I really love Wikipedia. I think the concept is a good one — allow users to add their expertise to content or create content themselves. However, I think it is a bit too optimistic to expect that people who do not create accounts can be trusted. Time after time, I have seen the damage to that site that is wreaked by vandals, and I think it takes up too much time on the part of other users and admins to clean it up. I don’t think it would go away if users had to register to add content, but I think it would diminish. Ultimately, there is very little we can do to keep folks from wrecking the web, I guess, but we can make a bit more difficult.
Ten Years Gone
Led Zeppelin has been my favorite band since I was nearly 16. I used to listen to KNAC in Los Angeles when we lived in Anaheim. You might think it is weird to think of me as a heavy metal fan, but I was indeed. Ask my sister, who comments here frequently and may even verify my membership in the Heavy Metal Chick Club. My introduction to metal was Mötley Crüe and — please don’t laugh — Dokken. I do cringe at the latter, but yes, the first two heavy metal albums I bought were Theatre of Pain and Under Lock and Key during the summer between 8th and 9th grade. I had the former on cassette and the latter on vinyl, if you can believe that.
Some time during my freshman year, I became a huge fan of Bon Jovi. I used to fall asleep every night with my Walkman on, listening to Slippery When Wet. I liked Richie Sambora. I was always weird like that. Because I knew Jon Bon Jovi was the best-looking one, the one all the other girls crushed on, I had to be different and like Richie Sambora. Not that he wasn’t good looking enough. I used to cut Bon Jovi clippings from music magazines and pasted them into a scrapbook. I have no idea whatever happened to that thing, but I carried it with me at school.
One day, I was in my room, listening to KNAC, and they played “Stairway to Heaven.” I had never heard Led Zeppelin before, if you can believe it. I thought it was an amazing song. I only caught the name of the artist, and not the name of the song, so I didn’t know what it was. Back in those days, I used to tape the radio and listen to my tapes over and over. If I heard the DJ annouce a song and/or artist I liked was about to be played, I quickly popped in a tape and recorded it. So one day, the DJ announced he was going to play Led Zeppelin. I recorded it, but it wasn’t “Stairway” — it was “Gallow’s Pole.”
I can’t remember how, but I eventually learned the title of the song. One day when I was out shopping with my dad, I found the Led Zeppelin cassettes and read the back, looking for “Stairway.” I purchased my first Led Zeppelin tape — variously known as Led Zeppelin IV, Four Symbols, Runes, or Zoso, but in actually, untitled except for four symbols appearing on the inner sleeve.
For my 16th birthday, I asked for more tapes. I think I had them all in pretty short order. Some time after becoming a fan, and I can’t remember when, I settled on a favorite Led Zeppelin song: “Ten Years Gone,” which appeared on the double-album, Physical Graffiti. It’s been my favorite Zeppelin song for years now. In fact, a lot more than twenty, never mind ten years gone. I was playing around on You Tube this morning, and I found a recording of “Ten Years Gone” from the famous concert Zeppelin played at Knebworth.
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Degrassi
When I was in high school, I watched the show Degrassi Junior High whenever I was able to catch it on PBS. I was kind of embarrassed, because the show’s characters were younger than I was. The theme song was ten kinds of lame, too. But I guess one shouldn’t necessarily judge a show by its theme song. My favorite character was “Spike,” whose real name was Christine. One of the things I liked about the show was that it was realistic. The characters looked like real kids I knew, not beauty queens or movie stars. They were involved in realistic plots that I recognized from my own school. For instance, Spike got pregnant and had a baby as a teen. I knew girls in school that this happened to. Characters tried drugs and alcohol. It was a good show.
One day in class, I no longer remember how, one of my students mentioned the current incarnation of Degrassi. I knew there was one, because I don’t live in a hole, but I had not seen it. I mentioned to my students that I watched the 1980’s incarnation and mentioned Spike. My student excitedly told me that Spike’s daughter Emma was a character on the current Degrassi, and so was Spike. I decided I’d have to check it out when I got a chance, but my thinking was that I was too old to be watching stuff like this.
