Why I Like Blogs

Posted on by Dana
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Back in February, someone posted a well-publicized rant on a pretty big geek web site designed to be a “collaborative site about technology and culture, both separately and in their interactions.” Think something along the lines of Slashdot (or, if I was true geek instead of a poser, /.), only not as good.

The subject of the rant was how Movable Type is ruining Google. I’m not linking the rant here, because the author later published a comment along the lines of how many hundreds of blogs were now linking his story, thus he had the victory. And in making that gloating little comment, he’s right. He got his message out by exploiting the very features of Movable Type that were at the center of his rant. So I’m not adding my blog to his list.

However, I did have a response that I’ve been rolling in my head for about a week now. I haven’t written it, because I kept telling myself that the debate is long over — February is ancient history in terms of the WWW. I also kept telling myself it wasn’t worth it to bother, since the ranter was clearly just trying to rankle some readers into linking him. I also kept telling myself it was a waste of time since the author plagiarized much of his rant from another rant, which is now four years old. A lot has changed on the web in four years.

But at the bottom of it all, the rant attacked one of the things I love about the web: blogging. Actually, to be more precise, the rant attacked Movable Type, but the implication was that blogging in general is a bad thing.

The first argument made by the author is that most bloggers are pretentious and have nothing to contribute. I have run across some blogs that I would say don’t contribute much, at least not to me, but who is to say it doesn’t contribute something to somebody? For crying out loud, I wrote a post in which I mentioned something as banal as cooking a pot roast, and several people wrote comments, emails, or even mentioned their own pot roast and gave me credit for the idea. The pot roast recipe, taken from the instructions that came with my West Bend crock pot, will appear at the end of this entry, in case you’re interested by the way.

Anyway, getting back to the subject at hand, even if it is only influencing other people to cook pot roast, we all have something to contribute to someone. As for bloggers being pretentious, I think that some are, and some aren’t, in direct correlation with the number of total people in the world who are pretentious and who are not. In fact, the story written by this person, in my opinion, smacks of the worst kind of pretention: those who feel that their opinion and what they have to say is so important and so true that we are extremely stupid if we disagree with them. He poked fun at Creative Commons licenses, insinuating that the majority of people who bother with them don’t have much to say worth protecting. Maybe. And Movable Type makes it very easy to get one as soon as you set up your weblog. Are they worth anything? I don’t know. No one’s ever asked permission to use my work, and I doubt anyone ever will. Still, I kind of like the idea that there is a license out that requests permission. Dumber folks than I have probably made book deals through their blogs.

Next, the author attacks the advent of “irritating” jargon. What make me laugh about that attack is that the author himself uses irritating jargon in comments he makes in response to other commentators. Actually, I found his use of language in total to be quite unimaginative, resorting as it frequently did to expletives and insults. It was not a thought-provoking criticism of blogging. To my way of thinking, and having taught Journalism, I passed this opinion on to my students: if you can’t back up what you say with solid facts, no one will be swayed by your opinion. Attacking blogging for having irritating jargon is a rather weak argument against blogging. Everything people do for work or fun (just about) has jargon. That’s just the way language works.

The author moves on to the lack of diversity of subject matter for most blogs, indicating without statistics to back up his claim that the vast majority of Movable Type blogs, which originate from America (he’s a Brit, and the fact that so many Americans blog really bothers him, so it seems) are limited to the following topics:

  • Presidential elections
  • The economy
  • Political parties
  • Blogging
  • Open source software

I haven’t found this to be so. Most of the blogs I read (though that is a limited number) are about the lives of the people who write them. I myself eschew topics like the election and politics, because those are personal topics to me. You want to rail against Bush in your blog? Fine with me. It’s your blog. I’m in my 30s and I have kids. I’m probably much more conservative than most people who stop by here. But it’s not an issue for me. It’s not something that I’m passionate about. I have been guilty of writing about blogging. Right now as a matter of fact. I have mentioned open source software, too. But I don’t recall talking about the economy at all. I doubt that his claim about the number of blogs with similar subject matter is true. I can’t say that’s been my experience.

The author targets Movable Type’s “poor design” and links to a script kiddie’s site (now defunct) offering a script designed to crapflood someone’s comments. I’ve not had comment spam, so I can’t say, but since the story was written, Movable Type has issued two updates — the one I use, Version 2.661 — patches up the vulnerability exposed by the script kiddie. Even if it didn’t, there are patches available, the MT Blacklist plugin, and Junkeater.com, which all deal with comment spam; Blacklist also deals with trackback spam. I think most of us know that no software program is perfect, and there will be bugs. In an ironic twist, it would appear the script kiddie’s server couldn’t take the number of hits from bloggers like this. I haven’t really even scratched the surface. There are many ways to protect yourself from comment and trackback spam. The rant’s author has a point when he mentioned the drain on your server that crapflooding can cause, but as I said, now there are ways to protect yourself. I don’t know whether it did anything or not, but I put a robots “noindex,nofollow” meta-tag in my comments template. It has been my experience that it works pretty well.

