Llama farms and software, from GB

In my efforts to make this blog more interactive, I'm going to paste some replies I received (they can be found in those little tiny font links under some of my posts) and post them as new posts, so they're easier to find. Last summer, "GB" responded to my introduction with this slice of his life:

Ah, the beauty of life -- and the interplay of art and science....All I can say is that, on the one hand, I love relaxing in the sunset rays of the llama farm where my daughter plays with (I mean, trains) her llama Caballo. And on the other hand, in the world of work, I continue with my conversational role-playing software -- it received a patent in February, and got some investment funds in May. That will allow us to offer it as a low-cost, web-based authoring tool later this year.

You can learn more about llamas at the link under Places I Enjoy Visiting, which you can find at the left side of this screen. The link to GB's software undertaking (which I, ahem, did some proofreading on several eons ago), is in this list as well.

My Mother's Wide Circle

My mother died last summer, and the late summer and fall have been filled with all sorts of memories and activities, not least of them the monumental task of writing thank-you notes to all who donated to our First UUU Church of Wichita or Harry Hynes hospice. I didn't even try to respond to every card sent our way or I'd still be writing thank-you notes into the fourth millenium. I was struck by how wide the ripples flowed from the love and creativity of my mother's life.

A former colleague of my father's, not even one of his closer ones, a young woman who worked with him in a few recent undertakings, long past his days at Wichita State University, was one of many people touched by Mom, even if distantly and through several degrees of separation. She wrote to my father, "I hope that your creative self can go on, even after what you must be going through. As they say in Les Mis: To love another person is to see the face of God."

Another of my father's former students, much closer to him but much further away in time, wrote: My voice joins the chorus of love and support from every corner of the country...seeds of love you scattered far and wide.

And, finally, from a very dear friend of my father's and a high school friend of mine, who walked a hard road for both herself and her own mother, a card citing an Inuit legend, "Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy," and to which she added: I love you.

My hopes for us all are that our creative selves can go on, fulfilling not only ourselves but others we might not even know we touched, and that through love we each can bask in the face of God.

Occupational Hazards, by Christine Lick

In the universe of occupational hazards, the ones that confront me are, very fortunately, not dangerous ones. Nothing that has me wagering with life or limb, but I will say, mine are the stuff that weird dreams are made of. And peculiar realities.

I earn my living as a proofreader for a design and pre-press house. Not the sort of lofty musing over fusty tomes of literature that I imagined as my dream job when I was younger. Not the fashionably hectic glamour of the glossy magazine world. Instead, I make sure that there are no misspellings on the backs of cereal boxes. I guard against any allergen not announcing itself. I firmly insist that the net weight statement be its proper size, as mandated by the FDA. And I simply will not stand for poor word spacing, skimping on quiet space around bar codes and other crimes of printed packaging. That’s right: I am a tough cookie.

Except when it comes to horrible abuses of language in the name of marketing. If my client has approved (and trademarked!) dodgy adjectives like “Fun-chewy-tastic,” I am a marshmallow. I cave. I look the other way, whistling a cheery tune. I know that my client meant to say “1/3 fewer calories” when they put “1/3 less calories” on their package, so that’s good enough for me. I’ll bet that Fabu-kleen is a real ingredient, on the periodic table in an alternate universe. Can’t call them out for that. And though I personally can see no way in which calling anything “clusters” adds to its appeal, I wouldn’t dream of questioning the client’s judgment when they do.

This kind of mental transcription — reading in one “key,” standards-wise, but playing in another — well, it lashes out at you in odd ways. Where I am forced to relinquish controls on one hand comes out as strange feelings and stringent behavior on the other. Take fonts, for instance. Do you have a favorite font? Or the sense that some fonts are just not right for certain purposes, the way that black velvet is not good for a picnic? Probably not, you with the healthy perspective. But I do — and this bothers me. (I once worked with a graphic designer who had a VERY CLEAR sense of how many exclamation points were too many; I loved that about him.)

It’s a distraction that most folks never deal with. In my world, it’s: I’d like to buy this birthday card for a friend — but there’s an extra word space right on the front. Too sloppy! Mmm — the Cornish hen with chili spice sounds delicious. But I’m afraid it’s chipotle — not chipolte. None for me! I miss parts of plays because my mind goes drifting back to “weird” punctuation in the program. I’ve missed freeway exits, thinking about bad billboard copy, and wondering whom I could contact to make corrections.

