changes

I often find myself tinkering with already-published notes on this site. I initially thought of this as a confession, because at times I’ve felt that editing old posts (beyond fixing minor typos or bugs) is somehow cheating. But, no, revision is not cheating. There is no rule of any sort that I cannot change, improve, or remove old posts as I see fit. It turns out that this is my own website and I make the rules around here. I had forgotten I get to do whatever I want with my website, though that was kind of the point in not interacting with some corporation’s platform anymore.

Now, having jettisoned my guilt and cast aside my faith in conventional weblog practice, I am contemplating yet more aggressive revisionist practices. These measures shall serve to further consolidate my narrative and solidify my power and absolute domination over this web domain.

<mwahaahaha>
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.  
</mwahaahaha>
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¹

One of my failures on this site, and really any site or platform on which I have ever shared content, is that I don’t always get around to posting things right when they are relevant.² I still want to share my thoughts and have a record of them, but too often, posting such things later becomes incompatible with the idea of the chronological or current “feed” — the conventional organizational concept of a weblog or a social media account. And so, overwhelmed with ideas left unfinished and unshared, and feeling unable to move forward, I go quiet again.

Long story short, I might start adding new-but-back-dated updates and posts — not just republishing old content from my defunct websites and social media accounts, but also interleaving previously unpublished notes and photographs recorded in previous times but never shared.

My goal is to have a single life journal or archive of sorts that pulls from all my different sources. I do need to do more learning in “digital gardens” and related concepts, but in the meantime I feel a need to get moving and publishing. This is something I just really want for myself - I don’t entirely know if it should be public, actually? Yes, it needs to be public, because even if not tied to any other platforms or networks I do have some sort of amorphous internet audience in mind for these things I share here, for better or worse. I want to be able to share this site with people I know on occasion, asynchronously. I want to link to it. I want items on my site to become serendipitous search results. I might want to make it into a newsletter. I want it to be my interface with the world.

The Internet has changed a lot and is rumored to have been ruined by corporations, but my past experience tells me that good things can come from a little old personal website. My old blog in the late 2000s was once found as a serendipitous search result by a certain person. That person and I have since collaborated in creating two entirely new humans together, and we are coming up on our fourteenth marriage anniversary next month. I wasn’t really looking for love through my website, but I put some of myself out there into the world and it happened. I think it still exists, the promise and possibility of connecting with other people and spreading ideas through a genuine personal website, rather than playing a toxic algorithm. I hope so, for my kids and other young people.

To make my revisionism more transparent I’ve added “Last Updated” fields to the bottom of each post. I’m trying to decide if I should take the time to also build a “Recently Updated” page/feed that lists the sometimes-backdated notes and posts based on when they were last updated, rather than their original post date. (I admit, I tried one way to build such a page today and failed miserably.)

As always, if you have thoughts to share you can email me by clicking “Contact me” in the footer of every page.

Standalone post link: My Revisionist History

Turns out I can’t resist the re-read.

I am going to finish Little Devil in America first, though. And read other things in-between. A slow re-read, because I already pretty much know what happens?

Standalone post link: blackleopardredwolfagain

‘Album Released’ notifications might be my very favorite phone notifications.

I woke up last Friday morning to see these notifications pop in that several anticipated albums had been released, and had thus automatically added themselves to my music library/streaming service of choice.

I was excited to get listening, but work turned out to be way too hectic for headphones that day, and so I only got partway through one album on my commute to and from work. And as it turns out I have basically just listened to that one album, PAINLESS, over and over again since then, intermixed with older tracks from the same artist, Nilüfer Yanya. I’m listening to it again right now.

Not sure what to say about this album, but I’ve added it to my Favorite Music of 2022 collection. Might have to get a physical copy. Might have to get tickets for her show in Salt Lake later this year, if I decide I am going to do things like go out to events again.

Standalone post link: Listening Repeatedly to PAINLESS by Nilüfer Yanya

I recently built and shared this ‘Top Titles of 2021’ thing at work.

I crunched data, built these interactive charts, and cranked out a series of posters and presentation graphics showing the most-circulated books in my district’s school libraries in the last calendar year.

This is the first remotely ‘creative’ product I can remember making at work in forever, unless you count bespoke MARC records for self-published Amazon titles, or XML files custom-mapped from inventory spreadsheets of thousands of Chromebook serial numbers for import into our resource management system. Oh, and of course, my never-ending quest to write The Great American Email. Actually, one of the Great American Emails was written to describe this very ‘Top Titles’ project, so now I’ve come full circle. Self actualization?

