To Plus or not to plus and...

I've noticed that some in the blogging world are adding apps to their site so that people can follow via Bloglovin', Feedly, or Linky Followers. I have decided I'm using the Google+ for followers and I hope to catch up to all those I was already following and adding new followers while I'm add it (although I have to admit Google+ is slow to catch on. Some who are members do not yet have the Googleshare options or Google +1 so it's not easy to see what's going on on their blog but it will all work out in the wash I suppose.) Anyway, I just thought I'd give a heads up to new people I follow and who come by here that I've decided the Google+ may make the best option because it is easy to connect to people and their blog in the easiest way for me- especially because I am not a Facebooker. 

Tomorrow is a pretty big day in history-- I'd bore you with all the fun details but I found a couple that I thought were interesting- Like here's a little literary history: 

On this day in 1040 King Duncan I is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth. The latter succeeds him as King of Scotland. (and yes, that would be Macbeth of Shakespeare fame)

The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California in 1939.

"We're off to see the Wizard... the wonderful wizard of Oz...."

AND in 1969..

Woodstock opens. 

 

Fun facts about Woodstock...

Jimi Hendrix was the last act to perform at the festival

There were ten million yards of blue jeans and striped T-shirt material at Woodstock.

Bob Dylan was one of the original inspirations for the festival, and his backing group, The Band, played to the massive audience, the great man never made it, as one of his children was hospitalised over that weekend. 

Two people died at Woodstock - one man from a heroin overdose and a teenager in a sleeping bag who was killed when a tractor ran over him. The driver was never traced.

So that's about it for me... still working away on my editing, taking pictures (yes the pictures above are mine from a walk in a nearby park- forgot to sign them) trying to get through a weirdly mild summer and a sore shoulder that won't heal. 

How is your summer going?

So,

An update and a little writerly background...

History! I use this History.com for my schedules at work but I also like learning stuff just... for future reference, because I am a geek, because I missed out on a lot earlier in life,  just BECAUSE.
So, for your entertainment: This week in history: 
Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state--and the first located entirely west of the Mississippi River on August 10, 1821.
In 1959 on August 7 a US satellite is launched that would later photograph earth for the first time.

A little modern literary history: On August 6, 1996, “A Game of Thrones,” epic fantasy novel by George R.R. Martin, was released.On the same day 51 years earlier (1945) the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. That's a sad memorial and requires AT LEAST a moment of silence.

Silence

Today is French writer Guy de Maupassant's birthday. He was  one of France's best short-story writers (according to History.com- don't blame me if you don't agree or think in fact that you are one of France's best short-story writers) and was born near Dieppe, France.

wildflower in the mountains.

And for those of you who love a conspiracy and maybe a mystery: Today is also the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death. She was found dead in her home on August 5, 1962- 51 years ago. This is what History.com has to say about the incident: 

In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs. These theories claim that the Kennedys killed her (or had her killed) because they feared she would make public their love affairs and other government secrets she was gathering. On August 4, 1962, Robert Kennedy, then attorney general in his older brother's cabinet, was in fact in Los Angeles. Two decades after the fact, Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, announced for the first time that the attorney general had visited Marilyn on the night of her death and quarreled with her, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.

Four decades after her death, Marilyn Monroe remains a major cultural icon. The unknown details of her final performance only add to her mystique.

Personally the Marilyn Monroe anniversary may have stimulated a little story telling idea for me. She had an interesting life even without the stardom. I might just have to think about this... 

And as a nice touch to begin August and update on my writing project:

drive home after work (entrance ramp I25)

I finally finished 'Death and Politics'! Yup, the long awaited finale has finally come. I stumbled on it actually. I knew how I wanted things to wrap up but I didn't know what I wanted the final words to be and then it just came to me. The day it ended wound up being a little... underwhelming. But I am glad to be done and now I am going back to polish things up. I have put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it and I don't really plan on just sticking it into a drawer so I'm still working away on it but it's a different work- and I like editing and polishing. So there you go! Yay!

I want to be a time traveler

My friend had a baby recently and I can't help but wonder what is in store for this wee one. As I held her, I wondered if these teeny hands would ever brush their hands over the pages of a lush illustration the way I did when I was little. Would they turn the page of There's a Monster at the End of this Book when Grover begs in anguish, "No! Don't turn the page!!!!!" the way my children did. Of course I know that this little one will because her mother is committed to books- she works in the library and doesn't even own a digital device although is well versed in how to use them. But whether they will be available with the same I-can-take-this-for-granted kind of availability? I doubt it.

