rouleur

I've begun posting to my tumblr microblog, Rouleur. Like most tumblogs, it's simply a vehicle for re-posting entries that have caught my eye elsewhere. This is a representative example:

11th Mar 2012

A Change of Scenery II (Making Mountains) by Rob Gonsalves; reposted from nothing new, a soup microblog by "charlottinka."

Walter Benjamin, a quote

I found a nice quotation on one of my favorite tumblr pages this morning. The blog is Chimin faisant by the artist, Catherine Willis, and one of its excellences is the author's insistence on providing descriptive captions and source data for her entries. Here's this morning's post with its caption and source:

Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.

— Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings (via mythologyofblue)

After reading a gazillion quotations over years of internet appreciation I've noticed that many (possibly most) have been subjected to substantial rewriting; others are entirely made up. It goes without saying perhaps that very many appear innumerable times on quotations pages, odd blogs, and the social sites.

This one does appear all over the place, mostly without citation, but, blessedly, its text is close to the original. Benjamin wrote: "Arbeit an einer guten Prosa hat drei Stufen: eine musikalische, auf der sie komponiert, eine architektonische, auf der sie gebaut, endlich eine textile, auf der sie gewoben wird." A more exact translation than the one that circulates webwise is Edmund Jephcott and Kinsley Shorter's: "Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven."* The statement (in original or translation) sounds more self-consciously aphoristic that most of Benjamin's writings. It's too pat. He wrote staccato sentences which did not flow into smooth-reading paragraphs and is thus considered to have had an aphoristic style, but he wasn't at all a sound-bite writer and most of his writing is more muscular than pretty. It does not generally have the musical, architectural, and textile qualities which he pronounces to be the mark of good prose. He wrote, in the words of a publisher, "in a disconcertingly concrete language."

Here's an example.

{From "Antiques" in One-Way Street, in One-way street, and other writings by Walter Benjamin, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London, Verso, 1997)}

Benjamin's ticket of admission to the Bibliothèque nationale.

{Walter Benjamin’s library card, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1940; source: a piece of monologue}

I've written about Walter Benjamin on another occasion: Walter, Hannah

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Note:

* From "Caution: Steps," One-Way Street, in One-way street, and other writings by Walter Benjamin, translated by Edmund Jephcott and Kingsley Shorter (London, Verso, 1997)

well written

I've been thinking about this quote from my recent blog post: "the incessant dribble of mini-messaging has made most people's daily use of written language brutally factual in character, more private ad copy than prose."

The statement may be literally accurate; who can say? Taking "mini-messaging" to be tweets, Facebook status statements, and the like, it may well be that most writers make no effort to craft handsome prose. But out of each day's millions of tweets and 'statuses' many are a pleasure to read. Some have poetic force, some are neatly aphoristic. Others are moving, arresting, or funny.

I like the ones that make good use of deadpan humor. Some of this is black: "Blowing out my candles, I wanted to wish for world peace. But then you harmonized the end of Happy Birthday so I had to wish for you to die."[1] Some is gentle: "Dear guy that asked me out in high school & is now a millionaire: I am entirely shallow now and will reconsider. XOXO, Summer." Some is pleasantly gross: "It's breathtakingly beautiful, the dim light of the office fridge filtered through the fine mist of a really good sneeze." Some graphic: "1) Watch women walking ahead of me slip on ice. 2) Mentally write tweet about her slipping. 3) Slip on ice. 4) Mentally rewrite tweet." Some mildly intimate: "Plucked one eyebrow, but am too lazy to pluck other one. Instead I shall live out the rest of my life looking suspiciously intrigued."[2]

The "incessant dribble of mini-messaging" quote comes from Adam Haslett's excellent article in FT: The art of good writing. One of his worries is that online communication via email and social media produces "a kind of death of the sentence by collective neglect." From Strunk & White and other style nannies writers have gotten the mistaken idea that you should always try to eliminate the inessential, use the one right symbol to stand for bunches of words, and make prose muscular by paring it down with Hemingway concision.

I thought about this today while absorbing blog posts by two favorite writers.

The first is a young woman born in Ireland, now living in London. A couple of days ago she wrote a brief reminiscence called Lay Of The Land and today she writes of a brief encounter with Seamus Heaney: Let The Hare Sit. There's no point in my copying extracts; both pieces are short and you should go there and read them. And do, too, make the jump out to read Heaney's poem, The Creggan White Hare to which she links.

