Those of us who grew up before rap and hip hop probably all remember The Tennessee Waltz and Old Cape Cod, among other songs that Patti Page made popular. Her slight twang and almost too sweet voice are memorable as soon as you simply say the titles. It's her birthday this week and I think we should all hum some of her songs, in tribute.

Labels: anniversaries, music, people of note

Normblog's weekly profile is of John Palmer who blogs at eclectecon.  Both the profile and the blog are well worth a visit.

Labels: blogs (others'), personalities, writing

They're 40. Amazing.
And thanks to Google for doing such a good job of illustrating the occasion.

Labels: anniversaries, tv

For background, I should mention that I am in a book group that is reading/studying Dante's Inferno. This week we are reading Cantos IV through VIII.

With that in mind, consider the following that happened today.

In the early afternoon, I was driving 30-40 miles to meet a friend whom I have not seen for several billion years - decades - since we were in college together and once or twice in the few years thereafter. (I would be acknowledging my age if I said exactly how long ago that was, and denial is more than a river in Egypt, believe me.) Anyway, there I was, riding along on a nice sunny day on a pretty country road. Nothing amiss or odd. I checked the classical music stations and nothing particularly excited me that they were playing so I put the radio on "scan" for background accompaniment.

As the sound passed one station and started toward another, I realized I had heard phrases like "and my teacher - that good man" and "she made license licit in her laws to free her from the scandal she had caused."

I very nearly slammed on the brakes. Could it be?? But what else could it be? I turned back to the station and recognized the ideas and images that I had just been reading in Cantos IV and then V. It was amazing to hear what had just been inside my head a few hours earlier. But without any doubt, those were the words.

I never did find out what the reading was about because I lost reception soon thereafter but I looked it up and it was Felicia Rashad reading Canto IV and Canto V. I have no idea why just those two, other than to surprise me, but on the assumption that I am not the actual center of the universe, that seems unlikely. I still think I may have been hallucinating - and what better to hallucinate than Dante? - but even the website says that's what it was.

Yes, I am familiar with Jung's theories about synchronicity and how we draw the universe to us at times. My father was a Dante aficionado and WQXR was even playing his all-time favorite Beethoven's 4th piano concerto in the evening as I drove home, so some might say that I was actually pulling or even tugging, but I suspect it's more about how we all see purple cows when we think about them and see pregnant women when we are pregnant, and so on and so on.

In any case, whatever it was, it was astonishing and wonderful.

Labels: amazements, books, writing

My 15 minutes of blogging fame are over.  A new profile is up at normblog.  It is of "Bataween, a journalist and mother of four, took her moniker from a residential district of Baghdad, Iraq, where her parents used to live. Bataween (the district) used to be almost entirely Jewish, and where once there were 150,000 Jews in Iraq, there are now seven."

Humor aside, in one of her answers, Bataween makes an comment that has lodged itself in my head as today's idea to think about:

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat?
The idea that the root cause of terrorism lies in legitimate grievances.

In the post-Che and post-911 era as we all attempt to figure out how to co-habit one large world, this is an interesting and challenging opinion.

Labels: blogs (others'), writing

Or do other people's I.E.s sometimes just stop doing anything? It's the strangest thing and it didn't used to happen. No, detective, I cannot identify when it started but it's been going on a while now and it happens both at work where I'm on a great big huge network and at home where it's just me tapping into a cable system. Sometimes I click on a link and nothing happens. Nothing. No error message, no blue-screen-of-death, no misdirection, no weird things. Just plain nothing. I've tried stopping the "connecting" swirl (hasn't worked) and restarting the whole computer (hasn't worked) and turning everything off and back on (hasn't worked). Sometimes Firefox works when I.E. doesn't but it happens in Firefox, too, just less frequently. It isn't one or two sites, either, it's anything.

Labels: web tools, websites

Inviting Jason Blair to speak at this ethics seminar is either cool or ridiculous and apparently even the organizers are of both minds.

Labels: ethics, modern times, writing

Sometimes sprucing up is good. One of my local yarn shops just rearranged everything in their brick and mortar store (this is their website) and it's much much easier to see what's in the store and to get around.

Sometimes sprucing up is not all that good. I do not particularly like the new look at cnn.com because it seems boring and less clear than it was previously. I started to write that it looks more corporate but even as I say so I'm not sure what I mean except that it looks less informational or news-filled and more annual report. Sometimes words fail one's ability to be accurately descriptive.

I find the LA Times front page easy to read, informative in a page-like way and pleasant to peruse - having said which, I hope some poltergeist is not karmically tempted to run out and "update" it.

Labels: design, websites

An article in the LA Times today says that many people have petitioned for Polanski's extradition. It would be rational and fortuitous to have him serve his sentence, it seems to me, both because of the horror of what he did (and admits to having done) and because neither time nor talent nor prestige nor celebrity friends should be sufficient to exonerate him.