The next argument made by the writer is probably the worst for making his point. He picks on one individual blogger whom he apparently despises. I find it odd that he links her so many times and insults her so vociferously throughout his story. I think he’s in love. Don’t most little boys like to smack the girls they think are cute? Seems like most people grow out of that, though.

The writer next accuses bloggers of being “sheep” and insists that we all throw out “random and completely false opinions.” Opinions cannot be either true or false. They are beliefs. People base their opinions on facts, but they are opinions because there is room for dispute. He goes on to say that we whittle each other down until we all hold the same opinion. I wonder if he’s surfing the same web I am. If anything, I see a large variety of opinions. If he wanted to poke fun at bloggers for being sheep, I wonder that he didn’t mention memes.

Finally the writer makes what is probably his most legitimate point — that the results from Google are meaningless because of linking and trackbacks. A search engine is a powerful device created to help us find what we’re looking for on the web; however, it is not a substitute for one’s brain. Yes, we do get lots of results that we’re not interested in or are not worth looking at, but I think that is an issue the search engines themselves need to address. It’s hardly the blogger’s fault that Google thinks a link to a blog holds more authority than another link. For a long time, I kept search engines from indexing my site at all, because I was tired of getting hits in my stats that had nothing to do with what I had to say. I honestly didn’t want to know that human beings could be as disturbed as they appear to be. I think if Google was so great, it could figure out that I’m not the authority on deviant sexual practices and wouldn’t trick Google users into coming here looking for that sort of rot.

In conclusion, the author recommends limiting our drivel to LiveJournal, where, in his opinion, it would be easier to ignore. Why? Does Google ignore LiveJournal? I know it sure doesn’t ignore similar services like Diaryland. In fact, the Googlebot has crawled Diaryland so heavily that it has overloaded Diaryland’s server. Funny enough, I get relatively few hits from search engines now that I’m using Movable Type on my own domain compared to when I was writing on a hosted journaling site. Anyway, I find it funny that he talks about how trackbacks are ruining Google when he linked to a crapflooder’s script.

I have to say that I think blogging has been great for the world. Mainstream media is finally beginning to catch on that blogs are important tools for journalists. I quote from WikiPedia’s entry on weblog:

In early 2002, blogs began to spring up to support the invasion of Iraq, these “war bloggers” were primarily from the right end of the spectrum, and included Instapundit and Little Green Footballs. The first “blog” driven controversy is probably associated with the fall of Trent Lott, where bloggers found quotes from his previous speeches which were taken to be racist, and “kept the story alive” in the press.

Through 2003, weblogs gained increasing notice and coverage for their role in breaking, shaping or spinning news stories. The triggering event was the sudden emergence of an opposition to the Iraq war which was not rooted in the traditional anti-war left. The blogs which gathered news on Iraq, both left and right, exploded in popularity, and Forbes magazine covered the phenomenon. The use of blogs by political candidates, particularly Howard Dean and Wesley Clark cemented their role as a news source, while the increasing number of experts who blogged, including Daniel Drezner and J. Bradford Delong gave the blog world a cachet among regular journalists.

In 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services and candidates began using theme as tools for outreach and opinion formation. Minnesota Public Radio broad cast a program by Christopher Lydon and Matt Stoller called “The Blogging of the President”, which covered the transformation in politics that blogging seemed to presage. The Columbia Journalism Review began regular coverage of blogs and blogging.

Blogging has enabled millions of people to have a voice and be published. I am willing to wade through the bloggers that don’t have much of anything interesting to say to find the gems. The friendships I’ve made through blogging have in some ways been more honest and true than friendships I’ve made in real life. Those people that read what I write here know me better than anyone who knows me in real life does. Maybe Jenni and Smackey can attest to that, since they know me in real life and read my blog.

If you want to find the article, I’m sure I’ve made it easy enough through my numerous references to do so. I didn’t leave a comment there, and I don’t plan to. I probably shouldn’t have responded in any way, even through an entry like this.