The second writer is a Swarthmore history professor who also has made two recent posts on his blog. His are longer and not personal but issue-oriented. The first takes the outpourings of anger in Eqypt and other Mid-East countries as a starting point and moves on to reflect on the effectiveness governing elites everywhere. It's Falling Walls, Burning Buildings, Gutting Budgets, and in it he says,

In the past decade, both global and local political classes have offered nothing but enfeebled incremental, technocratic and self-absorbed fumblings to a succession of shared economic and social crises, hemmed in on all sides by both self-inflicted and exterior constraints. Not even evident self-interest can push some national elites towards reform: now in Egypt, yesterday in Zimbabwe, tomorrow who knows? rulers, ministers, bureaucrats continue commit elaborate forms of social suicide, driving not only their people but their own fortunes towards the abyss, sometimes in the most transparently avoidable ways.

I’d welcome the uprisings and rejections save for the dreadful likelihood that in most cases nothing better lies behind it. No one knows the way out of this cul-de-sac, nobody has a better idea. In many cases, those most disaffected by or angry about the deterioration of the nation-state’s capacity and vision have still more horrible or destructive ambitions in mind, where the best thing we could hope for would be a bewildered, enfeebled liberal democracy weakly steered by weary technocrats lacking in all conviction.

The second post is about the practical value of courses in liberal arts colleges, whether it's enough to say that students gain the ability to think critically and that this is an extremely valuable life skill. The post is Skills, Competencies and Literacies, Oh My and in it the author says

If a parent asks me, "What will my child get from studying with you and your colleagues for a price tag that will buy me a house in some real estate markets" and my answer is solely, "They will understand the mysteries of the world a bit more deeply" or "They will be a better person", those are legitimately repellent or unworthy answers for a great many people. (And we shouldn’t be particularly pleased with the parents who will be satisfied with the idea that we’re making a future elite a bit more cultivated and dignified.) I can’t understand why we would ever insist on those as solitary or exclusive answers. I would say instead, "They will be better at almost any job they choose to do and any life they choose to lead, in ways that I can describe quite concretely, and part of being better is that they will understand the mysteries of the world more deeply and have begun to explore the art of being human within those mysteries".

These writers do not seem to be struggling to pare down their prose to minimal essentials. They appear (to me) to be using the words they need to get across what they have to say. And they both succeed very well. The more you read of them, the more you appreciate their styles. They aim to communicate and appear fully confident in their ability to do so. Their prose is lucid and never seems overworked or intended simply to impress.

My first author doesn't give her name. The second is Timothy Burke.

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There are good photos on ganching. I particularly like the one on the Lay Of The Land post but can't show it here because the owner asserts full copyright protection. The owner of this (somewhat similar) photo permits sharing under a creative commons license.

Oliver Perkins took this photo of fields in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It appears on his flickr photostream

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Notes:

[1] The king of black humor might well be Jonathan Swift who wrote "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse." Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704).

[2] Here are a few more. Some of these are like the one-liners of standup comics.

• Don't ask her about the band-aid don't ask her about the band-aid don't ask her. “What happened to your face?” Dammit.
• Full of peace and calm this morning. Googled my symptoms and found out I died in my sleep.
• I'm proactively rewarding myself in advance for not procrastinating later by taking a nap right now.
• "I taught the dog a new trick! Watch this!" He points at dog and says "Look cute!" I want to roll my eyes but damn, that dog IS cute.
• I'll never be the girl who walks in the room and commands everyone's attenHEY! Can you at least finish reading this tweet?!
• If Europe goes bankrupt, I might buy Portugal as a fixer-upper. Depends on the number of bathrooms.
• Day 65 of unemployment. I buy a party hat for my cat, think about knitting him a matching cape.
• I was *so* not into things before not being into things was a thing.
• I made eye contact with someone in traffic and then didn't let them merge. I feel like a Bond villain.
• The Census shows there are 82.8 million Moms. None of them can believe that you're going outside in THAT.
• Realized I haven't received a forwarded urban legend email in days. Sensing a great disturbance within my Mother-in-law's computer.
• Open my favorite web forum…50 people arguing about a coffee grinder reviewer's motivations…close my favorite web forum.

