tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10818547554924441722024-03-09T09:33:03.414-08:00Imp of the DiverseComments about whatever wanders into my frame of vision. Cooking. Politics. Esperanto. Literature. Other stuff.John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.comBlogger656125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-49278621558079026542022-04-23T14:43:00.003-07:002022-04-23T16:51:52.002-07:00Tales of Shakespeare<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWf4Vrj14OoDoEtMfCD2C7QpZZ4yb00ARuxwYNnHR3VwXxv8ICm3G2dUti-33ZvNZusl_bmYj9rV8rAnR_uegKMIPJ000Ar69q2WKBbwjhC4OPhnaGZrISiuIXalR0EGJFIaiEWViFoK6nVQFhNKQaqOY2t6sf9syihHrjE737Hy-NUBPOL9CHAWDhQ/s2379/IMG_8334.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2379" data-original-width="1464" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWf4Vrj14OoDoEtMfCD2C7QpZZ4yb00ARuxwYNnHR3VwXxv8ICm3G2dUti-33ZvNZusl_bmYj9rV8rAnR_uegKMIPJ000Ar69q2WKBbwjhC4OPhnaGZrISiuIXalR0EGJFIaiEWViFoK6nVQFhNKQaqOY2t6sf9syihHrjE737Hy-NUBPOL9CHAWDhQ/s320/IMG_8334.JPG" width="197" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>First Folio (1623)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />It’s Shakespeare’s birthday (maybe) as I post this.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> Though he did die on this day in 1616.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> Tradition has it that he died on his birthday.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> In any case, to mark this, I’ve assembled a few anecdotes about my own interactions with the works of William Shakespeare.<p></p>
<p><strong>The Rehearsal</strong> (1979)</p><p>My high school drama club entered a competition in our senior year. As a performance piece we did a few scenes from <em>A Midsummer Night’s Dream,</em> specifically those involving the play-within-a-play, “Pyramus and Thisbe.” I played Nick Bottom, the weaver.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a></p>
<p>Another member of the drama club had been given the role of Flute/Thisby. He was having trouble with his lines. We met in the library after school to practice, but when he arrived, he said he was sorry and that he couldn’t practice that day. Why not? He had forgotten his book.</p>
<p>I slid mine across the table. “Use mine.”</p>
<p>“What will you use?”</p>
<p>I smiled. “I have it memorized.”</p>
<p>“You have your part memorized.”</p>
<p>“I have everything memorized. My part. Your part. Everyone’s.” And so we rehearsed. I fed him the lines and he worked on his, looking at my book when he needed to jog his memory.</p>
<p><strong>The Witch</strong> (1980)</p><p>When I was a freshman in college, I got a call from my parents. There was a field trip to see <em>Macbeth</em> at the Boston Shakespeare Company and they were one adult shy. I was 18, I was sufficient. It was just a question of needing one more legal adult to follow the rules, so I got to hang out with my friends who were a year younger than I was.</p>
<p>The program notes called the witches<a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> the “weird women.” In the post-performance Q&A the director asserted that the word “witch” never appears in the text. It certainly didn’t appear on the stage that night.</p>
<p>As we were leaving the theater, I was chatting with a couple friends, and said “wait a minute, it just hit me.” And then I started reciting the opening of Act 1, Scene 3.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap<br/>
And munched and munched and munched. “Give me,” quoth I.<br/>
“Aroint thee, witch,” the rump-fed runnion cries.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As I got to “aroint,”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> one of the actors, who was also crossing the lobby, turned, pointed at me, and said, “you’re right.” It’s easy to say something’s not in the text <em>if you cut that line.</em> </p>
<p><strong>Only Faggots Watch Shakespeare</strong> (1982)</p><p>In October 1982, I was taking a Shakespeare class. We read the standards. I forgot if there was a requirement to see a Shakespeare play, but it was certainly an option. The Boston Shakespeare Company had a production of <em>Romeo and Juliet.</em> I could get tickets for friends (and they were cheap), so I had the idea of inviting a couple friends who were dating.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> I was going to meet up with one of these two friends for lunch and it was an opportunity to bring it up to her. She stood me up.</p>
<p>I called the other friend and at my lunch at his dorm room.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> I broached the idea to him. He was receptive. The guy in the next dorm room (with whom he was friends) heard about this. His assessment was “only faggots watch Shakespeare.” Really? Odd, considering that I was inviting an opposite-sex couples to use it as an opportunity for a date.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:10" id="fnref:10" title="see footnote">[10]</a> (We had a response, but I won’t tell here.)</p>
<p><strong>In the Park</strong> (1987)</p><p>Not much to tell here. On June 20, 1987, I saw <em>Richard II</em> in Central Park. Yeah, I had to spend some time in line to get tickets. It was worth it. At one point (I think while we were waiting for tickets) an entertainer had a puppet show of <em>Richard II,</em> including Henry IV getting Richard’s severed head with “yuck that’s gross.” It was a great moment watching Shakespeare.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:11" id="fnref:11" title="see footnote">[11]</a></p>
<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigDf5Tw1BVDSl89Rm-nGE3Lxx89Y1hH9SQj9puZMD6BdsMbMlHMTu2SVJhfwOf6B66IIuzbObVzelmEPv0Vh7hKHk7ob5YerGlcXQPqpUY4RBfbkDkxbr8XkN2B9FJ005KhgtKGHo83VVznroH4t4xfH_KooEeLyQYyLw6bGU2W8nbsDF-yUFa0pcJXQ/s3008/PICT0018_3.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2000" data-original-width="3008" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigDf5Tw1BVDSl89Rm-nGE3Lxx89Y1hH9SQj9puZMD6BdsMbMlHMTu2SVJhfwOf6B66IIuzbObVzelmEPv0Vh7hKHk7ob5YerGlcXQPqpUY4RBfbkDkxbr8XkN2B9FJ005KhgtKGHo83VVznroH4t4xfH_KooEeLyQYyLw6bGU2W8nbsDF-yUFa0pcJXQ/w320-h214/PICT0018_3.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Fellows’ Garden, Merton College.<br />The whole anecdote is an excuse to use this pic.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><strong>Liked Much</strong> (2006)<p></p><p><br />In August 2006, I saw a production of <em>As You Like It</em> produced in the Fellows’ Garden of Merton College, Oxford. I think that’s one of those moments when it just doesn’t matter if the production is good not. And it was good.</p>
<p><strong>For the People in the Pit</strong> (2007)</p><p>We were at services at our synagogue and the rabbi in his sermon noted that Shakespeare put in dirty jokes “for the people in the pit.” This imposes later feeling of propriety on a period where it just wasn’t the case. When there was an opportunity for discussion, I brought up the scene in <em>Henry V</em> in which the dirty jokes require a knowledge of French (Act 3, scene 4). Were we expecting that the people in the pit were bilingual?</p>
<p>I didn’t give any examples then, but the scene ends with Katherine ends the scene amazed that “les dames d’honneur” use words like “foot” and “gown,” which sound like the French “foutre” (ejaculate) and “con” (female genitals, but also used as American English speakers use “asshole.”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:12" id="fnref:12" title="see footnote">[12]</a>)</p>
<p>Later, I brought up to the rabbi that the Elizabethans were more fond of course humor than later eras. I brought up the story from John Aubrey’s <em>Brief Lives,</em> in which the Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford<a class="footnote" href="#fn:13" id="fnref:13" title="see footnote">[13]</a> bowed before the queen and broke wind. He left the court for seven years. When he returned, Queen Elizabeth I said, “My lord, I had forgot the fart.”</p>
<p>Remember this line whenever there’s an assumption that Queen Elizabeth I was some priggish figure of antique sensibilities. Far more inured to body issues than we are. Probably far more likely to see naked people.</p>
<p><strong>Everyone Dies</strong> (2016)</p><p>I understand that many people do not like spoilers, so if you do not want to have the ending of <em>Hamlet</em> (ca. 1604) spoiled, you may want to leave off at this point. Over the years, I have seen <em>Hamlet</em> on the stage or screen at least six times<a class="footnote" href="#fn:14" id="fnref:14" title="see footnote">[14]</a>. I’ve also read the play .<a class="footnote" href="#fn:15" id="fnref:15" title="see footnote">[15]</a> It was assigned in high school English, and I took I Shakespeare class in college. I know this play.</p>
<p>The most recent time I saw <em>Hamlet</em> was in 2016. When we hit intermission, I turned to my husband and quietly said, “I don’t want this to be a spoiler, but I this is an an ‘everyone dies story.’”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:16" id="fnref:16" title="see footnote">[16]</a></p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>We don’t have a specific date for Shakespeare’s birth. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>We prioritize birthdays over deathdays, but in the past, in certain contexts (saints’ days, for example), deathdays were more important. The Old English corpus has two works that include “deaðdæg,” but only one has “briddæg.” <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>Awful way to spend a birthday. There probably wasn’t cake either. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>And so I had the role of Pyramus as well. When I auditioned, I wasn’t certain if I wanted to go for Bottom or Flute, so I did both simultaneously, doing the wall scene all by myself. The teacher who ran the drama club said he would never let a student do that again, but that it had won me the role of Bottom. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>Yeah, that’s the word. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>Everyone has that memorized, right? Or is it just me? <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>“Aroint” is an obsolete word for “begone,” with two uses in Shakespeare. The other is in <em>King Lear.</em> My dictionary doesn’t even list it. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>Yeah, I’d be a third wheel, but it was a better prospect than sitting in the theater alone. My journal notes that I had made my early trips to the gay student group and ran into one of my Shakespeare classmates there. Nope, the two of us going together was not an option. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>My journal notes that I was apologetic about this impromptu get-together and promised to not take up too much of his time, but I needed somewhere I could eat lunch. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:10">
<p>The guy whose dorm room was next to my friend’s was also not an option as a seat companion. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:10" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:11">
<p>Now if only the local Shakespeare company would do <em>Richard II.</em> Their dramaturge would prefer <em>Richard III,</em> but she hasn’t got her wish either. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:11" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:12">
<p>“Quel con” is “what an asshole,” unless you’re a speaker of Commonwealth English, in which case it’s “what a [proscribed word].” The literal meaning of “vagina” is, according one of my dictionaries, now obsolete. By the way “con” is a masculine noun. “Bite” (also “bitte,” but Larousse prefers the one-t spelling) is a feminine noun; it means “prick” or “cock,” but only in the literal meaning of “penis” (so not like “prick” or “schmuck”). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:12" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:13">
<p>Let me take this moment to address the “Authorship Question,” the pernicious conspiracy theory that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the Shakespeare plays. Edward de Vere certainly didn’t. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:13" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:14">
<p>Maybe more. At least three filmed productions. At least four filmed productions. Maybe as many times on the stage. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:14" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:15">
<p>I’ve read all of Shakespeare’s plays (this should not be a surprise), though I haven’t got to some of the anonymous plays that more recently have determined to be at least partially by Shakespeare. The thirty-eight canonical plays. But not <em>Sir Thomas More</em> or <em>Edward III,</em> though I have read <em>Edmund Ironside.</em> <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:15" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:16">
<p>This is a <em>Doctor Who</em> reference, since there are a few stories in which the Doctor arrives and tries to avert an outcome in which everyone dies. Then everyone dies. Good examples of these from the classic series would be “The Pyramids of Mars,” “The Horror of Fang Rock,” and “Resurrection of the Daleks.” Those are all “everyone but the Doctor and the Doctor’s companions.” Conversely, the death toll in “City of Death” is minimal, with only two characters dying. In the revived series, the counter example is “The Doctor Dances,” in which the Doctor says, “Just this once, everybody lives!” (But we’ve gone off Shakespeare, haven’t we?) <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:16" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-48827620526260378582022-03-04T23:06:00.007-08:002022-03-05T10:18:01.842-08:00Yeah, I'll Watch That Again (and Again…)<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVS-GYkMdn8Y5qs8GBHxuR7t-MsW68Y8zp7C4ifaFhdqvJZxCygl_dtn37A9J7pvOcPydXh-WXfvEZv4lXlviFJizBd-QPB_qlQ258ApG4CQlyXtot7Wc4iAg9wn2hUImHE_KNmR6y4pYy-a8GxNgqtUY8fDaSxdMNeBLYBcKH_OZK5l5O4_T1_sDw3g=s1200" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="1200" height="109" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhVS-GYkMdn8Y5qs8GBHxuR7t-MsW68Y8zp7C4ifaFhdqvJZxCygl_dtn37A9J7pvOcPydXh-WXfvEZv4lXlviFJizBd-QPB_qlQ258ApG4CQlyXtot7Wc4iAg9wn2hUImHE_KNmR6y4pYy-a8GxNgqtUY8fDaSxdMNeBLYBcKH_OZK5l5O4_T1_sDw3g=w200-h109" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Some things just don’t fit<br />in a tweet.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Today I saw a tweet that said:<p></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Name a film you can watch over and over and over again.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>A friend had answered it and I thought about the films that answered the (implicit) question for me.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a></p>
<p>I immediately came up with fifteen films, though seven of them were films by the Marx Brothers (how I love those movies). I thought I was done. I thought wrong.</p>
<p>Then another hit me. A while later, two more, then another. Then nine more.</p>
<p>At that point I decided to stop making an ever-growing list on Twitter and instead concluded that since I have a blog, I ought to use it. I decided to omit short films from the list. There are certainly shorts that I have seen many times,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> but I didn’t want to clutter up the list with a mix of feature-length films and shorts (so no short films were listed on Twitter).</p>
<p><strong>Feature-Length Films I Have Seen More than Three Times</strong><br />
[Posted 4 March 2022, revised 5 March 2022]</p>
<p>The Addams Family<br />
Animal Crackers<br />
Auntie Mame<br />
Barbarella<br />
Beetlejuice<br />
Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey<br />
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure<br />
The Bride of Frankenstein<br />
Casablanca<br />
The Coconuts<br />
A Day at the Races<br />
Dogma<br />
Duck Soup<br />
Frankenstein<br />
Ghostbusters<br />
Go West<br />
Help!<br />
High Society<br />
Horse Feathers<br />
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)<a href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[4]</a><br />
The Maltese Falcon (1941)<a href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[5]</a><br />
Mars Attacks<a href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[6]</a><br />
Monkey Business<br />
The Muppet Movie<br />
Monty Python and the Holy Grail<br />
Monty Python’s Life of Brian<br />
A Night at the Opera <br />
A Night in Casablanca<br />
The Nightmare Before Christmas<br />
The Producers (1967)<a href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[7]</a><br />
Repo Man<a href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[8]</a><br />
The Rocky Horror Picture Show<br />
Some Like It Hot<br />
Star Wars IV: A New Hope<br />
Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back<br />
Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi<br />
Time Bandits<br />
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?<br />
The Wizard of Oz<br />
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?<br />
The Women (1939)<a href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote" class="footnote">[9]</a><br />
Young Frankenstein<br /></p>
<p>The list started off at 30 films, grew to 34, and is now at 42. </p>
<p>And, for the hell of it…</p>
<p><strong>Short Films I Have Seen More than Three Times</strong><br />
[Posted 4 March 2022]</p>
<p>Bambi Meets Godzilla<br />
Duck Amuck<br />
Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century<br />
Duck! Rabbit! Duck!<br />
Hardware Wars<br />
Rabbit Fire<br />
Rabbit Seasoning<br />
What’s Opera Doc<br />
The Wizard of Speed and Time<br /></p>
<p>Both of these lists are subject to revision as I realize, “oh yeah, I’ve seen that <em>at least</em> three times.”</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>The original tweet posed it as a question, but the it isn’t “what film can you watch over and over and over again?” but the imperative, “name a film.” <a href="#fnref:1" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>It’s that one in the previous footnote: What films can you watch over and over and over again? (Except I’ll use the plural here.) <a href="#fnref:2" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>Oh, fuck it, I’ll add that too. <a href="#fnref:3" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>I’ve seen the 1960 original at least twice, but probably not three times. The list of movies I’ve seen twice is fairly large. <a href="#fnref:4" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>There’s a 1931 <em>Maltese Falcon.</em> I’ve seen it once. <a href="#fnref:5" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>I’m cringing a little at this one. I saw it in the theater (and viewed it as Burton’s <em>Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,</em> a film I probably have seen three times). I saw it again on home video. I put it on in the background recently while I was doing some thing tedious and it was the most tedious part of the task. It’s a pretty bad film. <a href="#fnref:6" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>I’ve seen the musical remake once and am unlikely to do so again. <a href="#fnref:7" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>The first movie I ever went to on a date. <a href="#fnref:8" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>When the remake (2008) came out, I rewatched this. <a href="#fnref:9" title="return to article" class="reversefootnote"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-10141210376158795492022-02-06T22:15:00.002-08:002022-02-06T22:15:28.286-08:00Joe Rogan’s N-Word<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiuaXsgm1ua1v9x7j-Q28gdQRM5lmi0HkmFVmAck3NdnDJuZBlk1xkDo4DqpC0rw-dwguERQJwSqoZ-LmUii-ecFrazJebpzbzRW1b2aXuGRhiensqtXxiDJ7gz7Rkwm9tAHeyAh6ZewDz1RFV9SDphN6lsr6E8D-zLce9rNu6c3rnE5FRsKsW5Rl8tAw=s143" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="143" data-original-width="141" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiuaXsgm1ua1v9x7j-Q28gdQRM5lmi0HkmFVmAck3NdnDJuZBlk1xkDo4DqpC0rw-dwguERQJwSqoZ-LmUii-ecFrazJebpzbzRW1b2aXuGRhiensqtXxiDJ7gz7Rkwm9tAHeyAh6ZewDz1RFV9SDphN6lsr6E8D-zLce9rNu6c3rnE5FRsKsW5Rl8tAw" width="141" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Fuck Spotify.<br />Seriously.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Joe Rogan has apologized for using the n-word. <em>Let’s try that again.</em></p>
<p>Joe Rogan has apologized for using the n-word about seventy times. <em>There, that’s better.</em> Although to be clear, he used the word seventy times. He’s apologized once.</p>
<p>This was not some inadvertent slip of the tongue. This was a pattern of behavior. Yeah, I get it, he says (as noted in the <em>New York Times</em>) that it isn’t his word to use. Really? What took you so fucking long?</p>
<p>Let me offer some personal history here. I’m a few years old than Joe Rogan and from the same basic part of the country. I was born in Massachusetts, he was born in New Jersey. After moving about the country a bit, he graduated from a high school in the more urban end of Middlesex county. I graduated from a high school in the rural end of Middlesex county. We both attended UMass/Boston<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> We both left the Boston area in the early 90, him before me.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a></p>
<p>So as one person who grew up in Middlesex County and went to UMass/Boston, I have one thing to say to Mr. Rogan: get a fucking clue. Can you really tell me that you were unaware that white guys like you and me cannot ever utter the n-word? Are you that fucking clueless? Because I realized this, not in 2022, but back before 1980, when you were still in high school.</p>
<p>Before I get into a pertinent piece of personal history, I want to set the stage. Recently, I’ve watched some of the old episodes of <em>The Jefferson’s,</em> Norman Lear’s comedy about a suddenly successful man who owns a growing chain of dry cleaners. <a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> There’s no way the first season of the show would be aired on broadcast televisions, given the frequency which which characters use the n-word. In the show’s defense, perhaps that was a good indication of how Black people from Queens spoke.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> It probably didn’t seem odd at the time, though now it’d require a content warning, “Contains strong language which may offend some viewers.”</p>
<p>The sitcom ran for eleven years, from Joe Rogan’s childhood to when he went off to college.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> It was still being broadcast when I was at UMass, but I don’t think it came up in a conversation I had about the n word.</p>
<p>This was in my second year at UMass, so somewhere between 1981 and 1982. I had stopped in at the Science Fiction Club<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a> and was talking with a friend. I don’t know if the n word was actually <em>used,</em> but the idea of using it came up and I started pointing out why you just could not use the word, not if you were (liked my friend and I) two white males. We were joined by another friend and here I wished I remembered everyone’s names, but that detail has been lost in my memory. Let’s call the first friend Joe (that might be his name) and the second friend Scott (I’m sure I’m wrong here).<a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a></p>
<p>Joe and I were two white men, in our late teens or early twenties, discussing the propriety of using the n-word. As I launched into my explanation of why you couldn’t use it, Scott came over. The one Black member of the science fiction club. Did I want to continue? I was already in on it, so I pressed on.</p>
