The Healing Power of Web 2.0

SITB Redux (posted to my Yahoo fountain pen group)

It has been said that the one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is that we are fixated on finding the one thing that distinguishes humans from other animals. (Glassman, 2010) If it were not I who had said it, I would feel considerably more comfortable in offering to disagree. Even so, I disagree. I am certain that the true distinguishing feature is our appetite for irony. Animals do not give a hoot, or a woof, or a cackle, about irony. We humans seem to live for it.

So it is with a soul-satisfying sense of ever-so-humanizing irony that I come to you, having been attacked by the very substance that I, once upon a time, had only written a story about. Before that, I’d never actually seen SITB, only read about it. In my mind’s eye it was slimy, almost alive, lurking on the surface of a vintage bottle of ink, or one that, while not old, might have been exposed to the elements; Slime/Snot/Scum In The Bottle, waiting to be sucked up into the bladder or the converter of some unsuspecting pen, ready to unleash its sclerotic evil and plug the pen just at the moment that something vital, something life-transforming, was about to be written. In my story , that something was the governor’s signature on what the reader believed, or I hope believed, to be an order commuting a death sentence. If you remember that story, the SITB was sentient, indeed, it was inhabited by the consciousness of the convicted man himself, on the night of his execution, struggling (was it a dream? was it more than a dream?) to swim away from the feed so the governor could sign the thing and save his life.

Tonight, SITB came to visit me. In real life or what I, in my arrogance, call real life. It began innocently enough. I had half emptied a small pen using one of those microscopic “international” cartridges and was only part-way into a birthday card message. It was a very absorbent birthday card and I had become very absorbed in writing the message, and was waxing uncharacteristically prolix. Since I didn’t want to run out of ink mid-sentence, I grabbed a dental irrigator and my Jac Zagoory ink bottle, which I had filled, about 2 months ago, with some ancient Skrip ink from a huge bottle that I had just opened for the first time in its life. I swear that when I decanted that ink 2 months ago, it was pure. I’d used it a couple of times from the Zagoory bottle , (crystal, brass, beautiful!) without incident. But tonight I lowered the irrigator into the bottle, pulled gently on the plunger, and it resisted. A tiny amount of ink entered the chamber of the irrigator…then nothing. And when I lifted the irrigator from the bottle, hanging from its needle-like end, blocking the flow of ink or air or anything, was a long, dangling, slimy purple blob. I’d never seen such a purple blob. I’d hoped never to see one (look, could you have resisted that one?) but it was horrifying. It seemed like a violation of all that is holy about inks and pens and the purity of writing, and the wonderful birthday wishes I was trying to send my niece.

So I turn to you, dear friends, for advice. Is my giant bottle of Skrip just a bottle that I may as well empty into the toilet? Are its contents likely to be useable? Is it possible to reclaim ink that seems to want to sustain, even spontaneously generate, some kind of alien life? Would a little spray of Lysol into the Jac Zagoory bottle be of any value? I know that tonight I will dream. And when I dream I will be a blob of that SITB. If so, I shall be begging for release from that noxious form so that I may become the sentences and sentiments I want to send my niece. So please, release me. Let me flow. TIA, BG

IMDB can tell me that they take my complaint about a design flaw seriously, but not that seriously.

I’m having problems logging in

by - bg@bernardglassman.net (25 Aug 2008 06:24:35 PM) Your reply did not respond to my complaint. You wrote “We ask for a valid active credit card for security reasons: a valid credit card lets us verify the user’s identity and avoid multiple sign-ups for trial memberships. You can rest assured that for the duration of your free trial you will not be charged and you may cancel anytime within the trial period. If you decide that you like the service and wish to stay on as a subscriber, you won’t have to do anything; you will be automatically charged for the selected membership level.” My point was that you should let users know at the outset, not after filling out several fields, that you want this info. I also think that the default should be for the membership to go on hold unless the person opts in. Otherwise, there will be accidental memberships. Doubtless I’ll get another robo-response, but hope springs eternal. BG

Re: I’m having problems logging in

by - IMDbPro.com Help Desk (26 Aug 2008 03:03:21 AM) Thank you for contacting us! This is a confirmation that your message was received. Due to the massive quantities of feedback we receive every day, we regret that we are unable to provide a personalized response or follow-up on the progress of every issue that is brought to our attention, but please rest assured that your message has been forwarded to the staff in charge of the relevant section of the site for their information and/or appropriate action. We appreciate that you took the time to contact us and thank you for your feedback. —— Regards, Ann The IMDbPro.com Help Desk

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When the Insanity Lands at You Front Door, Even a Front Door from Years Ago,...

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Twitter is Becoming Location Aware: Huge Public Health Implications

Cliché introduction alert: Social media offer an opportunity for near-real-time awareness of public health phenomena, including alerts and mapping.

Today, if I were to map the ocurrance of ‘swine flu’ (or “the swine” as it has already become known among students) by tracking tweets, I would be able to see where the tweeters’ accounts were registered, but not where they actually are. So, Bob from Des Moines arrives at school in St. Louis, becomes ill, tweets that he has “the swine,” after failing to update his account information, and the score, erroneously, is Des Moines 1, St. Louis 0.

When you get sick, or are in an earthquake, updating your account information may not be your highest priority.

However, Twitter is in the process of enabling developers to grab the actual location of its users, as long as those users voluntarily enable location awareness. iPhone and other smart-phone users are already familiar with the “____ would like to use your location information” request when they launch a GPS application, for example. Now a Twitter app will be able to make a similar request.

Here’s the Twitter blog entry on the subject: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/08/location-location-location.html

If I were a public health planner, or a public health researcher, I’d be gathering a few of my most creative thinkers to see what sorts of opportunities this might afford. Could we write an auto-responder that would be able to send a direct tweet about nearby resources to anyone posting about having “the swine?” (Don’t get caught up in whether that was a good idea or not; you’ll risk losing focus on this article. Let your people knock it around.) Could we begin developing a textual analysis algorithm that would be highly accurate at determinining whether the tweeter was saying he/she had the disease vs any of the other possible tweets in which one might use the phrase “the swine”? Could we look for others’ work in such textual analysis?

The point is, we are about to have access to a stream of millions of communications that will be able to tell us within, potentially, a few hundred yards, the actual physical location of the originator of that communication. It’s time, past time, actually, to think aggressively about what that stream of information can do for the public health, while equally aggressively respecting the privacy wishes of the tweeters.

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Wow, an entire day passes without a single request to follow me...

…from someone offering pictures of themselves nekkid. Do you suppose it’s because I’ve begun responding in kind with a free sample? (Not really. The Internet is not ready for that.)

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Her Grandfather's Pen (A Short Story)

I need to confess.

I need to tell you what I did.

But I need you to understand. Not just listen; not just nod your head. Not just make little sounds of sympathy like I’ve seen you do with others, when you were really only barely listening.

I need you to know.

Will you really listen?

Will you try to actually hear me?

I don’t expect you to say that what I did was OK. Or that it wasn’t really my fault. Or that it was no worse than what most people do. It was none of those things.

It was bad and it was my fault. It was worse than anything anyone I have personally known has ever done. But even so, I want you to know.

Please.

And I need to let me come at this a little bit indirectly, OK? I can’t just blurt it out. I need you to see the context. It doesn’t excuse what I did, but there is a bigger picture, and I’ve got to give you that picture.

……………………

I’d like to blame the pen show, but I can’t. You know how I get at a pen show. I practically salivate. I can’t walk in a straight line from one table to another. I can’t stop asking questions. I actually breathe heavily some of the time…I admit it. More fountain pens than I’ve seen in a year, sitting there waiting to be picked up. To be held. To be examined. To be used. Just pressing a nib against my thumbnail to test its flexibility is, and I mean this, one of those intimate experiences that I lie awake and see, all over again, as I try to get to sleep.

At pen shows I’m flying high on fountain-pen lust, and way too much of my reticence and good judgment are left behind.