I got most of these via a Google search for 'best tweets.'

daily finds

First thing each morning (after making tea and finishing a few chores), I plant myself at the pc and open a little app called webmon. The app keeps track of changes in a bunch of homepages I follow and I have it show me all the changed pages -- maybe a dozen. Once loaded, I spend maybe an hour moving from tab to tab, checking what's new since last look. Some of what's there is news sites or other sorts of publications, but many are tumblogs, like Soup (my favorite) which is populated by mostly European, mostly geeky, mostly culturally-hip men and (increasingly) women. Here's a smattering of what catches my eye.

1. from Nothing New by charlottinka:

a retro arty photograph


a pretty woman


a cityscape


a photo from a bike fashionista


an audio track
Jane's Addiction - Summertime Rolls

Me and my girlfriend don't wear no shoes
Her nose is painted pepper sunlight
She loves me, I mean it's serious
As serious can be
— Jane's Addiction

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2. From a group blog called Saigonmarket

a poignant old news photo; the caption reads: "Elvis didn’t die he just moved to a better town. Memphis, USA"


a tatoo (DC!)

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3. From a Soup blog by ashe

a comic


an item on sexual assault
"A Culture of Indifference": Report on Campus Sexual Assault Reveals Inaction Taken by Schools, Education Department
Feministing

In December, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) released a report not only about the fact that 95% of college campus rapes go unreported, but that survivors who do report often get no justice. Today, they have followed up with solid results from a year-long study, revealing that school judicial systems sanction little to no punishment for students responsible for sexual assault, often...

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4. From halberd on tumblr.com

a cat


a bike

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5. From a Soup blog called Tumble upon johl

a quirky, funny photo


a wolf

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6. From the cartoonist, Stuart McMillen

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7. From a Soup blog by ivanzero

harbinger of the coming season


a reflection photo

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8. And from other miscellaneous sources

an animated gif


a hi-def cat photo


a landscape


a link to a youtube
"This is what happens when you tickle a Koala. "

a travel photo

this is on flickr and is by Xavier Fargas)

extraordinary finds

If you don't know about the blog, Ordinary Finds, you should. Its author, Bent Sorensen gives celebrates the cultural milestones of each day — the day's births of artists, photographers, musicians, writers, and actors along with the works for which they're known. The blog's posts give vivid images of the creators and their works. There is in it both beauty and enlightenment.

Here are recent images. Visit the blog to read their descriptions and explanations.















Bent is a professor in the English Dept of Denmark's Aalborg Universitet. He has another blog, A rare, rare find..., "cultural studies — all day, every day which is more text heavy. Ordinary Finds is more visual with just enough text to establish the context for each entry.

{Bent Sorensen; from his rare find blog}

{another photo of the man from his academic home page}

not a ganch, really

I'm fond of a blog called ganching. From what I can tell, the author is an Irishwoman, probably from the North, not South, now residing in London.* Her posts are personal, charming, and full of good humor. By her own account the blog is "funny, sharp and not to be taken too seriously." She's also an excellent photographer. She likes travel. She has many friends, some of whom she mentions (by codes names) and many of whom link to and comment upon her blog posts. The blog tells us not just what books she's reading and what films she's seen, but also "Things I have bought in John Lewis" (the UK department store chain).

This short post gives an idea of her writing:

Magherafelt

We stopped for tea in Magherafelt in a pub that smelt of the night before. You found it charming that they brought an unasked for plate of biscuits. I called my mother to say we were on our way. 'Will I make something for you? A tart - that’s what I’ll make - I have all the stuff in for a tart.' A first-time visitor you drank it all in – the 'it is, so it is' responses, the metal-meshed barracks and the raggedy red, white and blue. We stayed longer than we planned and got lost coming out of town. Me, behind the wheel, shoulders hunched, the wipers on, and rain pelting down from the darkening sky. When we finally arrived my mother was all aflutter, reaching up to kiss me, embarrassed in front of a stranger. My father, in the front room in his chair, seemed more composed but as I bent down towards him, muttered, 'Youse are very late - they must have moved Magherafelt since I was last there.'**

Over the past few months she's been taking — and writing up — long, rural walks. (See for example this post and this one.) The hikes have been a prelude to a trip she's about to make to Portugal and Spain for the Santiago de Compestela pilgrimage. She tells us this in a post she calls Twelve Things I Dislike (And A Couple More For Luck) in which she ennumerates the reasons why she, of all people, is unlikely to make this trip.

