Fiona serves dinner July 21, 2008

kijjohnson does this. I can do it, too.

1. It would perhaps be easier if I were more used to it. Why now? Hormones? I thought that by now it would be going the other way.
2. There can never be enough, but drawer space is limited.
3. There are times when I am convinced that they really don't deserve me.
4. That's okay, because I really don't deserve them either.
5. The guilt would be more productive if I actually did something about it.

Randy Pausch, a man almost exactly my age, died today at the age of 47. The New York Times wrote here:

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor whose last lecture became an Internet sensation and bestselling book, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

Randy Pausch with Dylan, Logan and Chloe. Dr. Pausch, whose proudest professional achievement was creating a free computer programming tool for children called Alice, was an improbable celebrity. A self-professed nerd, he pushed his students to create virtual reality projects, celebrated the joy of amusement parks and even spent a brief stint as a Disney “Imagineer.'’
Last September, Dr. Pausch unexpectedly stepped on an international stage when he addressed a crowd of about 400 faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon as part of the school’s “Last Lecture” series. In the talks, professors typically talk about issues that matter most to them. Dr. Pausch opened his talk with the news that he had terminal cancer and proceeded to deliver an uplifting, funny talk about his own childhood dreams and how to help his children and others achieve their own goals in life. He learned he had pancreatic cancer in September, 2006.

Sitting in the audience was Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jeff Zaslow, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, who wrote about the speech. Media outlets and bloggers linked to the story, and more than 10 million people have since watched an Internet video of the talk. The lecture was translated into seven languages, and Hyperion published a book version that became a New York Times bestseller.

I listened to the lecture on video, and it was truly excellent (Here's a synopsis in another article). It seems that Dr. Pausch had figured out a lot of stuff I've been trying to figure out, and he was very satisfied with his life, as short as it ended up. I will think some more on what he passed on, and how I can apply them to my own life.

Another excellent article/tribute, from the writer at the Wall Street Journal who ended up collaborating with him on the book.

There's a nice photo pool for Portus accumulating at Flickr. I've added my photos. If you couldn't make Portus, check 'em out to see what fun we had.

Check out The Half Bloods's "Breakin' into Gringotts."

And (my new theme song, probably): The House of Black's song: "Wrock Fan Girl," which also is on their album "Family Tree."

Both songs are downloadable at their MySpace pages (links above) and feature pretty good voices and nice musical arrangements, a little more sophisticated than the usual.

As always, for my own curiosity, please comment if you listen and like.

I saw this inspirational video on SparkPeople this morning and wanted to cross-post it here. (lollardfish and buttonlass, I particularly wanted to point it out to you.) The person who introduces the vid says, "This is one of the greatst love stories of all time, a story of a father who climbs mountains and runs to the ends of the earth and back to give his son a better life, a life that transcends the limitations of this body."

Definitely worth ten minutes of your time.

omigosh

Remember I told you that Delia needed to be entertained and asked you for ideas?

So far this summer, she has made:

A denim skirt, sewn with the assistance and guidance of dlandon. A matching jacket will be made on a future get together

Ten necklaces and "about a billion pairs of earrings" (and she helped me design a necklace and pair of earrings for me to wear)

Knitted bookmarks (several of them), tiny Gryffindor scarves from the book Charmed Knits: Projects for Fans of Harry Potter, using yarn that aome sent her

Started a knitted blanket

Started a cross stitch project from a package sent by haniaw (Thanks, we got the box!)

Made several soulcollage cards

Taken jewelry-making lessons

Taken a cake-decorating course

Cooked several dinners

Practiced crocheting (no specific project yet)

Started making a quilt ("although I'm probably never going to finish it")

She has bullied Rob into driving her to Michaels, Arc (where she can get secondhand craft supplies) and JoAnne Fabrics repeatedly in the last several weeks. "She's relentless" says Rob with a touch of consternation. "I never need to set my alarm in the morning because Delia's always waking me up and ordering me to take her somewhere to get craft supplies."

My paper journal has been sadly neglected lately. This is making me uneasy.