Now, here’s my contribution to the world. My recipe for pot roast, only slightly adapted from the instruction booklet that came with my crock pot:

Pot Roast

2 to 2 1/2 pound beef roast
1 small Vidalia onion, sliced
baby carrots
2 medium-large potatoes cut in one-inch pieces
1/2 cup water

Brown roast in skillet over medium-medium high heat on range. Season with fresh ground pepper and seasoned salt. Put sliced onion in crock pot. Place roast in crock pot on top of onion slices. Place vegetables around roast. The booklet recommended four pototatoes, but four would not have fit in my crock pot along with the roast. The booklet also recommended 4 carrots, cut into one-inch pieces, but why bother when baby carrots are already cut and peeled. Use the amount you desire. I put in two or three handfuls. I seasoned the vegetables with seaoned salt, too. Add 1/2 cup water. It seems like you should add more, but as the juices from the meat and vegetables start flowing, you’ll have enough liquid in there. You can cook on LO on LO for 9 to 10 hours or HI for 5 to 6 hours. I cooked on HI, and it was good. The booklet says a meat thermometer should read at least 170 degrees for well done. I didn’t bother. The timing they provided was accurate enough to ensure the roast was done.

My blog. It’s a good thing.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God

Posted on by Dana
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I have just completed Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. If you haven’t read the book and plan to, I warn you that there are some spoilers here.

Alice Walker, a great admirer of Hurston’s (and responsible for the revival of interest in Hurston since the 1975 publication of her article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston” in Ms. magazine, which can be read in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose) said of this novel: “There is no book more important to me than this one.”

I did enjoy the book a great deal, but I cannot say it was impossible to put down. It made me laugh out loud, and it made me tear up, but it did not resonate with me as it did Walker.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. said that “Hurston became a metaphor for the black woman writer’s search for tradition.” I can see the influence of Hurston strongly in Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use.” Hurston was a student of anthropology, and she brings that to bear in her fiction as well. It really gives the novel a particularly genuine feeling.

Janie is the main character. The novel begins as she returns to town. The old gossips watching her on the porch wonder why she’s back, and did that no-account Tea Cake she ran off with take all her money, leaving her no option but to return to town in shame? Her friend Pheoby (spelled as Hurston did) comes over to talk to Janie and find out what happened. What enfolds is the entire story of Janie’s self-discovery. It begins like this:

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Janie was abandoned by her parents and raised by her grandmother, who wanted her to choose a secure man to marry. Her grandmother didn’t listen to what Janie wanted. She silenced her dreams.

She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!

This was, I think, what Janie would have liked to have had from marriage. She did as her grandmother asked, but felt empty. When Jody Starks wandered down the road, he looked like adventure. He took her to Eatonville, one of the all-black towns established in the early part of the 1900s, and so asserted himself among the townsfolk that he was quickly elected mayor. Once this happened, he silenced Janie with intimidation, verbal abuse, and physical abuse. She grows to despise him for suppressing her:

“Ah knowed you wasn’t gointuh lissen tuh me. You changes everything but nothin’ don’t change you — not even death. But Ah ain’t goin’ outa here and Ah ain’t gointuh hush. Naw, you gointuh listen tuh me one time befo’ you die. Have yo’ way all yo’ life, trample and mash down and then die ruther than tuh let yo’self heah ’bout it. Listen, Jody, you ain’t de Jody Ah run off down de road wid. You’se whut’s left after he died. Ah run off tuh keep house wid you in uh wonderful way. But you wasn’t satisfied wid me de way Ah was. Naw! Mah own mind had tuh be squeezed and crowded out tuh make room for yours in me.”

After Jody’s death, she relished her new freedom for a while when along came Tea Cake Woods, whose deadly eyes captivated Janie despite the fact that he was much younger than she. She found herself falling in love, but Tea Cake was different from her grandmother, her first husband, and Jody: he treated her as an equal (most of the time) and valued her voice. He encouraged her to be herself, because he loved the real Janie. With the exception of $200 he spent when they first married, he never appropriated any of her money — and he always referred to it as her money. He was extremely likable and charming. He respects Janie as a person and an individual.

After Janie finds her voice, she learns how to use it. According to Mary Helen Washington, at the 1979 MLA convention, Robert Stepto of Yale “raised the issue that has become one of the most highly controversial and hotly contested aspects of the novel: whether or not Janie is able to achieve her voice in Their Eyes.” Stepto brought up the courtroom scene near the end of the book, which is told through the narrator. Janie is “curiously silent in this scene.” It’s a pivotal scene in her life. She must prove to the jury, in her mind, that she had honestly loved Tea Cake:

It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding. If they made a verdict that she didn’t want Tea Cake and wanted him dead, then that was a real sin and a shame. It was worse than murder.

