27 January 2005

For Missy

Margaret Atwood's new invention:

Atwood is developing a remote book-signing machine that will allow readers to get their novels autographed without the author having to traipse to bookshops across the globe. The idea occurred to her while undertaking gruelling tours with Oryx and Crake last spring.

"Last time I did a tour in Britain it was pretty horrendous," she said. "This will mean a lot less angst, inconvenience, starvation, sitting in airports and eating out of minibars."


I thought of you immediately. :)


P.S. Everyone:
If you look under the Blogger button at the right, you can see what I've started. We can either just put a bunch of favorite links under one heading (example #1) or each have a few fav links under our own names (example #2). I'd love to spruce this up a bit. Which one do you guys think is better?

23 January 2005

Funny Oxford pics

Anyone recognize this sexy lady?



Or remember this odd duck? (I may have been a little overzealous with Photoshop on this one...)


This one's one of my favorites--when they say a picture speaks a thousand words, this one only speaks two:

22 January 2005

New leaf

A snowy Saturday morning in the foothills... Today, I hope to muddle through FAFSA, see if any of my old papers can transform themselves into serviceable writing samples (for 3 schools), and begin a "personal statement" (ha!).

I've also found a little space to deposit all the random thoughts and book-talk that accumulate in my head. Whether this is to be attributed to too much nervous energy (i.e., coffee) or the lack of a social life, at least I will no longer be cluttering these sun-lit rooms built for camaraderie and reminiscence. (Consider it my little room off the ground floor. :)

Again, I must say how amazing it is that we're here and have our own corner in cyberspace to chat and hash things out. I am wealthy beyond words to have you all in my life.

P.S. An idea I've had since Day 1 is to have sidebars for each of us and our favorite websites, bands, etc. If you're interested in this, email me with which site(s) you'd like to have under your name and I'll get it set up. (I've been having fun tinkering with mine.)

13 January 2005

Free books

(Sorry Ryan, I just couldn't keep this one to myself!)

The University of California Press have made 400 volumes available online!

This is perfect for any of you still in school or doing any research (or just plain nerdy like me).

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Update: 19.1.05

Oh, this is even better!! Uncollected writings by J.D. Salinger online! In addition to many of his older tales, there's also the infamous Seymour-as-7-yr-old-at-summer-camp story, "Hapworth 16, 1924." (If I'm not mistaken, this is the last thing he ever published. I've been on the lookout for it for years.)

07 January 2005

Let's slow down on the literary references . . .

Alright, folks. I know I'm not a founding member of this blog thing.

And I may be a little behind on giving an "update" . . .

But the intense intellectual banter is scaring me off and y'all (I live in North Carolina now) need to tone it down. We either need to label these entries by IQ category or at the very least put warnings on them, so I know to steer clear.

I just finished my first semester of law school at UNC, so this is no idle threat. Second semester classes start in a few days, and I'm putting off doing some reading. Lindsay (my wonderful wife) brings home the bacon (which contributes to her wonderfulness) as an ER nurse, allowing me to blog on this Friday afternoon.

Since finishing things up at Messiah I worked on a campaign for governor in PA (my guy lost), then worked at a bank trying to force people to refinance their homes and explaining to others why they couldn't use our bank b/c they owed other banks lots of money. After another 6 month stint in charge of facilities at a Charlotte firm, I'm here in the greater Chapel Hill area (i.e. greater than where you live). Lindsay and I own three cars which combined are worth less than $5,000 (no joke) - I bought the 3rd as my "vehicle on the side"; it's a Volvo and I think of it as sort of a Sunday vehicle . . . like in the old days.

That's all the news I really have. Thanks to those of you who have contributed. It's a little scary to post thoughts in the early stages of such a venture. The coolest kids always sit in the back of the bus and write last, waiting to make sure the blog lasts before putting their good name on a site that may fail. The dorky kids (like myself) just make comments about other people's blogs and don't actually write anything useful. It's you pioneers who make such things work.

So keep on blogging . . . just dumb things down a bit for the good of all (er, me).

p.s. I'm not sure why this site is four hours off - it's probably due to all of you who live outside EST. If we could fix that, that would be great. I've made a personal clock adjustment here.