I got a chance to check out Degrassi this morning when I woke up at 4:00. I have been going to bed around 8:00 the last two nights, which is unlike me. It also means I have been waking up at about 4:00. Anyway, it’s pretty good, and to my way of thinking, a lot like the version I watched when I was in high school. One of the things I like is that the show is honest. It is about real kids, who look like real kids and have the problems real kids have. Maybe I’ll watch it more regularly.
Maggie’s Friends
Maggie comes up with some really creative names for her stuffed animals. Considering she’s only five years old, I have to say I am continually impressed her her intellect and creativity. I decided to catalog the names of her friends, or her daughters, as she likes to call them. Spellings are my invention, as Maggie is currently unable to write and tell us how the names should be spelled.
- Mr. Meow-Meow is the oldest. She’s (Maggie insists despite the honorific that Mr. Meow-Meow is not a male cat) an old, formerly-white cat with fur that used to be soft and is now like a pilled sweater. All of her stuffing has been squeezed from the neck area to either the head or body.
- Miss Tickles is a white kitty as well. Her body is shaped more like that of a real cat.
- Ooman (rhymes with Newman) is a stuffed C3PO doll that is actually her brothers’. She gave it more than one bath, which took all the gold sheen, leaving a sort of goldish-gray color.
- Mr. Lumpidoh is a gray elephant.
- Odie is a small blond puppy with brown ears, one of them torn.
- Luvinjenner is a hot pink puppy. What a name! It is pronounced the same as “love” & “jenner” like Bruce Jenner. I have no idea.
Steve recently wrote a post about rescuing Mr. Meow-Meow and Odie, who have been trapped down a air conditioning vent that doesn’t seem to be hooked up to the air conditioning system. It seems to open straight down to the crawlspace under the house. I think there may be a way to access the area where they fell from under the house, but the one and only time I went down there, it scared me so bad! Our house is over 100 years old. There is a stone that looks suspiciously like a tombstone at the entrance to the crawlspace. And I’m fairly convinced the place is haunted by mild-mannered spirits. I thought of getting one of those tools folks use to pick up trash on the road, but they were out of them when I went to Home Depot. I never dreamed one could find the right tool at Walgreens!
Update: I had a discussion with Maggie this morning about her stuffed animals. I forgot to mention Classical Dog, who is a stuffed bassett hound, Bandi, a baby deer who is named for Bambi (at least the way Maggie pronounces it), and Snow White, who is actually a stuffed version of Uga, the mascot for UGA. It plays the Georgia Fight Song when you squeeze its tummy.
What Do You Think They’ll Ask You About?
Some far day in the future, you might be interviewed by your grandchild for school. It’s a popular assignment, and one I’ve done myself. I interviewed my grandfather about the Ku Klux Klan (no, he wasn’t a member, but he had information about it that I wanted to include in a report I wrote). My great-uncle Alvin interviewed his grandmother about what school was like when she was a girl. Sometimes genealogists interview their grandparents about family history, as I have done with my maternal grandparents and my great-grandmother. One day, a grandparent of yours will ask you questions. What do you think you’ll ask you about?
Mine will probably want to know what I remember about 9/11. On a personal level, they might want to know about my divorce and remarriage. Maybe they’ll want to know what life was like before everyone had computers and Internet access.
It would be nice if they could ask me what the world was like before world peace was established and hunger and poverty were abolished, but I fear I won’t see that in my own lifetime. One can’t watch Star Trek without hoping one day…
I think that just knowing that they care enough about what I think or what I’ve experienced to ask about it will make me happy.
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Genealogy
I have mostly been working on my family history research over the last week or so. I do this in spurts. I have one advantage over many other genealogists: I started the hobby when I was much younger than most people do. It’s a lot of fun. I have managed to connect with distant relatives who are doing the same thing, and in many cases they have been very helpful and generous with information and photographs. My distant cousin Joe sent me a nice thank-you e-mail after receiving a copy of my great-great grandmother Stella’s diary. I could tell he was a kindred spirit by the way he reacted to it. He felt the same way about it as I do.
Figuring out where you come from is interesting, but I wish I could see some of these people. I wonder if I look like any of them, or if my kids do. My ex-husband resembles his great-great grandfather in some ways. I see it in the eyes and a bit in the shape of the face. My daughter looks just like her father. Hence:
Compare Sarah’s forehead eyebrows, and eyes to her great-great-great grandfather:
Compare her face shape to her great-great-great grandmother:
I think Sarah looks like she could be their daughter, yet she’s their great-great-great granddaughter. She looks more like them than she does me!
