There's just one life coming from that one place
There's just one face and it's your face
There's just one life going to that one place
There's just one face and it's God's face

And it's in everyone
It's in every place
It is everywhere that one face
I can see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

I wouldn't want hurt you, I wouldn't
I wouldn't wanna to do you harm
All of us came in through the same door
Now won't you let me sleep in your arms

All of us will very soon be leaving
We were brought here, soon we will depart
Now I don't care if someone says I'm foolish
'Cause while I'm here, I'm singing from my heart

There's just one life coming from that one place
There's just one face and it's your face
There's just one life going to that one place
There's just one face and it's God's face

And it's in everyone
It's in every place
It is everywhere that one face
I can see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

There's just one race and it's the human race
There's just one face and, babe, it's your face
I can you see it shining through
Can't you see it shining through
Don't tell me that you don't
Just tell me that you do

There's just one life

"Je Veux Vivre/I Want to Live"
"Tinted Samples of the '50s"
Tinted with Brunwell's Magic Color
postcard purchased in San Francisco, California

"Shelfari is a Bald-Faced Liar!"

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."

— Stephen King (Different Seasons)

"If you don't have time to read,
you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.
Simple as that."
— Stephen King

Late last November, while rattling around in this 3-storey, circa 1760s house in small-town central France I had the idea that I would like to have a Shelfari.com widget in the sidebar of my blog.

I didn't know Shelfari from Shinola® but I had seen its virtual bookshelf embedded here and there on my travels through Blahglandia and it appealed to me at a visceral level. So, one day I clicked on someone else's pixelated library and launched myself into Shelfari where I set up an account, picked out a bookcase, uploaded it, and got to cogitating on what I was going to put on its shelves.

The principle of Shelfari is simple: one can list books--privately or publicly--that one is reading, has read, or plans to read. After that there are all sorts of other activities one can engage in such as reviewing/rating books, participating in book groups, and/or inviting other people to visit one's own book list. As is always the case in Technolandia, one can always do more than one realistically has time and attention for, if one plans to continue to buckle down and read substantively with any regularity.


Barnes & Noble "Meet the Writers"
Steve Bertrand interview
with writer, Jonathan Franzen

Without missing a beat (Shirley Brice) Heath replied: "Yes, but there's a second kind of reader. There's the social isolate---the child who from an early age felt very different from everyone around him. This is very, very difficult to uncover in an interview. People don't like to admit that they were social isolates as children. What happens is you take that sense of being different into an imaginary world. But that world, then, is a world you can't share with people around you--because it's imaginary. And so the important dialogue in your life is with the authors of the books you read. Though they aren't present, they become your community."

Simply being a "social isolate" as a child does not, however, doom you to bad breath and poor party skills as an adult. In fact, it can make you hypersocial. It's just that at some point you'll begin to feel a gnawing, almost remorseful need to be alone and do some reading---to reconnect to that community.

According to (Shirley Brice) Heath, readers of the social-isolate variety (she also calls them "resistant" readers) are much more likely to become writers than those of the modeled-habit variety. If writing was the medium of communication within the community of childhood, it makes sense that when writers grow up they continue to find writing vital to their sense of connectedness. What's perceived as the antisocial nature of "substantive" authors, whether James Joyce's exile or J. D. Salinger's reclusion, derives in large part from the social isolation that's necessary for inhabiting an imagined world.

Looking me in the eye, Heath said: "You are a socially isolated individual who desperately wants to communicate with a substantive imaginary world." I knew she was using the word "you" in its impersonal sense. Nevertheless, I felt as if she were looking straight into my soul. And the exhilaration I felt at her accidental description of me, in unpoetic polysyllables, was my confirmation of that description's truth. Simply to be recognized for what I was, simply not to be misunderstood: these had revealed themselves, suddenly, as reasons to write.

--How to Be Alone: Essays by Jonathan Franzen

I started to tell you the Shelfari book-title-disgorging story on my 58th birthday:

3 December 2010

I had not planned to blahg today.

