Year: 2002

Categories
Just Shelley

Arggh

I somehow hurt my neck and upper back along the spine and am unsure of how long I’ll be able to stay online. Even laying down, trying to type into the computer just isn’t working out.

If you email and I don’t respond, I’m not being rude and ignoring you. Same with comments to postings.

In the meantime, check out the webloggers song in the making.

Update: AKMA, I’m not sure why your emails to me are bouncing. If it continues, drop me a note in the comments to this post and I’ll see if I can find a problem in my email server. I definitely don’t want to miss your emails, and I’m keen to keep up with your important research.

Open question to my Etherworld friends: anyone else’s emails to me bouncing?

Categories
History Photography Writing

Let ‘er come

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m back on track with the RDF book, though slowly. I want to write, frequently, strongly, and to cover the screen with pixels, but, lately, my thoughts have not been on technology. I think my new office location has something to do with it — my desk faces towards a window overlooking the housing complex and there is so much interesting scurrying about that I find myself easily distracted.

At this moment, exactly at this moment, I’m watching a wild rabbit hop around the bushes across the street. And one of the women that shares the townhouse where the bunny is foraging left just a bit ago, every hair in place, dressed perfectly. As always.

(Rather than be envious of her, though, she makes me feel oddly thankful to be so comfortable with my own rumpled condition. If she and I were cars, she would be a BMW, and I would be one of those volkswagon buses that has been around — you know the kind I’m talking about.)

I have also been spending time getting the web site for my online book (Coming of Age in John Birch Country) organized. I’m using pictures from the University of Washington Digital Collections to annotate the site, thanks to the school’s open copyright policy. One of my favorite photos is titled “Let ‘er come” and features a farmer and his wife talking to a reporter about the oncoming flood caused by the Grand Coulee Dam.

It’s easy to be sanguine when you know your home is above the water line.

letercome

Categories
Writing

More words than five

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m seeing a metamorphosis in many of the weblogs I visit lately — people not only moving their weblogs to new servers or new weblogging tools, but also looking to redefine what their weblogs mean to them. Why am I here?

I wrote the following in an email to a good friend yesterday:

Today, I stopped weblogging and started writing using weblogging tools.

It’s just a sentence. It’s just words. But it changes my view of why I’m here.

Categories
Just Shelley

Da train! Da Train

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I was woken up in the middle of the night last night by a loud sound. As I lay in bed, confused, wondering if the neighbor was partying I heard what sounded like the train. For a very, very long time.

Finally, I drifted back to sleep.

Just watched local news — the train derailed right next to our housing complex. Luckily, no one was hurt. Also luckily, this trip they weren’t carrying nuclear waste or dangerous chemicals. Guess the Bird isn’t going to be glowing in the dark after all.

But now I have to find a back way to get to my library.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Browsin’ them links, written’ them postings

Loren wrote a wonderful essay about To Kill a Mockingbird for the Banned Books project that’s a must read. For the record, I am also quite fond of this book, as well as the movie based on the book starring Gregory Peck.

I am aware that the book does use racially explosive and derogatory terms, the primary reason it appeared on the banned books list. However, the tight integration into the material makes the phrases/words an integral part of the story — they add to the richness of the scenes and provide defining nuances for both the time and the place.

In addition to the essay, following my earlier discussion about trying to write a weblog posting or two based on the style of writing demonstrated in whatever book just finished reading, Loren uses the style of writing from To Kill a Mockingbird in a new posting that, well, tripped me into a full throated, from the belly, rip-roarin’ guffaw.

Thankfully I work on home.

(Loren is packin’ his weblog and movin’ it over to that there Movable Type. This means that we’in these parts can comment and use these new fangled permalink things. That’s a rought smart move, boy.)