The narrator (and Janie) are silent, too, after Tea Cake beats Janie for the one and only time. Stepto put forth the idea that “the frame story in which Janie speaks to Pheoby only creates the illusion that Janie has found her voice, that Hurston’s insistence on telling Janie’s story in the third person undercuts her power as speaker.” Alice Walker, at that same conference, countered that this was not so. Janie had not only found her voice, but she had also learned, as Walker put it “that women did not have to speak when men thought they should, that they would choose when and where they wish to speak because while many women had found their own voices, they also knew when it was better not to use it.” Mary Helen Washington calls Walker’s defense the “earliest feminist reading of voice in Their Eyes.” In this way, Janie’s speech and silence become a means of learning who she is and becoming empowered as a person after having been suppressed for most of her life.

I was troubled that Hurston chose to put such an emphasis on romantic love as a means of personal realization. After all, I thought, if Janie is “finding her voice,” why does she need Tea Cake to show it to her? Actually, after thinking about it, one realizes that for most people, relationships are a necessary component of fulfillment. And sometimes, someone believing in you and encouraging you is what it takes. I believe that Janie’s dream of marriage (the bee and the flowers) was achieved with Tea Cake. When Janie is alone at the end, while you know she misses Tea Cake, she also seems at peace with being alone. By the end of the novel, she isn’t worried about those old gossips on the porch:

“Now, Pheoby, don’t feel too mean wid de rest of ’em ’cause dey’s parched up from not knowin’ things. Dem meatskins is got tuh rattle tuh make out they’s alive. Let ’em consolate theyselves wid talk. ‘Course, talkin’ don’t amount tuh uh hill uh beans when yuh can’t do nothin’ else. And listenin’ tuh dat kind uh talk is jus’ lak openin’ yo’ mouth and lettin’ de moon shine down yo’ throat. It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.”

Can you tell yet that I am teaching this book next year?

Anyway, I won’t delve into the symbolism, etc. I am trying to figure out why this novel didn’t speak to me as it did Walker. I asked myself if it was because I’m not black. While that’s possible, one also has to consider the fact that racism is not really a theme of the novel. Of course Janie encounters it, but it’s not the focus. This isn’t a story about a “black quest” so much as “human quest.” I really did enjoy it, but it didn’t affect me the way I expected it to. Still, I have to recommend it highly. I very much enjoyed the contrast between the literary prose of the narrator and the dialect of the characters. It was very well written that way.

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Firefox and Thunderbird

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Okay, in my quest to become a true web geek instead of a lame poser, and also because of the identity theft issue (which I can’t prove is because I was using IE, but who knows), I downloaded Firefox, in part because Kim Komando said she uses it. I’m sure she’s got several browsers that she switches between. The more I read about Internet Explorer’s bugs and security holes, the scarier it seems. I immediately performed the Secunia Multiple Browers Frame Injection Vulnerability Test I told you about, and Firefox is indeed secure as far as that particular problem is concerned.

Firefox has an easy user interface and even includes a help file for people who use IE so that they can figure out the differences between the two browsers with ease. It also displays favicons in the location bar (address bar in IE), which is something that IE doesn’t do (they display them in your “Favorites,” however). The only thing is there seems to be a bug with favicons in Firefox. Looks like it sort of randomly dumps the favicon or flashes it, then shows the default page curling favicon. That’s a pain in the ass if you have bothered to make a favicon for your site. However, it looks like the user has more control over the the web. You can disable favicons and target=”_blank”, customize your brower with themes, and BLOCK POP-UPS mong many other things.

I also dumped Eudora in favor of Thunderbird. The user interface is much simpler. Eudora was really busy. Plus, it had ads. Ick. Who wants that? You can get a version of Eudora without ads one of two ways: 1) purchase it for about $50; or 2) get the trimmed-down version with less features. I will admit neither one looked particularly desirable to me.

Oh, who am I kidding. If I was a true geek, I’d be running my computer on Linux. Maybe someday. Open source rocks.

I promise not to write about techie stuff every day. I know some of you aren’t interested and don’t get it. I’m just sort of into web development right now.

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Identity Theft

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Yours truly discovered she is the victim of identity theft today. I opened up my mailbox and found a new debit card, a check card PIN, and a box of checks. I thought, what the? I didn’t order even more checks — I just got a box! I opened the box and looked at the account number. It wasn’t my account number. I have had the same bank account since 1997. I have the number memorized, which (unlike my dad, and regrettably so) is not usual for me.

I called the bank, and they verified that $1000 had been transferred from my account to this new one. The customer service representative was even able to tell me the e-mail address that was connected to the account — an Earthink address — not even one of those easy to get and then abandon web mail accounts! I was thinking why was this person smart enough to hijack my bank account, but not smart enough to be a little more circumspect about doing it?

