Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Oooh... someone mentioned Conklin pens... <swoon>

Christy - There's something oddly cool and fascinating about cheese
racing. I must try this.

Mousey - I arrive in The Land of Norton at 1pm next Friday. I'm fairly
certain Madam Pam will be with me... but I'm not entirely sure.
  

    
aAARGH!!!  Now even the archives are freezing.  Both the regular
"Journal" page and the archive of this month just STOP loading right
after the words, "even <i>Coraline</i>", after Wednesday's question
about British- vs. American-manufactured book durability.  Which is a
shame, because I had just caught up through Tuesday and was going to
start on Wednesday's entries today.

Also, I KNOW I pointed out, somewhere in the last two topics, a site
that addressed the "momentarily" thing in a way I hadn't expected.  But
I can't find it.  Errh.
  

    
Christy, if you're using IE and are willing to rough it, try
right-clicking on your screen when it freezes, select the "View Source"
option, and read in plain text encumbered by lots of coding
characters. Or try Netscape, which sometimes provides me clear viewing
when IE doesn't, I don't know why.

How's the Choir song coming along, btw?

(Maybe more interesting notes later, but it's been a relatively boring
week and I haven't much interesting to say.)
  

    <scribbled by miko-chan>
  

    
*comes up for air* Hi everybody. ^_^

I was wondering if anybody might be interested in getting together to
go to a couple events:

1) Going to Anaheim to see Tori's concert on April 19th (Sat, the day
after my current term ends! ^o^)
2) Going to CalTech (Pasadena) on May 2nd-3rd (Fri-Sat) to see the
Capitol Steps perform. (Check them out here: http://www.capsteps.com)

Let me know if you want to come, and I can organise to get tickets.
^_^

Special shout out to Pam and Walker for posing for me -- you guys are
great models to work with! *^o^*

Neil -- (from a while back) I don't think you have to worry about not
being exciting enough for people who travel a long way to your events.
It's always absolutely lovely to see you, and if you were any more
exciting, I think my head would explode. ^_- Also, if you're open to
stuff like Tiger Balm, I have a throat syrup you should try.
(http://www.ninjiom.com/emain.htm  Click on the second circle from the
left, at the top of the page.) Tastes mostly like peppermint and honey,
and it's really soothing to the throat. I've got a jar here and I'll
send it to you. ^_^
  

    
Bought myself a prezzie on Friday--the copy of War for the Oaks that
I've wanted for so long.  I finished it in a little over 24 hours
because *I could not put it down*.  What a great book.

Am now off to read Nalo Hopkinson's Skin Folk in an effort to find a
short story to teach my kids.  Life is soooo rough  ;-)
  

    
Mary -- What a job!  ;)  _War for the Oaks_ -- that was Emma's book,
right?  Oh, and glad to hear Jeff's got work, both musical and
non-musical.

I just finished reading _Second Nature_, by Nora Roberts (part of a
two-novel collection called _Summer Pleasures_).  My mom lent it to me
because she thought the horror-writer hero and his precocious little
girl would remind me of Neil and Maddy.  She was right.  Warms me
cockles, it does.

I think I'll go ahead and read the second book in the volume, _One
Summer_, because it features the same characters in a peripheral role.

In the meantime, I've started reading the book of Esther again... and
just in time for Purim!

Safety post.

Christy
  

    
Far-from-Mousey -- That's cool.  He probably wouldn't appreciate my
going on about a couple of songs he did <mumble mumble> years ago, but
I wouldn't mind if you thanked him, for me, for being part of a very
happy time in my life....

And welcome home.

Kathy Li -- Welcome back!  And you have me curious about both teacups
AND "devices."

Davey -- Thanks for the tips.  I think I was feeling too contrary to
think of the "View Source" option (plus I no longer have Netscape).  I
ended up not having to, anyway; the journal actually behaved last
night, and I'm all caught up.  It didn't help me understand some
people's posts at all.

