Far to near

Big Five game. In Swades movie, the heroine, a teacher asks about the five big rivers in India.
Yales's museum returning antiques

Travel faux pas - They are committed not only when you are in a foreign country. Even when you are interacting with people of a different class. As an intern, I once traveled in the back of a boss's boss's car while he was driving.
This magazine has advertisement labeled on top of the page to avoid glossy pictures to be mistaken for magazine's article.
Booker travels

National Geo six to summit

Six to summit is about Everest summit by Americans in 1960s. I saw the movie Everest 82 about Canadians summit.

In this magazine, there is an ad about a watch that does updates date on the watch automatically. My sister asked me how is it done? I told her like a digital engineer, when the clock reaches 12 condition is true then the date is changed. But the actual how is here. While reading about this, I am taken back to the days when my parents would say the thorn (hand) is wrong and go about winding it to right. And now I learn that the watches used to rely on the motion of the wearer for heir function and if it hasnt been on the person for too long or the person hasnt moved then the watch does not show correct time. Loosely, we can say that a watch then was like a pedometer, that would not tell you how many but enough steps have been taken. From wiki, I learn the big deal about Seiko and a way to fashion a compass with a watch and a shadow.

Knorr soup that we know in India, is a German Company.

Essay poem

Author: Amy Leach

Her prose is like poetry. Prose poem

At once non-fiction, another time with anthromorphization of strong willed salmons to brides and grooms working against the river to reach the altar, the author adds stories to strife. Her subjects - beavers, Fainting goat with their abilities add to the charm of her writing.
Salmon as Old salt.

Authors interview and more work
A review

Best Books of 2012

Everybody has a list. Last year my friend told me that Bill Gates reads a lot too and he has a years best list.
Here's mine

2012
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
My Dyslexia - Phillip Schultz
The blue bird effect - Julie Zickefoose
Planet of Viruses - Carl Zimmer
The man who changed the way we eat - Thomas McNamee
Yes Chef - Marcus Samuelsson
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake - Anna Quindlen

Mention for Ideas
Extra Virginity - Tom Mueller
The toaster project - Thomas Twaite
How Eskmos keep their babies warm - Mei-Ling  HopGood

Poetry
The animals - a pastoral Richard Grossman


2011
The Anti-Romantic Child - Priscilla Gilman

2010
Muffins and Mayhem - Suzanne Beecher

Article

This article A brief history of wrapping paper, could have begun with the stalwart Hallmark's of greeting card fame. (Hallmark). But it ended with it. Usually we go after the inventors, but in this case, the product with its sole purpose of glitz is the cynosure.
exercise: Leave aside the person, focus on the thing, let it tell its tale independent of the inventor. Let Galatea tell her story. For example, To what Miserable wretches have I been born?


Zadie smith on joy. This article can help maintain a log of your personal experiences by mood.

Next year's read

Authors site

When the author writes of the kinds of people and questions he faces on his floor in the library, they make for funny incidents. This is how the chapters begin and then he brings in his personal life. The way the author has deal with his Tourette's by weight training is amazing.
In the end during a  competition he recalls how like Joe of Touching the Void , he is on his own. Wow, that story was just revisited by Sarah wheeler in access all areas.

National Geographic, 1969, Vol 136, Issue 6 of Moon landing

 Looking at the articles of Hassleblad (camera used for the moon - $22500 cameras. I am curious about how companies are after they are talked about in magazines. Also clears up if they are real), General dynamics ocean station, its har to tell that they are not the NG magazine articles and are advertisements.
Berlitz Language Schools - You are going to Haiti to learn french.
Jai Alai - What language is it? Its a game.
Zenith hearing aids
USF & G uses 'People, place and things' in their ad as all they insure. But really  Name place animal things game that we play as children seems like a budding travelers symptoms.

To turn a procedure into a fissile poem

Be scannable might be a good advice for a prose writer. But if the reader of your poetry is jumping a para, theres not much left to scan.

Woman mined. begins with a commonplace

snap you with an ultraviolet camera,
show you what you've done to your skin just
by living.....