What a headache. I was on the phone with my bank for more than a half hour I think. Ultimately, I talked with a bank representative who was very helpful, as his wife had been a fraud victim as well. He told me everything I need to do, but since it’s the weekend, lots of it has to wait until Monday. That’s really good for keeping the OCD at bay. I need to find out if my landlord has deposited our rent check. If he has, that could delay clearing this up until that clears. If he hasn’t, then I can completely close my account and give him a cashier’s check or money order to replace the other check. What a mess.

It would seem that I’m not alone in this. Makes me wish I’d never heard of online banking. But still… I think the article is right. Why aren’t banks doing things to make online banking more secure? It is such a convenience, but it is not worth this sort of hassle.

This is what you need to do if it happens to you. My ex-husband told me some very scary information. There is a vulnerability in Internet Explorer that allows hackers to get information you type, keylogging programs, and gain access to your online credit/debit/checking account transactions, thus steal your money. He told me to check out Kim Komando’s site, and her current newsletter has information about a Trojan horse that is hijacking browsers. Want to see if you are vulnerable? Run this test. Kim says she was vulnerable even after installing the IE patch. I ran the test again after installing the patch, and like Kim, I discovered I was still vulnerable to attack. She recommends using Firefox or only keeping one window open at a time. And here I am, Miss I-Like-to-Keep-a-Horde-of-Windows-Open. I even set all my links to open in new windows automatically, because I hate losing my place when I look at links in other people’s web sites. Kim Komando is right: IE has got to be completely refurbished. But why should Microsoft bother when 95% of the people on the web use it? They have no serious competition, and they know it. Bill Gates is probably the antichrist.

What really bothers me is that people do this with no compunction about it. They don’t care that they’re screwing someone over. Welcome to the Real World, right? Well, I’m sorry if it’s idealistic to think that we should be able to live our lives without someone trying to take everything we’ve got.

So on my to-do list:

  1. Find out what my landlord did with that check.
  2. Call the three credit bureaus to report the fraud.
  3. Call the Federal Trade Commission.
  4. File a police report.
  5. Call Earthlink and tell them what their customer did. Not sure what good it will do aside from make me feel better.
  6. Try to quit worrying about this, because it will most likely be okay in the end.

This reminds me of a nightmare I had a couple of years ago. In it, I discovered that a group of people was involved in criminal activity. I found their web site, and I could see them. Then I saw their leader look up, as though he knew they’d been found. He looked right at me from the computer screen and told me that he knew where I was, and they were coming to kill me.

I think the biggest thing that crime takes from any of us (any kind of crime) is our sense of security. I know I shouldn’t be as upset as I am about it. After all, I knew something fishy was going on. Someone stole my debit card number way back in April. I just thought this was all over after that card was canceled, and I got a new one. And honestly, it could have been much worse. I guess I just feel sort of, well, vulnerable is the best word. I hate that feeling. It almost makes this understandable.

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First Haircut

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Dylan had his first haircut tonight at just one week shy of 15 months. I was very sad to see his little curls go, but he was starting to get shaggy, and his hair was hanging into his eyes. I saved the curls in an envelope.

Now tell me… he truly does look like the Little Man now, doesn’t he? I mean, except for the paci. Pay no attention to the paci.

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MT Plugins/Eudora/My School on the Web

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Browsing MT Plugins today, and it’s like being in a candy store. When I have time to fool with thinking about it, I plan to get some.

I also downloaded Eudora today. Back when I had a computer running Windows 3.1, I used Eudora for mail. Then I switched to Outlook Express — probably when I got Windows 95, but I can’t remember. For about the past four years, I have only had web-based mail accounts. Now that I have a new mail account that comes with my DSL service, I plan to use it. I was using Outlook Express again, but encountered a problem every time my mom sent me an attachment. I got the same error message every time: OE has removed access to this unsafe attachment (or something like that). I think it was an OE problem. Of course, since MicroSoft makes it, all the geeks online hate it, so I decided to check out Eudora and see if I like it.

Since so many people have asked about it, I have decided to share the link to the school where I will be teaching. I have said some negative things about my former schools in the past, but I don’t plan to write anything in here anymore that I’m not very comfortable with anyone I know reading. I’m through going there.

The Weber School is a fairly new private Jewish school in Dunwoody, which is just down the road from Roswell. In addition, I have created a school blog which was already linked from PlanetHuff.com, but not from this blog. There’s nothing much there right now, but I plan to post assignments. I don’t know that you all would be interested in that, and I do ask that if you are, please don’t join the members. It’s only for my students and parents, and I’ll just remove you anyway, so you’d be wasting your time. It’s got a template I didn’t create, and it’s pretty plain, but it serves its purpose.

