Category Archives: General

General

Minneapolis and St. Paul and Seattle, the Northern Sunrise for Literacy

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24 81%  26%  0mph  N  bar30.22 rises  windchill23  Yuletide

          Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

Allison found this good news about reading, at least here in the Twin Cities.  The twilight’s pall hangs over the rest of the land, but not in these places according to Jack Miller.

Residents of Minneapolis and Seattle are the most bookish and well-read, according to results from a new survey released today of the most literate American cities. 

The survey focused on 69 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or above. Jack Miller of Central Connecticut State University chose six key indicators to rank literacy. These included newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:

1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.

Minneapolis, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Denver and Washington, D.C., have made the top 10 every year since 2003, when the survey first launched.

General

Techno-Lust Satiated: For Now

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26 82% 26% 3mph WNW  bar 29.97 steady  windchill25  Yuletide                       Waning Gibbous Cold Moon

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
  – Friedrich Nietzsche

2007 saw the Ellis-Olson household become late adopters in two of the more dynamic techno-revolutions abroad in the land.  Last month we got a, wait for it, second cell phone!  That means we now have, like many, three phones: A daddy phone, a mommy phone and a just because we trust Qwest so much phone.  Then, this morning I went over to Ultimate Electronics and after some back and forth over price bought a plasma TV, a receiver, five speakers and an HD-DVD player.  Due to some weirdness about Money Market checks it will be a week or so before it arrives in our house, but then it will be 24/7 movie watching for this electro-cowboy.  Of course, that conflicts with all those hours I spend writing and working out and giving tours and eating and such, so I’ll have to pick something to give up.  Sleep, maybe?

Next post will comment on an interesting article, Twilight of the Books, a New Yorker piece on the decline of reading and the rise of what they author calls, the second orality.  Some disturbing implications.

General

A Quiet Christmas Eve

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16  88%  23%  0mph E  bar 29.99 falls  windchill16   Winter

                           The Full Cold Moon

Lydia brought some gifts over from the Perlicks, a bottle of wine and two first day covers and whole sheets of stamps, Kate’s with a dreidel and mine with Dell Superheroes.  Got us pegged.

Finally, I’ve found a combination of Core Performance workouts that combine strength training, flexibility and balance with demanding cardiovascular.  Feels good to have a solid base and now a new workout.

Kate and I ate a nutrisystem dinner, read for a couple of hours, then she went off to bed. 

We’re due for more snow on Thursday and Friday.  The ole snowblower’s getting a workout and we haven’t even the new year.  This snow fall was light and fluffy, powder.  A pure joy to blow and shovel. 

General

Winter Well and Truly Begun

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8 78%  25%  0mph SW bar 29.86 steep rise winchill 8  Winter

                        Full Cold Moon

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.  Christmas will come to a snowy world here in Andover, a white landscape for the celebration; the moon on the crest of the new fallen snow does give a lustre of mid-day to objects below.

We spent a quiet evening at home, reading and watching the Vikings, frustrated again.  Perhaps they’ll pick their game up next week.  We’re into the the second week of the nutrisystem and I’ve gotta say it seems like a good plan.  The only negatives so far are that some of the food isn’t great–not bad, but not great–and I still get hungry late in the night.  Like right now.  The upside is that Kate has lost 4 pounds and I’ve lost enough to not feel squished into my jeans anymore.  I’m going to weigh myself at the end of the 1st month and the end of the 2nd.  I do feel lighter, better.

After Christmas we come to our version of the Mayan’s five useless days at the end of the year.  These have always been days when I’ve chosen to focus research on a topic of special interest.  This year it will be immortality.  There is this novel that keeps trying to get born and it has something to do with immortality although what I don’t know.

This is a special time for me, a time to think, to consider the year past and the year to come.  I love the snowed in , cold outside feeling.  It’s just right for this kind of inner work.

Art and Culture, General

Art and Snow at the Beginning of Winter

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                            jjwsolstice250-0.jpg 

A Winter Solstice shot by Jim Johnson from the plains near Hecla, South Dakota

18 73% 28% 0mph windroseWNW  bar 29.87 steady windchill17   Winter Solstice

                          Winter began at 12:08 AM this morning

A bit of refinement on the arts and literature ideas from yesterday. The overarching idea is this:  some works of art included literature, usually poetry but not always.  In those instances it is clear that for the artist the written material had critical importance to the piece, otherwise, why include it?  In other instances, the image or sculpture gives form in print, painting or three-dimensions to a specific moment, either in story or in history.  Again, for the artist the textual base for the piece has to inform the work, so knowing the work, especially as it was known in the artist’s time and to the artist seems as important as understanding the piece itself.  Also, painting and sculpture and prints were never the only art form of their day; insteady they existed in an artistic milieux that not included fellow workers in the plastic arts but also poets, novelists, musicians, architects.  We often see reference to architecture in art history books, but very little reference to literature.  This last point becomes even more important as we move into the impressionist era and beyond when artists often wrote proclamations, began to intentionally blend their work with poetry and some moved into performance.

These are ways in which literature is important to the field of art history and therefore our job as docents.  The use of other books, about artists and movements and particular works, is another intersection between art and literature.

A light snow.  The snowblower moved out of the garage with its usual growl and eagerness to eat snow, then throw it.  Temperatures have begun to trend down again after a brief warmup.  I’ve done some additional moving, but I think today, certainly tomorrow will see the end of the bookcase/exercise equipment reshuffle.  That means I’m ready to move onto learning about hydrponic gardening and planning the vegetable gardens for next year.  Looking forward to it.

