It has certainly been a while, hasn’t it? 

We moved to our lovely new place in Baltimore with some difficulty and exhaustion, but move we did.  The kitchen is amazing, and the soaking jacuzzi tub is divine!  We traveled home to help a one @DjLunchbox move to his new abode on the weekend of Halloween and handed out candy to the kids in my parents’ neighborhood.  Both Jack and I got sick to varying degrees, and only this week are we starting to feel better and back to normal.  There have been visits to local restaurants, a visit to the Walters Art Museum to see the Heroes: Mortals and Myth in the Ancient World exhibit and a lecture that had me resorting to my old intellectual elitist mentality, unfortunately.  But hey, I’ve accepted it.  We headed back to Brewer’s Art for the Baltimore Tweetup this week, and finally got to put some faces to the Baltimore names we’ve been seeing flit over our screens.

All in all, it’s been pretty wonderful.

So why the deep thinking recently?  I’m not asking you for answers, I suppose, but throwing thoughts against a screen to try and figure things out.  I’m feeling a very real, very visceral need to read Anna Karenina again.  Every year or two I revisit the novel, cover to cover, and every time I read it I gain a little deeper insight into the human condition.  I need something from that text, specifically.  It’s full of love, passion, lust, hate, lies, death, hope, and social and emotional roller coasters that only the classic Russian novels provide for me.  It’s beautiful language, and sometimes you need to be surrounded by someone else’s beautiful things and thoughts, and complex emotions and feelings in order to put your own world into perspective.  I’ve always argued that people watch reality TV for the same reason they went to the theater to see Shakespeare, or to the Colosseum to see gladiator games — Not for violence or cruelty, or tragedy alone, but to see other people going through something far worse than yourself.  For me, literature and music are the only things that can provide that kind of escapist comfort.  There’s something beautiful about language and imagery, and for me, reading all of Anna Karenina is to get to this one paragraph:

“She tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. “Where am I? What am I doing? What for?” She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. “Lord, forgive me all!” she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever. ”

-Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Part 7, Chapter 31)

No, it’s not enough just to read that paragraph. Yes I need to reread the entire novel.  And maybe War and Peace again as well.  I’ve neglected classic literature for far too long, and I need to remedy that immediately.  Before it would be a short span of time — a month or two, at best — but this time… this time I am left feeling marooned after many months away.  Anna always brings me out of a black cloud kind of week or month.  Literature can do that for me.  Othello and Hamlet do that for me.  Sylvia Plath’s “Soliloquy of the Solipsist” does that for me.  Casablanca does that for me.  Francisco de Zurbaran’s The Crucifixion (1627)  will always do that for me.

I wonder what the books or plays impact the worlds of others as profoundly as  Anna Karenina impacts mine… (hint… )

Podcamp Pittsburgh 4 was this weekend. 

As you can tell from my previous post, I was excited to go.  Thrilled, in fact.  But by now, you also know that I did not, in fact, get to go back to Pittsburgh for this year’s sold out PCPGH4.  Without going in to the gory details, let’s just say that digestive distress in cats is no joking matter, and it’s one hell of an expensive problem to have. Couple that with the fact that symptoms usually show up too late for any intervention and the need to visit Vet Emergency Hospitals, and you have a very hysterical Dawn worried about her cat and graduate school companion dying because they wanted to hospitalize him for $2500.  At least.  Long story short, we took him home, and complied with the required monitoring of him for 48 hours, and made him as comfortable as possible.  Hell, Jack even went out and bought him a water fountain in the hopes that it would make him feel better and help his water consumption.  ~*sniffle*~

So yeah.  No Podcamp for us.  I’m sad.  I miss YinzTeam as it is, and the opportunity to meet new folks and have discussions that open doors on so many levels come so infrequently anymore that it was just heartbreaking to be sidelined.  Because the crew organizing Podcamp this year was on the ball, I was able to watch a good number of sessions remotely.  But one thing that I noticed almost immediately on Saturday, was that the comments and chat system for the live streaming video stopped working.  I was struck with a whole new level of frustration.  The sessions are inspiring and informative, sure, but Podcamp happens (most innovation and idea hatching, for that matter) during the conversations.  The questions and answers. The discussions.  The panels and debates.  I’ve said it before, and I firmly believe, that Podcamp happens in the hallways.  And here I was completely shut off from the hallway conversations and even from the conversations in the actual sessions!

This all has a point. 

Trust me.  See, one of the things I planned on talking about at PCPGH4 was the culture of commenting.  It’s disappearing.  It’s no longer dwindling; it’s flat out dying.  It ages me to say this, I know, but I remember a time when blogs didn’t come with comment functions (~*gasp*~ I knnnnooowww!!).  And when some coder started passing out free code to insert comment features it exploded the entire notion of what websites and “blogs” were, and of the potential they had.  Suddenly people had interaction on a whole new level! Suddenly, you could rant about just about anything and have your friends and random passers by leave notes of agreement or rebuttal.  You could have a dialogue.

