July 29, 2012 · 7:20 pm

“It is a foolish thing to make a long prologue, and to be short in the story itself.”–Second Maccabees

My title quote aside, I often find myself making a lengthy introduction to something I mean to discuss which is sometimes only slightly longer than the “prologue” itself.  And there have been times when I’ve just outright broken the above rule and abided by the old formula whereby one first embarks upon a long explanatory bit and then stops, draws breath, and says to one’s audience (who are perhaps getting more and more exasperated by the minute), “To make a long story short.” Then one gives the “punchline” or gist of one’s tale, which could’ve been handled in a much shorter form.  My excuse today is that not too long ago I ran across an appealing story about a story-teller which made me think of one of the most gifted story-tellers I ever knew myself (a junior high school history teacher of mine), and I wanted to intertwine the two subjects, or at least to present them together in a series of thoughts about story-telling, both oral and written.

In both cases (one case drawn from J. D. Salinger’s short story “The Laughing Man” and the other from my personal recollection), the story-teller was an older person, in both cases a man (though it might equally well have been otherwise), and one who was employed in the education or development of a much younger group of human beings.  In Salinger’s story, “the laughing man” is the hero of a set of tales told by a sort of camp counselor or after-school activities teacher, a hero whose rollicking career goes from episode to episode for quite a long time, each episode having a cliff-hanger ending, and inspiring a group of young boys to feel a strong personal connection with both the teacher and the hero of the stories.  It apparently matters not how unlikely and incredible the adventures are, the hero is believable to the boys’ hero worshipping attitude (and of course, it’s clear from the way the narrative is structured that in some interior, subconscious way they associate the hero with the teacher, believing incoherently almost that the fortunes of one rise and fall with the fortunes of the other).  When the teacher suddenly “breaks” the story-telling “contract” with the students, they are easily able to assign a cause from his personal life, and there’s a fine and singular sort of imagery at the very end of the story which, though it’s not a surprise ending in itself, signals the end of an era in a boy’s life just as readily as if it were an action.  A veil or curtain has been drawn aside, not only about the teacher, but about the story-telling process itself.  And I’m not going to spoil the story for you by telling you any more about it (just in case you either haven’t read it ever, or haven’t seen it recently).

In my own case, the story-teller was a man with a life which was better shielded from us as students.  He was a great humorist in his own right, was a good teacher, and was  (as I later learned) well-versed in literature in some respects, even though history was his field of work.  Here’s how it went:  we were in a state history course.  It was dull and slogging enough as subject matter to us, because even a good teacher could only do so much to “kick against the pricks,” as the expression goes, and teach it separately from the way most history classes were taught at that time, with lots of memorization of names and dates, and battles and generals and all that “stuff.”  He did his best to highlight the facts with us to inspire our memory abilities, and it was probably the best a history class could be for its time.  But what really was inspiring, especially to incipient English majors like me, were the stories he told us, one per week on Fridays, after our weekly state history test.

Somehow, my teacher always made the story last just exactly the same time as the class period.  He always finished on time.  The most interesting thing I found out about his surprise ending story choices, which had us hanging onto our seats until the very last moment, however, was that most of the stories he re-told came from written literature!  He spoke in a slow, suspenseful drawl–punctuated with little leaps and bounds of words at exciting junctures in the story–and he always managed to catch us off-guard at the end, whether with laughter, gasping, or awe.  When I got a little older and more mature, I discovered that our story-teller had been an enthusiast of the short story form from mostly American sources, both male and female, though he had a slight preference for the male writer.  I later identified his story “friends” in such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, O. Henry, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Shirley Jackson, Stephen Crane, and Katherine Anne Porter.  There were even stories such as Katherine Anne Porter’s “He,” in which much of the drama relies upon the literary qualities, and upon conversations and voices of the characters–in their clutches and grabs at their mutual history (and which involves a developmentally disabled child, a subject needing delicate handling and a sure touch for junior high school students, especially when it’s Friday and they’re feeling the exuberance of release from an exam).  He “re-told” the story by inventing his own lines of narration and dialogue, getting the serious issues and themes across to us without moralizing, keeping the story on its real and essential track, modifying for our understanding without talking “down” to us.  In short, he became a performer himself, playing upon our minds and hearts and human qualities and teaching us to extend ourselves imaginatively to others through an experience of fiction.  And the best part at the time was that we didn’t have to do anything but listen; we didn’t have to write a paper on the stories, we didn’t even need to crack a book open.  It was a shared experience, one that often had us grinning and exchanging glances across the aisles at the startling conclusions of the stories, or perhaps even raising hands and asking questions as we almost always failed to do in English classes, where “this stuff” was paramount.  It was a wonderful experience, one which affected my own desire to become a writer just as much as anything I then or later encountered in print.

And that’s my re-told story for today.  Though it’s not much of a review per se, if you’re interested in looking up J. D. Salinger’s story, you will find it to be told in his usual matter-of-fact, apparently-uninterested-in-details stark manner, one which makes much more significant the final imagistic summary in the story.  You can find the story in a collection known as Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger, issued (and probably re-printed or re-issued by now) by Bantam Books (the original copyright was put through by Little, Brown, and Co.).   Today is the end of my weekend, and tomorrow I will be once again in the midst of myriad reading and writing chores.  I hope you all enjoyed the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics, and are finding time to watch the competitions that interest you the most.  Ciao for now!

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July 28, 2012 · 4:40 pm

“Hope is the thing with feathers.”–Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson wrote:  “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers–/That perches in the soul–/And sings the tune without the words–/And never stops–at all–“….  This is a very well-known quote, to which even Woody Allen felt the need to respond (by titling one of his comic books Without Feathers, for example).  We all feel hope for one thing or another, aspirations of one kind or another, desires that we cannot perhaps meet in the present, but which we hope to fulfill in the future.  In the nature of the thing itself, it matters not whether it’s a hope for a particular education, kind of job, one specific individual to share our life with, or our poetic “muse”: whatever may be the inspiring element of our own hopes, it reaches fulfillment because of some of the same characteristics, which might be called “persistence towards the elusive future, capitalization on the possible present.”  (That last phrase is just something I made up for lack of a better one, it’s not a quote.)  First of all, we have to persist in hanging on to the future, which seems to be trying just as stubbornly to elude us at every turn.  Secondly, we have to capitalize on anything good in the present which might lead us to that ever receding goal.  We all face these challenges, and it’s in the documents of our successes, failures, and survival on the path that we enrich and entertain and inspire each other.

