Author: Monda

Phone Fail

No Telling


Maybe I’m making this harder than it has to be. I’m not sure exactly how long should I read the book and fiddle with the touch screen of a new cell phone before I give up. The learning curve between the Sorry Cell Phone I had and the shiny new electronic wonder beside me now may just be a little much – like walking out of a Math for General Ed course right into Calculus. It’s not an exaggeration.

I think I’m flunking Cell Phone.

The thing intimidates me. It’s crouching here on my desk in all its Samsung Omnia sleekness, taunting me, making me feel unbelievably stupid. Oh, it takes fabulous pictures – I figured that out first thing – and even sends them to my email. I got that part down, easy. It’s just a nightmare to answer a call. In fact, I’ve not been able to pick up a call yet.

I spent three hours last night attempting to return four phone calls and I don’t think success ever happened the same way twice. There was one texting attempt, but I mistakenly texted a person who also can’t work their phone. Neither of us may ever know if that message went through.

It’s time to screw my courage to the sticking place and learn this thing. I’m putting a limit on it, though, because using a phone shouldn’t require a PHD. If I can’t figure out how to pick up and make call by this afternoon, I’ll graciously admit defeat and take the damn thing back to Verizon for something with a little less abracadabra.

Meanwhile, Em is thumb-spinning away on her new rig as if it were a natural extension of her hand. Gen-Y whippersnapper.

Happiness is an Unscheduled Hour

No Telling

Ilive less than a block from the local country club. Every afternoon as I drive home I juggle a to-do list in my head while the fellas out on the greens are putting and driving and such. More than once I’ve wondered how the hell they find world enough and time for such pursuits. Who’s taking the kids to practice/cooking dinner/making the Wal-Mart trip/grading their papers? Okay, maybe they don’t have any papers to grade. Maybe they’re all bachelors or widowers. Maybe they have hired help and lots of money to throw at them.

All I know is I’m really, really tired and they look completely relaxed. Happy.

There’s been a great deal of discussion lately concerning a research project by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. It seems they’ve discovered that in the past thirty years or so, men have become happier than women.

Well. That’s not very hopeful.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I remember watching my mother slave over dull housework and limited choices. Did the repetition of daily thankless work and the pressure of being the perfect wife and mother make her unhappy? I thought so at the time. My fist was hovering in the air and I assumed that not only had we come a Long Way, Baby, we could have our families and launch a career as well. I figured Mom was settling for half a life.

I, on the other hand, planned to have it all. A lot of us did.

It appears this research is actually telling us about our mothers and ourselves, and it’s saying we aren’t as happy as our mamas were. Is that possible? I thought diving into the career pool was supposed to change that, and now it appears all we did was dive into the deep end with heavy Power Suits dragging us down. There’s a scary Cult of Perfection we bought into along the way, so now we have to be superhuman in our relationships, jobs, and appearance.

Aunt Bee never worried about her abs, I’ll bet.

The study cites all manner of reasons for women’s waning happiness other than our leap into the office. Interestingly, they find that all women are unhappy, no matter what their days look like. To get to the bottom of it, there’s another study of women who rate themselves as whole and happy.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/bestoftv/2009/09/27/whitfield.men.happier.women.cnnCNN Video

So how do we measure happiness? Here are the five questions from the CNN video. How do you answer them?

1. How often do you do what you like to do?
2. Do you anticipate the day with joy/dread?
3. Do you get so involved that you forget time?
4. Do you feel invigorated?
5. How often do you have an emotional high?

I’m not completely sure what makes men happier than women, but I have an inkling that they don’t worry the same way we do. Men compartmentalize such things and we tend to compound them instead. I could name fifty-eleven bits I’ve planned for or scheduled or worried about just during the time it took to write this blog post. I’ve also been multitasking by doing laundry and brewing iced tea for tomorrow. For me, writing is the answer to several of those questions up there, but I’ve managed to complicate all the fun out of it tonight.

Maybe I just need to take up golf instead.

Bookplates and the Art of Procrastination

No Telling


Bookplates should be personal. Which is why the first one I made (with a little assistance from Gustave Dore) features tomatoes. I’m fairly certain Dore wasn’t from the South, but I am. We take tomato-growing seriously down here. If you’re laughing, you’re probably from Minnesota or someplace.

Don’t fret, these are all altered images frittering their artistic lives away in the public domain. I didn’t steal them and no one’s stealing my books with something like this on the inside cover. It’s not an Evil Eye, it’s an Exasperated Eye.

Sadly, the bat story clings to me. Can’t quite shake it, so I might as well make a bookmark. That’s not a rationalization, it’s a personal philosophy. Glass half full and all that.

