Happy birthday to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born on this day in 1792.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
Did you read Go Ask Alice when you were young? You know, the “true” diary of a girl’s spiral into addiction ending in death?
Random surfing at Snopes.com has revealed to me that this diary is a fake!
I don’t know. I just feel like my whole world has been turned upside down. Everything I thought was true might be wrong. It sort of makes you question your whole life — like that guy who finally tried Luzianne tea after a lifetime of Lipton.
Are you feeling pressure to update? Do you break out in hives every time you read something, mentally framing a blog entry about said article or item? Do you simply feel pwned by your blog?
You may be suffering from “blog depression.” But don’t worry. The Nonist has help for you.
A little over a year ago, I wrote about my great-great-grandmother Stella and included a transcription of a letter she wrote to my great-uncle Alvin. I mentioned a few months ago that my great-great-grandmother Stella kept a diary, but I had despaired of ever seeing it. Thanks to my grandfather’s cousin, Mary, whom I met and visited with yesterday at her home in the North Georgia mountains, I not only have a copy of the diary, but I also have copies of several photos of my great-grandparents. She is also going to make me copies of several more photos. To say I’m excited about all of this would be such an understatement.
I just finished Grandma Stella’s diary. She kept an account of what she bought and how much she spent. Her wedding dress cost $6.50. She was a teacher before she married, and she wrote about her difficulties keeping order and mentioned several times the fact that her students’ attendance varied widely depending upon the weather or farming. She mentions the death of her grandmother. She was too embarrassed to write down when my great-great-grandfather kissed her, so she used euphemisms to note these instances in her diary.
I am going to upload it in blog entries at my genealogy blog. After I have it completely transcribed, I will upload it as a downloadable document in some form, whether Word, Rich Text Format, or PDF.
I loved the photos of my great-grandparents. I know two of them were taken on their wedding day in June 1920. Here is my favorite (click for larger image):
They remind me of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald!
I’m thinking of upgrading to MT 3.2, but it is still in beta. Anyone using it? What do you think? I’m really nervous about upgrading to a beta product.
Also, I’m experiencing rebuild problems with Book Queue Too, and I discovered there is a new plugin called Media Manager. Anyone used it?
My sleep schedule has been off all summer, since I’m not working, which causes me to revert to my night-owl tendencies. I was doing okay, though, until staying up all night to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now I can’t seem to get back on my normal schedule.
Gah!
It drives me bonkers to keep such vampirish hours.
I finished HBP and wrote a MAJORLY SPOILERY POST at the Pensieve, so don’t read it if you’re not done. If you are done, let’s discuss there!
I have discovered Disney Channel’s series Lizzie McGuire in re-runs. OK, so what — I think it’s a cute show. I am absolutely charmed by Gordo, and I think Lizzie’s mom is adorable. Her glasses are so cool, and her hairstyle is so cute.
Sigh. What’s wrong with me? Don’t answer that.
On Friday night, I will be attending a Potter Party with my father and daughter here. Isn’t that cool? You can criticize adult fans of Potter all you want, but the truth is, it’s a lot of fun, and none of them will be thinking about your whinging little snipes this time tomorrow. Let’s see anyone share that sort of multi-generational excitement about Ulysses.
I will most likely be incommunicado until I finish it, and I have decided to go ahead and list my status on the book as “currently reading” in my book queue — so in case you were wondering, no I didn’t sneak into Canada or swipe it from that kid in New York.
See you all on the other side — oh, and don’t forget, I’ll be discussing the book at my Harry Potter blog, which will probably be more frequently updated than this one — for a while, anyway.
Literature encourages tolerance — bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they’re so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can’t see them also as possibilities. — Northrop Frye, born on this date in 1912.
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