Tag Archives: doing it oneself

October 28, 2012 · 6:28 pm

“I am at two with nature.”–Woody Allen (or, weathering the storm)

Roughly a week ago, Maine was the epicenter for a middling-to-large earthquake, felt for many hundreds of miles around.  This week, not only is there a (somewhat downgraded) tsunami in Hawaii and a large quake in Canada that caused it, but lots of rain and snow in Canada as well.  In the southern United States on the East Coast, people are already trying to clean up and recoup their losses from Frankenstorm Sandy while the Mid-Atlantic states are in the midst of it or have just had it leave, and New Jersey and farther North are bracing for the impact, assessing risks and giving advice and aid to those who need it.  We seem to be these days (in Woody Allen’s words) “at two with nature.”  Though my spectacles are a bit nearsighted and I haven’t lately looked at world weather beyond this continent, during this year at least there have been major weather events the world over, all of which tell us that something is vastly wrong, beyond the notion of a twenty year weather cycle such as some people cite.  And that something is clearly what is known as global warming (which until recently a child of my acquaintance referred to by the accurate misnomer of “global warning”).

Yes, we clearly are receiving a “global warning,” about our use of fossil fuels, and about our polluting of the earth, and about all our other climactic sins and misdoings.  So what do we do now?  Well, the idea of windpower strikes me as especially fortuitous, because one of the results of our misuse of the earth has been higher winds, gales, hurricanes, and if we can manage correctly to use the bad conditions we have thus created, then it’s a step toward redemption and redress of Mother Nature’s grievances.  Now if only we could find some natural process that required the use of dirty air, dirty water, etc. then we would be a lot better off than we are now.  That’s what we as a global people can do, if that’s not too much dreaming.  At the very least, we can learn to live on better terms with our environment than we do now.  As Willa Cather said of trees, “I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”  Right now, trees with leaves still on them are losing branches willy-nilly in storms and water surges, yet beginning next spring, already many of them will be sprouting little limbs out of the raw, torn flesh where full grown limbs once were.  Then again, many of them will be too damaged to do so, and will die and need to be chopped down, so it doesn’t do to be too sanguine or lackadaisical.  This to us sometimes seems like the cruelty of nature, the anti-human and illogical force that swirls around us and sets limits to the greatness we could achieve.  Yet, what do we do (sometimes) when we have “greatness” in human terms?  Often, we end up displaying an equal or worse cruelty in human terms to anything nature could dream up, making wars and genocides and allowing people to starve and die needlessly.  At the very least, one can say that Mother Nature is impersonal (whereas we have even made our complaints against nature personal by personalizing and referring to “her” as “Mother”).

It follows from this that the best we can be as humans is to help solve the problems created by impersonal forces such as nature, both to our environment and to other humans.  And in the process, we help save ourselves and solve our own dilemmas.  This year, why not volunteer to clean up a beach, or to help out at a soup kitchen, or to run or walk for a charity, something which you yourself are interested in so that you don’t lose steam halfway through?  I have in the past for differing periods of time served as a sighted guide for a visually impaired person and have volunteered at an animal shelter, working predominantly with cats.  If you don’t have much time on your hands, then think of contributing to a charity of your choice.  This is how we stand a chance of weathering the metaphorical storms of our lives, and pulling together to solve the larger problems of our existence, such as the ones “Mother” Nature is throwing at us right now.

As to more immediate and personal plans for this coming week?  Be practical, prudent, and self- and other-protective in anticipation that nature may have some unexpected challenge for you.  We have bought groceries which we plan to cook or prepare ahead of time, things that will keep fairly well.  I have my reading and my crocheting to keep me busy during the brunt of the storm.  We have towels ready for the rain, which may or may not seep in around the windows.  And we have batteries and a heavy-duty flashlight ready to keep us steady should all the lights go out.  Our prescriptions and over-the-counter medications are stocked and up to date, and our car will, we hope, be parked in a spot where we can avoid having it flooded.  Here’s hoping that you have (or have had) the same luck with your preparations.  And here’s a dedication to those who have died in this storm already; may they find rest in whatever home individually awaits them according to their wishes, and may some spring come when fresh buds spring out from where they were torn away.

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October 1, 2012 · 3:18 pm

“A few suggestions which may make continuing a halted or bogged-down manuscript a little easier….”