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Time and Chance

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I have finally completed Time and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman. I have read other books written by her before: The Sunne in Splendour (unfinished) and Here Be Dragons. She writes about medieval Wales and England — right up my alley. Time and Chance is about the feud between Henry II and Thomas Becket, with a secondary plotline about Henry’s struggles with the Welsh during that time. The Sunne in Splendour is about Richard III and the Wars of the Roses. Here Be Dragons is about the great Welsh leader Llewelyn the Great and King John. I give you this information so you have a frame of reference.

So what did I think? Not as good as Here Be Dragons. Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of my favorite historical figures. She married Louis VII (King of France), a union which ended in annullment, and then married Henry II (eleven years her junior). She was the mother of King Richard the Lionheart and King John. She was an imposing figure in any time period, but considering she lived during the Middle Ages, she’s incredible. She persuaded Louis to take her with him on Crusade. She incited her sons into rebellion with their father, Henry II (for which he imprisoned her for 15 years). She was a shrewd strategist. Had her husbands listened to her advice more often, things might have gone better for them. She is said to have been a great beauty in addition to being very intelligent. She was a patron to the troubadours and encouraged the flowering of medieval literature at that time. In fact, her grandfather was the first so-called “troubadour,” (and the most well-known of them all, I believe) and her son Richard was known not only for being a king and Crusader, but also for being a fine musician and composer himself.

Before I digressed about Eleanor I was talking about Time and Chance. Eleanor, as wife of Henry II, was a major character in the book. I liked her in the book. I got mad right along with her over Rosamund Clifford. In fact, her anger over Rosamund is something I’ve written about before, too. Eleanor was not one to stand idly by as her husband openly kept a concubine in one of their castles. In the book, she discovered his infidelity shortly before John was born. I am not sure if that was historically accurate or not. When she confronted the little slut, I wanted her slap her really bad, but she didn’t. Ah well, too much dignity for that, I suppose. The marriage between Henry and Eleanor had been good, at least in the fiction, up until then. But that was the beginning of the end for Eleanor. It was interesting to watch as her love for Henry grew colder until it began to disappear. You could see her encouraging her sons in open rebellion against their father within a few years of the time when the book ended, which was right after Becket’s murder.

I know that Penman does her research. I have actually relied on her research in writing my own book, because we have written about the same time period. Specifically, she was able to discover that in the Middle Ages, a town in Wales now known as Builth was spelled “Buellt.” Since that town figured in my own story, I was able to make the correction. I have no doubt that many if not most of the events in the book happened precisely as she described. But that’s the trouble. Most of the events are not really “described” so much as “told.” One bit of advice for any writer is to “show, don’t tell.” If you can get your reader to see the scene rather than hear about it from the mouth of the narrator of the characters, that’s better and more interesting writing. Too many times, Penman had characters sum up events during a conversation. I think this is because she bit off more than she could chew. The book was already more than 500 pages long, even with characters summing up some of the plot through conversations. There were a lot of characters to keep up with. It’s my fault I was confused, as she provided a list of them I should have turned to more frequently, along with a map I should have consulted more often.

Penman shifted viewpoints fairly frequently during the story. I think this was so she was able to include more information. Obviously, if you have more perspectives, you can include some incidents that other characters did not witness or know of. But I found myself simply wishing she’d pared it down and kept it simple. She does tell her stories from multiple views, which is something I should have known about her, though (having read her previously and all).

She has the extremely annoying habit of using comma splices in her writing. It drives me bonkers to read, though I am sure she does it as a stylistic device and not out of lack of knowledge. She mainly does it during dialogue. Every time I see it, it pops out at me and overshadows what she’s saying. She has done this in the other things I’ve read by her, as well, and it’s something I knew before I picked up her book.

The book was not riveting. I finished it. I think it could have been better in many ways. The scene with Becket’s murder was particularly well done, and I have to commend her for that. I have been reading some pretty good books lately — the kind that you want to spend more time with and don’t necessarily want to put down. I didn’t mind putting this one down, and sometimes it was hard to get back into. I think given the subject matter, this book could have been great had it’s scope been narrowed a bit. It’s a bit too unwieldy, I think, for most people. I don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone who wasn’t really interested in the time period or the historical figures involved.

