Category: Blogroll

just go read (please)

The Just Posts are up again, and this time, it’s the first anniversary of the social justice wedding that started it all. Go have a look at the posts that are listed at jen’s, mad’s, susanne’s and hel’s. As usual, you can find posts on a range of topics of social justice and activism to get the blood pumping in your activist heart.

I’d also like to direct you to a post that jen put up just this morning. Jen writes beautifully and powerfully about her work in a homeless shelter, and the range of people she meets in her work. I often find myself trying to figure out more ways that I can make a difference, and reading jen’s writing makes me feel more of a sense of urgency.

Now with more Polysyllabic Nonsense

I think most of you have seen this item making its way around the bloggy world: the blog reading level score. I’ve seen it a bunch of places:

You wanna know what I got?

elementary_school.jpg

(Note that my blog shares this honor with Sassy of eye heart internet, who can even blog at the elementary school level bilingually.)

Actually, the first time I tried this, a few weeks ago maybe, I got junior high level. But apparently my writing skills are deteriorating.

What I find funniest, though, is that I also tried my other blog: The Minsitry of Silly Blogs. This is a blog I threw together on a whim to go along with a NaBloPoMo group I started. See what it scored?

genius.jpg The Ministry of Silly Blogs

It would seem that when I am making efforts to sound Officious and Pretentious, as well as Silly and Pompous, my writing appears more erudite. Even if what I am writing is Utter Nonsense. (Which is not to say that I believe that all those whose blogs scored higher than elementary school write Officiously and Pompously. But perhaps you all write Utter Nonsense?)

All in all, I find myself terribly curious about the means by which a reading level score is achieved. Is it sentence length? Average word length? Does anyone know?

book, book, book, book

I am once again behind in my memery. YTSL tagged me for this book meme a couple of weeks ago, and it looked like fun. (Admittedly, two weeks behind is practically early for me these days.) You may see a wee bit of overlap with my earlier list of 18 favorite books, which was based on another meme YTSL tagged me for. (That one was supposed to be about a single favorite book. I had trouble following directions.) This time, the instructions mostly involve giving lists of four.

Four childhood books

  • Small Pig, Arnold Lobel. Possibly the first book I read by myself. About a pig. A small pig, even. Who likes mud.
  • The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis. This book really captured my imagination. I think I was always hoping to stuble across some otherworldly portal in my grandmother’s house.
  • The Gammage Cup, Carol Kendall. A quirky fantasy book about individuality and evil mushrooms.
  • The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster. A quirky fantasy book with lots of wordplay. Right up my alley.

Four authors I will read again and again

  • Sarah Caudwell
  • M. M. Kaye
  • Rumer Godden
  • Jane Austen

    • It’s hard to list just four here. I also considered Gregory Maguire and Connie Willis, though for each of them, there’s really only one book I tend to read over and over. (Wicked and Bellwether, in case you wondered.) Actually, I tend to reread kids’ books even more. The Chronicles of Narnia and the Dark is Rising series (Susan Cooper) get picked up often.

Four authors I will never read again

  • The Horse Whisperer dude. I can’t even be bothered to look up his name. That book irritated me beyond measure.
  • Amy Ephron. When I ran a book group, we once haplessly picked a little book called A Cup of Tea. The best thing about it was that it was short.

    • Other than that, I can’t really think of authors I hate. I don’t generally like to generalize from a single book (with the above exceptions). There have been a number of books I haven’t liked, and either I don’t remember the author’s name, or there have been other books that I’ve liked, or others that I still might be willing to give a chance.

The first four books on my to-be-read list

  • The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists & An Adventure with Ahab, Gideon Defoe. This the most recent book given to me as a gift.
  • Ulysses, by James Joyce. This damn book has been at the top of my to-be-read list for over a decade. It seems a shame to ever remove it…
  • Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. I have been commanded to read it once I listed it among my unread books.
  • The Ph0nology of T0ne and Int0nation (by Carl0s Gussenh0ven). This is actually the book I’m reading, as part of one of my degree requirements. (You may have n0ticed the zer0s here. I don’t like the idea of the author googling his name and finding…me procrastinating. That doesn’t seem quite right.)

    • Another book I’d like to read soon is actually a reread: The Golden Compass. I want to reread before I see the movie.