One writer who has composed for us a story very much of this encouraging and rugged nature is the Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros, another graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, who has written several books and volumes of poetry about her experiences, somewhat fictionalized but always true-to-life.  The book of hers about which I want to comment today is the book of short “vignettes” (as the blurb writer denominates them) composed around the life of Esperanza (a word for “hope,”) who doesn’t like her own name and would prefer to be called “Zeze the X.”  The book is entitled The House on Mango Street, published some time back, in 1984 (this is the paperback date; the hardback date may well have been earlier.  The story appears in a slightly different form in the anthology I mentioned in an earlier post a day or two ago).

In the autobiographical note in the anthology, Cisneros is quoted as saying that she has discovered for herself a way to write stories “that were a cross between poetry and fiction….[I]  wanted to write a collection which could be read at any random point without having any knowledge of what came before or after.  Or, that could be read in a series to tell one big story.  I wanted stories like poems, compact and lyrical and ending with reverberation.”  (The only other writer I am aware of who has written by a similar method is the writer Julio Cortazar, who wrote a book named Hopscotch, of which the chapters can be read in any order.)

The House on Mango Street opens with a terse, tense, though melodic relation of all the many houses (and streets) Esperanza has lived in (and on) with her family during their urban migrations from apartment to apartment building.  Esperanza first becomes aware of her own and her family’s poverty when a nun from her school points to the apartment from the sidewalk and says “You live there?”  Esperanza remarks only, “The way she said it made me feel like nothing.”  But true to the nature of her being (and living up to her name and her quality of mind) Esperanza relates, “I knew then I had to have a house.  A real house.  One I could point to.  But this isn’t it.  The house on Mango Street isn’t it.  For the time being, Mama says.  Temporary, says Papa.  But I know how those things go.”  Thus, Esperanza’s dreams are at variance with her worldly wise awareness of the things adults say and do, even though she herself is still a child.  Her experience and attitude are much the same regarding the friends she sometimes hopes to have.  Other incidents and conversations which are well-imagined and which are perhaps remembered concerning the writer’s comrades and friends are told in a lyrical style all their own, achievning what Cisneros herself aspires to do in her work.

In the penultimate story in the book, entitled “A House of My Own,” Esperanza adds evocative details to what she wants in a house:  “Not a flat.  Not an apartment in back.  Not a man’s house.  Not a daddy’s.  A house all my own.  With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias.  My books and my stories.  My two shoes waiting beside the bed.  Nobody to shake a stick at.  Nobody’s garbage to pick up after.”¶  “Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.”  Here, the rhythmic flow of the sentences creates the “space” for the readers to dip into Esperanza’s world imaginatively, adding their own like feelings and experiences of being crowded/longing for release, with the final line of “clean as paper before the poem” being the line that vindicates both Esperanza’s desire to escape and the reader’s persistence in following the writer’s exploration of the nature of hope.  Virginia Woolf and A Room of One’s Own, move over (or at least make room!):  Sandra Cisneros and her whole house are coming through!

(Today’s a short post, but I hope a worthwhile one.  I’m having a great time with my family members who’re visiting, and I hope your weekend is going well too.–Cisneros’s book is available from Vintage Contemporaries of Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc.  Get it soon, and enjoy the fine combination of poetry and prose which is a goal well-realized by Cisneros.)  shadowoperator

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July 27, 2012 · 4:26 pm

“New lamps for old, new lamps for old….”–story of Aladdin’s magic lamp

Did I mention that I’m a sucker for picking up old books that still have great reading value, whether at free book give-aways, low cost second-hand stores, Amazon.com Marketplace sellers, and anywhere and everywhere that people will give me a good book on the cheap that I think I might want to read?  “Want to read” is the key element here; I’m not really a “first edition book” kind of person.  Well, a few weeks ago, I picked up at my local library (which has both a free book shelf  and books for sale) a great short story anthology which is really not that old.  It was published in 2007.  I would encourage anyone interested either in teaching a beginning literature class to others (or simply to themselves) to get it.  It’s called The Story and Its Writer:  An Introduction to Short Fiction, and is edited by Ann Charters from the University of Connecticut.  I have it in the 7th edition (sorry, I don’t know if it’s been re-issued yet).  In this wonderful book, there are not only the same old short stories from the standard literary canon (“canon” in this instance refers to a body of literature which is well-established in both popularity and critical quality);  the book also features stories by more recent authors who are quickly enlarging the canon by leaps and bounds with their fine fictions.  In many instances, the stories are matched with one or several related stories, commentary, or casebook entries by the same or another author.  At any rate, if you are unable to get this book due to where you live (outside the U.S.) or due to scarcity of copies, I would still like to recommend the two stories I will be discussing briefly today, both by Kate Chopin.  I’m sure they may also be found elsewhere, though getting her comments on Maupassant may take a bit of digging in a bookstore or library.

First of all, if you read Chopin’s somewhat lugubrious novella The Awakening, whether you liked it or hated it, I want to warn you that her short stories are very different in nature from her novella.  The two stories, “Désirée’s Baby” and “The Story of an Hour,” though both written with her fine, sure touch, are clearly influenced by the French male writer Guy de Maupassant, and a brief commentary on de Maupassant’s works, written by Chopin, is in the commentary section of the anthology.  What she shares most with de Maupassant is not only the ability to condense the average emotive incident into strikingly full “moments of truth,” but also a skill at delaying the key event until the end:  she is obviously an accomplished writer when it comes to the surprise ending.

The first story I’ve mentioned by her, “Désirée’s Baby,” only about 4 pages long, is set in the American South of the Antebellum period, when slavery was still in its heyday.  The story concerns the events taking place which are centered upon what people do and say in an atmosphere where the birth of a new baby or presence of an orphan on a plantation leads to speculations about bloodlines.  I won’t give the ending away, except to say that the ending is ironic (you may remember that I discussed what is and isn’t ironic in an earlier post this week).