Hello out there, writing chums!  C’mon now, no need to be modest, we all write something, even if it’s only a letter or e-mail to an old friend, or the weekly grocery or chore list.  And I believe I’ve hit upon a list of suggestions which may help you continue a halted piece of writing as they have me (I shy away from the word “rules,” as it makes me halt and become bogged-down in turn, and unable to compose sentences).  What I’m saying (to borrow two terms from grammar) is that these suggestions are not prescriptive like rules (that is, they don’t dictate to you what you should do); rather they are descriptive (they are about what someone before you actually has done, namely I, to stir up my writing abilities).  By altering them only slightly to suit yourself, you may be able to use them for a critical or scholarly paper, a list of chores (we all tend to be able to remember 9-10 things in a row, but you may have to prod your memory for the other ones), a short story, novel, or even perhaps a poem.

Here goes:

Assuming that you have at least a snippet of your text already in mind, one of the things most writers of note will mention to you is to “outline” your ideas so that you can continue with the rest of your plan.  Obviously, you can do this, but for some of us the building of an outline deadens the process of dreaming up new ideas quickly and jotting them down before they vanish; I number myself among these people.  The outline-devotees at this point will go on from jotting down things to prioritizing them with A.B.C. and 1.2.3. and I am not at all suggesting that this is a bad method; I am simply saying it stifles my own creative abilities.  It is still related to what I do with my own method, which is to jot down item after item after item all over the top, bottom, sides, and in the margins of a piece of paper, and then mark them out one by one as I write them into my manuscript.  I do sometimes combine them slightly with the outline form by looking over them and prioritizing them with 1.2.3. or underlining the key sections.  The main advantage of this method (it’s perhaps too chaotic to call a “system”) is that if I am working with ideas which appear in a heavy cloud, again it allows me to get it all down before it vanishes.  Then I just abstract ideas, or images, or lines of dialogue from the cloud and use them in the work.

Another method of coping with a piece which won’t “move forward” is to re-read it, either the entire piece, whether long or short, just to see what you haven’t yet covered, or perhaps the last 10-20 pages before it breaks off, to get an idea of where you want to go next with the characterizations, or if it’s a grocery list to see what spices (for example) you’re out of that’re needed with the other items you’ve written down, or if the work is a letter to remember what scandals you haven’t yet told your absent friend about.  Here’s a place where the method doesn’t work as well as the outline method for those writing papers, because of course they already have a set course to cover, and will only be surprised if something else comes up while they are writing, as of course it may do (a new bit of research may turn up while they are composing on the basis of older research, etc.).  In that case, even the outliners may need to rewrite a section before final revision time (and most kinds of writing occasionally or often require final revisions, depending on what they are and how lengthy).

A third method, one not unrelated to the second, except for the fact that it allows you to sort of “sneak up” on the piece of work you’re doing, as if it were a shy bird or butterfly you were attempting to photograph and might scare away, is to go back to the beginning for proofreading.  This is different from method 2 because the original intent and focus of the exercise is on the writing as writing and not on “plot” or “content.”  In the letter or e-mail, you may have chosen to compose a previous part with a flourish of writerly skills which drove a related idea you meant to express straight out of your head, and so quizzical are the potentates of memory that rereading your original flippancy or splash of egocentricity may call the hidden rulers of memory forth again to articulate the lost idea.  In the list, you may have chosen a luxury item instead of something you need more, and re-reading the luxury item on your list may perhaps cause you to be forced to decide between the two or possibly to write them both down as things which for some reason you feel you need.  This method may work for the scholarly writing exercise too, because we all love to show off our writing skills a little (just note some of my odd and peculiar metaphors above, which you may feel are nothing to show off about!), and we may have forgotten or overlooked a toad lurking beneath the blossom, as it were.  But if you’re lucky, sometimes a short snippet of a continuation may occur almost magically in your mind from rereading the previous phrasing and because you have edited the previous portions up to the break.

If none of this works, leave the piece to mature a little further before tinkering with it again.  It may simply need time to become a sort of magnet for other ideas, images and plot lines (and here I’m mixing metaphors, as “magnets” are not usually “tinkered” with, nor do they conventionally “mature”).  With the list, if that is what you are composing, you can always leave it on the counter for others to add their suggestions and comments, knowing full well that at the end of the day (at least with this one sort of writing) if your six year old writes “more candy” on the list, or if your roommate writes “your obsessive-compulsive lists make me barf,” you can ignore, delete, or rewrite the list to suit yourself.  Now if only it were that easy for scholars, novelists, and poets!