<p>Every time I paused, ready to say “the n-word,” Scott stepped in with the actual word. Each time. “If you’re Black, you can say…” “but if you’re white, and say…” “you’re just appropriating a word you don’t own.” Every time. I compared it to words insulting to various other ethnic groups,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> gender, or sexuality.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> He eventually understood. We all understood, years before Joe Rogan set foot on the Columbia Point campus of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.</p>
<p>And that’s why I call bullshit on Joe Rogan. There are people I might believe if they say that they have only just now, in 2022, realized that this was not a word that they should be using, but none of them are comics from the East Coast who have landed multimillion-dollar podcasting deals. I’m sorry Mr. Rogan, then a high schooler, missed out on what I’m saying. It wasn’t profound in early 80s, it isn’t profound now. It’s fucking obvious. <i>If you're not Black, don’t say the n-word.</i></p>
<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4pzwXqAibYKmvFh7G5HLBXw36JNm0XHrTdEHOL9gm_U6d7bJ45cOafYo8ms4l2_kYyO7jpRFmqdwlWmFJ4-6ZW2_57uF26PKdWxJGCJJ7VLRqUPLm_AqSO-uTxYJ9SdfKJj975SAj0tLAByGatFZyNGgNCKdQut5zTN-o2BVykZfSF-LbQJ8Hq1vFwQ=s1155" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="946" data-original-width="1155" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj4pzwXqAibYKmvFh7G5HLBXw36JNm0XHrTdEHOL9gm_U6d7bJ45cOafYo8ms4l2_kYyO7jpRFmqdwlWmFJ4-6ZW2_57uF26PKdWxJGCJJ7VLRqUPLm_AqSO-uTxYJ9SdfKJj975SAj0tLAByGatFZyNGgNCKdQut5zTN-o2BVykZfSF-LbQJ8Hq1vFwQ=w200-h164" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">You guys are still <br />advertising this crap?</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />It should be fucking obvious to people that Rogan’s carefully crafted piece of P.R. regret is a heaping, stinking pile of bullshit. Spotify has pulled seventy episodes of Rogan’s podcast because <em>oops!</em> he said the n-word. I’m going to guess that if Spotify gave $1 of Rogan’s money to each person who has never said the n-word, he’d be working for free.</p>
<p>And I just had to go the iOS App store to see how contrite Spotify and Rogan are about this. Not one fucking bit.</p><p>The n-word that we should have for Joe Rogan is “No.”</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>And we both left without a degree. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>It’s all on his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Rogan">Wikipedia</a> page. Well, the stuff about him. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>I get that George Jefferson wants to interact with successful people, but why is he spending his money in renting a fancy high-rise apartment, instead of moving to a nice home in Westchester County? <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>The show was filmed in Los Angeles. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>The University of Massachusetts, Boston. By the time he had showed up, I had stopped taking the T to Columbia Point (now called UMass/JFK). <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>I was the president and you’re not surprised. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>If anyone involved has clearer memories than I do… <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>I was someone of Italian descent speaking to someone of Irish descent. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>I was easing out of the closet. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-68784742895724567872022-01-30T12:43:00.000-08:002022-01-30T12:43:20.916-08:00Words on Thinking about Wordle<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUWzTUwjvMZsHscOo69dUH8VotPvtqNCw05wrtecIzl9G410TUeIyuiiMUmiK_Kzvx9PfapxfZ01Leei4tnKeL4I6R1UiCqUcyNBVaicWNP7EfH5Y-naqHXaqVlIgUmWdcO3RB_HH6kB_xqMuLYAHPLcjRqDj38Q8RKNwerWFPnfWXobz401Ouzpn4_g=s820" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="820" height="59" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhUWzTUwjvMZsHscOo69dUH8VotPvtqNCw05wrtecIzl9G410TUeIyuiiMUmiK_Kzvx9PfapxfZ01Leei4tnKeL4I6R1UiCqUcyNBVaicWNP7EfH5Y-naqHXaqVlIgUmWdcO3RB_HH6kB_xqMuLYAHPLcjRqDj38Q8RKNwerWFPnfWXobz401Ouzpn4_g=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Turns out there’s some flex in this number</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>An <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/01/solving-wordle-puzzle/621413/"><em>Atlantic</em> article on Wordle</a>, everyone’s current word obsession (except mine) reminded me of a conversation I had about 40 years ago. I think it was late 1981 (as opposed to early 1982) when a friend found that the average adult English speaker knew about 20,000 words. That number struck him as way too high. How could he possibly know 20,00 words?<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> I, on the other hand, totally believed this. Even then, still in my teens, I knew so many words that you just couldn’t fit into everyday conversation, no<br />matter how hard you tried.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> The problem is really knowing how many words you know. While everyone else I know has been obsessing over Wordle,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> I’ve been playing the NYT’s Spelling Bee game, where you make words from a set of seven letters, with one letter needing to be in every word. I’m always amazed at the words I miss. In one recent game, I failed to play the word “ninth.”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> But let’s get back to my friend’s dorm room in 1981. </p>
<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuO9398ZIpeKZVJFaug7a8ul4_EJEYKXWzPZBCYoxXjVBn4NdlJ9_vIYcA0ckimT-aoHnOcOgqVKg_5qUjZeXd5zmlC3XLFddN7ySuS6B7Srud2BjSOs-4nwwUjIGv8ZS0g1-EeiHAxIy-zIKl0QqXZzVuRG3iAcFMdRN2gMHq639UF2pz9haLxIJVug=s858" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="858" data-original-width="619" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjuO9398ZIpeKZVJFaug7a8ul4_EJEYKXWzPZBCYoxXjVBn4NdlJ9_vIYcA0ckimT-aoHnOcOgqVKg_5qUjZeXd5zmlC3XLFddN7ySuS6B7Srud2BjSOs-4nwwUjIGv8ZS0g1-EeiHAxIy-zIKl0QqXZzVuRG3iAcFMdRN2gMHq639UF2pz9haLxIJVug=w145-h200" width="145" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I miss the simplest<br />words in these.<br />(Not today's either.)</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>I realized there was a way we could test this. His desk dictionary <a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> promised 250,000 entries. I am rarely the most mathematically inclined person in the room<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a>, and in this situation I was most definitely not the most mathematically inclined person in the room, but I realized that we could come up with a random sample of words, test each other’s knowledge, and then do the math. I do not remember how many words we settled on or whether it would be a statistical sample, but let’s say it was twenty-five each. </p>
<p>We set it up like this: We took turns as Questioner and Responder. The questioner would open the book at random and that’s where his choice ended. The other one would specify a column (out of the four) and a word, counting either from the top or the bottom. (so, third column, fifth from the bottom.) We figured this would stop the questioner from choosing the most obscure word on the page. <a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> </p>
<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHltYagZ1zVdw6Dqar8hPxgrnELoPD7cL3wjaT_dcSz3SdzuDT39VGkKbbc8rv0v-UWrsg3vu3f13GRF9qdtkvXSBrAZ2eke_aNO9D6R__TSnHhxceXM2_Gzgn4F0vXML5WAYi2FVEdCDKrxtS1xELlbmzD-j0sCbPI5h-AHZWIr9XHmxKGhWsegqg7g=s1481" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="903" data-original-width="1481" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHltYagZ1zVdw6Dqar8hPxgrnELoPD7cL3wjaT_dcSz3SdzuDT39VGkKbbc8rv0v-UWrsg3vu3f13GRF9qdtkvXSBrAZ2eke_aNO9D6R__TSnHhxceXM2_Gzgn4F0vXML5WAYi2FVEdCDKrxtS1xELlbmzD-j0sCbPI5h-AHZWIr9XHmxKGhWsegqg7g=w200-h122" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Just in case you haven’t<br />seen one of these recently (though<br />this is a hardback).</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>In one round, I simply said, “You know this one, you get the point.” He asked for the word anyway. “Jockstrap.”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> He confirmed that he knew what that was. Through the game there were plenty of words that he did know and plenty that he didn’t. And the same was true for me. When we did the math.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> He averaged out to 20,000 words. I had done slightly better. This was no shock. I suspect forty years on, he has learned words the meanings of which are obscure to me, but I suspect in the aggregate I <em>still</em> know more words. Not bragging.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:10" id="fnref:10" title="see footnote">[10]</a> </p>
<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHi_oZiXw41epG1yyHMmpqNaEoq2jebR5p-mVAacd-QyaRbn6EDyKOazqwpL5j7KuR9EMrX1jo5ePXKiPdammTX9fvUtsBugIhyMB6h7o6ZK-VZ3LLMHtcAUrEnV7NUdZSutcKjRs31vxsT2ltNt0pfwQTeEleOOpPQsxlxg3bBKJHYC4hhKsNCKWYLw=s260" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="246" data-original-width="260" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHi_oZiXw41epG1yyHMmpqNaEoq2jebR5p-mVAacd-QyaRbn6EDyKOazqwpL5j7KuR9EMrX1jo5ePXKiPdammTX9fvUtsBugIhyMB6h7o6ZK-VZ3LLMHtcAUrEnV7NUdZSutcKjRs31vxsT2ltNt0pfwQTeEleOOpPQsxlxg3bBKJHYC4hhKsNCKWYLw=w200-h189" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>See, I have played.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>That brings me back to Wordle and Spelling Bee. Neither of these games require a particularly large vocabulary. I keep finding that words I think perfectly acceptable aren’t listed (presumably because they’re considered obscure), yet one Spelling Bee had <em>épée</em> (though without the accents) on its word list. I was a little irked because even though the word shows up in English-language dictionaries,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:11" id="fnref:11" title="see footnote">[11]</a> it’s clearly a French word.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:12" id="fnref:12" title="see footnote">[12]</a> In all these games, it’s not so much a question of how big your vocabulary is, it’s how well you can access it. Now I just need a word that uses all seven letters in today’s Spelling Bee.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:13" id="fnref:13" title="see footnote">[13]</a></p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p><strong>Spoiler alert:</strong> he did, and has certainly learned words since that hadn’t been coined in 1981. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>Of course I tried. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>I’ve played it and keep meaning to go back to it. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>An obscure word like that? Who can blame me? <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>If memory serves, he had the paperback edition of the <em>American Heritage Dictionary</em>, if memory plays false, something else. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>Often the least. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>You don’t know what “squamous” means? <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>I don’t need to define this, do I? I'm not providing an illustration either. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>By which I mean he did, but we were in his room and I probably didn’t have my calculator with me. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:10">
<p>Okay, totally bragging. Can’t do math, but at least I do words. That said, after taking the picture of a dictionary spread, I looked at the third word from the bottom of the second column. Totally obscure to me. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:10" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:11">
<p><em>Webster’s Ninth Collegiate</em> has it, complete with acute accents. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:11" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:12">
<p>In one puzzled with a center M, I was peeved that neither “milt” nor “muntin” were permitted. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:12" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:13">
<p>No hints. Early on, I stumbled on a tweet where someone had posted the whole list. I stopped playing that one. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:13" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-92078492714735839442022-01-24T19:18:00.002-08:002022-01-24T19:25:03.429-08:00To an Absent Friend<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZF43xdGlFhKbCSGbe2LHs5RjM849f99vMempW2FxG9BZ5Yt3BY6t8Igfo06DaI_cC7AI1PXido_cxMSwKmi-h48XdsIZJoWKAOj_tS5ftSPl9v9_t43nY31BQf6-mZHKuW-D9MJhry7__hum0FzVdyYtbR5ZbBNCYAH2pTiwP9nx59-8YTfFJuOm7Gw=s882" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="882" height="139" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZF43xdGlFhKbCSGbe2LHs5RjM849f99vMempW2FxG9BZ5Yt3BY6t8Igfo06DaI_cC7AI1PXido_cxMSwKmi-h48XdsIZJoWKAOj_tS5ftSPl9v9_t43nY31BQf6-mZHKuW-D9MJhry7__hum0FzVdyYtbR5ZbBNCYAH2pTiwP9nx59-8YTfFJuOm7Gw=w200-h139" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Yeah, I still have this stuff.<br />Yeah, that done was on a<br />manual typewriter.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I was going through some old zines (in the 80s and 90s I was in some amateur press associations) as I was wondering if had I written about a particular science fiction convention. The ones I was looking at were written at time when (over a few months) a friendship had gone from close, to fractious, to sundered. One of the zines noted the moment when the ashes of the friendship were kicked over.<p></p>
<p>In the subsequent zine, a month later, I was responding to what someone else must have said about this once close friend. I wrote an entire page about him, explaining how close we had been, and looking back with regret on what had been lost. There was one line that really got me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once, when our friendship was still healthy, he told me that he could not converse for more than an hour without mentioning me at least once. With me, I admitted, it was somewhat less frequent, but still common enough that friends considered him to be an extension of me. I have often wondered if he still mentions me, and if so how.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That was thirty-eight years ago. The feelings still hit. I’ve lost contact with just about everyone who were my friends way back then. Most of the friendships just withered away, and their names no longer come easily to mind. This is the one I remember and regret.</p>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-64946516646410556232022-01-23T17:41:00.002-08:002022-01-24T14:38:59.970-08:00Some Thoughts on a Thousand Days of Journal Writing<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7z6stdhs6a5FQB2jyCsAIWjmPWSjLFdH1f9qNUzcoLV_xTlq9wVILw52eQZwucZCbd1H6Ec_fvYy6YL0v1pEWPHNbcWeo8VsxRmhjAkF_WEV_Cn_JiNj9wW6reI6_2aZ_AAmHiN7Os9igSdJIGUQ1GCw7HXskVbWV6NqiZDH4XWrnclppUL8r5SY-OQ=s1398" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1398" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi7z6stdhs6a5FQB2jyCsAIWjmPWSjLFdH1f9qNUzcoLV_xTlq9wVILw52eQZwucZCbd1H6Ec_fvYy6YL0v1pEWPHNbcWeo8VsxRmhjAkF_WEV_Cn_JiNj9wW6reI6_2aZ_AAmHiN7Os9igSdJIGUQ1GCw7HXskVbWV6NqiZDH4XWrnclppUL8r5SY-OQ=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>It's a milestone<br />with more milestones to hit in the future.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>To be clear, it’s not that I started my journal one thousand days ago. I started my journal 15,960 days ago,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> during which time (by one means or another), I have written 6,301 entries covering 4,607 days, which means the lifetime average for my journal is 29%. It would probably go up a little if I separated out a few of the entries in which I caught up on my journal after a few days of not writing any entries. The number would be much higher if I had written more frequently,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> and a bit smaller if I didn’t re-create an entry from time to time.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> <p></p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlPbNXzRlJLYe6ygAFyUfCbkhAvJOUeR7OU4l56nzRLDoKGHhR3-qvk5mhfo-0fY1PrjLh-C1zo3gciduEcGlo6eA70CqL0AgN02jnyXXld3-Wmr7czJs7w-2xW7PqEs6FakqfUkrJaTZ5WtaBDjHSzoASWegak-BO-BtJmFd7QvLR84tcFfhOs9A9kg=s1018" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1018" data-original-width="752" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhlPbNXzRlJLYe6ygAFyUfCbkhAvJOUeR7OU4l56nzRLDoKGHhR3-qvk5mhfo-0fY1PrjLh-C1zo3gciduEcGlo6eA70CqL0AgN02jnyXXld3-Wmr7czJs7w-2xW7PqEs6FakqfUkrJaTZ5WtaBDjHSzoASWegak-BO-BtJmFd7QvLR84tcFfhOs9A9kg=w148-h200" width="148" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I must have done<br /><b>something</b>, but what?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />All that to say that I may not be the best person to be a guide to diligent journaling, something I’ve only accomplished since about July 2018.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> On the other hand, as I look at my journal, I have nothing from July 11, 1999 and July 22, 2000. It’s worse than that. Every entry in my journal from May 11, 1998 to August 31, 2000 (843 days) is a re-creation, cobbled from photos, calendar entries, or whatever else I could get to show what I was doing on a certain day.<p></p>
<p>And yet, I’ve kept at it for the last thousand days. It was an evolving process, from missing years to that period between July 2019 and April 2019 where I missed a total of six days out of 303. Not too shabby. How did I get there?</p>
<p>For me, the big answer was going digital. No longer was it a question of finding pen and paper. No longer was it a problem that it was too dark to write. One of the major aspects of getting this done is that my digital journal<a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> keeps track of how many consecutive day on which I’ve written a journal entry. With that kind of monitoring, you just don’t want to see that go back to zero. Writing in your journal daily can become a habit, but I can’t tell you how many days it takes to establish that habit. When Day One introduced streaks, I didn’t think it was going to be my favorite feature.</p>
<p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDRpWqRvzHX-gw6X9eNxwSmzbhtVDk1R9AQ2s7zvPTF77zqBFuUXflSGguDOsm3517wX2zZe7YgQR2BgsXu4isolgI8f3QmZRfEoAa69znOrAGPpOAHTEj4bUHoOt9G_NqQb7iMO0a_w2qZPKc0c84MR8pZ3KWIPcpzJyFpLSxkgD33MacGQirIUZf9w=s315" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="315" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDRpWqRvzHX-gw6X9eNxwSmzbhtVDk1R9AQ2s7zvPTF77zqBFuUXflSGguDOsm3517wX2zZe7YgQR2BgsXu4isolgI8f3QmZRfEoAa69znOrAGPpOAHTEj4bUHoOt9G_NqQb7iMO0a_w2qZPKc0c84MR8pZ3KWIPcpzJyFpLSxkgD33MacGQirIUZf9w=w200-h76" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Not only can you see how many<br />consecutive days you've written,<br />you also can look back. </i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Daily writing was the habit I wanted to establish. There are so many entries in my journal where I apologize to myself for missing some days, weeks, or months. (The year-long gaps start with a resolution to keep a journal, not to keep one on a regular basis.) If only that lovely blank book could have reminded me to it (apps can, of course). Besides having an app nag you about this (I <em>could</em> set a reminder), the other valuable thing I’ve found is having a certain mindset about my journal. What is this for? I have a few answers.</p>
<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihpwa6Kp57Mw0a-HDKt1psGwIh_BOZpM7mZwBLZrxmEpn8FEJSj2ZjGAXR5afdMff22HTlDrhkkzMI5ymnYhNzrABF4NNhJ1bce2vTVIhUoNy1J-4jLkDcltCktL6gkVgXRq4bMhClmZaBEm_xigASM1ZTx1QYGPikjr523HeZxKH2slFi-kG3ANjDbg=s750" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="568" data-original-width="750" height="151" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEihpwa6Kp57Mw0a-HDKt1psGwIh_BOZpM7mZwBLZrxmEpn8FEJSj2ZjGAXR5afdMff22HTlDrhkkzMI5ymnYhNzrABF4NNhJ1bce2vTVIhUoNy1J-4jLkDcltCktL6gkVgXRq4bMhClmZaBEm_xigASM1ZTx1QYGPikjr523HeZxKH2slFi-kG3ANjDbg=w200-h151" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Well, that doesn't look like<br />a busy month.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I do value my journal as a chronicle of what I’ve done over the years. What did I do on January 23, 1982? I know, though the day (according to my entry) was pretty unmemorable.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a> How about March 23, 1982. No idea. I don’t have an entry. I wish I had, but I can’t go back in time and get myself to do better at journaling.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a><p></p>
<p>It’s also a handy space in which to write, knowing that no one else is going to see it. I can explore narrative in it, wondering how describe things so that they’ll make sense to me later, especially when there are things that overlap. How do you write about that?</p>
<p>In one of the many books I have on writing, one of them says that unless you’re planning on writing a memoir keeping a journal is useless. I’m not the expert on being a financially successful writer. I still feel that writers should keep journal. First, there’s the awareness that many good writers who kept journal extensively. If it’s a bad idea, why did Christopher Isherwood turn out three volumes of published journals? It gives something to write. When you’re not up for writing a poem, a story, a novel<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a>, you can always get those words moving with a journal entry. You may not know what the characters are going to do next, but you might have an idea what <em>you</em> did last.</p>
