Dear Sanna,

I pulled out a quill and bottle of ink to write you a letter to accompany the first volume I have had written and sealed since about the time I met John Green.  Having acquired a book to send to you, I have delayed all around because I do not have the appropriate sending accoutrements.  Ah well, such a package will just have to be filled with Christmas things and arrive in time for the holiday.  This is my deadline.

But, until I do write that second volume, I would like to speak to my "go-getter"-ness, as you called it when we spoke on Skype last week (That was lovely, by the way, I am so very glad I caught you and very sorry that my phone died in the middle of it.)  Well, I have felt particularly un-go-getter-y lately/all of November, and it turns out that it wasn't just strep that I had last week.  I have mono as well.  Yes, the disease that makes you tired and sick and there is no real treatment except rest, fluids, and protecting your spleen.  So here I am, freshly showered at 2:30 in the afternoon after justifying my new pattern of sleeping in very late on Saturdays by calling it my prescription for mono.

You might ask how I found out I had mono, to which I would reply, the strep antibiotics!  Once they had served their initial purpose, they reacted with the mono to produce a lovely red rash everywhere on my body.  Mostly my face, of course.  The last place I would want it.  But, alas, there it was, so I went back to the doctor and said "Hey!  Is this bad allergies or mono?" To which they responded by stealing some of my blood, shaking it up a bit and informing me I had mono.  There was definitely a smirk on the doctor's face when he described it as the kissing disease.

Yes, thank you, I have heard the nickname before.  Ha ha.  So funny.  Not always passed by kissing, thank you.  Teresa now (probably) has it and I haven't been kissing her.  So there.

Anyhow.  Between strep, mono weariness, and finishing my application to U of Illinois, I have found myself too pooped to do much other than watch Frasier and drink cocoa.

Hopefully I can finish NaNo on delay...

Ah.  So many things I want to do.  Like shake this perpetual headache.  And get that job...  We shall see, we shall see.

On the Road Again

Well, I suppose not entirely.  But it is a lovely metaphorical road with straight brickwork that arches in the center to allow the water to drain when the roads begin to flood a bit.

Really, it is just the road to grad school.

I have lately been eyeing a program at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts that would allow me to get not one, but TWO degrees in two or three years.  In one fell swoop, I will earn an MS in Library Science for Services to Children and an MA in Children's Literature (I will get to take a class on Folk tales!)  I had initially thought it would be my best investment of money to find a Phd program that struck my fancy and dig in for the long hall, but upon investigating the programs in Rhetoric and Composition, I found myself disinterested in the courses they had to offer.  With descriptions detailing the studies of the like of Bahktin and Leyotard, I quickly realized I can confused my interest in teaching others how to communicate clearly with the study of linguistic communication.  Do not get me wrong, I find linguistics very interesting.  It is the theorists who swarm to linguistics and develop mildly dizzying and entirely infuriating tomes about the exchange of symbols and signs.  These things are all well and good to study; someone must do it so we can better communicate about our skills to communicate abstract and simple thought.  I must declare, though, I will not be the one to do it.
Instead, I have come to the decision that I will cast my lot with libraries.  They are not public schools, that demand teacher licensure and somewhat standardized curriculum; they are public entities that are molded by the combination of enthusiastic staff and hungry patrons.  This is the mix I want to toss myself into.  I have begun volunteering at the public library here in Grand Rapids and have absolutely loved it.  Additionally, I snuck back to Chicago last weekend to continue to enjoy the city I may still love most in the world while the Harold Washington Library hosted Benjamin Saenz and John Green as they spoke about the relationship of a classic Chicago novel to the current genre of young adult fiction.

As a librarian, I would get to plan and throw these events.  How sweet is that?  Right now I am limited (ha!  Limited!) to helping plan an online book group for teens, and I wish I could spend my whole day working on research for it.  Instead, I work for my paycheck so that I can pay my bills and come home hungrier to send out my application.

Which brings me back to the road I have embarked on.  I have begun to put this application out of my hands.  Gary holds one recommendation form, the other will shortly be handed off to Dean.  Then it is up to me to track down my transcripts, far as they have been scattered across the globe.  It seems a tad silly for me to pay $15 to procure a transcript from and institution in England from whom (whom? hmm, I'll stick with it) I only took two courses.  But they have requested it, so I must comply.

Gary's affirmation of my statement of purpose has given me the necessary boost in motivation.  Hopefully I shall have applied by early November.  Huzzah!

I shall now make myself some buttered noodles and return to Scout and Jem.

Dear Sanna,

I told you I would send you an email, but clearly I haven't done that yet.  Instead, I am going to use this moment to write you a letter publicly, since I apparently carry you around in my pocket anyhow.

Part of the reason I haven't written you yet is due to the fact that since I spoke to you (On Skype!  It was Awesome!), I have done these things:
1) Driven back to my parents' house
2) Eaten chili
3) Pulled dresses out of my closet for a schmancy dinner tomorrow
4) Fallen asleep with a cat on my chest
5) Awoken at the ungracious hour of 5AM
6) Blearily eaten food, gathered coffee, hopped in the car
7) Drove three and half hours to work
8) Worked
8.5) Dropped off dress at cleaners
9) Took the cheese my mama gave me back to my house (forgetting to put it in the fridge) and departed for soup at Teresa's apartment
10) Went to the library to volunteer
11) Stopped back at Teresa's to collect my laptop
12) Drove home; fell asleep
13) Woke up at the unkind hour of 7 AM
14) Blearily eaten food, wished for coffee, hopped in the car
15) Worked
16) Discovered the dress I had taken to the cleaners is being held hostage!  (Will I have to go naked!?)
17) Ate noodles, made muff-cakes, tried to work on grad school apps
18) Began this entry

