My Obligatory Thanksgiving Meditation

Weekend Assignment #86: Who are you thankful for -- who you won't be able to spend this Thanksgiving with? This is a chance to tell us about the people you care about who will be far away from you this holiday, or who have passed on but remain in your heart.

Extra Credit: Pumpkin pie vs. pecan pie -- which do you choose for Thanksgiving dessert?

First off, let me just say that I will not be boycotting John Scalzi's Weekend Assignments and Monday Photo Shoots. I know that some people disagree - violently - but I think he has been as honest and honorable as possible in an extremely difficult situation. I see no reason to cut myself off from his little exercises that I enjoy so much. Plus - get this! - by participating, we can entice readers to venture away from AOL USA to see what we've posted on Blogspot, AOL UK, or wherever else we've landed.

So. I've told you all before about what my dad did for me on Thanksgiving Day, 2002, how he helped to get me through the worst day of my life - from three thousand miles away. He's the obvious answer to this question. Then there's Ruth, my stepmother, (John calls them "your Dad and your Ruth"), who invited us to Wilmington for Thanksgiving. I took a rain check, because John doesn't like to fly, especially on holiday weekends. We'll do it some other time, as a real vacation. Yeah, I'm grateful for Ruth, who has had a great marriage with Dad for longer than my parents were married (and most of that was not great).



I can tell you I'm grateful for my mom, all she taught me, how she was there for me when I was a kid, and how we were friends and companions for most of the 1990s before her health got so horrendous. But honestly, I still can't think of my mom at Thanksgiving without pain. And Steve, my brother, well, I'm grateful for the times he comforted me as a kid, cheered me up with my stuffed animals, took me to church and maybe to the drugstore afterwards for a newspaper and a paperback book. But I've only seen him once in almost twenty years, so it's hard to be grateful about him at length, here and now.

So let's switch gears a little. We all had a terrible shock this week. Who got us through it? Our online friends, that's who!

Carly and Michael, Becky and Shelly and the rest won't be here in Tucson for Thanksgiving, and I won't be visiting any of them next week, except virtually. I've never seen a single one of them face to face. (Well, I've seen Howard, but he hasn't commented in many a month; and my friend Linda in Phoenix comments only by email.) I can't pass them the rutabagas, and they can't save me a drumstick. But they've been here for me, Carly and Michael, Becky and Shelly, Robbie and Maryanne and others. And I've tried to be here for them.



Here's the main thing I've learned this week. AOL can drive us away by being greedy and short-sighted, but they can't completely dismantle J-Land. True, some people will leave AOL, some will cut back on AOL and blog elsewhere, some will go the AOL International route, and some will stay on AOL US, either happily or with regrets. And yet, against all odds, J-Land still exists! It's more diverse than before, scattered across the blogosphere, and harder to keep track of. AOL Alerts can't help you with Blogger and Bravenet and so on. But we're finding each other, linking to each other, blogrolling each other as we figure out how to do that, and as we find everyone again. People are making discoveries about how to mitigate the badness, and spreading the news from blog to blog, board to board. And if someone comes back from somewhere, and asks what the heck happened, we tell them, and help them figure it out.

Now, it's true that tempers have flared. Here and there, people have said awful things to each other, and especially to John and Joe. There's also been sniping in the other direction, people saying loudly that anyone who is upset about the banner ads is a crybaby who should just shut up and go. But what is a family without the occasional fight? Can you honestly say that before the current crisis, you got along with everyone you ever encountered in J-Land? If you've been here a while, read widely, and written anything remotely controversial, the answer's probably no. And that's okay. You have particular friends in J-Land, people you love, people you like, and people whose words or pictures you view occasionally. Others have a different set of friends and acquaintances, with different tastes and interests and views on all those controversial subjects. And that's okay, too.

But within our circles of friends and acquaintances, we're still there for each other. Sometimes, we're even there for the people we don't like very much. We're a community, and that's how a community works.

That's who I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving. You folks.

Us.

Extra Credit: I often say that my favorite food is "pumpkin anything." I love pumpkin pie, pumpkin cream pie, harvest pie, pumpkin cheesecake, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin bread, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and even pumpkin seeds! Pecan pie's nice, John S., but I can get through a year without it. I can't seem to get through October-through-December without a least one portion of pumpkin something.