<p>So you want to be a consistent journal writer? The best I can suggest is that you identify whatever obstacles there are to you getting a journal entry written and that you set aside time every day to work on your journal. This is not a “<em>find</em> time” sort of thing,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> but a “<em>make</em> time” sort of thing. You have to make time for the things that are important or they will get squeezed out. Prioritize, find some, time, and best of luck in getting to a thousand consecutive days.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>Specifically, May 14, 1978. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>There is a lost volume, but the last time I saw it, it noted in my journal that it had only three entries in it. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>As in “while composing this entry,” which means some of the numbers are already out of date. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>Yes, July 2018 is more than one thousand days before this post was written. In 2018, I finally managed the trick of missing no more than a single day in a month. My entries are pretty regular from 2014 onward. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>I have been using <a href="dayoneapp.com">Day One</a> for more than a decade. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>January 23 has been memorable in some years, but 1982 was not one of them. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>If they invent time travel, I have a list ready of advice for younger me, some of which is “don’t have sex with that guy or that guy either,” but also “please write in your journal daily.” <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>Should I add “blog post”? Yeah, let’s add blog post. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>Time is never found. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-64342391813783986342022-01-23T13:49:00.012-08:002022-01-24T11:45:25.956-08:00Respect Your Local Copy Editor<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilRQlfztSlgXk4NYORJDvW_yop4DNoizZGiksElQXWfkaRPN96LgElFoux0xNKpp7SMQPKWk2TNwxIUr__vbKjb9ldSQmRK3FNx67cNy5dA57jOCGI9OyL-CnHmnKgkNpInXdaOL4JMISVETVUczanpQmV3dwxcxbVbl9kLJbyt335up7Y62xbpLLOUA=s1501" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1501" data-original-width="1501" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilRQlfztSlgXk4NYORJDvW_yop4DNoizZGiksElQXWfkaRPN96LgElFoux0xNKpp7SMQPKWk2TNwxIUr__vbKjb9ldSQmRK3FNx67cNy5dA57jOCGI9OyL-CnHmnKgkNpInXdaOL4JMISVETVUczanpQmV3dwxcxbVbl9kLJbyt335up7Y62xbpLLOUA=w200-h200" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Don’t do this. I beg you.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>I’ve recently been engaged in a couple of discussions in which people talked about their idiosyncratic views on punctuation. I have to start by admitting that unless you’re a publisher (or a copyeditor working for a publisher) I don’t actually care what your views on punctuation are. This might be harsh, but it’s true. It’s like if you decided that <em>epitome</em> ought to be spelled phonetically and damn what dictionary said, you were going to do it.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> If you want to have people care about your views on punctuation, then become a publisher (or the head of a publisher’s copy editing department). Then you’ll have a real opinion. An enforceable opinion.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> Other than that well, you’re just someone who makes trouble for copy editors. And I’m telling you not to do that.<p></p>
<p>When someone asks my opinion of how something should be punctuated, I typically go for finding out what the general practice is. In other words, I look at some major style guides and do exactly what they says. If I disagree with that style guide, I’ll do exactly what it says. Again, if you’re publishing your own stuff you can do whatever you damn well please, but if you want someone else to publish your stuff you’d better follow how they want it formatted. Let me give a couple examples: </p>
<p><em></em></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_RHsVLDT6W3mTkP9WKpAhAf3XrrNOlW-ZpYg-z1d0_6iuRnLOj0QzpmXeuxUTqN7_UByr5sTpbjqp9EtWRxAKV5K_B6H82fKpPb39PBUxKQdDIuej6gKDggzKQcyf8QDgF_Gl1CbX1qVB6rk6gMhT9l5LAodLAH7wyYD0SFTIhnpREsr3Y0wmbRSyBw=s2761" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2761" data-original-width="2761" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_RHsVLDT6W3mTkP9WKpAhAf3XrrNOlW-ZpYg-z1d0_6iuRnLOj0QzpmXeuxUTqN7_UByr5sTpbjqp9EtWRxAKV5K_B6H82fKpPb39PBUxKQdDIuej6gKDggzKQcyf8QDgF_Gl1CbX1qVB6rk6gMhT9l5LAodLAH7wyYD0SFTIhnpREsr3Y0wmbRSyBw=w200-h200" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Some noted authorities.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><em><br />Should there be one or two spaces after at the end of a sentence?</em> (Spoiler alert: it’s one.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a>) The choice of one or two spaces represents two separate attempts to emulate typeset material while using a typewriter. When the typewriter was introduced, most books published in English used what is called loose spacing, there’s a lot of space after the end of a sentence. An em space, which is — wide. Books in that era often had generous margins and gutters too. Beautiful pages that really don’t have a lot of type on them. To emulate this on a typewriter, typists hit an additional space after the end of each sentence.<p></p>
<p>The French style was for tight spacing. They formatted their pages without a lot of space after a sentence. More than an en space –, but less than an em.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> The idea was to create a page of uniform text color. And text color adds up to gray. Think of it as how a page would look if you took a badly focused photo of it. The French wanted it uniform, the English and Americans wanted it non-uniform, with little holes in their text. Then came World War II.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a></p>
<p>With paper shortages due to the war, there was a desire to cram as many words onto the page as possible. Goodbye gutters. Goodbye margins. Goodbye extra space after sentence. They were probably people who wanted to go to the old style of page design after the war. The answer to them was no. The war had come, the war had gone, but French spacing was here to stay.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a></p>
<p>In the late 80s came the desktop publishing revolution. I was in that revolution. In the mid–1980s I was doing desktop publishing. I have produced camera ready copy. In order to make the camera-ready copy look like something that was set in physical type, I needed to emulate tight spacing. When I learn to type, I learned two spaces after the end of each sentence. Only a few years later I was retraining myself to type on the single space after each sentence. But it’s just a convention.</p>
<p>A few years ago I took an extension class for which the professor insisted that all papers needed to have two spaces after each period. Her class, her rules. That said, I had to retrain myself (again) to be able to type that way.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> She admitted that her own editor chided her for sending in manuscripts with two spaces after a period, though in these days of digital submission, at least that’s an easy find and replace. Find all double spaces and convert them to a single space. But the question still occurs to me that if you want to have your stuff published why would you make them do this extra step? For those who say they can’t this do, I wonder what they when typing abbreviations. Do they type an extra space after Dr., Mr., or oz.?</p>
<p>Onward to one of the other type of graphic conundrums, the quotation mark. <em>Should commas and periods go inside or outside quotation marks?</em> We return to our noted authorities and the rules are pretty clear. Generally. The American convention is that all the small punctuation (commas and periods) slide in under the closing quotation mark. It’s tidier. The British convention is to place punctuation outside the closing quotation mark. They also use single quotation marks where American use double.</p>
<p>Like Benjamin Dreyer, I agree there’s a certain sense to British practice, but there’s also a certain sense to American practice. To quote Dryer: “I find the sight of those periods and commas hanging outside tuition marks saddening.”<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> It creates this ugly little notch of white space, between the last word and the punctuation mark. To me it makes the punctuation a bit unconnected from its sentence. There’s not a lot of visual difference between a comma after a quotation mark (word”,) and one with an extra space before it (word ,). In <em>The Elements of Style</em> we find: Typographical usage dictates that the comma be inside the marks, though logically it often seems not to belong there.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> This is likely one of E. B. White’s additions, as it does not appear in Strunk’s edition of 1917.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:10" id="fnref:10" title="see footnote">[10]</a> </p>
<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQys-9G4yhFBG6MWB5g0ZqGKmi8ErtKbveDCEW3Yl586QPwOtb4xEINjuLwKg5d8CuCFjMFdPlykpzpVWc9y07fI0m5QYZPaGc9gGHz5nuekgUTqF0Ei43cclKMcw8rhiEpeGd6hWUzTyHRYIKMvppwnQyHr1pNRbX7ezRMNPPpxDfBNZSvmVEOLBjw=s1750" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1498" data-original-width="1750" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLQys-9G4yhFBG6MWB5g0ZqGKmi8ErtKbveDCEW3Yl586QPwOtb4xEINjuLwKg5d8CuCFjMFdPlykpzpVWc9y07fI0m5QYZPaGc9gGHz5nuekgUTqF0Ei43cclKMcw8rhiEpeGd6hWUzTyHRYIKMvppwnQyHr1pNRbX7ezRMNPPpxDfBNZSvmVEOLBjw=w200-h171" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>You (who do this: ”.) are here.</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table>If you’re an American putting your commas and periods outside double quotation marks, you’re using <em>neither</em> system. It puts you in the middle, I guess, south of Greenland and bit east of St. Pierre and Miquelon.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:11" id="fnref:11" title="see footnote">[11]</a> If that leaves you all wet, it’s not my fault.<p></p><p></p><br />If you’re an American using British punctuation convention,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:12" id="fnref:12" title="see footnote">[12]</a> are you also using British spellings? I thought not. I have not checked with any copyeditor on this question, but I suspect that if you’re an American who is submitting to an American publication using own version of quotation marks and end punctuation, the copy editor will hate you. Treat the copyeditor right. Do you really want someone to go through your entire manuscript marking a circled <em>tr</em> every time you have a quotation mark with a comma or a period?<p></p>
<p>All this said, all other punctuation stays on one side or the other of a quotation mark, depending on its source.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Edward E. Tanner III (Patrick Dennis), better known for <em>Auntie Mame,</em> collaborated on the memoir <em>Guestward Ho!</em>” The exclamation mark is from Tanner and Barbara Hooton, not me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Be good to your copy editor. If you want to break out of the herd, do it with your writing, not your arrangement of spaces or quotation marks. </p>
<p><em>A final thought on citation formats.</em> While there clear practices on spaces after sentences (one) and periods and commas with closing quotation marks (the quotation mark goes last) when I worked for a researcher it seemed almost that every journal had its own house citation format, none of which agreed with the MLA style I learned in college. No one ever debates these. Those who are writing for publications with house guidelines for citations just follow them. Do as they do. Follow the rules.</p><p>[Post in haste, edit later. I've given this post a bit of copy editing. It could probably use more.]</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>Would that be “aypitomee”? I’m not sure. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>Please—I beg you—do not make “aypitomee” part of your house style guide. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>Why do I say “one”? I checked submission guides. Editors have the issue that if all submissions are produced under the same guidelines, they can figure out how things will go on a page before they get there. Two spaces mess this up. And they have to go through and take them out. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>The em space and dash get their name from being the width of a M. The en space and dash get their name from being the width of an N. (But it’s usually half an em.) While you’re down here, the em dash, en dash, and hyphens (the narrowest of them) have specific uses. En dashes are good to separate dates, so 1708–1742, not 1708–1742. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>WWII was not fought over typographic standards, though prior to WWII, the Nazi Party had banned blackletter types (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter">which Hitler thought Jewish</a>) going for more modern typefaces, particularly san-serifs. The Fraktur types were the typographic continuation of textura, which Renaissance scribes called “Gothic,” because they thought it came from Germany (it developed in Italy). “Roman” hands were from the Carolingian Empire, that is, they came from Germany. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>Seriously. Page margins you could put a thumb into and never worry that you were going to cover the text. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>Any typing I did that wasn’t for class had one space after each sentence (well, not at the end of paragraphs, of course), so retraining to never again type two spaces after a sentence was easy. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>Dryer, Benjamin. <em>Dryer’s English</em> (New York: Random House, 2019), 83. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>Strunk, Willam F., and E. B. White. <em>The Elements of Style,</em> 3rd ed.(New York: Macmillan, 1979), 36. Repeated in the 4th edition (Needham Heights, Massachusetts: Allyn & Bacon, 2000) with an update in the examples, still on page 36. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:10">
<p>https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/37134 <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:10" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:11">
<p>I chose midway between New York and London. I’m not trying to claim that these are the two poles of the English language, although they are two major centers (<em>centres</em> if you’re British) of publishing in the English-speaking world. (No disrespect intended to Toronto or Sydney.) <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:11" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:12">
<p>Let’s dismiss the perception that British English is somehow “more correct” than American English. Not only is “more correct” not really a thing, British claims of American linguistic novelty are usually unsupported by history. The spellings “color” and “honor” were perfectly acceptable to the typesetters of the First Folio (Shakespeare’s collected plays, 1623), at which point there was no United States. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:12" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-38327685860488412432020-12-17T22:29:00.000-08:002020-12-17T22:29:10.449-08:00Filling in the Journal<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixLBwy7FlJDHzdJv4z88GpSJkZOLoYv21oqupTdm-gHUu6EqSgpBbtm1u3ZY-nRosc46L728r73DFkdFgxp-zp5bdKwBoYFyweUuGfOaq-ZQ-oj_hzk6UbyqczC08eLxBXr3NiS_xpvcxA/s360/Screen+Shot+2020-12-17+at+9.51.21+AM.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="352" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixLBwy7FlJDHzdJv4z88GpSJkZOLoYv21oqupTdm-gHUu6EqSgpBbtm1u3ZY-nRosc46L728r73DFkdFgxp-zp5bdKwBoYFyweUuGfOaq-ZQ-oj_hzk6UbyqczC08eLxBXr3NiS_xpvcxA/w196-h200/Screen+Shot+2020-12-17+at+9.51.21+AM.png" width="196" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>What can happen in 600 days?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />I have been, over the years, an indifferent diarist. Although I started my journal more than forty-two years ago, there are huge chunks of time without a single entry. But okay, I mean, what really can happen over a mere 728 days?<a class="footnote" href="#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a><p></p>
<p>Yeah, if I could go back in time,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> I would convince myself that even if I wrote a few words a day, it would be better than writing nothing. It probably wouldn’t do any good, since the intention of writing every day was always there, but sometimes it just wasn’t possible.</p>
<p>It’d be late and and I’d be in the dark.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> The ride would be too bumpy to reliably mark things down. I’d forget where I put my journal.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> I’d go a trip certain that I was going to keep a journal, but then leave my journal at home (which is better than leaving it in a hotel, never to be seen again). It is quick and easy to not get a journal entry written.</p>
<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHGrUbzQ4rRbAkLIJx6iIZtJsBAPcxZlDw2P1ZRhTz_KyW0Q5H7Q6VaA697nfsVoTwQcW7rxXah5tp6HOQZ5OCJs08ThJmPlfQ1dN4JUwqw8SNYwhhmcwDrxQl8610GHA2RvkwM88z7Xst/s2898/IMG_7814.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1731" data-original-width="2898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHGrUbzQ4rRbAkLIJx6iIZtJsBAPcxZlDw2P1ZRhTz_KyW0Q5H7Q6VaA697nfsVoTwQcW7rxXah5tp6HOQZ5OCJs08ThJmPlfQ1dN4JUwqw8SNYwhhmcwDrxQl8610GHA2RvkwM88z7Xst/s320/IMG_7814.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Hard to search through these</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Over the years, I filled (at least) eighteen notebooks to some degree of completion.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> That’s it, barring some forgotten volume resurfacing. I have finally transcribed the lot of them, in some cases replacing bad handwriting with bad typing, so I will probably revisit the volumes from time to time, when I look at an old entry and say, “just what the hell did I actually write here?” Now comes the next phase. It’s time to fill in the gaps. I have a plan.<p></p>
<p>Now, because I have been a less-than-diligent diarist, these are the things I must do:</p>
<p><em>See what I wrote elsewhere.</em>
For those times when I didn’t write a journal entry, sometimes I wrote something about it elsewhere. A zine.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a> An email. A social-media post. Time to check my words. I’ve been delighted to find that some of the gaps in my journal have already been written.</p>
<p><em></em></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGxdCRgOvW2JdtSSqeKFv3TUi3DRzooqFwlRb1joBIM3WstjuEDFYHSt_AnB_gY1qCvQpDDjbPdYQtP-1nQWbiGxpd0qpjm8gvhu4kSH5hJKkLdZZRtWDVGDurzG3lVr5YPwhpYrzh_hoI/s2048/DSC_0115.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1362" data-original-width="2048" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGxdCRgOvW2JdtSSqeKFv3TUi3DRzooqFwlRb1joBIM3WstjuEDFYHSt_AnB_gY1qCvQpDDjbPdYQtP-1nQWbiGxpd0qpjm8gvhu4kSH5hJKkLdZZRtWDVGDurzG3lVr5YPwhpYrzh_hoI/w200-h133/DSC_0115.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Like this one</i></td></tr></tbody></table><em><br />See what I shot.</em>
There have been plenty of occasions where I didn’t jot anything down on a trip<a class="footnote" href="#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> but I did take lots of photos. That’ll jog your memory. If nothing else, they provide a simple guide to what I did that day, akin to a one-line journal entry. “Went to the museum” is better than just a blank.<p></p>
<p><em>What can I remember?</em>
And in the absence of any documentary evidence, there’s always the chance association. Every once in a while, I’ll remember something and—aware that there is no corresponding journal entry—jot down what I remember. Sure, this is nothing like a contemporaneous entry, but it’s better than nothing. (I also mark these as such, since they are memories.) What you remember today might slip from memory.<a class="footnote" href="#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a></p>
<p>You can’t bring back the past. There no do-overs,<a class="footnote" href="#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> but there is a chance—even after the fact—to improve on spotty journaling practices.</p>
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">
<p>That’s the gap between my last entry in 1983 and my first entry in 1985. I mean, yes, that’s almost the entirety of a relationship I had with a boyfriend and included two changes of address, but really. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2">
<p>There’s this fantasy of avoiding some great personal screw-up, but some of those unpleasant events led me to today, so I’ll settle for the lesser goal of not avoiding them, but at least chronicling them. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3">
<p>You can’t write in bed in the dark with pen and ink. I’ve tried. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4">
<p>One journal entry celebrates finding my journal after it went astray at the end of a trip. Had I left it in another country? If I had lost it, I might have now forgotten it existed. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5">
<p>One early volume is lost, though when I last saw it, I did note that it spanned all of three days before I put it aside, only picking it up again after I had started a new one. I don’t think I’ve seen it since. It could turn up. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6">
<p>Yeah, I used to do that. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7">
<p>See above with journals that didn’t make it along for a trip. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8">
<p>There have been times when I’ve remembered something with great clarity but have not been able to jot it down, only to draw a blank later as those memories had sunk into the background. <a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9">
<p>As nice as that might be in some cases. Oh, here are some mistakes I would undo.<a class="reversefootnote" href="#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-26408438547838317232020-02-16T10:45:00.002-08:002020-02-16T10:45:55.593-08:00The Boskone Queerbashing<em>What follows is something I wrote up for a zine after an incident at the science fiction convention Boskone XXII (February 15–17, 1985). I am not completely certain whether the events below happened as Friday became Saturday, or as Saturday became Sunday. I’m kinda splitting the difference and since 16 February 1985 was one of the days. Leaning more to the evening of the 16th, morning of the 17th.</em><br />
<br />
Boskone XXII was full of surprises. There was great interest in my all-gay apa,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> I hosted one of Boskone’s two Gay Fandom parties, and also ran a discussion group about Gay Fandom (yes, it was a rather gay con for me). I saw lots of movies. And I almost got queerbashed.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Almost was more than enough. The intent to do more was there And—although I can’t be certain—I think much of it was premeditated.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a><br />
<br />
Start with the first Gay Fandom party. The crowd was only mostly gay. I have no problem with sympathetic straights being at a gay party. The point was to have fun in a gay-positive atmosphere. Then there were people like Drew, brother to someone I knew.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> He and his friends were not sympathetic. When they showed up at the party, I was a little apprehensive, but there were more of us (and who can stop an army of lovers?).<br />
<br />
Drew, in addition to being non-sympathetic, isn’t even a fan. Yes, folks, he’s one of the over-growing number of Mundane Fandom.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> When I started going to cons, fans had a good reputation with hotel staffers (this heard from a maid (okay, I could be cynical and say she was staring for a bigger tip, but…)). This year, I heard about how the hotel liaison was trying to calm the hotel about the vandalism (most hall phones were destroyed).<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a><br />
<br />
Well, they were quiet (although at one point, Drew called me over (I was in the middle of a conversation and said so)) and soon left. That’s when things began. There were a few annoyance calls and one in which Drew told me that his brother wanted to meet me by the film room (1. I don’t deal through intermediaries—his brother knows that; 2. I rarely come when summoned, which his brother knows too).<br />
<br />
Finally, at 3 am., I was preparing to leave the hotel. I wanted to say goodbye to a few friends. This took us (Ron and I) past Drew and his friends. “Queers,” they said, “faggots.” Bluntly speaking, these things are true, but I’d rather not be called them. Ron and I have only reaction to queerbating: we kiss and walk on.<br />
