I know you only come here for the photos, and I’ve been nothing but wordy for the past few days. Sorry photo seekers!
I started doing the last group of squares. The prospect of putting them together is both exciting and scary. But that’s ok. Usually when the moment comes the exciting part wins out.
In the non-quilting world, I have had a few good days at work, with a real sense of helping some folks. I have really enjoyed driving home and having the sun still out. This evening there had been just a sprinkle of rain and the air was wet and earthy smelling.
This morning I was pleased to hear that Donald Hall of New Hampshire was appointed America’s Poet Laureate. Go Poets!
I heard this on today’s Writer’s Almanac, where they were also celebrating the birth of the first commercially available computer, the UNIVAC in 1951.
The president of IBM at the time thought that computers, with all their incredibly complex vacuum tubes and circuitry, were too complicated. He said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” But with the invention of the microchip in 1971, all the processing power of those thousands of vacuum tubes and punch cards could suddenly be crammed into a space the size of a postage stamp. Within a decade, the first personal computers, or PCs, began to appear.
For the first thirty years or so of the history of computers, it was mostly businesses that used them for accounting purposes. But in the 1980s, the word processing powers of computers made them attractive to writers�although Stephen King said that when he first started using a word processor, he lost the ability to pace himself by the number of pages he had written, and his books grew longer and longer. Russell Baker said, “Computers make writing so painless that the writer cannot bear to stop. On and on the writer goes, all judgment numbed. Before you know it, you’ve written a book.” Some contemporary writers still don’t use computers. Joyce Carol Oates writes all her first drafts in longhand. Don DeLillo still uses a manual typewriter.
But, the novelist Stanley Elkin called his word processor a “bubble machine.” He said, “The word processor enables one to concentrate exponentially; you have absolute command of the entire novel all at once. You can go back and reference and change and fix … so in a way, all novels written on the bubble machine ought to be perfect novels.”
I just love that idea of the computer as a “bubble machine”. Fabulous.
And speaking of fabulous, I’m really enjoying this great relish from Alabama, via my local grocery store. Tasty, and a fitting end to this whole smorgasbord!
