Thus Spake Zuska has an interesting post about a conversation with a farmer at a farmer's market. It highlights what hard work farming is, and made me think about some of the choices we have to make, or that we make perhaps without even thinking about them.
For example, do we want perfectly organic veggies that have never been touched by pesticides, or do we want veggies that have not been gnawed on by bugs?
Do we want food that takes a lot of effort to grow, and therefore costs more, or do we want food that's produced largely mechanically and is cheap?
I like cheap! I like perfect-looking, bug-free produce! I also recognize that a few bug nibbles won't hurt me, and that people who do the hard work of producing food should be fairly compensated for it.
Food is one of those things that's kind of just always there (if you're fortunate), you eat all the time and you're always getting and preparing and consuming food, but as soon as you start to think about it even a little it becomes very interestingly complicated.
Fraught, even. You don't not have an opinion about it, if you stop to think.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Wordly Musings
Some things stick with you.
Like, I haven't read (or had read to me) Winnie-the-Pooh since I was about, I don't know, 30 years younger than I am now.
It was never my super favorite set of stories anyway. I preferred Kipling's Just-So Stories.
But for some reason I have long remembered this bit from that one story where Pooh eats too much honey and gets stuck in the tunnel trying to get out of Rabbit's house:
And I got it pretty close to right, except it's "only I didn't like to say anything," instead of "but I didn't like to say anything" (which I might have known, since it's more English) and the original does not italicize "me."
Also, this version renders the line as "one of us has eating too much," but that doesn't really make sense even as an old-fashioned Britishism, so I'm going to assume it's a typo.
The point is, I kind of love this. I love the way the language keeps looping back with the "said Rabbit," catching the sort of jumpy way he's talking, and the way it finally wraps up by switching to a decisive "he said."
It's stuck in my head for years and years, I suppose because I always kind of liked it, and only now it occurs to me to remember it again and think about why I liked it.
I'm only slightly likely to go re-read the whole book to better appreciate any other bits of fun prose, but I guess I'll always have that nearly-accurate memory of that one deliciously choppy line. I mean, unless I forget it.
On a slightly related topic, I also see here in Chapter 2 a use of quotation marks that you do see in older books, where they put quotes around the idea of what a character is saying, rather than using them to signify the exact words used.
For example, here in chapter 2 of Winnie-the-Pooh we have Pooh asking if there's any more to eat, followed by the line,
So today we would either leave the quotation marks out of that line and just write,
And either way we know what's going on, so it's really not a concern for readability, but these days we tend to assume that quotes are for setting off the precise words used by a speaking character, or an exact quote from another text.
These are the words that were used! I was taking notes!
I think it's interesting that there was a time when quotation marks apparently had a more general purpose, signaling that a character said something, and this was the main gist of it, but the author isn't going to worry about exactly transcribing the dialogue.
This was basically the information someone wanted to convey, but I wasn't taking notes, so don't expect a script!
It would be a good way to get around writing differentiated character 'voices,' not that I'm saying that's what Milne or Brontë was doing.
Also, if you don't want to write dialect or accents but they would make sense for your story? This could totally save you!
I'm going to remember this when I start working on a story full of dialects and accents for NaNoWriMo.
Like, I haven't read (or had read to me) Winnie-the-Pooh since I was about, I don't know, 30 years younger than I am now.
It was never my super favorite set of stories anyway. I preferred Kipling's Just-So Stories.
But for some reason I have long remembered this bit from that one story where Pooh eats too much honey and gets stuck in the tunnel trying to get out of Rabbit's house:
"I thought at the time," said Rabbit, "but I didn't want to say anything,"said Rabbit, "that one of us was eating too much," said Rabbit, "and I knew it wasn't me," he said.OK, that was me writing it down from memory. Thanks to the wonders of books that have gone out of copyright, I shall find an online version and check my work, which we may do here here in Chapter 2.
And I got it pretty close to right, except it's "only I didn't like to say anything," instead of "but I didn't like to say anything" (which I might have known, since it's more English) and the original does not italicize "me."
Also, this version renders the line as "one of us has eating too much," but that doesn't really make sense even as an old-fashioned Britishism, so I'm going to assume it's a typo.
The point is, I kind of love this. I love the way the language keeps looping back with the "said Rabbit," catching the sort of jumpy way he's talking, and the way it finally wraps up by switching to a decisive "he said."