Thanks for asking about the Choir song!  The hard part will be getting
the guitar down.  Not that it's a difficult chord progression, but I'm
just pretty rusty.  Today would have been a good day to practice, if I
hadn't spent three and a half hours on the phone listening to someone
vent about their job.  Ah well.  I did get to go to a cool frame drum
workshop this afternoon, so I guess that counts for something.  :)

And I've got almost a pint of Guinness draught sitting next to me. 
Slainte!

(Stupid a-fada won't work on this laptop.  Maybe it's jealous because
it's got no bottle.)

Sleep well, you guys.

Christy
  

    
Lá Fhéile Phádraig shona daoibh!!!

And THIS time, I'm on a computer where the accent works.  :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day,
Christy

Honey, turn the porch light on
High-stepping across your lawn
If you're thinkin' it's a leprechaun
Well it's only me
Livin' free tonight

-The Choir
  

    
Christy - when Neil's blog loads forever, just hit Stop or <Esc>.  I
suspect that there is a hidden link on the page that loads a stat
counter or something, because if you just stop the page from loading it
displays all of the text.
  

    
Actually, that's not true, at least not on my browser.  It displays
the latest part of the text, but if you're a few days behind, you're
out of luck.  My earlier pinpointing of the exact line where it stopped
described what I saw <i>after</i> I hit "Stop."  I probably should
have made that clearer.

Thanks anyway.
  

    
You know, I didn't _used_ to get slightly worried when Neil didn't
blog for more than two days.  You OK out there, Neil?
  

    
(Also wondering about the extended silence from the Great Northern
Cold Lands...)

This morning our outside temperature was already over 50 degrees at
8:00am, for the first time in _months_. Months and months and months, I
tell you. I've opened windows, and can almost smell damp soil. Not
going to plant anything yet--I know New England too well to be fooled
this way--but today is definitely a yard-clearing day. Whee.

So I just had to say, the other day, that I had nothing interesting to
post about, didn't I? Gaah. That'll teach me--I spent almost all of
yesterday in Technology Hell figuring out what had crashed my PDA
(combination cell phone, Palm Pilot, and email reader/web browser,
henceforth referred to as "the gadget"), and then rebuilding the
contents, after it started freezing with fatal errors every time I
tried to open my checkbook register (yep, that's on there, too) while I
was trying to extract various data for tax forms. Finally got the
gadget almost completely restored to its starting state (I've lost many
URLs in the browser, oh well, but YAY for BackupBuddy), but had to
finish the tax worksheets this morning. grrrr.

The temperature is up into the mid-60s! I'm going out to play in the
yard. More later.
  

    
Yeah, it was BEAUTIFUL here this weekend!  It's misty today, though,
which seems appropriate for St. Paddy's.

Davey, your PDA makes a strong case for paper.  Gaah!  I don't know
what I'd do if my checkbook register was locked behind an electronic
temper tantrum.  (You didn't have a... DELL REPAIRMAN... over to look
at it, did you?)

Yay for finishing tax forms!  I just sent out my last return today. 
Ahhh.  Time to wait for the checks.
  

    
Hey Mimi-- I will probably be at the Tori show in Anaheim.  I would
love to meet up with y'all if possible.  
  

    
Well, it appears that someone's _escaped_ from "the Great Northern
Cold Lands"!  But he went and brought hail to Florida with him.  That
wasn't very nice.

Neil, have a splendid, refreshing, restorative time down there.  It
sounds simply wonderful.  (Cyber-hugs Neil a few dozen more times, just
for good measure.  Hey, it's gotta have SOME sort of healthful
effect!)

Finishing My Last St. Paddy's Day Guinness,
Christy

P.S.  You know, I had thought about that losing-weight side effect,
since you'd mentioned trying to get back into shape before you got
sick.  At least you got a head start on _that_ part of it, which is
more than I can say for my sorry Stout-sodden self.  ;)
  

    
Christy--Yep, it's one of Emma's books.  I love her.

Have been researching creation stories for a unit I want to do with my
mean young'uns.  So many of the characters in American Gods showed up,
I started having flashbacks. Right now, we're starting a unit on
comics and political cartoons, by examining the worthy Mr. Ware's
offering from last weekend's Reader.  *This* class, at least, is fun. 
American Lit & grammar resembles hell just a bit too much for my taste.