<br />
They got louder and cruder. “Faggot,” said Drew, “it makes me sick that my brother used to hang around with a faggot. I wish I had a gun so I could shoot your balls off, faggot.” <br />
<br />
“At least he can find them,” shot back Ron. My turn: “I’d rather be queer than an asshole.” This got them mad.<br />
<br />
They pursued. Drew pushed me. “Leave him alone,” said Ron. Then a large brick wall, disguised as a blond man appeared and said, “leave them alone!” He pushed the queerbashers away. We left, going for security, since a fight had broken out. We left, going for security, since a fight had broken out, and we wanted to make sure justice was served.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, by the time we got hotel security to come to the fourth floor, everyone had disappeared (everyone! combatants and spectators alike).<br />
<br />
I was a little shaken up by this, so I suggested to Ron that we go to the film room and watch the rest of <i>Slaughterhouse 5.</i> So we did and told a few new friends of our experience. We soon became a group of angry young queers.<br />
<br />
There are people in this world who think that gay people should put up with such abuse. Fortunately, con operations did not agree when we told them of the incident the next morning. The next morning, Ron and I bumped into a committee member we both know. We told her out story. She told us to meet her in Systems. So, we went there and told our story (just as it is above).<br />
<br />
Later, we had to return to Systems. It seems the guy who stopped the queerbashing pushed Drew’s girlfriend, causing her to break her knee.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> So, we retold our story (to another con staffer), pointing out that we could understand Drew & Co. feeling attacked, but that the attack was borne of chivalry.<br />
<br />
[Not in my original account, but we were told by con staff that Drew and his friends had been ejected from the con and told that they were not welcome on the premises. They were also told that knew and believed me and that their tale of how Ron and I initiated things just wasn’t credible.]<br />
<br />
Later, I saw Drew’s brother. I told him the story, and promised to do what he could although he doubted he could do anything. (We saw him still later; his parents refused to order Drew to come home, further Drew had sworn to get us).<br />
<br />
We were a little nervous about all this. You can’t count on large individuals to come to your rescue. Fortunately, at most time we were with large groups of fen,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> and usually several gay fen.<br />
<br />
We went to Burger Thing,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a> and—as chance would have it—they were two tables way from us. This somewhat ruined our appetite, but nothing happened. <br />
<br />
The rest of the weekend went by with only one more incident. While the finally incident wasn’t violent, it was homophobic. Earlier that day, I was about to go to the bank and didn’t want to deal with weirdos to say dumb things to people in top hats, so I had loaned my hat to a friend. I hadn’t seen her after that, so I went to a party where I knew she’d be.<br />
<br />
I left several friends in the con suite and went off for the 13th floor. En route, another elevator passenger saw my badge and said, “You’re John Dumas. I’ve heard of you.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:10" id="fnref:10" title="see footnote">[10]</a><br />
<br />
“In conjunction of with that?”<br />
<br />
“You were involved in that thing where the girl got assaulted.”<br />
<br />
“What girl?” I questioned, then it hit me. “<em>Her</em>—she was injured trying to assault a friend and me.”<br />
<br />
“That doesn’t matter,” said the gentleman., “you only suffered verbal abuse, she has a broken knee.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:11" id="fnref:11" title="see footnote">[11]</a><br />
<br />
There’s no talking to some people and this one was going to the same party. So, I collected my hat<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:12" id="fnref:12" title="see footnote">[12]</a> (much to the disappointment of the friend who was now wearing it (sorry, Adam)), and explained why I couldn’t stay—and I was expected elsewhere.<br />
<br />
My friend later told me the topic of the party became how stupid some people could be, excusing the intent of committing violence, just because the intended victims escaped unscathed. There is hope for humanity.<br />
<br />
<strong>A few words in postscript</strong><br />
Ron and I broke up less than a year after that (for reasons that had nothing to do with the queerbashing at Boskone XXII). He’s a great guy (we’re in touch), but we were a disaster as a couple.<br />
<br />
The incident was well remembered a year later at Boskone XXIII, which saw the founding of the Gaylaxians. I’m happy to say that only <em>positive</em> gay experiences happened at Boskone XXIII.<br />
<br />
The question of what would happen with out gay fans at the con had been answered. Yeah, there could be problems, but the con would have our back (kudos to the staff of Boskone XXII, who handled things beautifully).<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">An amateur press association seemed the best choice to me, since I assumed that gay science fiction fans were sufficiently rare that there would be no way to have a local organizations (1986) or a convention (1988), both of which I later had a hand in.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">I wrote “almost” in 1985 when I wrote this up. I was queerbashed. They made physical contact with me. (<em>Queerbashing</em> and <em>queerbaiting</em> were the terms used by the LGBTQ (then LGB) community. Later, non-community newspapers softened these terms to <em>gaybashing</em> and <em>gaybaiting,</em> because when you’re talking about physical or verbal assaults, you need gentle language.)<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">I think anything less than an abject apology for existing and a promise to leave the con immediately would have been taken as a pretext for a physical altercation. They were spoiling for a fight. I wasn’t there for that.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">When I originally published this in my zine, I named him. I’ve removed a few identifying other details from this story. If you knew me in 1985 and you’re curious, yeah I’ll tell.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">Boskone had a problem in the mid ’80s. It had grown large enough that it was dubbed the “Winter Worldcon” and had attracted an increasingly large contingent who weren’t even remotely science fiction fans. These people increasingly became a problem for Boskone.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">And it would be two more years before Boskone XXIV, the “<a href="https://www.nesfa.org/about/history/rise-and-fall/" target="_blank">Boskone from Hell</a>,” after which no hotel in Boston would host the convention.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">So it was said. That said, a few years later, I injured a knee when I was thrown off my bicycle and made a one-point landing on my kneecap. I didn’t break anything. Within an hour, my knee swelled so much that I couldn’t bend it for a week. That Drew’s girlfriend was ambulatory does cast some doubt on her story.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Fannish slang of the era, with <em>fen</em> on the model <em>man > men. Men</em> is an i-mutation plural. These were common in Old English, but only a few of them are now left. That’s progress for you.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">Oh, figure it out. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">Within a couple years, people would see my name on a badge and want to talk to me, but it was in more positive contexts. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:10" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">Again, though this was her story, I’m inclined to believe that it was just a story.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:11" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:12">Although I have many hats, I don’t have this one anymore.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:12" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-87752637949031313102020-01-10T16:01:00.000-08:002020-01-10T16:01:39.460-08:00“You Needed Better Friends” An Optometric Observation<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAHZmo-WRQ43AIxm1rEdoUayChcG9Tr25-wZiC_VgbKJthKTLMUtdGKLA-Ooiheqx_gjxts2JEzDltCb-Q6Kl9WhebPdaYaUIr13ydBvg606YFd667DuAnVjUYG4Pbz1rzLzod1xYkEEdX/s1600/IMG_4890.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="1600" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAHZmo-WRQ43AIxm1rEdoUayChcG9Tr25-wZiC_VgbKJthKTLMUtdGKLA-Ooiheqx_gjxts2JEzDltCb-Q6Kl9WhebPdaYaUIr13ydBvg606YFd667DuAnVjUYG4Pbz1rzLzod1xYkEEdX/s320/IMG_4890.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>See, I really do own glasses.<br />
No need to see them on my face.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This year—2020—marks fifty years of vision correction for me.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> I recently had my annual vision check.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> I was chatting with my optometrist and this recalled the days when I wore glasses.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a><br />
My glasses of that era could best be described as “heavy, thick, inconvenient.” Their thickness (due to my prescription) meant that optometrists would regularly tell me “no.” As in, “can I get wire frames?” No, I needed thicker frames to support those lenses.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> Later would come the question of whether I could get contacts. “No, they don’t make them in your prescription.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> Heavy, thick lenses came with all sorts of problems. <br />
<br />
My glasses were always either sliding or being knocked off my face. Grabbing my glasses because their weight was pulling them off a sweaty boy’s face was bad enough, but it seemed that anything that happened to me would result in my glasses going projectile, once into a campfire. The lenses were spared, but the frames were trashed. I had to go some days without my glasses. My father had been given tickets to a Red Sox game, and I went even though I couldn’t see more than about a foot beyond my face.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR_CzqrMeRYj8Jdrg-ERS2AA1qGUlG1cEZ6zlK0vkaHEoWocHgOjQOSJl0TJ7QVkuqdspwquria_aT1reD1OlQd409t7jUQ35DxxMJy_aVbOQYsUzDxfP4fuRvq-Ml5hAnzaI9Tp1poDM4/s1600/IMG_4891.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR_CzqrMeRYj8Jdrg-ERS2AA1qGUlG1cEZ6zlK0vkaHEoWocHgOjQOSJl0TJ7QVkuqdspwquria_aT1reD1OlQd409t7jUQ35DxxMJy_aVbOQYsUzDxfP4fuRvq-Ml5hAnzaI9Tp1poDM4/s200/IMG_4891.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Contacts, how wonderful!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The friend who bumped into me, sending my glasses flying, at least meant no harm. Thick glasses on which I was utterly dependent also made me a target. From third grade on<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> it seemed there were always bullies who would snatch my glasses from my face and hold them out of my reach.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a> Glasses weren’t only expensive, they were difficult to replace. If anything happened to them, I’d be lost for days. If I remember, replacement glasses took two weeks. Plus I couldn’t see. Taking my glasses away was a great way of making me panic.<br />
<br />
When I mentioned this to my optometrist, she said, “children can be so cruel.”<br />
<br />
“It wasn’t always children. Friends snatching my glasses from me persisted into my early twenties.”<br />
<br />
“You needed better friends.” That was good diagnosis.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Do I get a prize for that? Maybe new eyes, 20/20 without correction, also the ability to focus on close without reading glasses. You know, like normal 25-year-old eyes. I’ll settle for 30, I’m not fussy.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">This has grown into a series of visits, as now I see an ophthalmologist before I go to see the optometrist. I have old, very nearsighted eyes.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Not that I don’t wear glasses now. I spend most of my waking hours with contacts, but I have glasses and wear them.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Eventually with changes in lens materials, I was able to get wire frames. My current glasses are frameless, an impossibility for me in the 70s or 80s.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">I asked annually nevertheless. My gas-permeable lenses taught me I needed to wait for soft contacts. At one point, a friend asked if I had considered Lasix. It was, of course, not available in my prescription. When I was 40 an optometrist suggested it, although there was no guarantee of 20/20 vision and I would still have to wear reading glasses. Thinner glasses didn’t make it worth it.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">Baseball happens more than a foot away.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Just do the math.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Just to be clear, I wasn’t just the kid with thick glasses, I was the short kid with thick glasses. The short, chubby kid. The short, chubby, non-athletic, nerdy kid with thick glasses. My shirts might have all been concentric red and white circles. Yeah, I was bullied. (Note to my former bullies: fuck you.)<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-68068906881215594812019-12-28T17:37:00.000-08:002019-12-29T12:32:13.085-08:00The Non-Writing Life<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpB3JJPXgB_zKyrKMP-_7QGJ2eytPoM9WGhqJdQQobIkUGND-bSR1rzHSMeIiE5zQwAmnTCDhWqjH3gm7QJ0IYEa6C2p8Cm6Z9CSdZ4NvoCSSWN9lNnPV2bhBiuViX1d8PmeDbIOkPWCyW/s1600/IMG_4798.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpB3JJPXgB_zKyrKMP-_7QGJ2eytPoM9WGhqJdQQobIkUGND-bSR1rzHSMeIiE5zQwAmnTCDhWqjH3gm7QJ0IYEa6C2p8Cm6Z9CSdZ4NvoCSSWN9lNnPV2bhBiuViX1d8PmeDbIOkPWCyW/s200/IMG_4798.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>I do use one of these<br />
occasionally, though most of my<br />
writing is done electronically<br />
these days.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I recently got a message from someone who pointed out that as long as he had known me (about forty years), I had been writing. What it showed to me was how much we had fallen out of touch. To be clear, he hasn’t known me for forty years; he knew me for about four years, but we had a falling out (partially my fault<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a>) about thirty-six years ago. Truth be told, it’s not like he’s some unique individual from this era. I’ve lost contact with just about everyone I knew back then.<br />
<br />
I met this friend<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> when we were in our teens. I was an avid science fiction fan, and like many science fiction fans, I wanted to write science fiction too. My journal from that time repeatedly names stories I was working on, with some indications that they’re fantasy or science fiction. All these stories are now long lost and while there are some lost things I really wish I still had, the stories I wrote in my teens are not all that important to me.<br />
<br />
We’ve had sporadic contact since then, much to my disappointment.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> We briefly connected on Facebook, but I’m pretty certain he left that to become inactive on Google+.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> We also connected on LinkedIn, which I joined about a year alter when I was job hunting. Later, when it became clear that I was not returning to the exciting world of in-house IT support,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> I changed my profile to say that I am a freelance writer.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a> I’d like us to be friends again. I’d also like to be slightly taller,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> and have my hair back. They can do things about hair, though I haven’t bothered. But I’m writing about writing here.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a><br />
<br />
<em>Now we can construct a timeline:</em><br />
We’re good friends and I’m writing. → That whole period he knows nothing about. → We’re barely acquaintances and I’m writing.<br />
<br />
I was writing then, I’m writing now, I must have always been writing. Not so. There’s a gap. (In a way, this is somewhat comforting, given my scant publication record<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a>.)<br />
<br />
Let’s talk about that whole period he knows nothing about. Let’s wind back thirty-eight years. There was an end to a lot of writing in 1983. I stopped trying to write stories. There’s about a two-year gap in my journal writing. I did keep writing zines during time for two amateur press associations.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:10" id="fnref:10" title="see footnote">[10]</a> But no fiction writing. Then the apas stopped. One grew increasingly hostile to the presence of an out gay man. The other was nothing but gay men, but it eventually died. And then, all I was writing was my journal.<br />
<br />
No fiction.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:11" id="fnref:11" title="see footnote">[11]</a> Life got busy. I had dropped out of college and entered the work world. The spare moments I had for writing evaporated. No more filling an hour between classes by grabbing a desk in the library and scribbling away. There are people who write while holding down a full-time job,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:12" id="fnref:12" title="see footnote">[12]</a> but maybe not while holding down a full-time job, looking for an apartment, and navigating the beginnings of a romantic life. There I was, early 20s, insecure and inexperienced, finally meeting other gay men. Certainly a distraction from writing.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:13" id="fnref:13" title="see footnote">[13]</a><br />
<br />
I also became one of the founders of a group for LGBTQ<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:14" id="fnref:14" title="see footnote">[14]</a> science fiction fans. That took up a lot of time, especially as the group started to grow and we started running our own conventions.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:15" id="fnref:15" title="see footnote">[15]</a> I moved and had to start job hunting all over again. Writing looked like it was permanently pushed to the back burner.<br />
<br />
How long is the gap? About eighteen years. I didn’t start writing again until 2001. I had some ideas and started writing. I even had a plan establish my chops with some short stories and build from there. I had come to the conclusion that I just didn’t have the turn of mind to write fantasy or science fiction,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:16" id="fnref:16" title="see footnote">[16]</a> so my new attempts were erotica. This was just as adult magazines started folding, due to the ready availability of porn on the Internet. My potential market had dried up.<br />
<br />
I turned to writing a novel. Why not? I had an idea. It was clearly something that would need to be worked out at the length of a novel to get everything I wanted on it. I proceeded then to hammer away at it over the next fifteen years. After fifteen years, I had an unfinished novel that really wasn’t compelling enough to keep working on.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:17" id="fnref:17" title="see footnote">[17]</a> Also, work just kept getting busier and busier. I found that after pulling lots of overtime, when I tried to write all my characters wanted was to pour a glass of wine, put their feet up, and watch some tv.<br />
<br />
I really salute the people who hold down full-time day jobs while managing to write after work and on weekends. I have no idea how they manage it. My experience was that I’d look forward to some writing time only to find that I’d be working overtime due to some crisis at the office. On so many weekends, I’d see my chance for getting some writing done recede into the distance. Then my job was eliminated.<br />
<br />
My new job was “job seeker,” but it really wasn’t an eight-hour-a-day position. The résumé was fine tuned. I scanned through job postings. Early on I did my online sessions with an employment counselor (one of my severance benefits). I also wasted some time just frustrated and unhappy. Then I got back to writing.<br />
<br />
One of the early projects was this blog, in part to rediscover my own voice (after years of writing corporate speak), in part to see if I could write at least a thousand words a day.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:18" id="fnref:18" title="see footnote">[18]</a> As the blogging gave me more practice and confidence in my voice, I returned to writing fiction. After a while (and a wholly unsuccessful job hunt), my husband agreed to let me just focus on that. The job hunt was over.<br />
<br />
I’ve kept at it. I’ve turned out some stories, one of which I even managed to sell. Sure, there have also been some times when life’s demands have slowed this down or even stopped. But I keep writing. I think I’m going to get there.<br />
<br />
<em>p.s.: If you’re reading this, you know who you are. Send me some emails. Please. After all, this post is for you, whether you read it not.</em><br />
<br />
Minor personal update: I was curious and looked through some old emails. I told him in 1999 that I wasn’t writing. Just before I got back to it.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Tough time in my life. It was when I came out. I was a bit of an emotional wreck, which was tough on me and lots of people around me too. It was also a period of transition for me, since I still have contact with people I met not long after. My belated apologies to all those whose patience was pushed past the limit. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">“Friend” seems a slightly inaccurate term, since we haven’t spoken in thirty-six years, we swapped a few emails some years ago (he owes me one), but to call him a “former friend” would just make me feel sad. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">This post is some of the stuff I’d want to tell him, but since communication is unlikely, I figured I’d get it off my chest this way. Look, if you’re reading this, you know who you are, you know what to do. You have my email address. Answer the email I sent you. It’s wholly unlikely he’ll actually ever see this blog post. Truth be told, I don’t think he’s interested in putting in the effort. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Remember Google+? Sure, you might now. I don’t think we’re far away from people wondering if they had accounts there or no. “Yeah, maybe I was on it, I’m not sure.” <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">Your browser may not be equipped to properly display sarcasm tags. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">It’s a largely unpaid position. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">If I woke up at average height, the need to buy a whole new set of pants wouldn’t bother me that much. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
My belated apologies to all those whose patience was pushed past the limit.
