The Cranky Lady Speaks!

Today I was working in my Random University library. They are now starting to box up shelves and shelves of reference materials – bound journals, archived magazines, technical dictionaries and the like – and send them to a central consortium storage place. You will still be able to access the materials by requesting them through the college library and there is an easy method to do so though the college computer system.

However, seeing all of the volumes being put onto carts and taken away makes me incredibly sad. One of my favorite pastimes in libraries is walking randomly through the stacks, pulling down books or topics that look interesting at the moment, and finding very surprising, fascinating bits of information. For example, one day in Ye Olde Colonial College’s stacks I found a series of bound women’s magazines from the 1940’s through the 1980’s. To look through all those volumes and see the ads and fashions of yesteryear, all of the articles of housewife-y information and advice, was quite a treat. Another time, I was wandering though and started reading old business magazines, marveling at the predictions and business practices from decades ago.

I know that in writing this I sound incredibly old fashioned, like someone nostalgic for the good old days, not sufficiently appreciative of the current technologies that allow people to access any information from anywhere. Well, I *am* appreciative – especially as a student and a researcher of sorts – but as someone who is always interested in a wide range of topics, and who sometimes depends on random connections to spark creativity, I think that the disappearance of the physical books from the scene can be considered tragic.

On another blog, someone was talking about how, as a kid, he would pull random books down from his parents’ shelves and read them as they struck his fancy. If we all have kindles or e-readers, will that moment of random discovery ever happen? Will everything in the future have to be purposefully sought out? What does this mean for future generations? I mean, I know that Wikipedia has a "random" function, but that supposes that you are constantly connected to a computer. I prefer not to spend huge amounts of time staring at a screen, and a tiny one at that! (And gee, can you tell that from my sucky posting these days?)

I also wonder why one technology has to push out another so quickly. I'd much rather continue to have choices of how I'd like my information, but it seems that especially in the newspaper realm those choices are being made for me, even though I'm willing to actually pay for the format I prefer.

These are some of the things that occupy my brain these days. Do you agree? Or do you think I need to adjust my tinfoil hat? Inquiring minds want to know . . .

Joys and Concerns

I’m an agnostic in the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition sense, “one who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and probably unknowable” – a state that can otherwise be known as “hedging my bets.” I actually, probably lean more towards atheist, but I do like knowing about other religions and I do think there is a lot of comfort and good that come out of them. (And a lot of really bad too, but we won’t even go *there* for today.)

However, I like going to church because: (a) I like singing, especially with choirs, and there are some hymns that are just so gorgeous and heavenly in melodies and harmonies that you can be SO transcendently moved. Soothing the savage breast and all that; and (b) there is just a whole community of (somewhat) like-minded people who are there to care and support each other, working together all for the purpose of what I call (probably very blasphemously) “putting on the show.”

The church I go to is one of the more hippie, liberal Protestant denominations, pretty close to Unitarian as you can get. Not a lot of decorations and doodads, communion is open to whoever wants bread and grape juice that day, and usual Sunday attire runs more along the lines of jeans/khakis/shorts/sandals – both guys and gals. Even before our pastor left, we had lots of “lay” participation and people in the congregation take turns running parts of the service and teaching Sunday school to the kids. We have a very energetic choir director, so we always have a (relatively) large amount of people in the choir, and on an off Sunday, the choir members look like they outnumber the people in the pews. On a good Sunday, we might have 45 people in the pews, on a summer Sunday we might have 15-20. We have lots of little kids in the congregation, most of whom are under the age of 8, so during the service before the kids get to go downstairs for Sunday school, there is always chaos of little ones running around and playing with toys. (Ours is not a “sit-down-and-shut-up” church for kids.)

Why am I writing this? I’m not sure, but I’m going with it. It seems to be the story I want to share at the moment . . .

Anyway, there is always part of the service, after the weekly sermon, called “Joys and Concerns.” This is when people can share any of their own joys or problems that they’ve been having during the past week with the rest of the congregation. It can be as innocuous as “My anniversary was this week!” all the way up to people talking about recurrences of cancer, job losses, sicknesses and deaths of family and friends, and heavy-duty personal struggles. The pastor writes all of these things down and mentions them during the closing prayers.

It is always amazing how much people feel comfortable sharing with everyone during these times – just letting a lot of raw emotion come out that has been stored up all week, trying to be brave. It is hard to describe. Sometimes it is very draining, but there is a wonderful, healing things that happens, when everyone’s heart goes out to the person talking, and the person feels like s/he is not alone in bearing his/her burden.

