the smedley log - suburban scrawl

The modern letter

I’ve mentioned the Modern Letter Project a few times here in the past. It’s an interesting project that’s occupied bits of my time over the past five or six months, and the basic idea is to get back to writing good old-fashioned letters (as opposed to typically thoughtless and artless modern modes of written communication – like, say, email and text messaging).

Part of the MLP’s stated goal is to help “each participant in the project will have a network of new pen pals, friends, and a collection of letters to treasure.” As someone who has found a strange sense of satisfaction in putting pen to paper – whether in journals, random scraps or actual letters – I submitted to be part of the project almost as soon as I heard about it. I have been fortunate to come into written contact with some fascinating folks over the past several months. Sure, some people haven’t written back (or written letters at all, I assume), but a small handful have become regular correspondents of mine since the letter-writing commenced. I feel compelled to offer an ounce or two of gratitude to the members of this intriguing group (I’d mention them by name, but I’m not sure they’d appreciate that).

I guess I’m mentioning the Modern Letter Project for a couple reasons. One, someone just asked me last night how to join the project, so I thought I might post something on it, to make the link more prominent. Who knows – maybe there were other people out there who meant to join, but have forgotten in the bustle of everyday life. I know in my life there seem to be a thousand things coming at me at any given point in time, almost like countless snowflakes that seem to hurtle at you when driving through a blizzard. It probably doesn’t help that many of the mechanisms making life more complex are placed there by my own choice. Which brings me to my second reason for mentioning the MLP: the process of writing a personal letter reminds me of a level of simplicity I sorely miss.

I can still recall a time when there was no cell phone, no computer or email; a time I didn’t feel compelled to check for new information every few minutes, or even every few hours. There are times I catch myself in the midst of sending an email, text or instant message – or even Twittering – and I wonder if I’ve lost something by surrendering to this strange, modern, new world. In the middle of all of it, I sometimes wonder if I’d be happier in a time of more effort and patience, a time of less convenience.

I remember sending letters to far-away people. I recall waiting for responses, wondering what they’d have to report. I even recall sending letters of great importance (to me, at least). On more than one occasion, I’ve professed my undying love in a letter. It worked once; not as well the other time.

I have letters from years ago from one particular friend who inspired and encouraged me during a rough stretch in my life. I remember thinking someday I might write something capable of doing for someone else what my friend’s words did for me. All because of a few letters.

There is something about the arcane collaboration of a pen, paper and the uncertainty of the post office. And it’s been nice to rediscover even a glimpse of that experience. If you’d like to learn more about it, or join the project, click here.

Spiritual reading list

Well, sort of.

I’ve been fascinated lately by some posts from a couple different regular reads of mine. They are all on the subject of God and/or religion.

A slew of these posts emanate from the furiously-typing hands of Fred Clark at Slacktivist. They all have to do with what many perceive as the strong bias of evangelicalism against homosexuality. While many in the evangelical community do differ on the subject, and broad brush strokes often do injustice to any large segment of people, Fred has an excellent series on the perception of evangelicals as “hating” gays. What he’s really examining, for those who look closer, is why homosexuality is treated in the Christian community as so much more abhorrent than the smaller sins like dishonesty, theft and marital infidelity (to name just a few). (The parts, so far are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.)

The other standout post on the subject of God is from the oft insightful Qazse, who wrote a brief piece of poetry called “The God Cage.” Having interacted on a few different virtual occasions with the pseudononymous blogger, I’m confident his spiritual expressions are anything but flip. This poem is a perfectly concise example of those expressions.

Dead letter office

Happy Fourth of July to the passersby!

I realized a slow build up of thoughts has been sifting through my mind, things that would otherwise be discarded or forgotten. One thing is my report on the candidates forum at Bright Hope Baptist Church on Monday. Find it by clicking here, if you’re interested.

Then there’s John Oates, (from tonight’s Welcome America headliners, Hall and Oates) who wants to be my friend! Apparently, he’s actually using Twitter and reaching out a bit to the common folks. Of course, I accepted his overture of friendship. I’m not sure if I’m going to attend the festivities in center city tonight, but I was fond of Hall and Oates’ music coming up in the early to mid 80s, so there is a certain ache of nostalgia rumbling through my bones.

Finally, here’s an outtake from the Q&A section of the Chicago Manual of Style Online that was featured in a Harper’s reading from (I believe) the February issue. This one involves the “proper usage” of emoticons, via The Chicago Blog:

Q: Is there any standard for the usage of emoticons? In particular, is there an accepted practice for the use of emoticons that includes an opening or closing parenthesis as the final token within a set of parenthesis? Should I incorporate the emoticon into the closing of the parenthesis (giving a dual purpose to the closing parenthesis, such as in this case :-); simply leave the emoticon up against the closing parenthesis, ignoring the bizarre visual effect of the doubled closing parenthesis (as I am doing here, producing a double-chin effect :-)); or avoid the situation by using a different emoticon (some emoticons are similar :-D), placing the emoticon elsewhere, or doing without it (i.e., reword to avoid awkwardness)?

