This will be part one of a nine-part series of quizzes about the Baby Boomer era. The sections covered will include a Historical Timeline 1955-1975; The Golden Age of Television; Top U.S. Song Hit Singles 1955-1970; Drugs; Famous Pairs; Who Gave Them Their Big Break?; Top Movies; Top Rated TV Shows of the 60s; and Miscellaneous.
There will be no grading system for these quizzes, I created them just for the fun of it. Play it with your friends. The answers will be immediately available in case you're not so good with delayed gratification (as they claim about us).
Feel free to share, but give me credit, dammit. The first quiz, the Golden Age of Television, begins after the fold. Copyright 2008 Maggie Jochild.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
BOOMER QUIZ: GOLDEN AGE OF TV
SKENE: CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
This is draft one of my sci-fi novel Skene. To read earlier chapters, go to LABELS in the right-hand column on this page, scroll down to the Skene tags and click on the one you want to read. Skene is set on a human-habitable planet in the Alhena star system at least 500 years in the future. There's a considerable amount of appendix material and diagrams also available here as needed:
Map of Riesig (the main island)
Map of The Manage on Riesig
Skene Glossary (Skenish to English)
Skene Cast of Characters
Skene Culture, Calendar, Clothing, and Islands
Map of All Skene
Map of The Lofthall on Riesig
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Halling pushed down the mic button and clicked it to lock.
"Hello, citizens of Skene, this is Halling la Mwezi na Ng, Sheng Zhang of the Lofthall. Today I accompanied my sinning crew to the Northern Wasa to a site an hour's flight north and east of Exploit. During the course of our successful harvest of a larger-than-average sinning, we were attacked by fifteen adult leviathans and at least a dozen juveniles. Another two dozen levis were in the vicinity but did not attack. At my orders, one of our lighters trained in laser use fired her laser at the blue spot on the leviathan attempting to kill her and the sinners who were already engaged with the net. The leviathan was instantly killed."
Halling paused to take a sip of tea, allowing two seconds of silence. Yoj wished she could see the stark hush that must be occurring all over Skene, in manages and workplaces. Dodd pushed back against her and she picked her up, despite Dodd now being ten and hard to hold.
SOME NOTES ON BLOGGING
("Corfu Lights and Shadows" by John Singer Sargent, 1909, Transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite pencil on paper; a large, high-quality framed print of this has hung at the foot of my bed for 17 years, the first thing I see in the morning and the last thing at night)
At the rest of sounding like Thomas and his Friends, who are psychologically stunted around the issue of Usefulness (and avoiding public humiliation): My definition of art includes what Sharon Bridgforth refers to as "raising the energy". When I create, I seek to not only reflect my perception of reality in such a way that you have a chance at sharing the experience, but I also feel obligated to walk in beauty, to avoid anger or despair as destinations, and to weave into the fabric of my creation a belief that the viewer/reader has just as much expertise about the world as I do.
How well I achieve these goals depends on my skill level that particular day, of course. Holly Near once said that nonmonogamy was a post-patriarchal idea that we were trying to implement in a patriarchal environment. I think this goes for almost any of our best ideals: We have goals, and then we have reality. The tension between the two, the gap, can be extremely productive and even joyous if self-hatred is under control.
I bring this creative ethic to my poetry, my fiction, my essays, and my blog equally. I'm new to blogging, and have tried to learn the craft from reading others' efforts. Some conventions I follow, some I don't. For instance, I don't have a "Blogroll", I have a list of what blogs I'm actually reading regularly. I don't link to something unless I have derived good from it. No trading favors for me. I'm not in this to curry power and influence: I already have that in my life.
I also strive for graphics to accompany my text which offer an added dimension, not just illustrate my words. This means I spend a lot of time sweeping the web for interesting visuals, and my saved images files are enormous. I do my best to credit the creator of the graphic -- this isn't always possible, there's a great deal of anonymous stuff out there, but I search for origin when I have any kind of a clue.
I do this for two compelling reasons. One is the example we set for one another in the 70s, the heyday of lesbian-feminism, to credit our sources. We saw this as a behavior men did not tend to do unless legally or academically required, especially white men: For them, it was all about claiming territory by sneaking it away from others, and building ego through ideas. Our cooperative model, however, led to essays and even fiction being peppered with footnotes at the bottoms of the page, acknowledging the influence/conversation/support of another woman for our comprehension or embellishment of a particular thought. I first noticed it in the pages of DYKE: A Quarterly, but it was common in Sinister Wisdom, Common Lives Lesbian Lives, Chrysalis, Quest, Feminary, etc. Even graphic artists did this, such as Alison Bechdel in her strip Dykes To Watch Out For with her "Tip o'the nibs" squeezed into the margin.
The second reason is that I am assiduously trying to comply with the Web Accessibility guidelines spelled out at Wikipedia. Labeling a graphic means that text recognition software used by a blind computer reader, for example, can hear the caption and description of that image rather than just hitting the alphabet soup of graphics code and skipping over it. The blog server I'm using (Blogger) tends to limit my ability to create large and click-to-enlarge graphics, another accessibility recommendation, but I'm working on that as well.