However, for me, there always seems to be a downside to all of the sharing – one that makes me feel . . . well, left out and apart . . .

You see, hearing about everyone else’s problems, makes my problems and issues seem *not very important.* Having money troubles? Well, somebody couldn’t sell their old house fast enough, was stuck paying two mortgages for a long time and is horribly in debt. Angst about paying for school? Some people can’t afford their courses any more and they have to drop out. Angst about horrible conditions at work? Someone has been out of a job for months. Not that it’s all a competition or anything, but how can you compete with that? So I keep my mouth shut, because my problems are not, relatively, problems. Even though they are, and they make me very unhappy. But I feel like I have to suck it up. Which makes it less of a safe space for me. But . . . who can help me, really? Where can *I* turn when I’m feeling bad, without feeling like I’m whining?

So I’m reaching the point where I’m getting pretty tired of the stuff I’m doing. I just see miles more road to travel to get where I want to go and I’m sick of traveling, but I’m also tired of where I am. It’s nice to have the blog as an outlet, but then I actually have to take the time to write all this out. So here I am.

My joys right now: my friends and family, having fun Saturdays, being able to go see plays, taking my college class.

My concerns right now: My Army sister (who is having problems with her legs), my grandma (who really needs someone to look in on her once a week, since she’s living alone and is now taking a lot of medications due to a hospital scare two months ago), Mr. Random and his family (mom, grandmom and sister – all having issues), my job (more people leaving, office is unstable, and I am unhappy every single day), money (Mr. Random’s student loans, pressure because of job uncertainty and debts), school (taking one class a semester is not getting me very far, will take me at least 3 or 4 years at this rate, plus it adds stress in dealing with work).

What are your joys and concerns at this time? Let’s lift them up and share!

Question of the Day: Who Do You Sound Like?

Taken from Unfogged’s discussion of yesterday’s NYT article on the small uproar that people who listen to audiobooks cause when they admit as much to their book clubs:

Pretend that the we had audio comments on our blogs – What famous person would you sound like, or would you want to sound like?

I think I’m a cross between Diane Keaton and Marilyn Monroe/Betty Boop. My voice is kind of weird and high, and yet kind of flat and low. Oddly enough, when I am talking, I hear my voice as lower in pitch than it actually is . . .

What Does it Mean When Something is "Cute"?

In Philosopher’s Playground today, Steve G. asked a question about what makes something “cute”. Please read the post to see what he is talking about.

Now that you’re back, I thought the question was intriguing and tried to answer it as best I could. Here was my response:

The best way that I can describe it is "attractive innocent simplicity." For
your wife's shoe example it is that the shoes resonate to her on some basic
simple level of "shoeness." The miniatures elicit the same type of reaction. The
older couple holding hands resonates with a "oh, how innocent and simple." A
couple making out would not be "cute," since that detracts from the "innocent"
part. "Cute" has to contain some level of all three things in our minds.

I was then asked to elaborate by C. Ewing, who laid out three categories of things that might be considered cute, and asked me:

Also, what precisely is "innocent" about the shoes or skirt? Perhaps, the
pencil/pen due to its association with the young girl, but I don't see how
all three are necessarily going to be present in Category #3 (to any degree
or on any level).

So I tried to answer:

Good questions. When I mean "innocent" in terms of the girlfriend or shoes . . I
mean that they have a quality to you, the observer, that strikes you in a place
that registers as a "good" thing or has properties of or reminds you of
something deep that just clicks. Because a lot of times it seems that those sort
of preferences are formed starting in childhood, which gives it the "innocent"
quality. As a girl myself, that's what I think of when I see something
"cute."

I may not be explaining this correctly, not being an academic, so it is one of those things I can see in my head and think I instinctively know, but may be horribly misinterpreting.

My spelling was atrocious in the HaloScan, by the way. I really should write my responses in Word before I answer . . .

It really is a hard thing to explain and I doubt that I am doing it well or am even in the ballpark of being correct. It seems like a simple concept that is not so simple to explain.

So I’m throwing it out to you guys: How would you define something as “cute”?

A Horse with No Name

I have a embarrassing confession to make.

Until I read this today, I didn’t realize that the title to that America song was “Sister Golden Hair.” I’ve heard that song forever, but never really caught the actual title.

Do you all have songs that you didn’t know the real title to until much, much later?

