Sorting Through an Old Hive

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As some of you on Blogger-based weblogs may know, a fraction of those sites recently had to convert from a particular old technology to a newer one. The owners of affected blogs received a series of email notifications from Blogger tech support, and by now any such sites have been converted over to The New Way… or can no longer be updated.

Running After My Hat is my first non-Blogger blog. But over the years — for myself and for others, some paying and some not — I have built and otherwise had a hand in contributing to a total of twelve Blogger sites. I got notifications that four of them had to be converted to Blogger’s current service level, and somehow managed to get them all switched over about a week before the May 1 deadline.

One of the four was a real relic — one I’d almost forgotten about.

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Running After My Hat: The Two-Year, 30-Second Version

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I’ve been trying to come up with something… different to do for this blog’s second anniversary. And then along comes Google, with its wacky “Search Stories Video Creator” for YouTube.

The Video Creator’s first page gives you up to six search boxes, into which you enter search terms — presumably forming some sort of “story arc.” (There’s also a seventh box on the form; this is used to create a “last slide,” as you will see.) For each search, you also choose whether you want to search the Web in general (the usual Google search), Google Images, Google Maps, blogs, news, Google Products, or Google Books. And then, when you’ve made those selections, you select a canned soundtrack from among numerous genres and styles.

And when you’ve done all the above, the system creates a YouTube video of your search(es) results.

It’s… it’s weird. Also kinda cool. And/Or disconcerting. Best of all, it gave me something… different to do for the blog’s second anniversary.

What I did was choose six posts from the last two years, published roughly every few months. From each of those six, I pulled key words or phrases for my search terms. I can’t say that the selection is entirely random: I wanted it to be sorta-kinda representative of the way RAMH has evolved (assuming “evolution” describes what’s happened here). And yet I also didn’t want to select “greatest hits,” “my favorite posts,” or any such thing. (You’ll find, for example, that none of the six was a What’s in a Song post, although a couple other series are represented.)

Here are the six posts I chose:

Below is the “Running After My Hat” entry in the Search Stories pile o’ stories. I decided to call it “in pursuit of headgear”:

Thank you to RAMH readers, both the lurking and the commenting sorts (especially the latter!), and thank you beyond measure to the bloggers whose sites I visit regularly, and from whose words — every day — I draw inspiration.

_______________

Note: The image at the top of this post, “Breezy,” is a scratchboard illustration from the fairy tale commonly called “The Goose Girl.” (Caption: “Curdkin has been tormenting the main character, so she calls out ‘Wind, wind, blow today, carry Curdkin’s cap away!’, and it does.”) It is by Tanaudel, on Flickr. You can read “The Goose Girl” here, on Project Gutenberg. (That version of the story includes a striking print of the same scene; it is by one Jennie Harbour, an Art Deco-style illustrator about whom little seems to be known.)

[Hat tip to the pseudonymous Jordan Baker of Dealing in Subterfuges for alerting me to this Google/YouTube Video Creator thing.]

Update, 2010-04-26: The Teacher Tracks blog recently posted an entry on five ways which teachers can use the Google Search Stories thingum as an educational tool. It included a link to a (Google-produced) “love story” using a beefed-up version of the publicly available tool:

(Apparently this was used in a Super Bowl ad this year. Darn. I missed that, didn’t I?)

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“I Can’t Market My Art!”
Oh, Yes You Can

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In a recent blog post, loyal friend of RAMH Froog dredged up a name I hadn’t seen or heard for years: “cartoonist” Hugh MacLeod.*

I no longer have any idea where I first encountered MacLeod and his interesting work. At the time, though, he was struggling to forge some sort of business from his creative output while still suffocating in a day job. He’d started up an e-newsletter, and in each issue he included — free of charge — a sample of one of his special projects. That special project was the creation of drawings (“cartoons”? eeehhhh… maybe) which he’d doodled on the backs of business cards. Some of the drawings were quite dark in tone; some were laugh-out-loud funny; some just made me uncomfortable with how much they made me think.

Ultimately, I unsubscribed from the Gaping Void newsletter, as MacLeod called it. Not because it had ceased to be interesting, even valuable or important. No, simply because I was saving every single issue, with all the others, in a separate GapingVoid email folder. The computer I had at the time had begun to wheeze with overload and I started to throw things overboard: MP3s, images, software… Gaping Void.

And then I forgot all about it. Until yesterday, when I read Froog’s post, and shortly learned that MacLeod is making  a living doing what he wants to do. Crazy, huh?

If you want, feel free (of course!) to explore what is now MacLeod’s Gaping Void blog. But by all means (as Froog suggested) do stop over at the Lateral Action site for a terrific brief interview with MacLeod, in part on the topic of getting your art — dare I say writing? — in front of people who will want it for themselves.