Dang. I'm hungry now.

Karen

Oh, Brave New World! A Quick Guide

Okay, guys, I see a lot of links sections in your sidebars with the tell-tale words "Edit-Me." People are asking me how to add links. Okay, a few quick hints:

1. If you actually click where it says Edit Me, it takes you to a help page on how to do it. Mind you, I'm not sure how helpful the help page is. I haven't looked at it.

Alternate method:

2. The links section is part of your template. If you click on the tab labeled Template in your Blogger control panel, you'll see a page of all the coding that tells Blogspot what your blog looks like and where things go in it. Scroll down, almost to the bottom. You'll see something that looks like this:




(If you right click and save these pictures, they should be a bit more readable.)

This is an unordered list (ul), and each line begins with a list item tag (li). Paste the links you want between the quotation marks in each line, and put the name of the blog or whatever where it says Google News or Edit-Me. You can paste in as many lines as you want, as long as they all start with li and end with /li with the /ul at the very end. Now it should look something like this:



Save changes.

Click the Republish button.

Done!

3. For how to keep up with non-AOL blogs: go to http://www.bloglines.com/, sign up, and read through what they do there. Basically, it's a way to look at everything that's been posted to blogs on your subscription list since you last checked. I've been lazy about doing this myself, 'cause it's a little confusing, and I was mostly depending on AOL Alerts instead. You too, huh? But check out the bottom of my sidebar. There's a little button that makes subscribing to Outpost relatively painless. If you want, you can add one of those handy-dandy buttons to yours, too, to help other people find their way back to you. The procedure is similar to adding links - just paste the HTML Bloglines gives you into your sidebar section, with a line break (br) before and after it.

4. People are getting upset because they publish an entry, and then can't see it right away. Been there, done that! This is a problem with the AOL internal browser, and sometimes with Internet Explorer. Emptying your cache and deleting history may or may not help. But if you do your blogging in Netscape, and reload the page, you see the entry right away! Also, IE doesn't seem to retain formatting if you're pasting stuff from elsewhere. Netscape does. I haven't tried Firefox - that might be good too. Somebody please let me know!

Karen

Update: please see the comments to this post for a couple of really good tips from Shelly and Robbie. Also, a thousand thank yous to Shelly for finding the source of my glitch on Messages from Mâvarin. The trick is to keep those photos narrow enough to fit the space alloted. I thought I had, but I missed one! - KFB

Meanwhile, in the World

Remember
Out in the world,
The sun still rises and sets.
Flowers have visitors.
Allocations must be made.
Dogs must be fed.
Spouses must be placated.

Out in the world,
Nobody cares
About banner ads on your blog.
Nobody cares
That J-Land is breaking up
And Blogger is confusing.

But we care.
Even if the sun sets.
Even if the dog is on the mooch.
Even if the spouse thinks
You're online too much anyway.

Just don't forget the rest:
And allocate time
To spouse and dog
And butterfly
And being out...
In the world.



KFB, 11/16/05

Okay, Here's My Cunning Plan....

Over the past 36 hours, I've seen most of my favorite AOL Journals taken private with no readers, or filled with angry postings. Some of you have already started an alternative blog or journal on BlogSpot or elsewhere. There are two major drawbacks to doing this:

1. Frankly, the Blogger templates have columns that are too narrow to do photos well. For the last year and a half I've been trying to tweak Messages from Mâvarin so that the main column is wider, and I've ended up with something that looks fine in Netscape but horrible in IE (and I don't know how it looks in Firefox or Safari). Steven, Becky, anyone: can you help me with this?



2. More important: in some cases we've spent years building a readership with comments and Weekend Assignments, Monday Photo Shoots and Round Robin Challenges, Saturday Six, Blog Explosion and plain old hard work. When we move to BlogSpot, we are back to square one. For example, here are my Technorati stats for Musings and Outpost, as of Wednesday at 7:22 PM MST:

Musings from Mâvarin

Rank: 26,175 (414 links from 68 sites)

Outpost Mâvarin

Rank: 938,770 (0 links from 0 sites)

Now, I know for a fact that there are at least two links to Outpost, but the point remains. We're starting over.

For this reason, I'm extremely reluctant to abandon Musings forever. I expect some of you feel the same way. You don't want to leave yet, in case something good happens, in case it blows over, in case it turns out that staying is the best alternative.

Allow me to suggest something we can do in the meantime: a multi-user blog! We could call it J-Land in Exile or something like that. One person would start it, and other people would be signed up as members. All members would be able to post on the blog. It would give people a forum while waiting for a resolution to the current mess, and help to keep the community together, and provide for more readers than a new solo effort. Then as people hang out their own shingles, the group blog (I think it's called a mob blog) would help to build a readership for those, too.

Now, if I were the one to start the thing, I would impose a few rules, a sort of watered down version of TOS: no personal attacks, no overt bigotry, no explicit sex. This would be for the protection of the blog members, and to keep things reasonably pleasant. (And of course, you can always start your own blog without such strictures, subject to the provider's terms and conditions.)

Who could get in as members and start posting? Why, anyone who asks, of course! Again, if I'm the one to start it, I'll reserve the right to lock out anyone who gets to egregious in the personal attacks and such. However, unlike AOL, I wouldn't do it capriciously, without investigation, or without contacting the people involved first.



Well? Whaddaya think? Hello?

[Insert sound of crickets here.]

Karen

Two Quick Things...

...before I dash back to work:

1. Sign the petition:

http://gopetition.com/online/7527.html

2. Patrick has a clearinghouse for forwarding links:

http://journals.aol.com/pattboy92/TheGreatExodus/

I have an interesting idea. I'll tell you about it tonight!

Karen

Welcome to the Outpost!

Like any outpost, this may be abandoned eventually, or it may grow into something big and lively and permanent. It all depends on whether AOL backs off from the banner ads that have sent half of AOL J-Land packing in less than a day.

Until and unless that happens, this will be my main blog / journal. Even so, Musings from Mâvarin will remain up and running and public, for at least a while. I have over 500 entries there, a decent readership and Technorati rating, and AOL on dial-up as my only online access.

Honestly, I don't even care that much about the banner ads over there. The darn things are ubiquitous anyway, so I had no great expectations about Musings remaining banner-free. What I do resent is that AOL callously disregarded the feelings and expectations of thousands of active journalers, and destroyed over two years of community-building in less than a day. I'll bet that by now, over half the VIVI nominees have at least a toe in the water on other blogging services. A dear friend has taken her three journals private so that NOBODY can read them. The same has been done by other people with other journals I read. It's a damn shame - and you know that I don't use words like "damn" likely.

Time to dip this particular toe in the water and see how cold it is. Back in a bit.

Karen

Photos on a theme:



Exodus.



Loss. (This is the maquette for the bear that used to sing Blood on the Saddle in the Country Bear Jamboree. But the Jamboree is no more, at least at Disneyland. It was the very last attraction Walt Disney approved at the drawing board stage - the day before he died. The attraction was originally for a resort that never got off the ground.)

Post Musings forwarding entry - check.
Add photos to this entry - check.
Claim this blog in Technorati - check.
Add link from LiveJournal - check.

Remember, people: if you're started a non-AOL blog to be your main one, please post your link! I'll add it to the sidebar. And I'd appreciate it if you would do the same for me!

A Childhood Full of Books

Thursday, October 20, 2005
10:29:00 PM MST
A Childhood Full of Books

Weekend Assignment #82: What was your favorite bedtime story as a child?

Extra Credit: As an adult, have you shared that favorite bedtime story with a child?

This may sound strange, coming from someone who owns thousands of books, including at least a hundred kids' books; but I don't recall ever being read to at bedtime. That's right; I said ever, E-V-E-R. While it may have happened, all my memories are of me doing the reading, with or without adult assistance, and doing so by daylight. I don't know why. That's just what I remember.

But that's not to say that I don't have fond memories of early encounters with particular books:


I remember Mrs. Livingston reading Winnie-the-Pooh to our first grade class, and my grandmother's subsequent gift to me of her personal copy of the book, printed in 1945. I still have it, dark with age and cigarettes, worn and dog-eared.