With the news of Barnes and Noble's recent collision with a metaphorical financial iceberg, books available in neighborhood bookstores are quickly going the way of the Tyrannosaurus Rex- which makes me sad. In a recent article on GeekWire, author Guzman says, "books speak with more than words. They speak with pictures and size and even smell. With sound, too — the whip flip of a page turn. You hold a book open and need a surface to handle a hardcover’s weight. A book has resistance. It makes demands. You have to carry it, put it away, give it a physical space in your physical life. What if that isn’t, as I’ve come to look at it, purely an inconvenience? What if it’s a sign of mutual respect? After I finished the amazing “The City and the City” on my Kindle, I couldn’t remember the author’s last name. It didn’t stare at me every time I went to read the story. At Elliott Bay I saw the book, “China Miéville” printed big and bold on the front, and felt like I was in the presence of something new." While I was reading her article I was thinking to myself how much I love my bookshelf- that I look at the books and see a title I've read and I remember the author, the time I spent reading it... I may not reread the book, but the book itself holds something special for me. (My albums and Cds have a similar feeling for me-love or like- something my itunes folder will never replace no matter how many times I listen to the songs. I have held on to sheet music from college for the same reason.) 

It's not just nostalgia that makes me cling to books. When I was a kid, my folks were quite poor and we couldn't afford to purchase as many books as I could actually read. I read voraciously so the library was my friend. We were the kind of poor that didn't have a television when all my friends had televisions- or we'd have one but it would break down and my uncle would fix it but it would take months for him to fix it so all the entertainment I would have would be my little green box radio and my books. But it was fine as long as there was a library close by.

Now years later and working at a library myself, I know that there are still many people who are too poor to have Nooks, Kindles or iPads and if the library were not available to them, they would not have access to books. If there are fewer books being sold then there will be fewer books available for sale to the library because publishers will lose a retail outlets to sell their wares in which means they will lose profits and go out of business. It's a vicious cycle that scares me. I may keep my job because librarians are vigilant and always ready to reinvent the library to fit what society needs. Nevertheless... libraries will not be what they once were which is another sad thing, I guess.  

Don't get me wrong! I am not fundamentally opposed to ebooks -for instance as an author I think they open opportunities for publishing where a vanity press is mostly taking advantage of authors. And as a tech lover I think they're fun when I have a magazine I want to read that I don't want to mess around with for very long. But as a reader, the truth of the article on GeekWire felt fundamentally true to me and I couldn't shake the feeling that we are losing something culturally if Barnes and Noble becomes an artifact of ancient history.

So, I want to be a time traveler- I don't want to only travel I want to change time. Maybe I'll go into the facility where they are developing the first ereader and sabotage it... anything to keep the book from going extinct. Anything to keep bookstores from disappearing from my neighborhood...

Anyone want to join me? I might need help...     

Random morning pictures and whose got life?

This morning I walked out of the house to find the baby bunny right next to the plants in the backyard.

My experience is that baby bunnies are a less gun-shy than the older bunny so I was able to get pretty close to the wee Guy. 

Well I took a series just in case... the first furthest away and then finally I was just about 3 feet or less away.

But I guess if I had to go through what a bunny did to survive (cats, dogs, foxes, cars, hawks, poisons, etc) I'd be slightly skittish too. 

And for all that, humans do get skittish. They just do it in their own human ways.

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery.  

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Saint-Exupery's birth (born 1900). While I am not a great fan, I was looking for content for our "Today in history..." on the schedule I make each day and the quote struck me as noteworthy. After all, it is not my great love of the well structured sentence that keeps me writing (even when I'm not writing a lot) but the love of adventure and imaginings that keep me pressing onward. A well turned phrase is delightful but set amidst dull story telling, the phrase is a shiny bobble on a bland tree. This is not limited to writing obviously so I needn't go on- the analogy with ship-building, while no longer relevant to today is quite metaphor-full so it's better than mine.

.

Have a great weekend!

--
"We are all standing at the station. The train is always leaving and the soul checks it's watch and wonders if its his time to go." -Cole, character in Key West, episode: Act of God.