This hobby is fascinating. If you haven’t ever looked into your family history, do it while you’re young. We don’t like to face this, but your best source is your elderly family members. They may not be here when you become interested in genealogy late in life. In my experience, too, they love to tell their stories. Give them a chance.
Old Posts
I have now uploaded old posts up through the end of September 2001. Wow. Nearly five years ago, this stuff was written. Five years ago, I was thinking a lot about my own writing and wanting to do more with it. And I haven’t done much since then. In five years!
Re-reading my 9/11 posts and looking at the children’s artwork I posted to my online diary brought tears to my eyes.
One of the reasons I wanted to transfer some of what I wrote back then to this more permanent space is that it is really interesting to look back and see who you were. I wish I still had the diary I kept when I was 15. I would love to see what was going on in my head nearly 20 years ago. I really admire Roger for continuously keeping a journal for as long as he has. I really like his posts when he goes through his journals and writes what he was doing 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. But journaling late is better than never doing it at all.
Kerri Strug and Brats in Public
No, the two subjects of my title are not related. I don’t think.
Atlanta hosted the Olympics in 1996, and the AJC has been doing all these retrospective articles. Today, I logged in to see an article entitled “Whatever Happened to Kerri Strug?” I have to admit that one piqued my curiosity. Who doesn’t remember how she did that second vault — flawlessly — with an injured ankle? Who doesn’t remember her coach, Bela Karolyi carrying her out to the podium to receive her medal? Who doesn’t remember how her performance secured the gold medal for the American women’s gymnastics team — for the first time? I’m not at all into sports, and gymnastics is pretty much all I watch of the Olympics (if I watch any of it).
I watched the women’s gymnastics vaulting in real time. It was intense. Kerri Strug became the hero of the 1996 Olympics right before my eyes. Now Strug works for the U.S. Department of Justice, speaking to mostly at-risk kids about her Olympic experience. She also used to teach second grade. She’s pretty level-headed about her experience:
“I don’t think I can just live on that vault forever,” Kerri said. “Clearly I love going out and talking about it. It was the highlight of my life; it’s great to share that with everyone. I’m proud of it, but I have to grow, too, as a person.”
Here is a recent photo of Strug:
Another article in the Sunday Living section caught my eye, too. The article, “Brat Backlash,” discusses the annoyance of toddlers and small children who are not properly taught how to act in public. I don’t take my children to restaurants any fancier than Olive Garden, and I don’t take them to events that I know will bore them. I don’t take my kids to movies where the expectation is to be quiet (even though they are fairly quiet at the movies) — I take them to kids’ movies during matinee hours, when I know lots of other kids will also be present. If my kids decide to be brats in public and will not respond to correction, they are removed from the setting. Why other folks cannot be similarly considerate, I have no idea. Once when we were at TGIFridays, a family nearby had two children older than Dylan and Maggie. They were running around, getting in the way, making noise. Maggie kept looking at Steve and me. She asked us why the kids were not sitting down. She was openly bothered by how they were acting and even attempted to correct them. Knowing this behavior would be perceived as rude by the family (no matter how rude they were being), we shushed her and said quietly it was up to their parents to tell them to stop. Which, I might add, they never did (of course). I think if a five-year-old can look at a couple of kids and determine they are not behaving in public, adults should have no problem. The next time I see something like that happening, I plan to complain to the manager. My kids are not perfect, but they know how to behave when we go out somewhere, and I have been approached on more than one occasion and told by a complete stranger that my kids were well-behaved. I don’t have a regular babysitter, so if we have to go somewhere that isn’t at least somewhat kid-friendly, we just don’t go. We may not have planned our kids, but we chose to have them, and that means we take responsibility for them, including teaching them how to behave when they go out. I am constantly dismayed by the large number of parents who refuse to teach their children how to behave in public and refuse to leave them at home. Folks, you have to do one or the other.
Blogging Minutiae
We had a little bit of a reprieve from the heat today as it was cloudy and a bit rainy. I took Maggie to the doctor to have her hearing tested. I was surprised to learn they were open on Saturdays. Now we just have to have her teeth checked at the dentist, and she’ll be ready for school registration.