As I mentioned before, I started keeping a daily paper journal at the age of fourteen and I'm pushing fifty now. I got my journals at Woolworths for years, and then, once all the Woolworths in this area went out of business, resorted to the At-a-Glance company. They're not nearly as cheap now: a blank journal that I buy now with the days properly printed for each day of the calendar year is now over $25.00. I have them all arranged on a row in my office. I'm running out of room on the top of the bookshelf where I keep them.

For years--decades--I was extremely rigid that every page had to be filled. No matter what. I could let a day or two pass, but I had to catch up later.

Then, about, let's see, five or six years ago, this changed. I'd let a day pass and not catch up. I didn't worry about it. I don't know exactly what made me change my policy. Well, perhaps I do. I started LiveJournaling around the same time. I was still writing; I was still doing the same journaling about my day I always did. Except that now, quite pleasantly, with the on-line journal, I was getting some response back.

Then, over the last two years or so, things changed again. I was letting more than a day or two go by without writing. Now I'd leave as long as a week blank and not fill it in. This year has been even worse. My entries are sparse, and hardly interesting. Well, I suppose they never really were interesting, but I was always diligent about it. Now I am not.

It's peculiar how my audience, my intent for these journal have changed over the years. When I was fourteen, they were for myself. I didn't think about what would happen to them after my death, because since I was a teenager, of course I was going to live forever. I had to face the issue of what would happen to them after I died, really, for the first time, after I married Rob. Now there was someone in my life who might presumably inherit them. We talked about it again after we made wills, after the girls were born. I decided that Rob could read them after I died, if he survived me, and the girls could read them (after I died) once they reached the age of 21.

What about anyone else?

My thinking about my paper journal has changed, in a way, I think, related to the long slow realization that I've been processing that I'm not writing fiction anymore. I think, in the back in my mind, part of the reason I always kept a journal was that I felt that I was a writer. That was what writers did. It was good training for writing, I know it--I've had various anxieties about my capabilities in various aspects of writing (i.e., plotting), but I never lacked confidence in one: I always felt I knew how to write a scene. That, I attributed to the fact that I have always been a faithful journaler. I had learned, through years of long practice in recording my daily life, how to describe one or two incidents, along with my thoughts concerning them, and write them down in exactly one page.

The other reason lurking in the unspoken recesses of my mind was this: I was a writer. Maybe, maybe some day I'd be a great writer! Maybe people would be interested in my processes, the life of my inner mind. If I kept a journal--well, I wouldn't want anyone to read it while I was alive. But when I was dead and gone and couldn't care, my thoughts would be there for scholars to read, wouldn't they? I've been the family genealogist, and I've been interested in academic and literary history, letters and journals of other writers.

I wrote about this in the paper journal last night, the first entry I'd made in it in almost two weeks. I put into words something that has been niggling at me, bothering me, and was perhaps affecting my willingness to keep up the entries in my paper journal. Just as I came to the realization that perhaps my fiction writing is over, I think a lurking unspoken suspicion has been growing: I don't have a writing career that will be of much interest to scholars. My books are too few, too unimportant. After I'm dead, I suppose the journals might be read with some interest by my descendants, but that's probably it. Maybe the Minnesota Historical Society might want them, but otherwise, I honestly can't see how these journals would be valued by anyone.

Perhaps I'm wrong. An incredibly fascinating analysis/exegesis of the diary of Martha Ballard, a 18th century New England midwife, was made by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812). For years historians had dismissed Martha Ballard's dry, laconic little daybook (a record of the deliveries she had made for twenty-seven years) as "trivial" and "unimportant." But Louise Thatcher Ulrich cross-referenced Martha's account with public records and newspapers of the day and wove together a fascinating analysis about what the diary had to tell scholars about the history of the early republic: the role of women in the economic life of the community, the nature of marriage and sexual relations, the scope of medical knowledge and practice. I think of the line from the Gettysburg address: "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here . . ." and yet Lincoln was wrong. The world did remember and note those words. And what about my words? Is my life, when it comes down to it, essentially trivial? Will others find meaning in it, even if (due to my depression perhaps) I cannot see it myself?

The paper diary, I realized as I made my entry last night, was first a simple journal, then a repository for my hunger to be remembered. Now it has become a symbol and repository for my anxieties and depression over the idea that my life is little and meaningless.

No wonder I've been avoiding it lately.

[Cross-posted to embodiment]