What are your tricks and traps for catching and holding fleeting inspiration and getting it to work for you?  Why not share with other writers here just what helps you get writing when your manuscript refuses to go forward?

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September 1, 2012 · 1:56 am

“Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end.”–Peter De Vries

If you wonder what odd tack I’m on today and why I’m so concerned with novelistic structure in the governing witticism which supplies the title of my post, it’s because I just today finished proofreading my fourth novel, putting it on the eCO (electronic Copyright Office), writing a novel blurb for it to add to the other ones I’ve already put among my pages on this site (where you’ll find it in order), and finally, putting the novel itself on this blogsite.

The title of the novel, Tales of Lightning and of Thunder, may sound like a collection of short stories; instead, it’s an episodic novel centering around the figure of Jason (the main character from classical mythology in the tales of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Jason and Medea).  Naturally, it was impossible to cover all of the different angles of the stories told by different classical authors, largely because there are so many writers who write about Jason and so many slightly different versions of the myths.  So, I picked and chose what I wanted to write about after reading around in all my five or six classical guides and dictionaries and retellings of mythology.

Should you be familiar yourself with any of these tales, you may wonder where I got the notions I’ve written about Jason (as a child) and his family.  These notions were in general pure invention up to the point when his uncle begins trying to influence his decisions, and even then I’ve changed the nature of his uncle’s character from that of the myths:  he’s no longer an underhanded villain as much as he is a foolish and misguided man.  And what happens to his sister Magda is a slight reference to the far greated mishap suffered by Helle, the young sister of Phrixus, the two of whom rode on the back of the great ram before it became only the source of the Golden Fleece.  Of course, I’ve created Jason as a sort of American “prince,” a son of young upper middle class parents at the beginning of the novel, and I go on from there, taking down both the Bildungsroman tradition  to a certain extent (see my “blurbs for novels” for an explanation) and the notion of a hero as larger than life, or tragic, or any of the other standard formulas for writing hero characters.  Again, my story has elements of comedy and satire, but not perhaps as much as my other novels.

I hope when you get the chance to read something longer from my site, you’ll have a look at Tales of Lightning and of Thunder, and will perhaps set aside trying to keep up with the elements of myth in their proper places in order simply to read the story as a story; after all, if you can’t enjoy the revised structure which changes it from a myth into a novel with “a beginning, a muddle, and an end,” then I haven’t succeeded in making the story live again in a new incarnation.  But I hope you will decide that I have, and will “get as much mileage” out of reading it as I did out of writing it.  Until tomorrow!

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August 28, 2012 · 8:49 pm

“Where the hell have I been all day? What have I been doing?”

Hi, I haven’t written a new literary post for today.  If you’ve already been online to my site, you know this, of course.  So, where have I been and what have I been doing?  Clearly, this is one of those “other than literary days” I have noted down in my categories.  Yes, it is.  Here’s what I’ve been doing since about 9 o’clock yesterday morning:

I’m on the verge of finishing my fourth novel, which is very, very exciting (that is, the prospect of finishing it is–as to whether or not the novel itself is exciting, it’s a matter of opinion, though of course I’ve been having a fantastic time writing it).  It’s hard, yes, but with this novel I have written in bits and pieces, and then stopped sometimes for a week or more, until I had something else to say, or had an idea of how to continue.

Though I have a very good idea of just how the novel is going to end (which I explicated to my ride on the way in to the eye doctor this morning), I was really dreading more the inevitable necessity to design the book cover and get it placed on the front of my novel file.  Previously, my brother the good and noble web designer has always done this for me, using PhotoShop of which he owns a download.  This time, I was on my own.

First, I took the background picture off my USB drive and put it in Windows Live Photo Gallery, where I played around with getting the logo from the I Ching in the right position (upper right-hand corner).  Then, when I discovered that Windows Live Photo Gallery would do this but wouldn’t allow me to switch the height and the width, I went to RoxioCreator and RoxioPhotoSuite.  Here, I was able to make changes to the size and shape of my picture.  By about 11:30 p.m. last night (Monday night), I had the lettering placed on the canvas in the correct positions, and was feeling mighty pleased with myself.

