A Few Words Before Bed

Yes, I admit it: I gave my obsessive impulses free rein today. They pushed me through the expansion of yet another L'Engle stub on Wikipedia, about Sandy and Dennys Murry, into a full article, and completing the same process with the article on Calvin O'Keefe. I am unrepentent. It was good and important work, and I'm glad I did it.

But oh, what a mess I've made! Looking up the entire histories of these characters has led to my pulling book after book off my L'Engle shelf, so that I can look up everything from what Charles Wallace said about reading to Calvin's gift of shoes from Mr. Jenkins, from the name of Dennys Murry's wife to the way Madeleine L'Engle's early publishers tried to constrain her writing into predictable patterns. Soon I will have to put them all away again, except for A Wind in the Door, which I'm rereading, having just read A Wrinkle in Time yet again.

Something I've been meaning to say about that: in reading through this favorite book of mine, I was surprised to discover that although I've pretty much memorized all of the dialogue and some of Meg's thoughts, a lot of the description is barely familiar to me at all. What characters think and say and do tends to be everything to me, so even with this terribly familiar book I've made very little connection with lines about the weather (aside from the infamous first sentence: "It was a dark and stormy night") or the moon over Uriel. I suppose I need to make an effort to pay more attention to description rather than skip over it. As boring as it generally is to me (not in L'Engle per se, but generally), I need a good grounding in what it looks like when it's done well, so that I can do it better myself. Rereading the Murry-O'Keefe books (and eventually the Austin family books) should help with that, as well as helping me with the Wikipedia pages on L'Engle and possible my own L'Engle site, The Tesseract. Equally important, I think, is the input of literary material into my brain, which tends to be all output, too much of the time. Even literary reruns should help me get a fresh perspective on my own books, even as I write a bunch of online stuff about L'Engle's work.

Still, even before I get through all that, I have other writing to do. I left Princess Cathma Masha of the other Mâvarin in the middle of an argument with her protector and confidant, Wil Masan. I'd like to know where that conversation is going, even though I probably shouldn't be working on that book at all yet. I need to get Mages of Mâvarin under control first. I've made it to Chapter Five in that, finally, page 149. I seem to be getting it done in little spurts rather than steady effort.

And now I'm going to bed. Jace and Sandy will have to wait for tomorrow to tell the next part of their story.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Writing, novels, Tucson, Madeleine L'Engle, Wikipedia, Mâvarin

L'Englepedia and Torowinder Mania

Just for a change, I've been busy all night on Wikipedia. Check out this excerpt from my watchlist:

16 September 2006

• (diff) (hist) . . m Round Rock Express‎; 01:41 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (update PCL championship)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Tucson Toros‎; 01:34 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (adding back several redlinked players with substantial MLB careers who made significant contributions to Toros.)
• (diff) (hist) . . Tucson Sidewinders‎; 00:48 . . 69.244.45.130 (Talk) (→Notable Players)
• (diff) (hist) . . m John Scalzi‎; 00:40 . . Alphachimp (Talk | contribs) (Reverted 1 edit by 67.23.128.161 (talk) to last revision (75900455) by Mavarin using VP)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Madeleine L'Engle‎; 00:27 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (→Important L'Engle characters - formatting)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Mel Blanc‎; 00:18 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (spelling, remove sales pitch)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Polly O'Keefe‎; 00:05 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (→Name - grammar)

15 September 2006

• (diff) (hist) . . User:Mavarin‎; 23:45 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (Polly O'Keefe)
• (diff) (hist) . . m Calvin O'Keefe‎; 21:59 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (correction)
• (diff) (hist) . . Meg Murry‎; 21:46 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (more info and organization, spelling)
• (diff) (hist) . . m My Summer Story‎; 20:58 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (every reference I've found says 1994 release, not 1988)
• (diff) (hist) . . m List of fictional islands‎; 20:29 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (→Named - Benne Seed Island)
• (diff) (hist) . . m A Wrinkle in Time‎; 18:54 . . Mavarin (Talk | contribs) (→Characters - bold)

As you can probably tell (or maybe not), most of it centered on two subjects: Madeleine L'Engle and Tucson baseball. I'll explain about both of them.

