The Healing Power of Web 2.0
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Posted via email from bglassman | Comment »
Her Grandfather's Pen (A Short Story)
HER GRANDFATHER’S PEN
by Bernard Glassman
just to 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 not really my fault. Or no
worse than what most people do. It was none of those things.It was bad. It was my fault. It was worse than anything anyone I have
personally known has ever done, as far as I know. But even so, I want you to
know.Please.And I need to 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 an angel with an
ounce of intelligence would fear to tread, I walked up to L and said “You know,
it’s OK to touch. 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 straight into my eyes,
straight 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.”“Oh, I get it. 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
his 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. 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 the 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?”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 bit 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. Then, 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, have I lied to a
ghost. 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? 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 I know that
somewhere she is waiting for me and her grandfather’s pen.
Posted via web from bglassman | Comment »
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*.
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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From Boston.com (The Boston Globe) one of many amazing photos from today’s demonstration in Iran. See all of them here or just click the photo.
An outstanding animation. If water matters to you, so should this.
Animal Services: (Excerpt of an email from Meadowmont Homeowners' Association
Animal Services: (Excerpt of an email from Meadowmont Homeowners’ Association)
Dogs must be leashed, in a vehicle or in an enclosure when off the dog owner’s property. A dog on its owner’s property must be restrained or enclosed with a fence, proper chain*, etc.; or attended by a person who can control the dog. Dogs, leashed or unleashed, are not permitted in playing fields in any parks.
Dogs and cats older than four months must be vaccinated against rabies. Dogs and cats older than 3 months must have current tags available through the Chapel Hill Animal Control Office. Households are limited to having a maximum of four dogs over three months of age.
Chapel Hill Animal Control Officer: 967-7517
____________________
So, shouldn’t Meadowmont be a little bit kinder to our dogs and utterly reject chaining them? And shouldn’t we have our own rule regarding leaving a dog in a parked car (not allowed for more than a few minutes,) or driving through our streets with a dog in a truck-bed?
*Italics mine.
Hollywood Computer Laws
Hollywood Computer Laws
Word processors never display a cursor.
You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
Movie characters never make typing mistakes.
All monitors display inch-high letters.
High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
Those that don’t, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain english.
Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard
Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS” (see “Fortress”)
All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer, even if it’s turned off.
Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see “Demolition Man” and countless others).
Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (e.g. “Clear and Present Danger”).
If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automagically asked for a password when you try to access it.
No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it’ll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (“Aliens”). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren’t labelled.
Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see “Alien,” “2001”).
Not sure of the original author. Sorry.
Posted via web from bglassman | Comment »
...an appliance we ordered from Amazon.com in April of '08 arrived...yesterday.
Talk about delayed gratification. And on top of everything, it was the wrong size. Amazon’s records showed it had been delivered a year ago. But they were still willing to take it as a return. Props to Amazon.com
Posted via web from Business Must Be Booming When… | Comment »
...I stop the guy mowing my neighbor's yard, ask him to leave me his card and a bid and I get...zilch.
It’s been well over a month. And no, he wasn’t my neighbor, yes he speaks English (natively) and yes, I pointed out my house to him. Just a guy with a yard-maintenance business who seems not to have learned to recognize a business opportunity.
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