A: Until academic standards decline enough to accommodate the use of emoticons, I’m afraid CMOS is unlikely to treat their styling, since the manual is aimed primarily at scholarly publications. And the problems you’ve posed in this note have given us added incentive to keep our distance.

The thing that brought the emoticon question to mind is a letter I wrote to someone in the Modern Letter Project a week or so ago. It occurred to me that I don’t feel comfortable using emoticons in handwritten notes. But then how will they know I’m just kidding?

Corresponding thoughts

I finally received my first bit of physical correspondence related to The Modern Letter project. I assume it arrived Saturday, though I didn’t notice it until just yesterday.

I was starting to suspect I was the only one taking part in this little project (a sort of blind pen-pal service). I’ve yet to receive the initial letter someone out there is supposed to be sending my way, but thankfully my June recipient was kind enough to make me feel like part of the club. My respondent also has a blog website. It’s even got a definite article in the url, just like mine.

(The photo above was taken of the newly-arrived letter, and it just happens to reflect a mental state I wish I could master right now.)

A monument to pretension?

This is a picture of every Moleskine notebook I’ve used since last spring – well except for one volume I can’t seem to find.

There are folks who think the use of a Moleskine notebook connotes someone desperately trying to seem creative. Me, I just find the hardcover version incredibly durable. And If you’ve ever been prone to leaving your notebook on top of the car as you leave for work, you know why durability is a concern for me.

Hard copy

I’ve been writing a lot over the past week or so. It’s almost as if the accident jarred my mind, letting loose all manner of untamed thoughts. A lot of the writing has been an effort to copy down the ideas bubbling to the surface. If only they made a machine for that sort of thing…

Stamps to spare

I’ve got stamps. And not the forever kind.

I started the week with 17 of them, and I still have about a dozen to spare. They’re the last of my 39 cent collection, and since I hate using supplemental postage stamps (especially of the one or two cent variety), I feel the strong need to get rid of these remaining 12 by next Saturday. The first five were utilized in the impromptu resurrection of my long dormant letter-writing habit.

But now I’m starting to run out of people I can target with substantive letters, and I don’t use the postal service for most of my bills these days either. Come to think of it, there isn’t much of anything for which I use postage anymore.

This letter-writing void in my life recently spurred a conversation in which Marisa mentioned the Modern Letter Project, which I vaguely recall forgetting about a few months back. I had meant to sign up because the idea sounded unflinchingly cool (and because I used to write letters incessantly). This morning I dashed off an email begging for inclusion. We’ll see how that goes.

Nocturne

“I’m the screen, the blinding light;
I’m the screen, I work at night …”
- R.E.M.

The chill in the air this morning was hanging just below 32 degrees when I got home, almost as if evading a radar calibrated for anything above freezing. That was just before five.

I’ve spent the past several months adjusting to a new working reality, a different job with different hours, but at the same old place. I’ve just started to feel assimilated to the new routine, and now I wonder how the arrival of regularly frigid weather might affect that.

Nocturnal activity is nothing new for me; I can’t recall when my mental hamster wheel didn’t spin a little faster at night anyway. The biggest difference is that now I don’t get to dedicate those high energy stretches to something creative. And I think that’s what I miss. Now my thoughts in the wee hours are almost entirely stolen by work.

I find some decent thoughts sprouting every now and then, but usually when I’m too busy to note them properly, so most of them get misplaced. I’m frustrated that I can’t remember, but grateful at the same time, since my failure to recall them saves me from knowing how awe-inspiring (or ordinary) they really were. I’d tell myself if they were really such great ideas they’ll come back to me later, but I know that isn’t always the case.

It was a Bill Mallonee lyric that always seemed to say it best:

“And I distinguish a voice that I hear in the wind,
like a radio station not quite locked in.”

Of course I’ve always had what I think of as “firefly” moments, but now that my mind’s most fertile moments are wasted on work, the effect seems compounded. Maybe that’s why my creative output has been curtailed recently to just 17 syllables a day.

I’m just wondering if this is how I’m wired. If I’ve always been attuned to night thinking, is that just how it is? Is there a way to become a day thinker?

Moleskine fever

“Losing my passport was the least of my worries, losing a notebook was a catastrophe.”
- Bruce Chatwin

I’m not the first, and I surely won’t be the last, to be stricken with this particular ailment.

I was in Barnes and Noble the other night looking for a replacement for my Moleskine reporter notebook. I had only purchased it earlier this month, but it has been tragically lost, before I could even fill twenty pages of it. [Read more →]

Restless suburban scrawl

Okay, not a great title, but I liked the alliteration.

I’ve been getting restless lately. Not restless in the sense of I need more to do, but restless in the sense that I just can’t settle on a focus for writing. As a result of that condition, I began a WordPress.com blog just to focus on one seemingly trivial practice: haiku.

