Random Friday

* Look for part 3 of Learning as I Go tomorrow.

* I miss the time when I posted a blog every day.

* One of my biggest pet peeves as a freelanceer who specializes in writing about health is editors who say they need doctors to write their articles. I don't want a writer operating on my wrist to fix my carpel tunnel syndrome. Sure, the writer will understand how I got it. But even if he's written about the operation, he/she still won't know how to do it. Why do editors think doctors know how to write?

* I know there are some doctors who can write well. I've edited their work. But it's because they are also writers, not because they are doctors.

* So those particular writers, if they're good surgeons too, could operate on my wrist.

* The last few weeks, I've been cleaning up some awful prose messes created by docs.

* Check out Bel's (aka Mommy's Nintendo) blog. She's writing about her spiritual journey.

* All my friends in Blogland: I'm coming back. I'm going to be catching up on your posts. They better be good ;0) (I know they will be).

* I'm out of aquamarine blue. I need a trip to the art supply house tomorrow.

Things I'm surprised I didn't say:

* Tomorrow is the Ohio State Michigan game.

* Fantastic basketball game on tonight between Syracuse and North Carolina. Kind of glad Ohio State lost their game against NC last night or they would be playing Syracuse tonight.

* There must be a poem somewhere in all of this.

Don't Worry Be Happy

I stole this video from the November Sky Poetry blog. Enjoy.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

a rather disjointed post

My favorite NPR (National Public Radio) program is This American Life. Sunday night I was listening to it -- I know, I should have been on the blog reading all of your fantastic posts, but it was This American Life -- which is a collection of stories and this week's topic was fear of sleep.


The first story was about sleep walking and doing things when you did that could kill you. It happened to Mike Birbiglia, a comedian who told the story at a club called The Moth. You can access the club Web site here.

It would be worth your time to spend some of it on both of the sites linked above. But that's not what this post is about. Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, does very insightful commentary about the stories and the story tellers. When Birbiglia's story ended he gave background on the comedian and the club and concluded with the statement "Catch him before he becomes too famous." So I'm sharing him with you. But that's still not the point.

I've met a lot of people in the Blogosphere. And I've made a lot of friends. And I watch them become more and more famous. And they still say "hey" to me. That's good. The Blogosphere is a place to catch people before they become too famous. That's the point. I'm glad I'm here. because I'm glad you're here.

More signs of the times and an apology

Strange, but it seems the swine flu is actually good for the economy. I saw this sign next to a gas station yesterday as we were driving along:

"Hand wash--$10"

Now for the apology. I've not been able to do anything in the blogosphere this past week, not even get to any of your blogs. And I am sincrely sorry for that and know it's my loss. But I'll be back in a few days, and I hope we can pick up where we left off.

Worth a Visit

Joy at Babble on (another wonderful name for a blog) posted a poem by Taylor Mali that's well worth the read, as is the poet's comments that she posted with it.

I need to bring back "Today's Spotlight." I just haven't had time to do it on a regular basis. But Joy's post would have been in the spotlight if I were doing it.

Oh, I was also a guest poet today on Mommy's Nintendo's The Itsy Bitsy Monkey blog. It was fun to be part of her National Poetry Month Challenge. And if you go there, spend some time looking back at the poems she's posted throughout the month. Also, I would highly recommend making the time to look at the blogs of the other poets who joined her in the challenge. She has links to their sites as part of her posts.

Sharing

Check out the new song by Rachael Chatoor. It reminded me of some lyrics I wrote several years ago. I also did the music but wasn't really happy with it. If Rachael wants to do music for it, she can have the lyrics. (Anyone else, please ask first. It's copyrighted.)

Paper in the Wind
(Song Lyrics)
By the Grandpa

[A]
The music stopped while I was dancing
On a street all by myself,
And all the questions I’d been asking
Felt like dust inside my mouth

[B]
The friends I had around me
Are like paper in the wind
Their faces lost in shadows
Of other places I have been

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[B]
Each morning I wake hungry
But nothing’s left to do
Too late to say I’m sorry
Too late for missing you

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[C—Waltz time]
I dreamed I danced with my mother,
A song from another day.
We held each other tight
Her smile made the music play.
I dreamed I walked with my father.
We talked along the way
By the time we got home
We had nothing left to say.