The four books I would take to a desert island

  • Thus was Adonis Murdered
  • Shadow of the Moon
  • The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I figure it would keep me busy. (Funny, I saw that this was also listed among the desert island picks of the person who tagged YTSL.)
  • I can’t decide.Bellwether or maybe Wicked or the Poisonwood Bible. Or maybe something new to me.

The last part of the assignment is to write the last lines of one of my favourite books. I can’t really do this just now, since I have work to do. If I could, I’d look up the last lines of Thus was Adonis Murdered. However, I gave away my copy of that, and have yet to replace it. And I shouldn’t go digging around in other books, since I have work to do. I do remember, though, that the last line of Shadow of the Moon was “And it was Alex.”

There it is. Damn, that ended up longer than I expected. Sorry about that. As for tagging, I think I have to pass, since tagging always seems to take me a lot of time. I agonize over who to choose. Please feel free to tag yourself if you are so inclined, and I’d be happy to link you up here.

pull up a chair

The Just Posts roundtable is up once more, and I just can’t keep myself away from (or keep my elbows off) that table. The Just Posts are a monthly event where we are invited to join in, by submitting posts that speak to the common goal of making the world a better place. You can see them right now at jen’s, mad’s, hel’s and suzanne’s. (Each of those posts has the whole list, but the hostesses also add a bit more to the discussion.)

And while I have your ear, let me whisper a small confession. I nominate my own posts. Whereas some folks consider the Just Posts an award list (and they are that, as well) the hostesses stress that this is also a roundtable. People are invited to submit their own posts.

The first time I participated, I sent an email with some nominations for other people’s posts. And I hoped that maybe someone would find one of my own posts worthy. But then I realized that there was a good chance that no one else would nominate me, and then I’d just feel bummed and left out and discouraged. So I nominated my own post, and felt a bit tacky. Since then, I’ve gotten over that.

The way I see it, knowing that my post will be a part of a bigger picture is part of what motivates me to write about topics of activism and social justice. And I do think it’s important that I write about these things. For one thing, it eases my own conscience. But for another reason, I truly feel that my contributions, tiny and insignificant though they seem, really do matter. They add to the numbers showing that people really do care. There’s power in numbers.

And in keeping with this philosophy, I also try to nominate plenty of other people’s posts, too. Plus nominating is fun.

I hope you’ll join me at the table. Dig in for some reading. Maybe a bit of writing. Might I entice you try a taste of nominating? (But please let’s not eat that pig’s head shown in the woodcut. That’s just icky.)

canterbury_tales.png
A 1484 woodcut from Canterbury Tales.

Who’s with me?

Because I am certifiable, I have signed on to NaBloPoMo. Don’t worry, it’s not a cult. (At least I don’t think so.¹) November is National Blog Posting Month. It involves commitment to posting every day for the whole month. That’s 30 days in a row.

The NaBloPoMo website lets members² make groups. To hang out. Like in cliques, I guess. Lots of people have started regional-based groups, like New England Bloggers³, Tennessee Bloggers, or Blogs from Europe.

Many others have created groups reflecting special interests. And perhaps some are especially interesting. Such as bikers, or brides or pregnant bloggers. Or pregant biker bride bloggers. Or knitters. Or (judging by their limited enrollment⁴ so far) even more specialized special interests, including Bichon bloggers and Kevin Spacey Bloggers.

I found myself with an urge to join a bunch of groups. Just because. And what’s more, I had the urge to start my own group: The Ministry of Silly Blogs:

Our chief functions are threefold: a) to identify silliness on the web, b) to create silliness on the web, c) to promote silliness on the web and 4) to encourage the promotion, creation and identification of silliness on the web.

And while filling out the form to start the group, I noticed a box to fill in an existing website for the group. “Damn,” I thought. “The Ministry of Silly Blogs deserves a website.”

So I made one. With some Official Ministry Bling, even.

And 3 other people have already signed on to be part of the Minsitry of Silly Blogs. 3 people who are total strangers even. (And quite possibly, 3 people who are totally strange.)

So, anyone else out there care to join me? Either at the Ministry, or just with NaBloPoMo in general?

