Love and best wishes to Soren and Velma. He is far too young for this horribly scary activity. TBNH, take care of yourself, too.
BJ and Soap
Before I went outside this morning, I thought we just had an overcast day; then I smelled it. On a fair weather day, we didn't see sunshine in the Central Valley until six or seven this evening. The sun had to sink far enough in the west to come in at a very acute angle. Since we are well within the "endangered" populace--age, you know-- we have changed the filter on the air conditioner and stayed inside. Cheers from the Smoke Bowl.
I remember the Great Depression well, and I can tell you that activities such as movies we're less frequent indulgences, and they cost much less than they do now. A dime would get you in the door and you brought a piece of Fleer's Double Bubble gum (1 cent) with you. (If you were six or seven) You could buy popcorn for a nickel or dime, I can't remember because I never could afford it. You could get a hamburger and a malt for 25 cents. Pork chops were four for a dollar, and our total grocery bill for a week was about $4 for a family of eight. Many people in our town did truck farming, and in the summer you really lived on fresh vegetables. So learn to garden and to mend clothing. I know that everyone is stocking up on rice, but don't forget pinto beans and large quantities of wheat flour.
I'll admit to not reading everyone on this topic, but my favorite quote, read in this morning's EV Tribune , quoted Argus Hamilton:
The super Bowl in Miami Sunday was declared a national security event by the U. S. government. That means everybody was on high terror alert. As soon as the scoreboard started blinking and flashing, Homeland Security moved in and evacuated Boston
what sort of person is it who, offended by something Teresa said in a Making Light post, decides the right thing to do is…email me, and not her, to complain about it?
Obviously, someone who has previously argued with Teresa.
This discussion is much too technical for me, but PLEASE let Patrick prevail in the type sizing. If you see a cartoon of someone in trifocals resting her chin on the bottom of the iMac screen, that is I. I know that my eyesight is faulty, but an option to increase type size would help.
Enjoyed the poem. The War Between the States always brings me such a sense of melancholy. So many boys--more than an entire generation--to decide where the power lies.
This is a "be careful what you wish for" because it's a reporter's dream story. It's the reason one goes into journalism, to cover a really big story first hand. It's the reason reporters consented to be imbedded with troups in Iraq, and what made Ernie Pyle such a great reporter during World War II. Such experiences and stories make up the continental divides of our lives, and certainly for the Times-Picayune staff everything will be ante- and post Katrina. Strangely, the pictures are easy. They're 360 degrees from wherever the photographer is standing, but digesting then interpreting the photos, that's the work. There was absolute beauty in the detail of this story. Thanks for the link.
By today--get up and get dressed and you'll feel better. Much love and best wishes.
Does John Wesley really have a smirk?
Some of them look just right, and some are totally wrong for my mental image. Napoleon had much finer features that those with which he's usually portrayed. Chopin was surprisingly almost pretty. They should have left the glasses on Joyce. Thanks for this link. I postponed finishing the historical society's newsletter for a good hour.
This one came in my mail yesterday:
How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to change a lightbulb?
The Answer is TEN:
1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed.
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed.
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb.
4. One to tell the nations of the world that they are either: "For changing the light bulb or for darkness."
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb .
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a stepladder under the banner "Light Bulb Change Accomplished."
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally "in the dark."
8. One to viciously smear #7.
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light bulb-changing policy all along.
10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.
PNH: Thanks for the "secret." I thought I was one of the few who becomes ill when reading something I wrote and forgot--discounting old love letters and threatening op/ed responses. I'll still wretch, but I'll know I'm not alone.
BD: Most of the professional writers whom I know are of the newspaper ilk, and they tell fascinating stories when they convene --background tales to what they write. They never talk about money unless they are well into their cups. Too depressing.
My initial thought as I read your schedule was, "What are you going to do in your spare time?" Read your email for further information.
Eric: Sorry about the name spelling. B.
Eric Saydoyama:
Well filled bookshelves don't endanger your house. They count as extra insulation! Originally we started with cement blocks stacked with 1 by 12 boards, effective but limited by the law of gravity. The best shelves are solid wood with rabetted joints holding the shelves in, but you can get away with the drilled holes and little brass inserts if you don't try to make the shelves hold too much. I once used the perforated metal strips in which you insert metal cantilevers all screwed firmly to the wall. They were holding up four shelves of books over my bed, but I came in one day to find the strips pulled loose from the wall, twisted, and my bed filled with books. Teresa is a master of bookshelf construction.
From where I sit at my G4, I can reach out and touch a California job case (Bodoni 24) which contains linotype mats I picked up from the ashes of the Brewery Gulch Gazette in Bisbee, Arizona. When I learned printing--at the elbow of a grizzled master printer--we prized our Model 8 Linotype because it was so fast! Nobody mentioned that the Linotype operator spent hours polishing mats, because if some type metal stuck to the mat, it would not snug up to its neighboring mat, and the text would have tiny hairlines between the letters.
You know how you decry electronic books and such because you like the feel of the paper book in your hand? That's the same feeling I get setting type on my Mac. It gets done, but the feeling of solid lead–of course it was an alloy–type in hand is missing. I also miss the substantial feel of putting the galleys of type in a chase, makeup rule in hand, and leading the stories out to fit Pounding a justified page to make sure you'd get an even impression produced a sound of accomplishment and finality. (What I don't miss is having to keep track of stereotype mats for ads.) Production skills that I taught in 27 years of Journalism I and II changed from headline schedules and counting heads to tiling pages on Pagemaker.3. All the steps in between were hailed and farewelled, miracles each one in its time.
Now if I could just figure out how to index a book with Indesign--anybody know a good book or manual on the subject?
Everyone has Googled all of his credentials, right?
Tom: Subject: you. Verb: let Ind. obj: us . Make is not transitive here. My argument was that "make" is an eliptical infinitive, and that "us" is the subject of the infinitive clause, which can have an objective form of the pronoun for a subject according to my ancient grammar text. It's a grammar text which devotes extensive coverage of the subjunctive, so you know how ancient.
Jo: You didn't mention the non-parallel constructions.
On the wall of my room were two signs. One said "Alot is anono" and the other said, "Alright isn't" The battle we're losing is the lie/lay battle, but I'll ne'er give up trying. It's a rare thing to hear it used correctly on television.
I'm glad you grammar gods are here, because last week the head of a high school English department called me asking that I diagram a sentence for them--the entire department was in a tizzy--to decided the function of the last clause/phrase in "Let's make a batch of cookies." Some junior high teacher had included it in a homework assignment. Students did not have to diagram; only identify parts of speech and function of each word. A fun workout, but we bet that the seventh grade teacher got it wrong. I was hoping to find a grammar god with whom to check my analysis, and here you are!
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