As you can see, it has been a touch busy.  And all I can think about is not how exciting it was to meet John Green, or even many of the specifics of that experience, but instead the oddity of the whole situation of celebrity.  I mentioned some of this to you yesterday over the wonky internet connection, and slightly to my mother before I went downtown, but events like this are very odd.  For the most part, the people who plan events count on the popularity of one or more of the speakers to draw a sufficient crowd.  Or the enthusiasm of the target audience.  In this case, we will assume that the majority of the people present had been drawn by the name JOHN GREEN not the quality writing of SAUL BELLOW.
That being said, the audience comes already knowing quite a bit about the speaker.  John makes himself fairly present on the internet.  There is plenty he doesn't share about his life (naturally, it's his.), but also quite a lot that he does share.  Fans of his videos and books take in all this content and learn more about him while he resides on the other side of the computer screen appreciating the growth in viewership/readership, only able to take in so much of the returning information.  This results in a decidedly uneven situation.  Those people who go to events such as the One Book, One Chicago event on Monday come with the sense that they know this person who is now signing their book.  They know this remarkable person who has the influence to inspire people to drive three hours across three states (which as it turns out, he also did that afternoon.  He was in Grand Haven!) but that remarkable person in all likelihood has no idea who they are.
Now, I don't want to blow this out of proportion.  John Green is very popular, but not so much that his name is universally known.  Very few people have that scope of influence.  But he is still popular enough to be unable to personally respond to all the entreaties for recognition he gets from those who appreciate his work.  Compared to Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden, Hitler, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Llama, or other well known figures, John Green is unremarkable.  But compared with me?  Many of the other people there?  We become the unremarkable ones.  And that is humbling.  I could not predict what impact I will have on the world, or individual people of the world, by the time I am thirty-something, but I do know that I likely won't fully grasp the extent to which I have effected people's lives because it is very difficult to have completely equal footing with the people in our lives.
No matter how much we tell our friends we love them, it is hard to express the actual extent to which they have touched our lives.  If it is difficult to do this with the people we love, how much harder must it be to tell someone to whom we are a stranger how they have impacted our choices in life?

I didn't know this was the direction I was going when I started this post, but I want to take this opportunity to tell you in this (not very) public forum that I honestly do not know where I would be if I didn't have you as a friend.  I greatly miss living with you (I feel very guilty about watching Burn Notice while eating ice cream now... no one to join me!).  I love you, my dear friend, and as much as I am not very good at being a public person, I am glad to have you in my life more than it makes me nervous to share that online.

I will write you a proper letter again soon, hopefully.  Until then, I will entertain myself by looking at ticket prices to Sweden.  Also, this seal will just have to suffice.

Love love,
Melissa

Far More Than OK, This One Might Just Be A Winner

 OK For Now

Gary Schmidt’s most recent novel, Ok For Now, pushes right up to the limits of what might commonly seem decent for a middle grade audience.  But, with the gentleness of endearing characters and realistic troubles, Doug Swieteck takes us through his first year living in The Dump, surviving through the friendship of Lil Spicer and the pleasures of a really cold Coke.  Though his brother and father pave the way for his own mistakes, Doug befriends the old librarian whose penchant for art sets Doug on a sweet and sometimes conniving crusade to restore the Audubon collection that once resided in whole in Marysville, New York.  Doug’s no stranger to trouble, though, and finds himself the butt of plenty of ill will from teachers, neighbors, and strangers alike.  Despite losing most of his fights, Doug learns that teachers do care, friendships are worth fighting for, and making a Broadway debut as girl is not the worst thing that has happened to him.  Heart wrenching and hilarious, Schmidt has once again delivered a story worthy of the National Book Award nomination it has received.  

Don't forget to read The Wednesday Wars! Though Holling Hoodhood stars, Doug first makes a splash in Schmidts equally delightful previous book.

Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes

13 Little Blue Envelopes

This gallivanting escapade through Europe is not the free and roaming trip we all dream of having.  Virginia, a reserved high school student in New Jersey, has recently received a package from her favorite, wild aunt who has recently passed away.  While Ginny follows a meandering, oftentimes unclear tour through Europe visiting artist friends of her aunt’s, the reader is taken along for a journey to discover why her aunt Peg has left this strange legacy for her.  Peg reveals her plan over the course of thirteen letters, each to be opened after a certain task has been accomplished or new destination reached.  Though she is farther from home than she has ever been, Ginny discovers new ways to surround herself with unexpected friends, even in the midst of shocking loneliness.  

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

A finalist for both the National Book Award and the Michael J. Prinz Award, this Disreputable History is somewhat of a misnomer.  Frankie, always the good girl, finds her heart hijacked by a boy who’s loyalty belongs first to a secret society gone soft.  After stumbling across one of their meetings, Frankie begins to put together the clues dropped by her father, a legacy from the same boarding school she attends, and the club’s short anthem.  After scouring the campus and bumping into the Loyal Order of the Basset Hound’s figurehead leader, Alpha, she finds the notebook documenting the clubs past shenanigans, a notebook that has been missing for longer than she has been alive.  While she continues to be excluded from the club by nature of her gender, she takes advantage of Alpha’s absence to anonymously coordinate the most stunning Halloween statement the Order has made in a quarter century.  Alpha returns, takes the credit, and Frankie continues to mastermind the clubs activities and public statements until the threat of expulsion and probation hang heavy over the heads of the supposed orchestrator of events.  Will the reputable Frankie take the blame for the disreputation she has spread from behind the scenes?  

Where There's a Will, There's a Way. Where There's Two, There's Too Many

Will Grayson Will Grayson

A unique pairing of authors, John Green and David Levithan toss together the most unlikely characters.  Tiny, the huge and hugely gay musical-writing football player bounces between the concentric worlds of the two Will Graysons.  False identities have led the Graysons to a porn shop in downtown Chicago, a store neither of the boys frequent, but one that serves as the launch pad for new relationships, confessions, and confusions.  When Tiny and Jane finally reunite with Green’s Will, Will fumblingly connects Tiny with the latest of a long string of crushes as the two Wills explain the unusual situation.  Through the difficulty of wading into and out of young romantic relationships, the four high school students form a bond that surprises them all when they appear on stage at the novel’s close, celebrating the often uncomfortable experiences that bring friends closer than they ever imagine.

