Melissa Wiley's Blog, page 70

Lots to talk about

I took a little trip. Had myself a perfectly wonderful time. Got home late, late last night…after many days of very late nights. Will catch up soon. Until then, I wanted to point you back to the comments on this post, where thoughtful writers like Erin of Mother Bird are continuing to share thought about blog commenting. Also, don’t miss this lovely rumination on the topic by Lesley Austin at Weaving Wild Simplicity. I’ll be chiming in on both those threads as soon as I get a chance.

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Books and Books and Books

  

The next volume of Scott’s alternate history/thriller series, Uncivil War, is now available for Kindle. A collection of five short stories, on sale for 99 cents. If you’ve read Vol. 1, The Island, and are eager to hear more about Harry and Buttercup, you’ll have to wait… This volume, After the Fall, features new characters, new story arcs (and is decidedly not YA, I should add, in case the first installment gave that impression).

More books I wanted to mention: Sarah Elwell’s The Memory of Light and Otherwise. Sarah’s writing has been some of my favorite on the internet since I discovered her old blog, Homespun—way back in 2005, was it? She blogs now at Knitting the Wind and Gnossienne, and writes poetry and fiction as well. I have a special hand-bound edition of Otherwise that I cherish. Both books are available as ebooks, and Sarah is offering them on her website, asking a small donation toward her daughter’s athletic training. (She is a serious—and seriously talented—windsurfer, working toward Nationals.) You can find out more at Gnossienne.

Thanks to my pal Karen Edmisten, I recently read Where’d You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple, and loved it, couldn’t put it down. Made Scott read it immediately afterward so we could discuss. (He’s very obliging that way.) Have you read it? Want to gab?

I’m still reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things, which, since it’s about a nineteeth-century lady botanist, is the very definition of had-me-at-hello. I’m not very far in yet; got waylaid by the aforementioned Bernadette and then a sudden inexplicable need to reread Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time. These things happen. But Alma’s a mighty captivating character and I’m looking forward to following her farther into the century.

What are you reading right now?

Sunday Snapshot

Bookstore Event Today

San Diego folks: I’m doing a booksigning and reading at the Hazard Center Barnes & Noble today at 2:30, right after the St. Didacus School choir concert. Come say hi!

Poetry Friday: The Twa Corbies

Arthur Rackham illustration from Some British Ballads, 1919.

Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Our poetry selections for today, as we move out of Chaucer and into some medieval ballads: “The Twa Corbies” and its English cousin, “The Three Ravens.” Just a little something light and cheerful for a chilly November day. You know, light like sunbleached bones.

The Twa Corbies

As I was walking all alane,

I heard twa corbies makin a mane;

The tane unto the ither say,

“Whar sall we gang and dine the-day?”

“In ahint yon auld fail dyke,

I wot there lies a new slain knight;

And nane do ken that he lies there,

But his hawk, his hound an his lady fair.”

“His hound is tae the huntin gane,

His hawk tae fetch the wild-fowl hame,

His lady’s tain anither mate,

So we may mak oor dinner swate.”

“Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,

And I’ll pike oot his bonny blue een;

Wi ae lock o his gowden hair

We’ll theek oor nest whan it grows bare.”

“Mony a one for him makes mane,

But nane sall ken whar he is gane;

Oer his white banes, whan they are bare,

The wind sall blaw for evermair.”

(spoken)

(sung)

This week’s Poetry Friday roundup can be found at Teacher Dance.

Related: do me a quick favor?

If you have a blog of your own, or a Tumblr or some other platform where you share things with the public (including a public FB page), would you share the link in the comments here? Even if you know I already know the link. (Other readers here may not.) I’d love to make sure none of my blog-friends are slipping through the cracks of my feed reader. Ever since I switched over to Feedly, I feel like something’s missing—even though I imported from Google Reader and all my subscriptions should be intact.

Feel free to tell us a little something about you and your site. But no pressure! I hereby declare Bonny Glen a certified Pressure-Free Zone.

Updated to add: your comments will probably get held up in moderation because of the links. Don’t worry if they don’t show up right away; just means I need to move them out of pending.