Next, however, I had to put the altered photo back into Windows Live Photo Gallery and transfer it into my Microsoft Word documents file so that I could place it at the beginning of my text.  This was when the fun began.  Rather, I’d been having a certain amount of fun so far proving to myself that I’m not a total ninny when it comes to computers; now, however, it was necessary to get my Photo Gallery to accept that yes, I really was not interested in putting together a slide show, or e-mailing my photos to anyone else, or doing any one of the nearly 110 other ingenious things that were apparently done by anyone else with photos.  I nearly despaired.

Then, however, I found something called Microsoft Office Picture Manager.  This became very grueling, because I kept trying to follow directions instead of being innovative (it’s hard to be innovative with the posted instructions unless you’re in a sort of devil-may-care frame of mind about experimenting and taking things down and putting them up again in a series of trial-and-error runs).  By 1:30, I was too tired to continue, and had to go to bed, because I had to travel about 45 minutes to get to the eye doctor’s office this morning.  So, knowing that I was almost there in terms of getting my photo project done (which just started out life as a .jpeg copy scanned from a watercolor), I went to bed and was unable to get to sleep because I wanted so badly to keep on working.  Finally, I slept.

When I got up this morning, I discovered that the “edit” button the Microsoft Office Picture Manager had described as having a “insert into text” option actually showed no such thing.  But you don’t know how stubborn I am; I tried again and again and again, until I was tired.  I’d gotten the thing to work one time, but it didn’t look the way I’d wanted it to, so I’d taken it down, and now couldn’t remember what I’d done.  Finally, I discovered that what I’d done the time it worked was to go to one of my favorite functions on Word and use the extremely useful “send to” button to send the picture to the front of my document.  And there it sits now, waiting for the title page and copyright page to be put in behind it, between it and the body of the novel.

True, it still doesn’t look entirely as I would like for it to, but I’m content to tinker and twiddle with it hoping to find perfection.  And the eye doctor even gave me a clean bill of health, so I haven’t totally ruined my eyesight from hours and hours in front of the computer!  Now, in place of my usual literary endeavors, isn’t that just about the most exciting story you ever heard (no, I know, probably not)?  Well, it’s at least exciting to me, because it proves I can usefully be stubborn instead of (what usually happens) being stubborn to no avail.  Now, if only perfection and I can work things out!

I hope to have another literary post up for you folks tomorrow or the next day, and I hope you’ll continue to visit my site.  Until then, onwards and upwards, as they say!

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August 11, 2012 · 1:42 am

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”–Sylvia Plath

I wish I had managed to track down the exact reference for this quote from Sylvia Plath, so that I would know under exactly what circumstances she said it.  Did she, for example, mean that the writing was lousy and that that’s why it had never been published?  Or did she mean that it would stop stinking once the impulse to publish it had been answered?  I took this latter meaning as my own yesterday and today, in getting my poetry–of which very few poems have seen the light of day–online with the U. S. Copyright Office and then here to you.

Mostly, I wouldn’t say the poems actually were stinky, though they were dusty and dog-eared (even the more recent ones) from being carried around in an equally ratty notebook.  I typed them up yesterday and this morning, and then got online with the U. S. Copyright Office formally to “seal the deal.”  You can file online for $35, provided that all their conditions are met and you are only publishing online (publishing in print form costs more, takes longer, and has more conditions).  So, since I just wanted to publish right now for the sake of my website (maybe some kind editor of print books will come along and discover me eventually, should I prove worthy), I went ahead and went through the process.  It can be done in a very short amount of time, and the instructions are generally quite clear, once you get used to the format.  I had a little trouble at first, because I haven’t been online to copyright since my last novel was completed in 2010, but the system is made for people who simply want to follow instructions without too much who-hah.

The best part is, that although your case may be pending for a day or two (in this case, over the weekend), once you’ve (1) applied (2) paid and (3) uploaded your files successfully (in that order), your work is officially copyrighted and registered.  The copyright office even sends you several e-mails during the process to let you know when each part is complete.  So, you don’t have to cool your heels wondering why, oh why, you didn’t start an hour earlier in the morning, or take less time for lunch, or why you were so muddle-headed about the process when it told  you (fairly clearly) what to do.  They will send you a paper copy of your registration in about 6 months (they say less, but face it, there are lots of people publishing out there).

