Two hundred public words, 1/30
This was a challenge springheel_jack mentioned -- to write one post a day for thirty days straight. It would be quite something. Also mentioned were a minimum length of 200 words, which I am not exactly sure about, and the fact that the entry should be public, which is also... man, it's been a long time since I've written anything publicly.
I didn't used to think writing publicly was any big deal. When I started writing on LJ, seven years ago (amazing), I think almost everything I blogged was public. Now almost nothing is. Hm. Writing without locking the post to at least friends... I guess it changes what I might write about. Not that I have deep dark secrets, or anything. Despite the fact that I am a born-and-raised socialist, I don't even have much paranoia about the State knowing my electronic internet published life. I think I figure that this sort of thing must be easy for them, and why should they care?
But writing personal things for people I'm not already friended to... that, I am less likely to do. Which left me thinking, well, what the hell am I going to write about? I decided that, at least for the beginning of this thing, I would write about writing and about reading.
Today I bought an iPad. I used my first unemployment check to do it -- that and money in my checking account. I'll have to use my second unemployment check to pay the balance of it. There are other things that unemployment money should be used for (not to mention just saving it in case I really do not get called back by my district and am actually looking for a job in a month and a half): a brake job and a driver's side mirror for my car; new glasses; a new digital camera as mine is partly broken and quite old.
But I bought an iPad. The most compelling reason for me was not the five billion apps, though I am sure I will get fond of some, and not the ability to watch a movie on a plane or whatever, though I am sure I will like that, too. The single app I most wanted was an eReader. And Kindle doesn't do other things, like the internet. So far I have bought two books, and downloaded 62 free books from Project Gutenberg...
I've read three of the free ones today: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Fame and Fortune, and Mark, the Match Boy... those are the first three of the series of five books that all feature Richard Hunter, the titular Ragged Dick. I have been deeply interested in Alger's books since middle school, I think. My local library had some, for some reason, in the Children's Room (I mean, yes, they were written as serials, for children, in the mid 19th century, so it's not that they weren't appropriate for the Children's Room... I guess it's just that they're so old and, um, NOT classic literature.) I think I found them fascinating because they seemed to me to be fairy tales for boys. I read a LOT of fairy tales as a kid -- the standard Grimms' Bros and Hans Christian Anderson, all the different ethnic collections of folk and fairy tales, and mythologies, the Andrew Lang color fairy tale books. And it seemed like only girls read those, or were expected to be their audiences. It was absolutely clear to me that Horatio Alger expected his stories to be read by boys. But they're equally wish-fulfilment fairy tales, and particularly American fairy tales of self-willed rags-to-riches bootstrapping. Except that the bootstrapping is ALWAYS, always accompanied by good fairy older benevolent men giving the downtrodden shoeshine boys, match sellers, newsboys, peddlars, fiddlers, porters and so on a hand up as well as a generous monetary hand out. No one actually rises on his own efforts alone in these books. They do reform, go to Sunday School, stop smoking, gambling, or drinking (though most of them had manfully escaped these pursuits in the first place), going to low places of amusement in the Bowery and wasting their street wages. And they do start saving money. But none of them do it without lots of help.
Project Gutenberg cullings, today:
Marx
Shakespeare
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Rudyard Kipling
Mark Twain
Wilkie Collins
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Lucy Maud Montgomery
O. Henry
Horatio Alger
Arthur Conan Doyle
Louisa May Alcott
I'll have to think of more. The speed is amazing. Search, push virtual button, three seconds to download the entire book. To me, this is more magical than almost anything I can imagine.
I didn't used to think writing publicly was any big deal. When I started writing on LJ, seven years ago (amazing), I think almost everything I blogged was public. Now almost nothing is. Hm. Writing without locking the post to at least friends... I guess it changes what I might write about. Not that I have deep dark secrets, or anything. Despite the fact that I am a born-and-raised socialist, I don't even have much paranoia about the State knowing my electronic internet published life. I think I figure that this sort of thing must be easy for them, and why should they care?
But writing personal things for people I'm not already friended to... that, I am less likely to do. Which left me thinking, well, what the hell am I going to write about? I decided that, at least for the beginning of this thing, I would write about writing and about reading.
Today I bought an iPad. I used my first unemployment check to do it -- that and money in my checking account. I'll have to use my second unemployment check to pay the balance of it. There are other things that unemployment money should be used for (not to mention just saving it in case I really do not get called back by my district and am actually looking for a job in a month and a half): a brake job and a driver's side mirror for my car; new glasses; a new digital camera as mine is partly broken and quite old.
But I bought an iPad. The most compelling reason for me was not the five billion apps, though I am sure I will get fond of some, and not the ability to watch a movie on a plane or whatever, though I am sure I will like that, too. The single app I most wanted was an eReader. And Kindle doesn't do other things, like the internet. So far I have bought two books, and downloaded 62 free books from Project Gutenberg...
I've read three of the free ones today: Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick, Fame and Fortune, and Mark, the Match Boy... those are the first three of the series of five books that all feature Richard Hunter, the titular Ragged Dick. I have been deeply interested in Alger's books since middle school, I think. My local library had some, for some reason, in the Children's Room (I mean, yes, they were written as serials, for children, in the mid 19th century, so it's not that they weren't appropriate for the Children's Room... I guess it's just that they're so old and, um, NOT classic literature.) I think I found them fascinating because they seemed to me to be fairy tales for boys. I read a LOT of fairy tales as a kid -- the standard Grimms' Bros and Hans Christian Anderson, all the different ethnic collections of folk and fairy tales, and mythologies, the Andrew Lang color fairy tale books. And it seemed like only girls read those, or were expected to be their audiences. It was absolutely clear to me that Horatio Alger expected his stories to be read by boys. But they're equally wish-fulfilment fairy tales, and particularly American fairy tales of self-willed rags-to-riches bootstrapping. Except that the bootstrapping is ALWAYS, always accompanied by good fairy older benevolent men giving the downtrodden shoeshine boys, match sellers, newsboys, peddlars, fiddlers, porters and so on a hand up as well as a generous monetary hand out. No one actually rises on his own efforts alone in these books. They do reform, go to Sunday School, stop smoking, gambling, or drinking (though most of them had manfully escaped these pursuits in the first place), going to low places of amusement in the Bowery and wasting their street wages. And they do start saving money. But none of them do it without lots of help.
Project Gutenberg cullings, today:
Marx
Shakespeare
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Rudyard Kipling
Mark Twain
Wilkie Collins
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Lucy Maud Montgomery
O. Henry
Horatio Alger
Arthur Conan Doyle
Louisa May Alcott
I'll have to think of more. The speed is amazing. Search, push virtual button, three seconds to download the entire book. To me, this is more magical than almost anything I can imagine.