Pattern Recognition

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Location: Here Of Course

I like to talk. And write poetry. I paint a little too.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Dashboard Dashing Finds Knitting Wool

Updating when I did, either side of me: a blog advertising Office Supplies (wonder what percentage on Blogger is just advertisements for merchandise?) and on my other side in the list of newly updated blogs My Bountiful Life which is amusing and in a restful winter blue and full of photogenic knitting wool and cute kids. Go look!

How can they DO that?




You settle down to a Sunday night movie on TV -- You've Got Mail.
In the cinema, when Meg Ryan wants to get rid of the old boyfriend, she tells him that "I never voted in th... LOUD COMMERCIALS...END OF LOUD COMMERCIALS WITH SILLY CASINO GAME SPONSOR and 15 minutes later she gets to say that last "..e last mayor election -- I went for a manicure instead..." etc.

Then Tom Hanks walks his dog and spots father and lives on a boat with him and visits sneezing sick Meg Ryan with daisies and says to her...LOUD COMMERCIALS...END OF LOUD COMMERCIALS WITH SILLY CASINO GAME SPONSOR and would you believe! Tom Hanks walks his dog AGAIN and spots father and lives on a boat with him AGAIN and visits sneezing sick Meg Ryan with daisies LIKE IT IS THE FIRST TIME and says to her...

So here I am way past midnight having watched that movie since 9 30 p m.

Finally it is all settled but I am a nervous wreck.

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

NUNS - wanna join our Lenten non-shopping spree?

Laurie and maybe Carol (or Carol's friend at least), and myself are now going in for No Unnecessary Needless Shopping and will be known during Lent as NUNS for short (copyright Laurie).




We had a discussion in Comments under my 'What are you giving up for Lent' post-- and I for one will walk around the lake next door (maybe not throw myself in, as it is -10 C today) or to the harbour or a museum and avoid all malls.

Only less than 40 non-shopping days left of Lent!

Timeline:
"Lent is a forty-day period before Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday. We skip Sundays when we count the forty days, because Sundays commemorate the Resurrection. Lent begins on 9 February 2005 and ends on 26 March 2005."

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Attention to Detail: A Tribute to Editing

I found this at The Guardian Unlimited -- the obituary of a proofreader taught by a poet, no less!

--------------
Eleanor Gould Packard

NEW YORK (AP) - Eleanor Gould Packard, who was known for her
proofreading, copyediting and probing of the language of thousands of
articles in The New Yorker, died Sunday at age 87, her daughter Susan
Hathaway Packard told The New York Times.

Though she was not known by a particular title at the magazine, she was
noted for her intricate attention to vocabulary, syntax, grammar, flow
and even punctuation of many nonfiction writers who have contributed to
including E.B. White, Roger Angell, and Wolcott Gibbs.

Born Eleanor Gould in 1917 in Newark, N.Y., she graduated summa cum
laude from Oberlin College in Ohio and came to New York after being
taught editing by the New Jersey poet Aline Kilmer. In 1945, she joined
The New Yorker's staff and a year later married her colleague Frederick
A. Packard.

She remained at the magazine for 54 years before retiring after a
stroke, and became known for her attention to detail and care for the
text. Many there believe she is responsible for the style of The New
Yorker's prose.

---------

Googling Eleanor Gould Packard led me to another interesting link: She had strong views on the annoyance of indirection in newspaper articles. Without ever formulating this to myself, I am addicted to those fact frames that give you the background.

BTW, Deborah Garrison, who is quoted in the indirection piece, is an excellent poet as well as a colleague of the late Eleanor Gould Packard.

Sunday, February 13, 2005

On dirait un Magritte


Happy Valentine's Day from Le Soir, the Belgian newspaper:




An old man waits for his beloved by a wall painted especially for St. Valentine's in Sofia, Bulgaria.

How Magritte is that?

Friday, February 11, 2005

What are you giving up for Lent?

Inspired by Radish King (see linked blogs) I thought I would ask.
Lent from lengthen, meaning the season of spring, as in lengthening days of.

We call it the period of Fasting -- so giving up meat would be appropriate. And I had fish in macaroni today.

I did my bit.

Now tell me..

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Love Song of A Sea Urchin (at the request of Mr Alexy)



I, sooty hedgehog of the sea-street,
prickly pear of drowned deserts
need you to dive to the rescue, scoop up
my yolky goodness, lick me off your picnic spoon.

Squid-ink me your grafitti on white cliffs
with shaky cartilage pen: 'My sea-wise urchin,
beggar for a poet's words, I shall return
to smooth Sardinian beaches for your thorny love.'

:)

Aisha