[A]
Too many miles between us
I’ve done things you cannot know
Nothing stays the way it was
I’d talk longer but I’ve got to go

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

Why can’t I tell you where I’ve been?

[B]
Sometimes I hear the music echo
And turn to greet a friend
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind

© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Observations

Writing is the hardest thing I do. It's unfortunate that it's how I make my living.

On a more positive note. Tomorrow starts National Poetry Month. Check Mommy's Nintendo's challenge at The Itsy Bitsy Monkey. Even if you don't take her up on it, it's well worth watching her do it. I followed her last year through the whole month and quite frankly was amazed.

Enjoy

Her name is Rachael Chatoor. Her Web site is here. Her blog is rachaelpachelwasmyname. Both are well worth a visit.

She calls this first video a rough draft of an original song that's about to be released on a compilation CD from Stupid Cancer. You can here the final arrangement by clicking on the widget in the sidebar.


On her blog she says she doesn't think of herself as a recording artist. I predict that's going to change.

Got a moment?

If you haven't done so already, you really ought to treat yourself and and take the time to read Bee's post (of Bee Drunken) on the Chronophage.

And while we're talking about time, I often wonder where people need to be so urgently after a movie ends. If the movie's been good, I like hearing the finale while I read the credits. It makes the experience last. Here's the credits for Bladerunner.

Happy Thanksgiving

......45 and Aspiring has a special request on her blog today. It would be nice if you could stop by and offer her a little of your creativity over the holiday weekend.

And speaking of the weekend, whether it's official where you are or not, have a healthy, happy, fun filled Thanksgiving.

Please watch and then share

I found this video posted by Electric Barbarella at Hooker with a Heart of Guile. It's one way the language should be used. I wanted to share it. I hope you do too.

Just do it

I really like it when people do fun things with words.

I found the following on Gawdess's Viewfinder 365's blog this morning. She was writing about glasses.

when I was a kid
I wore them because I had to
now I wear them because I need them

And here's how Braja at Lost and Found in India headed her post I saw this morning:

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

When I taught freshman English so many years ago, I used to start every term with a story about how I learned to dive.

I didn't learn to swim until I went to college, but then I never spent much time at pools after that. Then one year, when my oldest son was about 10, we suddenly found ourselves one summer with enough time and money to afford a family membership at the local pool.

I'd take the kids over two or three times a week in the morning for their swimming lessons and then we'd spend a couple hours just hanging at the pool. Mainly I'd sit in a deck chair at the edge of the pool reading a novel and watch the kids enjoy themselves in the water.

One day I heard my oldest son shouting at me "Hey, Dad! Look at me!" I looked up from the book but didn't see him anywhere. "Up here! I'm on the diving board!" I looked over at the diving board at the end of the pool but didn't see him. "No! Up here! The high dive!"

I looked up. There he was on the back of the high dive. "Watch!" he shouted and ran forward jumping when he got to the end, legs kicking, arms flailing, splash coming.

He bobbed up out of the water and swam to the edge where I was. "That was great," I said.

"Now you do it!"

"Maybe later. I'm kind of busy right now." (Hey, I was an English major in grad school. So it was actually work.)

"Oh c'mon, Dad. What's the matter? Chicken?" Of course, he said it in that quiet ten-year-old voice that turned every head in the pool in our direction.

Well you can't let your kid call you a chicken in public, so I closed the book and stood up. "Okay," I said. "Keep an eye on your brother while I go up there."

I walked to the end of the pool and started up the ladder of the high dive. About half way up, I remembered I've got this fear of heights. So I stopped, looked up, saw there was nothing to hold onto once I'd get there. Then I looked down, and there were both of my sons standing over by my chair beaming up at me and pointing. So, like an idiot, I went on up the ladder.

I walked out very slowly to the end of the board and looked down--a long, long way down. I don't need to do this, I thought. I don't need to prove anything to a couple of little kids. So I turned around and figured the best way down was the way I came up -- on the ladder.

I hadn't noticed before, but some kind of big truck driver who used to play linebacker in college had come up the ladder behind me. There he was at the top of the ladder, waiting his turn. I thought about saying, Excuse me, but I need to go back down. But before I could get the words out, he said, "Go ahead, buddy, jump."

So there I was, standing at the end of the high dive, looking down -- a long, long way down -- at the pool below, confirming for myself that, yes, I have a fear of heights. I was wondering what makes you stop before you hit your head on the bottom of the pool? And what if a big gust of wind caught me just as I jumped . . ."Jump, Dad!" both boys yelled in unison.

I looked over to where they were standing, and a crowd had started gathering there, some of them shielding their eyes with their hand, and I though I was hearing scattered cries of "Jump, jump." Then I heard somebody laugh.

I looked to the left, and there was the lifeguard sitting on his high chair chuckling at me. The lifeguard was laughing at me. What does that mean when the lifeguard is laughing at you? What's he going to say when you fall into the pool and drown. "Oh I'm sorry. I was laughing so hard I couldn't even get out of my chair." Pretty soon, though, he took pity on me. "Just hold your hands in the air, close your eyes and fall forward," he said.

What? Do I know this guy? Was he in a class I taught? Did I give him a bad grade on a paper? "What?!" I shouted at him.

"Just close your eyes, raise your hands, and fall forward. It won't hurt."

Now when someone tells you it won't hurt, you know they're not telling you the truth. But then I heard the truck driving linebacker behind me muttering. I couldn't tell exactly what he was saying, but it was something like, "Go ahead and jump, buddy, before I come out there and throw you off." I decided it was better to put my fate in the hands of the lifeguard.

So I closed my eyes, raised my hands over my head, and fell forward. For exactly .018 of a second, it felt exhilarating. But then I hit the water. The lifeguard had lied. It hurt. Oh yes.

But at the same time, I felt this wonderful sense of accomplishment. I swam over to the side, pulled myself out of the water and stood facing the beaming face of my son. "That was great, Dad. Do it again!"

Now here's the really stupid part. I thought, Yeah. Why not? Of course by the time I got to the base of the ladder, he'd run off to play with some new found friend. But that was okay. I wasn't doing it for him.

The second time hurt too, but not as much. And the third time hurt a little less. By the fourth falling forward, I kept my eyes open. It's a wonderful feeling to see the world turn upside down like that while you're in free fall. And it didn't hurt, either.

I must have fallen forward another 20 times before we left the pool. Then that evening, I went back over after dinner and fell forward some more. From then on, every chance I got, I would go off the high dive. Of course, I never became an Olympic diver, but I did get to go off the high platform once at the Ohio State varsity pools. (Quite a bit higher than the high dive at the neighborhood pool. We're talking cliff diving in Mexico.) That was a thrill.

Then I'd tell my students, "That's kind of what learning to write is like. You close your eyes and fall forward. Just do it. It may hurt a little at first. But you'll eventually come to actually liking that you can do it."

And that's what I like about the Blogosphere. All these people just falling forward. Just doing it.


And take a look at today's spotlight post (the link's over in the right sidebar) for a nice turn of phrase.

More odds and ends

The right word

Don't you just love it when the right word is right there. And it's so right you don't even realize you are using it.

Tenacious Tess over at The Thoughts and Sarcastic Observations of a Starbucks Addict described a recent oh-no-why-me experience she had at a Walgreen's pharmacy counter, and it reminded me of a time I went in to a Sears Auto Parts store to buy a new set of tires. I told the clerk what size I needed and asked what they had.

He said they had two different tires. One was $78 per tire and the other was $102 per tire.

I asked what the difference was.

He said the second one cost more.

I asked why.

He said because it's a better tire.

I asked what the difference was again.

He said it was $24 more per tire.

I asked what makes it a better tire.

He said because it costs more.

I asked why would I want to pay more.

He said because when you pay more you get a better tire. The $78 tire is not as good.

I asked what made it not as good.

He said because it only costs $78.

I asked if there was anyone else there that could help me.

He said he could help me. Everyone else was busy.

S was with me. I looked at her and said "Let's go somewhere where they want our business because..." then I looked back at him and said , "You're useless."