Spring break in less than a month, thank God.

Must go order copies of Neverwhere (finally!)
  

    
Lit classes <i>always</i> resembled Hell for me.  lol!  I'd much
rather find my own meaning in things, with the option of finding none.

Your classes sound like fun, though!  I would have loved the unit on
creation stories, especially if there were Native American ones.
  

    
E-mail from Kathy Li:

Christie, squeaks:  The cup is nothing to be curious over.  Jon is a potter
who throws his own teacups and will, if he likes you, give you a teacup or
a bowl that he has thrown, glazed and fired.  He *may* have made the clay
(he's created a translucent porcelain mix--my sister got a cup of that);
he'll WILL have made the glaze, and you will probably get a feu de joie of
details on the chemical makeup and firing method with the cup.  I have a
small cylindrical blue teacup which was fired in oxidation, and the glaze
(I'm told) contains clay from Neil's backyard.  It is astoundingly pretty,
and a great teacup.

The Device, if I guess correctly, is a pen I gave Neil at World Fantasy
last year.  It is a BCHR (black, chased, hard rubber) Waterman 52 with
moderate fading and wear to the nickel plating. It's most likely from the
mid-20s (definitely post-1917), and absolutely the most plain-vanilla
dime-a-dozen not-a-collector's-piece vintage pen you can possibly find.
But, it was built in the '20s when pen manufacturers had mastery over
fountain pen tech (i.e., when fountain pens were made for writing, not to
be office jewelry).  And it also has the standard 1920's 14K Waterman gold
nib, which is flexible.

A flexible nib's tines will separate with pressure, and spring back
together when the pressure's released. So, your line varies in width with
the pressure: thicker downstrokes, thinner upstrokes.  This is how
copperplate writing is done.  A flex nib, assuming you don't have the
ballpoint habit of bearing down like a mack truck when you write, and
aren't a leftie-who-pushes, is a great writing experience.  I've found my
handwriting pulls out horizontally like taffy when I use one, and that I
use quite a bit more flourish on my descenders.

As for Neil not posting, I wouldn't worry.  He is recovering from viral
meningitis (and out of town trips), after all.

--Kathy.
  

    
There.

I'm starting to get rested. If the sun comes out tomorrow I'm going
for walks etc.

Some of Jon Singer's glaze is from my garden. My house is built on a
rich clay... Jon used to have a website with a spectroscopic analysis
of the clay in question up...

The pen is just as Kathy describes it.

Mimi -- well, as the person who I think has trvaelled the furthest to
see me, I'll take that as reassurance.

Holley -- that's what you get for working with so many artists...
  

    
Er, does it count if the frequent stalker miles are Neil-related? Just
wondering if the trip to Oz counts for anything. ;P

Neil - good to see you up a bit again.

Christy - Will forward the message to the Boy... and just for
curiosity's sake (mine, that is) which songs? (she asks, wondering if
they are from the same era that led to a poster of said boy on the wall
of a certain 16 year old mouse maiden to be)

Kathy - Oh, I've heard of those teacups (er, sort of - I heard about
the clay, and they were supposedly for teacups, or something...) Neat!
They sound really cool. 

Okay, the new flatmate seems to be getting a bit impatient to use the
computer. (Don't see what the problem is, I gave him some Eddie
Campbell to read.)

squeaks, moving to SF proper in just over a month (woo hoo!)

p.s. Going back to work sucks sometimes.
  

    
E-mail from Dodge (Holley Nowell):

Since Neil's blog has been posting about strange under the street
things... Not quite so extensive as the Japanese but here in Houston,
there's a lot of construction going on downtown and there was an article
in the paper a couple months back about them finding a large concrete
block right in the center of the McKinney street intersection. The
article starts:

"Metrorail engineer Jim Schroeder had often wondered why maps of
underground utilities in downtown Houston always showed the rats' nest
of pipes and cables beneath Main Street detouring around the McKinney
intersection.