The second story, “The Story of an Hour,” is also ironic, and is even shorter (about 2 pages, as if the author was signalling the intensity and brevity of time with the length of the story itself).  Here, the irony is guided by the fact that we are inside the main character’s mind and awareness by means of a partially omnniscient/partially indirectly discoursed narrative:  we understand her as the other characters do not, and the surprise ending centers upon their misunderstanding of her feelings.

As Chopin says of de Maupassant in her commentary, “It was at [a] period of my emerging from the vast solitude in which I had been making my own acquaintance, that I stumbled upon Maupassant.  I read his stories and marvelled at them.  Here was life, not fiction; for where were the plots, the old fashioned mechanism and stage trapping that in a vague, unthinking way I had fancied were essential to the art of story making?  Here was a man who had escaped from tradition and authority, who had entered into himself and looked out upon life through his own being and saw with his own eyes; and who, in a direct and simple way, told us what he saw….it [is] genuine and spontaneous.  He gives us his impressions.”  More than this of the two stories and the commentary I leave you to read for yourselves, and I hope you will.  The story of de Maupassant’s which I think of most immediately upon reading Chopin is (I believe) called “The Diamond Necklace,” or “The Necklace,” a very well-known story indeed.  I mention it in case you’ve read it, so you’ll have an inkling of what to expect from Chopin (and also, you may find yourself delighting in the stories of de Maupassant too once you have read her).

So, the next time you happen to visit a free or used or remaindered book shelf, keep your eyes pealed for one of those “lamps” (books, in this metaphor) which light us along our way like this one did me.  You may find a treasure like I found, which kept me from having to choose between “new lamps” and “old lamps” because it had both historically traditional and newly traditional stories.  No one should have to choose only one!

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July 26, 2012 · 4:16 pm

Just a quick note about the other blogs/websites I’ve reviewed so far….

Yes, I admit I’m lost in the computer world; and I admit without challenge that one of my recent spoutings on ignorance could be applied to me, though not on the same topic (that is, I know a fair amount about Mark Twain, but computers–at least the correct language about them–not so much.)  So I was unaware when I wrote the reviews of other websites to make up for not having a “Blogs I Follow” button that what I wanted to fill in was the link that I would actually use in my browser to find the sites myself (do I have at least that language right?  No?  I’ll get it right eventually).  At any rate, I can at least do the other sites the courtesy now (a few days later) of giving the addresses where you can find them for yourselves easily.  And I think my punishment for my ignorance should be (though it’s not really punishment to be allowed to speak my mind!) to continue to write reviews of websites I begin to follow, just to add variety and interest to my own meanderings.  Actually, I’m being slightly disingenuous here, since my stats show that my readers like these pages introducing them to other sites, or perhaps commenting on sites they’ve already seen (and all my readers should feel free to respond through “comments,” or to recommend through “comments” other sites they themselves have seen first).

Here are the addresses where you can reach the sites I’ve reviewed so far:

Truth and Cake– http://truthandcake.com/

Jessica Stanley– http://jessicastanley.com.au/

Becky Hutchinson– http://rebeccahutchinson.wordpress.com/

ohdizzle– http://ohdizzle.wordpress.com/

The Art of the Visit– http://theartofthevisit.wordpress.com/

Forever–More Reviews– http://forevermorereviews.wordpress.com/

The Elephant House– http://theelephanthouse.wordpress.com/

Ye-buh-dee-ye-buh-dee-ye-buh-dee, that’s all, folks!  Until tomorrow!

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July 26, 2012 · 1:30 am

A great free website, some copyright terms, and irony (when is it ironic and when is it not?)

One thing at a time, and then in neat order, I hope.  This weekend, I am expecting a wonderful though short visit from family (and I’ll be trying to keep Kathy Bertone’s tips in mind from her new book, The Art of the Visit, which I mentioned in an earlier post).  Therefore, I’m going to write my post for tomorrow (July 25) tonight, so that I have some brief time to prepare for their visit.  Also, I know that many of you will be watching the beginning of the Olympics this weekend and keeping up with them after that, so though I’m going to try to continue to have a post for you each day, for a few days at least they may not individually be the usual generous dollop of opinionated (and I hope also insightful) writing that I may have led you to expect.

I want to start by telling you about a wonderful website I ran across last year, while trying to view some of the fabliaux of Balzac ( a fabliau is a literary racy story, and when wordy old Balzac once got started, he could keep up with the best of Boccaccio, which is going some!).  The address of the website (for once I have a full address) is http://www.readbookonline.net, and it carries a wide list of free reads on the Internet of famous writers who for some reason can be read without your having to buy anything–and I’m guessing it’s an issue of an expired copyright on a particular edition of the work.

To go through a little of the copyright issue briefly while trying not to misinform you, if a work is not available to read for free on the Internet and furthermore posts an “all rights reserved” warning, it means basically that except for what is known by the Library of Congress as “fair use,” which allows the use of short excerpts for purposes of reviews, articles, or lectures and academic purposes, the work cannot be reissued in any form without permission from the copyright holder(s).  (You may notice that on my copyright pages for my novels, which were copyrighted by the Library of Congress before publication, I mention fair use explicitly as an exception I am allowing my readers; I may be quoted from, under fair use principles.)  The copyrights protected by the Library of Congress are still adequate for works later published on the Internet, though what I’ve read on Wikipedia about Creative Commons suggests that their licensing procedures add to the Library of Congress copyright and support it.  It has not yet been replaced, however.  (Anyone wishing further information about copyright should look on the government website of the Library of Congress for recent updates; I’ve not seen them for a while, so you mustn’t expect this information to be conclusive.)

This situation being what it is, and because I was not able to find a complete copy of two of what I regard as companion poems from the poet Louise Bogan’s book The Blue Estuaries:  Poems 1923-1968  on the Internet, I will need myself to observe the fair use policy and refer simply to the points I wish to raise about the poems by short quotes, leaving you to find the marvelous book of her poems in a bookstore or library (she herself was appointed the 4th Library of Congress Poet Laureate in 1945, by the way).

The first poem is entitled simply, “Women.”  The first stanza, which contains the seed of all the rest, reads, “Women have no wilderness in them,/They are provident instead,/Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts/To eat dusty bread.”  The poem goes on in this way, developing the theme of careful need and caution in spending the currency of the heart, until the last two lines, which suggest:  “As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills/They should let it go by.”  My exposure to this poem occurred at a time when I was myself being incautious about which man I loved, and I often rued the day I’d taken up with him.  So, to me, the first stanza spoke faithfully of my sense of captivity in the relationship, and the last echoed the way I often kicked myself mentally for being so stupid.