I give books as presents all the time. Why, I’ve even been known to give them out at Halloween when the trick-or-treater is a little too tall for my liking. I gave out fifty-cent copies of Dracula, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Frankenstein a few years back and may never live that down. The too-big-for-trick-or-treating crowd has my number now. I’d never put one of these lovely presentation plates in those, though. They don’t deserve it.

This bookplate is strictly for scholarly books on rhetorical theory. Note the poor woman’s general demeanor. Enough said.

Making these was so much fun that now I’ll be grading all day tomorrow to make up for today’s artful procrastination. If you need to lose a few hours, I suggest Wikimedia Commons and Flickr Commons for a wealth of images in the public domain.

The Quest Begins

Fresh Ribbon


You know Margaret Mitchell. Gone With the Wind is a classic both in print and in film and she had her fingers on the typewriter keys for both. This post is not a tribute to this Southern scribbler, there are tributes aplenty across the internet and mine wouldn’t do her justice. Fine Literature? Not really, but she wrote an irresistible story.

I accidentally found this picture of her at Born Today as I cruised the net for something else. I find a lot of fine things that way, but this one stopped me cold. Bless her heart, Margaret’s not much to look at in this photo. It’s the brooch she’s wearing that nearly killed me outright.

There’s no mistaking it. That’s a typewriter ribbon done in pearls.

I. Must. Have. It.

Jitterbug or Blackberry?

No Telling


Let’s just say it’s time for a new cell phone. The groovy little phone I’m carrying around right now is older than The Perfect Grandson, woefully unattractive, and holds a charge for about half an hour. It still takes pictures (very important) but it doesn’t tend to take them well. I’d blabber on about the keypad, but I don’t text so it doesn’t matter.

Call me a geezer if you want. It’s a phone. You make calls on it. Isn’t that supposed to be the point?

This fine ride was free when I signed my life away on a contract with Alltel. Apparently Alltel doesn’t exist anymore. Was anyone else aware of this? Last month my bill was from Verizon, so I guess my waning contract is in someone else’s file cabinet now.

So now I have to shop around. Normally, shopping is a challenge I’m willing to take on, but we’re talking electronics and contracts here. It’s not like buying a new pair of pumps and a bag. So I went online to do a little comparison shopping and realized about five minutes in that I was in completely over my head.

Em jokes often about buying me a Jitterbug. If they took pictures I’d have one right now and Coolness Be Damned. Generation Y can keep their fascination with the intricate dance of electronics purchasing. The whole thing just makes me tired. My first phone was a rental rotary from Southwestern Bell. It came in two colors – black or tan – and my bill was under $8 a month. I didn’t have one of those groovy push-button wall phones until I was a married woman. And I made all my long distance calls in three feet of snow. Or something. The point is that a telephone shouldn’t be this much trouble.

Regardless, I’m past the point of no return with this sad little flip phone. It’s dented and scratched and breathing irregularly, so I feel confident it plans to give up the ghost before my contract runs out next month. Isn’t that always the way?

Help me out, folks. Simplify this process for me by giving me the skinny on good two-fer deals and cheap contract carriers. I’m going to put something on these frown lines right now before they become permanent.

snazzy image via My Confined Space

The snazzy drop-cap is a layout secret I’ll share with anyone who gives me shopping advice. Dangle that carrot, I say.

UPDATE: Here it is (but only for Blogger users):

L

1. Copy this code into a new blog post using the HTML mode. Change the “L” to whatever letter it should be. If you want to see exactly what it looks like beforehand, click Preview, not Compose. It will be perfect in Preview. Voila!

2. Want to do this with every single post? Copy the code, click on Settings, then Formatting. At the bottom there’s a Post Template box. Paste the code in there and it will automatically begin every post. All you need to do is change the letter in HTML mode. Double voila!

I thank you.

The Facebook Curmudgeon: Peer-Pressure Never Ends

No Telling


Okay, so after 3 1/2 months of Official Facebook Abandonment, I’m back on. I don’t have to like it, though.

I just don’t get it, really. Am I missing something? I Twitter, and that’s even beginning to make a little sense as long as I don’t follow people who tell me they just brushed their teeth. I follow a lot of editors, bloggers, and friends. I even follow Christopher Walken who’s certifiable and therefore entertaining. I’m not doing it very well myself, but it’s interesting to follow others.

Not so much with Facebook. After all those months the “friend requests” were staggering, as were the “gifts.” No one can convince me those apps are a good time. I don’t want virtual houseplants or anything that requires me to List Ten Things.

I‘ve discussed my history with Facebook before. You know, five years ago you couldn’t sign up without a .edu email address – it was nothing but college students. I signed up as a classroom experiment in which I made Facebook groups for each class I taught. For contacting students and answering questions, it worked beautifully.

Last night I logged on only to find I had over 500 friends – a scary mix of old high school buddies and recent students. It was decision time, and the youngsters lost out. I deleted over 400 students I’d accumulated over four years of the online classroom experiment. All that deleting was exhausting and gave me the terribly feeling I’d thrown out all the babies with the bathwater.