I also have in mind a number of other groups, which I may or may not decide to officially form:

  • Pants Bloggers: For bloggers who write about pants, like to say the word pants, and/or who wear pants while blogging
  • Homo Sapiens Bloggers: For bipedal primate bloggers who consider their brains more highly developed than your average baboon
  • Genji Bloggers: for bloggers who like to write about having read the 11th century novel The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, often known as the first novel ever written.
  • Linguistics Grad Student Bloggers with 20-month-olds Named Phoebe and Who Like to Write Lists and Make Stuff Up: For bloggers who are named alejna

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¹ I followed Magpie over there. But how well do I really know her?

² Why is that I get uncomfortable with that word?…members…Sounds a bit like card-carrying members. Or perhaps cult followers…

³ Well, “Bloggahs,” which I joined in spite of my non-native tendency towards rhoticity.

⁴ N=1.

my head is stuffed full of cotton wool

I’m a little shaky on cranial anatomy, but I’m pretty sure that some of the nooks, crannies and othr empty chambers inside my skull are currently stuffed full of cotton wool. Or cotton balls. Or maybe cotton candy.

I have a wee bit of a cold, making my head (more than usually) foggy. Yesterday was very foggy, due to the impending cold, and also due to 2 nights in a row of insufficient sleep. Because Phoebe got the cold first, and perhaps has been teething on top of that. We had mulitple night wakings. (Plus I never get to bed on time.)

Ideally shouldn’t have been driving yesterday. But I had to go into work, and wasn’t particularly sick (yet). I had planned to take the train in, but my autopilot kicked in, and I started driving towards Boston instead of towards the train station. And since I was running a few minutes behind, didn’t want to risk turning around only to miss the train anyhow. And then when I got off the Pike, the autopilot kicked in once more, and steered me into Boston instead of into Cambridge. Later in the day, when I actually did have to go back across the river into Boston, I was additionally rewarded with a parking ticket. Not for an expired meter. But for expired registration. I renewed my registration online last minute, but I hadn’t gotten the new sticker in the mail yet. And while it’s legal to drive as long as you have a printed copy of the email receipt in the car, the meter checkers apparently do not care about this. (And what’s especially irritating is that had I managed to actually take the train in, I wouldn’t have gotten the ticket. And I might have gotten a bit of a nap, potentially leading to clearer-headedness.)

Whine, whine, whine.

Anyhow, today was much better. Today was a “work from home day.” But I spent much of the day napping, figuring that I will work much better once I manage to remove the cotton balls from my head. (Don’t worry. I’m not planning on trying the surgery myself.) I did try doing some reading, but that is what (inevitably) led to the napping.

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In other news, the wedding this weekend went very well. The hitching was quite hitchless, as these things go. Phoebe did a wonderful job as flower girl (did I mention she was going to be flower girl?), my pumpkin-colored shoes were surprisingly comfortable, and my strapless bridesmaid dress didn’t fall down. I got my hair and make-up done by professionals, which was a novel experience for me. And I think I cleaned up pretty well. John got some great pictures, too. (I’ve mentioned before that John is a very talented and skillful photographer. )

He’s posted one of me and Phoebe over at his blog that I like a lot. (Don’t I look girly in that picture, by the way? Especially for someone who has written about often wearing men’s clothes. I was tempted to entitle a post “I like to wear women’s underwear.” I don’t know why that amuses me so much.)

refueling my optimism

I have to say, yesterday’s news made me happy. I believe I have already expressed my enthusiasm for Al Gore. So it should come as no surpise that I was happy to hear that he, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Happy may even be a bit mild. I actually got goosebumps, and got choked up while reading a news stories about the award.¹ (Tears don’t come too easily for me these days, either.) I felt moved by the acknowledgment of the impact that climate change can have on human populations. I felt pleased that scientists are being honored for their research into climate change.

I don’t have time to write more tonight, but I wanted to share my excitement about this news.

And speaking of reading that gets my idealism revved up, the September Just Posts went up earlier in the week. This month’s round-up of posts on topics of activism is the biggest yet, and are once more hosted at One Plus Two, Under the Mad Hat, Creative Mother Thinking, and Truth Cycles. Have a look!

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¹ I can’t find an article I thought I read from the New York Times. The NYT article I found from later yesterday had a very different tone. The one I remember was more in line with this AP article.