Well, we had been asked by one of my favorite teachers, a famous poet himself, to bring a poem into class by another poet, a poem we especially liked.  I brought the above poem.  He asked me for my thoughts on it, and when I went into what I thought it meant (without of course revealing my personal connection to the material), he said “Yes, but don’t you think she’s being ironic?”  I wish I’d had the words, the perceptions about the poem which I feel I have now, all these years later, because I don’t think my point of view about the poem has changed; I simply feel that as with many other literature classes both good and bad, instructors are able to freeze students in their tracks by suggesting that something is “ironic,” using that magical, all-powerful word of our time.  Students have sadly gotten used to being told that things they half-intuit, half-understand are “ironic”; it seems possible to me now that it’s an overrated term, perhaps used to rescue a discussion in some cases from the realm of the bathetic (and yes, that’s bathetic, not pathetic, though some discussions in literature classes can rate as both, I know).

One thing’s for sure:  the teacher asking the question was a kind man, and a gifted writer, with a full complement of the qualities needed to make a sensitive teacher.  If I’d only not been stricken tongue-tied by that word “ironic,” I could perhaps have said something like “The poet is showing keenness of mind and perception, but irony?  Plain and simple?  Not for me.  No, I think it depends on one’s perspective just what is ironic and what isn’t.”

For further support of my argument, I might’ve referred to the other poem, the one of Bogan’s which I would like to point to (though there is no external evidence of this outside the sense of the poem itself) as a companion poem of sorts.  It’s called, “Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom” and has in the middle of it the lines “What a marvel to be wise,/To love never in this manner.”  It speaks of the “fire in a dry thicket” which is like the love in “women’s eyes” which men “must return.”  The poem speaks of “dissembling,” which granted is a form of doubleness just as irony is, yet I wonder if the desperation registered by the poem can really be said to be ironic.  Again, I think this is an issue about which even the most civilized of men and women might disagree.

So, we have the dry crust of bread in the first poem, which is the only care the women take for themselves in that poem, and the wildfire in the thicket in the second, also dry, that they feel as love for the men.  Though I might be wrong to hang so much significance upon the one word “dry,” it does seem that the suggestion in both poems, especially when taken together, is of heat and want of water or soothing love, with an arid, all-consuming passion taking up all the available emotional space (or air).  Again, it’s a matter of perspective as to whether or not the correct word for the second poem is “ironic,” or whether something more precise or comprehensive is needed.

Just to close off this discussion of mine with something which I feel is one of the better poetry book blurbs I’ve read, the poet Theodore Roethke says on the back of Bogan’s book, “[She] shapes emotion into an inevitable-seeming, an endurable, form.  For love, passion, its complexities, its tensions, its betrayals, is one of Louise Bogan’s chief themes….”  The one word “tension” (between two opposite or opposed things) is a possible reference to irony.  But see how much more there is to be said about what this poet has so stragetically done with her language!  If only, I tell myself, I’d been able to voice some of my own reaction a little better at the time I was asked!  At least, however, the poems are still around to be appreciated and learned from.  I hope this article will encourage you to read Bogan’s book for yourself, or to re-visit it if you’ve not seen it for a while.

And that’s my post for today.  Everyone enjoy getting ready for the Olympics, and hope for our friends in London and the environs that all is kept safe and copacetic for the visit of so many talented people.

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July 25, 2012 · 12:45 pm

“Imagination is a good servant, but a bad master.”–Unknown

Before starting on my topic for today, I’d like to ask anyone who knows where this quote comes from to respond with the author’s name.  I couldn’t find the source of the quote after a lot of looking, so I’d like to be able to attribute it to someone specific (it’s one of my favorite quotes).

Now then, down to business.  A few days ago, I wrote a post headed by a quote from Herman Melville which read, “Dream[ing] horrid dreams, and mutter[ing] unmentionable thoughts….”  Those of my friends who read the post commented to me in private (why, oh why, didn’t they post a comment, to open this issue to discussion?).  They said that in showing a sense of humor about women possibly being buried under the floorboards of a castle by men, a scenario which might well occur in a Gothic novel (I deliberately said “castle”–after all, how many of us ever do more than tour in one of those?), I was being too “glib” about some of the truly dreadful things that happen to women at the hands of men.  I was merely trying to make the point that in ordinary day-to-day life, too much imagination or imagination ill-used can lead us to view our loved ones askance unfairly (chances are if either men or women find themselves imagining too much too often, there’s something wrong in the relationship–at least one side of the equation isn’t happy).

The friend who was the main instigator in challenging me about this pointed out that with the recent shootings in Aurora, CO and all the other gun-related crimes that have occurred in recent history, as well as all the times in the late 20th-early 21st century when men have been known to abuse/do away with their wives and girlfriends, I should’ve shown more restraint in my sense of humor about Gothic notions.

First of all, these are two separate issues unless you’re firm and sure in your mind (as I can’t say I am yet) that things are totally worse now than they ever have been.  As to all the mass shootings which have occurred in the time span I’ve referred to, yes, I do think those are worse, and I can only recommend Diane Feinstein’s point, that we urgently need more and better gun control.

About the second issue, however, I would ask whether we really have more instances of abuse/killings of women by men than we’ve ever had, or whether it’s simply a matter of the men being oftener discovered and, one hopes, prosecuted for their crimes.  While this view of the crime passionnel, as it’s called, takes a dimmer view of men’s goodness in the first light (that is, men are doing nothing new), it takes a more hopeful view of the penalties men must pay for their criminal excesses these days.  Better investigation means more correct arrests (aided of course by the press when it is a responsible one), which means more adequate prosecution (again, one hopes.  My discussion lacks statistics, but where would we look, exactly, for reliable statistics on sexual savagery down through all of history?).