I couldn’t sleep last night. My sleeping schedule always gets messed up during the summer. I am, I suppose, naturally predisposed toward being a night person, but it doesn’t make me feel good about myself. It makes me feel lazy. Logically, I don’t know why it should, as I get the same stuff done on the night shift as I do through the school year (work aside, which can’t be helped as school is out). Maybe it is something in my old Southern farmer blood that insists one must be up with the chickens in order to be a productive member of society. I think it makes me feel kind of blue to be on this schedule. It is sort of a matter of my mind fighting a losing battle with my body.
In the mail today I received my two complimentary author’s copies of English Journal, July 2006 in which my article appears on p. 33. It’s very exciting for me to be published in what is possibly the most influential journal for English teachers. I have pullout quotes and a minibiography and everything!
I was thinking about my great-great grandmother, Stella Bowling Cunningham, again. I don’t know why I am so curious about her in particular among all of my ancestors. Maybe because she was a teacher. But I have had other teachers in the family who don’t pique my interest. I think it might be the journal. I have a photocopy of a journal she kept in 1894-1895. In it, she records mostly minutiae, such as what she purchased that day and how much it cost, who came to visit and what they did, and that sort of thing. Yet mingled in there are significant events, such as her wedding and the death of her grandmother. It’s incredible to be able to read it. I find the smallest detail fascinating. I have struggled with the “who cares” factor with this blog. It isn’t that it bothers me that I don’t have many readers. Some days, I just find myself saying why bother to post that? The fact is, this is my journal. The difference between mine and Stella’s is that I know people look at it, so I have this “audience” hurdle to get over that Stella didn’t. However, Stella could little have realized how special and important someone — perhaps her great-great granddaughter — would find her journal. So from here on in, I hope to post more often, but I can’t promise that it won’t be about what I bought and how much it cost or who came over and what they did.
MySpace Update
Recently I told you about obtaining a MySpace page. I figured I would share my thoughts since I’ve now had it for a couple of weeks. First of all, it has done more to help me connect with old friends in a short two weeks than having my own domain has done in two years. Unfortunately, folks just don’t think about looking for you on Google. I can’t blame them. I didn’t think of looking for some of the folks I found there that way. However, it is fairly easy to look through folks attached to your old high school and go, “I remember that person!” then ask to be friended.
Up until I got a MySpace, I heard from exactly one person who found my blog looking for graduates of Warner Robins High, class of 1990. After I got a MySpace, I found three folks I went to high school with. I had a nice long e-conversation with an old classmate named Lisa. I was silently friended by a girl who I was best friends with my senior year (I say silent because I haven’t had a response to my “hello” message, nor did she exactly accept my friend request; instead she sent me one, which I accepted). I also found a friend of mine from Anaheim High before I moved to Georgia. I was also immediately found by two online buddies since my Diaryland days — Dana and Crankydragon. Just this evening I found an elementary school friend I’d been trying to find for years on Google.
I have figured something out — those guys who run MySpace are geniuses. They realized that a lot of people would set up something like a MySpace page when they might feel intimidated by even a Blogspot or LiveJournal. It seems like a lot of people who have MySpaces don’t even use the blog feature. I didn’t intend to, but I found I couldn’t let it sit dormant. I post just quizzes and stuff there that I feel are too trivial to waste space here.
As of right now, I don’t have any intentions of “pimping out” my MySpace. There seems to be no end to seizure-inducing backgrounds, and I don’t believe I’ll add to them. I did choose a tune by the Lost Boys, but I suppose that’s as fancy as I’ll get. I can get my creative layout groove on here on the domain I actually pay for, right? In the immortal words of Cranky on her MySpace blog,
I guess I could post here. I mean, though, why bother? I own my own domain, and it has been royally neglected since the little parasite was born. If I actually post something here, crankydragon.net might get all pissy and come over here and kick some myspace ass.
Frankly, I want to see the crankydragon.net/crankydragon myspace smackdown.
Anyway, I don’t see it replacing my blogs — any of them — but for social networking, which is how MySpace bills itself — I have to say it’s pretty good (despite frequent server hiccups).