How to Be Good

With characteristic off-handed wit, Nick Hornby steps into the muddy shoes of a would-be divorce struggling with her husband’s bitter-turned-sweet outlook on life.  Katie Carr, in defense of her goodness, finds herself dropped onto the sarcastic and sour team her husband’s relocation has left vacant.  Two visits to the hothanded miracle man, GoodNews, and David Grant is inviting homeless kids into the house instead of raving about them as the Angriest Man in Halloway.  As a doctor in an NHS surgery, Katie is accustomed to being the recipient of positive assumptions about her character, she’s a doctor for goodness sake.  But goodness has never been as simple as she believed.  Despite projections about the fabulous life of a divorcee, Katie finds herself unable to commit to the decision to leave or stay until she withholds medical aide in exchange for advice from the priest who has appeared in her office.  Under duress, the priest tells Katie to stay; though Katie may not have chosen the path of her own accord, she resigns herself to giving up the idea of divorce and begins to reconcile with the reality of her family.  While David will never be exactly who she wants him to be, they decide together that no News is better than GoodNews and they settle in to struggle up out of the muck they have made through mutual neglect of each other.  

What to do, what to do

I've been working on a number of rough drafts for my statement of purpose lately.  Each time I start again in the hopes that a new thought will bring about a better, tighter description of what it is I want to get out of a degree in library sciences.

I think I am waiting until I begin volunteering at the library to have specific examples to cite.  But I do not want to continue to wait.  I offer a draft.  It is unfinished, but perhaps there may be something in it...

Often labeled as one of the less useful, a degree in English opens many doors but neglects to offer a kick through any one in particular.  Advice often pushes students towards careers in publishing, a money generating business that will provide a respectable income an impressive resume of alumni for the university.  I have wet my feet with publishing, but I find the draw of an impressive resume insufficient to gratify the very human need to feel that I impart any lasting impact on my small corner of the world.  My current job pays well enough to cover my rent, but the rote actions I perform each day fill me with a sadness and a nagging sense that I am standing on the wrong side of the creation and distribution of literature.
In absence of a syllabus, I have effected my own course of reading, and I find it rife with literature that belongs to the future.  I say this not to indicate a story’s placement thousands of years ahead of our own but to highlight to whom these works belong.  Literature for young adults and children opens doors the first of all those many doors, inviting young readers to investigate mysterious figures alongside Nancy Drew or discover empathy for those who must learn to coordinate two cultures through the concerns of Jin Wang in American Born Chinese.  But it is not only the unfamiliar to which young readers are drawn.  John Green writes stories about relatively average high school students who find themselves caught in something dramatic for a short period of time.  All of these stories access the multitude of desires for young minds: to encounter the fantastic, explore the traditional, and understand the phenomenal in the seemingly ordinary.
It is not the business of publishing these stories in which I want to be involved.  I have seen and experienced the solitude required of an editor; I have mourned the marathon between when a proposal for a new book first crosses the threshold of the publishing house and when it finally becomes available to the audience for which it was conceived.  The process is necessary and important, of course, but I know I am on the wrong side.  I do not want to make books come into being; I want to make them come alive.  I do not want to work to think of books distributed for the purpose of selling as many as possible.  I want to work to circulate books into as many hands as possible without the worry of inflicting cost.  

I adore reading on my own, but it is much more gratifying to know that the reward for reading a particularly challenging or enjoyable text is that the experience has been shared with others.  English departments foster this for college students through classrooms and departmental activities.  Outside of academia, this is the role of the library.  I still return to the English department of my alma mater, happy to volunteer my time to promote departmental activities that foster.  While an undergraduate, I helped with numerous student supported programs for high school students and younger that brought together young readers and writers from throughout the community for a day full of events specifically designed to cheer them on to continue following their dreams.

Potential other projects to start soon.   I hope.  I am bearing up to buy a desk; it will be my present to myself if one or both of the job potentials pans out.  We shall see, we shall see.

The Three Rs: Reading, (W)riting, and Reving your engines!

Or maybe just my engine.

I've been in a reading slump for the past week.  I want to get into White Teeth, which I am currently borrowing from a friend, but I can't seem to get myself to sit down for more than ten minutes at a time with book in hand.  Everytime I think to sit on the porch to read, I end up calling a friend, sister, mother and talking until some other social obligation pops up and I leave the house to go and play.  I like the playing, but I am reminded of the importance of making time for reading and writing by this article, shared by a lovely professor of mine.  After one reading, I knew I would want to come back to it later in the day to read it again in a less cursory rush as an early morning article wake up exercise at work.  It discusses why we need to read to be informed to write, be it a basic development of a well-rounded library of influences, or the need for specific writers to inform our own writing.  Without reading, how do we know what challenges authors have already tackled?  How can we know we are not perpetuating a cycle of the same tropes over and over and over and over? 

Thoughts for the day.  And a kick in the pants to start a project that's been knocking around in my head for a while.

Mama

This is an idea I am toying with.  It came out of something else written in third person, written as a sister piece to another I wrote this past spring.  I can't decide whether or not it is believable.  I will leave it minimally public to embarass myself into editing it into something better.  Comments are welcome.  Criticism also welcome. 

Keep in mind I have never been a little boy, so if it's not realistic, PLEASE SAY SO.  Hmm.

Mama said he would be coming home soon but I don’t see why she keeps saying that, he’s never been here before. This is my home and her home. We picked out the new sofa when the old one busted and rearranged all the furniture in the living room. Well, she moved it, but I came up with the idea of where to put everything. All the food in the fridge in my favorite and Mama’s favorite. I don’t even know if Papa likes baloney. I hope he doesn’t, cause I don’t want to have to share it with him. I asked Mama how’m I supposed to know him? I’ve seen pictures, but they are all older than me, so what if he looks different? I sure look different from back then 1) because I’ve been born since then, 2) because I’m not a baby anymore. She’s shown me pictures of Papa and all, she’s told me loads of times that I have his eyes, but I don’t know about that. She says he’s going to love me to pieces, but I don’t get how she can know that seeing as I’ve never met him before. I remember having to sit still for my birthday pictures every year and never getting to see if I was making such a squirmy face as she said I always did from when I was a baby seeing as she sent the pictures off across the ocean to Papa. One time when we were at the library she showed me on the globe where Vietnam is, where Papa’s been since just after he and Mama bought our house. It’s all the way across the world! No wonder it’s taken him so long to get back!

Mama’s always read the letters we’ve gotten from him at bedtime except for the letter that came a couple weeks ago that said he’d got his leg hurt and he would be coming back to little old, boring Iowa just as soon as he could. Mama didn’t even bother to hide in the bathroom to cry that afternoon. She thinks I don’t know, but I can tell that she’s been crying cause her eyes get all puffy like mine when those rotten kids down the street trip me and call me bastard, which Mama won’t tell me what it means, which I guess means it’s pretty mean. But all the crying from scratching my knees makes my eyes all red a puffy, which is how I can tell Mama cries in the bathroom. That and the soup tastes too salty like there are tears in it.

She says it’s going to be great to have him back, that it will mean all the ladies on our street will stop looking at me funny, but I don’t think they look at me funny. They are always really nice when I’m playing in the front yard and sometimes give me chocolate doughnuts if I happen to kick my ball into their yard and have to go get it on Saturdays after they get their grocery deliveries. Accidentally kick my ball into their yard. It’s the kids at school that I don’t like. Mama didn’t want me to start going, but I told her that I wanted to go. She cried that day too. Maybe she just doesn’t like the house empty and that’s why she wants Papa to come. I like the teachers at school. Miss Wattley has been really nice to me since that time I got put in time out and she came back to tell me I could come back to the rest of the class and found me reading the books from the corner bookshelves. She thought I was just looking at the pictures, but I showed her I could read and not just look at the pictures. Since then she’s had me stay in from recess two days a week to work on reading other books she thinks I might like. She showed me these books about two brothers that solve dangerous mysteries. I don’t know a lot of the words, so I read some of it and she reads the rest of it aloud to me while I look on. Then she makes me read some of what she just read back again to see if I caught any more new words. If she just read aloud the whole time it wouldn’t be so boring sometimes, which is why she says we only do it two days a week now. I got too squirrelly when I stayed in from recess everyday that one time. Plus some of the bigger kids started making fun of me saying I was bad and had detention all the time so now Miss Wattley keeps other kids in on the other days. Emily and Sarah stay in on Mondays and Wednesdays to work on math and Friday is actual detention day for any one who teased me or Emily or Sarah during the week. When Bobby, Gary, Neil, Jimmy, and Katie all had to stay in with their heads down on their desks two Fridays in a row, the teasing stopped and I stopped minding staying in to read sometimes.

Mama says the boys at school teased me because they were jealous they weren’t as good of readers, if they could even read at all, she said. But they never said anything about reading. It was either about detention, which, like I said already, wasn’t why I was staying in, or about Papa and asking me where he was. All of their Papas were at home or working so they didn’t get it when I said he was in Vietnam. They asked where that was and I said farther away than you’ve ever heard of and they told me I was acting smart wasn’t I and I said yea, cause I’m not stupid. Then they punched me and said my Papa wasn’t ever coming back, if he even was my Papa cause how can someone be your Papa when you’ve never met them before? That’s what they said. I didn’t tell Mama they had said that because I had asked Mama the same question before and she just gave me this hard look that was so cold it was made out of icicles and made my eyes dry up and my back go shivery. I didn’t like what she said after that, she’d never sounded so stretched out and broken before when she told me I was never to ask her that question ever again because that was the question that no one ever spoke to her with words but with their eyes. I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that, but if words could have come out of Mama’s eyes at that moment, I’m sure they would have been scarier than when Mama forgets to turn my nightlight on and I’m all alone in the sticky darkness of nighttime in summer. Her eyes when she told me not to ask that question again had a sharp shininess like the time the blue glass fell off the counter and sparkled on the floor in a hundred shimmery, wet pieces. What I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve never seen her so dark and alone and sharp and broken like all those things I already said. I didn’t like her looking like that so that’s why I never told her about what the boys at school said. I didn’t want to see her like that, all broken and angrysad again.

My Mama has always been really good to me. She doesn’t always get me the newest toys, she says it’s because we don’t have a bunch of money but she does her best. I don’t mind not having all the toys like the neighbors do, it means I can come home covered in mud and smiling and she doesn’t yell at my like my friend Tommy’s Mama sometimes does when he comes home dirty. Mama says that the whole backyard and the woods down the road are my playground and natural toys, which kind of sounds stupid, but when you think about it, it means that all my toys, all the trees and grass and deer and bunnies are bigger than all the other boys toys. So what they have a shiny red fire truck to run around their floor all day? I can go to the woods and look and all the foot prints that the deer make and watch the little ones look at me curiously. I bet I look just as strange to them in these stupid shorts and overalls. Mama says it’s the only way to keep my pants from falling off cause I’m so skinny none of the pants fit me right, but sometimes before she can stitch them up to fit better I have to wear them and I look like a big corduroy balloon. Those are the days I go to the woods instead of Tommy’s house. Tommy’s a good friend, but when I look stupid he lets me know it. I don’t mind it so much from him, but I’d rather watch the funny deer instead of being told I look funny myself.

