Search Engines and All This Is That

By Mona Goldwater, Computing Ed.

Traffic (a/k/a readers) into All This Is That is heavily skewed to Google, mainly, we assume, because Google owns blogger and Blogspot, where this blog is located.  

According to Searchenginewatch, current search engine popularity is :

• 67.6% Google
• Bing 18.7%
• Yahoo 10%
• Ask 2.4%
• AOL 1.3%.  

Wait...that's 100%?? I guess that means that Apple's Safari, Mozilla Firefox, etc. are statistically irrelevant?  We are guessing that, although Bing is at an 18.7% market share, they tend not to refer to Google-oriented sites?  Or maybe it's just us!

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Faces No. 914 - Beards

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Getting through Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time

By Jack Brummet
20th Century Fiction Ed.

I just finished Swann's Way, Book One of Seven in Marcel Proust's novel In Search Of Lost Time a/k/a Remembrance of Things Past (about to page 550 or so of a 3,600 page book). I don't think I've spent two weeks reading a book before except maybe Lord of the Rings or Ulysses. I haven't read a book in a long time that aroused joy and frustration in me like this. Swann's Way has vast passages of brilliant, machine-gun prose and incandescent writing, focused on memory, time, obsession, and brilliant psychological analysis.

As a kid who grew up poor, I have some of the same problems reading this as I had with, say, Jane Austen or other writers who focus on the dapper and lovely lives of the upper classes. I had a pretty visceral reaction to some of this. But for the most part the book is so densely poetic with some of the most beautiful descriptive prose I've read in my life, that I give it a pass. It made me realize why I prefer Charles Dickens or Dreiser Hemingway or Joyce or even Rabelais to the more mannered novels of the upper crust. But then--why do I love Shakespeare so much when he also mostly wrote about the upper crust and whose best works are almost all focused on Kings and the nobility? 

painting of Marcel Proust by J.E. Blanche

I am meeting with a group of people soon and we are going to be a sort of ad hoc book club that focuses on Proust's great novel. This should be very interesting. We'll be meeting at Café Presse, so even if it fizzles (I don't think it will), hey, good eats and good Bordeaux.

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The rapture that never happened, May 21, 2011

By Jack Brummet

The rapture that never happened, on May 21, 2011, actually generated a huge amount of humor and speculation on the internet.  I created a series of collaged images in the week before the rapture, and a day or two afterwards.  Here they are:

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Painting: A Sunflower And Zinnia

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Painting: The first map

By Jack Brummet

This is the first map I ever drew and painted.  They got better as time went on, but this one's special because it was the first, and because I used an old window from our house as the frame.

click to enlarge

Details:

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ATIT Reheated [from 2006]: Calvin Coolidge,The President of Cool

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

They say he wasn't actually frosty. . .he just rarely showed emotion. In fact, when President Harding died, Coolidge was awakened after 2:00 A.M. He took the oath of office in his sitting room. He was sworn in by his father, who was a notary public. Thirteen minutes after he took the oath of office at 2:47 A.M., Calvin Coolidge went back to sleep. To sleep! His President (Warren Harding) had just died! He was The Top Banana! And he went to sleep. In that same position, I would have done something. Like:

Drink some whiskey!
Raise up a glass to the shade of Warren G. Harding.
Give orders to round up some of my enemies and have them held at The Tombs.
I would legalize something.
I would declare martial law on Detroit.
Drink more whiskey!
Declare the Roman Catholic Church a subversive organization.
Ask for the cabinet's resignations.
Order in naked dancing girls.
Throw a feast.
Make a collage.
Drive a tank through the streets of Washington.
In a radio address to the nation, quote Putney Swope: "I am not going to rock the boat; I am going to tip it over."
Watch the sunrise and the birds take to the sky on my first day as Czar  King  President.

Then, maybe, I'd go to bed.

Coolidge kept a poem hung on the wall in his living room, and it both illustrated how he felt and the image he wanted to project:

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw, the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard
Why can’t we be like that old bird?