So, now–my poems are up on this site, and though I would like to get rich off them and off my other writings too, I’m realistic enough to recognize that I should probably just point once more to my PayPal button, silently, and let it go at that.  Like Shakespeare said, “Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.”  I hope you will read my poems at your own pace, and enjoy them, and tell me what you like or were perhaps left cold by (I love getting comments and replies, and haven’t had nearly enough of them so far).  And now you know what I was doing instead of putting up a post a day at the end of this week!  I was suffering (read typing and proofreading) for my art!

A word about the poems themselves:  they go from my days as an undergraduate (when I won an honorable mention in a contest for about 3-4 of them) to the recent poems I wrote for the characters in my first published novel to exchange and read to each other.  Had I been able to remember exactly which poems had placed in the contest, I would have noted it down, but it’s too long ago now, and those are old moments of near-glory.  What’s more important now is how the poems hold up under the burden of time.  Suffice it to say that though I no longer liked all of the poems in this collection, I still felt that all of them had some merit which made them worth retaining.  So, without more stuff and nonsense about it, here they are for your–I hope–reading pleasure.  Someday, I hope to write poetry again, and I hope to get to it long before I have to call the volume Old Age!

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August 6, 2012 · 2:13 pm

“Always be smarter than the people who hire you.”–Lena Horne

The French author Muriel Barbery’s highly acclaimed novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog (translated into English in 2008 by Alison Anderson) is a book for and about self-directed readers and smart people, particularly frustrated ones. In it, a hôtel building’s concierge, Renée Michel, unprepossessing physically and getting on in years, hides behind the concierge stereotype.  After all, this is all that is expected or wanted of her by the vast majority of the building’s inhabitants.  But behind her mask, she is a self-taught intellectual (an autodidact, to use the correct term) who reads and/or comprehends everything from philosophy to fine music and art, with a generous smattering of topics her employers are themselves too ignorant and worldly truly to understand.  The book goes a long way to prove that wealth is not necessarily a sign of intelligence, nor is intelligence an index to personal income and status.

The second heroine of the book is a pre-teen named Paloma Joss, who is also very gifted, and who understands too much to feel comfortable with her family’s privileged lifestyle.  Paloma lives in the hôtel, but isn’t planning to continue that way for long:  she contemplates setting things on fire, but then confusedly though valiantly decides to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday.  She keeps a journal of “Profound Thoughts,” and some of them truly are profound.

The status quo and equilibrium of the building’s social system are disturbed, however, when a wealthy but unusually modest Japanese gentleman moves in.  For he sees through Renée’s cover almost at once, perceiving her as a kindred soul (he is not only wealthy but is also intelligent, educated, and genuinely well-bred).  He is clearly determined not to allow the concierge to continue to hide out behind her mask of dullness.  She and he and Paloma become acquaintances and then friends, all three of them joining to defy the class and age barriers that would keep them apart.

I won’t reveal the startling and moving ending except to quote Renée:  “The paths of God are all too explicit for those who pride themselves on their ability to decipher them….”  Paloma’s voice ends the novel, which is only fitting, especially since she is thought of by the concierge as “the daughter I never had,” and is at the ending a voice of hope.  She is thus a member of one of those human families we all make for ourselves, sometimes consisting partly of actual relations, sometimes not.  Amongst them, Renée, Paloma, and Ozu (their new friend) have sketched out the parameters that bound what people, rich or poor, can aspire to achieve–the territory is boundless.

This book, lest you think it a solemn, preachy text, is constructed of many comic moments, both when sketching out characters through their dialogue, and in the actual events that happen to people when they least expect it.  One of my favorite moments occurs when Renée is shyly visiting Ozu, and makes a trip to his bathroom, only to find that his toilet plays music at top volume when flushed.

Barbery has in this book successfully mingled the nobler aspects of the human race with the humorous and the painful to show that everywhere a human being is, so there is a potential fellow just hiding and waiting to be found by an appreciator.  May we all keep this in mind as we meet other people, and may we hope to find in them something we can relate to, however sad, funny, ironic, or small.

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August 5, 2012 · 5:08 pm

“Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are.”–Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Yes, I know we’ve all heard the remark before that’s posted as my title today.  But did you know that Brillat-Savarin wrote a whole book of aphorisms about food and eating called “The Physiology of Taste”?  I didn’t, before today, when I looked up the quote to see where it came from.  Anyway, you’ll have to take my word for it, but I’m an elf.