Labels: news, people of note

Not living under a rock or in a cave, I have of course seen pictures of Kate and Jon splashed all over the covers of various and sundry magazines and tabloids. I've cautiously asked a few people who they are - the caution being on account of how much I hate to reveal myself as an old fogey or being out of the hip and with-it loop. But not until today when I read this article in the LA Times did I get a full summary of the odd modern anomaly that is Kate and Jon et al. And, by the way, I'm still not sure why people find them so fascinating. Train wrecks aren't usually interesting to watch in really slow motion....

My favorite part of the article is learning that a Kate mask and wig are high on the Halloween must-have lists. Go figure.

Labels: personalities

It has been noted by more than a few political commentators that Bill Clinton stumps for just about everyone. He's a consummate politician, right? And yet he has not muttered a word in the David Paterson vs. Andrew Cuomo face-off. Which says to me that he must feel the same as everyone I've talked with about it. Peterson has been pretty dreadful but Cuomo is such a whiny and manipulative guy that it's simply impossible to get interested in him, let alone enthusiastic. He got thoroughly drubbed - a word only professional journalists use, you know - in the last go-round and I was hopeful he was down for the count and ever. No such luck, evidently, but perhaps Clinton's silence will help return him there.

Labels: politics

I've been profiled by normblog. It's evident thereby that he has a really really really shallow barrel to hand, but there it is.

Labels: blogs (others'), personalities

What's your favorite Ang Lee movie? Pushing Hands The Wedding Banquet Eat Drink Man Woman Sense and Sensibility Ice Storm Ride with the Devil Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Chosen Hulk Brokeback Mountain Lust, Caution Take Woodstock Life of Pi (in production)

What's your favorite Michael Crichton book? A Case of Need Andromeda Strain Five Patients Terminal Man Jurassic Park The Great Train Robbery Eaters of the Dead Congo Sphere Travels (one of my favorites) Jurassic Park Rising Sun Disclosure The Lost World Airframe Timeline Prey State of Fear Next

Today is the birthday of both Ang Lee and Michael Crichton today. Two people whose words and imaginations have brought so much enjoyment to so many people.

Labels: anniversaries, books, movies

One of the advantages of working in a fairly large firm is that there are always different people to talk with and therefore different ways to look at things. Sometimes you expand your people universe because you run into someone unexpected in the hall (not run into literally, one hopes). And sometimes the larger universe comes to you.

On the elevator the other day, I exchanged pleasantries with a woman I know and have always admired for her intellectual curiosity and eagerness to stretch and learn in many directions. Shortly after our encounter, she mentioned - and invited me to join - a reading / discussion group she is in with some academic friends. The book they have begun is Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and I have to say I was excited at the prospect of reading and studying it now. And since my father wrote his doctoral thesis on Dante it feels quite full circle.

Like many, I studied The Divine Comedy in college literature classes but one is so inexperienced with life's events and with people in one's late teens and early twenties. I imagine it will be as it is an entirely new book. The professor recommends the Mandelbaum translation, by the way, as it displays the old Italian verses on the left ("old" being a technical term in this case as old Italian is quite different from modern Italian, not unlike English I suppose) and the English translation on the right. I'm sure she is correct that even if we do not know Italian, we will glean from it.

Labels: books, conversations

The dramatic and oft-criticized Guggenheim Museum is fifty years old this week. Oh how the artistes excoriated Frank Lloyd Wright's design and how the pundits and doomsayers predicted it would have no audience and never last. Ha to them and happy birthday, SRG!!!!

In commemoration of the notable anniversary, the NYT Sunday puzzle had the museum as its theme and Modern Art Notes interviewed the puzzle's creator (here).

One of the joys of growing up in Manhattan, is getting to see first-hand so much time-honored, respected art and I remember vividly racing around and around the circles and circles and circles of the Guggenheim, seeing impressionists and expressionists - Kandinsky and Mondrian, in particular - and being amazed at the architecture.

Labels: anniversaries, places

According to Hungry Girl, today, October 14th, is National Chocolate Covered Insects Day. I am in complete agreement with them and, just like every other year, will NOT be partaking in any commemoration!

Labels: anniversaries, celebrations, curiosities

Finished On Chesil Beach. I relished every moment. That's an odd thing to say about such a complex and difficult story but it's told in an exceptionally simple and beautiful way so it seems utterly uncomplex and endearing. It's written rather sneakily, but I think that's McEwan's gift, actually. Florence and Edward's problems and issues are so simple and genuine that you feel as if you're hearing them tell you without decorative touches or embellishment. It's also such a specific time and yet perhaps not so limited to the time as it seems at first.

I wish everyone I know would read it and write down their unedited reactions without talking to anyone first and then, at last, we'd all get together for a long conversation - sharing our reactions and personal experiences. It would bridge generations and geography, I feel quite sure.

And now I must read more. I have previously rather steadfastly avoided McEwan's novels because I tend to be wary of writers who are spoken of in hushed tones. Enormous adulation for writers has been known, in my opinion, to infuse the writing with some puffed up air that I find distasteful. I found the movie of Atonement to have some of that feeling, for example, but now that I see what McEwan is doing, I suspect that I would enjoy the book for much of the same insights and ways of conveying them as Chesil Beach. In fact I have changed my overall opinion of Atonement as a result. I only have these two stories to go on, so far, but McEwan seems to be presenting people with great sensitivity, even affection, although the people themselves are experiencing solitary loneliness (no that is not redundant) and are having difficulty being or becoming themselves.

Labels: books, writing

Perhaps those cute hairy cows got through to my subconscious. In any case, apologies for a bit of a hiatus. I've been knitting somewhat furiously partly because I've rediscovered it - which happens now and then, I find - and partly because birthdays and holidays are impending. I'm not going to overdo it this year. Well, I hope I won't - I do have a tendency to start huge projects but start them too close to when they are due. This year I have planned projects that are realistic (I think). Anyway, that's my excuse for the last few days.

Labels: knitting

The renowned and coveted 2009 Booker Prize is being announced tonight. The U.K.’s prestigious Man Booker Prize is conferred (nearly) every year to a work of fiction written by an author from a Commonwealth nation (i.e., Britain, Ireland, Canada, Australia, etc.). The $80,000 award is amazing in the literary world where large incomes are rare indeed. Anyway, here is the this year's short list plus a review or two:

- Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel - a novel about Henry VIII’s close adviser Thomas Cromwell
- The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt (1991 Booker winner for "Possession")
- Summertime by J.M. Coetzee (1983 Booker winner for "Life and Times of Michael K" and 1999 Booker winner for "Disgrace")
- The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
- The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
- The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Extra, extra, read all about it . . . Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall has won the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Here is the announcement. And here is an excerpt. More on all this, anon.

Labels: books, people of note

Another interesting group of birthday honorees:

Toni Braxton Vladimir Putin Oliver North Heinrich Himmler Louis Leakey Andy Devine

John Cougar Mellencamp Yo-Yo Ma Joe Hill R. D. Laing Desmond Tutu Niels Bohr

And can we make anything of this?

Labels: anniversaries, people of note

Today's group is probably a bit obscure for some but they're interesting:

Jenny Lind Le Corbusier Rebecca Lobo Helen Willis Moody Carol Lombard

Thor Heyerdahl Britt Ekland Gerry Adams George Westinghouse (alternating current, not fridge) Stephanie Zimbalist

So what can we make of this?

Labels: anniversaries, people of note

Why do some people come, all excited and worked up, bursting at the seams to share some issue or concern or problem, then pause for a reaction, and then continue on their merry rant without even the least lip service to whatever may have been said from the audience? Why not talk to a tape recorder if all they want is to hear themselves talk? Even adding "yes, that happened to me with them, too" doesn't get a nod from this genre. I remember joking with my mother when she would clearly not be listening to what one of us was saying, and I would say "hmm, did someone say something? wait! I heard something...." and then she'd chuckle (or not) and pay more attention. Conversation is meant to be two-way, I thought. Sometimes more one person or the other but both people usually expect to speak, yes?

On the other hand, I have had some unexpected and energetic conversations recently, too, in unexpected places and with people who turned out to be very interesting. You just never know, I guess.

Labels: friends, modern times, personalities

Am (audio)reading "On Chesil Beach" which is read by the author himself. Turns out that the voice of Ian McEwan - his real voice, not his literary one - is very nearly the same as Ian MacShane's (notably of Deadwood and Lovejoy) and Bill Travers's (Wee Willie Geordie and Born Free). Interestingly, Travers was in at least two episodes of Lovejoy; that must have been odd, audially, since their voices are so similar.

Chesil Beach is an interesting departure for McEwan. He is known and highly touted for intense and psychologically violent stories such as Atonement and The Cement Garden. His prose, however, is remarkably both elegant and accessible. Often it is the case that a careful literary craftsperson is not particularly relaxing or easy to read but McEwan is all that. I'm not going to comment on the story on Chesil Beach right now because it's quite unexpected, but I will write again on it when I am done. In the meantime, already I must say that I recommend it.

Labels: books, surprises, writing

Just installed a new cable modem. Wow what a difference from dial-up. Yeah, I know: no kidding. But after a week without broadband it's just amazing. And let me add that, in stark contrast to the calls and attempts to work with Verizon, the Time Warner people were polite and quick and very helpful. The longest I was on hold was for precisely 90 seconds and in one case the person picked up the phone immediately. AND they gave me direct numbers to call them back. AND the tech person solved the slightly odd problem with just a few tweaks and tests, apologizing to me for taking more than a few moments. Holy cow and mackerel.

Labels: technology

I finished the first puzzle of Matt Gaffney's "Hell Month" and know the answer to the question and got all the words and everything!! All before the end of the first day and without any harrowing bafflement or wondering where my brain was or yearning to google things. I'm amazed and happy, I must say, although if the past is any predictor of the future, my sense of triumph will pass in, oh, seven days, as soon as next week's puzzle comes out (his puzzles getting progressively and ultimately impossibly difficult as the month wears on), but it's a pleasant puzzling beginning to Fridays in October.

Labels: fun, puzzles, words

I'm a somewhat obsessive puzzle doer so I have to enter this Puzzlefest, of course. Furthermore, I thought some rare readers might like to as well - just click the puzzle or "this Puzzlefest" for details and info (h/t to Rex).

Labels: fun, puzzles, words

It is both good and bad news about the United States government that individuals holding office have only limited ability to change the government. Good guys and bad guys are interesting but mainly their effect is on the mood of the populace.

I've often noted the faces of newly-elected presidents. From somewhat open and excited, they become a bit closed and shut down. (If you ever get a chance to see the dance party outside the Arkansas governor's house when the Clintons are awaiting election returns, it's particularly noticeable on WJC's face between just before he knows and just after that quick first briefing.)

Now comes a New York Review of Books article by Gary Wills that somewhat changes the bemusement I've always felt. Wills is focusing on the drive for, and the desire to retain and use, power, that must needs consume men who seek and attain the presidency. Yes, that's obvious once you think about it but I had chalked up the change to a sudden realization of what had just happened, that as the new "leader of the free world" he was now being in possession - among other things - of the code to the famous (although perhaps apocryphal) red phone. Not to mention perhaps some apprehension at being more or less alone in a new, difficult way. But Wills is not musing on the change from private citizen to president. His concern is that President Obama seems entwined in the power of it all as evidenced (to Wills) by the fact that he (Obama) has not undone some of the horrors he was, at least in part, elected to do, and has actually reinforced some.

Human nature being what it is, and the psychological make-up of a man who can bring himself from little boy to U.S. president being as complex as it must be, I am convinced there are no simple answers to even the simplest questions in this regard. Plus, it seems to me that eleven months is a bit early to shake our heads ruefully. Plus, it seems to me that's it's more than possible that Obama is confronting more sides to every argument and more maze-like twists and turns on the way to his goals than he expected and than he wishes to discuss for us all to share while he works everything out.

Labels: government, ideas, obama

Lifted from Rex:

Celebrity crossword enthusiast and breast cancer survivor Christina Applegate is the 2009 Ambassador for Lee National Denim Day (this Friday, Oct. 2, 2009), a day to raise awareness about breast cancer issues as well as raise money for the Women's Cancer Programs of the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), including Christina's own foundation, Right Action For Women. They're asking for $5 donations. I'm giving a little more. Go here to donate. Thanks.

I wonder what the chances are of my firm letting us wear denim on Friday? Hmm....

Labels: charities, headlines, people of note

It's distasteful and rather appalling. Almost like a movie by, er, Roman Polanski. But it's an interesting situation. The reactions are not, for once, political. Even The View's Sherri Shepherd weighed in, on Tweeter:

"Whew...hot debate over the Statutory [sic] Rapist Polanski. 45 year old man plies a 13yr old w/drugs & Liquor and anally & orally penetrates her w/o her consent is a RAPIST....We hunt down 75 year old Nazis. We must protect our children."

Just as a point of information and law, the rape was not statutory. The lesser charge to which Polanski was allowed to plea was not statutory because no one suggested it had been consensual sex reworded as statutory rape because of the girl's age. In open court he He acknowledged that he had drugged, sodomized and raped a 13-year-old girl despite her verbalized requests to the contrary.

And now Polanski is being detained in a Swiss jail while Switzerland and the U.S. engage in legal arguments as to whether he will be deported to finally charges and sentencing from his 1977 rape conviction subsequent evading charges and sentencing.

There is no debate even from Polanski himself that he drugged, sodomized and raped a 13-year-old girl. Thirteen is very young even in jaded and drug-worn L.A. It was inexcusable and disgusting and horrible. But apparently there is debate over how he should be handled now, 32 years later. But why now? Because the Swiss want to honor his films? Because Swiss banks keep a lot of peoples' money and want to avoid international monetary sanctions? Seriously: why now??

Despite wowing audiences and critics for decades, many of Polanski's films are fiendishly violent psychological portraits of very nasty people. Which has no bearing on the subject at hand, I suppose, but it's hard not to think there's a connection somewhere.

If you or I or your neighbor did what he did, you or I or he would be locked up, never to see the light of day except for a daily hour in the prison yard.

My questions (well, some of my questions):

(1) Should a person's talent, fame and and money be tickets to freedom from legal responsibility for one's actions?

(2) Should a victim's success in putting a life back together be what it takes to let a perpetrator off the hook?

(3) And if time eradicates the need to punish personal and heinous crime, why punish anyone for such offenses? Why not just put them on a desert island - or let them go away to Europe until the intensity of the moment passes?

(4) But why is Polanski being re-custody-ed now? It's never been a mystery even to casual readers of newspapers and magazines where he was, particularly when he showed up at various award ceremonies during the 31 years since his conviction?

(5) If politics makes strange bedfellows, what do you call it when Woody Allen (whose films are often unarguably brilliant but whose personal life has left something to be, er, desired) is among those publicly entreating the two countries to release Polanski and allow him to get on with his life?

(6) How much fame and talent means a person can commit crimes at will?

(7) And what about the girl's mother? Why wasn't she charged with aiding the crime? What on earth could her plan have been as she dropped off her 13-year-old at the house of two famously drug-taking and sexually adventurous womanizers??

Further reading:
--L.A. Times - long article + Geimer's 1977 testimony + the list of petition signers
--11D - post and several comments
--U.K.'s Guardian article

Labels: people of note, puzzles

...there are rumors afoot in the land that second-hand bookstores are be in some survival trouble. I've heard these rumors from time to time and dismissed them as voiced by people who don't feel passion for books because, well, anyone who really cared about books would know the value - emotional, intellectual and, sometimes, monetary - of all books. New and/or used, handed down or just printed. I am not one who rails against big business or thinks large retail firms are spending much energy plotting to devour and munch on small stores. And I know that like many (most?) book buyers, buying and reading books is not about holding onto old things for holding-on's own sake. It's about treasuring words and stories and writing. There is more to reading than the words in them, witness that even people who like electronic readers for some purposes (me among them) acknowledge that it's not the same as reading books - it's useful, it's informative, it's handy, but it's not the same. Which is off topic but related. Anyway, h/t normblog.

Labels: blogs (others'), books

Norm of the eponymous and unfailingly interesting normblog presented an intriguing book meme. The idea is that, using only books you've read this year, one should provide titles for posed questions and without repeating titles. I do, however, tend to go completely blank as far as titles even though I read one or two or more books a week.

Describe yourself: Almost always the main character of whatever book I've just finished or am currently enjoying. For example, while thinking about this, I've veered wildly from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to The Guernsey Literary...Society to The Marx Sisters to Just Grace to Persuasion to ....

How do you feel? Mennyms (Sylvia Waugh). A young readers' book but maybe not so much when you consider she uses words like "mollify." Also Far From the Madding Crowd.

Describe where you currently live: A Covenant With Death and, simultaneously, Anne of Green Gables and Little Chapel on the River.

If you could go anywhere, where would you go? London (Rutherford), A Remembrance of Things Past, War and Peace.

Your favorite form of transportation? The Phantom Tollbooth.

Your best friend is: A Bridge Too Far and Daddy Nostalgia.

You and your friends are: Song Without End and/or Oh What a Lovely War and/or I'm (we're) All Right, Jack and/or Don Quixote and/or J'accuse and/or Eat, Pray, Love.

What's the weather like? The Bell(weather) Jar.

You fear: The Tears of Autumn and/or Conversations After a Burial.

What is the best advice you have to give? The Healing Imagination.

Thought for the day: Cryptonomicon. Dance to the Music of Time. Both.

How would you like to die? A Postillion Struck by Lightning.

Your soul's present condition? Snakes and Ladders, The Idiot, The Quinqunx.

Now you!

Labels: blogs (others'), books, writing

I completely agree with Joy Behar. The Ukraine's decision is baffling and wrong.

Labels: children, people of note, puzzles

The recent silence from me was neither because I had nothing to say that I thought merited posting nor that I was running scared from commenters - reasons that have previously muffled my singular and oh-so-marvelous voice (ha ha ha). It was "technical difficulties" with my DSL. The issues started Wednesday evening. I called Verizon's supposedly 24/7 technical hotline and spent nearly three hours on the phone, 45 minutes just getting to a live human being and the rest of the time - unsuccessfully - just talking. The tech people a zillion miles away over oceans and seas, and very hard to hear clearly. Plus they seem programmed to say platitudes in response to almost everything (e.g., "that must be very frustating for you" and "I will definitely help you with that" etc.). The talking was time-delayed a bit and the sound quality was dreadful which doesn't give you much confidence since Verizon was first and foremost a PHONE company. I mean, inter-country phone quality was awful when I was in college but that was in the Dark Ages; I would have assumed the cables and/or copper or whatever it is now are far better materials.

I realized at some point that I had unconnected a phone while rearranging furniture on Wednesday, a phone I no longer use, so I thought maybe unplugging the phone had signalled to the modem that something had changed, so I replugged the phone. The modem still wasn't working on Thursday night when I got home, however, so I called the supposedly direct number that one of the tech people had given me. What a surprise (not) to find that it wasn't a direct line at all but just another entré to regular lines with lots and lots of prompts to choose one's way through. As a result, I got to spend another 2-3 hours with all the techies saying they'd tested the connections and everything tested fine so, oh my, it is very hard to know what's wrong and my goodness how frustrating it must be for me. No one could figure out what was wrong except one person I caught who said she'd been out the previous times I called but she could see that the phone line was unresponsive. Eventually the phone got fixed, on Friday, and they told me the DSL line tested fine. However, when I got home Friday night around midnight, the phone was indeed fine but the DSL was still blinking (a/k/a no signal). Saturday morning I called again and spent 4 more hours at it. With no success. (I definitely need to learn to quit sooner.)

So here's the thing. I completely understand that things break and that maybe whatever happened to the phone caused a problem in the modem or even the router. Or maybe vice versa. But it should never have taken four hours for people who know these things to figure out that the first issue was the phone line. Furthermore, a customer should not have to repeat anything dozens of times and STILL be ignored. I wish I was exaggerating about that, but I'm not.

They said they have to come to the house to diagnose and fix the problem, but can't come on Saturdays. Well, that's what they said until I said for something around the two hundredth time (NOT an exaggeration) that I could not be home during the week. Could. Not. Be. Home. During. The. Week. Because it would require taking an entire day off because they won't provide a two-hour window. After all that, I said I guessed the only answer was that I would stop Verizon service and write the PSC about the whole experience just trying to get a DSL up and running. At that point, somehow, magically, the guy said "let me check something" and it seems they CAN send someone on Saturday. Next week.

However, it was THE most unpleasant seven or eight hours. I am not kidding that I said "I can't be home on a weekday but only on weekends" and the man answered with "Well, we will send someone Tuesday, all right?" And that exchange happened dozens of times and even after I was referred to a supervisor and then to his supervisor. No wonder we make jokes about how they are trained to ignore what a person says. They are, in the end, simply beyond infuriating and frustrating and rude. On a scale I have never previously encountered.

I had work I had to do on Saturday evening so the solution I came up with was to try one thing first (buying a (returnable) modem and seeing if it worked because it was the modem that was faulty). Apparently that was not the answer. (I am pretty convinced by now that it's the signal being sent incorrectly but I may never know.) The second thing I did was pick up a NetZero HiSpeed internet connection disc. It isn't particularly high speed, not when you're accustomed to DSL, but it *IS* an internet connection so I was able to do my work. I am grateful.

I've talked to several people about all this and they ALL told me about their or their friends' similar Verizon horror stories, two of which were identical about being on hold forEVER and utterly unable to hear or understand the tech people and having to wait a week to get it fixed. They have ALL switched to cable or Optimum. So if my sample is representative of anything, Verizon had better be worried. I mean, no one had no problems. That's quite startling. Even with a small sample of about a dozen people, 100% is amazing. Do the words AIG and Lehman resonate with their priorities? Don't they realize what we all now know, that huge no longer means invulnerable?

Labels: commerce, modern times, web tools

Man oh man doesn't that look incredibly eerie?! It's apparently a huge dust cover over Sydney (Australia) and it sure looks forbidding and scary as heck and yet people are continuing to exercise and move about. Perhaps it's all trick photography with a red filter over the lenses..... Click the post's title for more details.

Labels: places, weather

Why don't chain hotels in America have the same look and feel and amenities as they do in Europe?  Take the Fairfield Ramada in York, England.  Tea with scones, daily.  A remodeled 18th century stone building overlooking a river.  Fireplaces.  Six acres of land.  Meeting rooms, wireless access.  Rates starting around $100 a night.  Have you seen and/or priced Ramadas and/or Fairfield Inns here?!

Labels: places, travel

Stephen King and H.G. Wells today. Nice.

Also H.L. Mencken and Gustav Holst and Bill Murray. I wish one could actually make a great big - and accurate - theory about people who are born on the same day.

Labels: anniversaries

What's the deal with Facebook being down or painfully sluggish so much recently?

Labels: websites

The Nanny of New York (a/k/a Mayor Bloomberg) reportedly wants to ban smoking outdoors as well as in. Normblog has written a - presumably sarcastic - piece on same.

Labels: absurdities, blogs (others'), writing

A serialized online novel is about to begin in the U.K. Telegraph and/or your email box. The link will not be available until Monday, September 21, but here is a description of book one, and here is an interview with Alexander McCall Smith. And you can sign up here to receive each day's chapter in email.

Smith may well be the most prolific writer since pen and paper were invented. His several well-received, popular, clever and nicely written series comprise 20 books thus far, among them:
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (10 titles at present)
44 Scotland Street (5 titles at present)
Von Igelfield (1 title at present)
Sunday Philosophy Club (5 titles and my favorite)
Corduroy Mansions (the first weekly online series)
La's Orchestra Saves the World (10 printable pages)

Many thanks to Cornflower Books for writing about the new serialization as well as for her January 2009 interview with McCall Smith.

Labels: book blogs, books, writing

I was talking about the number 9 recently, influenced by 9-9-9 two weeks ago and by general fascination with numbers, and thought rare readers might enjoy this article on the subject. Aside from other things, it points out the lengths that one of its military leaders, Ne Win, went to in order to insinuate 9 into the fabric of the Burmese economy.

Labels: history, numbers, places

He did it! He ran 1,105 miles in the 51 days since July 26. Yesterday he ran back into London's Trafalgar Square, with blisters on his blisters, he said, to complete his goal. He'd eaten five or six thousand calories a day (!) and succeeded in raising nearly half a million dollars (but why wasn't it more?!) for Sport Relief. Sadly, few papers around the world have given this exercise (pun intended) any attention, but it's quite an achievement. Izzard noted that when he left on his journey, the only people in the Square were his own team but that yesterday there were hundreds of fans and well-wishers in spite of the rain. He said he hadn't trained much, in advance, and was not a marathon runner previously. He injured his ankles and toes, lost toenails, felt exhausted at the beginning, but as the days went on found that he ran more easily and felt good. Consider, however, that he ran 27 miles each day for 51 days. I suppose his whole body chemistry and make-up will be different after this. He's a funny, intelligent, engaging actor and comedian; apparently he's also an extraordinarily disciplined and determined human being.

Donations can be made at Comic Relief.

Labels: amazements, people of note

Granting that polite and gracious behavior is always more pleasant - not to mention polite and gracious, heh - nevertheless I wonder about our reactions to Serena Williams' outburst at the U.S. Open. It is certainly true that the ideal reaction of people in the public eye, whether glad or miserable, whether winning or losing, would be graciousness. A column in the NY Times puts it well and clearly (here). It is true, however, that many people kind of chuckle when men athletes (hockey players, baseball hitters, tennis players, etc.) freak out and throw things. People voice distaste for John McEnroe's antics but there's a vague sense of amusement in their reactions, too. But Serena's yelling was "so unseemly," as someone put it to me yesterday. Why? She had received a crucial call that stopped her momentum and was likely to wreck her game, and she was angry. Who on earth would not be furious? Furthermore, as video has since shown, she was correct!!!! It was a bad call!! She lost the match and the championship on a bad/wrong call and on her reaction to the bad/wrong call. Man oh man. Fortunately she has a successful career and many other victories to savor but this must be extremely frustrating.

It's almost 2010. Women have voted for 90 years, have had personal health protection for nearly that long, have been freed from being official property of fathers and husbands for almost 40 years . . . and yet women are still expected to smile and be polite, no matter what happens, and no matter that unrestrained reactions would be acceptable for men.

Labels: modern times, people of note

I stopped in Posman Books in Grand Central today, to see if they had anything by Charles Lamb now that I'm curious about him on account of The Guernsey Literary . . . Society. They didn't. What they did have was four people on line buying The Lost Symbol (see yesterday). Four people, four books. In the five minutes I was there. Do the math.

Labels: books

The blockbuster never dies. Richard Langdon is back. Janet Maslin has once again annointed Dan Brown a master of un-put-down-able fiction in her review of The Lost Symbol, much as she did when she nearly fell all over herself in delight over The DaVinci Code, calling it "riddle-filled, code-breaking, exhilaratingly brainy thriller."  I enjoyed "Angels and Demon" more, I have to say, and thought it was much better written - more subplotlines were finished and the characters were better developed.  The one that was specifically about coding was way too easy to solve, disappointingly, and made me think that either the NSA should put me on their payroll or Dan Brown isn't as fierce a code writer as he and others think.  Rumor has it that there are some nifty codes in The Lost Symbol so of course I will have to accept the challenge.  I'll let you know....

Labels: books, writing

It's raining in New York City - pouring, in fact - and is expected to rain and be gloomy all day. Which makes this the first day since and including the day itself that the color of the light and the quality of the air reflects the emotional atmosphere.

What a somber and difficult day. It's an occasion for serious quiet thought. But the more I have thought and learned in the last eight years, the less I have a clear sense of what reactions would be best personally, let alone any idea whatsoever of what would be best nationally or internationally. All I know is that I have hope that nothing like it will ever happen again to anyone for any reason.

Anger is understandable. Resentment is understandable. Passion for one's beliefs is understandable. Wanting to wreak revenge on those who have harmed loved ones is understandable. Intense feelings on all sides are understandable. But what about trying to listen and hear and work and live together? It *has* to be possible. It just has to be.

Labels: anniversaries, ideas

Just finished reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (well, listening to the audio book) and I want to say that I enjoyed it very much. I kept hearing about it and seeing people buying it so I read the descriptions on B&N and Amazon. I was concerned that it would be awfully cute and romancy and it is a bit of both but it's also startling and often quite wonderful.

One remarkable feat of the book is its casual and friendly interweaving of serious literature into a story that isn't particularly intellectual. The members of the eponymous literary society - whose origins I will not reveal because it's one of the early surprises in the story - have a (perhaps not entirely believable - to me, anyway) passion for authors like Charles Lamb and Seneca which makes for delicious quotations and references.

And the well-researched historical details are enthralling. For example, I knew the Guernseys were occupied by the Naziis during WWII but I had no idea it was for so long (nearly six years) nor how vicious. Obviously I knew Naziis were extraordinarily cruel as a rule but I'd always thought their island outposts were relatively quiet as far as that went. Some of the random and utterly casual cruelties described here are beyond astonishing.

The vivid descriptions of the geography and the air on the island make me want little more than to go there right now and walk along the cliffs and beaches.

And if the characters in the book are even remotely like actual islanders, then that is yet another reason for a nice long visit.

My only quarrel with the book is that once the last quarter begins, all the historical and literary threads pretty much disappear into a not-unexpected winding-down and ending.

Labels: books, places, writing

Ellen de Generes? Huh?

Labels: ai, music, tv

Don't forget to take note and maybe even smile four times today. At 9:00 and 9:09 a.m. and 9:00 and 9:09 p.m. today. To be precise, that's at 9 on 9/9/9 or 9:09 on 9/9/09. And we can celebrate this evening again at 9:09.09 on 9/09/09. And today, for once, both d/m/y and m/d/y fans are on in sync. Cool.

Labels: fun, numbers

September 14-18 is Book Blogger Week. Click the "Celebrate Books" poster under the photo on the left of the page (or here) for a list of nominees for various praise. Also, here are some book blogs I frequent (which will no doubt be expanded within a short time with the addition of the some of the nominees).

austen blog bluestocking society book beast book ninja bookclub girl booked out the bookseller bookslut care's online book club confessions of an idiosyncratic mind cornflower books

diamond in the window diary of a heretic edog eurocrime eurocrime competitions jenny davidson john baker kids lit library thing moorish girl

lost in a good story paperback writer rarely likable roger simon semicolon small world reads so many books thoughts of joy upper fort stewart the rap sheet twiga's book reviews

Labels: book blogs, books, writing

Nicholas Winton. Do not let his name go unremembered. He is personally responsible for saving nearly 700 children's lives. Now over 100 years old, he proves that one person can make an incalculable and wonderful difference. (H/T London Telegraph article)

Yesterday, the "Winton Train" arrived in London, having recreated the trip that the rescuing trains took from Prague to the North Sea and then to London. The passengers on the anniversary train included some of the original passengers as well as their families.

On 1 September 2009, a special "Winton train" set off from the Prague Main railway station. The train, consisting of an original locomotive and carriages used in the 1930s, headed to London via the original Kindertransport route. On board the train were several surviving "Winton children" and their descendants, who were welcomed by Sir Nicholas in London. The occasion marked the 70th anniversary of the intended last Kindertransport which was due to set off on 1 September 1939 but never did because of the outbreak of the Second World War. At the train's departure, Sir Nicholas Winton's statue was unveiled at the railway station.

It's dreadful to separate families but many if not most of these children would have died in eastern Europe had English generosity in accepting so many children not have been there. In fact, apparently none of their family members survived.

And now there are over five thousand descendants of the children who came to England on the Kindertransport. People who would not have existed were it not for Nicky Winton and his trains. It shows that things can be done and that there are good people.

England itself deserves credit, too. Winton must have possessed remarkable powers of persuasion but England deserves enormous credit for being persuadable.

(Side note. I do not believe that people would buy fewer magazines and newspapers nor watch less televised coverage of it, were the world's media to spend less time blaring photos and words about celebrities who push white powder up their noses or down their throats, or dress scantily, or shop a lot, than writing about thoughtful and extraordinary people like Nicholas Winton. Do you?)

Labels: anniversaries, people of note, u.k.