Author / Sixer

by Sixer

Wow, I Haven’t Written Since……

Anyway, here’s my “literary” quote for the post:

“‘Names,’ she was saying. ‘Where would we woodtrolls be without them? They tame the wild things of the deepwoods, and give us our own identity. Ne’er sip of a nameless soup, as the saying goes.'”                                          —— Paul Stewart, Beyond the Deepwoods 

It seemed kind of relevant since last fall I studied the development of the novel which, interesting enough, outlined the rise of the individual. Naming was a big theme. The importance of what we associate our selves with stretches back even to Moll Flanders, where an ignorant little girl desires to be a gentlewoman. But enough of this, lets talk holidays.
Here is cheer, in the form of yarn:

Kindness, in the form of Fetching gloves, knitted by Theo:

And hospitality, in the form of food:

We had a big New Years party at our house (again) this year, and I decided to try Ms. Ree’s Chesse Puffs. My mom inisits on calling them fondue bread. I thought I’d photo-log the process, but the kitchen was a bit of a mess, here are the pictures I did take:

If you’re interested in making these (and you should, they’re not only easy and delicious, they’re also a nice change from candy canes) you might be interested to hear that when I doubled the recipe I neglected to double the butter. Bad llama. But seriously, the kitchen didn’t explode, the cheese didn’t curdle, and Ms. Ree did not hunt me down demanding that I strictly adhere to her fat content.
Maybe I’m being a bit dramatic.
After the Cheese puffs where in the frezzer my mom talked me into making carrot soup. Don’t laugh, but my carrot soup recipe comes directly from the Samantha cookbook – except mom dosen’t keep half and half on hand so I had to use heavy cream instead. I guess that was my karma for not doubling the butter.

Anyway, this was just a quick post to let everyone know I was still alive, and should be back tomorrow to review The Good Earth, which I finally finished yesterday. I’m also hoping review some of the books I was forced to read during the fall. I’ve realized that I’m really bad at talking about books. I either say too much (“Well, it was about this guy, a hobbit, who was forced into an adventure by a wizard, and, have you ever read Lord of the Rings? Okay, because it ties into that, and the man, his name is Bilbo, has all these adventures……) or I say too little (like “it was a good book” which means nothing).  Until tomorrow then, I remain,

Sincerely yours,
Ms. B

P.S. Just a follow up of the last post, I visited Pablo’s scifi poll and realized that I had left science out of my equation. I still think scifi is mostly about society, but there has to be some kind of science in there too, right? So here’s the big question, is Stargate science fiction?  What about the new Startrek movie?

by Sixer

Thought on a Freedom Friday

There is something about Friday’s that makes them always seem so much more casual, relaxed, friendly even. No matter how hard you work you can hear, issuing from the secret depth of your soul, that little voice of optimism singing “the weekend, the weekend, the weekend is here!” But today is not just a Friday, it is the Friday between classes and exams, and I have turned in most of my papers (the major ones, thank goodness), taken my first exam, and can now look forward to a light day of work today and a late morning tomorrow. On top of this, the air is clear, though nippy, and the clouds are doing wonderful wispy things in the sky. Oh, and did I mention it’s December and Yuletide spirits always make me feel creative?

A while ago my brother and I had a conversation about science fiction and fantasy. We were trying to figure out where comic books fell, and ended up having to define the two categories first. This is a debate that I’m hoping to get into again sometime, for I’m still not absolutely sure of my position. But I am convinced that, even though Superheroes like Spiderman use science to gain their powers and make their gadgets, comic books function as fantasy. This conviction does not come from any sort of ridiculing of the science found within their colorful pages, but from the focus on the hero and the hero’s place in the world. Fantasy, after all, usually revolves around some sort of unlikely hero who is good and just, and able, surprisingly enough, to conquer the powerful evil that threatens his world. Harry Potter certainly fulfills this, as do Frodo and Garion and so many other protagonist that have been inked into this world. Fantasy loves to see the struggle between good and evil, and it loves to let good win out.
Science fiction has always seem colder and more calculating. It should, I suppose, for it is not about the individual as much as it is about society. Keeping in mind that this is a unpolished generalization, think of the great classics. Asimov’s I Robot, for instance, which questions how man would respond to artificial intelligence. The series, too, provides a plot that seems almost like a canvas on which to display different ways of living so that we can better discover how we should live. Even Ender’s Game, which has a hero of sorts, is presented more as a social experiment than an excuse to talk about anti-gravity and aliens. It is how Ender’s government reacts to certain events, how Ender’s siblings use politics to manipulate the nation’s leaders, even how a person, perhaps you or me or a super smart child, might react if they were taken up into space to learn war.
Anyway, like I said, I haven’t really thought through it all yet, but I read a book over Thanksgiving that brought the conversation to my mind. It was the second imager book, and I was enjoying the complexity of the world the author had created, and thinking how much more I knew about this fictional world’s politics than my own, when it struck me. Imager is science fiction. Even though it is set in a different universe, and not on an Earth a thousand years from now, or some alien home world only recently discovered; even though the bad guys use poison and guns to attack the good guys, and people travel on wooden ships and trains; even though it’s main character is certainly a hero, one with magical powers no less; despite all these things, it is Science Fiction. It is Science fiction because it is about societies. It’s not about good conquering evil, it’s about how things are tied together and what would happen if they were tied a little differently. The former is why science fiction is called science fiction and not social fiction (jeepers, that sounds frightful doesn’t it?) – the “how things work” attitude of science is directly transfered to people. The latter is the “what if” of scifi – what if people were telepathic? or if the government could track us? or what if there was a world somewhere where some people had strange powers but most didn’t? Wouldn’t the people with these powers need to find a balance between respect and fear with the rest of the world? Wouldn’t they have to be careful in how they effected politics?
by Sixer

Living Arts

Don’t you just love this season? The air is delightfully brisk, as if it were alive, and the sky, when unadorned with clouds, is crisp and clear. And, best of all, everywhere you look there are signs of Christmas.

About three weeks ago I wasn’t thinking about Christmas at all. I was thinking of papers and thanksgiving, but only in a back-of-the-mind sort of way. What really filled my every thought was theatre. Specifically the Barter Theater. I have been developing a love of theatre ever since I went to New York and saw The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. There’s something intoxicating about live performance. Since then I’ve been able to enjoy some well done college productions. In fact, the night before I left for Abingdon VA, where the Barter Theatre is located, I was able to enjoy Jane Eyre: A Musical. Having just completed reading the novel the week before, I found this adaptation amusing in some parts, but nonetheless spectacular.

But what about Barter? The Barter theatre has a really cool history, which my group and I found out on our tour. It was started by actor Robert Porterfield during the Great Depression. Since there was no money in New York, the usual home for stage folk, and more food than money in the country, the enterprising Portefield came down with a bunch of his friends and they proceeded to barter their acting skills. Thirty-five cents worth of food would buy you a ticket, and people from all over would come with their pails of milk, corn, and baby pigs. Now days the Barter theatre takes paper money and credit, but not livestock. They also have two stages, a gift shop, and an old collapsed tunnel in their basement that is supposed to be haunted.
We got to see three shows while we were there: Frankenstein, Tom Sawyer, and Heaven Sent. I had read Frankenstein back in October, and Heaven Sent was an adaptation of Silas Marner, which I read during the summer, but to my continual embarrassment I have yet to read Tom Sawyer. That didn’t effect the performance though, the plays were all amazing in different ways, though my group like Heaven Sent best of all.
Frankenstein had some impressive child actors. At one point the monster throws a little boy off the rocky mountain prop onto a thick, blue fall mat, marked with a huge white X. It’s a height of about sixteen feet, and the cushion is, of course, hidden from the audience. I had seen it on our tour backstage, but oh! The thrill that went through my heart when I saw that child slice through the air. Another cool aspect of this show was the stage. There were numerous tracks on the floor so that different props, like doors and beds, could slide on and off stage easily.
Tom Sawyer had so much energy. It was preformed by six adults, but it featured over ten characters, a troublesome bit of math on paper but not at all a problem for Barter. Most of their plays feature few actors playing several parts. Tom Sawyer was performed on the second “stage,” though this was more like a floor, with the seats rising up around it. I rather wish I could have gone with my younger siblings, I think they would have enjoyed the wonderful creativity of it.

Heaven Sent, though, that was the cream of the crop. It was almost a musical, but not really. Set in Kentucky during the Great Depression, and therefore filled with the smartest period clothing (there are aspects of that era’s style that I just love to pieces). It featured the most adorable little girl, and an equally endearing crotchety old man. It kept us in smiles, while sometimes wandering close to tears, and I wouldn’t mind watching it again.

The whole trip was enjoyable. Abingdon is a beautiful little town, amid equally beautiful rolling green hills. If you’re you’re ever traveling through Virginia and find yourself with an extra day or two do yourself a favor and check it out. Everyone’s better with a little theatre.

by Sixer

Which puts me in mind of a book……

Of the last three Saturdays it has rained, to some extent, on two of them, which definitely makes me think of this story I once read. I can’t quite remember if it was a L.M. Montgomery story or a Kate Douglas Wiggin story, but I suspect the latter. At least, I seem to remember it was the latter. At any rate, the fact that it usually rains on a Saturday, when added to the belief on the side of the weather men that it would rain whether it was a weekend or not, makes that one bright, if chilly, Saturday all that much more amazing – especially since there was a parade.

I might as well tell you now that I was in it, and that the float I helped out with belonged to the Victorian Society, and having said that there is nothing really left to add but that I was colder than I wished but warmer than I expected. I was in costume, of course, and my family surly will remember how much effort my dear mother put into the dream dress that I wore. A decidedly summer dress, for a most uncannily fall-like day. But all in all the parade was fun, I loved being in it: throwing candy at children, watching the looks on the girls’ faces as they were presented with carnations, listening to the fiddle being played right beside me. And it was just as much fun preparing, with paints and papers, hot chocolate and tea, and wonderful examples of creativity springing forth from every quarter. I never knew so many crafty people to gather in one place, but there we were.
Maybe I will one day look back on this time and wonder at myself for passing over these monumental events with such a careless form of acknowledgment, but really, if I was to be every day journalizing the occurrences that leave a deep impression on my mind I would never leave off writing. Last night one of the girls in our little apartment chased a spider out of her room. It was the largest spider I have ever seen outside of a pet shop. It’s body must’ve been bigger than a quarter, and it was so furry and quick. Ugh! I hate feeling squeamish a over a little thing like a bug, but this was no little bug. It was monstrous. A mutant, equally likely either to give us extraordinary powers or kill us with it’s venom. It was too disgusting to capture on film, and too sneaky to let out of my sight while I looked for my camera. But believe this fish tale of mine, it was a whopper.
by Sixer

Hello,

It was one of those nights when the sins of the city seemed to have blacked out the sun, reminding us that we humans really were brothers, with more in common than is often remembered. The low, warm lights of the club soaked over us as we drank at the bar, but they weren’t able to penetrate the smoke that drifted from the ladies long cigarettes, or discover the color of eyes from behind allusive black veils. So the lights glistened off the brass instruments of the band as it played on undaunted by the gloomy faces of it’s listeners, or the deadness of the world outside. Caroming off the piano, and glancing off the sax, the lights threw their dying beams on the soft, yellow equipment behind the bar. The enamel surfaces seemed to be beckoning alluringly as they caught the light on their curves, throwing blemish into shadow and adding mystery to an otherwise clear cut form. As the bar maid turned away from one such appliance, bearing once more a round of drinks to keep the night at bay, the band struck up another tune to mingle with our sighs and so turn misery into music.

 

 

 
 
 
I have wanted to post this for a long time, but then I was busy with a work that was too delicious to complain about, and then – after a crazy three weeks of Fielding’s Tom Jones, Mansfield Park, Richard II, and Hamlet – when I finally got a break – nothing. I took part in Perfect, Peaceful, Blissful Nothing. And now, Tom Jones finished, break over, and new book begun, it is finally time to let you see the beauty that has come into my life.

 
It makes me think of sunshine, or butter, or jazz music. I could fill this whole page with pictures of it, but sadly, even here, I have business. First up, and it’s been bugging me for a while, when I mentioned Pamela I had forgotten the word for a book written as a series of letters. That words is, of course, epistle. But that’s old news, you want updates, you want story. Well, how’s this?

 
 
They’re my second pair of Jaywalkers, the first being still in progress. I finished them during The Return of the King, which I watched, marathon style, last Friday. Like I said, on my break I did nothing. These sock were fun to knit, very cheerful, very full of whimsy, and giggles, and precious things. I had fun trying out different kinds of edgings for the cuffs. Which one do you like better?


Another great reason for finally posting is Saturday. On Saturday I’m going to be taking part in a parade. It’s a small parade, but it is still something completely out of my sphere of experience, so I’m hoping to cement it into fact by describing the event to you later. Preparations for it started Monday, and are on going. I’m in charge of decorating the cardboard Teacups and I’m having so much fun with them I’m starting to wonder if I could make a living just decorating cardboard shapes. I think that would pretty much be heaven.
In other, actual news, I have started learning the deep mysteries of Dreamweaver. I love to think that, one day, it will be useful to know, but until then I’m just having tons of fun. Photoshop is more entertaining, I could sit and play in it all day long, but Dreamweaver provides a goal, a point, a frame to paint within. My friends are probably tired of me sending them random “postcards” inspired by the default images on my classes’ PCs, but one day, when I’m using those same skill to put together a website of my own, they will understand that all has not been in vain.
 
At least, that’s what I’d like to think.