ASH WEDNESDAY

Canto VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

T. S. Eliot

Grammar pet peeve of the day:

Using the contraction "there's" to refer to a plural noun; i.e. "There's storms on the way for later in the week." It should be "There are storms on the way for later in the week." Storms is a plural. You would never say, "There is storms," would you? I hope not. Use of the contracted form is no different! This particular error is no less annoying because I find myself using it now and then. I should know better, and I usually correct myself (sometimes very vehemently), much to the amusement of my co-workers.

But what's really starting to bother me is that I'm now seeing this incorrect usage crop up in legitimate news articles, by journalists! Journalists should know better, especially when it comes to the written word! What are they teaching in these schools? What is wrong with you people?!?

Here we go again!

I've made a pact with a couple of other NaNoWriMo friends to do a NoFiMo / NoEdMo in February. In my cast, it's a FiMo -- I need to finish the story rather than edit. I still have a good third to go, I'd say, even after reaching 50k (plus about twenty pages that need to be transcribed). Part of that is because...well, let's just say if I were filming instead of writing, I'd be the sort of producer who filmed every possible scene from every possible angle and then picked and chose what actually belonged, rather than someone who did everything in a take. I have an incredible amount of back story that helps me understand my characters, but which will likely be left on the cutting room floor, so to speak, if I ever really edit this one to completion.

My goal is to write 1000 words a day, or about three to four typewritten pages if I use the Corona, which is the plan at the moment. Which gives me an excuse to post yet another picture of it (Click the picture for a slightly larger view)...

More on the old Corona...

The Craigslist ad just said "L.C. Smith&Corona Typewriter in its own case," and listed a phone number. No pictures, no nothing. But the price was right, and I was curious, so I called and asked if I could stop by. When I saw the round keys and found that it all seemed to be in working order in spite of the dusty, musty shape it was in, I had to have it.

It's a Corona Standard, or so it says on the front. It also says "Floating Shift" on the shift keys, but I think that's a feature and not the model number. I tried tracking down the serial number (3C347795) in the Typewriter Database, but found myself pretty confused by the whole Smith Corona section there. My best guess is that it's from early to mid 40s, and more likely the end of that time frame than the beginning. A wartime model, I think.

It has some flaws. For starters, for some reason a number of the keys are completely crooked!

Note the "J" in particular. What's up with that? And they appear to be stuck that way. I'm not sure how to fix them. I thought perhaps it was a common issue, so I did some searching at the Yahoo portable typewriter group site for words like "straighten" and "crooked" and "keytops," but didn't come up with any explanation or assistance. I'd guess maybe a key-chopper had been at it, but its story doesn't bear that out.

The man I bought it from last night lives just down the road from me, and he said he does building material salvage. In the process of doing his work, he often finds odd things left behind. He had an amazing assortment of old toys and other such things that he'd recovered - fascinating. The typewriter was another such find. As I understand it, it was just...sitting.

Good things about it: it has a wonderful touch! Really crisp and smooth. Not a single key sticking, amazingly. And with a new Jay Respler ribbon (I was impatient and put one on before cleaning it much), it actually types beautifully, in spite of a hard platen and its age. I never cease to be amazed by these relatively complex machines and their ability to work perfectly after forty or fifty or sixty years of neglect.

Downsides: it smells very, very musty and mildewy. It's dirty, as the pictures show a bit - it needs to be scrubbed. It may even be a little rusty in parts. It also doesn't have a tab key (I like having one tab setting for my paragraph indents, but I can live without it), and this model doesn't have a regular paper bail - it has these little rollers that slide back and forth to hold the paper on each side of the page:

These would be fine except that I tend to write almost to the edges instead of doing nice margins, and these get in the way of that. Maybe it's good for me. I did snag the paper when I first loaded it, though, as can be seen in my initial photo. I'll learn. It also doesn't have a guide on the left for loading paper, which is not really a big deal, I guess, but I do notice it. Same with the lack of anything for holding the paper up in back as one types. All in all, though, I like it!

Now to try to decide which of the rest of the herd I could live without...

*sigh*

I am weak.

Does this one make me a collector? Probably, at least until I get rid of a few. Oops.

Bestest toy ever!

Sooo...I have a confession to make.

Earlier in the week, I did my taxes (*one* benefit of renting - and living in a state with no state income tax - is that it's quick and easy to do taxes!) and figured out my refund. And I made an executive decision on what to do with the refund, which will be here next Friday. I asked myself what would be the biggest quality of life improvement I could make to this place, and then I went to Lowe's and ordered the biggest durned counter-top convection oven they carried. It's more of a mini real oven than an over-sized toaster oven. It's HUGE.

It came in on Thursday. I lugged it home, dragged it out, and immediately made pizza, mostly because it was one thing at the grocery that came with a disposable tray - I didn't have any pans yet. It baked - yay!

Actually, it wasn't that great, but I think that was the pizza's fault rather than the oven's.