I was hoping to be able to go down by the River Creuse and hop on one of the buses that takes people from Le Blanc to the train station in Poitiers (6 euros aller simple) or the train station in Châteauroux (2 euros aller simple). But I had so many blog friends stop by to comment on my most recent blahg posts that a post was generated in spite of my best intentions not to blahg.

Deborah at The Temptation of Words was kind enough to comment and the response that I began to make to her comment got way out of hand. Consequently, I have given it its own place here:

Deborah,

Thank you for your enthusiasm and appreciation for my book title spew! I found another one last night in my memory--Oblivion by Peter Abrahams.

Having followed through on the impulse to post that little Shelfari widget in the sidebar here has paid off in rather unexpected ways and is a perfect example of the value inherent in the admonition by Seth to "Follow your impulses!"

I would probably have been less sensitized to the act of remembering what books I had read had my mother not committed suicide. Oddly enough, the desire to record––in order to recall at a later date––those titles stems from the fact that after my mother's death I was not only furious with her for having killed herself but also for the fact that I could no longer concentrate in order to read because she had killed herself. Merde!

On the one hand, it could sound quite shallow, to be preoccupied by an inability to concentrate enough to read in the aftermath of such an event. On the other, I loved to read. I learned through reading. I taught myself through reading. I looked for answers to big questions through reading. I escaped through reading. Reading is what I did. I was a reader. I did not think of myself as a writer of more than personal journals or letters and greeting cards. I liked to speak, but one does not always have a willing audience for one's monologues. Book writers were my hero/ines.

I discovered after her death that I had taken the/my ability to concentrate totally for granted. Although I had already been alive for 38 years prior to her death, and had my share of distressing experiences in that life, I had never had an experience that made it impossible for me to concentrate enough to read books for as long as it was going to turn out to be. I realized that the ability to concentrate was not a given, but rather a capacity "on loan" that could be taken away at any time by any number of thieves.

Once I realized my ability to concentrate enough to read was gone, I was down for the count and had no idea when it might come back again. I had to wait and see. So, from March 31, 1991 until November 1993, I did not begin, and read to completion, a book. It seems hard to believe that as I count out 32 months on my fingers, but it is accurate. In fact, the first book I read after the shattering of my ability to concentrate by that .22 caliber bullet to the right temple was called Aliocha by Henri Troyat, although you will not find it sitting on Shelfari's shelves. The search for it failed. However, thanks to writing this note to you, I discovered that I had spelled the title incorrectly, and Shelfari is nothing if not literal--if you make a spelling error, you will get a "failed search" message. They should think about smartening up their search engine a little bit!

Having developed the outlook of the type of person who believes that it is the creation, institution, and maintenance, or destruction, of specific habits that determine what the experience of my most intimate life-of-the-mind, and its attendant physical appearance, is going to take, I had the idea that if I could begin, read, and finish one book, and log its title in a specific location, I could build upon that accomplishment and beat my way back into the habit of reading for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. It happened that I was taking a course in how to use Microsoft's ACCESS database software at the time, so I built an rudimentary home for my imagined future list of "Books Read." After that, I was, more or less, home free, if one does not judge too harshly my choice of reading material. One thing that Shelfari does not contain is the reading that I did in college. Unless we now add Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Satre from my Philosophy 101 course and start casting about in that general direction...

The list served me well and came to hold more than 500 titles before I fell out of the habit of entering the latest one. My confidence had grown by then and I didn't feel compelled to log every book. Time went by and I continued to go to the library and/or buy books at my favorite bookstores, used-book stores, or swap meets. We moved and the PC with the ACCESS database got boxed up for a few years. I suppose that I could be called a bibliophile. When I was packing to move to France, the easiest thing to pack was, naturally, all of our books. However, I had to be very careful to have lots of library books lying around the beater trailer or I risked feeling compelled to go out and buy more books!

Blessings and curses... If one can't concentrate to read, one doesn't have too many books piling up around one's bed or sofa. If one can't concentrate deeply when one begins to be able to concentrate again, one risks reading less demanding material. If one has experienced a devastating loss, one wants to know how other people survived similar losses. If one has always harbored an interest in the small, personal memoir, one has a ready-made reason for indulging one's curiosity...