As I have stated before, I avoid the practice of using some goofy riff to label a link instead of a clear description. This is an obnoxious demand that the reader either click on the link to find out what it's actually about (not all of us have the time and energy to live at our keyboards in this fashion) or ignore what might be something we really want to see. We should have enough information to make a choice. Some big-name political blogs are really terrible about this, and I've gotten into the habit of never clicking on an unclearly-labeled link. If someone won't make the effort to synopsize content into a handful of words, then it must not matter to them very much if I actually go look at it.
Conversely, I was inspired today by Liza Cowan's essay at her blog See Saw about the value of links, the revolutionary impact it's having on our discourse and our ability to not only "follow our bliss" but locate kindred souls out there in Cyberia. Liza says "Links are often my favorite part of blogs. I’ve found some of my most valuable resources by following links, not only in the body of the text but also by following the URL’s embedded in names of reader comments."
I, too, check out the profiles of someone whose work has reached me in some strong way. Ironically, although I knew Liza as a sister leader in our movement for decades, it wasn't until I saw her name in the comments section of a blog (unfortunately, not a blog which allows profiles to come through) that I was motivated to Google her down and commence one of the most rewarding relationships of my life.
(May your friendship spread all over the world -- Shen qing hou yi ji wu zhou)
I think the nature of reality is complex. Usually, more complex than we can comprehend, but dumbing it down in response is a major mistake. The truth is never simple. And art, communication, reform, atonement, any means of growth should simultaneously embrace as much of the complexity as we can see while earnestly attempting to deliver it in a comprehensible form.
One of my mentors, Terry Galloway, a genius of a playwright, dramaturg and director, always stressed that if we have been given an audience, we are not to indulge ourselves at their expense. We have a responsibility to work our asses off, to not intentionally confuse or insult them, to share with trust and goodwill. She was quite fierce about leaving adolescent embarrassment behind, and I often hear her voice in my head when I'm trying to edit a piece.
And, going off on a related tangent, here's a request: When interviewing an artist, please stop asking them the meaning of what they do. The meaning is in the piece itself, and what you get from it. Artists seem to feel compelled to answer these damfool questions with a long string of arcane solipsism which differs from the interviews with football players after a game only in vocabulary. The reason why someone wins a game is because they played better. The reason why an artist did X is because they thought it looked/sounded good. If you want to dissect the artist's psychology, point out that the reason why their faces are mostly expressionless or their conversation tangential is because they lived with a control freak molester, go right ahead but don't ask the artist to participate in it.
So, do offer me feedback and feel free to talk about anything at all in your comments, as long as its not white supremacist, woman-hating, or otherwise oppressive, and you're not simply hyping your own self. (If you do, I'll delete it swiftly.) Aim high, forgive yourself, and as Garrison Keillor says, do good work.
I leave you with a department store product page for HEMA, in the Netherlands, that is a stunning example of how creative a web catalogue can be. Wait patiently for the page to load, then keep you hands off your mouse and watch the place go wild: HEMA.
SKENE: CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
This is draft one of my sci-fi novel Skene. To read earlier chapters, go to LABELS in the right-hand column on this page, scroll down to the Skene tags and click on the one you want to read. Skene is set on a human-habitable planet in the Alhena star system at least 500 years in the future. There's a considerable amount of appendix material and diagrams also available here as needed:
Map of Riesig (the main island)
Map of The Manage on Riesig
Skene Glossary (Skenish to English)
Skene Cast of Characters
Skene Culture, Calendar, Clothing, and Islands
Map of All Skene
Map of The Lofthall on Riesig
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
But as Halling's lethargy and disconnect continued, Bux and Yoj became increasingly concerned. That Shmonah, an end-of-school carnival was to be held all day on Pomar. Rark and Danaan offered to take the children since the forecast was rain until noon, and the Manage gladly accepted, giving them spending money and strict exhortations to mind the pilots no matter what. The adults spent the morning catching up on cleaning, weeding, and canning, ignoring the drizzle. After lunch, however, Yoj and Bux lingered at the table and raised the question of Halling's steadfast refusal to even try using the privy.
"This reminds me of Ng, before she came here" said Bux. "I'm scared that she's given up."
Veida, less concerned, said "She looked over the edge into the other side. She has to make sense of that."
"But Halling's always combined her best thinking with action" argued Yoj. "And she's not even interested in the children at the moment."
Friday, January 11, 2008
BROAD CAST 11 JANUARY 2008: PLUS FOLLOW-UPS
("Veined Splendor", watercolor by Deanna Leonard)
The BBC's Magazine Monitor has a weekly feature, "10 Things We Didn't Know Last Week", featuring interesting and unexpected facts arising from daily news stories. They've compiled a list of 100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year for 2007. Here's several that caught my attention, some with comments by me.