Feeling in the Raw

I’ve been rather quiet for this past week, both out of being busy but also out of not knowing what to say. I have not been responding to your great comments, but they have been read in snatches of time here and there.

I don’t want to sound whiny or miserable, so I’m just trying to get through each day as I best can. My boss was out in the field this week, which left me to have to handle some things in the office alone which turned out to be way over my head. It has been a very discouraging time and I am very happy that this week is almost over.

To go to happier topics, I am going to the theater on Saturday and am really looking forward to being out with a friend and having lunch and generally doing things that I adore doing, and wish I could do more of, more often.

In Friday’s Washington Post, there was a review of the version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that my friend J and I are planning to see sometime in the next month . . . it’s going to be “Costume Free”! If that link doesn’t work, there’s more information about it here.

At first, I was wondering if I could really handle watching something like that live – this theater is really small and intimate, so you are pretty close to the action on stage no matter where you are. But I figure, after 15 20 minutes or so you’ll get used to it and won’t even notice anymore, really . . . AND you’ll definitely be paying attention to the words, since you won’t have costume cues to let you know who is who. I’ve taken several drawing classes with live models, both male and female. Once you get over your initial 12 year old kid reaction, you move on and pay attention to the details . . .

Ah, yes – the sacrifices one makes to become a sophisticated theatergoer!

Also, the show schedule is out for this year’s DC Fringe Festival – July 19-29. Lots of interesting choices there, lots of really odd stuff, too – it wouldn’t be called “fringe” if it didn’t have shows like this or this.

Today’s Audience Participation Question is:

Looking at the Fringe schedule, what shows do you think I should go see? Include any shows that you’d personally want to see, or shows that you think look SO ridiculous that I should go to just to see how they turn out.

Spring 2007 Culture Post Mortem

Summer’s finally here!

While at this time of year most people tend to put up a reading list of what they want to read for the upcoming Summer season, I’m going to be a wuss and just note what I finished reading this past Spring:

• Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
• Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
• Sons and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
• Good in Bed – Jennifer Weiner
• 2 Noam Chomsky books (One was 9-11, the other title escapes me at the moment)

. . . And the following Shakespeare plays (along with the accompanying overview chapters in the Marjorie Garber book):

• The Tempest
• Coriolanus
• Love’s Labors Lost
• Titus Andronicus
• Twelfth Night

Gee, that doesn’t seem like a lot, does it? But if we add in all of the newspapers, magazines and blogs that I read on a daily basis, that pushes the reading count up quite a bit!

However, I can quite happily say that I have seen the following plays performed live: Edward III, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Love’s Labors Lost, and The Tempest.

I carry around Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon in my purse to read while I’m waiting for stuff, so that should be finished soon. I know that I will be reading Hamlet and Macbeth pretty soon, since I’m going to see those plays within the next month or two.

I hope that my end of summer list will be a bit fuller and have a bit more variety, but I also am really excited that I will also get to see some more live performances.

Does anyone have any Spring accomplishments they want to boast about?

The Past is Prologue

Thanks to everyone for the lovely responses to my post about my Grandpa. I am glad I was able to convey my feelings about him to the world. There are many people we meet in this life who are cool people, but who never get the recognition that we think that they should . . .

***
In my quest to continue to become a member of the 21st century, this weekend I finally got an iPod. Mr. Random had been encouraging me to get one for months, and yesterday – needing a bit of retail therapy – we went on down to the Apple Store and got one. I was filled with much anxiety about it, though – that’s a lot of money for what’s basically just a fancy gadget. (Gee, do I sound like a cranky old man?) I spent a good chunk of yesterday evening uploading half of my CDs and now have 499 songs at my fingertips.

It may just have been the luck of what I uploaded, but I seem to own a lot of really mellow music – a lot of folky stuff, a lot of classical, a lot of jazz, a lot of old standards. I like good voices, good stripped-down instrumentation and good lyrics. I do have a lot of upbeat, pop stuff . . . but, it is all on cassettes! Because my formative music-buying years were in the late 80’s/early 90’s, I have a lot of really cool music that I would love to have uploaded to my iPod so I can channel my inner 18 year old again, but doing so would be quite a pain . . . unless anyone knows of a cheap way convert them?

