C'est drôle!

Concerning the Blog Bog: What technology has done to writing

blog (noun)

1. An online journal, typically comprising links to current news stories or other Web resources, and/or social and political commentary, and/or a personal diary, sometimes with replies from readers or RSS feeds.

to bog (verb)
~Intransitive
1. (often with down) to become mired or stuck (especially in mud).
2. bog off (slang) to go away.
3. to bog up - to make a mess of (col).

~Transitive
1. (often with down) to cause to become mired or stuck, especially in mud bog (noun)
2. An expanse of marshland.
3. (slang) A toilet.

Here I am stuck in the blog bog again.

Words on screen. Lightning-fast I type them. Spelling errors magically correct themselves before my eyes. Zip zip! Writing is faster than thought and thoughts appear bluntly in bleak cruel incomplete incoherence. There it is for all the world to see: My spelling is perfect, but my mind is all wrong! EEEK!

Whatever happened to the privacy of writing?

Think back 200 years: Writing, what joy! What freedom! Feather plume in hand, dip in ink and take flight! A feather carries lightly on the wind, the thoughts, dreams, fantasies and wild wanderings of the mind. For birds, feathers are hollow for effortless riding of the wind; for writers, hollow to form a reservoir for ink. When the ink line dwindles on the paper, pause briefly to re-dip, then it’s back to the air currents. Splatters and splashes may punctuate the rough draft, but don’t interfere with words spewing forth on vellum like buttons from a jar: Colorful and contrasting, a clattering array of silver, bone, wood, and shell, later to be sorted and organized.

Stop! Enough fantasy! It’s a pretty image, but feathers are meant for bird-flight. In truth, writing with feathers is earth-bound and laborious. Human thought is quicker than a pen governed by gravity. However, the push of pen nib across the paper’s surface has a physical quality to be enjoyed for its own sake, and the writer’s effort has a specific, usually formal, purpose. It ends with the painstaking production of the final document; the artist-writer crafts it with beauty and solemnity, creating a product suitable for viewing. It is as beautiful to behold as it is thought-provoking to read.

The room is still. No TV, no chatter from the radio. The dimness of the room, the golden lamp glow, are comforting, reassuring. There’s no awareness of the missing-ness of TV, radio, record player, CD player, computer or cell phone. You just write.

The twentieth century converts the plume to fountain pen. Fuel stops are greatly reduced. The ink well is relegated to the artist’s shelf, while the writer pauses pen scratches only long enough to change the cartridge. Soon writers have an array of writing tools at their literal fingertips: ballpoint pens, pencils, or a heavy black typewriter.

Imagine you are there, mid-20th century, let’s say, 1952. What are you writing? A journal? A letter? A newspaper article? A poem or story? Why are you writing? To record events or organize domestic needs? To express affection to someone who will receive your message a week or month later? To express an opinion to the community via typeset printing press?

Whatever the case, you know who is going to read this thing you wrote down. You may do some revision later, but your thoughts are coherent as you write, because time is vast, the pace of life in step with the pace of human thought. When you work, it’s between you and the paper. It’s personal. You spend time with it. You live with it; you interact with it in a physical way. This combination of processes mental, corporeal, and spiritual is to writing, as water, earth and sunshine are to growing plants.

Now we have computers in all their incarnations: laptops, palm pilots, digital-this and digital-that. We have illustrations and graphs at our fingertips, at the ready for insertion into our documents. Finally, there are no more ink spatters or scribbles and scratches. Revision takes place during creation. Best of all, everything we write can be shared with the world via weblog, AKA “blog.” This is better, right?

I saw a TV show recently, Dr. Phil or Oprah, where a woman was asking for help. She had too much stuff. She couldn’t throw anything away. She was depressed. The camera panned her home, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, piles of papers, pathways so narrow they could barely navigate from the living room to the kitchen. The woman was bogged. She couldn’t pull herself out, couldn’t arise or lift even a finger to begin to sort or toss or make any sense of the mountainous gluttonous piles. The reporter picked up a single used sock, and suggested this was a good place to start – toss that in the trash can. “Oh, but I could find a use for that,” the woman said, “I could polish my dishes with it.” This is an actual psychological disorder, called Narcissistic Personality Disorder! A product of too-much-stuff-consumer-culture, an abnormal cell growth, a cancer. Humans survived for centuries on thrift. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a healthy adaptation gone awry.

The blog bog is like that. Write think write thinkwritethinkwritethinkquestion . . . question? I have a question! I don’t have to wait for the answer! I don’t even have to get out of my chair, or reach out to the encyclopedia on the shelf next to my computer. Google! Down the Google Path! La la la la-la! What a merry trail I trod, wherever curiosity leads . . . but wait! What was the question? Oh yeah, I’m writing a paper about the blog bog! But it was very interesting to read so many experiences about too much stuff. So . . . copy paste copy paste copy paste . . . now I have a place to put it – so interesting, all this interesting stuff, I really don’t want to forget it, so I copy paste copy paste and it’s safely tucked away in a saved MSWord document called “Saved stuff for paper #4.” Now I feel better. I’ll have it forever – in case I need it – unless . . .

. . . computer crash, disc malfunction, file overload, mind overload, I forgot where I put it, lost it in an overzealous trash-purge!

But everything is fine, safe, protected. Just make a backup file. Put it on your thumb drive! Dragging files back and forth, saving saving saving, doubling and saving, backing up and saving – then the dreaded question:

‘This folder already contains a folder named ‘OWP’ If the files in the existing folder have the same name as files in the folder you are moving or copying, they will be replaced. Do you still want to move or copy the folder?’

The wrong answer could be FATAL! Precious files forever vaporized! Eeek! Stress! Fifteen files later, all labeled “OWP” or variations thereof, and I’m beginning to fear for my sanity! Perhaps someone has already named this version of mental illness. Bloggagooglebog Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I am NOT going to search for that. I AM GOING TO FINISH THIS PAPER.

I want to finish all my OWP assignments now, so I can read what everyone else has written. I want to have time to think about what they write, and send them comments. I want to do this before the end of the workshop. Also, I want to go further out into Blog World, travel abroad, read blogs from France, Canada, Africa. It’s like going inside the minds of people from every imaginable corner of the earth. No more wondering what other people are thinking. Now we know – at least the thoughts they want to blog at us.

And so, I’m done. This paper is over. I’m going to post it on the blog. Oh no. That means everyone can read it. EVERYONE. There it is. My crazy mixed up bogged up blogged up mind, exposed for all the world to see. Not to mention my sentence fragments, punctuation errors, and erroneous writing style in 2nd person P.O.V. Or is it 1st person?

Stuck. Wedged. Jammed. Lodged. Trapped. Having difficulties. Blocked. EEEK! If you’ve read this far, you know it all.

Here goes.

Originally posted July 12, 2005 at 07:04 AM - Oregon Writing Project

Driveway Philosophers

Garrison Keillor’s column this morning so moved me that I want to share it. Yesterday my dad stopped by to drop off some produce from his garden. We stood in the sunshine at the front door to chat. The sun was warming my pajama-clad legs and Dad leaned against the house. He’s 81 years old, and this summer kept two community gardens, supplying our family with fresh produce all summer long. And his garden is still producing. He’s going to give up one of the gardens next summer. But before he leaves it, he will plant a cover crop, being a good shepherd of the land he’s passing to someone else’s hands.

Here’s what Garrison Keillor has to say about men like my dad:

“Bright chill October days of sweet dry smells, smoke and apples and pigskin, memories of touch football games on grassy fields strewn with dry leaves. “You go deep,” our QB said, thinking that a big lanky kid like me must be a good receiver, so I galloped deep looking back over my shoulder, but I was not, in fact, all that terribly interested in actually fighting for possession of the ball. I was brought up to share, not to snatch things away from other people.

“Aggressiveness was not a prime value in my family. Only two of my 15 uncles played football and not one of them was a hunter. They were gardeners, not warriors. Gentle godly men with husky voices who leaned against cars and talked quietly about manly things which, for them, included:

1. Cheap Things That Are Better Than Expensive Ones
2. The Peculiarities of Neighbors
3. The Relative Merits of Makes of Cars
4. Amazing Coincidences in Everyday Life
5. The Art of Raising Strawberries
6. The Absurdities of Urban Life
7. Road Trips, Past and Future

“Sports and politics didn’t loom large in their world. So when I tune in to talk radio and hear guys ratcheting on and on about the home team betraying them or how much they hate Hillary, it has an exotic tinge for me, like hearing space alien dialogue in a movie. My male role models didn’t raise their voices. They stood with their backs to a 1947 Ford and looked off across the field and murmured.

- So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?
- Oh, not so much. Keeping busy.
- How’s that car of yours running?
- Got us to Idaho and back.
- So how was that?
- Well, she burned a little oil but she was getting almost 20 miles to the gallon.

“Gas mileage: they lied about that, though they were Christians and all. It was a main bragging point. And now oil is $93 a barrel and I hear owners of hybrid cars brag about gas mileage - they can read it right off the instrument panel. My uncles would’ve loved that, and also the GPS map on the dashboard - my dad would’ve driven around and around in circles, just to watch that blue dot moving along the street plan of Minneapolis.

“The radical feminists of my day did not grow up with men like my uncles, or perhaps they forgot, and other intellectuals who explore maleness do not include the Men Leaning Against The Car Murmuring archetype, but I remember them well, especially on these golden Saturdays in late fall, the gentle voices of the philosophers of the driveway.

“What they say is that life is made up of a richness of small things and you need to keep them all in perspective. Read the Bible but don’t forget to cover your strawberry beds or change your oil. Go places, see things. Don’t get carried away. Moderation. Don’t get mad. Don’t make things more complicated than they are. If you’re too busy to stand around and talk, you’re not living right.

“Some of us veered away from their example and galloped into the stone canyons of careerism, which has warped us somewhat. We are expected to give up our lives for work. We have a tendency to obsess and orate and that is something the driveway philosophers didn’t go in for. They were a chorus, not an audience, and they spoke softly and contrapuntally of the wonders of the world, the benefits of pruning and mulching, the qualities of apples, the science of forecasting winter by observing woolly caterpillars, the plans for flooding the backyard to make a hockey rink, the difficulties of growing roses, the trials and tribulations of plumbing.

“The driveway philosophers are still with us. Whenever I escape from my stone canyon, I find them here and there, talking uncle talk. They constitute a large invisible bloc that looks at candidates for public office and gets an intuitive sense of who is real and who is not. They know that politicians live in stone canyons and hire smart designers to create their personas, but they check out Hillary and Obama and Giuliani and Romney and they wonder who knows about gas mileage, who has a normal relationship with children, who can truly appreciate a really good apple. And that’s why Iowa is important. It’s a major of driveway philosophers.”

Garrison Keillor’s “A Prairie Home Companion” can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.

Barbies

Last night at the high school football game, the homecoming princesses marched out to the balloon arch with their princes in the freezing cold, wearing spikey high heels and short little spaghetti strap dresses and tiaras. They looked like Barbie dolls shivering in the icy air.

Barbie dolls came on the scene when I was about 10, and my mother wouldn't let me have one. And there is no way I would have stood out there in the cold, even if I were homecoming queen.

Chatty Cathy

"Kathy" was the most common name among girls in my class. One year in summer camp 4 of the 6 girls in our cabin were named Kathy. I loved my Chatty Cathy doll. Mine was the dark haired one, which I liked best. Back then I never wondered what the little tape player inside Chatty Cathy looked like. It must have had a little speaker attached to a tiny audio tape on a little reel with some kind of spring action attached to the string. How did it hit each of the 11 phrases randomly? The mechanism didn't hold up very well. Slowly the sound quality wavered and faded, and eventually the string just went limp. I still think she was a cute doll, though. She had freckles, like the real Clover so many years ago. I wonder whose voice was recorded all those years ago? I wonder if her name was really Cathy?

Thoughts on a football Saturday

I hate games! Not the kind lovers play (although those stink too) but the kind everyone else seems to love. From football to monopoly to red rover... I do not enjoy them.

First of all, I can never remember the rules. That makes me feel stupid.

Second, I hate competition. Why do people constantly have to find ways to be better, faster, stronger, smarter, better-looking, richer, more successful, etc., than someone else? I hate that. I mean, what's the point?

Third, I can't understand extrinsic motivation. Competing for money or a prize or working for brownie buttons or grades, or even for praise or to go to heaven -- it's meaningless to me. If I don't get some pleasure out of what I'm doing, no amount of extrinsic reward is going to motivate me.

I think I am the only person in the world who feels this way.

When I was in elementary school and there was going to be a test, the teacher would say, "Now children, we're going to play a game." I would sigh... Then when I found out we were really having a test, I was happy. I much preferred tests to games. I like answering questions on questionnaires. I like filling in blanks. It's fun! (Not tests where I don't know the answers, of course, that's no fun. Like math tests. Ick.)

This is really really weird, I know.

So I'm constantly pretending! Because in American culture this attitude is unheard of. I pretend, at least, to tolerate games. Sometimes I pretend to enjoy them. What makes it easier is trying to identify with the feelings of those who love them. I have good friends who are very competitive. They have described to me how it feels, how much they enjoy competition, how it gives them a rush. So I try to understand, just like I understand that some people enjoy cooking (I don't) and gardening (I don't) and shopping (I don't).

So I can cheer for my student who is a football star this year. I can gather with my friends and drink beer and celebrate the Ducks' football successes, but I do it for the camaraderie with friends, and it's hard for me to resist making fun of the announcers, "..he's here to play ball..." "..end over end bouncer down the endline.." "..you gotta be serious about playing football.." "..when you dive over the top of people it really exposes the ball.." "if there's a word in the dictionary called escapability.." "..I mean that ball was just rollin' rollin' rollin'.." "..and Oregon threatening again.."

It's hilarious when you take the comments out of context, but I try to keep my thoughts to myself. Because no one else gets it.

On the other hand, I just can't get upset when "our" team loses, which is rather liberating. It's just a game after all. Still, I have compassion for the losers.

Surely I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Maybe other people are pretending too?

Everything is True

Everything is true...proven by 70 questions! (haha!)

I took a paper version of this survey in grad school when I was learning to be a teacher. I think it was an Ed Psych class. It turned out pretty much the same way, as I remember. If you like this quiz, you can find it under "Long Personality Test" on okcupid.com.

Your Score: ENFJ- The Teacher
You scored 72% I to E, 21% N to S, 9% F to T, and 31% J to P!

Your type is known as the teacher, or the educating mentor. You also belong to the larger group, called idealists. You tend to bring out the best in other people. You lead without seeming to do so. People are naturally drawn to you. You expect the very best from people which takes the form of enthusiastic encouragement which is so charming that people try their best not to disappoint you. You share your personality type with 3% of the population.

You need to feel a deep and meaningful connection to your romantic partners, and go to great lengths to understand and please your mate. Harmony is vitally important to you, and you often put others' needs before your own. You have a pretty thin skin and are easily hurt. Although you strive for harmony, when your values or ethics are violated, you can be very emotional, confrontational, and even punishing. However, you are very insightful about the underlying cause of conflicts, and an excellent communicator, so you have the tools to bring about a quick and peaceful resolution as long as you can keep control of your facilities. You want to be appreciated for your thoughtfulness and compassion. You need your partner to make a real effort to get to know you. Above all, you need to be able to express your feelings and have them taken seriously.

Your group summary: idealists (NF)
Your type summary: ENFJ

French traditions bite the dust (farewell to the smoke-filled café)

Posted by Charles Bremner on October 02, 2007 at 03:07 PM in Europe, France:

"One of the sure-fire themes for correspondents in Paris is the death of French institutions.
"Generations of reporters have filled slack news days with dispatches on the demise of the great French café, the baguette, the béret, the concierge, the Gauloise sans filtre, the language, driving habits, the snail, the truffle, movie, cuisine, wine, couture, and so on. Next February, when tobacco is banned in all indoor public places, it will be time for 'farewell to the smoke-filled cafe.'
"After ending 'the era of', you can sometimes revive it. In recent years, this has applied to most of the above as pendulums have swung and fashions changed. Even bérets enjoyed a return a few years back. The Gauloise and the nosey concierge have not returned and it's pretty unlikely that we will see smoky cafes again. Bad driving seems to be making a come-back, though.
"Sometimes it is sad to see a tradition disappear at a ministerial stroke. I wrote about a new one in the newspaper today -- the end of the car license plates that advertise where the owner lives...
"There are sound arguments for centralising vehicle registration. It conforms to the European Union's push for a lifetime Vehicle Identification Number and also to President Sarkozy's campaign to shrink the bureaucracy and the public payroll. It will also mean less time waiting in queues at the prefecture to change la carte grise, the registration paper, when you move département.
"But it takes away one of the little pleasures of French life. After a few years in France, you automatically scan the final two digits of cars around you, noting outsiders and sometimes guessing what distant province they might hail from. This probably doesn't make much sense to US, Australian or Canadian readers. They wouldn't replace distinctive state plates, with their slogans and boasts about sunshine, gardens and lone stars, with anonymous federal ones (I have always found Quebec's 'Je me souviens' to be one of the most obscure).
"Le Parisien newspaper summed up the general French reaction nicely. 'For many people, these number plates are one of those little things which are so anchored in our daily existence that we cannot imagine living without them.'"

Amazing human creation!

Click To Play

Tribute to Marcel Marceau

Thoughts on September 11th

Just a few thoughts that come to mind as I reflect on the events since September 11, six years ago:

I'm realizing that many of my younger friends have lived almost their entire adult lives with the reality of the world after 9-ll -- in other words, ever since theywere old enough to be aware of worldly goings-on. They have heard that "the world changed" on that day, but might not remember what it was really like before it changed.

That morning I was driving to work, for the first time listening to French music instead of NPR on my 20-minute drive. When I got to work, I noticed my answering machine blinking. I played to the recording, to hear my husband's voice shaking as he told me there had been an attack on the World Trade Center. I called him back immediately, and as we were talking the second tower was hit.

We are on the west coast. My first thoughts? Now we won't be able to travel freely around the world. This is the death of freedom as we know it. Honestly, those were my immediate thoughts, at a time before the second plane hit, before the buildings fell, before anyone knew there were four planes of terrorists that day -- and before anyone even began to connect the dots.

Suddenly images of war and soldiers and weaponry and fear reappeared in the American consciousness. Those who are in your late teens or early 20s have never known anything different. Those in my generation have lived through fear overshadowing us during the Cold War, images of death and losing friends to war during Vietnam, and then, miraculously, through more than a decade of relative calm and peace.

But then everything changed. Travel changed. For awhile, flying was cheap uncrowded in the months following 9-11. Even though they took away our scissors and tweezers. I was not afraid to fly after that day. I was afraid of the limits our government would put on our travels and flights. I had recently discovered the thrill of flying to Europe, traveling to other countries where I could speak French with real French people. I was never afraid of other countries, cultures, or people who were different from me. In fact it felt deliriously liberating to be able to travel and explore other countries. Pure joy.

So it made me mad to have that taken away. I don't know if we will ever have that sense of freedom again.

After that day I wasn't afraid to fly, or afraid of being the victim of terrorists. What I am afraid of, and angry about, are the restrictions on the freedoms that so many Americans have died for in numerous wars. The innocent people who have been delayed or jailed, or worse, around the world in the name of "freedom." The loss of habeas corpus, and the threat to our constitution. That doesn't feel like freedom to me.

Quiz for Boomers

If dumb-but-fun quizzes and blogs existed in the 1950s and 60s, some of us wouldn't be born! Our parents, like us, would be busy on the computer, wasting time on MySpace and Found Magazine. There may have been no Baby Boom. Wow. The implications are mind-boggling.

Culture:

1. Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck?
2. Tom or Jerry?
3. Rocky or Bullwinkle?
4. Popeye or Olive?
5. Father Knows Best or Leave it to Beaver?
6. Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew?
7. Superman or Green Hornet?
8. Peanuts or Blondie?
9. Candyland or Chutes and Ladders?
10. Tinker Toys or Lincon Logs?
11. Tiny Tears or Betsy Wetsy?
12. Chatty Cathy - blond or brunette?
13. Mini or Maxi? (skirts, not pads)
14. Ford or Chevy?
15. Beatles or Stones?
16. Munsters or Addams Family?
17. Alley Oop or Flying Purple People Eater?

Names:

1. Pam or Linda?
2. Tammi, Terri, or Toni?
3. Kathy or Cathy?
4. Steve or David?
5. Mike or Jeff?
6. Kip or Kim?

Food:

1. Meatloaf or Spaghetti?
2. Snickerdoodles or Peanut Butter Cookies?
3. Coke or RC?
4. Fanta or Nehi? Orange or strawberry?

Fears:

1. Atom Bombs or Dirty Commies?
2. Bogeyman or Bears?
3. In the closet or Under the bed?
4. Spanking or Grounding?

School, Playground, Neighborhood:

1. Hopscotch or Jacks?
2. Kickball or Tether ball?
3. Boys' germs or Girls' germs?
4. Cowboys or Indians?
5. Sally, Dick, or Jane?
6. Puff or Spot?
7. Red Rover or Gunny Sacks?
8. Writing or 'Rithmatic?
9. Sidewalks or mud puddles?
10. Bikes or roller skates?

Vices:

1. Pixie Stix or Candy Cigarettes?
2. Salem or Lucky Strike?

Unfortuneate laughing

This shouldn't have been funny, but it was.

Clover in the Lawn wrote this on Found today.