Carolyn Creedon has jumped from a quotidian scene in a specific setting, a cosmetic department , from the material to the emotional space of a life time.

Exercise: Take a procedure done at any place that offers service - doctors, hair salon (or car wash) and see if you can hop onto the next circle post leading to the altar at the center of the lake.

Another exercise: Create out of tornado of fish.

Reigning nonfiction

Author: Lee Gutkind

Three rs of narrative nonfiction. An article by the author using the example of Rebecca Skloot's Henrietta Lacks story.


Creative nonfiction playing by the rules. Give the nonficion writers a break or name a new category. Sounds like there is a need for rule book.

Be scannable. Never thought I would find that as an advice to a writer.

Galvanize

An article
Leyden jar
Luigi Galvani

At home travelling

Andrew McCarthy
Lenga tree
El Calafate glaciers

At the end of prologue when the author is relieved that his wife is not freaked out having just missed a flight after a jangling ride in a foreign country brings two points to light. One, that travel is important to him. Two, that his partner knows this.
Our author is a blur traveler. He is back from one place and already onto another trip before the family can get to grips with it. His partner to be wife ghost travels with him. The reader can sense the guilt in the solo trips.
The author is mostly comfortable with loneliness. His patience for others is checked in a boat trip on the Amazon. There is a scene described, where a girl has an infected tongue hanging out. It couldnt have been in the book without a happy ending. Just when I was ready to chuck the book, there are references to further action on that matter.
The author shows an interest in the history of the places he visits. Goldpanning in Osa Peninsula, he meets people who have settled down in a place where they went on travel.
The Kilimanjaro hike is funny to read with the oximeter being passed around, like an elimination round on 'The Chopped'. The guide says that the most difficult ones are honeymooners and that too men as they are busy taking care of the women and forget about taking care of themsselves. A nurse in the delivery room said similar things and asked my husband to eat so he doesnt pass out when the baby is ready for the world.
All through the book, his wedding is planned which happens in the end in Dublin.

I have seen the movie Mannequin a long time ago. An the sculpted lady is Kim C. Wow.

Authors travel writing
Ever since I read of Kilimanjaro trip, I set my exercise to 'Kilimanjaro' profile on LifeFitness.

Easy book to carry along

Read twice

Debora Greger

The cover seems very familiar. Chairs. The women in them are focused on are they turn their back and focus into the inner world. 

I have never read poetry of Florida so much. 

Feeling cold is not something we ever go for. But the poets lines urge you to divest the objects of their agreed symbols and utility and build new ones in the process of comprehension.
With Tomas Transtromer (can I refer to him as Transformer) as inspiration, I can see where she gets her obscurity in her poems from. 

The reader cone

I didnt think I would read much of this book from the LARB review. How do reviews manage to accomplish distancing the readers instead of getting them into the reader cone. (A review like this comes from the other end of what the book could have been). But once into it, I like the book's development as it goes through reading and women in history.

Silent reading. As kids there was a stage where we had to graduate from reading aloud to silent reading. It is interesting to know that at some point most reading was done aloud in a room. 

The introductory point where the book had me was about the myth of Philomela were weaving was used as a communication tool to point to the times when education for women was not prevalent.

the book lists the service of many women towards paving the path for other women to learn. By digging up history it breaks the common held knowledge of the lack of educated/powerful women in Arab countries. The book is geared towards women in the west and Europe. There are a few references to the east. I kept thinking about how was it in India.

A slate article

A review

Author interview

Walk 'into' mountain

(Poetry exercise)
1. In Hardy's novels, stretches of path can carry memories of a person, just as a person might of a path.
2. how we are scattered, as well as affirmed, by the places through which we move.
3. He(Edward Thomas? or Hardy) imagined himself in topographical terms. corners, junctions, stiles....
4.For paths run through people as surely as they run through places.
5.what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself.

Machair
William Fox essay - cognitive issonance in isotropic place
NYT review
An example of what William Fox says
Hachure map
Miniature lake of mercury in Chinese king tomb