Tuesday, as I was preparing my first blahg post in almost two months, and thinking about that old list of "Books Read" I had the impulse to go ahead and make the effort to set up the old PC that has been sitting, finally unpacked, on a shelf beside my bed since April 2010. I was afraid that I would no longer know how to set it up or retrieve the material contained therein, but I needn't have feared. It all went together without a hitch and I was excited and gratified to realize how much I had remembered on my own without the prompts from the list. I was amazed to find out how many books I had listed over about a 5 year period and also how long it had been since I actually listed anything at all in that database. There were some books that I had no memory of reading and some I genuinely wonder if I read completely, if at all. Did I ever list books that I intended to read and then not read them? I have given myself a mental "exaggeration" margin of error of about 50 books+/-. Who really knows?

What I do know is that I inadvertently stumbled upon a key memory trigger for my unique brain/mind circuitry that has allowed me to access memories of my life in areas that I normally have trouble recalling--especially memories from my adolescence. If I try to go directly to that area of recall, I run into painful feelings, usually of failure or humiliation, but if I come at the memories via the books I was reading, the rooms in which I was reading them, the towns I lived in, the houses, the people who occupied the houses with me, it all comes flooding back--the bitter and the sweet...

It was, and still is, a very good thing that I had a psychological universe of my own, anchored in books, because the blow back from a fatal gunshot wound to the head is guarandamnteed to leave a world of collateral damage in its wake. I'm happy that my younger past self had that life-line with which to drag herself back to some semblance of normalcy and with which to move into some unexpected version of the future...

So, blame this blahg post on Deborah, my inspiration for today!

That birthday post never got published, but I went on dredging my memory for titles and stopped for a few months at 1127 titles. I quit blahging with any regularity or depth because it takes time, a lot of time, and I knew that the time it was taking was time that could otherwise have been spent reading. I was also in a quandary with respect to what kind of writing I wanted to do--I can't blahg about my life in France à la Peter Mayles. It's not possible and the interview with Jonathan Franz embedded above eloquently addresses why. Thus, I am still mulling over what I can blahg about, if anything, with commitment and a modicum of intellectual and emotional satisfaction.

Nevertheless, today I can blahg about the fact that Shelfari is a bald-faced liar! I found that out entirely by accident, however.

During a Tuesday evening apéro last week with my 74 year old Frencher Half and an 84 year old uprooted Parisienne here in Boonville, France, we had occasion to discuss death, dying, dignity, and provisions for self-dispatching if ever push came to shove--inspired by the brouhaha concerning 91 year old direct-mail entrepreneuse and kevorkianette Sharlotte Hydorn. Which conversation unearthed the titles of 3 books I had forgotten that I had read--Final Exit, First You Cry, and Last Wish--all of which concern, among other things, illness and death-with-dignity.

The next day I wanted to enter those newly revealed titles in Shelfari so I logged on and was entering them when I saw something that I had never noticed before--a short sentence stating "You have no books read this year."

"Say WHAT?"

"Me? No books read this year? "

"Then what the hell have I been doing since January 1, 2011 when I was not blahging because I was reading?"

"Shelfari, you are a bald-faced liar!"

"Portrait of My Mother Reading"

by the Pliers
O'Neill's Camp, Alviso, California
circa 1972

"If You Could Read My Mind," 1970
written & performed by Gordon Lightfoot

And, for your information, Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire-Shelfari, this year I have read:

• The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
• How to Be Alone by Jonathan Franzen
• I Don't Need A Baby To Be Who I Am by Joan Brady
• Their Wildest Dreams by Peter Abrahams
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 10th Anniversary Edition by Stephen King
• How Proust Can Change Your Life by Alain de Botton
• Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
• Unwinding the Clock by Bodil Jonsson
• Télérama, the French TV Guide with class
  

Now, I realize that 9 books in 6 months might appear to be a paltry accomplishment to Shelfari, but, in my defense, it must be noted that I also:

• mounted an Ancestry.com public family tree that now contains 5,089 names--each accompanied by recorded documentation, more than 10,000 records--which translates into about 6-8 hours/5 days per week in online research and data-entry chores
• made a trip to the SoCal, USA--January 18 - March 26--to visit friends and continue completing the move to France
• made a trip to NoCal, USA to visit friends
  
• made a trip to Mérida, Yucatán from March 11 - March 22 to visit friends and successfully lug educational supplies down for the newly-minted, unfunded Yucatán State Program for Teaching English to Elementary School Children
• came home exhausted and spent a month recuperating
• translated one of the town's cafés' menues from French to English
• hosted international travelers, from within and without France, for lunch and dinner
• wrote innumerable emails to friends and family, a number of whom have never deigned to respond
• worked on both garden- and house-beautiful projects around our little outpost in la belle France
• and took a great number of photographs of the dove who is now nesting 2 new baby doves for the 2nd time since April outside one of our bedroom windows
  

So, if you find yourself the victim of Shelfari's spreading of false rumors about your reading prowess, just remember this post and take heart.

Now, I have to go find my copy of Psycho-Généalogie: Mode d'Emploi, Comment transformer son héritage psychologique? and get to reading...

"I've Been Meaning To Write To You..."

I hope you receive my postcard...

"You have a guardian angel
who keeps you safe and brings you home."
illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith
greeting card purchased in Santa Monica, California

a shiny pair of 3 year old Pliers...
Easter 1955, Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA

"I'm sure that there is an Easter basket
around here somewhere..."
Easter 1955, Chickasha, Oklahoma, USA

à propos of le printemps...

"Toi et moi"
by Jill Caplan

La vie sera western
Ou ne sera pas
On va de dizaine en dizaine
On n’y croyait pas
On est si enfants
On est si craquants

Nous, sur un air de banjo
Entre deux balles perdues
On refera le Balajo
S’il n’y en avait plus

On est si enfants
Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi
Des petites misères
Coincées entre deux guerres
Tu verras, un jour
On s’aimera d’amour
Il faut y croire
Chante avec moi!

La vie sera western
Ou ne sera pas
Il faudra nager à l’indienne
À la force des bras
Toi et moi, oh, oh
On saura nager à l’indienne
Je ne m’en fais pas

On est si enfant
Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi
Des petites misères
À l’âme chevalière
Tu vera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Toi et moi, toi et moi
Oui, on sera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Oh, toi et moi

Juste un rêve d’enfant
On est toi et moi
Des millions de toi et moi

On sera un jour
La plus belle histoire d’amour
Il faut y croire
Chante avec moi!

"Reading the Bullet Holes on the Wall..."

It would be an embarrassment––if it were not such an insult to the victims of each act of violence perpetrated by any individual in possession of sufficient fire power, in whatever form, to settle his or her grudge with whomever s/he holds responsible for whatever offense s/he feels has been committed against him or her, regardless of political affiliation or mental health status––if anything other than the free access to weapons of mass destruction is under discussion in the aftermath of the most recent mass shooting in the Land of the Free (to be gunned down by any seething-with-anger-among-other-things co-citizen) and the Home of the Brave (enough to leave home to begin with).

It is stupefying that the American public's media's memory is so short, selective, and self-serving. Not to mention disingenuous. By all means, let's not discuss "gun control." Let's discuss 2nd-rate wannabe politicians instead.

Palin Schmalin...


"Bowling for Columbine"
Michael Moore interviews Marilyn Manson

God made him do it

Depression made him do it

Marily Manson made him do it

Erotomania made him do it

Methamphetamines made him do it

Sarah Palin made him do it

The Devil made him do it

Social isolation made him do it

Jodie Foster made him do it

Road rage made him do it

Joey Buttafuoco made her do it

Television made him do it

The U.S. Government made him do it

Divorce proceedings made him do it


"I Hung My Head"
performed by Johnny Cash

November 22, 1963 Dallas, Texas
Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed John F. Kennedy

November 24, 1963 Dallas, Texas
Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald

August 1, 1966, University of Texas, Austin
Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 32 others during a shooting rampage...