Why am I an elf, and what do I eat that makes me one?  Well, the so-called “waybread of the elves,” of course (along with a judiciously tall glass of milk–waybread is a little bit dryish and full of delicious crumbs, just as it should be, so milk goes with it just fine!).  End this vain pretense, you say, come out from behind that elvish persona and reveal a real subject that someone can sink a literary tooth into.  Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing; but I’d better explain.

Several of the interesting folks whose works have been in Freshly Pressed lately and who write on books or literature have recently commented on what they eat or drink while writing, or reading, or they’ve just shared recipes as a periodic feature on their posts.  So, in the interests of combining the literary with the culinary, here’s my own offering in that light, along with an excellent recipe for “waybread of the elves” (at least, that’s what I call it–the originator of the recipe was much more modest and less histrionic).

Back in the days when I had recently become a teenager and was babysitting my brother, who was five years younger than I was, I had just re-read Tolkien’s Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for the second time.  One particular summer, time was hanging particularly heavily on my brother’s and my hands, and I proposed to him that I read Tolkien to him to get us through the long, hot summer days when it was too scorching or humid to be outside in the sun and we were stuck inside.  Quickly, so enchanted was my brother with the book and I with my own voice communicating the story by reading aloud to someone whom I had often previously aggravated and pestered, that we kept it up until the entire book was done.  We had real meals, of course, either cooked up ahead of time by my mom, provided by my grandmother (who lived close by and could look in on us from time to time), or dreamed up by ourselves.  But I had recently discovered another book as well, a book called Old Timey Recipes, a series of recipes collected from the Appalachian area by someone named Phyllis Connor, and I had a favorite recipe in it:  her recipe for butter cookies.  The plot begins to thicken, you say, or at least the dough.

Now, lest you run away with the idea that these cookies were like the effete, overly sweet, LITTLE cookies that come in those tins at Christmas, I would like to tell you that you’d be misinformed:  these so-called butter cookies, especially when made entirely with butter the way (I confess) I changed the recipe to make them, come out nothing like a sweet cookie but much more like what’s correctly called shortbread, or shortbread cookies.  That is, when they emerge at the correct time from the oven, they’re not yellowish, but rather lightish buff color with slightly browned edges and bottom.  And with a contribution of imagination from Tolkien, you can easily imagine them wrapped in preserving leaves by the elves to sustain weary travellers on their way, and you can even imagine how they taste after several days’ travel, filling and innervating, because cookies made entirely with butter don’t go rancid the way cookies made even partially with margarine can.  Instead, they age, though they may get slightly softer; hence, you can imagine Sam’s grief and sense of loss as he sees Gollum’s nasty work of crumbling the cookies and throwing them down the mountainside in Mordor.

I know one thing:  to the despair of my mother, who kept asking where all of the butter and milk were disappearing to while she was gone, my brother and I ate copious amounts of waybread and drank milk all summer long (some elves drink milk, too!) while we read through Tolkien.  Finally, my brother read the books to himself by preference another time, since I was at this later time occupied with other things.  And now, he’s reading the books to his child, doing all the different voices as he no doubt imagined them for himself (since I made no attempt to reproduce accents when I read to him, doing instead only the emotional tonalities and nuances).

And now that I have dragged you through this piece of back history, here’s the recipe:  like all old timey recipes, it leaves some details out, such as the information that if you cut these cookies with an old-fashioned biscuit cutter (a large one), it’ll look more like standard shortbreads, or that you bake these on an ungreased pan, or that actual baking time if your oven is accurate is 12-15 minutes (check often in the last 3 minutes).  Or, that you can press out the dough gently with your hands.  Also, as I said before, the cookies will keep better if you use all butter, but I want to give you the exact recipe as I first encountered it:

“Cream 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup shortening, and 3/4 cup sugar until fluffy.  Add 1 beaten egg and 2 teaspoons vanilla.  Sift together 3 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/8 teaspoon salt.  Add this to cream mixture very gradually.  Roll out on a pastry cloth [doughboard is fine] and cut into desired shapes.  A cookie press may be used [unnecessary].  Bake at 375 degrees until light brown.”  And that’s it.