General

The Fog of Everyday Life

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35  54%  34%  7mph  windroseENE bar rises dewpoint20 First Quarter of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)

Whenever I read something about war, especially from a general staff perspective, this observation comes up:  “A battle plan never survives contact with the enemy.”  This represents several attitudes at once.  Humility, in that no plan can entertain every contingency created by others with free will opposed to it.  CYA, in that it provides cover for even the bad plan, for it too will not survive contact with the enemy.   Hopefulness, in that it apparently assumes that despite this problem, somehow, things will come out ok. 

A paraphrase might be, no plan survives contact with reality.  That is to say, no intellectual effort, a non-dimensional rendering of a complex, 4-D world, can guide us unerringly in the nitty gritty of daily life.

                                     Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.
                                                       – Lily Tomlin

All this explains why I’m not done with my tour.  The cursed enemy of groceries and filing and e-mails were ugly facts, real obstacles that rose up and overwhelmed my plan.  In days gone by I would become anxious about this, troubled.  Now, I’m merely frantic.  I have all the stuff out, I’ve done most of the objects before, and I’m bound to know more than the high school students.  This all provides me with the long ago experience of college when a report or test was imminent and other ugly facts like beer and women and politics had crossed my path and torn up my plans.

At some point in all this mental milling around, I come back to this, “This is why you’ve not done more with your life.  You bum.”  This occurs especially when I read about someone like Jacque Barzun who, at age 100, just published his 38th book.   If I publish one a year from now till my 100th birthday, I could just catch him.  Well, I guess there is still time. 

Next comes:  Oh, geez.  Come on now.  You love your life and realize how lucky you are.  How grateful you are for what you have and for what you’ve been able to do with your life.  Then, I nod, get up and go work out.  Out, out, damned fact.

General

Night’s Clarity

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 28  76%  37%  0mph windroseWSW bar falls  dewpoint22  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

 Living should be perpetual and universal benediction. – Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei…

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
  – Thomas H. Huxley

Haven’t added any quotes as I’ve gotten used to WordPress.  I’m getting there.

As I do this final post of the day, the time ahead has grown clearer.  Tomorrow Kate and I have a business meeting.  I’ll finish her Hawai’i travel arrangements.  After, or around, those two, I will complete my filing–some of it left over from the finish of the docent program in June.  If I have time tomorrow, I’ll sort out the objects for my Magic of Myth tour.  Saturday I’ll have two things to do:  finish up the tour and dig that fire pit.  Oh, and put out the marker stakes so the snowplows don’t dig up our lawn and bust sprinkler heads.  This is a suburban gig.  The city gives out stakes with fluorscent orange paint.  They’re about three feet high and presumably stick up above the snow.  Not always true, but by the time its not, the plows have cut a groove and hopefully it’s all on the road.

Night.  This is no longer the gentle dark of summer; this is the darkness that is metaphor for lonlieness and meditative silence. 

General

Out of Whack

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33  59%  35%  0mph windrose WSW bar steady  dewpoint 20  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon   Holiseason

Extra long nap.  Up.  Work out.  Glad to have the new routine.  It seems to make sense.  I do the regular phase 4 movement prep, pre-hab and strength routines and add the advanced endurance aerobics.  Feels about right.

Feeling fragmented, unfocused.  Priorities seem out of whack.  Not long term, just in the current moment.  Don’t like the feeling.  As if the center (which, if I understand Buddhism correctly, does not exist) will not hold, different motivators come to the surface, push me in this direction or that.  Less conscious choice. 

The fire pit, if it’s to be finished this year, needs to get dug before the ground freezes.  A tour on Sunday needs constructing.  There is overdue filing that demands attention.  I’ve spent the last couple of days working on the Hawai’i trip, too.  Just a lot of stuff to do, and no work on the writing at all.  All one me.  Still…

General

A this and that morning

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37  51% 34%  1mph  windroseWNW  bar falls  dewpoint 20 Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

A blah, somewhat disorganized morning.  Tried to book Kate’s travel and hotel for Hawai’i.  Had to use a travel agency and they don’t have a website and will not handle stuff over the phone.   “We have to have it in writing.”  That means fax.  Which means finding the long phone cord to connect our Swiss Army Knife copier/faxer/color printer/bottle opener to the phone.  Just occurred to me. Wonder if a computer link can do it?  Have to check.

Also looked up info on bath towels. How to tell a good one.  Answered a few e-mails.  Put object files back in their places, info for tours at the MIA.

Bill Schimdt introduced me to the world of RGB (Red, Green, Blue) hexadecimal codes and  how to use them.  He’s gradually giving me tools so I can futz with my computer.  He’s a good, patient teacher.

Fed the dogs.  Ordered an ankle strap for the Vectra, our home gym, so I can do some more sophisticated work with it.  Ate lunch. 

General

Growing Up in a Small Town

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33  62%  39%  0mph windroseWSW  bar steep fall  dewpoint21  Waxing Crescent of the Snow Moon  Ordinary Time 

 “More common sense can be induced by observation of the diversity of human beings in a small town than can be learned in academia.” – Louis B. Wright

Sherwood Anderson knew the lie in this quote.  Observation of the diversity of human beings in a small town can teach us a great deal, but common sense is not often part of it.  Winesburg, Ohio is a work that sticks in the memory because, like Spoon River Anthology, it knows the individuals in a small town are just that, individuals, no more imbued with common sense, good sense, or evil, for that matter, than folks in any other place.  This quote comes from the following book:  Barefoot in Arcadia, University of South Carolina.  Might explain the naivete.  Or, it might not.

I succeeded in marrying the endurance program of Core Performance with the resistance work.  Felt good and will prove manageable.

Getting that get down to work feeling again.  The last week or so have seen me immersed in productive activity, but not on point when it comes to writing new stuff.  Got waylaid on the marketing/distribution work, so I have to get back to that, but I want to work outside some tomorrow, get started on the firepit.  Nice to have choices and good work to choose.