adamantly heedless was she
of warning given on a moon full night
venturing forth shall I be

faerie-cursed changeling, forest bound tight
enraged he was when lily she picked
the stars they blazed in all their might

passion engulfed the simple maid
burning like an ember bright
the sun across the sky was splayed

“your essence, i feel it right
the world it whispers to me
deep from within your smile”

pregnant with possibility
locked together tight
things simple were not meant to be

bravely she faced her plight
as deny he did his need
what shall come from such a night?

whatever will shall be
“having held you till morning light
for ever shall I your Margaret be”

Loosely based on the Tam Lin stories

Tam Lin at Wikipedia

Website devoted to Tam Lin

the man sat gazing
awed by the vast firmament
night after endless night
terrified, alone
years rolled by

friends came
friends went
his children grew
and the world changed around him
the stars, they were too many

one May evening in the endless procession of months
in an Alley
the man and a friend sat and talked
unknown to the man
something stirred in the heavens
the night sky had changed

a few days later
a single beautiful star spoke to him
“Look at me.
I shine for you.”

for the next couple of nights
the man continued to listen
to his shining star
tentatively at first he began to speak back

as Luna, his lifelong but ever mute companion, approached full
with hope and courage in his heart
the man turned his face fully
to his softly calling Starshine

Primarily written on 18 June 2008 by yours truly. I wanted to write a poem but I’m not too good at poetry. This was a (very) rough 1st draft of the ideas I wanted to convey but I quickly realized that it would take far too long to either clean this up into a poem or even into a “proper” story. So instead I wrote a haiku. And, no, you do not get to see it.

It also should probably go on a bit longer but such is life and the lack of time. [Or, one ought to work for their pay.] Then again, it ends with the event that it celebrates.

Drinking with the Troops

From a local blog, Urbanagora, comes “Drinks with a Soldier.” I just love how some jackass commentor tries to hide behind the shield of anonymity and call the post author a liar. Certainly there are all sorts of views on this war, including those of the troops fighting it.

Perhaps if you ever get the chance—you could try arranging the chance—you, too, should have drinks with a soldier (or sailor, airman or marine) and find out a bit about what it is like on the ground in this war.  Of course, don’t forget the millions of servicemembers still living who served in our previous wars. A patient, caring ear would do many of them a world of good.

The value of a liberal arts education

For an interesting discussion on the value, or lack thereof, of a liberal arts education and liberal arts colleges see “On Liberal Education” at the Academic Librarian blog. Wayne Bivens-Tatum critiques the views of the author of a new book on the subject, as presented in The Kansas CW.

A spirited back-and-forth between Bivens-Tatum and the book author follows in the comments. I should state up front that I agree entirely with all of Bivens-Tatum’s points and his larger argument. The book author tries to point out some flaws in Bivens-Tatum’s arguments which simply are not there. I found that rather humorous.

But the one point I was hoping Bivens-Tatum would take up was the author’s insistence that some immediately practical subjects should get substituted for liberal arts classes because students are incurring too much debt, can’t pay their student loans, have to take high paying jobs vs. the job of their dreams, have to move back home with mommy & daddy, etc. because colleges are financially predatory.

So the solution is immediately practical vocational training? Wouldn’t better financial counseling for students, laws barring credit card companies from preying on students, educational finance reform, and so many other things be helpful, too, and perhaps even more ethically important? Have a look and see what you think.

Early Mike Wallace interviews with “important people”

Via Resource Shelf comes The Mike Wallace Interview.

In the early 1960’s, broadcast journalist Mike Wallace donated 65 recorded interviews made in 1957-58 from his show The Mike Wallace Interview to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The bulk of these were 16mm kinescope film recordings, some of the earliest recordings of live television that were possible, and that survive today. Many of these have not been seen for over 50 years, and they represent a unique window into a turbulent time of American, and world history.

See interviews with jockey Eddie Arcaro, stripper Lili St. Cyr, actress Gloria Swanson, Steve Allen, Frank Lloyd Wright, birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, Eleanor Roosevelt, novelist Pearl Buck, and many others.

Doing the dirty fictionally

Via 3 quarks daily we get a book review in the New York magazine of Robert Olen Butler’s Intercourse: Stories. Find it in a library near you via WorldCat.

