[Image of 18th-century dowser from Wikipedia… Wonder if it’s sized to fit?]
I’m going to be computerless much of this week. Which presents me with a convenient dilemma — to wit, how to do a whiskey river Friday post?
You may be thinking: How, exactly, will this be “convenient”? Sounds rather like a pain, in fact. (Also a bit presumptuous. There can’t be that many people who know this Friday series even exists!)
Nonetheless, I’m curious to know how easily this will be accomplished. Options considered and rejected so far:
- Emailing a post via WordPress’s own built-in feature (limited features)
- Installing and using the Postie WordPress plugin (not working from Blackberry email address)
- Posting via Posterous.com (ditto)
Finally, I guess I’ll try what I’m doing now: using the Blackberry WordPress app. Tedious entering mass quantities of text, but I guess since the Friday posts are mostly copy-n-paste anyway…
Here’s a test, using the poem in last year’s edition of the Poetry Daily e-newsletter for today’s date:
How to Find Water
Easier if there are springs.
Before sunrise, lie down flat where the
search is to be made. Place
chin on the earth, so that your
sight will not range
higher than it ought. Then
dig.Valleys receive rains most
abundantly and snow is squirreled by forests. Springs
run underground and
burst forth in the middle of
plains, protected
by the shade of trees.Melting, it filters through
fissures in the ground and this
reaches the foot of the
mountain, from which gushing
springs come belching out. The earth
gives moisture under the influence
of heat, as a body emits sweat.Taste.
(Keith Waldrop, from Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy)
How’d that look? ‘Twas a bear to enter, even with copy-n-paste: the (highly idiosyncratic!) line breaks went missing and had to be entered manually, toggling back and forth into email and the WP app to check and correct them.
…And I still won’t know if it’s right until I can see it in a real browser!
Have a feeling Friday’s post will be very short, ha ha.