Rough Draft

I wonder if anyone would notice if I used this blog as a rough draft for a second blog.  I find myself 1. Lazy about blogging and 2. Discouraged to continue blogging on a blog that has no clear, central theme.  I thought I could do grammar, but that fell apart faster than a peel off a banana.  I have a multitude of ideas, but no solid choice yet.  Which, perhaps, I should get over and merely refer to this current experiment as a rough draft. 

I am clearly also still working on figuring out how to address an audience, or even who I imagine the audience to be.  I feel, rather egotistically, like I am directing myself to myself.  Because I am self involved?  Perhaps.  Because I can only predict my own responses?  Perhaps.  Because I am too lazy to imagine anything else?  Perhaps. 

To state any of my possible plans will lock me into doing them, resulting in an actual requirement to invest time in this experiment, or it will merely make it even more apparent how completely incapable I am of following through on my electronic plans.  Or any plans.  Man.  I need a desk; they help me actually get stuff done.  Labor day labor?  Build a desk.

Empty Shelves

Once again I am preparing to move all the belongings I have collected up here in Grand Rapids to a new location, only this time there really is particularly important to mark the move.  Generally a shift in location has coincided for me with something like school starting or ending, or even just moving out of the country. This time my parents will come up on Friday to help me move some furniture, possibly help me acquire a desk, hang out a bit, and then leave.  And Monday I will go to work like everything is exactly the same.  I was remarking to my current housemate that this lends itself to a state of denial where I would like to pack up all my clothes, but I can't seem to bring myself to do it, since it they could effectively spend no more than a few hours in my suitcase.  Even so, I spent this evening--yes, a Saturday evening--packing up the pants I rarely wear and the winter sweaters I didn't leave at my parents house into my big, red, Atlantic-crossing suitcase.  Taking those clothes off the bookshelf I have been using as a wardrobe of sorts has made my corner of the room look mildly more empty, but the most obvious evidence of removal is my bookshelf formerly holding books.  I only allowed myself one small bookshelf this summer so that I wouldn't be tempted to unpack all my books and try to put them on display.  I resisted mildly well, though I just ended up buying more books to fill it anyhow.  But, they are now all very compactly sequestered in two boxes in the living room.  I would provide a picture, but that is impossible until late next week.

When my shiny new computer will arrive!  This summer, as I hoped would not happen until later this year, I was in the midst of trying to import some of the many photos I have on my camera, when my computer alerted me to the fact that my computer's disk was utterly and completely full.  So full it would be unable to save my iPhoto library.  So full it would lack the memory to turn off and back on again without severe risk of losing some important information.  The only things I keep on my laptop anymore are photos, a few employment documents, and a portion of my iTunes library.  And the disk is full up to capacity.  For the second time.  I haven't cleared out my photo library because I have waited until I had the time to work with Aperture, which I received as a gift and only recently tried to install.  To no avail; my operating system, as it turns out, is too old.

Option 1: Buy new operating system.
Pros: Will be able to run Aperture.  Only costs $30-60
Cons: Requires wipe of whole drive.
Will take up significantly more space on aforementioned full drive.
Add Aperture and space further diminishes leaving far less space for the photos that need addressing.

Option 2: Sell laptop and put money towards new laptop.
Pros: New laptop!
Cons: Laptops are vastly more expensive than desktops, which I would prefer to move to.
Currently function, though outdated, laptop will be undersold because of age, despite lack of faulty running.

Option 3: Sell laptop and put money towards new desk top.
Pros: New desk top!
Cons: No more mobility with laptop.
No desk for a desk top.

Option 4: Keep laptop, buy new/refurbished desktop.
Pros: Keep mobility of functioning, though old, laptop PLUS increased power of desktop.
Cons: Costs slightly more than Option 3
No desk for desktop.

Which option did I choose?
Option 4.  And the new computer will arrive in the mail mid to late next week.  I got quite a good deal on a refurbished desk top that qualifies me for a free upgrade to the most current operating system.  Hurray Free!  Perhaps shortly thereafter I will finally post some photos.

Shame on me

I am sitting in CFAC 230 watching the remaining three students in English 101 finish their grammar exam. Before they set down to take the test, there were skittered remarks about the demise of this component to the course.  No more after today will Calvin students have a separate test to evaluate their grammar knowledge from Written Rhetoric!
They think this is cause to celebrate, but really it is a call to the department to incorporate the evaluation into the course more cohesively.  Which I think is fair.
Without practice, grammar knowledge fades, and I must confess that a few months after my three week grammar course in January, I have gaps in my memory.  I remember where commas go in relation to coordinating conjunctions (after the clause, before the coordinator when it is followed by an independent clause), but don't always remember some other use questions.

I particularly disagree with Chicago Sixteen's decision to have plural s's after everything.  Jesus's, Moses's, presumably, cats's.  How stupid does that last one look?  It just feels wrong on the tongue.

Perhaps I should set a better example for these last remaining two now.  Although, as far as they are concerned, I am working on my final paper.

Except that I have finished enough to satisfy the prompts and have decided to simply move on to the next task.

Graduation.



And then there was one.

Helmsley Castle

Don't leave me friend!!  When you go, you will be all this picture is: a shadow and a silhouette in my memory.  Stay!

Sanna, I am doing this for you.

Someday I will remember to take my camera with me to the kitchen.  Until then, this will all just remain very boring looking text.  Unless I can change font!

Which I totally can!  Although, it's not really that wide a variety or significant improvement.


So back to roman it is. 




Back to my original thought.


I never buy box mac and cheese anymore.  Not because it isn't delicious on occasion, it is.  Mostly when I'm at home eating it off of small, pink, rectangular plates my mother has had since my much, much younger days.  As tempting as the thirty cent boxes might be, I am convinced it is WAY cheaper to make my own from whatever shape noodle I please and the simple ingredients needed for a simple roux.