...is it okay to laugh at another's misfortune? I think not. But I have been doing that lately. What is happening to me?

Yesterday I laughed at a cute little 2-year-old girl for accidentally almost strangling a little dog. The dog said "hcgk hcgk" when she let go of him. The kid was really cute, and she understood that I was laughing at her even though she can't talk yet. After that she gave me a dirty look and ran away from me when I tried to be friendly to her. The dog didn't care, though, that I was laughing at him because he almost died.

It's just not right to laugh at another's misfortune.

I'm not catholic... and I'm going to stop feeling guilty now.

I have to go scrub the bathtub now. I will meditate on the find. It is Sunday, after all.

History! Part 2

Coincidences

Wow, life is so strange... I was in this workshop today and the presenter grew up in the same town as me and went to the same school that my best friend moved to after 5th grade.

Everything changes...

Poodwaddle.com

S'aright? S'aright!

From way back in my childhood past comes a popular culture phrase: "S'aright? S'aright!" What was funny about this? I don't know, but everyone in elementary school seemed to be saying it. I was wondering, where did this come from? So I looked it up online and found that it was from a comedian named Senor Wences, and he died at the age of 103 in 1999. Wow. He appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show more than any other guest. What more can I say?

Harry's Last Stand

A friend says that every time he hears "Harry Potter" he gets a mental image of a big hairy guy sitting bent over a potter's wheel, making pottery. What kind of a pot does a hairy potter throw .... ? But that's a random sidetrack.

July 20, 2007

We went out to greet Harry at midnight for the last time. Big bookstore bashes were booming at the two large book seller chains in our town.

First stop, Barnes and Noble. Lines of people were stretched around the block away from the doorway in both directions. Apparently no one was getting into the store until midnight. That didn't look fun. We were looking for a party.

Next stop, Borders. We found a parking place and went inside.

First observation: Harry Potter's fans have grown up. I estimate the median age of the crowd to be 18 or 19 -- about the same age as Harry (who I think should be 18 now, but according to my daughter, is actually 17 in the last book; it must be because one of the books was a year behind schedule). Many wore assorted versions of witch and wizard costumes: capes, cloaks, wands and tall, pointed hats. They gathered in groups on the floor between the aisles, playing cards, looking at books, and socializing. One girl sat on the floor alone, working a Harry Potter word search puzzle.

"If I may please have your attention ...." the courteous voice over the PA system was not easy to make out from our location near the front door, but it continued, "Very soon we will be bringing out the books." The voice politely requested customers to clear the wide aisle down the center of the store, warning that, "the books are heavy, and once the pallets start rolling, they are very difficult to stop," and the voice did not want to be responsible for hurting anyone.

The three of us moved out of the aisle, but apparently the announcements weren't effective for some; the polite tone gradually broke down to grim threats of imminent smashings of small children that were certain to occur once the pallets laden with 700+ page Harry Potter books began to roll down the center aisle, squashing flat everything in their path! Those poor children would soon resemble the dead possum we passed on the highway today, and not even Harry's magic wand would be able to bring them back to life!

Across the soon-to-be-deadly aisle I caught the eye of a tall blond wizard I recognized as one of my students. He grinned and waved, then settled back to a conversation with the girl next to him seated on the floor.

While I was very interested in being witness to the inevitable violence that was certain once those books began their trek down the center aisle, I grew tired of the wait. With the knowledge that there would not be a book there for us (we had not reserved one in advance), we decided to take our opportunity for escape.

Next stop: Albertson's. Albertson's?? I remembered that the grocery store had Harry Potter books for sale in the past, and Heather and I talked Daniel into stopping there on the way home, much to his chagrin. By now it was just a few minutes before midnight.

There were few cars in the parking lot. Daniel waited in the car, expecting to soothe our dashed hopes with an I-told-you-so. Upon entering the store, Heather and I saw approximately 20 customers queued up -- we knew why! We smiled at each other, knowing who would be saying I-told-you-so this time! However, an employee at the head of the line was making a disappointing announcement: We have only six books, she said.

Only six? Yes, she verified. They sent us one case. When we opened it, there were only six books inside. They are big books.

Now things were beginning to get interesting. People at the front counted off. A tall middle-aged man who was approximately 7^th in line insisted that he had been one of the first six to arrive and he deserved a book. He began to challenge the other customers and assert his right to buy the sixth copy.

The small, round, cherub-faced employee was now forced into the role of police officer/mediator. I wondered if her Albertson's employee training had prepared her for this role. Soon another employee, a taller and equally fresh-faced young man, came forth to the fray. He was obviously deeply troubled -- and provoked to resistance -- by the older man's angry demeanor. The two men dug in their heels and positioned metaphorical antlers in an age-old contest of strength and will.

Heather and I, having mastered the Buddhist principle of non-attachment, stood by in observance, with bemused smiles on our faces. I watched with some wonder as members of the crowd displayed varying reactions to the conflict, even those who were not involved in the dispute, and gave up their position willingly. One couple stomped out, the man saying, "Come on, this is Harry Potter! It's supposed to be fun!!"

After they had all determined their rightful places in line, at issue was the common economic problem of how to distribute limited resources. Should family members be allowed to buy a book for each person, or should they take only one to share until tomorrow, when the books would certainly be readily available around town? I casually threw in my 2 cent opinion for the latter solution, even though we weren’t in the running for a book. But the antagonist had now made himself so unpopular that it was impossible for anyone to rule in his favor – even if it would be the most fair and just outcome.

As we left the store, I saw the disgruntled customer scanning something at the checkout counter, and I thought I heard someone ask him if he was satisfied now. His response was not conciliatory: “I won’t be back anyway. Not to this store.” By his tone, it sounded like perhaps he had secured the book. We left not knowing whether or not he got the sixth copy.

Now Heather was in the mood to continue the hunt. It’s not that she cared so much about getting the book right then; if that were true, she would have reserved one during one of her frequent bookstore visits. She just didn’t want the fun to stop.

Daniel agreed to try one more Albertson’s store not far away. But this too was a dry well. They told us they had received 20 books and 15 had been on reserve. We decided to buy some cookies anyway. The young man in line in front of us had the book and was reading the prologue. He said, “I’m going to read the ending,” then seeing my horrified expression, he qualified it by explaining his plan to play a joke on his roommate. He would walk into the apartment with the book open to the last few pages, feign shock at the ending, and toss the book to the ground in disgust, saying, “So that’s how it ends!”

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July 21, 2007

This morning, Heather got up and asked us to take her out to get the book. On a whim, I phoned the store where Heather was scheduled to work at 1:30, to ask if they had any copies. Irony of ironies, they told me yes, so I hopped in the car and drove down there, only to find them sold out.

Later this afternoon we bought one at Costco. They had hundreds stacked on pallets 12 feet square and 4 feet deep. I also brought home two of the cardboard cases the books had been shipped out in; they are a good size for storage, and they're cool because they have the book title and release date stamped on the outside. On the box it says "10 books." It seems as if the people at Albertson's had not been completely honest about the scarcity of this resource. Perhaps they were hoarding some for themselves. Hmmm...

And that’s how the story of our family's search for Harry Potter ends, for the last time.

Fun with Jury Duty

Well, this morning in the jury assembly room, they assigned us to groups named after animals. This is really true. Today was big cat day. (The lady told us that yesterday was shark day.) I thought, good, because I like cats! She drew our names at random. I was in the Tiger group. I would have preferred Cheetah or Bobcat, but Tiger was okay.

Then we watched a video about jury duty in the United States. Then I got a snack and settled down with my computer to wait to be called. A few minutes ago the announcement:

Tigers have been excused. She said not to take it personally. They kept the Cheetahs and the Bobcats. So now I'm going home.

This is really true. You see, school isn't the only place where people are placed in arbitrary groups... well, it's worth a smile in this ironic world we call LIFE.

I'm going home now.

Sadness

Flicks 'n ' Pics closed. Yesterday was the last day they were open. In the morning before they opened I stopped and photographed the familiar neon sign, the notices scotch-taped to the door. I was shooting into the sun. Maybe that's why my eyes watered. I kneeled to get a different angle. I thought about an altar, a prayer.

I wrote a message on a card from a museum in France. In the evening on the last day I went in and there was nothing apparently different. The neighbors were perusing the shelves. The shelves had space where the movies were checked out, expecting to be returned. The owner was there.

So many memories. I walked through the foreign film section. I looked at the French films. I walked through the kiddie room. I looked at the shelves from which, with my little daughter, I had rented so many VHS movies, so many Disney movies, so many unusual children's movies, like the Russian folk tale, "The Magic Pony." So many times, stopping by on the way home to rent a movie for a rainy winter Saturday night. So many movies rented for my French classes and the mulitcultural class I taught.

I was too sad to stay.