There are other recipes in the book which were mainly of historical interest to me, such as recipes for parsnip wine, home brew, and moonshine.  And there is one which I’ve never tried, but which some people still swear by:  hog jowls and turnip greens.  Corn fritters, dandelion greens, grandmother’s spice cake (the third one of these I have tried, and it’s very good), you name it.  If it’s an Appalachian traditional recipe, chances are some version of it appears here (though since some of the recipes are very old and don’t supply cooking times or temperatures, you may have to improvise).  I first bought the book in 1970 or so, in a sort of “hippyish” place which also sold beads, incense, and quirky jewelry.  A few years ago (about 5), I was in a gift shop in Appalachia, and I sighted the book again!  Evidently, it is still continuing to sell.  My edition is the 3rd edition; I was distracted at the time and so happy to see my old friend on the bookshelf that I unfortunately can’t tell you what edition it’s in now.  But if you want a copy, I can tell you that it’s published in Bluefield, WV.  Put that together with Phyllis Connor’s name and the title of the book, and you may be fortunate enough to locate a distributor/supplier, especially with the Internet being the haven for information that it is these days.

And whether you get a copy or only follow my revised recipe, be sure and bake a recipe of waybread for your favorite elves and Tolkien fans (even if you’re the only elf you know for 40 miles!).  You surely can’t go wrong, whether in summer, spring, fall, or even winter to supply hungry literary “travellers” with sustenance.  (And keep in mind that waybread burns the hands of minions of the Dark Lord, just in case there are any grumps around!).

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July 30, 2012 · 2:50 pm

This is one of those days when I feel like I’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know.

Hi, folks!  This is just a brief note to let my readers who follow me day by day know that I’m not putting up a new literary post today as I normally do.  Instead, I’m trying to verify my site with the search engines so that I can gradually learn a little search engine optimization, though that seems like a very optimistic venture at this point.  It’s hard, because each site has something a little bit different that it wants done, and all the wishes don’t match up.

As to my title?  Well, it’s derived from an old saying, often thrown at the head of an overly ambitious and confident upstart by some old-timer or other.  The original saying, from expert to beginner, is “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”  This is what I sometimes feel about the kind people in all the site forums who’re trying to help me:  they’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know.  But more than that, after trying variation after variation on the one theme of how to get my search engines to recognize me, and trying to be sure I don’t do the same thing twice,  I have honestly begun to feel that I’ve forgotten more than I’ll ever know!  I’m going to keep slogging at it though, until I either get the correct formula that will satisfy everyone, or just decide to give up and wait until all parties ask for the same details.  Someone who had encountered a problem with this a few years ago, back in 2009, I think, said on one of the forums that WordPress.com actually does a pretty good job of supplying the data you normally gets through optimization without you having to do it (unless of course you’re ready to upgrade or buy your own domain name, go on WordPress.org, etc).  So, there’s no real disgrace in giving up if nothing works.  But secretly, I would rather believe that my heroes on the forum sites are right, and that I’m just a slow learner–it makes life more bearable that way.

For those of you who are looking for my literary posts, however, I did go ahead and do two less intensive, shorter ones over the weekend (even though I originally said that I probably wouldn’t, due to having some wonderful family company here).  As it turned out, though, the company needed some rest and time away too, so during that time I went ahead and wrote one post on Saturday and one post on Sunday.  I hope you can make due with those and with my archives and novels until I can get some sort of handle on the issues I’ve trying to resolve with respect to search engines.  I’m really excited sometimes to see on my stats page all of the people in different countries who’ve been following my blog.  It keeps me going to know that I’m developing an audience.

I hope to be publishing literary posts again by the middle of the week.  See you then, if not before!  shadowoperator

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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 19, 2012 · 1:39 am

“Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you’ve made it again.”–Unknown

And that’s what I’ve been doing today, making mistake after mistake, and not always sure that I didn’t make the same one twice.  Today, I’ve been trying to embed something from Scribd into WordPress.com, only to find that for some reason I (is it only I?) couldn’t get the instructions to work right.  So, finally I put the previous post up as a pdf (a review article I wrote 2-3 years back for thedeepening.com, a site ever to be commended); you can visit my WordPress.com site and click on it at your leisure on the Home page.  Some days, it just doesn’t pay to be a computer idiot!  shadowoperator

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