Standalone post link: A Thing I Made At Work - Granite Top Titles of 2021

1. Updated the home page of this site today, adding prominent links to RSS feeds, a gallery of recent post images, and returning a link to the “Featured / Longer Things” post collection. Now I need to update the front matter of all the other missing posts that belong in that “featured” collection.

And with the images back I feel like I should start taking and posting more photographs of things other than just screenshots and shit I bought.

2. Also updated the Tree of Life, a.k.a. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, a.k.a. Site Taxonomy page, improving styling and adding toggle buttons to make each element collapsible. This will be extremely useful to me, if to no one else, as my next job here is to clean up and standardize all the taxonomical front matter in old posts. This will be the authority.

(This is the first attempt at me posting status updates in the notes feed when I make changes to a static page. I got this idea from maya.land as a possible solution to the problem I described in “My Revisionist History” the week before last. I have another essay or whatever mostly drafted about my evolution and plans on future site organization, inspired in part by exploring Maya’s and other people’s web pages, but I don’t know when/if that will see the light of day. I do need to do more learning on digital gardens and whatnot.)

Standalone post link: Home and Taxonomy Updates (March 20, 2022)

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Concocting and rolling out changes to this website. +

  Laying the groundwork to put more content in ‘collections’ and static pages not bound by the reverse-chronological tyranny of the ‘feed’, all the while trying to make sure the date-based feeds are accessible and functional, because they do have their place.

• Proceeding on my work goal of getting back to creating and curating more resources, as well as being better about sharing and promoting the resources that already exist. +

  Started with this ‘Top titles of 2021’ project.

• Listening to Nilüfer Yanya’s album PAINLESS pretty obsessively, as well as the new Big Thief double-album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. +

  

  Obsessive repeat listens are actually good for my mindset, I think, and I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I was last hooked on an artist or album like this.

• I read Moon Witch Spider King and had big plans for more reading, but I’ve kind of fallen off. +

  See the next bullet for a reason why.

• Playing Pokémon Legends: Arceus +

  This was something I started supposedly just to humor my kids, but to be honest I think I’m playing it more than they are now and I’ve let it get in the way a bit of my reading (see above) and my writing and working on this website. But sometimes in the evening those other things seem too hard, and that pokédex isn’t going to fill itself…

• Our backyard is a a muddy hellscape that will dry to a dustbowl in summer, and I should be doing something about it, but I just can’t. +

  I don’t know where to start. Help me please.

This page was last updated on March 19, 2022. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. +

Standalone post link: Now (March 19, 2022)

I finished reading Moon Witch Spider King yesterday evening.

There is a strong pull to re-read Black Leopard Red Wolf, but I have so many other books to read that I’m reluctant to give over another potential month or so of reading for this series right now.

But I don’t know if I can let this world go quite yet, and it’s going to be another couple of years, probably…

Standalone post link: Finished Moon Witch Spider King

Here are some of the things I’m working on and thinking about now…

• Just finishing up a ‘February Break’ with my kids, who had the week off from school. +

  We did a ‘staycation’: went sledding by Donut Falls in Big Cottonwood Canyon, rode the train downtown to the planetarium and the mall, and will probably go to the Natural History Museum of Utah later today. Also spent a lot of time just chilling at home, video games and what not.

• In my work, I’m hoping to renew a focus on creating, curating, and sharing resources with colleagues, and ultimately teachers, students, and parents. +

  I feel like this was a strength area of mine that I have let languish in the last couple of years, and I hope I can make a useful or valuable contribution with this type of work again.

• Reading Moon Witch Spider King by Marlon James. +

  I’ve also started A Little Devil in America, but I’m so obsessed with Moon Witch that I’m picking it up every time I have a moment to read. Been a minute since I’ve been so engrossed by a book. I’ll probably re-read Black Leopard Red Wolf once I’ve finished, though I also have a lot of other books in the queue to read next.

• Not on a big listening project or obsession at the moment, but may take on a full artist discography soon.

• Playing Gris and Pokemon Legends: Arceus from time to time these days.

• Looking to buy a car soon. +

  Maybe this one? My idea of a midlife crisis car - possibly the most consumer-reports-friendly responsible purchase on the market, but lifted an extra inch with slightly chunkier styling and poorer gas mileage.

This page was last updated on February 27, 2022. See my prior ‘now’ updates here.

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I had envisioned a page of this sort for my new website, but my concept was vague and I didn’t have a clear way forward until I happened upon someone with a ‘now’ page and followed the trail back to the source. I think you should make one too.

Standalone post link: Now (February 27, 2022)

My daughter really wanted to be immortalized as a ghostly figure on google maps so I decided to make this photosphere public. See also: our deconstructed puppy’s detached floating tail.

If you spend much time on Google Street View looking at the photospheres this kind of stuff often pops up and my kids love it and have started looking for it. They are usually accidents or mistakes but we decided to make one this way on purpose.

At some point I might start a Pinterest board to collect screenshots of some of the weirdest ones we have found.

Standalone post link: Big Cottonwood Regional Park Photosphere with Deconstructed Puppy and Ghost Girl

A few weeks go I was at my wife’s family’s cabin and I was lurking around in a bedroom browsing my in-laws' old bookshelf.  Hidden in the midst of a notable collection of Louis L’Amour novels, with an old framed photograph sitting on the shelf in front of them, I discovered copies of the original Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula LeGuin: A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore.

I believe I have read the first chapter of A Wizard of Earthsea at least three or four times over the course of my life (the first time was probably when I was about 10 years old.)  For whatever reasons it never took and I never continued and finished, but it has always been on my list to get back to sometime (right up there with Moby Dick, Swann’s Way, and the Old Testament.) So, it appeared the time had finally come for this book, and I spent a good chunk of my cabin weekend reading that old copy of A Wizard of Earthsea.  As the time came to leave the cabin, I still had about 15 pages left and the story was completely unresolved.  What else could I do but steal the book and take it home? And then since I was already stealing, I might as well steal the whole trilogy.

Although I had various other reading plans, I put them aside to focus on this trilogy.  And now that I’ve finished, I am having a hard time finding anything else from those other reading plans that engages me and forces me to make reading a priority like these books did.

So, rather than a review (because I’m [bored with book reviews](http://kidlit.froztfreez.com/bored-with-book-reviews/ ““Bored with Book Reviews”")), here are five things I noticed and learned from these books, mostly from a would-be writer’s perspective:

1. You don’t have to show everything.  You can tell some things.  And you don’t even have to tell everything.  You can skip time, even and especially across volumes of a trilogy, across years, across great deeds only alluded to or sketched out briefly.  You don’t have to share the whole history of the world you build or the whole lives of the people you bring to life.  You can cover wizard school in three chapters rather than seven books.¹

2. You don’t have to end books with cliffhangers. Not even the second volume of a trilogy.  Each book in a series can be a stand-alone snapshot of a much larger world.²

3. You don’t have to write high fantasy that is obsessively Euro-centric; you can have high fantasy with people of color.  These books actually set a precedent for this 40+ years ago that I didn’t know existed. Our hero and the majority of the characters are dark-skinned people.  For the most part this isn’t a major focus of the narratives, but it is definitely there and it is intentional.  It’s just one subtle detail of her world and character building, which makes me love it even more.  I didn’t realize this when I started reading A Wizard of Earthsea as a child; it certainly isn’t reflected in any of the cover art I have seen for these books over my lifetime. Depressingly, that downplay was probably a sound marketing decision for the times.  Hopefully the #WeNeedDiverseBooks meme is changing the calculus for those types of decisions and will result in new book covers even for old books such as these. I’m definitely not well-read in fantasy and most of what I have read was a long time ago, so I recognize that I am ignorant and maybe others authors have been engaging in diversity in fantasy for a long time as well.³

4. The varying ethnic and cultural details are just one example of how LeGuin is a master of using fantasy and other speculative fictions to explore, describe, confront, come to terms with, and rebut ideas we have about culture, race, social norms, politics, religion, sexuality, etc.  I had learned this years ago from reading her The Left Hand of Darkness as a teenager, but I had forgotten since then or taken it for granted.  Speculative fiction provides such capability and opportunity to explore these kinds of issues in a very real, emotional way without the potential for the story and ideas to get bogged down by all the messiness, politicization, and need for research and accuracy that can come with tying a story or character to a particular place and time in the actual historical or contemporary world.  LeGuin is practically an anthropologist of new cultures of her own creation, and I like her approach.⁴

5. I love reading paperbacks from the 70s.  They just don’t make them like that anymore.  But more than just the physical-ness of the books themselves, it is good to read something from a different era with a different writing style that is not really trending. A nice widening of perspective from the more contemporary middle grade novels I have been focusing on in the last year or two.  I am reminded that there is so much more to read and learn, I can’t just try to keep up with the new stuff.  I need to read what I need to read, even if it is old mass paperbacks hidden behind a picture frame on a bookshelf in someone’s cabin.⁵

Footnotes

Standalone post link: 5 Things I Learned by Stealing and Reading the Earthsea Trilogy