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Poem: Sailing to Athens

By Jack Brummet

In a pale grey fog,
I see the ghosts

Of ancient Helleniki mariners
Sailing phantom steamships, sloops,

Prams, dories, catamarans, dinghies,
Trawlers, purse-seiners, frigates and tugboats

Across the cerulean blue sea,
Trawling for missing fish.
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Only: an English game

via Radio One Lebanon :

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Photo: Guerillas Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the early days, up in the Sierra Maestra Mountains

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the early days of their guerrilla campaign, holed up in the Sierra Maestra Mountains.

#85075079 / gettyimages.com

Much later - Che tourist postcards on sale in Havana:

#98877483 / gettyimages.com

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Four James Richardson aphorisms

What I'm not changes more than what I am.

So many times I've made myself stupid with the fear of being outsmarted.

The wound hurts less than your desire to wound me.

Think of all the smart people who are made stupid by flaws of character. The finest watch isn't fine long when used as a hammer.

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Gratitude Challenge - Day 7 (includes the previous days)

By Jack Brummet

Gratitude Day 7 - the final day (whew).

Thanks to Pegeen White for challenging me.  I was reluctant at first, thinking ah...no.  A few years ago at one of the Mohr-Lone bar mitzvahs,  a rabbi talked about a tradition where people of faith would take the time every day to enumerate what they were grateful for--big things, little things, deep things, and passing things.  I wanted to try it on a smaller scale.

1.  I am grateful to have traveled as much as I have, prodded into it early on by Keelin (mainly since that meant dealing with fear of flying).  So far on the list, extensive travel up and down the west coast, from Kamloops, B.C. down to San Diego and many stops in between, especially when I lived in California. Idaho, Montana, Las Vegas (once, hopefully only once), Desert Hot Springs, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Yellowstone, and many more.  Greece (twice), Spain, Mexico (eight times), Italy, North Africa, England (twice), Turkey, Colombia, Russia, and China.  I still want to see Cuba, the Middle East, and Australia.

2.  I am grateful for the helpers and teachers of the world.

3. I am grateful you have indulged me in this exploration of gratitude.  This has been a good exercise in self-exploration and acknowledgement of the people and things that help forge who I am.

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The previous six days:

Gratitude Challenge - day 6

I am grateful for

Those who are gone.
Those are still here.
Those who are still coming.

Mindfulness is about being here now, but much of what we are now stems from what has gone before.  I still hit the occasional speed-bump, but I am as happy now, or happier, than I ever have been, and much of that stems from those who are gone, from my father who departed 51 years ago to Jerry Melin and Pete and Pat who left much more recently, to my brother in law Colin, and all the other friends and family who didn't quite make the journey this far.  I am in Spokane tonight to celebrate the life of Joanie Curran, whom I knew for 46 years, and who helped teach so many of us the importance of loving and celebrating with laughter, songs, and delight those who are still here.  I need to do this.  Every single time in my life I ever saw Joanie, she lit me up with her love and hugs and happiness at having you back in her orbit, if only for a short while.  When I came to see her a month ago none of that had changed.  She joins the list of those who are gone, but I'll remember that love and lust for life as long as I am still here.

 "Dude, you really married up, didn't you?" 

Those who are still here makes life, life.  You wake up grateful, and happy that you and your friends and family are still here.  I want to communicate my gratitude to those who are still here every single time I see them--not merely for the fact that they have somehow persisted, but because they inspire, warm, and thrill me.  They make my heart sing every single day of this beautiful life. Speaking of still here, KeeKee inspires me every day with her mindfulness and equilibrium and the way she can walk up to anyone in a room and envelop them with that brilliant mind and laugh and 150 watt   smile.  I can't tell you how many times I have heard variations on "Dude, you really married up, didn't you?".  So, on day 6, a callback to day one, KeeKee's original appearance on my gratitude lists.