Madeleine L'Engle and the Murry-O'Keefes

As most of you probably know, Madeleine L'Engle my favorite writer. I even have an online bibliography devoted to her work, although I've never really finished it. L'Engle wrote the classic children's novel A Wrinkle in Time back in 1959-1960, which won the Newbery Medal for 1962. The reason for the delay between the writing and the award is that the book was rejected by 26 publishers before she met John Farrar of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, who didn't expect the book to be a success but bought it anyway.

That's just one of the reasons why Madeleine L'Engle is a hero of mine. She went from terrible rejection to major success, all with the same book. She also happens to be an excellent writer, filling her work with of great characters - decent, intelligent, talented, flawed people, most of them misfits in one way or another, who consider deeper issues than who is dating whom. Her books are about people and ideas: science, religion, mysticism, history, psychology... it's all in there somewhere.

Madeleine L'Engle has written novels, short stories, autobiographies (The Crosswicks Jornals), poetry and essays for children, teens and adults, although the distinctions among these categories are often blurred. Her most famous books, though, are young adult novels about three families:the Murrys, the O'Keefes and the Austins. Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe of A Wrinkle in Time eventually get married and have seven kids, the eldest of which, Polly O'Keefe, goes on to have adventures of her own, with and without her brother Charles.

So anyway, yesterday some kid (I'm guessing a youngish high school student, based on the spelling and syntax) wrote a "stub" article on Wikipedia about Charles Wallace Murry, Meg's remarkable brother. It wasn't a great bit of writing, but it wasn't terrible, either. So I spent the evening cleaning it up and adding to it. Then today the same person started stubs for Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe, so tonight I cleaned those up a bit, too. A little defensively, I then wrote an article about Polly O'Keefe from scratch, before "Happy User" could get to her. There's a lot more to be done on all of these articles, but it's a start, and something I've wanted to do for a while, anyway.

Toro-riffic! (Sort Of)

Tonight in Round Rock, Texas, the Tucson Sidewinders won the Pacific Coast League Championship. I know this because I checked the Sidewinders' official page around midnight to see whether they'd done it. The Tucson Citizen, which regularly sents me email alerts if there's a big storm coming, a high-profile arrest or a player dropped from Lute Olson's Arizona Wildcats basketball team, has not seen fit to notify me that the former Tucson Toros came out on top this year in a league of 16 AAA baseball teams. The last time Tucson took the PCL championship, back in 1993, the Tucson Toros were up against only nine other teams. That was before the American Association merged with the Pacific Coast League. Sort of.

There is an article on the Citizen site now, though. I checked.

For the last month or so I've been pretty much the curator of the Sidewinders article on Wikipedia, researching, adding and rewrting the entry and then updating it as the season and postseason progressed. This is ironic, because I haven't been to a Sidewinders game since about 2003. The last time John and I went, we got bored and left early. They just weren't our beloved Toros of yesteryear. Even so, it would be a shame not to acknowledge their achievements in 2006, so I've done so, all of the basis of sketchy online newpaper articles and final scores of games. I even updated the stub article about the team the Sidewinders defeated.

Tonight, however, I wasn't the only one to touch the Sidewinders, Toros, and Hi Corbett Field articles. Someone expanded my list of notable Toros and Sidewinders who made the majors, added links to the players' individual articles, and copied the list from the Toros article into the Sidewinders one. This was all fine and dandy until this person, editing from an IP address instead of a Wikipedia account, removed the names of any players who don't currently have Wikipedia articles. Grr. Three of the four were my favorite Toros of all time! More to the point, they all played for years in the majors, and all were key players in the Toros (including a league MVP) when there were here. So I put them back in the Toros article.

Congratulations, Sidewinders! I didn't cheer you on, but despite myself I turned out to be a loyal fan after all --virtually.


Technorati Tags: Tucson Sidewinders, Baseball, Tucson, Madeleine L'Engle, Wikipedia

This User Does Not Understand...

Weekend Assignment #129: Write about something that makes absolutely no sense to you, or that you find almost impossibly ironic. This covers a lot of ground so let me make it simpler: Write about something you just don't get. You've rolled it around in your brain, you've thought about it, and it just doesn't add up. Yeah. Tell us about that thing. From the enduring popularity of talentless celebrities to people who put mayonnaise on their french fries (yes, I'm looking at you, Belgium), there's got to be something out there that makes you go, "huh?" Or, for the kids, something that makes you go "WTF?"