This one’s long enough to make up for the two weeks of silence

So it seems I hit a little blog lull, quite unexpectedly. I write posts in my head every day, all through the day (it’s why I began blogging in the first place, you know: thinking in narrative is the way my brain has always, always worked)—but lately I seem prone to tossing a thought or a quip or a link onto Facebook instead of chronicling here. And yet I recoil, actually, from the idea of handing over one’s mental activity to the data-miners and the the rushing update stream. I have this looping conversation with myself over and over. If you blog and are also active on Facebook, I bet you know exactly what I mean.

On Facebook, people leave comments: that’s one point in its favor, part of its great appeal. And let me back up and say how much I love certain aspects of Facebook! I champion it often, when people are running it down for being shallow or negative. Facebook gave me what no other medium has: daily contact with my faraway cousins, my old school friends, my coworkers from jobs long past. Very precious contact, actually. Friendships rekindled and deepened. Road trips made merry (and potentially safer) by en route updates, with friends keeping tabs on us and inviting us to stop and stretch our legs as we made our way across the country and back. There are things Facebook can do that this blog cannot.

But: vice versa! Such riches I have tucked into the archives here—family treasures, I mean. Stories I’d certainly have forgotten, had I not recorded them here. A diary of sorts of our homeschooling journey. An annotated reading journal. A commonplace book, with pictures. Oh, I love this blog, what it’s given me. Including the friends: no small matter, that. Facebook reconnected me with old friends. Blogging gave me new ones, and I count those friendships as very real and rich indeed.

I don’t comment on your blogs nearly often enough. I’m still probably among your most faithful readers, though, did you know that? I find myself reaching for the like button to let you know I’ve appreciated a post, am nodding my head at your insight or smiling at your joke. On Facebook people snark about the superficiality of ‘likes.’ I understand why, it’s quick and glancing, it’s not saying anything meaningful, it sometimes suggests an unfortunate endorsement of the wrong half of a sentence. (“I got an offer on a YA novel today! But then I fell and broke my leg.” Er, like? No, wait!) But that silly like button serves a purpose. I means I’m here, I’m reading this, I took note of what you said, I’m glad you shared. If I could click a button on Feedly to let you know I’d appreciated a post, you can bet I would. Clicking through to actually comment, now…oh, I wish I were better about it. Sometimes it’s captcha that deters me, or login technicalities. (Blogger gets very grumpy with me when I don’t want to comment as Melissa Wiley’s Official Data-Providing Google Account, which I loathe doing on friends blogs because I’m just Lissa to you, right? And I can never remember my WordPress login on blogs that aren’t mine.) But other times, a friendly comment is an easy click away and I still don’t take the time, because I’m probably reading your post on my phone, and I really really hate typing with my thumbs.

A Facebook update is much more likely to generate discussion these days, at least for me. Of course, Facebook is such a combustible stew of people from all one’s different worlds and walks of life—sometimes I cringe, seeing all my people jumbled up together that way. I’ve tried separating my personal and professional worlds there but it’s flat impossible. Colleagues become friends, and then what do you do? Make them switch accounts? Who can keep up with multiple accounts anyway? Not I.

All of this is musing without agenda: I simply thought I’d try thinking aloud here the way I did in the olden days of blogging. You know, way back in 2006.

For my own amusement, a few of the topics I’ve posted about on social media recently:

• geocaching, which has become our favorite pastime, and I could talk about it ENDLESSLY for HOURS (see one diabolically clever hiding place in the photo above—oh how we shrieked!)

• how I’ve started writing serious poems again, and I really miss my old grad-school poetry workshop mates and the close readings we used to do of our own poems and others

• Coursera classes I’m taking (alone or with various kids), and many many thoughts about how we use Coursera—and actually I have a long post half-written on that subject. It began here (is still in drafts) and spilled over to Facebook, and judging from that conversation I actually have a lot of practical information to share on the topic.