Robert Olen Butler’s new story collection, Intercourse, is, as its title suggests, totally about doing it. It imagines the thoughts of 50 iconic couples as they knock the proverbial boots, beginning with Adam and Eve copulating on “a patch of earth cleared of thorns and thistles, a little east of Eden,” and ending with Santa Claus blowing off postholiday steam in January 2008 by doing the nasty with an 826-year-old elf in the back room of his workshop. But, as the clinical tone of Butler’s title also suggests, Intercourse is very much not a work of erotica. It tends to ignore messy fluids and crotch-logistics in favor of wordplay and psychological nuance.

Civilization and cultures

Also via 3 quarks daily we get Tzvetan Todorov in the Pakistan Daily Times thinking and writing to his usual standard of quality.

But if you look at this line of argument more closely, the flaw in Barnavi’s argument is immediately apparent. The meaning of the words civilisation and culture is very different when they are used in singular and plural forms. Cultures (plural) are the modes of living embraced by various human groups, and comprise all that their members have in common: language, religion, family structures, diet, dress, and so on. In this sense, “culture” is a descriptive category, without any value judgement.

Civilisation (singular) is, on the contrary, an evaluative moral category: the opposite of barbarism. So a dialogue between cultures is not only beneficial, but essential to civilisation. No civilisation is possible without it.

[There, S, I did it. And no, neither linking to the Academic Librarian nor WorldCat invalidates my effort. ]

Welcome new readers

On the 14th of Jan, Blake posted a story at LISNews, The LINews 10 Blogs To Read in 2008. My lowly little blog was included in that list. I have at least 29 new readers in Bloglines, which means, perhaps, 80-120 total new readers since then. Of course, the fact that the list was reproduced all over the blogosphere didn’t hurt either.

Now Blake’s recommendation is wonderful to me, but I wonder what people expect based on that description. It is accurate but such a small part of me, even the part shown here. Also note the methodology; I come recommended based on a sample of probably one, perhaps two if I flatter myself. [There's a tie-in in that previous link to the name of my first (public) blog, ...the thoughts are broken....]

So, welcome to everyone who has come this way via the list. Please check out the other folks, too.

Please feel free to comment, correct, say your piece, etc. I do not worry about whether or not you agree with me or how long your comments are. Sometimes substance requires several paragraphs.

I do moderate all first time comments, though, to cut down on spam. Links are allowed but at some number shortly after 1 your comment will get flagged as spam, which I’ll hopefully catch. I do try to address all comments, and try to do so in a fairly timely manner. But I do sometimes fail.

And you can always use the Contact Form to send me non-public comments, too [Scroll back up and use the Contact tab at center top].

Who am I?

I am finishing a Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) in LIS at GSLIS, UIUC. I also did my Masters here just prior to this degree. Organization and access of information has been my area with a focus on classificatory structures. Some of my post-MLS classes include thesaurus construction, classification systems seminar, information modeling, humanities ontologies, Topic Maps, bibliography, and Python programming. [Full list of my 80 or so grad LIS hours is here.]

I have worked as a computer technician for the department, broadcast distance ed classes and assisted with classroom technology, both on campus and virtual, been a thesaurus maintainer, and most recently work as both the serials cataloging GA and as one of the monographic cataloging GAs.

As I hope to be done this May (my 3rd Mother’s Day graduation, hopefully) I am now on the job market. I am primarily looking for an academic job doing something related to cataloging, metadata, vocabulary work, etc. If you know of any feel free to send me a link.

I am also a “habitually probing generalist” as my tagline claims, but that may be causally based more on brain chemistry at an early age than by culturally-trained bent [Although I have assimilated much of the cultural quite well. I'm one hell of a manual citation tracking machine, for instance]. I get intensely interested in highly specific things on occasion. And in the process of diving in deep one finds so many things one did not know about. Some of that stuff is going to be highly interesting and itself lead off in other directions. What a deliciously dangerous vicious circle this is.

3rd blogging anniversary

Three years ago today …the thoughts are broken… debuted with “So, what is this about, and for?” I once had a “best posts” which I began to update quite a while back. Not a job I actually relish although I would like people to see the stuff I prefer for whatever reason I label it “best.”

Oh. Crap. That page is much older than I thought and all of the links are broken since it moved from the first blog to this one. Oh well, perhaps you can search titles if you are interested in some of my early stuff (1 Feb – 25 Oct 2005). Some day I may get that list updated but since I’m nearing 1000 posts [and taking into account other time constraints] it won’t be any time soon.

My first blog was hosted at TypePad. On 20 July 2006 Off the Mark debuted [It does include all of my previous posts at ...the thoughts are broken... but all internal links are broken]. This means I’ve been on LISHost and WordPress for more than half my online existence; that is, blogging existence and paying for hosting.

The name of my 1st blog came from a line in a Grateful Dead tune while this one was named by Richard Urban and Walt Crawford.

Since May 2006 I’ve been taking a fairly narrow path for a generalist; that is actively taking. Much of my time is taken up by this. [See this post and comments for some comments on the curse of being a generalist; and also of having an "actively wired" brain.] I am looking at what the Integrational theory of communication and language might mean for LIS if taken seriously. Thanks go to David Bade for starting me down this road.

So not an anniversary for this specific blog (although my friend, Iris, said last night that it’s the same blog with a new title. Perhaps.) but a blogging anniversary. Just to be clear.

Zotero, COinS, WorldCat, linking …

My blog has a plug-in that generates COinsS data so that OpenURL and COinS aware tools will recognize this data and do something contextual with it. For instance, Zotero (which I recommend highly) can import that data from the web page. If I click the icon [contextually variable] that shows up in my browser’s address bar the post metadata is imported: Post title, author, blog title, date of post, URL, and access date. And, no, I don’t have many of my own posts in Zotero. There are a few posts, though, that are being used in my bibliography and CAS paper so they are there.

But I also use Zotero to output COinS data to put in my posts when I cite a source, like in my weekly reading posts. And I do far more of it for print resources as it is easier and more reliable to get information in automatically. And if I can provide a resolvable URL for a web resource anyway then how important is the COinS data for them. Again, I do not have that many web-based resources in Zotero; comparatively.

I also try to link to WorldCat for stuff they have records for. By the way, they are providing data for the taking by Zotero also. A couple days ago I linked to a work record in LibraryThing that I had brought in from Oxford University being the only one in LibraryThing to have it (or claiming to have it). I got that data into Zotero from the LibraryThing work page which also gave me some data. I think, in this case anyway, that WorldCat would have been better.

So, as Blake said, I write about print stuff. I read a fair few books (mostly non-fiction) and lots of articles, to include photocopying a boatload of stuff not online. Most of it is LIS literature or related to issues in LIS.

Extraneous

Well now. I think it’s all been a bit extraneous and somehow self-indulgent so far.

My blog is both personal and professional. This state has been written about and commented on many times here and elsewhere. Consider the name of my first blog, …the thoughts are broken….

Here’s a few more lines for a bit of context:

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?

It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they’re better left unsung
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Grateful Dead. “Ripple.” American Beauty.

This is the positive view of making best use of one’s broken thoughts. I’ve been listening to American Beauty since it came out and “Ripple” has always been one of my favorites and always deeply personally meaningful. That meaning has shifted and changed and grown over the years but it has always been positive.

The other side of broken thoughts though is know as fragmentation, depersonalization and moral minimalism. [See these posts perhaps. Actually, I do have an overview post of these issues less than a year old.]

Thus, the title of my 1st blog was both a warning to myself and a positive statement of how to make things better. Changing the name for my new blog had nothing to do with considering my thoughts to no longer be broken. That is a lifetime struggle based on the way our society is structured.

In the meantime, I try to keep my chin up and gently coax a few of those thoughts into being coherent and whole. As Robert Hunter wrote 38 years ago:

Let there be songs to fill the air.

Truthfully, I will not be addressing that directly as such. Much more oblique will be my comments.

But first some initial resources:

• Martin Luther King Day at Wikipedia
• High as the Listening Skies, Loud as the Rolling Sea at Ramblings by Laura Crossett.
• Search Engines Commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day via Resource Shelf.

Five years ago today—well, it was 20 January in 2003—I was sitting at home listening to the MLK Jr. specials on the radio (NPR) when at 4:02 PM CT I heard that 12,000 soldiers from Fort Hood (4ID) were being mobilized.

4th Infantry Division (4ID) is the division I retired from and the one my son was serving in at the time. Not that this was publicly known yet, but they were to be the hammer out of the north from Turkey in the initial invasion of Iraq.

Later that evening after a couple pints of beer and attempted reading I went by the ex’s for a hug and some talk. Jeremy called while I was there. Said aircraft had to be on ships down south by the end of the week & they’ll be 2 weeks behind. When I got home from Mary’s I called my mom and then my sister.

So, here I am, almost 44 years old & my baby’s ordered to war. Where did I go wrong? [my journal, 9 PM 20 Jan 2003]

The complete irony of the formal announcement of these deployments on Martin Luther King Jr. Day did not escape me. Nor will it ever.

My son’s deployment was quite hard on me. The reasons are quite complex and I will never fully understand them myself and certainly never be able to explicate them to others.

My son and his family have been lucky so far and he has had a job for the last couple years such that—unlike many who have been back several times in the last almost 5 years of war—he has not. That shall change soon, though. He is on his way back to Fort Hood and the 4th ID.

So here I sit again contemplating my son’s (possible) deployment.

That, and so much more, is what Martin Luther King Jr. Day will forever mean to me.

… consistently we are resistant to love …

Four Bitchin’ Babes. “Beautiful Fool.” Beyond Bitchin’

Song I used to “commemorate” MLK Jr. Day 2003, the mobilization of 4ID and the march to war on my 2003 compilation CD.

This past Wednesday, 26 Sep 2007, was the Fall 2007 Phineas L. Windsor Lecture at GSLIS.

Betty Sue Flowers, Director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum was the lecturer.

I must say I was kind of ambivalent about this lecture but I ended up truly enjoying it. I have, I believe, attended all of the Windsor Lectures since my arrival at GSLIS. Well, looking through the lectures page it seems I may have either missed one or simply do not remember it.

I have heard Betty Sue speak on two previous occasions, both via telephone in LEEP classes. In fact, I called her at her office on the 1st occasion as I was the Tech GA for that class. The 2nd time I was taking the class. She is a wonderful speaker but I am generally ambivalent—actively leaning towards the negative end—towards some of the topics she was to cover in the Windsor Lecture. Plus, she considers herself a futurist. On that topic, let’s just say I still haven’t got my damn flying car I was promised when I was a kid.

Enough about me; on to the lecture, keeping in mind that these are very sketchy notes. Also where I have used “” I do believe that I captured a direct, verbatim quote. Other cases may be also but are more likely a paraphrase.

Using the Future to Create the Present

“This field [LIS] is under-theorized to the outside world.”

Amen, but then many outside fields are also under-theorized by us! (me)

The trouble with the future is how the past blocks our vision of the future.

“Logic is an organized way to go wrong with confidence.” — attributed to a NASA head engineer on a project which she consulted for.

A-freakin’-men, brother! (me)

Our extrapolation from the past to the future is like this. [I.e., we infer the same from the past into the future. Thus, we are often wrong about the future; and we create bad futures due to lack of vision.]

We cannot know the future BUT we must have a story about it.

This I can fully agree with.

• How do we escape from extrapolating from the past to make the future better?
• Our stories of the future (and bad extrapolating from the past) affect the present.
• “The present is created by the story you’re telling of the future.”
• We need a clear distinction between fact and narrative. The story you tell about the facts are what influence/create the present.

How do we break out of the current story to a new plot?

Scenario planning:

• Equally plausible stories.
• Must hold the future as a fiction.
• Creating in a field of play allows one to support a position that they don’t have to stand by/defend as much as they might in a non-scenario case.

Stories of the United States – historically there have been 3 stories and we are now adding a 4th.

1. Hero Myth – “brings out competition,” lack of communication as is individualistic.
2. Religious Myth – “goodness.” [Religious more in the Joseph Campbell sense, not religion per se.]
3. Democratic/Scientific/Enlightenment Myth- “truth,” “we can all reason together.”
4. Economic Myth – “growth.”

• Pictures and numbers make this the 1st truly global myth.
• Has a kind of parity: my number is as good as your number; my bit is as good as your bit. [Ah, leveling ala Kierkegaard!]
• Growth implies interconnectedness – can create a field of possibilities never seen before – both good and ill.

Sorry for the sketchiness, but perhaps it will give you a flavor and you will make the effort to hear her speak if you ever have the chance. I would recommend it highly! There is a good possibility that this lecture will be available as streaming audio (Real) at the lecture archive link in the near future.

Plus, this allowed me to record my notes in a slightly more formal way than on the heavy paper handout they gave us as we entered the lecture.

I had a very quick read through yesterday and it looks pretty good on a first pass. He clearly admits where it needs fleshed out more; perhaps others can help him do so.

[Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend anyone's personal views. My only aim here is to share a love of word play with others who may also appreciate it.]

Earlier this week I did the copy cataloging to enter this book into our library. I found the juxtaposition of the the title and the subject heading quite humorous.

Murphy, Francesca Aran. God is Not a Story: Realism Revisited.
LCSH: Narrative theology.

Truth be told, the book looks highly interesting to a heretic such as me, and the subject clearly matches the title because the book is (based on my reading a fair amount of the intro) a reaction to a “side-effect” of narrative theology, which argues that

the Church’s use of the Bible should focus on a narrative presentation of the faith, rather than on the exclusive development of a systematic theology.

The intro to the book explains it better than the Wikipedia article, but it seems that (and it makes sense that) a side-effect of focusing on story is that the view, intentional or otherwise, that ‘God is story’ arises. That’s is in the existential sense. Does seem to be a distinct possibility.

Anyway, based on my reading of Auerbach’s Mimesis I imagine that if I was a theologian I would be highly drawn to narrative theology. It is the story of the Bible that is important. But Murphy’s objection is easy enough to see as a definite issue within narrative theology.

Nonetheless, heathen word play lover that I am, God is Not a Story == Narrative theology cracks me up.

Sunday, 11 Feb

Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. Declamation on the nobility and preeminence of the female sex. Translated and edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series. Read pp. 13-65.

The resemblance [of sons to mothers] is often evident in their physical appearance but it is always present in their character: if the mothers are stupid, the sons are stupid; if the mothers are wise, the sons breathe wisdom. It happens otherwise with fathers, who, even if intelligent, very often beget stupid sons or who, stupid themselves, produce wise sons, provided that their mother is wise (57).

Tuesday, 12 Feb

Finished the above book. It is actually pretty good, although I have 2 small complaints. First, is the that translator/editor claims that the book is primarily for undergraduates. Maybe. It is extemely heavily footnoted; thankfully. But if we are to believe any of the stories told about people’s reading habits that will be a definite turnoff. I am certainly not saying it is above undergraduates; that is far from the truth. I am only wondering about whether they would engage with it. It is actually a fast read, especially if you avoid the footnotes, unlike me. Second, it is heavily biased towards beautiful, upper class, European, white women, and not necessarily all women. But considering it was delivered as a speech in 1509 and first published in 1529, it is a master work and an extremely important early work on “the querelle des femmes, the “Woman Question.”" Some more quotes:

Women, to the contrary, have invented all the liberal arts, every virtue and benefit, which the very names of the arts and virtues—being feminine in gender—show better than anything. Another remarkable fact is that even the terrestrial globe itself is called by women’s names, the nymph Asia, Agenor’s daughter Europa, Epaphys’s daughter Libya, also called Africa (76).

But in order that no one doubt that women can do everything men do, let us show it by examples; we shall discover that there has never been any exceptional or virtuous deed of any kind performed by men that has not been executed by women with equal brilliance (79).

Are not philosophers, mathematicians, and astrologers quite often inferior to country women in their predictions and diagnoses? Is it not often the case that a small, aging midwife outstrips a doctor (84)?

But since the excessive tyranny of men prevails over divine right and natural laws, the freedom that was once accorded to women is in our day obstructed by unjust laws, suppressed by custom and usage, reduced to nothing by education. … And so these laws compel women to submit to men, as conquered before conquerors, and that without reason or necessity natural or divine, but under the pressure of custom, education, chance, or some occasion favorable to tyranny (94-5).

And from the conclusion:

I have shown the preeminence of the female sex according to her name, order, place, and material of her creation, and the status superior to man she has received from God. Moreover, I have demonstrated this with respect to religion, nature, and human laws, and [in each case] through diverse authorities, reasons, and examples (96).

Amen, brother. “Down with the patriarchy!”

Neelameghan, A. “Lateral relationships in multicultural, multilingual databases in the spiritual and religious domains: The OM Information Service.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 185-198.

More Foucault.

Eliot, George. Silas Marner: Weaver of Raveloe. Read all introductory matter and first two chapters.

Wed-Thursday, 14-15 Feb

Finished Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Thankfully! I’m sure there was something of value in there; but I’m damned if I know what it was.

More Eliot.

Friday, 16 Feb.

Finished Silas Marner. An excellent book. I am definitely going to have to read more Eliot having only read Middlemarch and now this. The Introduction by Q. D. Leavis was also quite good. Eliot’s psychological insights are no less insightful here than in Middlemarch.

His life had reduced itself to the functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended. The same sort of process has perhaps been undergone by wiser men, when they have been cut off from faith and love — only, instead of a loom and a heap of guineas, they have had some erudite reasearch, some ingenious project, or some well-knit theory (20).

Hmmm…?

A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic (39).

And I dare say, quite a few not-so-dull minds also.

Satija, M. P. “Relationships in Ranganathan’s Colon Classification.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 199-210.

Saturday, 17 Feb

Mitchell, Joan S. “Relationships in the Dewey Decimal Classification System.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 211-226. Which also means I have now finished reading this book. I will have more to say about it in the future, as this is the book that I am reviewing for Representation & Organization this semester.

Garsol, Lars Marius. “What are topic maps.” For Representation & Organization.

Durusau, Patrick. “Babel and topic maps.” [pdf] For Representation & Organization.

Pepper, Steve. “The TAO of topic maps: Finding the way in the age of infoglut.” For Representation & Organization.

Martel, Yann. Life of Pi. Started on Read this novel, which my friend, Mo, gave me last October. Pretty good so far, but no George Eliot. Holy crap! I just read a whole book in one day, and all those other things, too.

Holy balls! I’ve read 8 books already this year. This is absolutely incredible for me. I guess it’s time to turn to the 400-600 page books at this point; those will properly slow me down, no doubt. Or I could actually start producing for my classes instead of just reading.

If you are a Flickr contact of mine, you might know that I have lately been scanning some photos (just a few, all told) from my photo albums. This has been, and is, odd for various reasons.

While the photo albums are “in order” (chronological), they aren’t perfect. For one thing, I’d often remove a partially shot roll of film to put another speed in, if needed, and switch back to the partially shot one later. There is also very little recorded data with the photos. This was my life. I should know more about it.

A fair amount of metadata exists. Somewhere. Somewhere, possibly multiple places, are some small notebooks with details about scores of rolls of film recorded. Where are they? What are the limits of that data? What is its quality? How variable is it? These are all highly interesting questions for one such as me.

So far, I have been dropping the new scans in the Assorted Scans set and then arranging the new photos in chronological order. They need arranging because the set was initially populated with a few scans that I already had or photos at hand prior to bringing the photo albums back from storage in Normal. The wedding photos had to fit in fairly quickly and the “original” scans covered almost a 25-year period. All new photos, when uploaded, go to the end of the set, too, which is probably not where they belong. For a long time still. Thus. Arranging.

Most photos have little real metadata. I find that somewhat disheartening. Even more disheartening, this was my life. I recognize it from behind the lens of my camera. [One should read Jacques Ellul on this: The Humiliation of the Word, chap. III, "Sight Triumphant," Photographs subsection in Section 1. The Invasion of Images (pp.121-24).] I can only plead youth and ignorance.

While I may not have specific dates, or place names, or something else, I do have stories about all of them, and of the many, many more that are left out. Honestly, the few I have been scanning don’t even add up to the outline of a story. Although stories are too wordy for Flickr, I need to find a way to tell some of them. For now, I’ll leave some of it up to prompting by others. In fact, I owe Miss E the story of why Jeremy had an “infamous nose blanket.” And I find it odd that I don’t seem to have a photo of the nose blanket in action, as it were. Maybe it was such a normal part of our odd little lives that it wasn’t worth photographing; although, it did make a great live demonstration. Little kids as “freaks” and all.

At this point, I am up to the beginning of the 4th photo album and Sara’s arrival in the world (early Nov. 1983). These photo albums are of photos taken with my Canon AE-1 that I got in 1979. I actually have 2 albums of Polaroids from Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT), my leave before I headed for Germany the 1st time, and early barracks life on a nuclear missile site in West Germany. These are a preservation issue at the moment. They need some intervention before I can scan any of them. Getting them out of the albums will be the first step. These come before those in the numbered albums; chronologically-speaking.

It appears that I have just found my notebook that covers April 1985 to April 1995. I am not yet to that point in time in my scanning, but this is great news. Now where is the earlier one(s)? I also found a notebook from some time in 2003 that covers the last 8 or so rolls shot after I had my camera cleaned and refurbed, but I have no idea were any of the loose rolls of film are.

Well, I used a few tricks of the professional, individual, info manager/seeker and found the box with all the rolls of slides and most of the “loose” rolls of film, including up to the last ones I shot. It may not be everything, but it is probably most of the non-albumed photos.

Just who is going to do this, and just when is this going to be done?

I sure wish I could put a little of what I’m feeling by revisiting all of these photos into the scans so you could feel it, too. Might just help tell many of the stories. And I wish I could do better with the “facts” without having to rely on recorded “knowledge.”

It is only (representations of) my life. And of the stories that comprise it.