Now he knows.

On Jan. 2 a backhoe operator, ripping up pavement on Main for
Metropolitan Transit Authority's light rail tracks, struck concrete -- a
lot of it. "

They found a flat block 6 feet square with a metal rod sticking out of =
the center of it. They have dug down some 6-10 feet and haven't found
the bottom of it yet and they've shaved off about 24 inches of the top
and are planning to pave over the top of it without trying to get to the
bottom. None of the utility companies or any other people who ever
installed anything in the streets have any record of why and who put the
block there.

"...also questioned some old-timers, but none could remember any
monument, flagpole or other construction in the dead center of the
crossing. "

"We'll leave it for future generations to find, and wonder what it is."
[the chief engineer said]

One of the businessmen who offices nearby was quoted as saying something
to the effect of don't they have any curiosity? He watched and wanted
them to dig all the way down and find out what it is. The article goes
on to say that digging anywhere is like going on a treasure hunt.
Sometimes you find something you don't expect and sometimes you don't
find something you did. They find pipes that are on blueprints aren't
there and some buried very deep that the blueprints don't show. And one
time they found a graveyard under the Allen Parkway Village site - BTW,
the Allen Parkway Village was a housing project that was built for
welfare families way back when which was so ill built and run that
nobody would live in them except the very desperate and they were moved
out many years ago because they were unlivable. For years they sat empty
and an eyesore and finally the city got the permission to tear them
down. Somehow, then, I'm not surprised with all the shenanigans on city
politics and good ol' boy stuff that went on the get the thing built way
back when that someone actually built it over a graveyard. Hm.

"China dishes and an antique Lea & Perrins sauce bottle were unearthed
at the county courthouse complex. And excavation for Metro's transit
streets project found -- perhaps ironically -- wooden crossties from
long-silent trolley lines."


The project they are working on BTW is Metro project to widen and repave
the streets downtown for the buses and  to prepare for the light rail
that is going to go in. Hence the "perhaps ironically" statement above.

They think it may have been one of those old traffic towers from which
police controlled traffic. There's an old picture in the newspaper
archives of one of them at a different intersection but there's no
records of one at this intersection. In fact, there's no records of any
of them at all except for that one picture.

Shown below. Don't know if you can post that.

Reading about the lack of records for so short a time ago reminded me of
a book I read recently about American Hauntings. I forget who wrote it.
Some guy that apparently did a whole bunch of books on ghosts. All of
his investigations in this book were in the 1960s. And involved a medium
named Sybil Leek which stuck in my head because I think I once a long
time ago read a book about white witchcraft she wrote. Wasn't she a
bigtime somebody in the occult back when? Anyway, one of the things his
research people often tried to do was to find out about the house being
haunted and he said it was sometimes frustrating here in America because
records just aren't kept. In Europe and England and so forth they could
go back centuries on a piece of land and house and get owners and
construction and so forth but here in the US they are often lucky to go
back as far as two owners ago and very lucky if they even find out who
built the house much less what was there before.

This article reminded me of that because IF that concrete slab was a
tower it was only in the 1930s that it was used so why are there no
records? Well, I also recall an article about Houston recently that
talked about the TODAY attitude here. The past is not kept. Few really
cares if a fine old building is torn down. (I still miss the Shamrock
Hotel). The Enron thing doesn't worry us because it was SO YESterday.
And it's true. We tend to live in today and plans for tomorrow.

On the other hand, then you see something that has been kept and wonder
why. For instance, right across from the courthouse is a Burker King
which is built in on the first floor of an old Houston building. When I
went there to do jury duty, before the trial started, I went to eat
lunch and was surprised to find that there is an old natural stone vault
in the middle of the room that was, according to the plaque, installed
way back at the turn of the century in a bank and for some reason, the
people who built this building built it around the old vault from the
old bank (after tearing down the bank) and then it has just stayed there
no matter what the floor became, including a Burger King. It looks
strangely out of place.

As for me. Just working along. Still getting house in order.