It's stuck in my head for years and years, I suppose because I always kind of liked it, and only now it occurs to me to remember it again and think about why I liked it.
I'm only slightly likely to go re-read the whole book to better appreciate any other bits of fun prose, but I guess I'll always have that nearly-accurate memory of that one deliciously choppy line. I mean, unless I forget it.
On a slightly related topic, I also see here in Chapter 2 a use of quotation marks that you do see in older books, where they put quotes around the idea of what a character is saying, rather than using them to signify the exact words used.
For example, here in chapter 2 of Winnie-the-Pooh we have Pooh asking if there's any more to eat, followed by the line,
Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, "No, there wasn't."It doesn't actually make sense that he would say "no, there wasn't"--wasn't is past tense, as is the story as a whole, but the question "is there any more?" is present tense, so the answer really ought to match. We would expect Rabbit to say "no, there isn't" instead.
So today we would either leave the quotation marks out of that line and just write,
Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, No, there wasn't.Or we'd match the tense to that of the question and write,
Rabbit took the covers off the dishes, and said, "No, there isn't."I just finished Jane Eyre (no, I had never read Jane Eyre before, yes, as a former English major my head was perpetually hanging in shame), and that book is bristling with this kind of "quotes around the general idea of what the person said" usage. (Hmm...what kind of usage were those quotes just there? Never mind that now.)
And either way we know what's going on, so it's really not a concern for readability, but these days we tend to assume that quotes are for setting off the precise words used by a speaking character, or an exact quote from another text.
These are the words that were used! I was taking notes!
I think it's interesting that there was a time when quotation marks apparently had a more general purpose, signaling that a character said something, and this was the main gist of it, but the author isn't going to worry about exactly transcribing the dialogue.
This was basically the information someone wanted to convey, but I wasn't taking notes, so don't expect a script!
It would be a good way to get around writing differentiated character 'voices,' not that I'm saying that's what Milne or Brontë was doing.
Also, if you don't want to write dialect or accents but they would make sense for your story? This could totally save you!
I'm going to remember this when I start working on a story full of dialects and accents for NaNoWriMo.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Things That Inspire Me
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette, as usual, has some excellent advice. This is especially timely for the beginning of the school year:
There's also a link to this amusing 15-minute video documentary showing how this was accomplished at Eastern Kentucky University. I'm sure they have a very obedient, if small, student body.
There's no reason we can't all be producing high-caliber cautionary tales like this! I mean, other than laziness.
All back-to-school library orientation sessions should include video footage of librarians murdering patrons who don’t follow the rules.I'm going to get right on it.
There's also a link to this amusing 15-minute video documentary showing how this was accomplished at Eastern Kentucky University. I'm sure they have a very obedient, if small, student body.
There's no reason we can't all be producing high-caliber cautionary tales like this! I mean, other than laziness.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Vegetable Digression
What is kohlrabi? I got some in my box of local farm veggies this week. I'd heard of it, but not actually owned, prepared or (as I recall) eaten it.
I could have looked it up online to learn more about it, but that would have ruined the joy of discovery, so we just ate it as suggested by a helpfully included recipe (the farm people must suspect that some of us are unfamiliar with this vegetable).
It turns out that, sliced up and roasted in some olive oil, it makes a pleasant dish that's sort of halfway between a turnip and a potato. Not as sweet as turnip, but with a turniplike texture: mild in flavor like a potato, but not quite as starchy.
It would probably go nicely in my favorite fall concoction, a mix of root vegetables all roasted together (although according to this description, it is misclassified if considered a root vegetable, since the edible portion grows above the soil).
The moral is, do not fear the kohlrabi if you happen upon one. It is a mild-mannered vegetable with a pleasing taste. And, once I finally looked it up, a long and distinguished history.
Now to do something useful with those beets lurking in the crisper drawer.
I could have looked it up online to learn more about it, but that would have ruined the joy of discovery, so we just ate it as suggested by a helpfully included recipe (the farm people must suspect that some of us are unfamiliar with this vegetable).
It turns out that, sliced up and roasted in some olive oil, it makes a pleasant dish that's sort of halfway between a turnip and a potato. Not as sweet as turnip, but with a turniplike texture: mild in flavor like a potato, but not quite as starchy.
It would probably go nicely in my favorite fall concoction, a mix of root vegetables all roasted together (although according to this description, it is misclassified if considered a root vegetable, since the edible portion grows above the soil).