Yesterday's post, Language Lessons, describes some unusual and funny language lessons by a friend. Here's an excerpt:

Things he has attempted to teach me include:

Double olive oil on that please
Do you have any dishes on the menu that include offal?
I put out on the first date

When I attempt to speak any Spanish at all TB [the friend] does a lot of harrumphing and gives the impression that the only thing missing from our Spanish lessons is the opportunity for him to apply a sally rod across my knuckles when I make mistakes. His teaching technique is either to mock my pronunciation or shout or both.

"You have to pronounce ALL THE LETTERS! Now say hello"

"Hola"

"No - 'ola. You pronounce all the letters apart from h."

So far I can ask where the path is (although will not be able to understand anything said in reply to this) and say hello, goodbye and thank you. This does not bode well.

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What does this word Ganching mean?

The blog's author gives these definitions in the blog's banner:

1. To talk in a halting, agitated way 2. talk stupidly 3. of a dog snapping of the teeth 4. of a horse biting

The OED says it means execution by impalement, gashing by boar tusk, and like horrors.

In a blog post the author says 'the proper definition of ganching btw is not the one at the top of this page; it is in fact "to talk shite."'

In Irish Slang a ganch is a person who talks to much. As a verb it means to slabber e.g. "I wouldn't listen to yer man...he's a pure ganch so he is"

The BBC Northern Ireland glossary says a ganch is an oaf or ill-mannered person, someone who's clumsy and awkward: "stop fallin about the place ye ganch ye"

A site called Detectives Beyond Borders: A Forum for International Crime Fiction has this exchange:

Blogger Peter Rozovsky said... "About time, ya big ganch."

Blogger adrian mckinty said... "Is Brennan a ganch? More of a pochle if you ask me.

Blogger Peter Rozovsky said... "What can I tell you? My grip on Northern Irish slang is shaky. A ganch is a big, bumbling fellow, isn't it? What does one call a somewhat smaller version of a ganch?"

He continues... "Ganch appears to have several unrelated meanings, raning from a cat's belly to a verb meaning to talk incessantly. Some of these meanings appear to have found their way to Australia, according to some Web site I found. I don't know if Irish immigrants brought the word there or if a separate meaning evolved independently. Whatever the case, I like the word -- which I learned from one of the Michael Forsythe books, by the way."

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Notes:

*To be specific, she lives in the smallest flat in South London and commutes to work in East London.

**Magherafelt is a town in Northern Ireland.

{Pub in Magherafelt; source: tripadvisor.com}

{This photo comes from a page of ballistic resistant windows and doorsets in Magherafelt}

{On 'the raggedy red, white and blue' see here}

serendipity

I recently finished reading Elizabeth Taylor's novel The Wreath of Roses and am thinking about writing something about it. In doing a little web searching on the topic I stumbled on an interesting post by a Tayloresque Irish woman who calls her blog ganching ("1. To talk in a halting, agitated way; 2. talk stupidly; 3. of a dog snapping of the teeth; 4. of a horse biting"). The post includes a photo of a branch line railway station. The author and a friend have come there to take a countryside walk. The connection with Taylor's novel relates to its branch-line motif. (Its first line: "Afternoons seem unending on branch-line stations in England in summer time.")

Excerpts from the post:

I was in Balcombe yesterday with my friend Fiona who likes to talk and talk and talk some more. With every mile we walked my mood got worse and worse. When we arrived in Balcombe it was raining. . . . We squelched off through the long, wet grass to the nearest pub where we had cold fried eggs and ham. This also made me cross as did the fact that my boots were letting in water. Fiona pretended not to notice that I was out of sorts and continued to talk. . . . Eventually I snapped: "Would you ever stop talking 'til I read these directions. . . . Fiona continues to chat. We walk along for 15 minutes. Nothing we see accords with the directions in the book. Eventually I stop. I insist that Fiona must be wrong and we need to retrace our steps all the way back to the exiting the woods bit. Fiona argues against this but eventually agrees and we spend 20 minutes trudging back the way we have come. Eventually we reach the bridge again.

"Ok, Fiona, you have to pay attention this time as well. Cross the river by a wooden bridge, following the footpath sign. Follow this path straight up the hill.

"What happened to the half-left?"

"What half-left?

"The half-left you read out the last time!"

It is at this point that I realise where I have gone wrong. For a split second I consider lying to Fiona but good sense prevails plus I know I wouldn't get away with it.