And it is in this light of the whole discussion of the issue that I raise the thought that both humor (taking things less seriously because one winces at them) and heightened Gothic horror (taking things at a fever pitch of seriousness because one shivers at them) are both defense mechanisms against what is too dreadful actually to be taken lightly in any real sense.  So, I like to think that in the space of a post I have dealt squarely with the issues my friend(s) raised.  I do, however, reserve both the right to joke about things that make me (and possibly you) uncomfortable–and by this means perhaps to relieve some of the tension–and the right and obligation to take things seriously when requested to do so.  Here’s to my friends and readers, for their forbearance and this topic for discussion.  Please leave a comment at any time:  your input is valuable.

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July 24, 2012 · 6:23 pm

“They would talk of nothing but high life, and high-lived company, with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.”–Oliver Goldsmith

Though I don’t pretend to be able to talk about these topics listed above in any comprehensive sense (not even Shakespeare, because I haven’t read as widely in him as I would like to), there are a few other topics I would like to get to today.  It’s a sort of miscellanous day because I’m covering more than one topic, but I would like to be understood as saying that the topics themselves are individually important, and have only been covered in this way because I like to give my readers a good longish chunk of text for each day, to offset the disadvantages of some of the arrangements I’ve made for my site so far, such as the fact that due to financial obligations elsewhere I haven’t yet gotten around to buying various helpful upgrades which could improve my site.  I could do with a lot more widgets, for one, and though the Pilcrow theme arrangements are very varied, I needed not to use too many sidebars because of the way I wanted my posts and pages to appear.  So, I’ve made a few concessions.  Maybe in time I will think of a better arrangement, but for now, I don’t mind taking a day now and then (for example) to cover in positive critical fashion other websites which due to my not having a “blogs I follow” link for readers can’t been seen from my site; nor do I mind commenting on revisions made to my posts which you may have seen/missed.

First things first:  let’s get to the other websites.  Since I last wrote about the first 5 websites I’ve been following, I’ve found 2 others which are valuable to me, and which are also different from each other and from the other 5.  An embarrassment of riches, as it’s known!

The first of the 2 new blogs I’d like to mention to my readers is one showcasing a new book which has come out on the market in etiquette (and lest you assume that this is etiquette only for those born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths, you should know that this presentation of highlights from the book gives tips not for setting a table for 100, but pointers for keeping one’s own family and friends satisfied and happy with one).  So commonsensical and thoughtful is this production of advice that anyone might wonder why he or she didn’t think of it first; yet  these are some of the points most often overlooked in a sort of affectionate myopia when family and/or friends are expected for a visit or plan to visit.  The blog is entitled “The Art of the Visit,” and takes its title from Kathy Bertone’s new book–(she pronounces her name correctly as “Ber-town,” in case you want to recommend the book to all of your dear ones)–The Art of the Visit:  Being a Perfect Host, Becoming a Perfect Guest.  As you can see from the clips from some of Kathy’s television and radio appearances, she really has the jump on projecting a warm and welcoming personality.  She puts her points forward clearly and concisely with a minimum of straying from her topic.  Kathy shows both realism and a sense of humor in her remarks about why you should follow one path and not another in your dealings with family and friends, and keeps always in sight as her goal getting along with family and keeping (and gaining) friends.  In a few years, I can easily see Kathy Bertone writing yet another book with the same universal appeal this one has, perhaps entitled “Good Manners for a Shrinking Planet,” or something of that sort.  After all, keeping in mind always the dictates of generosity in dealings with others is just as good for the world family as it is for your own, a point Kathy herself makes.   I urge you, go to Kathy’s blog and see her presentations–you have nothing to lose but potential quarrels and animosities with those you love, and you have much to gain.

The second site I’ve also begun to follow is elliptically named “TheElephantHouse,” and it is at first distinguished by a fine array of cartoons and quips about elephants in all their shapes and forms (which are always recognizably elephantine, of course).  My favorite quip from this site reads something like, “If it doesn’t have to do with elephants, it’s irrelephant!”  Very cute.  I can’t wait to try to trip up my constantly punning brother with that one so that he will be forced to make the “buh-bump!chhh!” sound he makes (like drums and cymbals) when I make a successful joke.  I know one thing:  this time he can’t give me the gradually descending “wahn, wahn, wahn” failure-of-joke sound he makes (like a trumpet with a Harmon mute).  This blog is one that has a few grammatical mistakes/omitted words, but the writer gives the impression of being fluent in another language, and we all learn by doing:  I’m not worried, I plan to keep following the site.  For one thing, I listened to a truly moving and clever discussion on it from someone named Kathryn Schulz, on the topic of “Don’t regret regret.”  As Kathryn points out, the philosophical currents of our time sometimes try to teach us that regret is a waste of time and thought; actually, regret is a humanizing influence that we need to pay attention to in ourselves and others.  She notes that sociopaths feel no regret.  From this platform or taking off point, the blogger of “TheElephantHouse” launches a discussion entitled “Non, je ne regrette rien,” contributing to the thought on the subject.  As to how it affected me as a person?  It not only made me feel less regret about feeling regrets in the past (a meta-philosophical state if ever there was one), but it encouraged me to feel no regret at all for having gone to look at “TheElephantHouse” (and I think that sociopaths wouldn’t get the point of myriad decorative elephants anyway).  I hope to see more on this site which is as important and considering as what I’ve seen so far.

My second major topic for today is really a bit of a minor confessional note.  I do go back sometimes and re-read what I’ve written (and already published the day before) because something suddenly pops into my brain from the work of the day before (that’s called really being self-obsessed!) which doesn’t sit quite right with me.  Sure enough, in yesterday’s post on Cutting for Stone, for example, I found an awkward sentence and went ahead and revised it this morning, a day later.  That’s why I think writing and composition is made for natural and non-clinical obsessive-compulsives.  And to take a note from the paragraph just above, it’s because I “regret” having made the mistake.  “Well, don’t you use the copy-checking option in your program?” some may say.  My answer is, “No, I don’t.”  I took typing classes (way back when they were called that) in high school; I’ve spent years revising my own writings and helping students revise theirs:  shame on me anyway for letting a mistake get past me!  So, as a sort of practice, I do re-draft, but I don’t rely on the editing program on the computer; I do it laboriously myself.  We all have our forms of (non-literal) self-flagellation.  So if by chance (and I’m flattered even if this has happened) you have looked at a post one day and then seen it the next and think something looks a little different, this is why.  Let’s toast to some regrets and losses that it’s possible to change!  Shadowoperator

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July 23, 2012 · 8:09 pm

Of a gripping medical science novel for laypeople (too), and of multi-talented individuals.

Recently, a dear new friend raved to me about a book called Cutting for Stone, by author Abraham Verghese; as with every book that receives very enthusiastic reviews from someone, I wondered if I had time to read yet another (longish) book, in the middle of what has turned out to be a very busy summer for me.  I cannot tell you how glad I am that I decided to follow my friend’s recommendation and read this one.  It has taken some time for me to cover it, but it wasn’t because of any inaccessible quality in the book; rather, it was a matter of having less time to expend.  I worked it in at every possible time, and unlike what often happens with books when you are forced to put them down and resume reading at a later day, I found that I did not lose track of where I’d been:  the events were that gripping.

There’s something for everyone here, all in one book.  It’s perhaps first and foremost a family drama, a saga of betrayal, anger, forgiveness, and sacrifice.  In this book, faith and science are not opposed, but operate together as the individual characters follow their destinies and achieve both professional and spiritual wholeness.  Though the story is set in another part of the world from the U. S. through much of the novel and begins back in time a number of years, it would be a mistake to assume (as Americans sometimes regrettably do) that the awareness of feminist issues is missing:  the author, both in the spirit of the novel and in the mechanics of writing has fully and richly merited the attention the book has received, as an exemplar of tolerance and societal love.

The story is a story of conjoined twins and their biological and adoptive parents, as well as the society(ies) in which they function and the happenings in those places.  For much of this fictional work, the historical and cultural backgrounds are Ethiopia, India, and Eritrea, with the latter part of the work comprising the characters’ presence in the U. S., tracing the natural comparisons made among the different areas, and showing what befalls the characters by force of their exposure to societal factors like revolutions and breakthroughs in medical science.  These issues are not dryly presented, however, but are interwoven closely with the characters’ lives and emotions, giving the changes in society an urgency which gracefully and passionately recommends itself for the readers’ attention.  As the author notes in his acknowledgments page at the end of the book, he has slightly revised the historical events by a few years to place his story within its fictional time frame, but I doubt that even a specialist in any of the myriad intellectual fields covered so easily and smoothly would feel this to be a jarring note.  The acknowledgement pages are even interesting to read, for they not only show the wide variety of sources the versatile Verghese has consulted and his generosity in attributions of help (which speak to his humanity very convincingly too), but they also provide useful resources for those wishing to follow up the fictional events non-fictionally, or for those who are interested, additionally or conversely, in literary ancestors of parts of this wonderful book.  One of the most critical and interesting thematic threads, which is here at once intellectual, literary and factual is the repeated use of the expression “cutting for stone,” which recurs a number of times in the book in various usages.  One has to follow this particular riddle to the very end to realize just how complex even such a simple bit of language can be in the hands of a true master of story-telling.

Which brings me to another issue.  How many times in your life have you envied those multi-talented individuals who master more than one vocation or profession easily and neatly, or who (like Abraham Verghese) can find an intellectual place in their lives even for a combination of the things they do?  For Verghese is a doctor himself, employed at Stanford School of Medicine where he has achieved outstanding status among his peers, and he is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.  There have been other people something like him:  to name just two, there was William Carlos Williams, another doctor and a famous poet; or, Wallace Stevens, again a world-renowned poet and an insurance agent when he wasn’t writing poetry.  Where do these polymaths find the time, the energy, the talent?  For this, it’s necessary to read biographies, and even then often their life stories leave us a bit mystified.

I can tell you this, though:  you will not have read a better and more moving book in more than a decade than Abraham Verghese’s book.  And he has written others, at least two by now!  Are you worried or anxious that the book will be too technical for you?  Don’t be.  There are a few long medical terms thrown in, but as opposed to the sort of doctor none of us likes to find in our home court, Verghese does a very good, humane job of sketching out quick and understandable explanations for the terms concerning their significance to the story.  If you were a reader of the Encyclopedia Brown books when you were a child (and you may have noticed in the news that the author, Donald Sobol, sadly passed away a few days ago at the age of 87), in which that human compendium of facts the Brown kid solved mysteries because of all the facts and details he’d been able to master, then you certainly have a leg up in scientific terms, even though Verghese’s book is far more serious and emotive than those early childhood delights.  Or, if as a teen or an adult you had a look at Berton Roueche’s collections of medical mystery stories, then you will be well-supplied with an automatic enthusiasm for the explanations that occur in Cutting for Stone.  Neither of these preparations is essential, however, for reading one of the very best of the best novels to come out in recent years; I’m only sorry that I didn’t hear about it sooner.

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July 22, 2012 · 9:24 pm

Five blogs I follow regularly now, and what I have found there so far.

I know, I originally said that I was going to do this post tomorrow, but I found myself with a lusciously free Sunday afternoon, before time to have my afternoon coffee or go for my walk (I hate vigorous exercise, but you just gotta do something, right?).  It seemed the right time to honor that old saw, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” so here I am, writing about the 5 blogs I’ve started following since my site first went up on July 4, and what qualities I go to those blogs for (and I don’t go to them all for the same thing, by a long shot).  My interests are perhaps a bit narrow, but I like to read and talk about books and ideas from books more than about fashion, or gardening, or sports, for example.  I’m willing, however, to extend myself to other topic areas in which I have no particular expertise, upon occasion.

The first blog I went to was “Truth and Cake,” because I saw it on “Freshly Pressed” and just had to tell people about the picture in the header–it’s so half-retro/half-nouvelle!  The site immediately attracted me with its discussion of “Selective Truth and Social Media,” a thought-provoking and wise article by a woman only a few years more than half my age (I’ve come to computers late in life, and really admire not only her grace and fluidity with her written topics, but her practical skill in getting it on the Internet).  The topics and links of hers that I’ve investigated so far are well-covered, perspicacious, just plain smart articles and evocative pictures in words and images.  Her topics are strongly on target (she seems to have her head on very straight whether she’s writing about personal issues or societal ones).  Last but not least, I really appreciate the amount of careful editing that’s gone into making her blog as well-written as it is.  Some people blog with the apparent impression that getting things down in a hurry is the most important point on the Internet at least, and while there’s a certain amount of truth in this, neatness counts, too.  A basically good strong post or blog that’s riddled with spelling/grammatical errors or errors (worse) of fact is not only hard to follow and distracting, it’s less appealing.  I’m happy to say that hers has none of these faults, but is regularly quite well-edited.  Her most recent post, “Crow, Baby, Crow” is an encouraging and uplifting message to all who are inspired to follow her in their efforts to make good as bloggers, and it has justifiably drawn a lot of hits since I’ve been following it (I’m sorry to say I was out of contact with her post for a day or three, but luckily found it again, just in time to read “Crow, Baby, Crow”).  It’s no wonder that she’s been “Freshly Pressed” now two times (I’m waiting for the third).