Don't be scared by the x, it's French, which means you don't have to pronounce it but it will taste delicious.


I have been making this roux the same way for a few years now, but today I shifted my recipe and it turned out far better.  So I thought I would share it.  Here goes.


Homemade Mac and Cheese with Roux!


Ingredients:
water
noodles (small shells are nice)
butter
salt
black pepper
flour
milk
cheese (I generally use cheddar)


Tools:
two small pots
two stirring utensils (rubber spatulas are the best)


Instructions:
1. Fill one pot with water for noodles and set to boil.  Add noodles and a dash of salt when boiling.  Stir occasionally to keep them from sticking to the bottom.


2. Melt 1-2 tablespoons of butter in the other pot.
3. When melted, add a dash of salt and a sprinkle of pepper.  Mix up.
4. Add flour 1 tablespoon at a time (should be about 3) mixing after each addition, or until the mixture is just grainy and is beginning to stay together.


5. When noodles are done, strain them and put however many you plan on eating in your bowl.
6. Scrape the roux out onto the noodles.
7. Pour 1.5 tablespoons (ish) milk onto the roux.
8. Grate as much cheese as you think necessary on top of this all.


9. Mix it up and eat it.  YUM.




That looks a lot bigger and more complicated than it is.  It seriously only takes as long as it takes to cook noodles.  I just broke it down into very simple steps.  




I'm going to go cough myself to sleep now.

Everybody's got a set of bread makers!

Behind me there is a bread machine intoning the near end of the bread baking cycle.  Or perhaps alerting me to the fact that it is lonely and that no one has been paying it any attention.  When people tell me they never bake bread because of a lack of a machine, I just wave my hands at them.  Everybody's got a set!

Bread machines kind of fascinate me.  I'm not allowed to open the machine while the cycle is going, so I can't get a good look into the actual happenings of the process like I can when I make bread by hand.  In fact, I have only used a machine myself on one occasion, that being my visit to my sister in March.  She got married in August 2010--that will make it so easy to remember how long she's been married, score!--and had received a bread machine that she had no idea how to work.  I wanted to make handmade bread for her and her husband, but she rightly pointed out that she would be more likely to use the convenience of a machine that would make bread for her so she could come home from class and snack on homemade bread immediately.  Which is a fair point.  Most of my recipes are slow rise, so they take a while, but are excellent for apartment bound study days!

Anyhow.  I bought the yeast for her, since it's pricey and I knew she wouldn't want to cough up the money without knowing how it would turn out, and we decided to make the simplest recipe in the little booklet that came with the machine.  It was a plain white bread with egg, and I was a little unsure of the proportions.  But, again, I had never used a machine, so I figured they knew what they were saying.  We deposited the wet ingredients in first--which was weird--then the dry, and finally the yeast.  We closed the top, hit a button, and watched the tiny paddle at the bottom begin to mush up the dough.  For being only about an inch and a half big, that paddle sure could get the dough moving.

We retreated to the coffee table to play more Munchkin while we waited.

I'm not certain we actually finished the game, perhaps it was the second or third game we were in the middle of, but eventually the bread maker asserted its presence with an insistent beep that we both initially mistook for the fire alarm.  Thankfully we were wrong and were instead rewarded with savory sniffs of fresh bread.  The bucket pan inside was piping hot, so we let it sit open for a bit before we pulled it out and up ended the loaf onto a wire rack.

We then let it cool for twenty minutes  to let the gluten networks firm up.  As one should always do.

Delicious!  And makes great toad in a hole!
American style, that is.

GrrrrmmmmmBbbllllleeeee

I am sitting on the couch with a rumbling stomach as my roommate posts about trains.

Perhaps one will burst forth from my belly.

Perhaps I should just eat some haggis.

And So I make a Return

My dear friend Sanna is sitting on the couch beside me while a still image of the Earth taunts us on the television.  She will be leaving me soon for the cooler climes of the Swedish summer.  I will miss her greatly, so I will continue to deny that she is leaving me until her parents fly all the way out here to retrieve her.

Also, I am going to completely ignore the fact that I am completely changing direction here.

His knees are set wide, arms resting on the table and chair that flank him.  He looks up, directly in my direction, but hangs his head again to think.  There is nothing in his hands, but he toys the air or the wrinkles on his knuckles with circular precision.  Even when he stretches, his shoulders remain square with military precision.  Who is this man?  He takes his wafer-thin frame and umbrella and walks out, watching the occupants with a mouth cracked open in thought.  He'd only left for a smoke, which I learned about twenty minutes later when he came back in and asked me about my leather, Scaramanga bag.  It was at this point I discovered he didn't speak English very well, nor could he read it at all.  I offered to give him the address, but he declined; not only could he not read, he didn't have a computer, though he called it an internet.  A very confusing conversation ensued in which I thought he was asking how to protect again internet hackers when in fact he merely wanted to ensure no one could access his computer when he wasn't using it.  He suggested taking out the battery.  Instead of getting my work done, I became this man's personal researcher.  I looked up various things, such as the top three cities in Europe (Vienne, Zurich, Geneva), the religions of Austria and Switzerland (Roman Catholic, none), the population of North Dakota, Fargo, and Grand Rapids (600,000; 200,000; 600,000), where to get a watch in GR, where to get new dentures in GR, and a few other things I have forgotten.  I felt pity for him, living in a country whose language he couldn't read, so I continued to google these things for him, making small talk, and get absolutely nothing done on my work.  


He eventually left to catch the bus to get more tobacco and I went off to get groceries for the first time in four weeks. 

What in the World Are You Doing?

Todays Tackle: Verbs - Infinitive, Tenses, Auxiliaries, and Modal Auxiliaries

Who knew verbs could be as complicated as they actually are?