Here are some links if you are interested in learning more about the Murder in the Cathedral and other events in the book:

Wikipedia’s article on Eleanor of Aquitaine
The Murder of Thomas Becket at Eyewitness to History
Becket, the Church, and Henry II (BBC History)
The Character and Legacy of Henry II (BBC History)
Fair Rosamund by John William Waterhouse

On a semi-related note, I must sadly report, for those of you who may not be aware, the demise of ArtMagick, which was truly the best web site showcasing pre-Raphaelite artwork (among other forms). It will be missed.

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Summer Planning

Posted on by Dana
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Yesterday, I had a meeting with my new principal. We discussed the curriculum a little bit — she gave me some handouts the teacher I am replacing made detailing the curriculum in a syllabus-style format. I got my teaching assignments. I will be teaching 10th grade Honors American Lit., 10th grade College Prep. American Lit., 9th grade College Prep. Lit., Comp., and Grammar, 9th grade College Prep 2 Lit., Comp., and Grammar (a college prep. course for lower level students), and a study skills course. Before I go any further, from now on, College Prep. will be abbreviated CP. My fellow teacher readers might be freaking at the number of preps I have. Don’t worry. I am essential teaching only 2 preps with some differentiation for ability. The study skills course is something I have lots of ideas for already, too. I have taught similar courses before. My ex-husband referred to me once as “the anal-retentive student.” He’s not far off the mark. My notebook was always impeccable, and I made grade sheets for any classes that didn’t give me one so I could keep track of my average at all times. I plan to mold my students in that study skills class into little anal-retentives, too.

I will also be responsible for monitoring the CP 2 students — checking their progress in other class, making sure they’re not slipping through any cracks. The thing about teaching at a private school, is that if they can’t cut it academically in the CP 2 class, then they just don’t stay at the school. That’s a new concept. Public schools are required to educate every student in their school zone, regardless of ability. Seems like this will be very different. I was also told that I shouldn’t hand out A’s. Yay! The pressure to give inflated grades has been so great for most of my career. Now, as long as I can justify the grades I’ve given through clear criteria and fairness, then I can give them. Students making D’s and F’s will most likely not stay at the school long or will be dropped to a lower level course (if there is one).

There are only three full-time English teachers. One of the counselors teaches the AP English Language course. Randall teaches 11th and 12th grade Brit. Lit., World Lit., and AP Literature. I have the 10th graders and some of the 9th. Sara, who will also be new and teaching for the first time, will take the rest of the 9th graders (Honors) and Humanities. I am not completely sure what all she’ll teach, to be honest. She was very nice. I met her yesterday, too.

If I understand the schedule correctly, I will teach 4 days a week. The 5th day I will be available for subbing (they do all their subbing in-house) or resource lab for tutoring English students. My classes meet 3 days a week for 80 minutes, then on Friday for 45 minutes. School will start earlier on Friday and get out earlier because of the Sabbath. Did I mention this was a private Jewish high school?

I am looking forward to learning more about Judaism. I am hoping to learn a bit of Hebrew. I find it very interesting. Hebrew lessons are included in a newsletter I used to receive from Zola Levitt.

The textbooks I am using are old. I don’t think it is because it’s a private school and funding is an issue. The copyright is 1989, and that was before the school was founded. I got an inkling as to the reason why we have these texts when Nanci, my principal, indicated she loves them dearly and they’re out of print, so please take of care of them. Aha! Nanci was an English teacher, and I believe that she just really took a liking to them. They are Scott, Foresman/Prentice Hall’s Literature series (Patterns in Literature: America Reads, Traditions in Literature: America Reads, United States in Literature: America Reads, and England in Literature: America Reads — I’m not sure if the World Lit. book is in the same series). It’s actually a good series. Same works as all the other textbooks. There’s less fluff (photos, pictures, flashy graphics) and more literary terms, analysis, and the like. Because it’s out of print, though, Nanci ordered teacher’s editions that had to be photocopied and bound. We have separate books for vocabulary, grammar, and writing, too. MLA handbooks. All kinds of things. I think I’ll want some dictionaries. Nanci asked me if I would. I need to read through them all and get familiar with them.

I am actually really getting excited to start, too.