But that’s going the way of the Dodo now, and I think that’s a terrible mistake.  As blogs become more common place, and more and more people post whatever they want whenever they want, they’ve taken the dialogue out of the conversation, and when you do that you no longer have a blog.  You have a basement printed broadside that no one can discuss with you.** 

What happens when no one comments?  Comments and discussion fuel the conversation and development of ideas.  It becomes a tidal wave of thought!  So you may have tons of email responses, or comments on your site.  That’s grand.  But how many comments do you leave on other sites?  Are you closing off your fishbowl by only fostering the culture of commenting on your own site?  Look, I’m as guilty as the rest of you.  I have, sitting in my Google Reader, the dreaded (1000+) unread blog posts.  Some are from news feeds, but a good many of them are blogs just like this one.  I read daily, or weekly, and rarely leave a comment.  Why? 

You tell me. 

Why do you read (and I know you do.  I see you….)  and not leave comments?  Not just here, but elsewhere?

I’ll make a deal with you.  For one week, starting today, see if you can leave a comment on each blog you read.  It doesn’t have to be every post, but at least leave a thoughtful response indicating that you engaged the post.  Can you do that?  For a week?

I know @BurghBaby is in over at TheBurghBaby.com, and if a working mommy blogger who posts at least once a day, takes care of a zoo, a new house, and a family can do it, can’t you? 

Let me know how it goes.  Remember, we’re all watching. 

~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~

** I’ve never agreed with closing off comments on blogs.  That’s what makes a blog a blog.  I’ve also never agreed with News sites opening comments on fact based articles.  The news is the news.  It’s not up for debate.  Editorials are for debate.  Letters to the Editor are for debate.  Once you make factual articles something to debate, you undermine their validity and turn your entire news organization into a blog of editorial opinion by the masses and moderated by journalists. News sites are not for discussing ideas and hashing out positions and opinions.  Leave that job to the blogs and message boards.

~*~

CONFESSION

I was never a fan of John Hughes’ films.  I didn’t go ga-ga over Pretty in Pink, and I didn’t have any deep connection with Sixteen Candles.  Christmas Vacation  always made me leave the room, and the Home Alone movies were never on my shelf.  I didn’t understand the humor of The Great Outdoors. 

My friends and family members all rave about these films as though they are cinematic classics, but I’ve never once felt compelled to watch any of them more than my initial viewing.  The only Hughes movies that I had any connection with were Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  and The Breakfast Club – even those connections were tangential. 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off  was a passing teaching reference for me (”Bueller?… Bueller?…. Anyone?…. Bueller?….”) and once my students no longer had a clue what I was talking about, I knew I had moved in to that “old” category that young kinds always lump everyone making references they don’t understand regardless of their age. 

I never understood why my senior class thought The Breakfast Club was important enough to make it the focus of our Senior Act, and to use “Don’t You” as our Senior Song.  I some how missed the entire phenomenon, and my tastes were just…. different.  Those movies weren’t serious enough for me at the time, and I thought they were one long string of cliches.  Only in retrospect do I realize that those movies created  those respective cliches and rolled around and reveled in the prevalent theme of the decade in the same way that Noir and Kung-Fu films did.  Now I can appreciate that.

WE’LL KNOW WHEN WE GET THERE

Because of Alison, I also appreciate John Hughes on a completely different level than I ever imagined I would.  His movies tapped in to the nuances of family, friends, absurd situations, Murphy’s Law, and the misunderstood teen angst that he depicted so perfectly on screen.  Part of that teenage experience was dreaming of a future, of having grand ideas and trying to balance them with reality and figuring out how to beat the odds to get where you want to go.  Nearly all of his characters dreamed of finding someone that took the time to understand them and recognize the potential they had.

When the people around you don’t understand you or what you want to do (There’s that “misunderstood trope again…), reaching out to an idol or icon (I don’t even know what you call them these days) in the vain hopes that they will see your brilliance and reach back to acknowledge your burgeoning brilliance and offer you encouragement is not uncommon.  I wrote to astronauts.  I wrote to scientists.  I wrote to playwrights.  I wrote to authors, and I even once wrote to a serial killer while on my career path to being a criminal/abnormal psychologist and profiler.  (In retrospect, I’m really glad I had the address for the penitentiary written wrong and the letter was returned.  Who needs to open the can of crazy that could bring?) 

To this day, I dream of writing to Al Pacino in regards to his fascination with Shakespeare and his production of plays and film, and having him see the value I could bring to his projects.  Will it happen?  Not likely.  But I respect him for the creative and professional choices he has made.  Will I write to him? Probably not — only because, Like Alison, I would hate to receive a form letter in response. 

But she recoiled, and responded with her indignation, and what bloomed from that was a pen-pal friendship between one of the (if not THE) most famous writers/directors/producers of the 80s.  He gained perspective, and she had a mentor and a connection with the artist who crafted the works that defined her youth while she was growing up.

In my opinion, John Hughes’ greatest works weren’t his ones on screen;  they were the letters he wrote to Alison.  In those letters of encouragement, guidance, and friendship he conveyed the understanding and hope that the characters in his films were always searching for.  His letter writing over the years renews some of my faith in people.  He had a heart breaking kindness, and though I never knew him, I can say that the world was a better place for him being in it.

~*~