My second-selected blog was “Jessica Stanley,” and I follow her also on Twitter at @dailydoseofjess .  She is another very talented younger person (I’m getting to be an old fart, so everyone looks younger to me some days).  I was first attracted to her site when I saw her regular post (with links) on “Freshly Pressed”:  it’s called “Read.Look.Think”.  I saw it first when she covered Hila Shachar and feminism.  There’s usually more than one post or link that I find stimulating, and quite a large number of absolutely marvelous bits of photography from Jessica herself, who has covered her own recent vacation in Italy with beautiful scenic photos and quite talented blog posts that explain some of the things (and people) in the photos.  She too is a careful editor, which gives old windbags like me hope that civilization hasn’t yet thrown in the towel.  Her personal story (of having recently relocated from Melbourne to England) has given her a valuable perspective on things, which I hope she will share more of when she has had a longer span of time in England.  As a person who once lived 6 years in another country myself, I can speak for the fact that even when you’re going to a country where the same language (you think!) is spoken, it’s not always the same language.  So far, however, she seems to have largely escaped any unflattering culture shock.

The last three blogs I need to mention (starting with this one) are all ones I’ve begun to follow in the last day or so; therefore, I can only speak to how they have struck me so far, and cannot predict even at my witchiest what their trajectory will be, though the fact that I’m still intrigued and following a day or two later will vouch for something, certainly a strong interest in how they develop from here on out.  The blog “Becky Hutchinson” is one which I located yesterday or the day before on someone else’s post, and her blog has continued to get mail all day today on the topics she raised: (1) about the differences between movies and the books they are made from, and (2) about the notorious trilogy of  the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books.  Her ability to attract many readers and many enthusiastic post-ers has been the main thing I’ve noticed so far, and I have to say that this is a quality not to be underestimated, since we are all in this together, and an intelligent remark some one person makes may well lead to stimulating discussions on more than one blog.  I think she is inspired and generous towards her readers, and she also has generally respected the good editorial practices that may seem negligible to some, but that make the reading experience so much more enjoyable when they are present.  I look forward to seeing much more of her blog when it gets published.

“ohdizzle” is a blog that rather unusually has stricken me to the core of my guilty fiction-lover’s heart with its recent post on the importance of non-fiction books.  My sneaking know-nothing position has always been that though non-fiction may spill the beans about someone or something in a fashion calculated to arouse interest and speculation, I really preferred my facts about life to be presented via fictional characters because fiction writers tell universal truths whereas non-fiction books just tell about a particular place and time.  This is a debatable issue (and I do recall more than one English or composition or history professor throwing this issue open for debate, but I was smug in my fiction heaven, what can I say?); I will say, however, that now that I’m older (don’t automatically assume wiser, except under persuasion such as “ohdizzle”), I can see a purpose to all those great non-fiction books that everyone reads.  First of all, as “ohdizzle” has comprehensively proved, there is still an amount of fictionalizing that goes on in writing even the most starkly addressed issues of fact.  For one thing, the author has to imagine and conjecture about events a certain amount of the time.  Secondly, how is it going to hurt me to imagine that maybe all object lessons don’t come just as fiction, but may be drawn from life?  Didn’t Henry James, the great author and literary theorist of the late 19th-early 20th century say that all fictional “fruit” that wasn’t plucked from the garden of life was “stale” and “uneatable,” or words to that effect?  So, I’ve learned my lesson (finally) from “ohdizzle” .  I don’t know which non-fiction book I will feel most drawn to yet, but the exploration of some titles I read on “ohdizzle’s” site gives me a wide list to choose from, with entertaining editorial comments.

Finally, and also recently, I’ve started to follow “Forever – More Reviews”.  For this blog, I have a different principle of inclusion for myself.  First of all, I’m up early in the morning, so in order to get the requisite number of hours of sleep that we are all being preached at to get these days, I go to bed surprisingly early (9:30-10:30, with the last hour reserved for reading whatever print book or Internet text I’ve currently got my hands on).  This means that I’m often in bed or doing other things in the evenings when television shows like “Glee,” “Revenge,”and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” (which “Forever – More Reviews” engagingly assesses) are on.  And, I’m a little too old (though not too mature) to be sighing over the characters from “Vampire Diaries” or “The Twilight Saga,” upon both of which the blogger exercises a vital wit.  I do know about these things, however, from hearing younger and/or more involved viewers talk about them.  I like to feel that though I’m asleep and antiquated, I’m not entirely out of the know and can perhaps carry on a five-minute conversation about some aspects of these shows for other people.  And as to books like “Fifty Shades of Grey” and its sequels, from the blogger’s warnings I’m beginning to think that forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes.  The blogger has advised me (on another site where our discussion of the series first emerged) that the books are a disappointment, and she (I want to say “she” is the blogger) has nevertheless encouraged me to see them for myself, always a good quality in a reviewer.  After all, even when a reviewer solidly pans a book or movie, it’s important to feel that that reviewer isn’t trying to censor or block your access to something you might like (though in the case of “Fifty Shades,” many other voices have also spoken against it already, and for what seem like cogent reasons).  “Bared to You,” which “she” also reviews, is another story.  I may very well enjoy what seems (in the blogger’s take on it) to be an agreeable and informative experience of delving into the screwed-up characters’ psyches to see what makes them tick.  I plan to put it on my reading list anyway, on her recommendation.  If there is any way in which I was made uncomfortable by the blog, it was by the discussion of why other women “hate on whores,” which took up a lot of space and was somewhat repetitive and filled with what seemed like a lot of run-on sentences.  The blogger had a number of good points to make on this subject, among which were those that excessive promiscuity isn’t good for anyone, male or female; nor is it a promising introduction to a serious relationship.  All well and good, so far.  As a serious feminist myself, however, and yet one who tries to retain a sense of humor about sex and sexual mores, I found the discussion a bit off-putting because it seemed to encourage women to accept the double standard, while admitting that it is unfair.  If it’s unfair, then we as women should be the first ones attempting its abolishment.  Still, I know that this blogger has a lot of talent and some serious things to say, and I look forward to continuing to follow the blog.  For one thing, I think she(?) shows a certain ability to deal with the very modern contemporary novel which shouldn’t be slighted, and I can say that I really appreciated what she had to say about  the  series beginning with “Fifty Shades of Grey,” to name only one thing she did well.  I feel sure there are more good reviews to come.