When the carnage was over, I peeked at my Friend Feed to see what was left. What remains reminds me of those old party-line phones where you picked up and heard other people’s conversations. Do I need to know Shelly lovingly prepared Spam and tater tots for dinner? Or that it’s late and Barry is tired? Is it any of my business that, without explanation, Linda’s changed her relationship status to “single”? No, no, and no.

My daughter wandered in as I sat there staring at the screen dumbfounded. Em tried, bless her heart, to convince me Facebook could be interesting. She showed me how to “lurk” or “creep” – clicking willy-nilly through and across and over layers of friends to find out the poop on everyone. It was like watching digital macrame and the end result was the same: I couldn’t make myself care. Besides, all her friends are funky and in their risk-taking years. All mine are dull and in their heart-attack years. She doesn’t see a lot of Spam-and-tater-tot updates, for example.

I did learn something important from Em’s Facebook Stalking Tutorial: if you don’t update your status, no one looks for you. Looks like I’m in the clear.

It all boils down to this: As terrible as I am at Twitter, I’m a much, much worse Facebook friend. My colleagues and closest friends are aware of my failure to socially-network properly. They forgive me in that Southern way by bless-your-hearting my digital eccentricity and trying to include me even if I never respond.

I’ll post a link to this on my Facebook status update as an act of contrition. Baby steps.

Historical Typecast: Sweetheartin’

Fresh Ribbon

Meet Melinda Parker. Sometime between 1936 and 1940, armies of writers and photographers with the Federal Writers’ Project and the Folklore Project were sent all over the U.S. to collect personal histories. Some are strictly informational while others, like this one, contain recorded narrative. Sometimes the interviewers are identified, but not this one. Melinda Parker’s voice is the only one we hear.

From American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940, housed in the Library of Congress. The collection is vast, containing

“2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant’s family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts.”

Not all of the documents are online. Not all of the states are represented, including Arkansas. I have managed to find a small collection of WPA/Federal Writers’ Project documents house at the University of Arkansas as “WPA: Early Settlers’ Personal Histories of African Americans in Arkansas.” Sadly, most of these are thin on narrative and heavy on “report.”

I’m just thankful Mrs. Parker’s voice was recorded in these anonymously typed pages.

A Bad Idea that Luckily Never Quite Caught On

No Telling

“Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.” – via Foresight Culture, Popular Mechanics 1950

Does anyone remember Naugahyde? My mother had a harvest-gold couch covered in the stuff and it remained indestructible until we yard-saled it sometime in the late 70s. It was impervious to spills and stains. It stuck hermetically to the backs of our legs so that rising from the nauga-couch in the summer snatched off a layer of skin. It was almost atomic and just about the grooviest piece of furniture my mother ever vacuumed under.

I even had a Nauga-monster, which the company still makes. I’m not sure why I had one, and I’m truly confused why anyone wants one now. They’re cold and uncozy until they warm up near you and become That Doll You Peel Off of Your Face.

Wistful memories aside, I’m not ready to go nauga-retro just to ward off an errant stain or two. Besides, there’s no built-in storm-drain in my living room floor. Not that it wouldn’t be handy.

I’m also not a housewife, so there’s that. Even if I were a housewife, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable about spraying water willy-nilly from a garden hose all over my living room. The ad-men on this little project must have imagined a bookless, magazineless, clothless world. Great in theory, but not in any house I’ve ever lived in.

I won’t even talk about what a cleaning ritual like that would do to a hair-do that took two hours once a week at the local beauty shop, and was meant to last from one visit to the next. There’s not enough Aquanet in the whole world to make that right.

Of course, she’s smiling. Since those were the days before anti-depressants became all the rage, I’m putting my money on Valium or one of its cousins as Mother’s Little Helper. Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Yearbook Yourself, or This is What Happens When She’s got a Little Time on Her Hands

No Telling

So it’s Friday night. Em’s out with her gentleman friend and I’m babysitting The Perfect Grandson who’s working some new molars through and is a bit restless. Writing anything requiring sustained concentration is out the window.

I’m kind of glad, though, because I’ve found this Yearbook Yourself site and it’s more fun than anyone has a right to have. Just upload a picture, make sure it’s lined up correctly, then try on yearbook looks. Anything from 1954 to 2000. Double the fun by adding your picture to activities – seriously, put yourself in a 1966 football squad or become a cheerleader in the 80s (scary permed hair and all).

I loved all of them, but this one (1966) really made me pause. Except for the glasses, I look exactly like my mother.

C’mon. You know you’re not doing anything important right now. Go make a yearbook picture and horrify yourself, just promise to leave a link so we can all enjoy your pain. Extra points if you put it on Facebook.