The moral is, do not fear the kohlrabi if you happen upon one. It is a mild-mannered vegetable with a pleasing taste. And, once I finally looked it up, a long and distinguished history.
Now to do something useful with those beets lurking in the crisper drawer.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Historic Events
I hear it's the 91st anniversary of votes for women in the U.S.
Also, the 40th anniversary of WorldCat.
I'm off to catalog some women's suffrage materials to celebrate.
But only on the street in my mind, because in real life I don't have any women's suffrage materials or cataloging rules with me right at the moment. Also, sitting here with a glass of wine is just as celebratory.
I'll drink to votes and massive catalogs.
Also, the 40th anniversary of WorldCat.
I'm off to catalog some women's suffrage materials to celebrate.
But only on the street in my mind, because in real life I don't have any women's suffrage materials or cataloging rules with me right at the moment. Also, sitting here with a glass of wine is just as celebratory.
I'll drink to votes and massive catalogs.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Just a Tiny Speck of Awful
So there was this tiny adorable earthquake on the east coast this week, right? Livened up everyone's afternoon. Startling but harmless. Good times.
I was busy playing Talisman that night, so I didn't bother to write anything about it at the time.
Yes, it's all fun and games unless you live somewhere where it actually did damage. This Ain't Livin' has a guest post from someone in Virginia who reports that it wasn't actually all that tiny and adorable if you were right on top of it.
No one was killed, thankfully, but buildings were damaged to the point that they had to be condemned, which is bound to be inconvenient if you lived in or worked in or had occasion to visit those buildings.
The post suggests that no one is paying attention to the damage that was done in small towns because the damage that wasn't done in big cities is a better story. And certainly disasters in big cities tend to be worse in terms of numbers than disasters in small towns because there are more people around to get hurt, so the fact that there was no disaster in any big city is good news.
It's too bad if that means we can't notice that things happen outside of big cities, though.
I was busy playing Talisman that night, so I didn't bother to write anything about it at the time.
Yes, it's all fun and games unless you live somewhere where it actually did damage. This Ain't Livin' has a guest post from someone in Virginia who reports that it wasn't actually all that tiny and adorable if you were right on top of it.
No one was killed, thankfully, but buildings were damaged to the point that they had to be condemned, which is bound to be inconvenient if you lived in or worked in or had occasion to visit those buildings.
The post suggests that no one is paying attention to the damage that was done in small towns because the damage that wasn't done in big cities is a better story. And certainly disasters in big cities tend to be worse in terms of numbers than disasters in small towns because there are more people around to get hurt, so the fact that there was no disaster in any big city is good news.
It's too bad if that means we can't notice that things happen outside of big cities, though.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
StealthNet
Go Make Me a Sandwich has a guest post offering a nice introduction to internet anonymity (crucial tip: be extremely paranoid).
It mentions metadata! Not the sort librarians apply to records, though. The type that software and gadgets automatically add to your documents and photographs (autometadata?). The post notes that metadata is not necessarily bad, but can be trouble in the wrong situation:
Yes! Use it to organize and manage your data!
Also, be paranoid. Besides the metadata note, which yeah is probably not the interesting part to anyone but me, there are helpful tips on passwords, anonymous browsing, thoroughly erasing files, and more.
It mentions metadata! Not the sort librarians apply to records, though. The type that software and gadgets automatically add to your documents and photographs (autometadata?). The post notes that metadata is not necessarily bad, but can be trouble in the wrong situation:
Pictures, for example, store all kinds of juicy things as EXIF data, including in the case of some phones and cameras, geolocation. Office documents, pdfs, spreadsheets; all sorts of things can hold data that can identify you. This junk is called Metadata. Not a big deal (it can even be personally useful) until you’re posting information, say, about unethical practices about your boss on your anonymous blog and your employer uses metadata from a posted .docx file to find out it was you. Oops. Now you’re fired. Or worse.Again, this is not librarian metadata, but I'm all for spreading awareness of metadata in general, so cheers to the mention that, if you're not worried about anonymity, it can be useful.
Yes! Use it to organize and manage your data!
Also, be paranoid. Besides the metadata note, which yeah is probably not the interesting part to anyone but me, there are helpful tips on passwords, anonymous browsing, thoroughly erasing files, and more.
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