the Ruby Slippers
a ruby
ruby throated hummingbird
the ruby-throated sparrow
Ruby Tuesday
ruby grapefruit - my favorite
rubber ruby nipples
Just Another Day
Today's story starts at the Oaks card club but this is not a poker story. The card room is just the setting for part one of my tale. The Oaks has an elevated rail like many card rooms. For the non-players that simply means the area around the poker tables is separated from the common area by some kind of rail or railing. In this case there is a very large wooden ballister about four feet high with heavy thick wood posts appropriately made of oak. And the common area is two steps above the playing area, so those waiting to play can watch the games quite easily from above the action but behind the rail.
Yesterday I happened to be seated at one of the outer tables facing the rail, so I could see the six or seven spectators up there. At some point I looked up and an elderly oriental gentleman was at the rail. He was old, not ancient; dressed in a hooded sweat shirt with a well worn but not frayed leather jacket as an outer garment. He was wearing a wool knit hat, you know the one size fits all winter hat, he also had on big black glasses with the side bows worn on the outside of the wool cap. So he looked just a bit odd. When I looked up a second time he was vigorously wiping down the top of the wooden rail with a paper towel. He was very diligent about his cleaning chore, once done he discarded the towel in a nearby trash bin and then began a slow inspection of the now sparkling clean two foot wide section of the top rail. He then stepped up to the rail without touching it, watched one hand of play at our table and walked away.
An hour later, I happened to look across the room to see the same gentleman cleaning a section of the rail on the far side of the card room. I kept an eye on him, when he finished his task, he again watched one hand at the nearest table and departed. I have nothing more to say about this.
On the way home, I stopped into Berkeley Bowl, a local favorite, for some groceries. Near the checkout stand was a large five shelf display of package nuts, candies and assorted treats. While I waited in the queue, two offerings caught my attention: Organic Gummy Bears, which seems like an oxymoron. The second item was candied fennel seeds. I have nothing more to say about this either.
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that is actually not a lime on the cat's head but a carved pomelo; some kind of chinese tradition; attribution for the picture is lost in the shadows of the internet
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that is actually not a lime on the cat's head but a carved pomelo; some kind of chinese tradition; attribution for the picture is lost in the shadows of the internet
$15 for the New York Times
The New York Times began offering a paid subscription last month. Basically anyone can read up to 20 articles a month for free. After that you have to pay up or wait for the new month to kick in. I never really kept track but I was fairly sure I hit my limit well before the end of a calendar month. What surprised me was when I signed up (99 cents for the first month, $15 thereafter), when I signed up I did not feel like I had just made a NPR donation or a relief for Japan, Haiti, Kathrina or tornado alley contribution. Fifteen dollars a month is a deal.
I read the NYT often. I hunt around in the archives for research, I get three of their teaser email newsletters and click links often for the full stories or editorials. I nearly religiously read the Sunday Review of Books usually on Thursday when it comes out online. I also read the online version of Atlantic (Monthly) still free, it would be a more difficult decision to pay for it; I really prefer magazines in hard copy, particularly the longer pieces. The Economist also gets a cyber-passthru each week but again a subscription might have to be for the hands-on edition. I read both the Atlantic and the Economist at the Berkeley Public Library, along with several other research oriented periodicals; usually on a very hot or rainy mid-week afternoon.
I also am not sure about magazines on eReaders. Books yes, but there is more to a good magazine than the words. The illustrations and the New Yorker cartoons don't translate so well to the digital screen.
Ah what literary times of choice and bounty we dwell within.
Upon Attempting to Be a Novelist
All praise to any novelist who takes us out onto thin ice, under which large, dark shapes are discernibly swimming. Michael Cunningham
As a rule it is not a good idea to tell someone a story before you write it. Any comments or feedback will distort your vision before you have committed the words to paper or cyber-storage. About eight months ago I told two good friends and trusted critics the first part of my novel. I had what I thought were all 35,000 words written and I was interested in their reaction to the big reveal that finishes part one. Indeed it was at this point all of my large, dark shapes came into view and I did indeed have my readers out on very thin ice without them even noticing they had been led out onto a lake.
Unfortunately, neither of them liked the dark turn my story takes and I was concerned that the tale was way off track. So I turned back to the pages and began to edit, I could have simply changed the big reveal but I was sure I had it right. Must have been the lead-up twas lacking. After several weeks the 35,000 words had burgeoned to 63,000 and I sent the newly fattened part one out to six readers, including those same two I had verbally told the story. Lo and behold none of them were put off by the big reveal, in fact, the two who had been less than luke warm originally were glowing with their praise.
I pondered this for a few moments and realized I had attempted to condense my well structured dark forms into a two minute verbal summary. Clearly, darkness needs some time to build. I needed those thousands of words to lure my readers out onto the dangerously thin ice and then and only then to reveal the sinister shadows beneath them.
Lesson learned, I ain't tellin' nobody no stories no more; at least not ones that are going to take hundreds of thousands of words to deliver all the darkness and shadows.
I pondered this for a few moments and realized I had attempted to condense my well structured dark forms into a two minute verbal summary. Clearly, darkness needs some time to build. I needed those thousands of words to lure my readers out onto the dangerously thin ice and then and only then to reveal the sinister shadows beneath them.
Lesson learned, I ain't tellin' nobody no stories no more; at least not ones that are going to take hundreds of thousands of words to deliver all the darkness and shadows.
Saturation Saturday: White
white peacock
Great White
white orchid
white lion
the White Album
white tiger cubs
Ghostrider Snowball Pumpkins
(casper luminas)
nice eyes
and, of course, Barry White
Security & Stuff
Edward Lemay, assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire and his colleagues found that people who had heightened feelings of interpersonal security — a sense of being loved and accepted by others — placed a lower monetary value on their possessions than people who did not.
I am becoming more and more anti-stuff. I have always been anti-shopping but some of that is simply not liking the process of looking, finding, sometimes trying on and then purchasing, followed by being told I could have gotten it cheaper, larger, greener or with more power. Anti-stuff is both anti-consumerism and anti-clutter. I find the weight of ownership to be a burden. The process also requires that I labor to produce capital to expend on the objects I find objectionable. Seems like an obvious wicked circle, Dante comes to mind.
On the other hand, I don't find that being loved or accepted has much to do with my meager ways. I just don't like stuff. In fact, often upon entering into a loving, accepting relationship the event is inaugurated with a flurry of accumulation. New furniture, new clothes, new this, new that. OK some of the this and thats are fun, you know one of those things with the whatchamacallit and the thingamabob attachment. But other than that - no more stuff!
The Lemay study actually asked people to put a monetary value on their possessions. So it really isn't that being accepted and loved will make you purchase and consume less, but rather that you value the stuff at a lower price point. Hoarders, in particular, value their piles of items as much as five times more than those who are secure, loved and accepted.
However, if love and acceptance makes anyone less attached to their possessions dollar-wise or otherwise and if being less attached means accumulating fewer things - well then I am all for it! I love you, I accept you. Let's celebrate by not going to the mall.
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Art: the BuyMoreMandala made of plastic shopping bags
Silly Bigotries
Church leaders [in the 1780s] saw theaters as competition with the kind of indoctrination they provided. Laws were passed in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island banning the performance of plays. Preachers spoke of theaters as 'the Devil's Synagogues,' places where fabricated human emotions were on display. The contempt continued into the nineteenth century, a time in which many religious leaders forbade dancing in public. Acting was considered an even viler form of expression, one step down from public drunkenness. - Finding Oz by Evan I. Schwartz
We read those words today and think how pedestrian, how silly, how deluded were those ancestors of ours. Banning theater seems so ridiculous as we think back from our place in the 21st century. Yet while plays were being banned as works of satan, there was also slavery; women couldn't vote - well you know the list.
Fast forward to the 60's and coalesce the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement and the anti-war vietnam protests. One might have thought that the baby boomer generation would have swept away all forms of prejudice as they aged through the society and took control of the means of production and the direction of zeitgeist. But no, it has been left to the children and grandchildren of the boomers to put down prejudice against homosexuals, hispanics and political independents. As the boomers die off, so too will those lingering pockets of prejudice and injustice.
But before the Gen. X and Gen. Y members get too smug, I have to wonder what lingering anthropocentric chauvinisms the Millennials will have to step up to extinguish. Will they be the ones to finally address environmental degradation? What lingering discriminations will they put to rest? And what narrow-mindedness will today's youth carry to their graves?
The good news is that we seem to be evolving in the right direction. Each generation does seem to be shedding the blind hatreds and unfounded fears of their elders. Want to accelerate the process - it might be as simple as watching what your kids do and emulating them.
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