Extra Credit: There's a song playing in your head right now. Tell us what it is.

This user does not understand mean people. Please be nice.

The graphic above is called a userbox. It sits on my user page at Wikipedia, along with 16 other userboxes. Most of the others are about books and tv shows I like and the Wikiprojects (novels, children's lit, television) I work on. Four of them I customized for myself (can you spot them?), but not this one. It's a template, a pre-made expression of an important part of the Wikipedia ethos.

I like it, because it expresses something that is very true of me. I really don't understand why anyone would choose to be mean to other people. Sure, we all say something hurtful in a moment of anger, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about true malice: hating and persecuting a person or animal for being one of Them, or on their own merits, or for no reason at all; or even being indifferent to a person except for the entertainment value of teasing or torturing him or her. I'm talking about the horrible, earthshaking meanness of beheading Western journalists or debasing Iraqi prisoners, rape in the Sudan and so on. I'm also talking about small, mean things people do, like insulting other students in the hall after lunch, putting ice down some kid's back on the playground, or lying to get a co-worker in trouble at the office.

Some of this is I can understand a little, maybe 10%. If you can convince yourself that someone else is a Them, a subhuman with no rights, then you feel less guilty about taking revenge for some perceived wrong, or putting Them down to advance the cause of Us. That's still horrible and wrong, but it least there's a reason for it - a bad reason, but a reason nonetheless. But some people hurt others just because they think it's funny, or it makes them feel good or powerful. I don't get that at all, not even 1%.

Really, what is the purpose of increasing the unhappiness and suffering in the world? Isn't there too much of that as it is? Aren't the interests of Us better served if we make friends with Them, to our mutual benefit? What message can one person possibly send by being mean to another, that doesn't say more about the abuser than the one abused?

As for myself, I'm sure I miss lots of opportunities to be nice to people, to go the extra mile, to leave an encouraging comment or a note of condolence as needed. I'm not very good at caring about complete strangers, and actually doing something to help them. But I try hard not to hurt people, either. Being human, I do occasional fail in that, but because of anger or miscommunication, not malice.

And by and large, other people seem to be the same way. When a stranger smiles at you in passing, you generally smile back. You hold the door for a stranger with groceries. You express sympathy when someone has cancer - or even just a cold. When it's easy to be nice, people are usually nice. When it's a bit harder, most people are still nice, or at least civil.

But somewhere out there, there are people who add rude edits to Wikipedia, who do much worse things to cats than apply bacon to them, who beat up third graders, who call people names for no other reason than to get a rise out of them, who go out and shoot strangers on the streets of Phoenix. Why? Okay, you can say that some of them have bad brain chemistry or a bad upbringing, but I'm not sure that really explains it. What motivates such a person? What is the evolutionary benefit of malice in the human psyche?

No. I really don't get it.

Extra Credit: Right now? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins, written by the Sherman Brothers.

Technorati Tags: Scalzi, Weekend Assignment, Ethics, Wikipedia, Kindness

So, Are You Sick of Sunsets Yet?

Tuesday sunset at the school where I voted

I have a small problem with sunsets, which is this: I can't seem to stop taking pretty pictures of them. If I don't post them frequently, I develop a terrible backlog on my increasingly full hard drive.

Looking across the school playground

To alleviate this glut, like it or not, I must post a minimum of five sunset photos tonight. They represent just one fourth of the sunset pictures I've taken in two days, excluding the ones I deleted outright.

However, just in case you think there's more to life than Tucson sunsets, I will now talk about other things.

Wednesday sunset from the second floor.

I was very dizzy this morning from congestion, which made it hard to get up and go to work, and equally hard to accomplish much once I was there. I did eventually feel better though, and ended up working until 6:30. I came out of the accounting department just in time to see the last of the sunset--oops. I'm not supposed to discuss that any further.

Looking east at sunset, Wednesday

I actually have made it through part of Chapter Four in my editing of Mages of Mâvarin, including ten pages just last night. I'm on page 123 now, which sounds impressive until you learn that a) it's doublespaced, and b) I have 31 1/2 chapters - over a thousand pages - still to go. That's okay. I'll get there.

Sunset Wednesday, looking north. No adjustments.

Tonight, after John got home late from the office, thus proving he wasn't "dead in a ditch," I went out and brought us back a slice of pizza each. (They're very large slices.) As I waited, I read through parts of my current writing notebook, the one for writing in restaurants. For the second time in a row while waiting for pizza at Mama's, I didn't write a thing; but I had fun reading. Last time, I read a chunk of the second Joshua Wander story, "My Favorite Ghost," the one I was serializing to a few beta readers until I got stuck and set it aside. I quite like it, though. I just need to work out how to write the solving-the-mystery part of it. Any tips, Julie? Linda?

Tonight I read other fragments - a bit that didn't make it into Mall of Mâvarin, a bad poem (actually, I skipped over that), notes for The Jace Letters, and the intro to the opening scene of The Mâvarin Revolutions. Although with the cold and the dizziness and the sleep issues I didn't feel up to working on a scene while waiting for my mushrooms, sausage and meatballs, I quite enjoyed reading past noodlings.

Still, I can't get involved in those right now. As of Sunday, Jace and Sandy both have a clue what's really going on in The Jace Letters, so I'm into the scary wrap-up-the-story part (climax and denouement). And Chapters Four through Thirty-Five of Mages won't revise themselves. I've got to do it.

Meanwhile, I had another one of those crushing moments of seeing a large envelope in the mailbox. It wasn't my Heirs manuscript, though. It was a Disney magazine John won on eBay. I've got to get that follow-up letter off to Tor!

Karen


Technorati Tags: Sunsets, Writing, Tucson

Talking Pictures (again)

Let's see what's been on my mind - and my camera - today. Yep, it's another photo essay.

I had a doctor's appointment this morning. No, it wasn't about my cold; it was a physical/GYN exam, scheduled months ago. Aside from my weight and my cold, neither of which require expert diagnosis, it was pretty much all good news. She was happy to see that even though I'm not taking my diuretic, the edema is currently almost completely gone. Everything else looked normal except for a minor issue with one test, which I'm pretty sure was due to something I did rather than an actual medical condition.


My doctor's office is within walking distance of where I work, so, naturally, I walk. Somewhere in between one and the other is this complex of dentists' offices, which is where my dentist is. Handy, huh? The interesting thing about the dental park, aside from the topiary in between the buildings and the hand-painted "B4" near my dentist's particular entrance, is the way the light hits the south side of this building on sunny mornings. The sun slanting down through the ramadas casts oblong shadows, making the stucco look like an elongated log cabin.


And here's another surprising sight. This idyllic scene is at the edge of the parking lot outside Dr. L's building. People come and go all day long, oblivious to the beauty as they worry about test results, turn off their cell phones and wonder whether they remembered their insurance cards. Notice also that it wasn't terribly cloudy at 9:43 AM, despite a report that another heavy rain was coming.

This is the walkway in front of Dr. L's office. Nice, huh? It's not as sumptuous as it looks, but it is peaceful. I remember having a few low key conversations with my Mom here as she smoked after an appointment.

After work I took a few pictures, went home, researched the Democratic primary for about 15 minutes and headed over to my local polling place. The Tucson Citizen is not the world's greatest newspaper (I noticed tonight that one of their headline links spells Mt. Lemmon as "Mount Lemon"), but they do put together a decent election guide. I especially liked this sentence in their primary endorsements:

Governor: Four men are running, and we don't think any would make a good governor.

The sole Democrat in that race is the incumbent, Janet Napolitano. I like her a lot, and so, apparently, do most Arizonans.


So I checked out a couple of the candidates for Jim Kolbe's House seat, and ended up with the one the paper endorsed: Gabrielle Giffords. I was tempted to vote for Patty Weiss, who used to be a news anchor here, but Giffords agreed with me almost perfectly on the issues. (Giffords won easily; Weiss is second at this writing.) Yes, I know the above is a lousy picture. The original was very dark, and I kind of like the wonkiness of the colors.