Excerpt:

“Artists cannot market” is complete crap. Warhol was GREAT at marketing. As was Picasso and countless other “Blue Chips”. Of course, they’d often take the “anti-marketing” stance as a form of marketing themselves. And their patrons lapped it up.

The way artists market themselves is by having a great story, by having a “Myth”. Telling anecdotal stories about Warhol, Pollack, Basquiat, Van Gogh is both (A) fun and (B) has a mythical dimension… if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have had movies made about them. The art feeds the myth. The myth feeds the art.

The worst thing an artist can do is see marketing as “The Other”, i.e. something outside of themselves. It’s not.

So: what’s your myth — your “great story” about your story?
_______________________

* The “cartoonist” is MacLeod’s preferred term, rather than “artist.”

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Real-Life Dialogue

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The scene: the living room of a rustic but solidly built house in Vermont, with a gorgeous view spread beneath and a Green Mountainside above. It is a summer morning, and the sun is still low but bright and cheerful. The Guest and The Erstwhile Missus are there at the invitation of D—, a colleague of TEM; the two women teach at the same school, and are in the kitchen talking.

For their part, The Guest and G—, who is D—‘s husband, met for the first time just a few minutes ago. They now share a sofa in the living room. They have their feet propped up on a rugged coffee table which G— himself constructed, starting with actual logs and, conceivably, a blacksmith’s forge and anvil. A former industrial chemist in a Pennsylvania city, he moved to Vermont to be with D—; having utterly changed careers, he has become a successful carpenter. He built this very house, as well as its two predecessors. His whole demeanor seems that of New Hampshire (The Granite State) rather than Vermont: craggy. On the TV over the fireplace, a man in a threadbare suit and thin gray carefully-combed hair reads agricultural news from a sheaf of paper: news not just of weather but of livestock auctions, grain prices, and government-subsidy deadlines.

In short, The Guest is on alien ground, apparently having shared not a single life experience with G— but eager, for TEM’s sake, to ingratiate himself in some way.

Guest: You know, I’ve always wanted to live in Vermont.

G— is silent for a long moment, extending through the end of the segment on TV, several commercials, and the start of a new segment.

G—: (immobile, arms folded, gaze fixed on TV) Why’d you want to live in Vermont?

Guest: Oh jeez, it’s just beautiful here. I mean, look outside right now. (He gestures vaguely at the window.) Seriously — could anything be more beautiful than that? (He pauses to give G— a chance to interject something, anything.) In the fall, oh my gosh, it’s beautiful in the fall. (Another pause.) And if I had enough books and a house as well-built as this one, why, I bet I could be happy living up here my whole life.

Another protracted silence. Another commercial break.

G—: You ski?

Guest: (speaking rapidly) Nope — never been on skis in my life! Actually now that I think about it snow skiing, water skiing no difference, never even held a ski in my hands, actually I’m not very athletic at all, no sir.

The silence oppresses. From the kitchen, sounds of female laughter and the clatter of tableware. The newsreader on TV seems to have started all over again: temperature and precipitation expectations for the day, records of past years—

G—: (only his mouth moving) So why’d you want to live in Vermont?

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Gracias

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Thank you for 2009 and best wishes for 2010 to all in the RAMH universe (both visitors and, uh… visitees?) — especially to the proprietors of the following blogs: you collectively and separately inspired me, awed me, made me laugh out loud and ponder, stopped my breath, wonder what the hell I was doing calling myself a “blogger,” and wait eagerly for your next post, way out of proportion to my ability to return the favor.

In alphabetical order:

(Note: Many of you talented, industrious folks work with more than one site or blog, and your other presences are often just as powerful/meaningful as their main ones. Thanks for them, too, folks — especially Maggie for Violence Unsilenced, Marta for Words Are Art (etc., etc.), Moonrat for The Book Book, and Froog for Barstool Blues.)

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A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist (2009 ed.)

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Taking off from the first edition… All I’m going to do for the music portion here is just add ten songs (and pray that, over time, I won’t blow the little WordPress audio-player thingie out of the water).