April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee
James Earl Ray shot and killed the Reverend Martin Luther King

June 5, 1968, Los Angeles, California
Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy

Monday, 8 December 1980, New York City, New York
Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon with a handgun

Monday, March 30, 1981 Washington, DC
John Hinckley, Jr shot and injured Ronald Reagan, James Brady, a DC police officer, and a Secret Service agent

February 18, 1983, Seattle, Washington
Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, Wai-Chiu "Tony" Ng, and Benjamin Ng shot and killed 14 people in a gambling club

July 1984, San Ysidro, California
James Oliver Huberty shot and killed 21 people and wounded 19 others at a McDonald's restaurant in San Diego before he was shot by police

1986 - 2010 Anyplace, USA
"Going Postal"

June 18 - July 25, 1987 Los Angeles, California
extreme road-rage incidents — spate of freeway shootings in 1987
death, paralysis, maiming, and, no doubt, PTSD

February 16, 1988, Sunnyvale, California
Richard Wade Farley shot and killed 7 people, and injured 3 others at his previous place of employment

March 31, 1991 San Francisco, California
Patricia Lee "Kate" Marshall shot and killed herself with one of the two small caliber handguns found near her body

October 16, 1991, Killeen, Texas
George Jo Hennard drove his pickup to Luby's cafeteria where he shot dead 23 people and himself

April 18, 1993, Sacramento Public Library, Sacramento, California
...the gunman entered the library shortly before the the closing time of 5 P.M. He man went up to the third floor, where he shot and killed 2 people--one of whom was Thomas Perry "Tom" Ballard, librarian--with a handgun....

July 1, 1993, San Francisco, California
Gian Luigi Ferri entered a law office in San Francisco and shot dead 8 people, then himself

April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Timothy McVeigh, bombed and killed 168 people and injured 450 in the federal building in OKC

Tuesday, April 20, 1999, Columbine High School, Colombine, Colorado
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 students and 1 teacher before committing suicide. They also shot and injured 21 other students directly, and 3 people were injured while attempting to escape

Six Week Period, August - October 2002, Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia, Louisiana, & Alabama
John Allen Muhammad & Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed 11 people and wounded 6 others

January 16, 2002, Grundy, Virginia
Peter Odighizuwa shot and killed 3 people and wounded 3 others with a handgun

February 24, 2005, Tyler, Texas
David Hernandez Arroyo Sr shot and killed 2 people and wounded 4 others

March 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minnesota
Jeffery Weise, student at Red Lake high school shot and killed 5 students, 1 teacher, 1 security guard, and then himself. Before school he had shot dead 2 others––his grandfather and grandfather's companion

April 2005, Los Angeles, California
4 drivers shot and killed in random sniper attacks on LA freeway
The California Highway Patrol stopped recording the number of shootings on the roads in 2002...

May 2005 -August 2006, Phoenix, Arizona
Dale Hausner and Samuel Dieteman shot and killed 8 people and wounded 17 others

November 20, 2005, Tacoma, Washington
Dominick Sergio Maldonado shot and injured 6 people at a mall

Saturday, March 25, 2006, Seattle, Washington
Kyle Aaron Huff shot and killed 6 people and wounded 2 others at party in Seattle, before killing himself

Monday, February 12, 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah
Sulejman Talović shot and killed 5 people and wounded 4 others

Monday, April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech, Virginia
Seung-Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people and wounded many others before shooting himself

December 5, 2007, Omaha, Nebraska
Robert Hawkins opened fire with a rifle inside a mall crowded with Christmas shoppers shooting and killing 8 people and himself, 5 more people were wounded in the rampage

Tuesday, September 28, 2010, U of Texas, Austin
Colton Tooley fired a number of shots on campus before shooting himself

Saturday, January 8, 2011, Phoenix, Arizona
Jared Loughner shot and killed 6 people and wounded 14 others

...but s/he could never have done it without ammunition and a firearm...


"See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"
performed by Lou Reed