Went to Amazon to buy Neil's things that I don't have and EBay to get
things not sold there any more. Good thing I've got stock in Amazon.
Maybe I should buy stock in EBay as well considering how much I go
there. And to that shop of Neil's things. Got a T-shirt of Death and
another one of Dream (as well as one of Elrond from LotR and a Princess
Mononoke(sp?) shirt). At least when I collect T-shirts of my fave
obsessions, those are items that are useable and not just dust
collectors on top of bookshelves though just now what I'm buying are
books I'm also tempted by the figurines. Sigh. So now I've got my Scary
Trousers shirt and these others to wear come summer on the weekends and
to the gym. Nothing like advertising your interests on your chest and
back. Nice way to meet people interested in the same things you are I
bet. So if any of you are ever in Houston and see a woman walking around
with Dream or Death or Elrond imprinted on a T-shirt - say hi.

 tower <http://images.chron.com/content/news/photos/03/01/15/tower.jpg>

Chronicle file photo
The concrete may have been the base of a traffic tower like the one on
Main and Capitol in the 1920s or '30s.
  

    <scribbled by jonl Wed 19 Mar 03 12:29>
  

    
Hello.

I saw Tori last night! Weee! It was fabulous and I'm glad I finally
got to see her this tour. She looks/sounds happy, sparkley, and well.
The songs are still echoing in my head.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes. My dad is doing so much better.
we thought he would have to stay in the rehab hospital for one-two
months. He called me all excited that he could wiggle his fingers and
toes, then the next week he called and said that he could walk with a
cane and they sent him home. He's doing outpatient therapy now and is
weening himself off the cane. I asked him how well he walks and he
says, "Ozzy Osbourne looks like a swan compared to me." But still, he's
made massive improvments and he's very lucky. It could have been a lot
worse. I think he's learned his lesson and will listen to doctors now.
I hope. 

Neil- I'm glad you're feeling better. walks in the springtime are sure
to cure anyone. Try walking around singing, "Lavender's Blue dilly,
dilly. Lavender's green." It works for me. 

This weather has made me extremely happy. I run around outside and 
shout, "Glee, Glee!" I got out all my summer clothes and packed away
most of my sweaters. I kept a few out, because, well, this IS the
midwest. It's been known to snow in fucking July. I hope the
Tempestries are nice to us this year.

OOh! Equinox tomorrow!

Chicago people-- I would love very much to see everyone. I'm thinking,
if i come up, I would have to take the train, because, well, I love
Barry (our truck) but he's a '83 Ford Ranger. He gets us where we need
to go, and we haven't had any problems with him,  but we haven't tried
long distances (more than two hour drives) yet. I'm sure he'd be fine,
but I dunno. Everyone's always welcome down here, of course. I plan to
spend most of the summer in the state parks camping, hiking, sleeping
in caves ect. If anyone is interested in outdoorsy stuff, this is the
place to be.

Squeaks- Oz sounds like so much fun! I really need to save money so I
can travel more. I'm glad you had an enjoyable time  :)

Danguy- re: new child- I wish nothing but glee for you you and your
family. Hurrah! 
I stayed away from Barnes and Noble and the comic store song enough to
save for and purchase (finally) the Dead Can Dance box set. I am
pleased. But now I'm looking out the window and I can see Barnes and
Noble and it's saying, in a deep seductive voice, "Come to me. You
don't have to spend any money. You can just look." No. Look away, look
away. . . 
  

    
Neil -- I guess smoking dreams are like school dreams.  I STILL dream
I'm in school -- either college, or worse -- and I've been out of
school for... well, I'm OLD.

I don't get the W.W. Gull/M.J. Druitt thing.  What am I missing?

(Christy wistfully remembers being smart once.  And I WAS, too, you
whippersnappers!)

Kathy -- Thanks for the explanations.  You sure do know your pens! 
Me, I would have to take up Hebrew or Arabic or something if I wanted
to take full advantage of such an instrument.  I'm a pretty definite
lefty.

> He is recovering from viral meningitis

And why do you think I was worried?


(Sigh.  Poor baby.)

(Anyway.)

Time for a safety post.