I remember how much I loved One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. Still do. I bought it again as an adult, but it's hiding from me just at the moment. I can still recite two of the poems in it from memory, but I'll try not to do so now. My two other Dr. Seuss favorites were Green Eggs and Ham (I told you about my dad making green eggs and ham for me, remember?) and Ten Apples Up on Top. The latter book is attributed to Theo LeSieg, not Dr. Seuss, but that's just another variant name for good old Ted Geisel. I think he didn't put the Seuss name on books unless he did the illustrations.

I remember reading something called Little Dog Tim over and over in the school library in first grade.


I remember getting and reading my brother's hand-me-down Whitman books of Tom Sawyer and of Howard Pyle's Robin Hood. I think I got Black Beauty for Christmas or my birthday. Other beloved hand-me-down books from Steve were Sunnybank: Home of Lad and Further Adventures of Lad by Albert Payson Terhune; and another Whitman book, Lassie and The Secret of the Summer. I read the Lassie book so many times that I can still tell you that Jeff's favorite musician, according to the book, was someone named Dan Dawson. But I had to wonder, who the heck was Jeff? Lassie's proper owner was Timmy, in my experience.

I remember reading a biography of Henry Ford once when I had the flu, and one of Helen Keller (I think I was healthy for that one).

I remember reading another of my grandmother's old books, given to me around 1965. It was an 1865 edition of The Cricket's Friends by Cousin Virginia. As I recall, the Cricket's close friends included a saucepan and a teakettle. Go figure. I think it was a little water-damaged (probably by me), but basically still in nice shape. There was even a tipped-in sheet of tissue paper protecting the frontispiece. In the early 1970s, my mom encouraged me to donate the book to the Arents rare book collection at Syracuse University's Bird Library. I got a nice letter back from the collection's curator, thanking me and identifying the mysterious Cousin Virginia by full name. I'm sorry to say that I almost regret the donation, though. I'd like to reread the book! Maybe someday I'll buy a copy online. I know it turns up for sale, in several printings from the 1860s.

I remember reading A Wrinkle in Time when I was in fifth grade. It's fair to say that it's had a lasting impact on my life.

I remember loving The Little Prince, and also The Little Lame Prince (no relation), The Little Lost Angel and The Five Little Kittens. Well, maybe not so much the kittens.

I remember a book called Surprise in a Tree (apparently by Lillian Moore), and one about baby black bears who get into some paint and end up in the polar bear exhibit, and another one about a boy named Billy. In the latter Easy Reader Book, Billy makes his mom a a birthday cake. Quoting from memory here:

Hmm. This cake looks kind of bumpy.
Maybe Ma won't see it's lumpy.
I know it will be good to eat.

In the second half of the book he makes his mom a hat out of all sorts of things, including a bird cage:

"No, Ma, please, Ma, no, Ma, no."
She said, "Billy, you are silly.
Why do you say 'No, Ma, no?'
This is junk. Out it will go."


(Great, now that's gonna be stuck in my head all night. But I'd rather have that than I've Been Working on the Railroad, which chugged around in my tired brain for an hour this morning.)

I remember the books I bought for myself: Skip (about a blind dog) and Follow My Leader (about a blind boy and his dog) from the Arrow Book Club, and Peanuts books from Economy Books at Shoppingtown, back before it was a mall. I think the Peanuts books were 50 cents at the time. My allowance was a quarter. That meant I could buy one every two weeks, if managed to scrounge the tax from Mom.

And I remember fairy tales, especially a very small book of The Bremen Town Musicians, and other one of The Princess and the Pea. The first one I loved because it was about animals. I'm not sure how I feel about the second one now. Like Snow White and Cinderella, the protagonist is virtuous and downtrodden, which certainly has its appeal. But are we supposed to applaud her for being oversensitive, supposedly a sure sign of royal blood? If that were true, I'd be a queen!

Did I have a favorite story? Sure. I had lots of them, at different times. Little Dog Tim was a big hit with me for a while, probably because it was illustrated with photos instead of drawings. I remember Ten Apples Up on Top being my favorite at one point. I remember reading and re-reading the Snoopy books, probably every day for a while. At one time or another, probably nearly every book I've mentioned above was my "favorite."

And I still love them. That's why I've bought back as many of these books as possible, in the same editions I had as a kid. Too bad I can't Google up the story of Billy and his mom. I don't know the title, and the most memorable lines brought up nothing but a message board in which guys were saying terrible things to each other for fun. [Edit, 9/15/2013: It's Billy Brown Makes Something Grand by Tamara Kitt.]