Not highly evolved haiku, mind you, but haiku, none-the-less. Just a way to limit myself, which I keep thinking will help with the focus bit. One haiku a day, seventeen brief syllables, as a means of exhibiting some limited, twisted sense of self-discipline. I’ve vowed to write one for each day, like clockwork, and after two weeks, I think I may be losing interest. Already.

That pretty much spells out the focus issue, doesn’t it?

Have you seen my pen?

I once loved a pen. It was a Waterman Hemisphere Stainless Steel Fountain Pen. I’ve been unable to find it for a while now. Well, I’m actually not sure it would function if I could find it, as I was a having a persistent problem with the nib before it went missing, a problem I believe was associated with some inadvertant mishandling on my part.

Anyway, I’ve been looking around recently, at various pen retailers, for a pen like the one I miss so desperately. No luck. In fact, most of the people I talk to at these retailers have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention the characteristics of the pen. Apparently even Amazon.com can’t help me (except to tell me there are none available).

So out of desperation, I’m opening it up to the general public. Has anyone out there seen my pen?

Fireflies

A couple people have mentioned to me over the past couple months how time-consuming it must be for me to keep a weblog. I’d like to think that’s because of the impressive content they find here, and depending on their perspectives and reading tastes, maybe that’s it. I don’t know, but one thing I’ve heard in the past from people who suffer what might be referred to as “blog burnout” is how the combined task of finding topics to write about, and then writing about them, takes more time than they can spare. That’s easy to imagine. But it’s not my situation, because while I am a relatively busy person, I don’t have to go that far out of my way to blog.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been teased by the ideas that flutter through my mind. It reminds me a bit of trying to catch fireflies at dusk when I was younger. You see a spark of light, but if you’re not in the right position to snag the insect before the glow fades and the flight pattern’s lost, a firefly can be very difficult to capture. You see it, then you don’t, and before too long, you have no clue where it went. And then it continues with the next flash of the bug’s tail. Like before, if you’re in the wrong place, it eludes you again.

Story of my life. I was only ever good at catching fireflies either when I happened to be standing in just the right location as the light appeared, or when there was such a volume of these beetles that I couldn’t help but snag a few.

[Read more →]

A look at the man behind the broom

My post on the PA Clean Sweep event I attended last week, complete with some input from Clean Sweep founder Russ Diamond, is now up at Philly Future.

Found poetry exercises

Matt recently posted some responses to his search for reader-found poems. The results are quite fascinating. Perhaps my favorite is one cobbled from CNN headlines. Check them out for yourself.

If I could be like Mike

When I was young man, somewhere in the wasteland of junior high school, I found a personal hero, someone who was what I one day hoped to be. He plied his trade in the windy city of Chicago, and I suspect—no, I know, that many other people have looked up to him over the years. The grace and style he showed as he did his work, along with his professional longevity and charm may never be rivaled again. At least not in my eyes.

It all started when I got into the habit of reading the Op-Ed page of the local paper at the age of twelve or so. I wasn’t so interested in the local writers; it was the syndicated columnists that caught my eye. Especially one legendary Chicago newsman. Anybody remember him? I know it’s been a while, but that’s who I dreamed of emulating when I was growing up—I wanted to be Mike Royko.

And now for the awkward segue:

After I started drafting this impromptu little revelation, I noticed a Philly Future post from marjomoore. It was capped with the question: “What do you think? Do people read columnists (or A-list bloggers, for that matter) for their information or their points of view?”

To me, it seems obvious that most of us read who we read because of their point of view. It’s not to say that we never read to acquire sheer information, but I seriously doubt we choose our star columnists for how much information they present; we read who we read because we like how they present the information. And relax, because that doesn’t necessarily mean we all gravitate to monotone ideologists like Michelle Malkin or Jim Hightower.

Don’t get me wrong about either of the preceding examples—I’ve read and at times enjoyed both of them (though not all the time), but I suspect that for most of us, dry, straight-line political ideologies fit like a cheap suit. Even when it’s close to fitting, there’s still that little bit that rubs you the wrong way.

So, when I mention a man like Mike Royko, I bring him into the columnist question in the sense that he didn’t write from a sheer left or right-wing persona, as so many columnist do today. His point of view, his style cut both ways, though some will definitely remember his predominant leaning as being toward the left. But the factor that’s been lost on so many modern opinion writers is the one thing he possessed that made him a hot commodity, until the day he died: It was his style. It was the most predictable facet of his writing, and it was why I sought out his columns as often as they were printed.

I still read the Op-ed’s today, and I just don’t know if I can say the same about 99% of the ink that gets spilled on them anymore. Makes me wish I hadn’t abandoned my dream of journalism years ago—I’m sure I could never have matched him in the style department, but somebody’s got to try.

For those interested, or just clueless about who Mike Royko was, his wikipedia link is here, and they’ve also published two posthumous collections of his old columns in the past nine years since he passed. They are:
One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko
For the Love of Mike : More of the Best of Mike Royko

Perhaps my personal favorite, which appears in the first volume, is a recollection of his childhood visit to Wrigley Field to see Jackie Robinson’s first Major League appearance in Chicago. But I recommend both books.