• related: gossip as a vital tool for human survival—one of the many fascinating points of discussion in the Coursera “Brief History of Humankind” class I’m taking, about which I have LOADS OF THINGS to say

• also related: the Coursera “Modern and Contemporary Poetry” course is wonderful and is going a long way to satisfy my ache for close readings, since each week’s lesson consists of video discussions (grad students and professor) of several different poems—one poem per fifteen(ish)-minute video, perfect for diving into in small chunks of time, which is all I have

• a mocking gripe about my internet service provider, not worth recording

• links to various articles, all of which I’ve shared in the sidebar here anyway

• my delight over the first sketches for Inch and Roly #3

• a picture of The Greatest American Hero, which generated more comments than anything else I’ve posted this month

• the sudden realization after all these years that in the Magic School Bus theme song, the guy is not actually saying “Make a sacrifice on Mars.”

• and in the comments of the above, the revelation that “the guy” is none other than Little Richard!!!

• an adorable photo of my boys

• Overheard, Rilla to Huck: “I’m going to teach you three things. The first one is Pounce, and it goes like this.”

Which is, it turns out, kind of a lot.

Heads Up! Betsy-Tacy on Sale for Kindle Today

The first Betsy-Tacy book is $1.99 on Kindle today. Hat tip to Ellisa—thanks for alerting me!

Me thinketh that I shall rehearse it here

The girls and I are having a good time with Chaucer. We’re making our way through the Prologue—slowly; this is a slow reading—using the Norton Anthology of Poetry because it’s conveniently marked up with my notes from college, as well as having decent footnotes to help us along with the Middle English. I was delighted to discover I could still quote the opening lines, thanks to my wonderful Medieval Lit prof, Dr. John Krause. Now Rose and Beanie are learning them, which makes me six kinds of happy.

I’m reading aloud relevant bits of Marshall’s English Literature for Boys and Girls for background and color, some of which gives us a good laugh, since Marshall feels compelled to reassure her young readers that she isn’t going to scandalize them with the unsavory stuff, but perhaps they will appreciate it in context when they are older. Today this led to a discussion of Victorian* sensibilities and occasional outbursts of “Your ankle is showing!” (Perhaps you had to be there. We were crying laughing.)

(*English Literature for Boys and Girls was published in 1909, so isn’t itself Victorian, but Marshall’s tone very often is, and amusingly so. “Some of these stories you will like to read, but others are too coarse and rude to give you any pleasure. Even the roughness of these tales, however, helps us to picture the England of those far-off days. We see from them how hard and rough the life must have been when people found humor and fun in jokes in which we can feel only disgust.” Er, no, Henrietta, I think a casual meandering through YouTube will make a strong case for the enduring appeal of “coarse and rude” content.)

This morning’s passage was some more of the prologue—we haven’t met all the travelers yet; we’re doing a slow reading—and then “The Complaynt of Chaucer to His Purse,” which my daughters, the offspring of two freelance writers, understood all too well. After we finish the prologue, we’ll read two Tales together. Chanticleer, I think, because the girls know it from the Barbara Cooney book and I expect they’ll enjoy hearing the original, and one other I haven’t decided upon yet. And then they can read the rest on their own, if they like.

My favorite part of our discussion today was in regard to Chaucer’s apologia for the Miller’s Tale:

What should I more say but this miller

He would his words for no man forbear,

But told his churls tale in his manner.

Me thinketh that I shall rehearse it here;

And therefore every gently wight I pray,

For Goddes love deem not that I say

Of evil intent, but for I might rehearse

Their tales all, be they better or worse,

Or else falsen some of my matter…

(To borrow Marshall’s translation, since I had the tab open already)

We talked about how every writer of fiction (and biography, memoir, many other forms) has to grapple with this same challenge, and how gratifying it is to me to see Chaucer dealing with it way back in the 14th century. Sometimes our characters must say and do things we, personally, find distressing or even offensive. This has been the hardest part of writing my current novel, actually. It’s historical fiction and though I wish my characters were more enlightened on several points, I must be true to the time, must let these people tell their stories authentically “or else falsen some of my matter.” One of the chief parts of my job is climbing inside these unfamiliar skins and attempting to walk some miles in them. I inch my way in and find Chaucer has already been there.

Adventure of English, take two!

Heard from two friends that yesterday’s post isn’t displaying the YouTube clip on iPad. Sorry about that! It’s visible on my laptop so I didn’t realize. Here’s the direct link for those who missed it: The Adventure of English episode one: The Birth of a Language. We’re deep into episode two now and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Thanks for the heads-up, Ellie and Edith!