As before, these artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist:

  1. Peter Robbins et al.: dialogue from A Charlie Brown Christmas
  2. Anonymous 4: Hodie Christus Natus Est
  3. Waverly Consort: Three Spanish Villancicos – Dadme Albcrecias
  4. Perry Como: Home for the Holidays
  5. Mannheim Steamroller: Joy to the World
  6. George Winston: The Holly and the Ivy
  7. Celtic Woman: O Holy Night
  8. John Denver and the Muppets: The Twelve Days of Christmas
  9. Al Hirt: Nutty Jingle Bells
  10. The Roches: Deck the Halls
    — 2009: —
  11. Charlotte Church: Mary’s Boy Child
  12. Madeleine Peyroux/k.d. lang: River
  13. George Winston: Variations on the Kanon
  14. Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops: The Toy Trumpet
  15. Eartha Kitt: Santa Baby
  16. Mannheim Steamroller: Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer
  17. Celtic Woman: The Wexford Carol
  18. The Brian Setzer Orchestra: Jingle Bells
  19. Jimmy Boyd: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
  20. Cumberland Gap Reunion: Silent Night

(Note: The playlist goes automatically from start to finish, once you click the little Play button. To fast-forward to the next number, once a song is playing you’ll find a little fast-forward button to the right of its progress meter. And a fast-rewind to the left, for that matter.)

[audio:00_dialoguefromacharliebrownchristmas.mp3, 01_hodiechristusnatusest_anonymous4.mp3, 02_threespanishvillancicos_dadme_albricias_waverlyconsort.mp3, 03_homefortheholidays_perrycomo.mp3, 04_joytotheworld_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 05_thehollyandtheivy_georgewinston.mp3, 06_oholynight_celticwoman.mp3, 07_12daysofchristmas_denvermuppets.mp3, 08_nuttyjinglebells_alhirt.mp3, 09_deckthehalls_theroches.mp3, 11_marysboychild_charlottechurch.mp3, 12_river_peyrouxlang.mp3, 13_variationsonthekanonbypachelbel_georgewinston.mp3, 14_thetoytrumpet_fiedler.mp3, 15_santababy_earthakitt.mp3,
16_rudolphtherednosedreindeer_mannheimsteamroller.mp3, 17_thewexfordcarol_celticwoman.mp3, 18_jinglebells_briansetzerorchestra.mp3, 19_isawmommykissingsantaclaus_jimmyboyd.mp3, 20_silentnight_cumberlandgapreunion.mp3|titles=’A Quirky/Eclectic Christmas Music Playlist’|artists=Various Artists]

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Non-Holiday Holiday Reading

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I had occasion recently to hunt down a story by James Thurber which I hadn’t read in *counting*… uh, many years. But the first time I “read” it, I didn’t actually read it: I heard it, read aloud, by my seventh-grade English teacher.

The story itself has nothing to do with Christmas or even winter (as far as I can tell), but the day Mr. Krause read it to us and his other seventh-grade class was the last schoolday before Christmas break — when no one, teachers included, had much interest in academic matters. (An innocent time, eh?)

Mr. Krause’s voice had a flattened, slightly nasal quality to it; years later, as a teacher myself, I heard a recording of Kurt Vonnegut reading from Slaughterhouse-Five (“Overhead he heard the cry of what might have been a melodious owl, but it wasn’t a melodious owl. It was a flying saucer from Tralfamadore”) and thought I recognized in his voice my old teacher’s. As he read the story that day, grinning almost the whole time, he sat on the desk and kept having to stop and laugh. Indeed, even not counting the jokes, it must be a fun story to read aloud — all those smackings and tockings of all the k-sounds. But I’m surprised, in retrospect, that he read it to seventh graders; the diction and sentence structure, the almost literal slipperiness of the writing, seems to me a tad above listening-comprehension level.

(Most of all, I guess, I’m surprised that even one of those listeners still remembers as much about the day as he does.)

The title is “The Last Clock,” not to be confused with Thurber’s more well-known, full-length book, The Thirteen Clocks. Online, the story seems to be available nowhere except at the site of The New Yorker, which originally published it in February, 1959; to read it there, you’ll need either to be a New Yorker subscriber, or you’ll need to purchase (for $5.99) one-year access to the digital version of the issue.

Offline, the most obvious choice is to find the issue in some form at a library… or obtain a copy, one way or another, of the Thurber anthology called Lanterns and Lances.

In the meantime, as a little bit of a tasty holiday treat, I thought I’d transcribe the first section (and a bit more) into a page here at RAMH. (Links to both the New Yorker site and to some places to obtain Lanterns and Lances appear at the end of that excerpt.)

Enjoy!

Read “The Last Clock” (excerpt), by James Thurber

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Boyish Prankery

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Marta was wondering earlier this week about pranks, harmless or funny or otherwise. Coincidentally, at about the same time that she posted that, I received a funny reminder of a successful but harmless prank I’d been involved with from years ago. Thought I’d share the story with you (even though some of it, in retrospect, will embarrass me and make me wish that some things weren’t true).