<li id="fn:8">As opposed to getting maudlin about a lost friendship. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">That is, one story, though part of that is for lack of trying. (Maybe that’s fodder for another blog post.) The story is “Shotgun” in the anthology <em><a href="https://www.lethepressbooks.com/store/p409/THCock.html#/">THCock</a>. </em>It makes a fine gift for any gay stoner you might feel comfortable giving erotica to. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:10">If you are unaware of what an amateur press association is, best to think of it as a group blog of the pre-Internet era. They were obscure then, more so now. My blog stats are pretty minimal (thank you, oh kind reader). These were even more limited, read only by the participants. I need to mine them for whatever comments I made about my life during the time when I wasn’t keeping a journal. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:10" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:11">Sure, my journal is just my point of view, not an objective account of my life, but it is as truthful a narrative as I can make it. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:11" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:12">I salute these intrepid souls. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:12" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:13">I think if the options are find a quiet corner and work on a story or have sex, it’s a pretty obvious choice. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:13" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:14">I admit the anachronism here. When the group started, the term <em>transgender</em> had not yet been coined. The initialism <em>g/l</em> was prevalent, soon supplanted by <em>lgb.</em> The Gaylaxians were open all, without regard to sexual orientation. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:14" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:15">Which persist. The first Gaylaxicon was in 1988, the most recent one in 2019, though I haven’t been to one in years. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:15" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:16">I do keep trying. I even brought a fantasy piece to a writing workshop where the professor praised it for some good and inventive writing (yeah!) then completely eviscerated it (no!). As she pointed out, the best part didn’t even belong in the story. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:16" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:17">In part, it was probably a victim of my own inexperience. After countless restarts and revisions, I sapped the life out of it. Plus, I really should have outlined the whole thing, instead of trying to just write it organically. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:17" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:18">Yes, though a thousand words of blogging (which I’ve already passed in this post) is a lot easier for me than a thousand words of fiction. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:18" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-24560038199266768062019-05-14T18:11:00.000-07:002019-12-22T16:56:11.966-08:00The Journal of My Journal<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeL-HrLt0f0k7-FKeKZmvzzDNVWGPuJhLY5WQdZU0mAxosDaq0UUtxK3O-6KA9e9FMY-SDjFgDuHhrZAGZBPslPa8ZT9UUZboMJL2jTRexzLwWeJVMaqL_qVqbGbkOnic-aVDiT33UYvbF/s1600/Image_DxOVP.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1322" data-original-width="1600" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeL-HrLt0f0k7-FKeKZmvzzDNVWGPuJhLY5WQdZU0mAxosDaq0UUtxK3O-6KA9e9FMY-SDjFgDuHhrZAGZBPslPa8ZT9UUZboMJL2jTRexzLwWeJVMaqL_qVqbGbkOnic-aVDiT33UYvbF/s320/Image_DxOVP.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The various physical volumes of my journal<br />
(or at least the ones I have tracked down)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
If the word <em>journal</em> were to be defined based on my practice, the definition would be “a work of memoir for personal use characterized by suddenly breaking off in the midst of a notebook and then starting a new one.” I’ve used several notebooks for my journals, most of them end in blank pages.<br />
<br />
I have used (at least) fifteen notebooks.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> I started at fifteen and filled out (end-to-end) four composition books. I started a fifth, but I do know that I stopped making entries in it (at the moment, I am reasonably certain that this one is lost). That fifth volume, which had plenty of empty pages, was a harbinger for what was to come.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
I eventually started a sixth volume (and in the first entry, wrote about the lost three-and-a-half volumes). It’s a small volume, and I wrote on every page. By that point, I had been (intermittently) keeping a journal for a decade, and I had filled out five of the six volumes.<br />
<br />
The next volume covers exactly nine sheets of paper. I didn’t like the paper. Clearly. Finally, I stuck a Post-It Note on the last page to show me where to pick up again. Then I bought a new notebook and used just three sheets. Oh, I must have really hated that one.<br />
<br />
The ninth volume starts off with a comment on how much I love the paper. Yeah, that lasted for ninety-pages when I stopped writing in it. At that point, I abandoned paper journaling for a while and created one in HyperCard. Given that HyperCard saw its last update in 1998, you might not have heard of it. Maybe you could look it up on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard">Wikipedia</a>.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a><br />
<br />
I am not sure why I wrote my journal in HyperCard as opposed to a stack of text files in a folder or something. The single HyperCard stack (HyperCard files were called “stacks,” and they consisted of a variety of “pages”) did have the advantage of everything in one place, new entries were easily dated (I created a script that inserted the date when I created a new entry<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a>), I was able to password protect the whole thing, and it was faster too. In other words, in 1990, I created a little electronic journal program in HyperCard.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a><br />
<br />
One of the downsides was that I could only work on my journal while sitting in front of my Macintosh SE/30. Not a very portable device. Despite its limitations, I used the HyperCard journal from 1990 to 2008. Not too shabby: eighteen years of sporadic journal writing in a single format, when I had kept a (also occasionally sporadic) journal for fourteen years prior to that. HyperCard went from computer to computer. As the application hadn’t been updated in a decade, it was showing its age.<br />
<br />
Plus, even before I abandoned it completely, there were still moments of going back to paper. I have a few entries in one notebook from 1994 and and a few in a notebook from 1998, just a few pages each. I started a third in 2001, and when went to Italy, that supplanted the journal on my Mac. This twelfth volume (not counting a not counting a hard drive as volume<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a>) got filled end-to-end.<br />
<br />
I continued this with the thirteenth volume. Perhaps it was because both of these blank books were gifts. It wasn’t just my own money I was wasting, it was the generosity of a friend. I was obligated to fill out those pages. If that’s the case, then I made a tragic mistake in buying a beautiful leather-bound book in Italy, but that ends with just a few more than half the pages filled in.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmzOYuwYkPSnQpLOxPubyTatphRCeg_DL0BlgeKZ9kBb59CqgTHUWt26MA_ttMILopEiOhejVl1ZychqTdsJPFYjwgfXGFKBdhNn1_GpgXKiEsypml-zmFlJvJJJbmwcW5wFQIdyxf7bX/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-14+at+5.36.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="582" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKmzOYuwYkPSnQpLOxPubyTatphRCeg_DL0BlgeKZ9kBb59CqgTHUWt26MA_ttMILopEiOhejVl1ZychqTdsJPFYjwgfXGFKBdhNn1_GpgXKiEsypml-zmFlJvJJJbmwcW5wFQIdyxf7bX/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-05-14+at+5.36.58+PM.png" width="116" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not bad!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And that’s when I went back to the computer. By this time, HyperCard was now inoperable. That tragic day when you upgrade your operating systems and a cherished piece of antique software no longer functions. <br />
<br />
Earlier, I said that my my practice had been that the journal was for me and me alone, but in 2005 lots of people I knew were blogging on LiveJournal and it seemed like the thing to do. Sure, I couldn’t put things in there I didn’t want to share with other people, but it was an interesting experiment while it lasted.<br />
<br />
In the end, I wanted to go back to things that were just for me, but I knew that I had done better when I was on something electronic (the HyperCard stack or the LiveJournal pages) than with scribbling in a notebook.<br />
<br />
Let me be clear, I love the romance of taking a beautiful blank book, uncapping a fountain pen, and writing in my journal. I still look longingly at blank books when I see particularly nice ones available. I do ink fountain pens and write with them. I have not been all that interested in writing my journal with a stylus on a tablet. As I’ve gone though and transcribed old journal entries (an ongoing project) I’ve occasionally thought, “what did I write here?” Sometimes that has gone unanswered.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a> When it comes down to it, while the thought of lying in bed writing out your thoughts of the day sounds great, it’s actually a bit of a pain to write in bed.<br />
<br />
Back to the laptop, so the obvious thing was to find if there was a Mac app for keeping a journal, and there was.<br />
<br />
I wanted to like MacJournal, but I don’t. It just never sat with me. Sorry. Well, not really. I used it anyway, and when it came out for the iPad, I convinced myself that it would et me to write a journal on a more regular basis. Well, it’s a lovely sentiment, at least. Between March 2010 and September 2013, I have a total of 85 entries. Admittedly, in the past I’ve written journal entries that are nothing but a note that it’s been a month since my last journal entry.<br />
<br />
In 2011, for reasons that totally escape me, I used a few pages of a Molskine notebook which had been resident in my camera bag for years to write out a few journal entries. No idea why. <br />
<br />
Which brings us to the most successful iteration of the journal. After that, I downloaded DayOne, getting the iOS version on July 11, 2013 (I think Apple gave it away<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a>) and then the desktop version on October 23. I won’t pretend it’s magic: it doesn’t make you write out an entry. It has made it easier. Instead of sporadic entries, I’m writing almost every day.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a><br />
<br />
I’ve been keeping a journal for forty-one years. Mostly sporadically. I’m delighted that I’ve found something that actually works for me. If you keep a journal, best of luck with it!<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Just writing these words makes me suspect I’ll stumble upon a forgotten volume. [After writing this, I found my journal for my trip to Italy in 2000, and had to revise the word <i>thirteen</i> to <i>fourteen</i>. After taking the pic and actually counting, I realized I had left one aside. <i>Fifteen.</i>]<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">I have the vague memory that at one point I thought the <em>fourth</em> one was lost and that I had first three and the fifth. Or something. That said, I have a journal entry from 1992 in which I list it as the missing volume. (I have since begun to suspect that when I said, at the end of the fourth volume, that I'd start the fifth volume in the morning, I never did.)<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">I did, to remind myself of some of the particulars. <br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">To dig down into it, I attached the script to a button, so I created new entries by hitting a button.<br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">I also created a cataloging system for my books in a different stack. I really should have gone on further from using HyperTalk, the programming language for HyperCard. Too late now. <br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">Even though it is a volume. <br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Not that my typed journals are free of typos. [Note: in typing this, I hit the D key by mistake and wrote “typods.” Are “typods” typos made on iPads? As I said.] <br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">Thanks, Apple! <br />
<a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">Looking at the calendar view, I see October 2015 has only two entries. Thinking about it, that was the month I wanted to see if I could write four short stories. I managed it, but I did little else. Had I written entries they would have been “I worked all day on [name of story].” <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
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John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-90611406044307516902019-05-02T22:22:00.000-07:002019-05-02T22:22:11.134-07:00Moving to iCloud Photos and What I Learned<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRMFuVsBacNtKiHYu3oqlQd-xNoYDbS2X4Z6FyM5Xh5mWV17Qscj1K-FIor3s6qDCut5GVDFd0tmY9LOGDxsX55TL6b9dGKOpFbppvWoTSW7Q_KWiJtpUO1MILh6Iivhgis0qito8fN6_/s1600/m3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRMFuVsBacNtKiHYu3oqlQd-xNoYDbS2X4Z6FyM5Xh5mWV17Qscj1K-FIor3s6qDCut5GVDFd0tmY9LOGDxsX55TL6b9dGKOpFbppvWoTSW7Q_KWiJtpUO1MILh6Iivhgis0qito8fN6_/s320/m3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of my earliest digital photos, circa 1994</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>(And What I Wish I Had Known Beforehand)</i><br />
I recently made the jump to iCloud Photos. It was a very slow jump, in that I am several days into this jump with many more to come until my photographic feet are on solid ground again. Some of the things that I did in preparing for this jump may have prolonged it. <em>Mistakes were made.</em> Nothing serious, just irritating.<br />
<br />
Had I known certain things, the whole process would have been smoother. In my reading beforehand, I didn’t find anything that would have let me know these things, so I’m committing them to my blog, because maybe someone will stumble on them.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsubsWNC9azdIVCflQRJB0Zfa8V35GF_kFUJq7ziWObcpwJluHoG6KpDfFE4IXG_hhyphenhyphennRszkSZuNAjbI3G2Cj_XXxE1LshfvaL2X68eT_HgUydiGOcyGnQzVF_X_G-pyfSM9dgBlBNGzdJ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-05-02+at+12.08.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="224" data-original-width="874" height="82" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsubsWNC9azdIVCflQRJB0Zfa8V35GF_kFUJq7ziWObcpwJluHoG6KpDfFE4IXG_hhyphenhyphennRszkSZuNAjbI3G2Cj_XXxE1LshfvaL2X68eT_HgUydiGOcyGnQzVF_X_G-pyfSM9dgBlBNGzdJ/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-05-02+at+12.08.31+PM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Okay, that'll take a while (this is from day four)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Going to iCloud Photos meant syncing photos from three places: two iOS devices and on Mac. My photos are in several other places, as the Photos for MacOS is backed up to my TimeMachine drive. As photos are added to Photos, I also store them on another external drive. I started doing this before Apple released iPhoto, and I’ve never found a reason to stop doing it. My oldest digital photo dates back to 1999, a few years before iPhoto. Over the last twenty years, I’ve accumulated a lot of photos (at ever-increasing resolution), scans of photos, and so forth. What I’m saying here is that my Photos database is pretty big.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, because it was (and will continue to be) the repository for all my photos, I decided that it would be the first set of photos that I would send to iCloud. <em>That was a mistake.</em><br />
<br />
It was also an easy mistake. I upped my iCloud storage to the appropriate amount (lots) and then set Photos preferences to use iCloud Photos. That was the easy part. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the place to start.<br />
<br />
As I said, it’s got everything. Well over 100,00 items. These range in size from a 750 MB video to those early digital photos at less than 50 kB each. This means, of course, that the per-item countdown I’m getting isn’t completely helpful, since uploading that video or one of those tiny pics would knock an item off the list, but they’re not going to take the same amount of time. Progress seems to be newest to oldest, so I’m anticipating that things will speed up as I get to smaller files.<br />
<br />
The two iOS devices held a subset, all of which are also on the Mac, with some seventeen thousand items on my iPhone and six thousand on my iPad. Once I had the Mac uploading the massive number of items to iCloud, I set to work on the iOS devices and tried to switch on iCloud Photos. It warned me that my albums synced from iTunes would be deleted. I agreed and I promptly got the message that iCloud Photos couldn’t be turned on.<br />
<br />
<em>What follows is a mistake.</em> I looked this up on the web and I didn’t find much. The best answer I had was to sign out of iCloud and sign back in again. That didn’t work. Nor did restarting the machine. I decided that the problem could be the photos already on the iPad, so I methodically exported backups (even though these photos were backed up) and then deleted them. I tried again. It still didn’t work.<br />
<br />
Well, if it wasn’t the photos… I cancelled the deletion of slightly more than 6,000 photos and synced the iPad to my computer checking the setting to stop syncing albums from Photos. One of the things that had lead me to iCloud Photos was the inconsistent behavior of albums synced through iTunes, which would typically vanish from my iPad sometime between when I had verified that they were there and when I wanted to show them to someone.<br />
<br />
Once the synced albums were off, I started iCloud Photos again. Success! <em>But also something of a mistake.</em> Then I did the same thing to my iPhone. <em>I compounded the mistake.</em> This is a lesser mistake, since getting rid of the synced albums was a good thing. My sequence was off.<br />
<br />
At this point, things were slowly beginning to make sense. I was beginning to see see the error of my ways. The iPad took a couple of days to finish uploading, after which it began downloading (which it’s still at). There are still black bars where I deleted photos which are now being re-dowloaded. Because I sent things to be deleted, I’ve been making a daily round of the Recently Deleted album to make sure that none of my photos end up there.<br />
<br />
It also became clear that every device was uploading things in reverse chronological order (either by file date or import date). Time creeps backwards. For the Mac, it was clear that anything new would wait until the end, while the iOS devices and iCloud did share their new content. There’s probably no way around that, but the process might have gone smoother if I hadn’t had three devices uploading at the same time (as I write this, I’m anticipating another two days for the iPhone, after which the Mac is on its own for uploads, apart from now photos).<br />
<br />
<strong>This Is How I Would Do It</strong><br />
If Apple’s TimeMachine really could turn back time and I could take my current knowledge back to when I began, I would do this (so maybe you, gentle reader, can profit from my adventures):<br />
<br />
<strong>An important step:</strong> The first clean-up step would be to remove the albums synced with iTunes. Since if everything goes right, they vanish anyway, it’s no loss to speed them on their way.<br />
<br />
Then I would sync the device with the <em>least</em> number of photos and videos first. (In my case, that would be my iPad.) Move from there to the next item, only as a final step send the remainder of your photo library to iCloud.<br />
<br />
Had I done that, at this point, I’d have all the same photos on my iPad (less the albums shared from iTunes, though they’d get there eventually) and it would be adding photos from my iPhone (which is most certainly is doing).<br />
<br />
This is all working. I’m going to get there (and I’ll probably make another blog post about it). With just a bit more knowledge, I probably could have got there more quickly and easily. I think I’m going to like iCloud Photos, but there will be a delay getting there and that delay is partly my fault.<br />
<br />
Wish me luck.John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-49462288270679087332019-03-29T14:16:00.002-07:002019-03-29T16:59:03.895-07:00Social Media Incantations<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5YiJKh6ZNLMi3X8jkJpdYl4oqZ8SbJC_lbQx0YlYyu18y9PKDwCMs7_j5u0RJw09G0Wfd8rFb2jH-HbMJYlC3h9EB6CxDqZ12wntZAZaJZpRhG9IhH0Elzr2JRNyNs8fQFOmRm9_neGz/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-01-24+at+11.40.44+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1092" data-original-width="980" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5YiJKh6ZNLMi3X8jkJpdYl4oqZ8SbJC_lbQx0YlYyu18y9PKDwCMs7_j5u0RJw09G0Wfd8rFb2jH-HbMJYlC3h9EB6CxDqZ12wntZAZaJZpRhG9IhH0Elzr2JRNyNs8fQFOmRm9_neGz/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-01-24+at+11.40.44+AM.png" width="287" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is what bullshit looks like</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
You’ve probably seen these posts. The ones that claim that if you copy and paste them, it will change what the Facebook algorithm feeds you (it won’t). The one that claims that everything on Facebook becomes public tomorrow (it won’t). The second one never actually specifies what day “tomorrow” refers to, but that only heightens the urgency, right? Unless you’ve seen it multiple times over an extended period and tomorrow never comes.<br />
<br />
Some of them sound legal. There’s one the cites the UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) and the Rome Statute, both of which sound really serious. The only problem is, as lawyers are happy to point out,<br />
<blockquote>
the UCC is a model code and is not law. Where the UCC has been adopted, it only applies to commercial transactions, not intellectual property.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a></blockquote>
The stuff you’ve posted on Facebook: pictures, comments, and such are all intellectual property. Some of it might even be yours. That meme you copied? Not your intellectual property. There is a piece of text that floats around the Internet which inaccurately implies that stuff found on the Internet is public domain, while the stuff the person who posted the notice also posted is most definitely not public domain. Posting something on the Internet doesn’t alter its copyright status.<br />
<br />
The Rome Statute part is even more interesting.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> It’s the international statute (to which the United States is not signatory) which sets up the International Criminal Court. I really wanted the ICC to be the court that dealt with dashing jewel thieves who smuggle diamonds from Paris to New York while impeccably dressed. No such luck. The ICC is the court that deals with war crimes, genocide, and things like that. No matter how badly you think of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, you probably don’t think them guilty of genocide.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr_ZdoMWaRru_w4m5GbMli-ZHK5FLox8rVEaFG2FIbqkQOx0aBw96S7ERhlUPJjCp7aUqrFPCfRvcvyPF1wH-Erdn7RJXXK5h92EPqaatYYrml5zJ2eJSmKwBa9Cxu4ak0MJ1x1RymlwEP/s1600/img.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="913" data-original-width="1049" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr_ZdoMWaRru_w4m5GbMli-ZHK5FLox8rVEaFG2FIbqkQOx0aBw96S7ERhlUPJjCp7aUqrFPCfRvcvyPF1wH-Erdn7RJXXK5h92EPqaatYYrml5zJ2eJSmKwBa9Cxu4ak0MJ1x1RymlwEP/s320/img.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If your lawyer really told you do to this, find a better lawyer.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So what’s it doing in a much-shared post? It makes it sound legal. Same thing the reference to the UCC does. Or the posts that begin “under the advice of legal counsel” and go on to proclaim that the poster is a “free citizen of the world.” The concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement">sovereign citizens</a> has some pretty ugly roots in white supremacy. The people who coined the term felt that the only “free citizens” were free <em>white</em> citizens. Ouch.<br />
<br />
Why is these things so attractive to people, given that they have no actual legal standing and that there are some associations that at best seem to be <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-posts-made-public/">conspiracy theorists</a>? I have a thought on that.<br />
<br />
I am not a lawyer (IANAL) but I do have some training in Medieval Studies (IAAM).<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> I have seen legal mumbo-jumbo before. These posts aren’t intended to be legal. They’re incantations.<br />
<br />
The Internet has become a scary place, in part due to Facebook.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> The online world probably would be scary without hoaxes, fake news, reports of Russian manipulation, fake accounts, and so on. Then there are the moral panics, where someone is happy to report that social media will degrade your intellect and made you a worse person (typically without any data to support such a thesis), which fall in nicely with previous moral panics such as novels<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> or reading newspapers.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a><br />
<br />
What can you do about it? How do you deal with the terrors of the Internet.<br />
<br />