"Umm, I think I turned over a page too many last time!"

The directions in the book begin to make sense again. My boots continue to let in water. Fiona continues to chat.
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{The photo shows Balcombe Station; it was taken by the author and appears on flickr.}

Here's a recent post the author calls White Collar Crime. The phrase "Moats, tennis courts, flat screen televisions!" refers to the revelations of illicit and highly questionable public expenditures for personal benefit by House of Commons Members. We know from previous posts that the author has recently moved into a tiny London flat and is making repairs. She puts the whole post in Italics to show that it's a conversation.

Nearly finished. If you could just turn the heating on for a minute to make sure there are no leaks. So, like I was saying, what a bloody shower.

I know! Moats, tennis courts, flat screen televisions!

If it was one of us it would be a different story. It's fraud isn't it? Nothing else. Have you got a cloth in case there is a leak?

Scatter cushions, flipping, flipping nerve more like.

That's it - all done.

How much do I owe you?

Forty five quid if you want a receipt?

I was going to pay cash.

Great! Thirty quid and no receipt.

There you go.

Lovely - so I'll be back to clean out the radiators in a few weeks. See you then.

Mayor Dave's blog

Today a member of my family made a Facebook link to a blog post by the Mayor of Madison, Wisconsin. The post says the city needs to sustain the professional reporting of its one remaining printed newspaper. Here's an extract:

So, here's a modest proposal. Charge me. Please charge me. Why is it that I should expect to pay for news delivered on paper, but not expect to pay for the same story I read online? It costs something to hire reporters and editors and why shouldn't I, as a consumer of the news, pay for some of that cost?

So first and foremost, charge me. Second, charge me twice. Competition is a good thing. The blending of our two daily newspapers into one is not a healthy thing. When I see a Cap Times byline in the State Journal I wonder what that means. I know who wrote it, but who edited it? And what does it mean for competition between the papers? Are reporters tripping over one another to break a story or are they sleepily cooperating?

I'd rather not have just one daily news outlet. It would be better for democracy if there were a bunch. So, I'll pay to subscribe to both "papers" as long as both are hiring good reporters and competing against each other. I'm betting that for all the scrutiny and tough questions and pure aggravation that professional journalists present me with, in the long-run I'm better off with a well-informed constituency. And whether or not I am personally better off as a mayor, I know democracy itself depends on it.

The post is interesting for a few reasons. First it seems to me to be unusual for a politician to welcome competitive news gathering since it surely results (as the post suggests) in competition to uncover real or supposed dirt in city hall. And then it seems unusual because he's not discussing any government policy; he's giving a personal opinion; no more. Further, the tone is conversational. The post has nothing in common with the self-promoting literature that it seems most politicians send out via mail, press releases, and whatever means they can capture.

The mayor's other posts are similarly informal, but their topics vary greatly. Some record local events in which he's participated, each with what seems to me to be a genuinely self-deprecating charm. For example: a bowling contest between the mayor's office and city council and a fundrasising event called Men Who Cook. Others explain his position on legislative initiatives; for example one on the city's purchase of hybrid buses and another on fast-tracking proposals for federal stimulus money.

I thought it might be interesting to see whether other mayors blogged so effectively and with such a light touch. A Google search reveals that while there are quite a few mayor blogs, almost none are as interesting and personable. Most are stiffly official, written either in passive or third-person voice. Some are blatantly boosterish. One or two are more like wikis than blogs, with the mayor responding to contributions sent by constituents. The only one that seems to approach Mayor Dave's from Madison is Mayor Joe Curtatone's in Somerville, Massachusetts.

My search turned up no mayor blogs at all from my own local jurisdictions; just a couple from county council members (here and here).

Here are links to some of the blogs I came across:

• Youngstown, OH
• Guelph, Ontario
• Phoenix, AZ
• Manchester, NH
• San Clamente, CA
• Valley Center, KS
• San Francisco, CA
• Miami, FL
• Dawson City, Yukon, Canada

Here's a smattering of mayor-blog images. The last one shows Mayor Dave.

soup

I joined soup.io when it was first introduced last year. Haven't used my account, but keep finding others who are doing good stuff with theirs. The ambiance is refreshingly Mitteleuropa and iconoclastic.

Hair in my soup has a been a favorite for a while now. I just added pogus'ka to my Bloglines aggregation.

These come from its current posts: