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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

What tests a flashlight has to go through




The flash light has a flexibility for near or close spaces. It is light weight with a great intensity of light than I would expect from a torch. Only goes to show how like knives, torches too have gotten Swiss with all the optics and technology. It comes with a case for its safe keep that can be strapped onto loops for easy reach.

Stilty




You Are Special (Max Lucado's Wemmicks)


I come across so many unheard of children stories like The Phantom Toll Booth, that I stash away as a list to read them some time as my daughter grows. Today I cam across a book with wooden characters called 'Wemmicks' which is the kind of name that catches your attention, that you try to remember for later reference and forget. I was introduced to the concept of stars where kids place the stickers on the things they like in a TV commercial. And taking that a little further is to put 'dots' for the things you dont like. Then I started looking at other books. Its not like other children books where its ok even if you dont know what happened next. The tension between the stars and dots, between the donts and dos, haves and have nots builds up. This one has the allure and the mystery of a story with a message that most kids need growing up.

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



Sunday, December 23, 2012

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.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

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.

Monday, December 17, 2012

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.


Sunday, December 16, 2012

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.