You can recite an incantation. Because if these don’t have <em>legal</em> force, but they have <em>emotional</em> force (and why else would people share them?) they’re in the category of the superstitions people do to ward off harm (which is exactly what they hope these posts will do). Are they effective at warding off harm? Probably as effective as throwing spilled salt over your left shoulder. Also saying “bless you” after someone sneezes has no clinical efficacy in preventing colds. Or warding off evil. But you do it, don’t you?<br />
<br />
These social media posts, with their meaningless language, are our contemporary version of some medieval charm. They sound good, although they have no actual power to ward off malign influences. If you’re bitten by a snake, you need modern medical attention, not the poultice of herbs in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Herbs_Charm">Nine Herbs Charm</a> (which tells you to recite the charm three times over each ingredient, and then in four places on the victim).<br />
<br />
Medieval charms were chanted repeatedly, just like a social media post that gets shared again and again. Like a medieval charm, they don’t actually become more powerful by repetition. They never had any power at all.<br />
<br />
The next time you see that a friend has posted something that tells you to copy it to your own timeline in order to ward off some dreadful aspect of social media (Facebook billing you, or showing you only twenty-six friends<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a>, or taking possession of your photos<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:8" id="fnref:8" title="see footnote">[8]</a>), cross your fingers, knock on wood, close your umbrella before you go inside, but don’t copy that post. Please. Even if someone said that someone else’s lawyer said that you should.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:9" id="fnref:9" title="see footnote">[9]</a><br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><a href="http://www.birminghambusinesslaw.com/protecting-your-legal-rights-on-facebook/">Protecting Your Legal Rights on Facebook</a>, retrieved 5 February 2019. If that’s not enough, here’s a <a href="http://www.wassom.com/10-reasons-not-to-declare-your-copyrights-and-privacy-on-facebook.html">post</a> by a lawyer whose work is on copyright, trademark, publicity right, and media law. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Well, at least to me. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">I Am A Medievalist. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Yeah, thanks a lot, Facebook. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">The novel was guaranteed to be injurious to the mind, particularly the minds of young women. Clearly your high school English teacher did not have your best interests at heart, but we are talking about someone whose brain had been disturbed by years of reading novels. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">The <em>death</em> of conversation. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">We don’t know the specifics of the Facebook algorithm, but we know it rates posts as to how sticky you’ll find them. If you interact with a lot of memes and wonder why you never see the posts where friends tell what going on in their lives, it’s because Facebook can tell that you like and share memes and scroll past your friends. It’s watching you, which kinda does make you want to ward off evil. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:8">A violation of copyright, though if Facebook tried to monetize your work (instead of just you), you’d probably have a hard time getting damages. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:8" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:9">I mean, free legal advice from a lawyer who didn’t put their name to it? <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:9" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-37046034120166658032019-03-27T13:02:00.000-07:002019-03-29T16:57:58.706-07:00How Did Italian Food Conquer the World?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyCcVfr4-nhf5d86zDmIPu2gox4uVatyG5hp6sWVFttx8vDYK5jysB7Tzuzp1Qe7XepMe6vIqpz_oEpqyhJW2Ix_4KRhh3lxD7PHB95g6iajxMurFewHlslgufPj0Jez_ntW7FMJ_P5KB-/s1600/IMG_1516.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyCcVfr4-nhf5d86zDmIPu2gox4uVatyG5hp6sWVFttx8vDYK5jysB7Tzuzp1Qe7XepMe6vIqpz_oEpqyhJW2Ix_4KRhh3lxD7PHB95g6iajxMurFewHlslgufPj0Jez_ntW7FMJ_P5KB-/s320/IMG_1516.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Doesn't that just make you think of Bavaria?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I’m not disputing the title of John F. Mariani’s <em>How Italian Food Conquered the World,</em> since like Mariani, I’ve seen Italian restaurants all over the world, with some particular hot spots. In a recent trip to Kolkata, India, I noticed there were several Italian restaurants. Even though some were recommended by the locals, I did not eat in them.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a><br />
<br />
Nor did I eat in Italian restaurants in Japan. Japanese restaurants typically display photos or models of the food. In a land where there’s a cuisine built around the artful arrangement of food (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiseki">kaiseki</a>), Italian food gets presented as something you might refuse to eat on a dare. Even the worst red sauce joint might look at it and say, “did you just hurl it on the plate?”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Then there was the trip to a town in Germany where it seemed that Italian restaurants outnumbered the German ones (and if you got tired of <em>wurst</em> and sauerkraut, well, there was Italian), including one where Germans sang Italian songs while waiters served Italian dishes. Many of these Italian restaurants are staffed by Italians. To make it clear: I am not disputing Mariani’s contention, just wondering if he’s made his case.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8Bsu3IJyymBA4B76uI5LjuxWJJUgnPBMGzVZ88h7wXbmhwKCDG_Ot0PrcfxgyJlezjhOZ-7gKq7H1TDpEI2tjVZFnj-lxqz6xzq8OE55LRkT-33RiLwgJ6MAqGA9bgto9_7LZZyTcHQT/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-03-27+at+11.38.56+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1591" data-original-width="1600" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe8Bsu3IJyymBA4B76uI5LjuxWJJUgnPBMGzVZ88h7wXbmhwKCDG_Ot0PrcfxgyJlezjhOZ-7gKq7H1TDpEI2tjVZFnj-lxqz6xzq8OE55LRkT-33RiLwgJ6MAqGA9bgto9_7LZZyTcHQT/s320/Screen+Shot+2019-03-27+at+11.38.56+AM.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A small error of geography.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
His book gets off to a shaky start, since on pages 7 and 10, I found two errors of fact. First tells us that <em>vomitoria</em> were rooms were Romans would force themselves to vomit so they could go back to eating; these tales of bulimia in antiquity are fantasies based on a fourth-century word for “stadium exit.”<br />
<br />
Nor is it the case that Vasco da Gama visited Calcutta (or Kolkata, founded 1690) in 1498. How could he? He sailed to Calikat (modern Kozhikokde). Kolkata is Northwest India, Kozhikode in Southwest India, and they’re only separated by about a thousand miles, so just a small <em>sloppy</em> mistake, likes those plates of pasta in Japan.<br />
<br />
Another of Mariani’s problems is that as a food and travel writer for <em>Esquire,</em> his real expertise is in destination restaurants, not food history. Does he make the case that Italian fine dining is how Italian food conquered the world? No. Does he know a lot about Italian fine dining. Yes. Does he name drop like a status-hungry socialite? Absolutlely.<br />
<br />
Take these two sentences from the end of a paragraph:<br />
<blockquote>
Living above the restaurant until she died at the age of 97, Bice was known for her egalitarian approach to her guests, rich or not, famous or from nowhere, and she got along with everyone. Once when Sophia Loren entered the room, everyone applauded.</blockquote>
Can we assume that those who were neither wealthy nor famous (like humble and obscure <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Loren">Sophia Loren</a>) were applauded when they walked into Bice? The next paragraph tells that restaurant was always packed when the designers showed off their collections in Milan. On this one page, Mariani finds room to reference Gina Lollabrigida, Ingrid Berman, Franco Zeffirelli, Gianni Versace, before he gets to Sophia Loren, and the fashion houses Burberry and Gucci.<br />
<br />
Was it through Italian food nudging French food aside as fashionable dining that Italian food conquered the world? Given that those restaurants in Japan and India and some in Germany were the more humble sort (red sauce joints, really), it’s tough to say that the success of the Bice Group (from that one restaurant in Milan to locations around the world) was conquest for anything other than one company specializing in upscale dining.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKzTBFwhxjHfozTRUSS1HPTqGc0u5EbeDYFeI-0YsT8QV2kD_d4_EwclpDHh_lWDfLf3qeY4lmtDce7VsJT-CAm8-tE_AuNBo6ZMRAGt8NQbrrZXTTgMtvx5VMgDnga_P9K5jUYHhF5f0/s1600/64518.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="331" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKzTBFwhxjHfozTRUSS1HPTqGc0u5EbeDYFeI-0YsT8QV2kD_d4_EwclpDHh_lWDfLf3qeY4lmtDce7VsJT-CAm8-tE_AuNBo6ZMRAGt8NQbrrZXTTgMtvx5VMgDnga_P9K5jUYHhF5f0/s320/64518.jpg" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not wholly trustworthy.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It’s not long after this that in his discussion of upscale dining that Mariani simply asserts that by this point Italian food had conquered the world, without any evidence of this sudden capitulation. When did that happen and how?<br />
<br />
Although it’s a bit of a non-sequitur in his telling (though undoubtably important in how Italian food conquered the world), Mariani has a good chapter early in the book on the rise of the Mafia-themed pizza parlor, part of a broader context of Italian food wrapped in ethnic stereotypes and slurs, with sniggering suggestions that Italian-Americans can’t really master English and they all have connections to organized crime. Long after Italian immigrants stopped serving up low-grade Italian-American food, it’s been adopted by corporate restaurant concepts.<br />
<br />
In a way, it’s not far from the upscale dining, often just a different sort of restaurant packaging. Mariani doesn’t cover how Italian restaurants on every level aren’t family trattorias, but packaged by corporations (from Bice and Il Fornaio with roots in Italy to Buca da Beppo founded in the Midwest and owned by Planet Hollywood). That Italian food can be readily marketed on a global scale is part of this story. (The only type of food more relentlessly churned out by corporate America is, of course, the burger joint, though that’s only one segment of dining, while Italian restaurants can be found in several.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> The number Dunkin’ Donuts locations in Germany indicate that the next level down is open for conquest.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a>)<br />
<br />
In Mariani’s telling, Italian food had yet to conquer the world when any supermarket in the United States already had extensive quantities of Italian food in their aisles. Again, this is Mariani focusing on the sort of dining he writes about in <em>Esquire</em> and completely failing to look supermarket shelves which have been home to Italian foods for decades. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag%C3%BA">Ragú</a>, now owned by a Japanese company, was founded in New York in 1937. I grew up with ads that told Massachusetts residents that “Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti day.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> Mariani doesn’t mention how the Italian food on supermarket shelves is increasingly the product of global food conglomerates. Maximizing the profits of companies with no connection to Italy or people of Italian descent is part of that story. When someone in the Midwest pours a jar of sauce from a company headquartered in Japan on pasta from a company headquartered in Spain and tells themself that they’re eating Italian, Italian food has conquered the world (without any actual involvement by Italians).<br />
<br />
At turns inaccurate, gossipy, and too focused on Mariani’s experience going to nice restaurants for <em>Esquire,</em> <em>How Italian Food Conquered the World</em> never actually answers how. Yet, Italian food really did conquer the world. Great title. The book, not so.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">I ate Indian food in India, mostly Bengali food, since I was in West Bengal. I didn’t actually trust the Bengali cooks to turn out Italian food I wanted to eat. Besides, there was so much good, authentic Indian food to have. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Again, why eat ugly, poorly-made Italian when there was so much good local food to eat? Eating in Japan was an experience of almost no two restaurants alike (I had sushi more than once), since there’s such specialization in Japanese food. There was no overlap between the place the served only eel, the place served only crab, and the place that served only fugu. That’s a different blog post. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Throwing this in a footnote. Burger and pizza: fast food. Pasta places are typically family dining. Things slide from there to casual dining to fine dining. These are best typified by the beverage choices: no wine, house red or house Chianti (glasses and carafes only), a wine list, an expensive wine list. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">As much as I like their Bavarian cream donuts, I just don’t see myself having one in Bavaria. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5"><a href="https://www.princepasta.com/en-us/content/27448/OurStory.aspx">Founded</a> on <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prince+St,+Boston,+MA+02113/@42.3654984,-71.0581437,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x89e3708ead28efeb:0xf409e8fa496197d5!8m2!3d42.3654945!4d-71.055955">Prince St. in Boston</a> in 1912 (just blocks from the site of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Molasses_Flood">1919 molasses flood</a>). It is now owned by the US subsidiary of a Spanish corporation. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-42391956813007244932018-06-28T22:49:00.001-07:002018-06-28T22:51:24.551-07:00My First Encounter with Harlan EllisonHarlan Ellison has died after a life of many contributions to literature. If there is an afterlife, he’s probably threatening to sue God. Or mailing off dead weasels to angels. <br />
<br />
I met Ellison only twice, both times at World Science Fiction conventions. The first time, if memory serves, was in 1986 at Confederation in Atalanta, Georgia. It was my first Worldcon and I was still amazed that I was sharing the same air as the names that graced the books that I had been reading for years.<br />
<br />
Ellison was chatting with a group of fans. He was easy to pick out, since he was the only one in the group who was under 5’10”. I plucked up my courage, walked over, and hung at the edge of group, unnoticed.<br />
<br />
There was a break, and I said, “excuse me, Mr. Ellison.” He looked back and upward a bit, to that space whence the voices of fans typically came. Then he did a double-take as he realized his interlocutor was at his own height, if not a little shorter even. (Okay, okay, yes, a little shorter.)<br />
<br />
I told him what a pleasure it was to meet him and how I had enjoyed his work. He thanked me, briefly turned back to the other people, and then back to me again. “Do you get the short shit too?”<br />
“All the time.”<br />
<br />
“This is what you do,” he said putting an arm over my shoulder. “You say, ‘my height is genetic; it is completely beyond my control. You could do something about being an asshole.’”<br />
<br />
Sadly, I only met Harlan Ellison one other time after that. Still, when people make comment on my height (yeah, that happens), I think about what Harlan Ellison said.John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-76218637694139447352018-05-18T18:02:00.000-07:002018-05-18T18:19:06.778-07:00Who the Fuck Says “Hebrews” in 2018?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtg_W9b0Zo12PPhSunpIJjXbht35rSnaXDOR-r00H66y2vvisRywUXvr1WdWno9PPZ0GKTI1nUkJc7D07lul6xv2-wq0nRN0uWNsw6gQAMzRQjIXcqUTMpczDuHkyN5UIEQpM0Jh9mqtLg/s1600/hebrew.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtg_W9b0Zo12PPhSunpIJjXbht35rSnaXDOR-r00H66y2vvisRywUXvr1WdWno9PPZ0GKTI1nUkJc7D07lul6xv2-wq0nRN0uWNsw6gQAMzRQjIXcqUTMpczDuHkyN5UIEQpM0Jh9mqtLg/s320/hebrew.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who the fuck says "Hebrews"?<br />
Tip: Don't.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There’s a meme going around Facebook which attempts to promote a viewpoint about Israel. I won’t share it here, because memes take complex issues and reduce them to their most stupid and reductive elements. Although I don’t think anyone should be sharing it,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> I do think it should be unpacked.<br />
<br />
The meme shows a Native American man, dressed in traditional garb while riding a horse. The text says, “So you’re telling me…” and continues “You believe Hebrews are entitled to the land of Israel because their ancestors once lived there?”<br />
<br />
It’s simple. It’s clear. It’s also wrong.<br />
<br />
Let’s start with the guy on the horse. The image reduces the Native American to a caricature. He’s the Noble Savage fighting against the cowboys in the Western Expansion. Specifically, he’s the actor Rodney Grant in a scene from <em>Dances with Wolves.</em> In the image, he’s in character as a Sioux during the Civil War. He’s not indicative of the lives of modern Native Americans. When Mr. Grant is not acting the role of a nineteenth-century Native American, he doesn’t dress like that. There are plenty of pictures of him in a tux or in t-shirt and jeans, and even a picture of him wearing a shirt patterned with images of Elvis.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, a Native American dressed up for a job in biotech or computer programming might not have quite the same impact on its intended audience of white liberals who might be convinced to be unsympathetic to Israel.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Then there’s the text. “Hebrews?” Who the fuck says “Hebrews” today? It used to be a commonly used term, but those days have passed. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_for_Reform_Judaism">Union for Reform Judaism</a> was named the Union of American Hebrew Congregations from is founding in 1873 to 2006. According to <a href="https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hebrews%2C+hebrew&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chebrews%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chebrew%3B%2Cc0">Google Ngram Viewer</a>, the term “Hebrews” had its biggest use between 1910 and 1930, while “Hebrew” had its biggest use between about 1935 and 1945. Both terms are used far less than “Jews” for any period. So then why use it?<br />
<br />
It mucks things up if you call them, not Hebrews, not Jews, but Israelis. After all, many Jews no intention of taking up residence in Israel.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> So it becomes the standard question: does Israel have a right to exist. Well, no more (or less) than any other nation. But we never seem to question it about France. Or England. Should the Welsh be agitating to take back their island?<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a><br />
<br />
If we’re not giving the throne of Britain to a descendent of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owain_Glynd%C5%B5r">Owain Glyndŵr</a>, then why would we ignore all the history of Israel that doesn’t fit tidily into that meme? Unlike Britain or the United States, Israel didn’t come about through the conquest an indigenous population by foreign invaders.<br />
<br />
I don’t want to deny that people were violently displaced from their homes. That happened. On both sides. This becomes part of the complex history that can only be dumbed down in a meme.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> Maybe, just maybe, Israel’s legitimacy comes from decades of treaties and international resolutions, and not only because in the wake what is likely the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll">largest genocide in history</a><a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a> it seemed appropriate to establish a Jewish homeland, something the Zionist movement had been trying since about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Judenstaat">1896</a>. But that’s hard to put into a meme.<br />
<br />
When I posed the question with which I’ve titled this post, a friend of a friend (who had posted the meme) had an answer. I can’t verify her answer, but it is tempting. Who the fuck says “Hebrews” in 2018? Anti-Semites.<br />
<br />
<b>Update:</b><br />
Instead of looking at memes on Facebook, <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/262329/gaza-media-explainer" target="_blank">read this</a>. It’s a balanced look at the issues on both sides.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Although some of my friends and relatives have. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:2">Which is to say, if you’re white and posting this, you might want to check if you property was once in lands claimed by a Native American tribe. I’ll wait until you figure out your back payments. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:3">Wht? Nd hv t lrn Hbrw? Ths ppl r n nd f vwls. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:4">It’s only been about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hengist_and_Horsa#Anglo-Saxon_Chronicle">1,570 years</a>. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:5">Memes are cancer. Memes make you stupid. Memes are the irritating inspirational poster in the office of that asshole boss you hated. “Work smarter, not harder,” reminding you that you just cancelled your plans <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">because you have </span>to work late and clean up a mess of your boss’s making. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:6">The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor">Holomodor</a> in Ukraine may have killed more Ukrainians than Jews died in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust">Holocaust</a>, though the total death toll of the Holocaust is larger. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-90404743996126221382018-02-03T16:35:00.000-08:002018-02-03T16:35:45.695-08:00Going for Gougères<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqD-GEy0CIPoYReJSQnHpK8hI0aRC_vXlRc2owetZmLv2ulMk4p1JDNdzczTfw1iEcuzh3YUqKobv828G6GbAFipZP1cYWHPdzNJmqyyMn3s0t-PDanoxs33Su0JiVEiksl5WXM-q71gu/s1600/IMG_6096.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqD-GEy0CIPoYReJSQnHpK8hI0aRC_vXlRc2owetZmLv2ulMk4p1JDNdzczTfw1iEcuzh3YUqKobv828G6GbAFipZP1cYWHPdzNJmqyyMn3s0t-PDanoxs33Su0JiVEiksl5WXM-q71gu/s320/IMG_6096.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My gougères</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I run the risk of this being one of those precious bits of food writing when I say that I first had gougères while doing wine tasting in Bordeaux. I’ll take the risk. It might sound less hoity-toity if I mention that we signed up for the tour at the tourist office and that we travelled about by minivan. (And given the cost of the tour, those were some terribly expensive glasses of wine.)<br />
<br />
At one of the chateaux, the woman who showed us around the property (which was lovely) and led the wine tasting, said, “oh, look, the chef has made gougères for us.” The words were meant to indicate surprise and delight, though the way she said them made it clear that she said them about eight times a day. They smelled good, though. Instead of getting to the gougères and the wine, we got a tour first.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEVV43qFx2VFevNOQFlVLkKVbPh1mT_F3amgJUoP1B1SsthC_6l53AAy6EHZE_l-dCB4PIg0X8A9QePhinSACzYCFmsMl7N3cTZeZqxmeRF0AZkYfaNc2ZUsfJIpyQXlHM4CVr4g8QDbP/s1600/DSCN4011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEVV43qFx2VFevNOQFlVLkKVbPh1mT_F3amgJUoP1B1SsthC_6l53AAy6EHZE_l-dCB4PIg0X8A9QePhinSACzYCFmsMl7N3cTZeZqxmeRF0AZkYfaNc2ZUsfJIpyQXlHM4CVr4g8QDbP/s200/DSCN4011.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The French ones. Nicely piped,<br />but a little flat.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We had them between our first and last tasting. Yeah, they were yummy, but I was already analyzing them. They were cold, since they were already there when we arrived and we walked about for about a half hour before we even drank any wine. They were a little tough. One was slightly deflated. Everyone was enthusiastic about them. I munched on mine and thought, “someone makes these better.”<br />
<br />
As we walked back to the minivan, my husband expressed surprise about them. “Oh, you can have those any time you want,” I said. “They’re just choux pastry with cheese.” Yup, gougères are cheezy choux pastry, and <em>pâte à choux</em> is easy.<br />
<br />
I learned how to make it years ago. We took a cooking course and the dessert was profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream. Profiteroles are easy. I prefer the term “cream puff,” since instead of ice cream, I fill mine with pastry cream (which is also easy). While I’ve been aware that you can fill profiteroles with all sorts of things, I’ve stuck to filling them with pastry cream and dipping them into chocolate.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a><br />
<br />
Recently, I was making a French-themed meal and decided that gougères were showing up in the menu. I checked a few recipes for choux pastry, two from Julia Child (<em>Mastering the Art of French Cooking</em> and <em>The Way to Cook</em>), one from Françoise Bernard (<em>La Cuisine</em>) and Mark Bittman’s <em>How to Cook Everything.</em> Both Child and Bernard noted that gougères were made by adding cheese, though in <em>Mastering the Art of French Cooking,</em> Child adds pepper and nutmeg. That allowed me to get my basic recipe:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<strong>Gougères</strong><br />
<br />
1 cup water<br />
6 Tbs butter (¾ of a stick), cut into pieces<br />
1 tsp salt<br />
¼ tsp pepper<br />
dash of nutmeg<br />
1 cup flour<br />
4 eggs<br />