***
The reason I finally bought the iPod, was that I needed a bit of retail therapy. Mr. Random and I were supposed to take my parents to dinner at a local barbeque place in honor of Father’s Day, and we were going to give my dad a present of 4 tickets to a Washington Nationals game in really excellent seats. (We were giving him the tickets because we can’t use them on that date, but he doesn’t need to know that.) My Dad cancelled at the last minute, since had had to go out of town to a funeral a few days last week and wanted to help my mom get ready for her business trip to Florida for two weeks. Which, I guess is valid, but it did hurt my feelings. I actually had been looking forward to the dinner, since I hadn’t seen my folks since Mother’s Day. Also, my dad cancelled another time we had invited him to dinner while Mr. Random’s Mom was here – so there was a bit of a history. I’m probably making too much of this and I’ll get over it . . . I’m still debating whether to still give him the tickets, though . . .

***
Went to see The Tempest on Thursday. It was a good production, but I was thrown off by some of this company’s interpretations of the plot. They left out a few of the not-so-minor characters, who actually added some important elements to the plot, and portrayed Caliban as mentally disturbed and hearing voices in his head to replace the characters. I wasn’t real thrilled with that . . .

Next play up for me to see: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Wooohooo!

***
I’m doing more ESL subbing this week, this time for a drop-in conversation class. I’m used to having a set bunch of people to educate for 10 to 12 weeks, so this is a new experience for me – I don’t need to do as much lesson planning and the key is to just have everyone talk and practice their English in a non-threatening environment. Very low key . . . perfect for me to do during the summer . . .

***
The weather is going to be DC summer hot this week. I’ve already received more mosquito bites this season than I’ve received in the past 5 years: This past week brought seven mosquito bites on my legs and thighs. I now have a bottle of OFF tucked away in my purse, along with a tube of sunscreen. I will not be caught off guard again!

OK, the last few songs on my iPod have been by: Allison Krauss, Fiona Apple, Paul Simon, Eddie From Ohio, and Diana Krall. Yes, I really need to finish uploading some other albums on here or this machine is going to put me to sleep . . .

The last two CDs I bought were The Puppini Sisters’ Betcha Bottom Dollar and Pink Martini’s Hey Eugene! What does this say about me?

What are you all listening to these days? I’m looking for ideas . . .

Kvetching Allowed

Philosopher’s Playground has a really good post today about the differences between whining, complaining, bitching and kvetching.

I am trying to analyze which of those I do most here on the blog. I always hope it’s kvetching, but it often does seem to devolve into whining and bitching.

I bitch about the admin guy all of the time – especially to Mr. Random, who in a highly entertaining way can also do a spot-on impersonation of him.

I whine about a lot of things, because I guess deep down I want someone to go “oh, poor Random Kath . . . there, there now.” I mean, in a way it’s human nature to want to have your misery validated. Who wants to think they are paranoid for no reason? Who doesn’t want some love shared their way?

One thing that I do not do a lot is complain. If I see something wrong, I try to fix it myself. If I go to a restaurant and there is a little puddle of schmutz on the table, I’ll just get a napkin and wipe it off myself – I’m used to cleaning up myself and other people – it takes more time to flag down a busy person and make them get a wet towel to wipe off a little spot. I’ve been on the other side in similar situations and no one is perfect, so I try to cut others some slack. If I can’t do it myself, I ask for help – then half the time people take over the task anyway. . .

~ Time passes ~

Oh, I’m back. I went away for a while – not that anyone would have noticed – to participate in Mr. Random’s good-bye party here at the Random Non-profit. I was the one assigned to keep Mr. Random busy until the party, which was pretty easy since he had to show me a few office procedures this morning and that activity took up over an hour. He was very surprised! I took many pictures, however I was not able to immortalize the look on his face when he walked into a room full of people with balloons, confetti and silly string. He received many cool going away gifts and started choking up when he was asked to give a speech. I started crying too . . .

This day has been quite surreal for the both of us, and I don’t think either of us will fully realize that he isn’t working here anymore until a couple of weeks from now. A chapter of his life is ending and a new one is beginning – very scary and exciting stuff!

I guess today is a lame posting day – I’ve been pretty low on sleep – but I’ll try to do better next time . . . But my Question of the Day is this: Of kvetching, whining, bitching and complaining, which of those do you find yourself doing most often?

“If you’re bored with yourself, imagine how I feel”

On my desk sits a New Yorker daily cartoon calendar and a cartoon showed up this week with the tagline above. You know the one, the husband and wife walking down the city street, the wife turning to the husband with a smug look on her face . . .

It seems to fit – I can imagine Mr. Random grouching that to me (although he wouldn’t, because he’s an awesome guy – but he COULD, there is cause . . .)