Halvah, of course, preferred the box. Just for sitting on, 'cause that's her thing.

Tam took a more active interest:

Cisco sez, "I just don't get cats..."

I also made a quick batch of brownies, and brought those to work the next day. They were gone by noon, so I guess they were OK...

Today I did my first *real* baking: made some blueberry bran muffins. A regular sized muffin pan fits in the thing, as do small cookie sheets. Actually, it's about the same width as my broken wall oven, though the wall oven is far deeper, I admit. The muffins turned out nicely, I think! They'll be good breakfasts for this week, and I can freeze some, too.

Now I'm itchin' to try some real pizza in it. I'll do it Dad's way and just use a regular cookie sheet instead of a round pan, since I can fit a bigger pizza that way anyhow, and I'm done with buying pans for now.

I really hope it holds up over the long term. Don't know why it wouldn't, but of course I *had* to go look at on-line reviews, and there are a few negative ones. Granted, some of the negative ones are pretty pathetic. One person gave it a seriously negative rating because they opened the box and it was big. No joke. Erm...kay.

In praise of gjetost

I'm convinced that I first tasted gjetost (or geitost, however you care to spell it) when I was really little, either during my parents' urbanite multicultural phase when we lived in Portland, OR and often had things like halvah and Chinese food and curry, or at my grandma's house. In any case, I have no direct memory of having it, but when a few years ago I bought a cube of the stuff on a whim, it was immediately familiar and loved.

It's hard to describe the taste of gjetost. It's sweet and nutty, and almost tastes like salty caramel with a slightly goaty aftertaste. But that sounds truly nasty, and it's not. It's mahvelous, particularly on buttered toast. I could eat that daily, and once in awhile, I do - usually until I can no longer find it in the store. It's apparently not a universally loved thing; at least not enough to justify the often steep cost.

I hadn't thought about it for awhile, but my sister-in-law's family served it (among other lovely cheeses) on Christmas and I *had* to have more (more on that trip when I have pictures figured out).

I spent a good portion of this morning rushing around trying to chase some down. One grocery store didn't carry it, the other was the froufrou local chain that said they usually had it, but their supplier had been out for several weeks and they wouldn't have it for awhile. Ack! I finally found it (at a darned good price) at Fred Meyer. Go figure.

Ah...toast and gjetost. I'm content now.

Pyelem G Vudhaus??

Apparently there are now some pretty fanatical Russian Wodehouse fans.

Natalya Trauberg sounds like an amazing woman:

That there is a Wodehouse fellowship at all, though, is largely thanks to Natalya Trauberg. A self-taught English speaker, the 79-year-old former dissident risked transportation to the gulags under Stalin for translating the theological works of C S Lewis and G K Chesterton in samizdat.

Can you imagine the sort of stories she could tell? Fascinating.

Lowbrow cultcha

Completely by accident, I recently came across mention of this program: matinée performances *live* from the Met, broadcast to your local movie theater. There's something rather beautiful about being able to attend an opera in jeans, and watch whilst consuming Coke and popcorn.

This weekend was the first of the series: Gounod's Roméo et Juliette. It's not an opera I'm that familiar with, but of course the story is very familiar, so I figured...why not?

It was fantastic. I already know and like Roberto Alagna, so that was good, and the gal who played Juliette (Anna Netrebko) was incredible - great voice, great actress, and just adorable, to boot. I'll keep an eye out for her work in the future. The rest of the cast was good, too, especially Capulet (Charles Taylor) and Mercutio (Nathan Gunn).

During the set changes and part of the intermission, they talked with some of the performers, and with the conductor - none other than Placido Domingo. So that was pretty neat. Heh...kind of amazing how NOT fancy the back areas at the Met are, though. The public areas are so opulent that it was a bit of a shock seeing exposed pipes and worn paint and all in the halls and off-stage rooms.

The sound wasn’t as great as I’d kind of hoped, and overall it was more like watching an opera video on the big screen rather than like really being there, but still, I’ll go again. Having been to the Met for real exactly once, I have to say that there's nothing that replaces being in the same room as the singers, hearing their voices without any processing or intermediary, and being in the middle of that audience of people all living the experience with you...but it was still really cool.

Finished the lumberjack throw I've been working on..

I'm not good at takin' photos, particularly in indoor lighting, but here's an attempt at a shot:



Eeevil Halvah-cat (she's in a mood today) and messy writing desk in the background...

I'm relatively pleased with how the throw came out, though I missed some boo-boos along the way, and the border is pretty lopsided in places. It's for my new nephew, Bertie, and I wanted something he could use even after the baby stage. This is nicely masculine, I think! I may try it again with different colors. If I could find some grey, I think a black/white/grey combo could be very nice. However, it appears I'm the only person in the world who likes grey yarn. I haven't been able to find it at Michael's or Jo-Ann's here, at least not last time I checked.