about 5 oz. shredded cheese, preferably Gruyere or similar<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Preheat the oven to 425°<br />
Put the water, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg into a saucepan. Bring the ingredients to a boil. Once it is at a boil, turn off the heat, and pour in all the flour and stir vigorously with a wooden or plastic spoon until everything is combined. Continue until it is a thick paste that pulls away from the sides of the pan (this should take a couple of minutes).<br />
<br />
Put the pan back on heat. Cook, stirring, until a film appears on the pan. (This takes another couple of minutes.)<br />
<br />
Let cool for (you guessed it) a couple minutes then beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each one before you add the next. (This can be done by hand, or you can use a mixer.)<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a><br />
<br />
[At this point, other than the pepper and nutmeg, you have pâte à choux, which you could fill with something sweet or savory.]<br />
<br />
Add the cheese. It will not incorporate into a smooth batter, but will be somewhat lumpy.<br />
<br />
Using a pair of tablespoons, form the batter into balls on a baking sheet or parchment. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool (but not too much, these things are heavenly hot from the oven).</blockquote>
<br />
Just a note, in <em>Mastering the Art of French Cooking,</em> Julia Child says these will cook in fifteen minutes. I took her at her word and my gougères deflated on cooling. People ate them anyway, but I gave the next batch another five minutes and they retained their shape as they cooled. And people ate them just as avidly.<br />
<br />
These can be piped out (the ones in France clearly were), but that starts to transfer this from a quick and easy recipe to one that has you scrubbing cheese off a piping bag. I own piping bags but I’m happy not to use them.<br />
<br />
These are going to become a standard at my house.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">I’ve read that as a savory appetizer, you can fill them with chicken liver paste, that is <em>mousse de foie de volaille.</em> That’s easy too, but I haven’t thought they’d go over well at parties. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:2">I’ve seen variation on this from 4 oz. to 6 oz. How cheesy do you want them? <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<br />
<li id="fn:3">You can double this. Then you’ll really want to use a mixer. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-65598997446338107182017-08-27T16:13:00.000-07:002017-08-27T16:13:48.356-07:00News Flash: The Primaries Weren’t Rigged<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6UsYjVwU7ETmsmidvXcNgWSQdi_QRBJK799fRe3aomOct-1f9sVTdR00tA76xabJNHpRbN5nptLtpyOMK_JpjMrFWtiruyURyLYIc2HoywJQYlAAnN6EnzFJsDn3THero1QS8TkDk2AS/s1600/observerlies.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd6UsYjVwU7ETmsmidvXcNgWSQdi_QRBJK799fRe3aomOct-1f9sVTdR00tA76xabJNHpRbN5nptLtpyOMK_JpjMrFWtiruyURyLYIc2HoywJQYlAAnN6EnzFJsDn3THero1QS8TkDk2AS/s320/observerlies.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Friendly tip: some stuff that looks like news is propaganda.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My whole point here is how you might distinguish news from propaganda, since we (unfortunately) live in an era when the propagandists are making able use of the internet to try to con people. And so I find myself having to look at the (thoroughly debunked) claim that the Democratic primaries were rigged.<br />
<br />
Am I really writing this in August 2017? The final primary was June 17, 2016, at which point Senator Sanders had an unwinnable position with regard to the pledged delegates (that is, he got fewer votes than Secretary Clinton and in fewer states) and so he started chasing after the superdelegates, despite months of saying that the superdelegates were unfair and that the Democratic Party ought not have them.<br />
<br />
So superdelegates were really, really bad until it was clear that only with the help of the superdelegates could Senator Sanders get the nomination, even if it meant going against the popular vote. The will of the people is really important until it looks like it’s the will of the people that you shouldn’t be the candidate. Sanders did not withdraw until July 26. Four years earlier, Clinton had withdrawn after the last of the 2008 primaries, when it was clear that she did not have sufficient delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee. <br />
<br />
Those are the facts. If you want to dispute them, do some research. There is absolutely no evidence that the Democrats rigged the elections, because they didn’t do it. It’s pretty much impossible to rig a nationwide election in the United States, since our elections are all decentralized. It’s not like one of these countries in which the national government runs the election and the Glorious Leader gets 103% of the vote.<br />
<br />
<strong>Civics Lesson 1.</strong> There’s a hierarchy in voting procedures that never hits the federal government. My votes aren’t even tabulated at a state level, but rather at a county level. Those are then reported up. It’s efficient that way. A quick search shows that in 2004 (close enough) there were 174,252 precincts, but only 113,754 voting places. Clearly some states are allowing precincts to share voting location (then have precincts), while California law provides that a voting precinct may contain no more than 1,000 registered voters and that each precinct must have at least one polling place. This is actually typical, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precinct">Wikipedia</a> notes that<br />
<blockquote>
A 2004 survey by the United States Election Assistance Commission reported an average precinct size in the United States of approximately 1,100 registered voters.</blockquote>
If you want to rig an election in the United States, you have to target not just a few places, but hundreds of local election boards. There’s a line from Ben Franklin that “three may keep a secret if two of them is dead,”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> but those think that a grand conspiracy of the DNC rigged election have to believe that several thousand people (some of whom would be opposed to anything the DNC wanted) can keep a secret. If you want to claim that the 2016 primaries were rigged, you need to go beyond strident claims and start producing some hard evidence.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
In the fever dreams of Sanders supporters, there is no way that Hillary Clinton could possibly have beaten Bernie Sanders in a fair election (despite that 538.com pointed out that the primary election results were completely predictable).<br />
<br />
Into this mix comes an article from the <em>Observer</em> (more on the source later) that screams in its headline that “Court Admits DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schulz Rigged Primaries Against Sanders.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> This is a lie. The second paragraph makes it clear that<br />
<blockquote>
On August 25, 2017, Federal Judge William Zloch, dismissed the lawsuit</blockquote>
<strong>Civics Lesson 2.</strong> There’s no findings of fact in a dismissed lawsuit. Zip. Nobody produces any evidence. The court could not have admitted anything about the factual nature of the case, because there were no claims tested by the fact-finding procedures of a court of law.<br />
<br />
So what really happened? Sainato cites a section of the <a href="http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/62-D.E.-62-Ord-of-Dismissal-8-25-17.pdf">order of dismissal</a>, to which he helpfully provides a link, but he takes it out of context. This is what he quotes, running together material in separate paragraphs from page 9 of the order:<br />
<blockquote>
The Court thus assumes that the DNC and Wasserman Schultz preferred Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president over Bernie Sanders or any other Democratic candidate. It assumes that they stockpiled information useful to the Clinton campaign. It assumes that they devoted their resources to assist Clinton in securing the party’s nomination and opposing other Democratic candidates. And it assumes that they engaged in these surreptitious acts while publically proclaiming they were completely neutral, fair, and impartial. This Order therefore concerns only technical matters of pleading and subject-matter jurisdiction.</blockquote>
This is quoted accurately, right to the misspelling of “publicly.” The final sentence comes from the subsequent paragraph, but let’s look at the third word, “thus.” The word indicates that the conclusion is a consequence of something. But of what? Mr. Sainato does not tell us. Oh, but we do have the court order.<br />
<blockquote>
At this stage, the Court is required to construe the First Amended Complaint (DE 8) in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs and accept its well-pled allegations as true. (page 8)</blockquote>
This is in the same paragraph as the quote material and immediately precedes it. The court has to accept it as true, despite there being no finding of fact, until that finding of fact happens. It’s akin to “innocent until proven guilty.” Plaintiffs are assumed to be telling the truth until the defense proves otherwise. The judge doesn’t get to say, “I don’t buy your allegations, and so I’m not giving you a chance to prove them.”<br />
<br />
The judge makes it quite clear that the plaintiffs have failed to establish standing:<br />
<blockquote>
As to the fraud-type claims Counts I, II, III and IV, Plaintiffs fail to allege any causal connection between their injuries and Defendants’ statements. The Plaintiffs asserting each of these causes of action specifically allege that they donated to the DNC or to Bernie Sanders’s campaign. See DE 8, ¶¶ 2–109. But not one of them alleges that they ever read the DNC’s charter or heard the statements they now claim are false before making their donations. And not one of them alleges that they took action in reliance on the DNC’s charter or the statements identified in the First Amended Complaint (DE 8). Absent such allegations, these Plaintiffs lack standing. (Page 13)</blockquote>
Further, the judge notes later on that page (and continuing on page 14) that<br />
<blockquote>
To be sure, two paragraphs of the First Amended Complaint (DE 8) assert generally that the “DNC Donor Class Plaintiffs, the Sanders Donor Class Plaintiffs, and members of the DNC Donor Class and the Sanders Donor Class, relied on Defendants’ false statements and omissions to their injury.” DE 8, ¶¶ 188 & 195.3 But this boilerplate recitation, absent factual content to support it, does not permit the Court to “determine that at least one named class representative has Article III standing to raise each class claim.”</blockquote>
Key words “absent factual content.” The plaintiffs provided allegations (which is all they need to file), but no factual content (because that comes later). There have been no hard facts offered to support claims that the DNC rigged the primaries and the preponderance of evidence is that they did not.<br />
<br />
But now let us consider the source. In reading it’s always important to consider the source. Is it a respected media outlet, known for its commitment to fact checking (like the <em>New York Times</em>) or is it the random blog of some loud individual with a keyboard (this).<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> This story was promoted by the <em>Observer.</em> Okay, what’s that?<br />
<br />
The <em>Observer</em> is the internet remnant of the former <em>New York Observer,</em> a newspaper that was purchased by Jared Kusher. This is a source that goes directly to the President’s family. Yeah, just not any Jared Kushner, but the one who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law.<br />
<br />
There is insufficient separation between the <em>Observer</em> and the Trump administration to consider the <em>Observer</em> anything but the propaganda arm of the Trump administration. Some liberals have accused Fox News of being the propaganda arm of the Republican Party (and Fox News is good at making themselves seem to be the propaganda arm of the Republican Party), but even there the RNC chair doesn’t own Fox News. If you’re getting your news about the 2016 Democratic primaries from Jared Kushner, you really need to consider the source.<br />
<br />
While the <em>Observer</em> hasn’t shown that the DNC rigged the election,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> this story is a good lesson on how to read.<br />
<ol>
<li>Consider the facts. Is there a factual basis to the article? In the case of the <em>Observer</em> piece, a careful reading says no.</li>
<br />
<li>Look at the sources. Does the source support the article’s claim? In this case, no. One thing to watch for are one-sided pieces, such as articles on the harms of same-sex marriage where only opponents of same-sex marriage get cited.</li>
<br />
<li>Consider the source. Is this a likely biased source. Hint: “published by the President’s son-in-law” is not an assurance of objectivity, just the opposite.</li>
</ol>
<br />
If the <em>Observer</em>’s unsupported claim that the DNC rigged the election fills your heart with righteous joy, please read more carefully. They’re lying to you.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Often quoted as “two may…” but <em>Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations</em> gives the cite. It’s from <em>Poor Richard’s Almanac</em> of July 1735. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"><br />
↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">And if you have no hard evidence, then we have to assume that nothing happened. That’s when you shut the fuck up. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"><br />
↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">I know I usually link to news articles, but since this article my Micheal Sainato, published on August 26, 2017 is a lie, I see no reason to do so. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"><br />
↩</a><br />
</li>
<li id="fn:4">This is an invitation to rigorously fact-check me. Have at it. I love more and better facts. Still, if you have hard evidence that the DNC rigged the primaries (and not just that Sanders won smaller, whiter states) then don’t tell me, tell the <em><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/news-tips/?mcubz=3">New York Times</a>.</em> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"><br />
↩</a><br />
</li>
<li id="fn:5">Because there is no evidence to support this idea and a lot that undermines it. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-67633530889284184932017-05-08T17:00:00.000-07:002017-05-08T17:00:24.974-07:00Nay to Née<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlJ-C-Y4o0Nnp5eH8Q4tFJsRizXE02j7I4uu1U3QmXJRM_lyRurlIE9fuMwEccCUYil4M5rvAJ3DNNXnnMDnDNm3tLX7eozde-R9JZKdLvxZitlD4ojf9WzhvdIMeoV2qaKUv5VEesrjj/s1600/ne.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlJ-C-Y4o0Nnp5eH8Q4tFJsRizXE02j7I4uu1U3QmXJRM_lyRurlIE9fuMwEccCUYil4M5rvAJ3DNNXnnMDnDNm3tLX7eozde-R9JZKdLvxZitlD4ojf9WzhvdIMeoV2qaKUv5VEesrjj/s200/ne.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Né? Not for me!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I tend to be fairly conservative in language, preferring the tried-and-true to the innovative, but there is one point where I have to draw the line. There may have been an era in which the use of the French word <em>née</em> didn’t come off as affected or pretentious. We are no longer in that era.<br />
<br />
Worse yet, the only times I ever see it, it’s been misused. There are multiple forms. In French there are times in which you would write not only <em>né</em> and <em>née,</em> but also •nés* and <em>nées.</em> It’s just the French word for “born” (that is, the past participle of the verb <em>naître</em>). As a convention in English, it’s acquired the meaning of “born under the name of,” and it’s typically used to indicate that some man is performing under a name other than that with which he was born.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I remember seeing this used some years ago in a newspaper article about a British performer, though I have forgotten whether the performer in question was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Ant">Adam Ant</a>,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie">David Bowie</a>,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elton_John">Elton John</a>.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> I do remember that the newspaper used the feminine form, <em>née,</em> instead of the masculine form, <em>né.</em> Oops.<br />
<br />
<em>Slate</em> has taken this one step further into error. In <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/05/republicans_are_lying_about_trumpcare.html">an article on the American Health Care Act</a> (aka Trumpcare), Jamelle Bouie writes, “Obamacare (née the Affordable Care Act).” Now wait a minute! Is the Affordable Care Act female? Really? The French word <em>acte</em> is masculine (although the feminine word <em>loi</em> could be used instead). Was the law born with the name the Affordable Care Act, but now it uses “Obamacare”? The text of the law undoubtably is still titled “The Affordable Care Act.” <em>Né</em> is indefensible here, <em>née</em> doubly so.<br />
<br />
<em>Née</em> should only be used when talking about talking about women in a prior era, when in “taking their husband’s name,” women went whole hog, giving us “Mrs William Backhouse Astor Jr.” (née <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Schermerhorn_Astor">Caroline Schermerhorn</a>). But Mrs. Astor died in 1908. Mrs. Astor would have found shocking the construction “Mrs. Hillary Clinton,” which for Mrs. Astor would have raised the suspicion that a divorced woman was running for president. Twelve years after Mrs. Astor’s death, <a href="http://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/protection-of-marriage.html">James M. Cox’s divorce</a> was shocking enough to prevent him from becoming president.<br />
<br />
It’s long past time to say <em>adieu</em> to <em>née.</em><br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Stage name of Stuart Goddard. (There’s no indication that he’s ever legally changed his name.) <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">Stage name of David Jones. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Born Reginald Dwight. Getting knighted conferred a legal name change. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-54090021104593172152017-04-14T18:19:00.001-07:002017-06-29T14:55:36.254-07:00Zamenhof Died. Esperanto Still Lives<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8vpqc9jOW_wyooAu748M3B0KinFl8_v4PzYojbPcc-Yb87VeDIF2CFJgIPLcKy-5ypPxW_qgZC3NR8H1lbDxJrGekP_yQoQN-xN5zEaEV14ai6twvwAoPD7xcERatCwTFzmF2Yj5GkmAY/s1600/antwerp1911.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8vpqc9jOW_wyooAu748M3B0KinFl8_v4PzYojbPcc-Yb87VeDIF2CFJgIPLcKy-5ypPxW_qgZC3NR8H1lbDxJrGekP_yQoQN-xN5zEaEV14ai6twvwAoPD7xcERatCwTFzmF2Yj5GkmAY/s320/antwerp1911.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Zamenhofs in Antwerp, 1911</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We live in an age where when even the deaths of minor newsmakers and celebrities are reported globally almost instantly. When Ludovik Zamenhof died on April 14, 1917, this global communications network still in its infancy, but many American papers did report on Zamenhof’s death just two days after, which is (by the standards of the day) reasonably fast. They might not have heard about it until the Sunday, April 15, 1917 newspapers were set in type.<br />
<br />
It actually says something that Zamenhof’s death in Warsaw hit the American papers so quickly. After all, Europe was at war. The front page of the April 16 <em>New York Tribune</em> (they fit the Zamenhof obituary on page 7) all about war: “President Calls Nation to War Duties,” “Treasury Asks for $1,807,250,000 in Special War Taxes,”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> and “Socialists’ Peace Plan Called German Ruse.”<br />
<br />
The reports given in various newspapers (<em>New York Tribune,</em> <em>Washington Times,</em> <em>Washington Evening Star,</em> <em>The Tacoma Times</em>) overlap in their text, so the whole thing was probably taken from the wire services. This is the article as it appeared in the <em>Tribune</em>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof</b> </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="background: #000000; height: 1px; margin: auto; overflow: hidden; width: 20%;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Author of Esperanto Dies in Warsaw at Fifty-eight</b></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="background: #000000; height: 1px; margin: auto; overflow: hidden; width: 10%;">
</div>
<blockquote>
Amsterdam, April 16.—Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof, author of Esperanto, died yesterday at Warsaw, according to advices received here.<br />
<br />
Dr. Zamenhof was born at Bielostok in 1859 and published his first book on the new language called Esperanto in 1887. Dr. Zamenhof chose the roots of Esperanto from existing languages, mainly European. There are 2,642 roots in his dictionary. The phonology of his language is said to be very simple. The grammar, like Volapuk, wich it succeeded as an international auxiliary languge is partially borrowed from existing languages.</blockquote>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOFk_juOJJ78Oey2ZvxPLKUCJ78np7_jmyLQvxVaU6ZsymODE8VRdr8K_fYgi7K_db0nQEcAQp-5kkpFJG27QoofXzJhNWw63eJSAr-5U90V4diDHWSXCc39BtM-BMHZI6kgopi8hTDzE/s1600/zamdeath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvOFk_juOJJ78Oey2ZvxPLKUCJ78np7_jmyLQvxVaU6ZsymODE8VRdr8K_fYgi7K_db0nQEcAQp-5kkpFJG27QoofXzJhNWw63eJSAr-5U90V4diDHWSXCc39BtM-BMHZI6kgopi8hTDzE/s320/zamdeath.jpg" width="264" /></a>The last ten years of Zamenhof’s life must have been difficult (even apart from health issues). He had seen the movement split with the Ido schism, a breakaway which saw more favor among prominent Esperantists than the rank and file, so Zamenhof saw old friends and allies break with him. He had seen the 1914 <em>Universala Kongreso</em> abruptly cancelled due to the beginning of World War I, and though the armistice would happen later in 1917, he wouldn’t be around to see it.<br />
<br />
It was a low point for Esperanto.<br />
<br />
The succeeding century saw mixed fortunes for Esperanto. French opposition to Esperanto in the 1920s was nothing to German persecution of Esperanto in the 1930s and 40s. Let’s be blunt: the French just blocked the use of Esperanto in diplomacy and education; they didn’t murder Zamenhof’s family. And yet despite attempts to stamp out Zamenhof’s dream, it persists after his death.<br />
<br />
The 1915 UK was a hastily thrown-together affair, moved from the initial choice of Birmingham to San Francisco in the still-neutral United States. Only 163 people marked the tenth anniversary of the first UK. A century after that, in 2015, 2,698 Esperanto speakers participated in the 100th UK in Lille, France.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
Things have changed recently.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKOWuwhi6e2ljsYhF1GnbbxXM_mcD2oni7iRDCEhdRC8bbEnWrkYq70hXAbGJ_CJRHGsABqyOI8S4Wv-rBK3MQ52iAQo7BhU2pUwtZe6OGFtjn5rr69QpN7wv-2UVntLOLqOlp9pRpw1E/s1600/Duolingo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQKOWuwhi6e2ljsYhF1GnbbxXM_mcD2oni7iRDCEhdRC8bbEnWrkYq70hXAbGJ_CJRHGsABqyOI8S4Wv-rBK3MQ52iAQo7BhU2pUwtZe6OGFtjn5rr69QpN7wv-2UVntLOLqOlp9pRpw1E/s400/Duolingo.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Join the club, it's easy and fun!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In May 2015, <a href="http://www.duolingo.com/" target="_blank">Duolingo</a> (<a href="http://www.duolingo.com/">www.duolingo.com</a>) released Esperanto lessons. As of today, 810,000 have signed up to take these lessons. Esperanto for Spanish came after that and has 94,800 studying it (and I hear that Esperanto for Portuguese speakers is coming next). It looks like Esperanto might be in a bit of a resurgence.<br />
<br />
Ludovik Zamenhof died a century ago, but his dream lives on. A century after his death, people are learning and speaking the language that he published 130 years ago this year. Let us raise a toast to the memory of Ludovik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto:<br />
<br />
Zamenhof mortis, sed sia revo ankaŭ vivas!<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><br />
Can you imagine a newspaper today being so specific in a headline? Now it’d be $1.8 Million. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2"><br />
Not the record. That would be Warsaw in 1987, the 72nd, and the centennial of Esperanto. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-74054704089185547902016-06-02T19:31:00.000-07:002016-06-02T19:37:47.296-07:00Pride<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDELzQ6SGw1W6FSJ0BSWQscG4nSvsDVMGqCNQ6jwmwZo6GRY_TQbECvbrC7FUVy3Tpb_F-Sj368-rzqk6W1Qe0hcnCq01akWPGKriYRPDzMNN6gFKMGZhYahrIqyuU4xvJm0Foq0HtuL4P/s1600/Pride.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDELzQ6SGw1W6FSJ0BSWQscG4nSvsDVMGqCNQ6jwmwZo6GRY_TQbECvbrC7FUVy3Tpb_F-Sj368-rzqk6W1Qe0hcnCq01akWPGKriYRPDzMNN6gFKMGZhYahrIqyuU4xvJm0Foq0HtuL4P/s200/Pride.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We are proud to be a<br />
community!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<em>Pride, Celebrating Diversity and Community,</em> by Robin Stevenson (Orca Books) is geared to middle readers (8-12). I would suppose it would be perfect for a teen who is becoming aware of LGBT relatives or even teens who becoming aware that they are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. I would be remiss in my review if I didn’t note that I, who was seven when the Stonewall Riots happened, actually learned something from this book.<br />
<br />
No fooling. It wasn’t something that happened in the last year or two that had slipped my attention, but the origins of gay-straight alliances, which Stevenson notes started at George Washington High School in New York City in 1972. She further cites a 1976 pamphlet from the Youth Liberation Front (her research and scope is impeccable) which exhorted gay teens to come out, a message that still needs to be heard today by people who have left their high school days behind.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Look, I understand. I started high school in 1976 and my recollections are not of an affirming space for LGBT youth (I got called “fag” by my classmates…a lot). I am not telling teens that they should come out; I’m telling everyone else that teens ought to be able to come out. I would have been horrified at though being found with with a pamphlet that said:<br />