Extra Credit: I don't have kids, and never had a younger sibling, and my godson lives hundreds of miles away. I did tell most of the plot of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to some kids I babysat once. Years later, when I was in college, I told the same story around a back yard campfire to the kids next door. Oh, and the last time my godson was in town, I read a few selections from Heirs of Mâvarin to Jacob and his parents.

Karen

Written by mavarin.
This entry has 9 comments:

The Little Prince - I even have this one in french - I adore that story! http://journals.aol.com/pixiedustnme/Inmyopinion/entries/1303
Comment from pixiedustnme - 10/21/05 6:16 PM
Woops--typed the link wrong. Here goes again: http://journals.aol.com/debbted/SassysSecondWord
Comment from debbted - 10/21/05 10:23 AM

Omg Karen~You still get my "most thorough" award! ;-) Thanks for reminding me of so many other favorites. How could I forget Lassie or Black Beauty?! For extra extra credit I have even shared the Lassie movie with my Collie ;-) (true) Love the photos of your books as well. Dang, I am now grieving for all the books I didn't lug with me on this last move. They are like old lost friends; I know you will understand this! ;-) Wonderful entry!!! Blessings, Sassy ;-)

http://journals.aol.com/debbted/SassySecondWord
Comment from debbted - 10/21/05 10:22 AM

Karen,
I loved this entry!
You brought back memories of so many favorite books that I have loved!
I still read The Little Prince every now and then, and I even have a copy of it written in French, which I studied in high school.
I adore The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, but didn't ever read it until adulthood after I got hooked on C.S.Lewis.
You'll probably wonder about my mothering skills when I 'fess up and tell you that I read "A Wrinkle in Time" for the sole purpose of helping my son write his book report. Okay, truth be known, I wrote the whole darned thing 'cause he was too lazy to read the book himself! But I did enjoy that book very much, too, though I would need to go back and refresh my memory as to why I enjoyed it so much. What was that word I learned from that book? Hmmm, something that started with a T. Tessernaut? Tesserism? Darn, this is going to drive me nuts all day, and I don't think I still have that book around anymore since we moved!
Some of your favorites indicate that you are much younger than I, but I certainly loved the same classics as you.
By the way, as a child I was never read to at bedtime either, but I adored books.
Thanks for this lovely entry. Maybe I should do the weekend assignment , too , now that you've made the wheels begin to turn!
Comment from globetrotter2u - 10/21/05 9:17 AM

Y'know, I don't recall being read to as a child, tho I'm sure I was, since that's probably where I got my love for reading as both my parents are/were readers. Given that it was 50 years or so ago, I don't really expect to remember. :) I do remember books I read as a child, mainly Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (I even had a model of the Cat that I made) and a whole lot of Little Golden Books. I just can't remember back to before I could read.
Comment from shellys555 - 10/21/05 6:48 AM

Wow, that brings back some memories. I had a number of those books as well. And like you, my memories of someone reading to me are mostly from the daytime. My mother used to read to me before my nap. My earliest memories of bedtime stories are of my grandma telling me werewolf tales! Now you have an idea of why I'm so warped. ;-)
Comment from jabarett - 10/21/05 6:10 AM

HA! I used to have those Snoopy books. I just looked, and they are no longer around, but I still have The Beagle Has Landed.
-Paul
Comment from plittle - 10/21/05 6:04 AM

Great choices! Honestly...I don't remember being read to either!! My mother insists that she did and The Velveteen Rabbit was my favorite (I asked her about this a year or so ago when I was buying books for Tyler's growing library.) I think I remember my grandmother reading to us a time or two. And I remember reading to my brother, for sure. I have vivid memories of all HIS books. LOL
Comment from ryanagi - 10/21/05 5:38 AM

Hey Karen :)

Oh my, I loved the "Little Prince" when I was a kid. My 6th grade teacher read it to us during our art hour. Ph how fun. I haven't thought of that book in a long time. :) Of course "Winnie The Pooh" was fun too. I loved Tigger. :)

Always, Carly
Comment from ondinemonet - 10/20/05 10:48 PM