Some background:

I attended a small high school in southern New Jersey in the late 1960s. Most school dances, at least back then (what do they do now, anyway?), were held in the gym, suitably transformed into romantic wonderlands by crepe paper and complicated lighting. But in our junior year, the prom — the Big Event — took place at a popular club some 10 or 15 miles away. Called the Latin Casino, it was a big deal, with big-name entertainers on the calendar, and at the time our prom took place the big name was big indeed: The Supremes, with Diana Ross.

So yes, we always got a rise out of telling people that we’d had The Supremes — The REAL Supremes — at our junior prom. We always got a rise out of that, even if we hadn’t gone to the prom ourselves. Which was the case with Yours Truly and most of his friends, none of us having yet fully (or at all) emerged from our cocoons of bachelor-boyhood.

(To be fair, it was a plain old economic calculation, too; two tickets to the Latin Casino cost a heck of a lot more than two tickets to the RHS gym. You practically had to believe you meant to marry the young lady in question.)

So that’s the background story. Now scroll the calendar forward, not quite a decade…

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Navigating My Subconscious

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When I was a boy, among my adventure fantasies was being a fighter pilot. There was something tremendously exciting to me in the idea of traveling at superhigh speeds and concentrating not just on the flight path ahead, but on the split-second change in circumstances in all three dimensions at once. You’d have to keep looking up, behind, down, to both sides… and never, ever relax.

(One obvious fallacy seems never to have occurred to me: if Dad’s characteristic high-speed highway driving gave me the willies, as it did, in actual aerial combat I’d almost certainly bail out more often than not.)

Later, fresh out of college, I first worked not as the English teacher I’d been trained to become, but as a cab driver — a position for which, excuse the boast, I was eminently suited.

Two apparently unrelated factoids about my life, separated from each other (and from now) by decades. But if you let your conceptual vision blur just a bit, you might discern the connection: spatial relationships; geography.

For whatever reason, I’ve always been interested in, not to say obsessive about, how one gets from here to there. Even now, I can spend hours poring over maps and atlases; Google Maps (and its macro-offspring, Google Earth and Google Sky) would be like a crack pipe to me if I let it. Furthermore, I’m blessed (or cursed) with a good intuitive sense of direction, so after I’ve driven someplace once I can almost always get back to it without conscious thought. (I say “cursed” only because this sometimes makes me impatient with others’ reluctance to venture into unfamiliar territory.) I actually hold a mental map of the route, including landmarks, traffic bottlenecks, relationship to other routes to other nearby destinations, and so on.

This obsession extends, bizarrely, even into my dreams. I notice and generally remember how I’ve “gotten” from one place to another. As my dream life goes on over the course of years, I recognize intersections I’ve “been to” before (although I’ve never seen them in real life). And, what’s more, I sometimes record these routes — write them up the morning after, in the course of recording especially notable dreams.

(Yes, I’ve tried to keep paper and pen by the bedside so I can jot them down at the moment, so to speak. It never works for me: I’m too caught up in my dreams to want to wake up.)

The most recent such report took me about an hour to write on Saturday morning, when I should have been working on Seems to Fit instead. You can read it here (irrelevant, non-setting-related portions excised, and hyperlinks to real-world places added (because — ha ha — doing so gives me a chance to use Google Maps)).

In the meantime: how about you? Is there any ongoing thread to what happens between your ears as you sleep? Consider the common “Color or black-and-white?” question. Beyond that, though, think of your dreams as a very particular sort of fiction. Do you tend to remember the plots the next morning? or are you a character specialist? what about dialogue?

Have you had the deja vu moment in which you come to a real place for the first time… and realize you’ve already been there in your dreams? Do you find yourself dreaming about the same things, people, places, even in non-recurring dreams, even spread out over years or decades?

C’mon. Spill.

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Perfect Moments: Birds of an Earnest Young Feather

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How do people form their first enduring friendships, anyway — I mean, their very first friendships (like at age 5 or 6), and very enduring (like spanning decades)?

Maybe it’s different now, what with parents arranging “play dates” and similar activities. But when I was a kid, these things (looking back on them now) seemed to develop haphazardly, utterly by chance, with friendships forming and disappearing like condensation on the inside of a window…

I have dim memories of my very first friendships, because those boys moved away within a year of my meeting them. (I remember, specifically, a name — Craig Brashear — although I’m not sure of the spelling, and  no longer recall if he was the one who lived on Walnut Street or the one who lived on… was it Edgewood Avenue? Oakford? Craig, are you out there?)

But I do have specific memories of my friend Ron: I think he was the first one I started hanging out with on my own, rather than as a mob of boys who’d gather (say) in the Clipsham family’s side yard to play football.

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