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Comment Spam

Posted on by Dana
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Movable Type allows users to determine whether or not they will allow anonymous comments. I prefer not to, which means you have to submit your e-mail address when you comment. On one occasion, a rather cowardly individual who posted my only negative comment ever provided a fake e-mail address, so I know there are ways around that. I wasn’t sure why he did it, though. Did he do it because he wanted to do the online equivalent of running up to someone on the schoolyard, smacking him/her, then running away? Or did he do it because he was afraid he’d get spam? I almost think spam is more dreaded than a tongue-lashing from yours truly. On the other hand, if he was who I think he was, I believe he’s web savvy enough to know that MT allows users to insert the following code in the comment post form to help prevent spam: 



However, since I can’t figure out whether it was fear of little ol’ me or spam, I decided I could at least take spam out of the equation.  I have fixed my comments so that while you still have to submit an e-mail, it will not be displayed, like so:




I have also added a feature that will protect my comments from spam.  From what I’ve read, it seems comment spam is on the rise.  That’s because Google rewards comment spammers by increasing their page rank.  As long as it works, you’re going to keep finding inducements to chase after nebulous investments in Nigeria, penis enlargement hocus pocus, and phentermine, phentermine, phentermine!  I personally have not had problems with comment spam yet, but that is probably due to the fact that until this week, I had the “noindex,nofollow” meta tag for robots in my header.  I really don’t care if a bunch of googlers wind up here by mistake and get disappointed when there’s not any really freaky naked pictures here, but I was miffed that I couldn’t get Technorati to work correctly.  I’m not positive this was the problem, but I think they were unable to spider my site.  On the other hand, even after I’ve removed the meta tags, they still haven’t listed my site on the profile, though they got The Pensieve.  I don’t know why I care, but it’s making me crazy.


Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  So I did have that safeguard in place, and you all didn’t even know it.  Now that I’ve removed that safeguard, I wanted you to know that not only will your e-mail address not be shown, but I have also placed a “noindex,nofollow” meta tag in my comments templates, so search engines shouldn’t try to index them.


All this talk about comment spam made me a little worried I’d start getting some, so I decided to be proactive.  I tried to install MT Blacklist, but I couldn’t get it figured out.  Flashbacks of installing MT threatened to overtake me, so I tried Junkeater instead.  Not only do they filter my comments before they are posted, but they also provided a handy little java script whereby posters will need to provide the code shown in the little box to prove they’re real people and not spambots.  


I hope all this extra security encourages you all to feel safer about leaving comments here.  Mainly I’m just kind of becoming a web geek who likes new toys, though.


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The Thorn Birds

								

					Posted on  by Dana				

							


			

				
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I was looking for something to watch on TV this evening, and found that The Thorn Birds was on WE.  I only caught the last two hours or so of it.  You know — the most heart-wrenching part.  Apparently, WE ran the entire mini-series from start to finish, beginning at noon.  Of course, I’ve seen it before.  


One of my former colleagues once said that The Thorn Birds (by Colleen McCullough) was one of those books that you didn’t put down while you were stirring the pot.  It was the second adult novel I read (the first was Gone With the Wind).  I was in 7th grade.  I decided that if all adult novels were this good, I was going to keep reading them!  Of course, I was fortunate to read two of the best books I’ve ever read at one go.  The next one I read was a romance novel that would have been rather forgettable had it not been the first one I’d read.  Maybe I should clarify — when I use the term “romance novel,” I’m thinking of the bodice-rippers with scantily-clad couples embracing on the cover.  I suppose it could be argued that Gone With the Wind and The Thorn Birds are romance novels, but they are something more than that, so I just don’t classify them that way.  Not that there’s anything wrong with a good romance novel.  I’ve been known to enjoy a few in my day.  But let’s be frank — they are not as moving and enduring — as epic, indeed, as The Thorn Birds.


Oh it has been years since I saw the movie or read the book, but I was right back there in New South Wales with Meggie.  I cried when  Dane died.  I cried when Fiona told Meggie to stop making the same mistakes she’d always made and reach out to Justine.  I cried when Justine and Meggie made their peace.  I cried when Ralph died.  


Isn’t it hard to watch as each generation of Cleary women is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the previous?  To watch as the characters are destroyed by their passion for the person they love most?  You just want to shake them.  I find that I actually talk to them, and sure enough, I kept urging Ralph to use his head and figure out that Dane was his son as I watched tonight.  That’s good television.


Before Maggie was born, when we were discussing names, I suggested Meghan.  Steve didn’t really care for the name.  He suggested Margaret, after her grandmother.  I thought then that would be great, because even though I didn’t have a Meghan, I could still have my little Meggie.  For a time we tried to call her Meg or Meggie, but she’s just a Maggie, and there not much I can do about it.  I think the nickname is perfect.  It suits her personality.  And truthfully, Meggie Cleary’s life is not what I want for my own daughter!  All of my children have names that have layers of meaning to me, and there is a little bit of my love for the character Meggie Cleary behind my little Maggie’s name, even if my husband didn’t know it.


To be swept away into that story, even for a brief time, was a joy.  I have been meaning to re-read the book for some time.  Perhaps I ought to do so.


Link: The Thorn Birds at Nostalgia Central


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