Outside I was actually feeling proud of myself for staying so calm. I've been known to fly off the handle at times like that. So I said something to S about how reserved I was. She just laughed at me.

What? I asked.

You told the guy he was useless.

Did I? I asked. I couldn't even remember saying it. Then. Oh yes. I did.


More redundancies again where the writer says something more than once and repeats it ...you get the idea.

Here's a sentence I found today while I was editing:

In large doses, some vitamins have documented side effects that tend to be more severe with a larger dosage.

I'm just wondering how large these doses are getting to be.


When there's nothing there

Some writers just don't think what they're saying. But let me interject here first. I do a lot of work for hire editing. That's right. I'm a word whore. (Not an original term. Someone else gets credit for that.) That means I edit the writing of a lot of writers I don't hire. But maybe the good thing is, if any one of these people pitched a story at my magazine, I know what I would say.

Anyway, I was editing a user description for an article on a web site today. (The name of the web site in the following quote is totally made up. Hey! I have to keep eating.) Here's what the writer sent:

Dr. Feel Realgood explains which vitamins are health essentials for women of every age, from the early adulthood to seniors, learn what vitamins your body needs to stay healthy.

I sent this to S because she does this kind of work too. All I said was I needed to vocalize a scream that somebody heard. (I work at home alone.) She wrote back that she thought she'd try to help and do an edit for me but, "I tried to edit it for you, and that helped me realize how stupidly repetitive and empty it is."

I'm not trying to be mean to the writer. But S's response actually calmed me down. I went back to the passage, and realizing there was nothing there, came up with this.

Dr. Feel Realgood explains which vitamins are essential for a woman’s health at every stage of life. Learn what vitamins your body needs to stay healthy at any age - from early adulthood through your senior years.

Now I can sleep tonight.

(Don't forget to check out the spotlight. It's over there in the right sidebar.)

I'm no quitter

I dropped out of NaNoWriMo after only three days into it. The truth is I don’t write that way.

For those who don’t know about NaNoWriMo — it’s a creative writing marathon, a word-a-thon, if you like. All around the world, thousands of writers are sprinting to each complete a 50,000 word novel by the end of November. That’s roughly 1700 words a day. And although I can and have spilled out a lot more than 1700 words in a single day, that’s not the way I write. And the first thing a writer needs to do is understand how he or she writes. And the second thing is understand why. Let’s start with second things first.

There are lots of reason I write. For instance — it’s an old saw (but that doesn’t make it any less true) — I write to find out what I think. Writing is a way of knowing. When I write, I discover ideas I didn’t think I had. I find new ways to think about things. I build layers of understanding as well as layers of misunderstanding. And I sometimes look for and sometimes stumble over connections that create sentences that take on meaning.

I also write because I want to be a part of a conversation. When I write I’m conversing with my readers. But I’m also doing more than that. I’m entering into a larger dialogue. Just take the blogosphere as an example. Sure there’s a lot of drivel. But there’s also a lot of genius. And in between those two extremes, there are people commenting on, questioning, exploring, critiquing, reconstructing the world they are a part of. Just like I’m doing. And I like hearing what those people have to say. I like considering what it means. And I like making a response, with the hope that others will be doing the same with what I put out there.

There are a lot of other reasons I write, but I’ll just mention one more. When I write creatively, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry, I get great satisfaction out of creating a work of art. And when it’s good, it usually comes at the end of a long struggle. While the struggle can be short, it can also go on for days, weeks, even years. And short or long, it’s always the same thing. There’s always that feeling that I can’t do it. But when it’s over, I don’t feel relief that it’s done. Instead, what I experience is always surprise — surprise that there it is. And I have no memory of the struggle other than the awareness that’s there’s been a passage of time. What is out there, whether it’s on the screen in front of me or on the page in front of me (or, in the case of music, in the notes I just played), has always been there. All I did was make it palpable.

I’ll save how I write for tomorrow.

You're going to like this.

Maybe they're Not The Rockefellers, but Rene's posts are absolutely rich. If you've never been to her blog, don't waste any more time. Use the link and head on over to her "big bowl of quirky with a side of sass." You're going to be glad you did. I guarantee it.