There is mobile phone reception from the summit of Mount Everest.
Martina Navratilova has spent four years secretly working as an artist.
Only about half of China's population can speak the national language, Mandarin. (Useful for throwing back at xenophobes to think America will perish if English-only laws aren't passed.)
Antony and Cleopatra were ugly.
Astronauts wear diapers during launch and re-entry because they can't stop what they're doing should they need to urinate. (That still doesn't explain Lisa Nowak. Also found on her when she was apprehended were a wig, a carbon-dioxide powered BB pistol, a tan trench coat, a new steel mallet, a new folding knife with a 4-inch blade, 3 to 4 feet of rubber tubing, and large plastic garbage bags. My mind keeps wondering about the tubing.)
Adding milk to tea negates the health-giving effects of a hot brew.
The Romans had roadmaps. (But did only the women use them?)
The brain can turn down its ability to see in order to listen to complex sounds like music.
IP addresses will run out in 2010.
A bdelloid rotifer is a pond-dwelling organism that has survived 80 million years without sex. (Now I don't feel so bad...)
In Iceland, 96% of women go to university.
Relocating crocodiles doesn't work -- they come back.
(Another image from the wit of little gator.)
Wired Science has a video of a series of chemical reactions, discovered in 1973 by Thomas Briggs and Warren Rauscher, two high school science teachers, that over 35 years later has chemists still trying to discover how it works. They issue a warning: "This beautiful ballet of chemical reactions could make you trade your lava lamp for a magnetic stirrer."
In follow-up to a recent discussion here about children's books of the 50s and 60s, I discovered a website containing recipes from Trixie Belden characters, entitled Moms Has Outdone Herself Again: A Guide to Cooking the Bob White Way! Let me just ask, if you make the "Bobby's See-Crud No-Bake P.B. Treats", please send me a batch, okay?
A recent article at Utne about a groundbreaking program called Music Together offers a nice adjunct to Kat's recent guest post here about choirs. According to the article, "Music Together cultivates children’s musical development from infancy through kindergarten with classes where parents and kids sing, dance, chant, and play instruments together. Specially trained teachers, exposed to the latest research in early childhood music development, encourage the native ability in all human beings to make music and dance....The truth is that making music and exploring movement is for everyone. It’s not about performance; it’s about expression, celebration, growth, fun, emotional honesty, and community."
In the elementary schools I attended, we sang together often. As did my family. Even more bonding was the singing we did at breaks of lesbian political meetings -- revolutionary and women's music was perhaps the strongest fibers of our subculture, completely ours, not commercialized or altered to fit male perceptions. The only comparison I can made is ethnic music from a small but thriving ethnicity. And singing together made us one.
Cat humor seems to have taken over the internet. It certainly rules at my house. Neatorama has compiled a list of all their stories and videos related to cats in 2007, The Year in Cats and you need to just go there and entertain yourself. Some of them I've already covered at this blog (like Nora, the piano-playing cat), but check out the family of cats performing to a waltz; the Wolverton, UK cat named Macavity who rides the bus to a local fish shop; and Oscar, the nursing home cat who can predict which resident will be the next to die.
There's also a project underway to translate the Christian Bible into Lolcat. (I'm keeping the news of this from Dinah.) Here's an example from Genesis: At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.
SKENE: CHAPTER FIFTY
[NOTE: ONLY FIVE CHAPTERS LEFT!]
This is draft one of my sci-fi novel Skene. To read earlier chapters, go to LABELS in the right-hand column on this page, scroll down to the Skene tags and click on the one you want to read. Skene is set on a human-habitable planet in the Alhena star system at least 500 years in the future. There's a considerable amount of appendix material and diagrams also available here as needed:
Map of Riesig (the main island)
Map of The Manage on Riesig
Skene Glossary (Skenish to English)
Skene Cast of Characters
Skene Culture, Calendar, Clothing, and Islands
Map of All Skene
Map of The Lofthall on Riesig
CHAPTER FIFTY
When Yoj walked into the waiting room, all of the children were there and ran to her. Yerush, Qen, Veida, Lawa, Rark, and a very pale Danaan were there as well. Yoj picked up Speranz and hugged each of the other children one-handed. She sat down on a sofa and said "Emma just ate some soup and drank orange juice, and she's gone back to sleep."
"It's not nighttime, why she is sleeping?" asked Prl.
"They are giving her medicine for her hurts and it makes her sleepy. Sleeping is the best thing she can do right now, it lets her body heal faster" said Yoj.
"How is her arm?" asked Veida.
"They say it's fine, no nerve damage, and as long at it doesn't get infected, it'll heal like any other broken bone" said Yoj. "But it was exposed to -- all kinds of things. So she's on lots of antibiotics. The pain stuff has her definitely loopy. And she's -- terrified of being alone."
She turned to look at Rark and said "She keeps bringing you up, how you saved her. It's a miracle, plain and simple."
Rark said "Same as she'd have done. And it was her training made it possible."
"Still..." said Yoj.
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