So I was already totally buzzed when I first saw her. Her paper name-tag said “HELLO, I’M L…. B….” She was slim. Slight, even. Willowy, I suppose some might call her, but not young. There were streaks of gray in her long, brown hair. Her skin, though, what I could see of it, was flawlessly smooth. The skin of a child, the hair of a middle-aged woman and the posture of someone who might flee at any moment, at a loud noise. She was standing at Susan Wirth’s display, just looking. I could tell she was new to pen shows. She seemed to be afraid to ask a question, much less touch a pen, much less ask to try it. L. would start to touch one of the older, more perfect Pelikans, then draw back, then reach toward another, then put her hands back at her sides. She wore a reticent sort of outfit, too. A gingham top with some frills at the sleeves, and a skirt that took me back decades. If someone had told me she had stepped through a time-warp and into the Embassy Suites ballroom, I could not have argued with them.

If you know Susan Wirth, you know she is one of the most welcoming, warm and understanding people in all of pendom, so L’s hesitation is a pretty good measure of just how timid she was.

Susan sat at one of the tables she always rents at pen shows, talking with a customer, looking up and smiling at L every couple of minutes, and even so, L looked as if she were about to turn away. So, rushing in where any angel with an ounce of common sense would fear to tread, I walked up to L and said “You know, it’s OK to touch the pens. Isn’t it, Susan?” I asked the question loudly enough to interrupt Susan’s conversation; maybe a little too loudly, as I look back on it.

“OK? Sure it’s OK. How’re you going to know if it’s any good if you don’t pick it up? Go ahead, dear.” Then she said “Sorry” to her customer and they returned to what I realized was a very earnest negotiation.

“Thank you,” she said to Susan. And turned and looked right into my eyes, right into my brain, if the truth be told, and said “Thank you.” Soft voice. So soft I could hear nothing else.

“Maybe if you tell me what you’re looking for, I could help you.” Good old Sir Lancelot to the rescue, that’s me. Never miss an opportunity to be a hero to a damsel looking for a pen.

“I’m looking for my pen.”

“Sorry? For a moment I thought you said you were looking for your pen.”

“Yes. I’m looking for my pen.”

“Of course. You believe that somewhere here is the pen that’s just right for you. I know the feeling. I started out that way, too. Unfortunately, I’ve got about 300 ‘my pens’ and the number just continues to…”

“No, I’m looking for my pen.”

“I don’t understand. Do you think one of the dealers here has it?”

“Forty-two years ago my little brother stole it from me. It was my grand-dad’s pen. He brought it with him from Germany. I wrote all my school papers with it. I wrote poems with it. I kept my diary with it. My brother stole it. He ran off. He ran out of the house, saying he was going to sell it. He needed money. We all needed money. We were so poor. That pen was the best thing anyone in my family had. My brother, well, he ran into the street and was hit by a car. I heard the tires screeching. I was running to catch him. I heard him get hit. The driver drove off, fast. A crowd of people all stood around looking at my brother. I called out his name and I heard him calling out to me. Someone took off his coat and put it under his head while the ambulance came. Someone in that crowd stole my brother’s coat while we were getting him into the ambulance. My pen was in my brother’s coat. We never found the coat. We never found the pen. My brother never walked again. I’ve been taking care of him ever since Mother got too old to do it herself. He never stopped blaming himself for losing my pen. He died last year. Now I can go looking for it. Now I can find my pen.”

Let me begin with my physical response. My face flushed. I could feel it. My hands turned icy cold and very damp. My stomach tightened up and I felt the rest of my digestive system beginning to develop a mind all its own. I stopped breathing for longer than I can recall ever holding my breath.

My mental reaction was no less dramatic. Fear, no, terror, flooded every bit of me. Along with a memory that I had long ago thought I’d ridden myself of. A crowd in the street. A young boy on the ground, his head resting on a ragged tweed overcoat. A young girl beside him, her head on the pavement. Blood everywhere. The wail of sirens coming our way. I was just a kid myself, but I knew the girl was dead. So did everyone in the crowd. So did her brother, when he opened his eyes, turned his head and called out to her. “She tried to save him,” someone said. “She was chasing him and yelling something about a pen, and she saw the car, and she tried to push him out of the way, and she got hit herself, right along with him, but worse.” Then the ambulance. The driver and his assistant putting the kids on stretchers and into the back of the ambulance. And I was so cold. And there was the coat. I was just a kid myself. So I took his coat and left mine, which I’d outgrown at least a couple of winters before. As I put on the coat, I saw the boy looking back at me from the stretcher, but he was crying too hard to say anything.

“What’s wrong? What did I say? Are you OK?” L looked up at me. She looked worried.

I waited until I could speak without stammering. “Look, I sincerely wish you were right. I really do. But look around this room. There are thousands of pens here. Thousands! And this is just a tiny part of everything that’s out there in the world.”

“My grand-dad said it was one of the very first Pelikans ever made. Does that help?”

Help? That Pelikan, the pen that had started me on a lifetime of collecting, was in my shirt pocket.

“Not really. I mean, first of all it’s a very rare sort of pen, probably way too rare to be on open display at this show. And more important, what are you going to do to get it back? Tell every collector who happens to have such a pen that it might be yours?”

Whatever hopes she may have had, Sir Lancelot had crushed. She looked down, looked up at me one last time with a gaze that pierced every shred of defense I had erected against shame, then turned and walked away, and out of the exhibit hall. I stood there and watched her go, until, too late, I ran after her. She was not in the hall outside. Not in the parking lot. She was gone.

In my life I have lied to the people I love, I’ve lied to my employers and my colleagues, and I’ve lied to my customers. But never, not once, has I lied to the dead. To a person just waiting to find peace. Until I lied to her.

And that last look she gave me before she walked out of the room? Surely you’ve seen that look. It was a look that said she knew I was lying. Because just before she turned to go, she glanced down at my shirt pocket. And she smiled a tiny smile. And then she walked away.

But I know that somewhere she is waiting for me and her grandfather’s pen.

Custom Pencil Cases and a Blast of Nostalgia

I have to admit that my fountain pen fetish is actually part of a larger office
supply complex, not yet recognized by the DSM*.

The beginning of the school year _still_ has me wondering whether I am going to
be able to use the narrow- versus the wider-lined notebook paper. Or at least
remembering wondering. It’s the ephemeral remnant of what used to be a huge
back-to-school drama that, if memory serves, and it most decidedly does not,
lasted weeks and involved many trips to 5 and 10 cent stores. (TG&Y in Oklahoma
City. What was yours?)

For a brief period at the beginning of adolescence, supply drama gave way to
clothes drama. But I gave up on clothes because I could never predict what all
the guys would be wearing. It generally took me till sometime after Christmas to
figure that out, and then I had to wait until the stuff went on sale for my
mother to buy it. I was a sartorial Neanderthal and that was that. But pens,
pencils, paper, notebooks, rulers, protractors, slide-rule…CUTTING EDGE! Not
that anyone cared. I was just the kid in last year’s jeans and the wrong socks
who carried around way too much paper, in every color and line-width. And too
many pens and pencils. Not that they were shy about borrowing. It is from this history that a nearly overwhelming blast of nostalgia emanated
when I got an email from ArtsCow, a firm that will print almost anything on
almost anything. They are always having sales. (Got a wonderful photo of my dog
printed on a big piece of canvas for about $16**.) Today’s special, the one that
turned the voice in my head back into that whine that I employed to extend the
simple word “Mom” into about 12 syllables, was this:

http://www.artscow.com/Create/ShowProduct.aspx?ProductId=436 I no longer need a pencil case, I don’t even _know_ anyone who needs a pencil
case (although I suppose I could use it for my spare trifocals) but something
tells me I’ll be ordering one, just as soon as I can figure out what art to put
on it.

Best, BG * Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV)
** Cost 10 times that to have it stretched and framed locally. Live and learn.

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