Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Blogging ennui.....?
I have been a very bad blogger lately. And I relate this to being a very bad Hometown Tourist as well. But, realizing you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, right? And I've been doing some thinking about why this has come about.[in the meantime, I've dotted this post with some select photos from my 2009 travels, to entertain my readers and—hopefully—to get me back on track]
Classes start today at St. Mary's, bringing to an end a long holiday break that saw me- staying home a lot and
- working very hard on my London photo project
interest in, Hometown-Touristing. Staying at home means catching few interesting sights around the city to inspire blog posts. And, perhaps more importantly, my head—and heart—have been in London, rather than here at home.I've realized—duh!—pretty clearly that you have to be open to current experience to be a good tourist or a good traveler, whether your current experience is happening around the house or on the other side of the world. And my intense concentration on London
has closed off my eyes and ears to what's going on here.Two examples:
- I intended, at the beginning of the holiday season, to make a trip downtown so that I could take a photo like this one of our lovely Riverwalk at Christmastime and show you how San Antonio dresses up for the season. But I just never managed to get downtown. (Thanks to nanpalmero's Flickr photostream for this great picture.)
- When I did have an errand last week that took me to a part of town I don't usually frequent, I could have gotten some neat photos and shown you some of my hometown's diversity. But I forgot to take my camera with me! If I had been in proper Hometown
Tourist mode, that never would have happened.
AND, my London photos are almost all done! Web pages need proofing, and some technical difficulties with Flickr are slowing down the process, but the end is in sight! So hopefully this project, fun as it is, will be bogging me down less and less as 2010 progresses.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
Twenty-ten* !
One of those years is actually here! I mean, one of those years that used to make you think of something else, when you said the words. In this case, it's one of my favorite sci-fi movies, 2010. (Turner Classic movies lets you watch the trailer here, which really made me want to see it again, badly!)
The last time this happened was in 1984, in one of many coincidences—see below—the year 2010 came out. This date had always had a very sinister connotation. Before January 1, 1984 dawned, I wondered what it would feel like actually to live in that iconic year. (The environment of which, thankfully, wasn't much like that in the book.)
As it turned out, what happened wasn't anything mystical or life-changing (at least, not anything to do with the date). It became just another year and the syllables that make up the words
nineteen eighty-four sort of lost their original power. I suspect that will happen pretty soon with the syllables that make up twenty-ten, too.
However, something very special did happen in 1984, and it's actually related to the movie 2010, which is, of course, related to today. Bear with me a minute.
My daughter was born that year, and all the previous years that I'd spent dreading the coming of 1984 (ever since I read the book, which was probably in high school) melted away in the joy of adding her to our family. Now 1984 just became the year I entered as her birth year on all the school forms to come.
The connection with 2010 comes from her name. Everybody knows the computer in the original 2001, HAL. You might not remember that there's another computer appearing briefly in 2010, whose name is SAL. (The review I wrote for the movie, since this was back in my movie-reviewing days, was even written from her viewpoint.)
My SAL and HAL visiting me in London last year
I wish that the hopeful message of 2010 will infuse our new year in reality, in spite of the fact that we're a ways behind the movie, space travel- and home decorating-wise. And I hope it's a happy one for all my kind readers.
*I don't think there's much of a contest between saying two-thousand-ten and twenty-ten, as was discussed in a recent NPR segment. I just don't have enough excess energy to spend some of it putting an extra syllable into the date every time I say it. Now, if I can just remember to write 2010 on those first few checks of the year....
The last time this happened was in 1984, in one of many coincidences—see below—the year 2010 came out. This date had always had a very sinister connotation. Before January 1, 1984 dawned, I wondered what it would feel like actually to live in that iconic year. (The environment of which, thankfully, wasn't much like that in the book.)
As it turned out, what happened wasn't anything mystical or life-changing (at least, not anything to do with the date). It became just another year and the syllables that make up the words
nineteen eighty-four sort of lost their original power. I suspect that will happen pretty soon with the syllables that make up twenty-ten, too.However, something very special did happen in 1984, and it's actually related to the movie 2010, which is, of course, related to today. Bear with me a minute.
My daughter was born that year, and all the previous years that I'd spent dreading the coming of 1984 (ever since I read the book, which was probably in high school) melted away in the joy of adding her to our family. Now 1984 just became the year I entered as her birth year on all the school forms to come.
The connection with 2010 comes from her name. Everybody knows the computer in the original 2001, HAL. You might not remember that there's another computer appearing briefly in 2010, whose name is SAL. (The review I wrote for the movie, since this was back in my movie-reviewing days, was even written from her viewpoint.)
Now, HAL's name in 2001 was, according to some scifi geeks, a little joke on IBM (just move back one letter). But our son's nickname was chosen for its Shakespearean connotations, not to call to mind psychotic computers, as a way of distinguishing him from his father and grandfather, for whom he was named. Our Sally was named that because we liked the name and there are other Sallies in the family. How funny to find out later that year that we'd named our kids after two of Arthur C. Clarke's computers!
My SAL and HAL visiting me in London last year
I wish that the hopeful message of 2010 will infuse our new year in reality, in spite of the fact that we're a ways behind the movie, space travel- and home decorating-wise. And I hope it's a happy one for all my kind readers.
*I don't think there's much of a contest between saying two-thousand-ten and twenty-ten, as was discussed in a recent NPR segment. I just don't have enough excess energy to spend some of it putting an extra syllable into the date every time I say it. Now, if I can just remember to write 2010 on those first few checks of the year....
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night
When we were in Colorado this summer, actually all together for a few days, we took advantage to take our Christmas card picture. The "album cover" approach was the kids' idea, and since they usually don't like posing for these pix, I thought it best to go along. Left to right, we are: globe-trotting writer/son, myself, cat parent/daughter, globe-trotting artist/daughter-in-law, and kayaking spouse.The setting is Upper Water Dog Lake, arrived at after a fairly long and strenuous (for me, anyway) hike along the Continental Divide. It's some of the most beautiful, and some of my favorite, scenery in the world, though, so it's worth the shortness of breath and aching feet.
And, being a location with so many pleasant associations for us, it's a fitting place to say this from:
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !!
To all my kind readers
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