To those who are still coming: whether we share a bloodline or not, if you eventually arrive at this much joy and wonder and admiration for those here, gone, and coming,  the circle of life is still in great shape.   Welcome. 

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Gratitude challenge, day 5

1)  Mites live in your eyelashes.  At least they are ectoparasites (they don't burrow in); they stay on deck.  And they're slow moving—it would take half a day for one to walk from your ear to your nose, not that you would notice even if they were whizzing around at 100 MPH.  Demodex mites colonize the eyelashes of more than 80 percent of people over the age of 60 [source: American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology]. I'm their target demographic. 

I'm grateful they keep to themselves and that I don't sit up night fretting over just what ARE they doing on my eyelashes (hatching, eating, having sex, laying eggs, dying, and then releasing the defecation they store during their two weeks of living.

I'm grateful I don't notice the the cooties on my face. 

2)  I am grateful for my 18 nieces and nephews, and humbled by their approach to life and the world at large, their will to seek out detours and different paths, for their brains, good looks, warmth, sass, and overall hugability.

3) I am Grateful for The Dead.

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Gratitude Challenge, Day Four

1.  The bounty of the sea: Oysters, Black Cod a/k/a Sablefish, Sockeye Salmon, Halibut, Trout, Rockfish, Cod, Scallops, Shrimp, Mussels, Squid, Clams, Barnacles, Crab, Lobster, Abalone, Mackerel, Tuna, Ahi, Steelhead, Octopus, Catfish, Grouper, Monkfish, Sardine, Sea Bass, Skate, and Bluefish.

2.  The Birds.  I love them all--their songs, their flight, and their antics--but then, I've never been dive-bombed by a P.O.'d crow. My son Colum told us a story tonight about how he had to change his walking route home a year or two ago, because one crow had him in its gunsight.  He literally had to start walking home on a different street.  Then Del told us that a professor at the U (I don't know if it was his professor) has studied crows, and they actually meet up and somehow trade notes on people.  He also said that if a crow has it in for you that the crow's offspring will also seek you out, given the opportunity.

3.  Folks who work to keep people alive at Crisis Clinics and on hotlines.  I did this at The Sixth Chamber and the Crisis Clinic for a year and a half, and it was maybe the hardest thing I've ever done.  But when you reel one person back, or at least buy them some time, it makes your heart sing.  The hard part was that most of the time you never knew if you made a difference or not.   Thank you to all those people who keep on keeping on. . .especially those of you who come back from the brink.

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Gratitude day three:

1). Bird a/k/a Charlie Parker; 

2) Everyone who has ever picked up a pencil, pen, paintbrush, airbrush, palette knife, computer, sculptor's chisel, crayon, pastel, spray paint, scratch pen, lithograph crayon, charcoal, or silk screen to commit life or their imagination to paper, screen, canvas, wood, Masonite, clay, or stone; 

3) You, friends, associates, co-workers, neighbors, and friends of friends.

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Gratitude Challenge, Day Two

There is a "thing" going around social media circles, where you list three things you are grateful for for a week.

The gratitude challenge was assigned me by Pegeen White.  I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you want to do it, give it a shot in the comments here, or on Facebook. today I am grateful for:

• My mom, Guy, Loa, Cathy and Jeremy; my surviving Jones and Brummet cousins, James, Jimmy, Kevin, Leslie, Laurie, David, and Susannah.

• The Currans, too numerous to enumerate (around 130 people or so).  My entire Brummet/Jones side includes just the twelve people named above (plus my nuclear family, listed yesterday).

• Puget Sound, an every day presence in our lives in North Beach, with the crisp salt breezes, foghorns, sea lions barking, Olympic Mountains, boats, and heartbreakingly beautiful sunsets.

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Gratitude Challenge, Day 1

The Gratitude challenge was assigned me by Pegeen White.  I'm not going to tag anyone, but if you want to do it, give it a shot. 

Day One is easy: 

1) Keelin:

2) The Brummet-Curran Youth:

3) Music:

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