06 January 2005

Humphrey Carpenter, 1946-2005

"A perceptive biographer and engaging broadcaster with a deep love of music and the imaginative world of the child".

Very sad news. He will be sorely missed.

The Independent
Humphrey Carpenter was the master of the group biography. His best books were works of cultural history that yoked together the lives of a dozen or so literary figures, and examined how their lives intertwined and how their work shared certain themes and obsessions.

The Guardian
Although born into the British establishment, there was nothing pompous or stereotyped about Humphrey, who has died aged 58, and this made him such a telling and refreshing biographer. His father, the Rev Harry Carpenter, was Warden of Keble College, and Humphrey recalled as a small boy roaming the gothic vastness of the lodgings and college on his tricycle, terrorising the undergraduates and bursar in what he described as "a wonderful Gormenghast existence".

I really don't know how I would've lived through my senior thesis without him. (And I watched him on the extended edition of The Return of the King only this weekend.)

Other obits:
Daily Telegraph
BBC

04 January 2005

Gathering moss...

Well. I'm glad that I posted early, since I have very little remotely comparative to say after all the rest of you have shared your stories of excitement and service and passion. And, as you've already been inundated with "what Missy's been up to since Oxford," I don't even have that to fall back on! And yet I feel compelled to post, just because I've so enjoyed reading your entries, and I'd like to continue the trend. I appreciated Vic's comment about picking up where we left off--with this group, "catching up" is merely one more venue for deeper reflections on, well, things. I don't know how I managed to find you all in that one house on Canterbury Road, but I wish finding folks like you was so easy in the rest of the world!

Enough sappiness from me. As I read about all of your adventures, I feel very boring and humdrum to be sitting here in a suit, listening to C-SPAN. If that sounds exciting, it's not. :) Yes, I really have had a real, grown-up job for three years now--and part of me is very jealous of both the adventures you've had and the passion that you are pursuing. Wasn't this just something to do for a year or so until I figured out the next step? :) I must confess, seeing where all of you are makes me feel a bit lost in my own world! Now I'm expecting all you "Activist-Types" (to use Carrie's description) to be knocking down my cubicle door sometime in the coming months... I know that once all the political niceties were exchanged we could have a really great chat over cafeteria food. :)

Anyway, I just wanted to say hello. I like sneaking onto this site and remembering that people like you (who can in fact use the phrase "circular ecumenicalism" with the same authority as I can use to say "bunch of crap") really do exist. Meanwhile, I spent Christmas break rereading the entire series of "Little House on the Prairie" books with great relish and laughing at "Napoleon Dynamite" until my sides hurt. We in the Otter office have decided that it constitutes "research for improving constituent relations" and feel no qualms at playing excerpts of it at regular intervals throughout the day (yes, Ryan, that IS what Idaho is like...sort of). I hope to be smart again someday.

Missy

Hymns in the whorehouse

A post at The Reading Experience introduced me to The New Pantagruel:

"The New Pantagruel is a quarterly electronic journal run by a cadre of intemperate but friendly Catholics and Protestants who have seen other electronic journals run by Christians, and thought that while they might not be able to do better, they could certainly do no worse. The New Pantagruel does not have a doctrinal statement such as is typical for publications of this sort because its creators haven’t managed to agree on one."

Refreshing honesty in an era of circular ecumenicalism, no?

The article, "Further Scandal: Christian College Professor Doesn’t Teach from a Christian Worldview" tackles the question:

"If there is a Christian worldview, could we say that such a concept unites such historically, culturally diverse writers as the Beowulf poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Edmund Spenser, Martin Luther, Lady Mary Sidney, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Olaudah Equiano, Phyllis Wheatley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, W.H. Auden, Graham Greene, and Flannery O’Connor? Would Coleridge’s opium addiction, Auden’s homosexuality, Bunyan’s imprisonment, Dostoyevsky’s compulsive gambling, Kierkegaard’s Danish language, and Graham Greene’s frequent adulteries color their worldviews?"

Good stuff. Basic, but vitally necessary.