<blockquote>
”Now it is up to us, the gay students, to have the courage to come out, so that we can help our gay brothers and sisters, as well as ourselves.”</blockquote>
Honestly, that’s a lot to ask of a gay teen, particularly in 1976. Stevenson takes the history of the gay rights movement from Stonewall, a story that everyone should know, and brings things forward to the current day. In this, she covers the community’s struggles for which Pride has been a chance to get together and remind ourselves that we can meet our goals. Pride parades were only a decade old when the LGBT community had to face the AIDS crisis. On a happier note, she also covered the marriage marriage equality movement.<br />
<br />
<em>Pride</em> was published in Canada, and that’s a good thing, because though the Stonewall Riots happened in New York (with other protests and disturbances happening elsewhere at about the same time), Pride doesn’t belong to New York City or even the United States. She ends the book with a look at Pride around the world, because it’s become a global phenomenon. She does not cover Iceland where Pride has become arts festival celebrated by just about everyone (Iceland has fewer than 500,000 citizens).<br />
<br />
But that’s a quibble. This book is packed with so much great information that it seems unfair to fault a 120-page book for not being exhaustive. Someone could create a massive tome, with little room for pictures (<em>Pride</em> is lavishly illustrated with photos and other materials), but how would you get the intended audience to read it?<br />
<br />
In the forty-six years since the first Pride march, there have been far too many people who have wished that Pride marches would just go away and the LGBT community would slink back into the closet. Not gonna happen. Stevenson makes it clear in her book that this is a community and it one with a global reach. Her book is a great way to learn more about our community. It’s a great book, even if you’re not LGBT. Or Canadian.<br />
<br />
Stevenson's book is an utter delight and should be in the hands of middle readers everywhere, whether it is is in their school libraries or (better yet) their homes.John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-91754800630070881692016-05-03T21:34:00.000-07:002016-05-03T21:34:25.087-07:00An American Anthem…In Esperanto<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvDbq1EGvEGGc-fKaAWcwvAG1m0JuoiEVVlTps3BeNo6DAglbmvOSPHvJ2fTIu__fEJJpbFH51A9aJ__-xN_N9igWAPLsp0vueMFRlItrGswWBTsweFFMSykCrBuPVVGalMIcd68w6KzWG/s1600/McFatrich.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvDbq1EGvEGGc-fKaAWcwvAG1m0JuoiEVVlTps3BeNo6DAglbmvOSPHvJ2fTIu__fEJJpbFH51A9aJ__-xN_N9igWAPLsp0vueMFRlItrGswWBTsweFFMSykCrBuPVVGalMIcd68w6KzWG/s200/McFatrich.png" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dr.James McFatrich<br />
Sought to select anthem<br />
Probably not the Esperanto one</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The status of the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner">Star Spangled Banner</a>” as the national anthem, has apparently been of discussion ever since it was chosen (and clearly a bit before that). While it’s been the United States national anthem for forever, it only become so in 1931,<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> despite that the lyrics, “Defense of Fort M’Henry” were written in 1814.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a> People have complained that the song is difficult to sing, and that the music comes from a drinking song (which must have been <em>damn</em> difficult to sing drunk), “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Anacreon_in_Heaven">To Anacreon in Heaven</a>,”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> so maybe not the best tune for a sober nation.<br />
<br />
There were various attempts to find a national anthem, because all the cool nations had one. England had “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Save_the_Queen">God Save the King</a>,”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a> France had “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise">La Marseillaise</a>” and even the Esperanto movement had “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Espero">La Espero</a>” as anthems before 1911.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> Unofficially, the United States was using “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country,_%27Tis_of_Thee">My Country, ’tis of Thee</a>,” which has the problem of using the tune of “God Save the King.”<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>There were a variety of attempts at proposing something else and making it official, including “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Country,_%27Tis_of_Thee">The Battle Hymn of the Republic</a>,” which some Southerners objected to, since it uses the tune of the abolitionist hymn “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown%27s_Body">John Brown’s Body</a>.” In 1911, the Chicago School Board proposed a contest to find a replacement for “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem (please note that officially the “The Star Spangled Banner” would not be the national anthem for another twenty years, but it was clearly the <em>de facto</em> one).<br />
<br />
The <em>Chicago Daily Tribune</em> reported on May 3, 1911 that an entry had arrived in Esperanto.<br />
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>USES ESPERANTO IN NEW ANTHEM</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>Woman Resorts to ‘Universal’ Language in National Hymn Contest.</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>PEACE IS HER THEME.</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>Fifty Entries a Day Overwhelming Dr. McFatrich and the School Authorities</strong></div>
<blockquote>
Fratoj de l’tuta ter’<br />
Nun vivu en l’esper’<br />
Ĉiu naci’.<br />
Tro longe la glavar’<br />
Restis kun la homar’<br />
Nun estu la lander’<br />
Pacim peri.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
[This is going to be one of those moments when I break the transcribed article because I can’t wait to comment. I have no idea what the last line is supposed to be. It’s just too garbled to make sense of. One problem with this text is that, for no particular reason the final -o has been dropped from every word. In transcribing it, I added apostrophes that the <em>Tribune</em> did not use. Since <em>tero</em> rhymes with <em>espero,</em> there’s really no need for it. Okay, back to the article.]<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Just after a postman had left the board of education yesterday noon the district superintendents, assistant superintendents, and other officials heard a mona of despair from the desk just outside the office of the president of the board.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong>Esperanto Is Too Much</strong></div>
They looked over and saw Charles Wilson, secretary to the president, sitting limply in his chair and staring that the latest addition to the contest for a new national anthem. It was called “Himno por la Paco Tutmonda,” and was in pure Esperanto.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:6" id="fnref:6" title="see footnote">[6]</a><br />
<br />
Mr. Wilson struggled through the first verse and then sadly placed the contribution on Dr. McFatrich’s desk. Since the suggestion of a prize for a new anthem to take the place of “The Star Spangled Banner,” which Dr. McFatrich maintains is the national anthem, letters and packages have poured into the office until now communications on this subject number upwards of fifty a day.<br />
<br />
<strong>Is Hymn of Peace.</strong><br />
The hymn in Esperanto is the contribution of Mrs. Evelyn Leeds-Cole of Michigan City, Ind., and is translated to “A Hymn for Universal Peace,” the first verse reading:<br />
<blockquote>
Brothers of every clime,<br />
Led by a hope sublime,<br />
We sheathe the sword.<br />
Longs has the earth been rife<br />
With hate and deadly strife;<br />
Pledge we our heart and life,<br />
O grant thy peace.</blockquote>
Here is the chorus of a St. Louis contribution:<br />
<blockquote>
O say can you see<br />
My country, ’tis of thee?<br />
Our national anthem should be sung<br />
By every, every, EVERY one.</blockquote>
Many of the songs are sent to Mrs. Young, who turns them all over to the president of the board as sponsor for the contest. Mr. Wilson gets them eventually.</blockquote>
<br />
Before considering Evelyn Leeds Cole, there is Dr. McFatrich to consider. In addition to being principal of the school board, he was a doctor of medicine, president of the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Otology, and one of the founders of the Murine company. That’s right, the eye drops.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:7" id="fnref:7" title="see footnote">[7]</a><br />
<br />
Between his practice, the college, and the company, Dr. McFatrich probably didn’t have a lot of time for the day-to-day duties of the Chicago school board, and so the Mr. Wilson mentioned in the article probably had to deal with most the responsibilities. We can hear him muttering that it just didn’t make sense for the Chicago school board to host a contest for a national anthem.<br />
<br />
The contest applicant, Evelyn Leeds Cole, was the widow of physician and this was not the only song to her name, as the <em>Catalog of Copyright Entries</em> make it clear that in 1916 (so later) she published “Dear Hoosier Land.” “A Hymn for Universal Peace” was composed in English, and then subsequently translated into Esperanto (and she did not do the translation herself), so she actually submitted a joint work to the Chicago school board. Of the two songs, her “Hymn” (in either language) seems to have been the more popular. The <em>Advocate of Peace Through Justice</em> noted in February 1912 that the song was available at 20 center per copy. According to the November, 1911 <em>Amerika Esperantisto,</em> the Esperanto translation was done by A. B. Deans. In Esperanto, it cost 22 cents a copy.<br />
<blockquote>
This won the prize in a contest for such songs a short time ago, as our readers doubtless knew at the time. That the author at one had the words translated into Esperanto is a fact which will be noted with interest, and our musical esperantists will therein an additional reason for being pleased with the hymn.</blockquote>
In 1924, the song was part of the festivities of the annual convention of the Indiana League of Women Voters. And in 1926, the Esperanto version was republished in <em><a href="http://kantaro.ikso.net/kantaro_esperanta">Kantaro Esperanta</a>,</em> edited by Montagu C. Butler.<br />
<br />
Dr. McFatrich died in 1914, less than three years after the contest. The <em>Optometrical Record</em> ascribed his death to heart failure brought on by a severe cold, but are we certain it wasn’t the strain of the 1911 anthem contest? In the end, “The Star Spangled Banner,” the <em>de facto</em> national anthem, became the official one, twenty years later.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">Eighty-eight years ago, as I write this.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">All this from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner">Wikipedia entry</a> I linked to at the words <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner">Star Spangled Banner</a>.</em> <br /><a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">With its stirring lyric, “To Anacreon in heav’n, where he sat in full glee…” The Wikipedia page on the song doesn’t link to the page on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anacreon">Anacreon</a>, who was a “Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns.”<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">Or, currently, and at other times, queen, though between this post is referring to a 1911 event (which I’ll get to), which means that between the time of the event and 1931, the British anthem was “God Save the King.”<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">I was tempted to make a snarky comment that Germany had “Deutschland über allies” as their national anthem, but then I looked things up and found that the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandlied">Deutschlandleid</a>” [literally, “Germany song”] didn’t become the German national anthem until 1922, But it does begin with “Deutschland, Deutschland über allies.” That first stanza is no longer used, in part because during the Nazi era it was the <em>only</em> one used.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:6">You wouldn’t want it in <em>impure</em> Esperanto. Of course not. Also the <em>Tribune</em> messed up the name, giving it as “Himmo.” Twinned consonants are extremely rare in Esperanto. <br /><a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:6" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:7">Murine eye drops seem to no longer be available in the United States, though the company makes a ear wash (the founder was president of a college of otology, after all), although its UK and Australian affiliates are still producing eye drops. It’s still a mystery to me why the company was named after a family of rodents that include rats and mice. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:7" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-13156490532288456802016-05-02T15:59:00.000-07:002016-05-02T15:59:49.904-07:00I Stalk Dead People<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkoDEMFn34xp9OpXGMLJmtaF28DLFM6y3hoFeQawroMIdiIXJeaFt3zldEYDZ9TzzWaF_ARyzTTEC5YhzGVEluXbFuBEahRzUsmf71yBG9J32z_HwuSAlpZYA6PTjeGipPDkr8QujC1LR_/s1600/mary+anne+death.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="32" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkoDEMFn34xp9OpXGMLJmtaF28DLFM6y3hoFeQawroMIdiIXJeaFt3zldEYDZ9TzzWaF_ARyzTTEC5YhzGVEluXbFuBEahRzUsmf71yBG9J32z_HwuSAlpZYA6PTjeGipPDkr8QujC1LR_/s320/mary+anne+death.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone got buried in 1881, but probably not someone<br />named Mary Anne Maddicks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This blog is two years old, and this is the first time I’ve really covered genealogy. Oops. It’s odd that it hasn’t come up since not only have I used genealogical research over and over on this blog, but I’ve been researching my own genealogy for about the last sixteen years.<br />
<br />
In the blog, I’ve used genealogical research to find out more details about the people I’ve written about as part of the general background material of the blog post. “Hey, this person seemed so active in the Esperanto movement. What happened? Oh, they suddenly died.”<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a> The same techniques that go into finding out where great-great-grandpa lived.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>I’m not the only one. It’s a popular hobby, though I’ve joked on occasion that “all of the good hobbies were taken,” but its popular because it’s great fun. It’s more like a great game of sleuthing. In geocaching, there’s expectation that the item you’re looking for is somewhere. If you come up empty-handed, you did something wrong. In genealogy, you might be searching for something that was destroyed decades ago, if it ever existed. Sometimes, you search, give up the trail, and then it just drops into your lap. In the end, you’ve amassed a pile of documents about your relatives. Dossiers, as you would. Sounds kinda stalkerish. But let’s not focus on that. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK45gYhVy_MbAOqVqxTkjqh7FY9n4JWrHskqLQVngRywSpWWkK-bimnd88TwUOgl2cTyaWwVxbtCg4W17glsHrtkZDoyx0NlNoifi3fqRaVHdqpz0mD6qbgK8oNntghJDcXKL7T7Oz9Cbj/s1600/mary+anne+baptismal+edited.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK45gYhVy_MbAOqVqxTkjqh7FY9n4JWrHskqLQVngRywSpWWkK-bimnd88TwUOgl2cTyaWwVxbtCg4W17glsHrtkZDoyx0NlNoifi3fqRaVHdqpz0mD6qbgK8oNntghJDcXKL7T7Oz9Cbj/s320/mary+anne+baptismal+edited.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The baptismal record (edited)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I’m fascinated by the puzzles involved. I recently was going through Nova Scotia death records and found one for Mary Anne Maddox, the daughter of Matthew and Catherine (Cavanaugh) Maddox. Their names get spelled a variety of ways in the records, probably depending on who was writing it down (I’m sticking with “Maddox,” as that is how living relatives spell it). Matthew and Catherine Maddox were my great-great-grandparents, and the individual at question would have been my great grandaunt. In the burial registers we see that on 22 September 1881, Mary Anne Maddox, aged 1, died in L’Ardoise, Nova Scotia. There’s just a problem with that.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpmUcw_NhnO27EP7LcDJd5P63tH5sflNCWx_So1nJ0pkRtBW4PMn9gHk_uLTh6IWNSHS83ak4u74H_hFZY3Yw4ss4zidXzh0A5SS1sK3OMCgtdKu32x3sVHApRjv4rdJ3VPxvtgqXhZIW/s1600/mary+anne+census+snip.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpmUcw_NhnO27EP7LcDJd5P63tH5sflNCWx_So1nJ0pkRtBW4PMn9gHk_uLTh6IWNSHS83ak4u74H_hFZY3Yw4ss4zidXzh0A5SS1sK3OMCgtdKu32x3sVHApRjv4rdJ3VPxvtgqXhZIW/s320/mary+anne+census+snip.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And here she is on the census, a decade after the burial</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Ten years later on the 1891 Canadian Census, Mary Anne is 13, which is an amazing trick to manage if you’ve been dead for ten years. It can’t even be a child that was named for her dead sister; as you poke through birth and death records it seems clear that a promise of “we’ll name the next one—” was expected to stick until you got the name applied to someone who survived childhood.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a> It’s not the census that’s making a mistake, since there’s a baptismal record for Mary Anne from 18 February 1878. Let us do the math: someone born in 1878 would in 1891 turn, oh yes, 13. What the birth records <em>don’t</em> have is a Maddox birth in 1879 or 80.<br />
<br />
(Not everything is so uncertain. The same baptismal and burial records establish that Matthew and Catherine baptized a son, John Robert Maddox, on 22 June 1884, who did on 15 March 1885. Pretty simple.)<br />
<br />
This is what we know:<br />
<ul>
<li>Mary Anne Maddox was baptized on 18 February 1878, .</li>
<li>In 1881, her parents buried an one-year-old daughter, also named Mary Anne, according to the death records.</li>
<li>In the 1891 Census, she’s listed (predictably) as a 13-year-old.</li>
</ul>
Whom did they bury? Mary Anne Maddox would go on to marry, have children and die in 1932. But someone was buried. That question remains to be solved.<br />
<br />
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn:1">I expect that people who were covered in century-old newspaper stories are now dead; many of them died not long after their brief moment of fame. Take for example <a href="http://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-promising-young-esperantist.html">William Parker Bonbright</a>, whose Esperanto advocacy was cut short when he drowned in 1909 at the age of 26.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">For me, that answer is Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, or Italy, depending on which great-great-grandfather.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">One of my ancestors, after his first wife died (my lineage) re-used a lot of the same names for children with his second wife, even though their step-siblings of the same were still alive. I guess if Laurent had moved away from home, what did it matter if his step-brother had the same name? <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
</ol>
</div>
John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1081854755492444172.post-21554387446886021892016-05-01T20:54:00.000-07:002016-05-01T20:54:01.542-07:00Second Blogaversary<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWziFoFsyNJNVKt-qeH1x2IspmpC0La-YNHDYXvrwlOIj7LShM0aqZNlLolVu0F8iBYNWPksIKVLHGUSmaA9Mb0KWnK4AMvFjP4qSxcBlEmZhKeqiOI6T6Ha6YumhxmuufENdAp512YJ1L/s1600/du.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWziFoFsyNJNVKt-qeH1x2IspmpC0La-YNHDYXvrwlOIj7LShM0aqZNlLolVu0F8iBYNWPksIKVLHGUSmaA9Mb0KWnK4AMvFjP4qSxcBlEmZhKeqiOI6T6Ha6YumhxmuufENdAp512YJ1L/s200/du.png" width="80" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two years!</td></tr>
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It’s been two years. On May 1, 2014, I wrote my <a href="http://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/05/insert-standard-first-blog-post-title.html">first post on this blog</a> and on May 1, 2015 <a href="http://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2015/05/first-blogaversary.html">wrote a followup</a>. If the first year of the blog was filled with great hopes, the second year, reality set in. In the first year of the blog, I turned out 528 posts (more than one a day), but in the second year, I turned to other things, and only wrote a further 103 posts (call it one every three and a half days). Ouch. What happened?<br />
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Mostly I was busy. I started the blog with a few things in mind, although there was the hope that <em>somehow</em> the blog would bring me an ever-increasing readership. This is not the case. If you’re reading this post, you’re one of the few. Be proud of it. After a few months, in anticipation of the coming readership, I started serving ads on the page, but at my current readership, that should pay off sometime in 2034 (and then again in 2054).<br />
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One of my goals was to recapture my own voice, to make this blog sound like me. In my prior life, I did a lot of corporate writing, and I found that when I got home I would be writing in that same corporate speak. Who wants to read that? Not even the recipients of those corporate screeds really wanted to be reading it, but that’s what I had to write. I am happy to say, in that respect, the blog has done its job and I am writing something that is my own voice, for better or worse.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Although I found myself becoming a blogger, that was never the endgame. I hope people enjoy this, but I don’t see these blog posts as my life’s work. I wasn’t trying to get to my voice in order to become a better blogger, but to be a better writer. I’m writing fiction, but you don’t see that stuff showing up on the blog. Nor do I feel myself particularly competent to make pronouncements on how I write (<a href="http://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2016/01/longhand-writing-in-digital-world.html">with one exception</a>). Why follow the advice of an unpublished writer? I might be on to something, but it’s too early to tell.<br />
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In the last year, the writing has taken more of my attention as I have become ever more serious about it. From October through April, I found myself writing and revising according to one sort of deadline or another (an MFA program<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:1" id="fnref:1" title="see footnote">[1]</a>, a grant program<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:2" id="fnref:2" title="see footnote">[2]</a>, a specific magazine deadline<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:3" id="fnref:3" title="see footnote">[3]</a>), all of which I could see as more important than a blog position the history of Esperanto at that particular time.<br />
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There were also times in the blog’s first year when I applied heroic measures to make certain that the blog would not go silent. Before taking a lengthy trip, I wrote a series of blog posts in advance so that I would have them ready to post, as if I were just writing away. In 2015, as travel impended, I just couldn’t see myself taking so much time away from everything else I wanted to do so that the blog posts would continue, especially as I knew that when I returned, I needed to decide where I was in my career as a writer, and whether it would be worth my while to apply to the MFA program that did not accept me in 2014.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:4" id="fnref:4" title="see footnote">[4]</a><br />
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What does Year 3 hold for <em>Imp of the Diverse</em>? I haven’t the faintest idea. There are some things I want to write; I even have upcoming blog posts drafted out (some are things I started to write and lost the time or will to finish). I know I need to get more stories written, and those won’t be showing up on the blog. I do know that this blog still runs on ego.<a class="footnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fn:5" id="fnref:5" title="see footnote">[5]</a> If you want to see more of this blog, get your friends to read it and you and your friends should comment on my posts.<br />
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Writing is a lonely task, and there’s plenty out there to discourage writers. I already know that I should have a real job. Encouragement helps.<br />
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<li id="fn:1">Didn’t get in.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:1" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:2">No word yet. Too early to tell.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:2" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:3">Also too early to tell.<br /> <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:3" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:4">So, that’s two for two. As I write this, I’m still ambivalent about a third try. I know I won’t make an attempt if the only difference is that I’m a year older. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:4" title="return to article"><br />↩</a></li>
<li id="fn:5">Mine, specifically. <a class="reversefootnote" href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1081854755492444172#fnref:5" title="return to article"> ↩</a></li>
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John Dumashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08908646219266836986noreply@blogger.com0