a personal record

The past few days have been pretty unimpressive for me.

I’ve  been spending a lot of time doing things that bring me a lot of short-term happiness: reading and re-reading short fiction I’m already well familiar with, watching videos on YouTube, things like that. I know that it’s not the stuff that I need to be working on. But there’s this draw.

The problem is not because the other stuff looks so attractive to me. The problem is that the things that I’m meant to be doing are looking harder and harder.

And thus I find ways to avoid those things. It suddenly becomes very, very important to read everything that’s been posted on Boing Boing today. It would be horrible if I missed something neat, wouldn’t it?

The solution, I am trying to teach myself, is not to convince myself of how very important the things which actually are important are.[1] I know that full well. I am very good at feeling guilty and completely blithely ignoring those feelings.

The solution is to make those things that I need to do as exciting, interesting, easy, and fun, and as immediately satisfying as anything else. Bit of a challenge, yeah. I started writing this post at about 7 pm. And got distracted.

[1] Love the grammar, yeah?

Another lovely book review thanks to Mini Book Expo:

“The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: A murder and the undoing of a great Victorian detective,” by Kate Summerscale, published by Raincoast Books, 2008.

This is a fantastic piece of historical nonfiction that reads as grippingly as any murder mystery of the more fictional variety. Summerscale is an excellent researcher as well as an excellent writer, and I can’t think of a single weakness in the way this came together.

It’s 1860, and the body of a three-year-old child is found stuffed down an outdoor lavatory. His throat has been cut, and his chest stabbed, and he appears to have been suffocated as well. The killer must be someone known to the victim and his family — someone from the nearby village, or one of the help, or even one of the family. This horrible killing quickly becomes a national obsession. While the local police fumble evidence (accidentally or with help?) citizens from across the country write in to newspapers with their favourite theories, and the Metropolitan Police sends in their best detective to help.

The role of plainclothes detective is a new one, and one that’s not regarded fondly by the upper class British at this time. It’s shocking that someone could be authorized (and paid!) to spy upon citizens who have done nothing wrong. It’s even more shocking, of course, when one of these working-class, little-better-than-a-criminal-himself detectives enters a respectable home to interfere with its private workings and accuse a teenage girl of murdering her brother. Detective-Inspecter Jonathan Whicher is certain that the killer is Constance Kent, sixteen years old and half-sister to the victim. (After her mother died–and was rumoured to be insane in the years before–her father remarried the governess and had several more children.)

Unfortunately for Whicher, there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict Constance, and what with popular suspicion falling upon the boy’s governess, she went free and the crime went unsolved for years. Whicher’s career suffered, as did the reputation of the detectives in general.

Detective fiction did pretty well, on the other hand. Authors like Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens found lots of material for their stories in this new method of crime-solving. Summerscale traces nearly the entire history of the genre back to this and a few other famous cases in the mid-nineteenth-century.

And by the end of the volume some more light is shed on the murderer, the motive, and the way all of these lives played out after the tragedy.

As I mentioned, this book is excellently written, compelling, and thoroughly researched. One is given no reason to doubt Summerscale’s theories and conclusions. A good deal of context is given to put the murder itself in the proper time and place, and this never seems to bog down. No detail is irrelevant. The quotations from contemporary literature are perfect for shedding light on public opinion towards crime and detection.

While there are very few footnotes in the text itself, the voluminous research to support the work is indicated in an extensive Notes section. The reference material also includes a bibliography, an index, maps, and a list of characters (which I must admit I referred to frequently.) Incidentally, the binding and printing are of a pretty good quality, and I’m fond of the subtly hyper-sensational cover image.

All of which may pale beside the fact that this is a fun read. I got through much of it in airports (true of so many things I read, unfortunately) and it was more than sufficient to help me forget my surroundings. Goes quickly and is thoroughly enjoyable.

“You regard society as merely a machine, don’t you? What part of the machinery do you consider me, for instance?”
“You are one of the cranks.”

Kevin Kelly has written about the Rosetta Disk — a Long Now project that has microscopically etched text in over a thousand languages onto a nickel disk, encased in a glass sphere. The intent is that it will physically last as long as possible, and also increase the likelihood of readability well into the future. (The disk is analogue rather than digital, and the microscopic nature is implied by text decreasing in size on the opposite side.) Provided that at least one of the existing human languages is still known, the disk should enable future scholars to read the others, as it reproduces several standard texts translated into the variety of languages.

(It’s not explicitly stated, but what might be the probability of a civilization with no prior knowledge of any of the languages being able to decode it, to some extent at least?)

Saving one disk for all time is pretty unlikely. The goal is to produce a sufficient number of these, and have them stored in enough different locations that one or two can be expected to survive. Total cost (as quoted by Kelly) is $25 000. Seems like a lot, if you’re considering buying one for yourself.

But compared to the sort of money that large organizations deal with, it’s hardly anything. Get enough people together, and it would be easy to buy as a group. I’m sure that any number of university libraries, national libraries and archives, and similarly large institutions will be able to pick one or two up without blinking.

And if I can find 99 other people to put $250 in, then no problem!

I got in the mail today my package from Bleep Labs. There are a couple of major for-fun projects coming up in my personal time, and assembling the synthesizer will be one of them. Watch this space for more …

When I started working on the time capsule project, what I didn’t anticipate was what would be the most challenging part: putting up a sign above the exhibit.

Just something simple, reading “Time Capsule” rather than the existing, inaccurate signage. Not something I can do by hand, but it shouldn’t be that much trouble, right?

When you’re dealing with government, though, there are certain channels that one must go through. I needed to contact one person to design the sign, two to approve it, and another department entirely to put it up. It should have been finished today, more than 2 weeks since the process was started. I’ll go by the exhibit to check it out tomorrow.

Of all the things I’m not an expert in, right?

Book: “Flight of the Hummingbird: A Parable for the Environment,” Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, with Wangari Maathai and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Greystone, 2008. Another lovely free book through Mini Book Expo for Bloggers.

The story “Flight of the Hummingbird” itself is very short, and the entire contents can be viewed as an animated short film. It tells the story of a forest fire, that all of the animals flee, except for one hummingbird who attempts to quench it one drop of water at a time. While it appears that she can’t have much impact on the entire situation, the attitude “I am doing what I can” is the only one by which anything can be accomplished.

The artwork for this volume is beautiful. Again, samples can be seen in the animation, but Yahgulanaas’ style is just perfect, and I’d definitely look for more of his work. The book itself is small and the printing and binding are of high quality.

The real content, of course, is in the “additional matter,” with a foreword by Wangari Maathai and an afterword by the Dalai Lama. Again, these are very short writings, but they pack in the essential message.

A pleasure to read, and I’ll shortly be passing it along to others.

One of the challenges I encountered last week with the Time Capsule project was the small “collection” of stamps and coins. A set had been placed into the first capsule in 1903, and then again in 1966.

Which of course leaves me cursing the “archival” habits of the 1960s. The stamps were placed flat onto construction paper, contained in a plastic page protector. (Not great, but not as bad as it could have been.) The 1903 coins had been glued to a piece of paper (in 1966 I assume.) The 1966 coins were stuck on with double-sided tape. Lovely. The glue separated away pretty easily without damage or much residue, but the tape was still nastily sticky. I’m assured that this pretty much decimated the value to collectors.

(Not that it’s strictly ethical for me to be thinking in those terms, is it?)

The other thing that made this challenging was my total lack of knowledge of anything relating to stamps or coins. I wasn’t able to find much coverage in my usual sources for preservation and conservation information. Stamps, not mentioned at all; coins listed along with medals in one bulletin.

I’m certain that this is due to the monetization of stamp collecting and coin collecting — as these are two popular hobbies, the artefacts become the province of amateurs and collectors, and are not considered to be of nearly as much interest to archives or museums. (With exceptions of course, stamp museums and currency museums do exist. But I wasn’t able to find much information from them on what I should do.)

Sites directed towards collectors treat the issue very simply: don’t use bare fingers, use protective enclosures that one can buy at your local hobby shop. Not much technical there.

Having hit a dead end doing things the usual way, I followed the advice and headed off to the local hobby shop — and success! Not only did I get lots of very detailed information about history (and aforementioned values) of these very display-friendly objects, but I was also freely given the supplies needed to take care of them a little more properly this time.

I’d been expecting that the special status of these things as collector items, as objects with known monetary value, would make it more difficult for me to deal with them properly. Instead, in a situation where I was the amateur, I found it possible to take advantage of some wonderful expert advice.

Compositions is a collection of short essays on a variety of topics connected to the subjects of writing, poetry, the publishing industry, and the creative process. The chapters are short (most ranging a little over ten pages) and in some cases only loosely connected.

My main complaint with this book is the lack of coherence: there is little sense that these individual essays are written for the same audience, or with any intent to be gathered together. Some are well-structured and effective, and some wander like a first draft or journal-writing exercise.

Wakan admits to this in the first paragraph of the Foreword:

The essay allows me to meander. It allows me to stop here and there to consider more deeply some vantage point. The essay encourages me to adventure down some side road that may, or may not, rejoin the main. If it doesn’t, I often find myself in a mess of brambles through which I have to scramble in order to get back to the theme.

All of which may be a wonderful way to write, but it is slightly less rewarding for the reader.

That being said, many of the individual essays are clever and interesting. I enjoyed the Foreword and first chapter on creativity, the chapters on writing poetry on demand, detective stories, and on dedications, particularly. Far less impressive was the chapter on copyright, which should have required much more research. (In my view, it’s not a subject which benefits particularly from generalities and glossing-over.)

I would be remiss not to mention the poems and excerpts from other writings generously sprinkled throughout this volume. In each case, they make a point where plain old explanatory prose cannot, whether it’s about some facet of the world, or the nature of poetry itself. Wakan is, I think, best as a poet, and it’s the sparsely distributed poetry in this book that makes it a pleasure to read.

(volume obtained through the fantastic Mini Book Expo for Bloggers. Author: Naomi Beth Wakan. Publisher: Wolsak & Wynn.)

The exhibit that I’ve been working on this week, and this week only, is now available for passersby to admire!

As you can imagine, I’m quite proud of this. Got the go-ahead to start work last Friday afternoon, and managed to get ready to set up the minute the replicas were back from the print shop.

I had a lot of help with this, of course, but in many ways I feel like it’s my project. My first real successful, completed project since finishing school.

There’s a companion web exhibit that is not yet done. I hope to get it finished early next week.

Lessons learned:

• Decide what you want in the display before arranging for reproductions.
• It’s possible to make things work on almost no budget if you have a really, really steady hand with scissors.
• Outsourcing is more expensive and takes more time. Do it yourself, or get a summer student.
• Everyone likes old stuff.
• When installing an exhibit in a display cabinet, don’t forget that you’ll also have to deal with the stuff that’s already in there.

I think this is about time for a long weekend, yes?