I hadn’t realized how bad this had all gotten until the day my sweetie and I were shopping for a present for his 4-year-old nephew. He turned to me, picking up a boxed game and remarked “Look— they have the ‘for ages’ guideline different in the Spanish than in English!” As we quickly moved to the next toy option, it became clear that my obsessing was affecting my loved ones. I’ll admit, I felt somewhat proud that my guy had picked up some admirably picky tendencies, but also I felt guilty for leading him the way of my madness.

So since then, I try — with uneven levels of success — to turn my editing inward. To unclench a bit. To swing and flow. And above all else, to keep the workweek out of the rest of my week. It’s a work in progress, but a good goal to have, I think. If you are here with me, I wish you my best!

What do you like? What do you really like?

The primary difference between humans and our cousins in the animal kingdom is not the orientations of our thumbs or our (alleged) moral capabilities but, I believe, our peculiar tendencies as humans to lie to ourselves about who we are and what we like to do.

I don’t mean lying in general—that runs rampant throughout the animal world: “Me?! I didn’t dig those 12 new holes in your back yard; the cat did it.” “‘Look at me swimming around, I am so male, c’mon over, ladies!’ Wait. Everybody here is a male. ‘Look at me swimming around, I am so female, who wants to fertilize my eggs?’ ”

I mean the lying we do to ourselves, all the time. What’s your favorite TV show? Ken Burn’s history of jazz? Uh-huh. Sure it is. It isn’t “Two and Half Men.” Nah, you only watch “Two and a Half Men” because the tube happened to be on and you happened to be in the room.

Myself, I tell people that I like to write, and I tell them I like to run. But the truth is, I like to watch “House” (and “Two and a Half Men”), and I like to play with my cats. I run to keep the endorphins going, and I write if somebody gives me a deadline.

But when I am doing these things I profess to like—writing, running—I really do have fun. So I suppose technically I’m not lying to myself when I say I like these things. But why must I trick myself into doing them? I’ve never seen a cat look into the space where she might have leaped, and then walk away. No: She just leaps.

Here are ways I avoid writing. Perhaps they will be useful to you.

Writing exercises. These are great because you can pretend you’re writing when really you are avoiding the hard part of writing. But they aren’t immoral, illegal, or fattening—and sometimes they come in handy when you need something to fill out a word count. Sometimes they do sort of teach you something about yourself. Then you can move on and lie to yourself about something else.

My favorite writing exercise is this one: Take the story or play you’re working on and list the characters. Now remove one out of every three characters. Will the piece work now? If it will, it might be better.

Here is another that a teacher I once had a crush on had us do. I really liked my results but he gave me a bad grade on my exercise. Goodbye, crush. Take two characters. One of them wants the other to do something. Each one cannot say more than one word in each exchange of dialogue.

You can find other ideas and more information on writing and playwriting here, here, or here.

My favorite way to avoid running but get in the miles is this: I’m just going to walk today. I won’t even go far. I’ll just walk around the block. But just for fun, I’ll put on my running clothes. I’ll just jog this first bit to the corner to get my heart going. I’ll just go to that tree. I’ll just go to that bridge. If I go to that car I’ll have run a half mile and then coming back would be a mile. … and so on. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does.

I also like to look up running stuff on the web and pretend I’m researching. Then I feel like I’m an imposter if I don’t actually use them. You can find nice places to run in Wichita. If you live in the Twin Cities, lucky you! You could run here, or here. In L.A. you are even luckier, and you are unlucky. You are lucky because you can run in one hundred trillion beautiful places. You are unlucky because there is rarely a way to get to them on foot that isn’t horridly smelly, noisy, and dangerous from traffic, and it’s no fair driving to a place to run.

COMING SOON: Revised Blog! Hello: Introducing PrairieGanesh

This blog has languished for years while Life has knocked me around and sucked time away from me, as it is apt to do. I will return to it soon and hope to find new friends and fellow word-lovers here.
Anne, April 2011

My introduction from way back in the day:
I am happy to see you here. I've named this space after Ganesh, but fret not, that is the first and last you will hear from me about Hinduism, unless I end up talking about it for no particular reason. Among other things, Ganesh is known as the patron of arts and sciences, and I have three beliefs about art and science. First, every living creature engages in both art and science in some way. Second, art and science involve, and in fact are, creation. Third, art and science are the same thing.

I want to find out how you are creating, how you are living the life that Ganesh rules. Did you capture light wriggles as the earth moved away from the sun, and morph them into an especially fine photograph? Did you learn to play chopsticks on your daughter's piano? Did you pluck your first tomato of the summer? Was opening night far more successful than you feared? Was the dinner party a success, or did the wilted greens wither before folks made it to the table? Did it matter?

How do you create? How did you view, experience, and change the world today? Please tell me in your own words, through a picture, or with a link to a website that you love. And we'll continue to create together.