One thing I already knew: a nasty little anti-immigration proposition that passed a year or two ago meant that I had to show a driver's license to vote, and it had to be a recent drivers license. Fortunately, the MVD made me take care of that last detail a month or two ago. Here's something I didn't know: there's a limit of 75 pies at polling places in Arizona. (Yes, I know that's not what it really means.)


Check out the major cloud cover by 6:30 PM. It had actually rained a bit by this point.


The building with the two lights shining is the school where I usually get to vote. When the polling place is somewhere else, I have to scramble to find it in time. But not tonight. The polling place was where it was supposed to be. All's right with the world. Well, with Tucson, anyway.

Karen

Technorati Tags: Photos, Monsoon, Personal, Tucson

Profiles Discouraged

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Get a picture of someone in profile. Could be you, a family member, a friend, a pet -- just as long as we see their face, from the side.



This was surprisingly hard. I expected that John would decline to be photographed, but I didn't expect to struggle through three photo shoots trying in vain to catch myself facing the right direction, fully in the shot, properly lit and with no hair in my eyes. So you get to see the best of my failures.

The second, frustrating, time-consuming, multiple attempt task of the night was to photograph Tucson's fifth anniversary tribute to 9/11. This is supposed to be two beams of light directed from "A" Mountain into the sky in memory of the WTC. But that's across the city from me, so I'm lucky to see and photograph one beam. Again, you get to see the most interesting attempts, photographed with no tripod and edited every which-way.

Weird colors, but the original shot was all red.

Lens cover wasn't quite open. The diagonals
may be rain, may be a plane. Four planes?

This was my first or second attempt. The beam
wasn't really visible yet, just the reflection
on the cloud. The blue part is lightning.

This next shot was also frustrating, but at least it didn't take long. It was pretty much dusk when I left the office tonight, first day back after being out sick on Friday. The view was pretty, but I couldn't photograph it without a reflection. I offer the photo strictly as is.


But the most time-consuming, frustrating task of the evening by far has been to

• Troubleshoot
• Research
• Update
• Troubleshoot
• Research again
• Uninstall
• Uninstall again
• Reinstall
• Update
  
• Reinstall (2nd program)
• Update
• Run
• Fix AOL because of
• Reconfigure
  
• Run again
  

Norton Systemworks and Norton Internet Security. (Insert several reboots in there, one of which took 20 minutes, and you begin to get the idea.) I've been having trouble with Norton (and my computer generally) for weeks, with error messages and unfinished scans and slowdowns and not responding and I can't get to the AOL screen and why won't my darn computer SHUT DOWN!

Maybe it's fixed now.



And at the end of this long evening, when I should be well into REM sleep, I discover that Scalzi allows pet profiles for this shoot. One-take Tuffy obliges, with about two minutes of set-up.

Good night!

Karen

Technorati Tags: Scalzi, Monday Photo Shoot, Profiles, 9/11, Tucson

Since I Have Nothing to Say...

This has been on my hard drive
since at least two computers ago.

...perhaps it's best that I direct readers to some excellent postings about 9/11 by other people.

Paul reminds us of facts, and follows them up with an extraordinary, very personal account of a day spent in front of the tv.

Carly offers a very different remembrance of that day, some thoughts on related issues, and some useful links.

Bea prepared a class full of children for the news the school declined to announce. (Two part entry)

Patrick reveals why his memories of 9/11 involve a stranger named Joshua.

Shelly was close enough to smell the smoke.

2,996 Project:

David Angell - comedy writer-producer
Joshua Birnbaum - bond trader and musician
Thelma Cuccinello - grandmother
Dorothy Alma DeAraujo - artist
Jake Denis Jagoda- energy trader and former charter boat skipper
John Frederick Rhodes - senior vice president and family man

I'm sure there are tons more worth reading, but you get the idea.

Since it is now 9/11/06, I suppose this is my last chance for this year to try to find something new to say about what happened five years ago.

Sorry. Can't think of a thing.

Fortunately, Paul, Carly, Bea, Patrick and the rest did have something to say. Read them.

Flags at my mom's cemetery, Memorial Day 2005

My previous entry on 9/11: I Still Have Nothing to Contribute

Technorati Tags: 9-11