I’m not bored with myself, per se, but I am hankering to get out of my rut. Spring is usually the time when I try something new, throw something different into the mix – take a class of some sort, start some new projects . . .

I have one project that I could work on, which I hope to write about more this weekend. There’s a Shakespeare Festival going on in DC until June and my friend, J, has made it a project to read all of Shakespeare’s plays. That’s a cool idea, though with everything else going on, I don’t think I will be able to keep up with my friend. It’s a noble goal, though, one that I’m going to try as best I can. I’ve already recently read Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, and to keep it low key I’m just going to read random plays whenever the mood strikes me: sometimes it may be a comedy, sometimes a tragedy, sometimes a history play . . .

I still have the nice new yarn to start knitting a baby blanket, and I guess I could start any time, but for this one I think I’ll only feel motivated when and if I myself am actually pregnant . . .

There are some cycling/spinning classes at the local Y that I have been looking into, and I hope to start those next week. Oh, and swimming lessons too . . . but let’s see how committed I can be to the cycling classes first before coughing up extra money for swim lessons.

I still have stacks of books to read and the piles keep growing. I’ll try to show you the stacks when I get a moment . . .

Anyway, the Spring and Summer are full of possibilities, I just have to get off my duff and do something – anything, really . . .

What do YOU want to do this Spring?

The Sound of Paper

I usually don’t go for mushy, self-help-y type books, but given what’s going on in my life at the moment, I felt like doing a bit of guided reflection. For a brief shining moment, I thought I had sorted things out in my head and had started making positive decisions about my future, but this little health scare is making me rethink everything I decided.

So while Mr. Random and I were rambling in the bookstore last Saturday (because you can’t keep me out of a bookstore!), I was unexplainably drawn towards the book, The Sound of Paper: Starting From Scratch, by Julia Cameron. It is a book on how to unlock your creativity as a writer, but in the way it is written it has amazing parallels in rejuvenating the way you think about how you look at life and how you are living in it. After each chapter, there is a suggested writing exercise. So far I have been faithfully doing each exercise and not continuing on reading until the writing is completed. The fact of actually having to think about things and write about them on a piece of paper (not a keyboard) seems to be very . . . reflective? Devotional? Ugh! I can’t think of the correct word right now . . .

Anyway, here was one of the exercises:

Each of us has a different idea of sophistication. Each of us has certain items that speak to us as tokens of success. Sometimes in all of our striving, we overlook treating ourselves symbolically in ways that match our accomplishments. Take a pen in hand and number 1 to 25. List twenty-five things that represent to you sophistication and success . . .

OK, so I’m not going to list 25 things here, but I will list five:

1. Having a room dedicated to being a library
2. Wearing a well-tailored dark suit, with a crisp white shirt
3. Having a cozy house that is comfortable, but good for entertaining family and friends
4. Being able to afford to go to as many plays and concerts as I want
5. Having very nice stationery and journals and a good pen to write with

Having a shiny, clean car that doesn’t have twenty empty water and juice bottles on the floor of the backseat, thus making it impossible not to be embarrassed to carpool with friends and coworkers (oops, that’s six . . .)

So, I ask my faithful readers, what things represent sophistication and success to you?

Question of the Day

This was a question posed by my good friend, J, and I wondered how people would answer:

Why is it considered rude to talk on a cell phone in a restaurant?

If you had someone sitting across the table from you, you could talk to them and nobody would feel the least bit bothered. But if the person you're talking to happens to be in another state, suddenly you're boorish and insensitive. Why is that?

I think it's kind of rude, but I have trouble articulating why . . . it just is.

I theorize that the cell phone rings are irritating to many people who are trying to quietly enjoy their meals. People who talk on cell phones usually talk louder than normal, which is also disruptive to those around them.

When you talk to someone across from you, it is considered normal dining conversation – usually held at a normal tone of voice. Even it is loud, people can and do give you dirty looks and tell you both to keep it down.

A person talking on the cell phone? You only hear one side of the conversation. It makes people feel uncomfortable in ways that face-to-face conversations, for the most part, do not. (Unless it’s a heated argument or a drunken harangue, which sometimes can be considered free street theater.) Besides, what’s so darn important that you have to chat about it on the phone in a public place . . .

Which leads to why it annoys people so much – people hate cell phones anyway. It is another conduit of people bringing their private lives and dirty laundry into the public sphere: a loud, obnoxious MySpace page that people can’t block out of their range of hearing.

What do you guys think?