All verbs, no matter what action they describe or what purpose they serve, have a base form also known as the infinitive.  The verb changes to agree with three things:

Person: the subject committing or receiving the action, or the subject about which the action is taking    place

Number: demonstrates the quantity of people or things committing the action

Tense: locates the action in time

If you’ve ever taken a foreign language, I’m certain you’ve spent time in class drilling different conjugations.  Conjugation refers to the change the verb undergoes to reflect these three conditions influencing the verb.  Here’s a refresher:

Present:                        I bake, run, eat

Past:                             I baked, ran, ate

Future:                         I will bake, will run, will eat

Present Perfect:            I have baked, have run, have eaten

Past Perfect:                 I had baked, had run, had eaten

Future Perfect:             I will have baked, will have run, will have eaten

To reflect a tense change, the ending of the word is changed.  Many verbs are regular, such as bake.  Others are irregular, like run and eat.  In the past tense, regular verbs receive an –ed ending.  As you can see, that is the only one reflected in this conjugation chart.  Where is the infamous –ing, you ask?  It is hiding in the progressive form.  (Look!  I just used it there!)  Let’s take a look:

Present Progressive:                   I am baking, am running, am eating

Past Progressive:                        I was baking, was running, was eating

Future Progressive:                    I will be baking, will be running, will be eating

Present Perfect Progressive:       I have been baking, have been running, have been eating

Past Perfect Progressive:            I had been baking, had been running, had been eating

Future Perfect Progressive:        I will have been baking, will have been running, will have been eating

I bet you all think you know what each tense indicates.  Write it down. 

Now compare.

Present:                                    Actions in the present moment

Past:                                         Completed actions occurring at a static moment in the past

Future:                                     Actions occurring after the present moment

Present Perfect:                        Actions culminating in the present moment

Past Perfect:                             Actions culminating in a fixed moment in the past

Future Perfect:                         Actions culminating in a fixed moment in the future

Present Progressive:                       A less awkward way to state actions still occurring in the present           moment

Past Progressive:                            Actions in the past that grant a narrative opening for expansion upon the event*

Future Progressive:                        Continuous actions located in the future

Present Perfect Progressive:           Actions that have already begun in the past but continue in the present  moment

Past Perfect Progressive:                Actions that began and end in the past

Future Perfect Progressive:            Actions that begin and end in the future

I will warn you, the definitions of the progressive forms are ones I have developed in considering the role of each form.  Do take a look at each form yourself and figure out definitions that make the best sense to you.  So long as they are right, of course.  The past progressive is the oddest, hence the *.  That one is a particularly inelegant definition.

Before I move on to explain the auxiliary verbs, I want to draw your attention once again to the verb endings that indicate tense changes. 

Base/Infinitive: used in the present tense, retains base form or adds –s or –es to agree with third person singular subjects.

Past: used in the plain old past tense, adds the –ed

Past Participle: used in the perfect tenses, adds has, had, or will have before the past tense form of the verb

Present Participle: used in the progressive forms, adds the –ing ending

Alright.  Auxiliary verbs.  Any verb associated with the anchor verb that isn’t the anchor verb is an auxiliary verb.  Let me illustrate.

I baked.                                    No auxiliaries, just the base verb bake.

I am baking.                             One auxiliary, “am,” and the present participle baking.

I have been baking.                  Two auxiliaries, “have” and “been” and the present participle

I will have been baking.           Three auxiliaries, “will,” “have,” and “been” and the present participle

Be, Have, and Will are the three most common auxiliary verbs.  But there is another class called modal auxiliaries that replace will to indicate a variety of conditions.  Examples:

Must                        I must have been baking.

Could                      I could have been baking.

Should                     I should have been baking.

These also include Might, May, Can, and occasionally Do.  In each case, they replace the will to illustrate varied meanings.  I’ll leave the classification of those meanings to you for now, I haven’t mastered them just yet and don’t want to lead you astray unwittingly.

Confused yet?  You’re in good company, a whole world of actions have opened up to you.  If I were smart, I would include some exercises.  Maybe next time.

Addendum:  I apologize for any wacky formatting that may have slipped through, indentation is much easier in Word.

Topic One: The Simplest Bits of Sentences

As most people can state, a sentence is composed of a subject and predicate. 

The subject refers to the part of the sentence that serves as the topic or focus of the action or description. 

The predicate refers to the part of the sentence that says something about the subject.

Let’s look at an example.

Snails watch football.

Alright.  The first question we can ask to determine the subject is: Who is doing something in this sentence?  In this case it is the snails.  So, the subject is snails.

Now to determine the predicate, we ask: What are the snails doing?  They are watching football.  In this way, the “something about the subject” that the predicate offers concerns the action in which the snails are taking part.  Here’s a different example.

Snails are delicious.

Again, the Who of the sentence is the snails, but in this sentence we do not have such an obvious action.  (This gets into the difference between transitive an intransitive verbs, but I’ll explain that later.)  Anyhow, the question we must ask ourselves to determine the predicate here is: What am I learning about these snails?  We learn that they are delicious.  The quality of taste is something about the snails that we learn, and therefore constitutes the predicate of the sentence.

Lindblom differentiates between these types of verbs by calling the verbs that refer to the condition or quality of the subject as linking verbs.  In his words, they “lack concrete exactness,” meaning they need further information to make sense. 

Examples of these words include: is, are, was, were, seem, become, or other verbs that connect the subject to the predicate in a necessary relationship.

Now, I want to caution over generalization of the predicate; there are other units in more complicated sentences that provide information that makes the sentence clearer but does not directly say anything about the subject.  The predicate refers to all of these smaller units as a whole, but separately, they have their own names.  Here is an example.

The snails slithered across the kitchen floor when my Aunt Sally dropped the aquarium filled with Tommy’s slimy pets.

The subject is still the snails, but the predicate becomes much more complicated.  Instead of stating a simple action the snails commit, the predicate describes where the action occurred as well as under what context.  All of this information as a whole remains part of the predicate, but individually different grammatical units are coming together to paint a more detailed picture of the event.

