Diane in MN

The Guardian article reminded me of a passage I read in an essay, or maybe a story intro, by Ursula Le Guin many years ago. She quoted someone who’d written something like “there was no technology in the Americas before Columbus” and commented that maybe he (yes) thought that pottery and baskets grew on trees. I assume she wanted to make a point about how one defines technology, and that’s why she didn’t also mention metalworking, irrigation, architecture, etc. I’d guess that it’s only since the Industrial Revolution that people have equated technology with machines, and the more familiar a machine is, the less “technological” it’s perceived to be. I would call a (printed) book perfected technology, but I’m probably in a minority. (Well, maybe not in this group.)

Has everyone here read Joanna Russ’ HOW TO SUPPRESS WOMEN’S WRITING?  If not you should give it a try.  I think anyone who is interested in the whole Girls/Women Who Do Things issue—and if you’re not, why are you reading this author’s blog?—would find it pretty riveting.  It’s from 1983 so it should be out of date, right?  Nope.  I reread it about five years ago—since the move into town, anyway, so less than nine years—and it’s still only too accurate.  It’s also very funny, if often in a blood-letting—or blood-curdling—kind of way.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Suppress_Women%27s_Writing

I’m delighted Wiki has the right edition on display—click on the link and just read the cover, and see if you don’t immediately have to read the book.

I also totally agree about hard copy printed bound books being perfected technology.*  At this point I do read a lot on Astarte, but that’s convenience.  Pdf:  bring it on.  Mss:  give me the electronic version.  And if your iPad is in your knapsack anyway you don’t have to have any last-minute crises about what book you’re taking with you because if the hard copy you snatched up on the way out the door is the last thing you want to read when you arrive** then you have several dozen or possibly several hundred alternatives on your e-reader gizmo.***

But having always been a fidget—and learning that fidgeting isn’t enough either—I’ve started standing up more, especially at the cottage

Susan Orlean had a piece in The New Yorker a while ago about treadmill desks–which, as you might guess, are treadmills with desk bits in the front, so you can work while walking–that made me WANT a treadmill desk. There are manufacturers that make them, so you don’t have to cobble one together from abandoned exercise equipment and old furniture. Orlean said that using a keyboard while walking was easier than she expected; drinking coffee, not so much. Maybe not quite perfected technology . . .

Hmm.  The New Yorker has a hit and miss free-availability on line attitude.  I’m not sure if this is the full thing or not but it certainly gives you the idea:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_orlean

And again . . . hmm.  It doesn’t fill me with longing but where would I PUT the thing?  I work regularly at at least three different desk/table/kitchen island situations† ALL OF THEM TOO SMALL FOR A TREADMILL.††  If I hadn’t just read that article about how fidgeting isn’t enough I’d be dismissing this out of hand as for other people but maybe this is The Future of No Longer Sedentary Work.  And we’ll all live (nearly) forever, happy, healthy and productive.  Definitely a yaaay scenario. †††

* * *

* Even if they do frell around with glues and bindings and signatures and what the paper is made of and so on.

** Back in the days when I still travelled the books you took with you was a serious issue.  What you wanted to read in the departure lounge or on the runway varied with how many delays, reschedulings, being dragged out of the queue for extra searches, and the number of babies with colic in the immediate vicinity there have been so far—and the book you really want now is in your checked luggage.  On your way home again there will be a different constellation of frustrations, so even if you have that book in your carryon this time it will be the wrong book.  Although are you still not allowed to have any electronic devices on during takeoff and landing?  I know they keep changing their minds about this, like they keep changing their minds about knitting needles.  So you probably still need at least one hard copy volume with you.  As a symbol if nothing else.^

^ That would be LOTR then.

*** And then there’s listening to audible^ on your iPhone while you knit.  Which is one of the great pleasures of life and proves something or other about the positive aspect of the march of time and progress and learning new stuff and being open to new experiences blah blah blah blah blah.  Five years ago I didn’t knit or listen to audiobooks.

^ http://www.audible.co.uk/t1/SCH399_at?source_code=GRL30DFT1Bk90HFSH082312

If anyone who can get on line to read this blog can possibly not know about amazon’s read-aloud books subdivision.+  There are other read-aloud companies out there but ::shuffles feet:: I actually subscribe to audible.

Which reminds me, someone on the forum recently asked about Christian books.  I’ll still try to do a blog some day about my favourites so far but on the subject of read-aloud. . . . Aloysius had recommended Rob Bell’s LOVE WINS some time ago after I’d had a mini-rant on the more-or-less standard concept of hell, where if you screwed up in life you will be CONDEMNED FOREVER.  Nope.  Don’t buy it.  I don’t care what some people tell me Scripture++ says.  Love wins.  In some cases it’s going to take millennia but that’s okay.  God is patient.  And a good thing too.

So I tried LOVE WINS.  HAAAAAAAAATED it.

All those one-line paragraphs?

Pages and pages of them?

And pages?

How stupid does this boy think we are?

And lacking in attention span?

GAAAAAAAAARRH.

So I threw it across the room a few times and forgot about it.

And then we had a video one Sunday at St Margaret’s, and it was short and pithy and really good.  And it was Rob Bell.  Oh, I thought.  Hmmm.  So the next time I had to buy something on my subscription to audible, I bought LOVE WINS.  And listened to it.  And loved it.  It’s now one of my Best Books but only when read aloud.  If you look the printed version up on amazon you’ll see the one-line paragraph deal in the excerpt.  If it doesn’t make you crazy, fine.  If it does make you crazy, but you like the love-wins concept, try the audio.  Bell himself is doing it and he’s got a stand-up comic’s timing.  I had been so busy gnashing my teeth over the print edition I hadn’t noticed it was funny. . . .

+ Sorry about the ridiculously long address.  I was trying not to drop you in my account, which opens automatically if I go to the main opening page.  I’m sure you can log out but [computer] technology and I . . . well . . .

++ Besides, ‘Scripture’ is terrifyingly mutable.

† Four.  Okay, maybe five.  Not counting balancing it on the back of some sofa or other surrounded by hellcritters.

†† Not to mention convincing the hellterror that it isn’t Beelzebub and needs vanquishing.

††† And if this is the ME eating my brain at least it’s cheerful for a change.  ME hallucinations generally go for the post-apocalyptic.