Monday wanderings

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Mary Beth Frezon

I stayed up way too late last night because I had been working on the 4th revision of my NaNoWriMo and well, things just got out of hand. Oh well. I only had a bit of actual editing to do and then transcribing it to digital version.

I have to say I’m frankly amazed at the limitations of both Word and Pages. Word is winning in the “formatting of book-like things into easily updated chapters etc” category. Pages wins hands down in the “show it and print it in facing pages, two-sided (do you care if I lost some of your hard-won styling)” category.

All this with an eye of getting things into some sort of epub format so I can hand off something easier to carrier than a stack of paper.

It’s 2012 folks. I don’t want to spend so much time trying to figure out multi-OS, easily-exchangeable file formats. Get on that or else I’m sticking to BBEDit and someone else can do the formatting.

From co-worker Dianne:

Which only goes to show why we should move to Finland.

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Best Quote of the Day!

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Mary Beth Frezon

From Jane Yolen’s page for writers:

On Intuition: Someone on line asked me, how to use intuition. Well, intuition works best when you remember that “tuition” is part of it. You need to have paid ahead of time (ie done your prep work) so as to prepare the ground for intuition.

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The Amazing Tricks of the Human Mind

Posted on January 5, 2012 by Mary Beth Frezon

Was sitting here looking over my research/reference notes for my NaNoWriMo month wondering how some of the sentences got so scrambled… Look down a little further and there’s a bunch of stuff about all the different sorts of fairies. Just the tip of the iceberg really.

I see that selchies are included in a group and there you have it – the icebergish tip of a song. Thinking… thinking… selchie, fisherman “his hands are his craft, his boat is his art…” and BLAM – there’s the whole thing and the melody. Put the above phrase into google and am rewarded with the recording artist’s name – Lui Collins and am doubly rewarded to be reminded that the author of the lyrics is none other than the esteemed Jane Yolen.

Now that’s amazing.

Oh, weeping she goes, and still weeping she stays
Her hands are her craft, her babes are her art
A year and a year and a year more she stays
A rock, a cold rock, in her heart.

But what is this hid in the fisherman’s bag?
It smells like the ocean, it feels like the sea!
A bonny white sealskin closed up in the bag
And “Never a tear more!” cries she.

“Goodbye to the house and goodbye to the shore
Goodbye to the babes that I never could claim
But never a thought to the man left on shore
For selchie’s my nature and name.”

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Happy Birthday J.R.R. Tolkien

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Mary Beth Frezon

Let me be the first to wish all of you, anxiously waiting for the release of the coming Hobbit film (part 1) a very happy remembrance of Tolkien’s birthday! Happy Birthday J.R.R.!

…the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.

~~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Book II, The Land of Shadow.

Meanwhile, for those of you less interested in dragons, and more interested in whales, you are invited to a Moby Dick Marathon:

Moby Dick Marathon
The Moby-Dick Marathon, a nonstop reading of the novel, will celebrate its Fifth Annual read, starting Wednesday January 3rd at 12 noon and ending Thursday January 4th at about 1 PM. The dates celebrate the anniversary of Herman Melville’s departure from the port of New Bedford aboard the Fairhaven whaleship in 1841. About 150 readers will take part, including several in non-English languages.

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The View From Here

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Mary Beth Frezon

At the end of my day, I went downstairs to package up the huge quantity of soup I’d made (and never made the barley for it…) and then decided to take the garbage and some recycling out. The thermometer said it was about 28F as I went through the door. The moon was out.

After my task was done, I looked up at the moon. A bank of clouds was moving up towards the moon,which seemed odd enough but the leading edge was wispy and it looked like smoke billowing up. Eventually the cloud covered the moon but didn’t conceal it – sounds impossible, no? Then there was a really big, thick orange ring around the moon through the clouds. The thickness was probably as big as the moon itself but the circle was several moon widths in radius.

I can say I have seen lots of icy rings around the moon but nothing quite like this dark orange ring. No doubt the practical explanation has to do with refraction through the cloud. Not really interested in the practical. It looked very mysterious.

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