Some Basic Parts of Speech

Nouns name people, places, things, qualities, or ideas.

Proper nouns are capitalized and refer to specific people, places, or groups.

Pronouns serve as substitutes for a noun.  Pronouns come in a number of classes: Personal, demonstrative, indefinite, possessive, intensive/reflexive, or reciprocal.

Personal: replace definite people or things (I, you, he, she, it, etc)

Demonstrative: replace things pointed out (this, that, these, those)

Indefinite: replace unknown things (each, neither, either, one, anyone, everything, etc)

Possessive: replace things possessed by someone or something (mine, yours, his, hers, etc)

Intensive/Reflexive: “self” words that add emphasis (yourself, himself, etc)

He hurt himself.  You yourself kicked the potato.

Reciprocal: describes a mutual relationship (one another, each other) Be aware that this is not the same as the indefinite case, though some words are shared.  These two pronouns are both a group of two words, but together treated as one unit.

The tricky thing about pronouns is that occasionally a word that on its own appears to be classified as a pronoun can instead take on a different role and will then be classified as something else.  This is a warning, I’ll get to that another day.

Verbs demonstrate action, existence, or occurrence. 

Blog-Subject Agreement

As of yet, I have not determined any sort of real thread through these posts, but that is all about to change!  Now that I’ve realized that consistently posting is kind of like having a job, I will use my new office as a secluded space where I can sit down and write.  A clean desk, a two-volume dictionary, and a comfortable ergonomic chair, none of which I paid for.  Perfect.  But today, I am still in my apartment. 

My university offers a one-month term during January, granting students the opportunity to take any of a wide variety of courses not generally offered in either the spring or fall semesters.  Many students use this time to take university supported trips abroad or take an intensive quilting or bookmaking class.  While these all sound wonderful, there are only so many years to take a small selection of courses. 

I have chosen grammar. 

By no means am I an expert on the subject; in fact, even after three days on the simpler topics of traditional grammar, I have come to realize that the issues I thought easy are in fact more nuanced than I expected.  Which brings me to my initial point.  For now, at least, I aim to offer a less textbook source of grammar instruction based off my own textbook and my professor’s corrections of said text.

Should you desire to work along with me, I am using the fifteenth edition of English Fundamentals by Donald W. Emery, John M. Kierzek, and Peter Lindblom.  For the sake of anonymity, I will not name my professor, but will mention that his name does appear in the acknowledgments as a contributor for improvements on the text.

That being said, let’s begin.

Stewing

I have only done some preliminary curiosity research, but I can't help but wonder: who exactly is making money off the digital media introduced by e-readers?

My own experience has been limited not only by platform, but perhaps more importantly, duration.  I received a Barnes and Noble Nook for Christmas and while I enjoy fiddling with it on a daily basis, I find I spend more time using the web browser than actually reading books.  Advertisements generate the belief that the over 2 million books available would be over 2 million different books, but I am under the impression that this may not be the case.  There are a multitude of versions of older books available; those for purchase, those offered through googlebooks, as well as other digitized forms.  While this does mean relatively easy access to obscure Irish cookbooks I otherwise would only wonder about or forget after an initial google search, I still cannot find some more modern books.

Amazon has nearly every book for which I have ever searched.  But it comes at a price.  The lure of $0.01 books lasts until the final moment of checkout when the $3.00 shipping charge drags the total price closer to the electronic version available.  On Amazon, the person making the sale earns the money.  Nothing is given to the author for a used book sold cheap.  It is an online market for used books that moves outside the purview of authors and publishers that spent so much time creating something from which they hoped to make money.  I love used bookstores, and equally, used book markets online.  I am a sucker for cheap or free books, with which I have filled my bookshelves at school and am beginning to do electronically with my Nook.

No one earns any money with free books.  It is a beautiful moment when literature escapes the market that sometimes nurtures, often corrupts the initial ideals of hopeful writers.  And yet, I sympathize with the struggle to achieve publication.  I have worked blinding submissions for a small academic journal for the past year.  Often I read terribly uninteresting pieces, but even the unoriginal work reflects months of research and effort to generate a thirty page document worth at least an initial look.  Despite that investment, we only publish 7% of submissions, none of which receive monetary compensation.  And yet, these academic authors know that walking in.

Mainstream authors, on the other hand, have different expectations.  When an author submits a manuscript to a publishing house, the hope is to achieve successful publication, which includes successful marketing that will lead to sales, sales that in turn encourage trust between author and publisher for future submissions.  When I purchase a new hardcover book from Barnes and Noble, the author receives only a tiny portion of the proceeds.  Most of the profit goes to the entity selling the good.  With e-books priced so much lower than the tangible product, my wonder concerns whether or not there is a proportional decrease in profit to the author.  And what about authors whose initial contracts never anticipated this new medium?

Who makes this money, then?  Barnes and Noble, for the sale itself?  Amazon, as the sale occurs through the Kindle technology owned by Amazon?   Some reviews indicate the business model these companies share reflects a desire to offer hardware at a fairly reasonable price so that the consumer will spend more purchasing books for the device.  The subsequent purchased would generate the profit that would justify the technology.

But what about self-published e-books?  There is a growing market seeking to introduce authors who have bypassed the tradition model of publication.  Instead of going through a publishing house, they circumvent the system and offer their work purely electronically, striving to work out contracts for print publication contingent on their electronic success.  If their book makes it to an electronic market, they would presumably receive all the proceeds, but if that is the case, then why do authors continue to use the traditional publication model?

I am only beginning to involve myself in this new corner of the market, but my excitement for free and unusual books comes hand in hand with continued reservations and fears for the potential deterioration of the tangible version.  Will hardcover and paperback go the same way as CDs?  More expensive and tending toward the collectable?

I don't know.
Perhaps I will make an Irish stew and consider the question some more.