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July 22, 2012 · 1:35 pm

“Dream[ing] horrid dreams, and mutter[ing] unmentionable thoughts.”–Herman Melville

As Hermann Melville wrote in Pierre, “One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual’s own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.”  I’m accessing this quote not to discuss Melville and his works, but instead to highlight what it is about the Gothic novel (when it is good) which keeps devoted readers following the form.  I hope my readers will stick with me while I discuss this issue (men as well as women; guys, you may learn something about your near and dear).  I’m centering my discussion on one particular modern example which I in my own mind keep reverting back to ever since I read it.

So, let’s get down to it.  In every Gothic worthy of the name, there is of course some sort of mystery.  As with any mystery, the mind of the young (usually) heroine (almost always) in Gothics reaches out in summaries and hypotheses to account for the unusual happenings of the book, whether they are the sinister machinations of a villain or villains or whether they are more supernatural in nature.  A really great Gothic is one which amasses a goodly number of surmises and conjectures, only to top them all with a conclusion which is even more unusual.  It’s also a great book (not only a great Gothic) when the conjectures we have been encouraged to make have been good clues, with the true answer (as it turns out) always niggling at us just outside the range of conscious awareness.  Lastly, a good book of this sort may well leave one or more minor details of the overall conundrum unresolved, which doesn’t detract from the overall performance, but may actually add to its believeability (incredible as it seems), since life is not neat with all the strings well tied up.

One such book, one of the best books I’ve read in the last 5 years, is Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, which centers around a famous and reclusive author’s collection of stories, supposed to have 13 parts, in which however the 13th tale is missing.  This is the slender thread which leads into the labyrinth of mystery and out again for Margaret Lea, a young biographer who goes to write the much awaited biography of the reclusive author Vida Winters, old and frail at the time the story opens.

The blurb on the book jacket, otherwise so tantalizing, starts out disappointingly enough:  “When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny.”  How many times have you read something very like this generalization in the opening blurb of a Gothic or–I hate this term–“chick lit”–novel?  Yet, it goes on far more promisingly:  “The enigmatic Winter has spent decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself–all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret.  Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life.  She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain.  Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter’s story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.”  The blurb goes on to itemize some of the characters and things that appear in the novel:  “a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire”–these last four items are your reassurance that yes, it is in fact a Gothic novel in the classic tradition that you’re reading.

And as has been established and rung changes upon by the long Gothic tradition, family relationships and mysteries of identity and selfhood are articulated.  The story behind the story (as with any good biographer’s work) is uncovered, and the eerie becomes a daily routine (rather, the daily routine becomes eerie).  This novel is superlative in that not one but at least three characters’ entwined life mysteries are maintained and only gradually exposed to the light of day, holding off until almost the very last page.

One of the main ways in which this novel is different from so many run-of-the-mill romance-Gothics (written since the heyday of the great Gothic writers in the Romantic period, when happy endings and weddings weren’t the sole mainstays of the tradition) is that it functions without the typical boy-meets-girl love sequence which is usually worked in as a major element:  this is a Gothic that can stand on its own without the sugar coating.  That’s not to say there are no characters who “match up,” but these are either in the past or at a distance as subsidiary characters.  The most this author will contribute in this way (and I think this is a good choice) is hinting that the cat, Shadow, caught between two owners, may in fact have a happy ending, which one may take either as a literary promissory note or not, as one chooses.  This departure from what has become a somewhat predictable, boring, slogging sort of tradition is immensely more interesting by its very difference.

And now the guys (assuming there still are some guys reading this) are beginning to clamor, “Yeah?  So what’s in it for me?  What do I get out of this?”  And I reply, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “Well, first of all there’s some great girl-on-girl psychic action that has nothing to do (at least not overtly) with sex.  How’s that?”  They look at me (I imagine) with suspicion.  But especially if they’ve often wondered why their girlfriends/wives/female partners take advice so willingly from mothers, aunts, and other older women, they might refer to the budding and troubled friendship of Margaret Lea and Vida Winters, in which two women learn to trust each other and exchange friendship of a non-sexual kind.  Also, guys, and especially if your woman has read a lot of what passes for good Gothic fiction (not this book, which actually is good Gothic), the next time you surprise that funny, frowning, puzzled look on her face when she looks at you, you should know that she may not be wondering if you would mind if she changed the drapes.  In fact, she may be wondering if you buried your last girlfriend or wife under the floorboards of a castle somewhere “romantic” (in other words, far away and inaccessible) and whether the attractive young delivery man Ernie might not burst in and save her from you if you try the same thing with her.  It only means that she’s in the process of self-discovery and exploration of her identity that philosophizing about men brings out in women, and if you’re smart, you’ll get on the right side of the “who-I-actually-am-and-what-he-brings-out-in-me” equation).

And that about wraps up my post for today.  People wanting to comment, please do so outright on my “comment” box for each post or page.  I’m also on Twitter (and Twitter is enabled on my posts).  I welcome all helpful suggestions.  If you have a book you’d like to recommend for review, I’d be glad to know about it.  It may take me a while to read it, but I’ll try my best to give it a fair shot.  My sidebar unfortunately doesn’t have a “Blogs I Follow” link, because I’m using the Pilcrow theme from WordPress.com which has the best form for what I have to offer (there are six variations of content and sidebar on Pilcrow, and this makes it truly versatile); I don’t have the extra link space right now.  But next post, I will mention the names of 5 blogs I follow and what I especially like them for, for they are all very different.  Until tomorrow!  shadowoperator

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