The Improbable Read: Dialing back the big plan

One or two of you may be starting to wonder whatever happened to my Impossible Read project. To be honest, it’s still sitting in a tote bag next to my Comfy Green Chair in my home library.

I have been very frustrated at running out of time before being able to sit down and work on the project. Eventually I realized that this was happening because I took an admittedly very very long book list and converted it into an extremely time-consuming project. Not only was I planning to read some of the greatest books of all time, but I was also going to create a series of books filled with my own thoughts and annotations. And not only that, but the physical space necessary for working on these notebooks wasn’t even anywhere in my own house.

So I am setting aside the idea of creating a multi-volume artifact for myself. Instead I have a new plan, and I hope that you are sitting down as you read this. You’re simply not going to believe it.

I’m just going to read the books.

You heard me.

I will just read the books, and then watch the movies. I have plenty of other places where I can write about my reactions to the texts — in my morning freewriting, in my evening journaling, and here in my weekly blog posts. It’s even possible that as I work on my two primary writing projects, the great works and my thoughts about them may spill over into the writing I do there. (That’s kind of the point — to finally read these books and be influenced by them in my thought and my expression. To be edified, and to be improved.)

So hang on, Wart! I’ll be back soon to enjoy all of your adventures with Merlyn. I’ll just try not to be taking notes at the same time.

This weekend, for the Impossible Improbable Read-ing list, I found a very good used copy of Grendel by John Gardner. (I’m frustrated that I had to buy it at all, because I recognize the cover but cannot find the copy that I surely already own. ANYWAY.) Then I splurged on a new unabridged copy of The Tale of Genji, translated by Royall Tyler. Evidently this edition was originally published in 2003. It’s more than a thousand pages long and includes exquisite line drawings, a timeline, and a glossary. It’s full of helpful notes to the reader (hooray!) and it’s printed on paper that is soft to the touch (a high clay content?) and makes you want to just sit and pet it.

I marked these titles as “owned” in my Google Sheet, then scanned down the list to what I would next need to acquire. There are several books in a whole time period that I need to find — but they were written in the late 1600s and the 1700s. Before I even get to that point, I will have read The Once and Future King, The Mists of Avalon, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Grendel, The Tale of Genji, The Arabian Nights, The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales (in Middle English), Orlando Furioso, Don Quixote, and Salman Rushdie’s novel Quichotte. I have no idea what that cumulative page count even looks like (and I think it will go better for me if I don’t work it out in advance; I will log them in the spreadsheet as I finish each book [I have already created the formula]). There are also movies planned for viewing at the end of each segment, and those (so far) are The Sword in the Stone, Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, Beowulf, Aladdin, and Man of la Mancha (okay, I do need a DVD of this).

It may be two-three more years before I reach Oroonoko by Aphra Behn or Pamela by Samuel Richardson. But if you do see a nice used copy, could you let me know about it?

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On to the Primary Projects mentioned above.

For Black Walnut (the fiction project), I continue to collect and listen to bluegrass music. I’m reading mostly about the early years because that’s the timeframe that will impact my characters, and I’m doing a little side research into the bluegrass radio shows of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the Ohio-Appalachia area. In the last few days I managed to pick up a used DVD of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a CD of the soundtrack, and a CD of live music from the groups on the soundtrack. I also snagged CDs by Mac Wiseman, Alison Krauss, and Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. From the reading I’m doing, I am starting to recognize the names of key bluegrass musicians. Some of these names may or may not sneak their way into the manuscript when I’m writing again. (I also promised an archivist that I would name a character after him, and I have absolutely no problem with that.)

I can see now how thin and underdeveloped my original storyline was. I’m reminding myself that it was a NaNoWriMo project from 2014 and that it didn’t have to be any better than it was. I wrote 22,500 words in 30 days and it was okay. But now I want to meet the characters and their parents and grandparents, get to know them, get to know the time and the region, and find the big story that’s worth telling. Every so often I get a glimpse of it.

For the Development of Mathematics project (doesn’t that sound thrilling?), I have catalogued almost every annotation in the copy of the book held by my own university’s library. When I’m done with that, the logical next step is to do the same for the other copies in the University of Wisconsin System libraries. The catch is that Inter-Library Loan operates by choosing a copy at random from the system holdings. I’m in consultation with a research librarian and our library director as to how to tweak that system so that I efficiently receive each copy in the system for evaluation and possible cataloguing. That phase will start in June so that I will have the maximum possible time with the books.

Another thing I need to do for this project is to brainstorm until I understand what the core project actually is, then what are the possible spin-off projects. That was something I had hoped to tackle this weekend, but plans changed and that’s been postponed until next weekend.

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Knitwise, this week I did put in a few sessions of work on the Habit-Forming Scarf. This evening it measures 15 inches from the cast-on edge, and the remainder of the skein weight 51 grams (out of 100). This backs up my calculations from last week about getting 30 inches out of each skein. Hooray, my scarf is now 25 percent complete.

I’m going to have to normalize adding a couple of inches every couple of days if I want to get out of “slog” territory.

And with that in mind, it might be nice to have a small and colorful project to do on the side, to keep me motivated to work on something so long and grey (although certainly elegant and sophisticated).

My friend Nicole recently crocheted an office plant for me, and my friend Mary sent me a link to some crochet patterns published by the U.S. National Park Service. Here is one for a halibut. Here is another for a walleye. There are some fun patterns out there, including one (somewhere; I don’t have a link) for a crocheted Scottish thistle. It’s time to go stashbusting and color this place UP.

Off to a flying stop

Last Monday I kicked off my Impossible Read by beginning my first book, The Once and Future King, in the first minutes of the new year. I hadn’t intended to do so, but when I found myself awake in bed at 11:40 pm it seemed like a low-effort idea to just stay awake for a few more minutes.

The plan backfired slightly when I found it hard to get to sleep after reading one chapter, but that was just because I enjoyed the book so much. After a good night’s morning’s sleep I resumed reading and finished six chapters. I marked all kinds of passages that I particularly enjoyed — twenty-five of them, in fact, including two descriptions of Merlyn that brought to mind the River Song character from Doctor Who.

It was my copious notations that brought the project to a halt. I had stocked up on plenty of Artist’s Loft sketchbooks to use for recording my notes as I read, but two qualities of the sketchbook have proven to be problematic.

The first issue is the thickness of the blank page. I wanted plenty of room to write, draw, and include any kind of scrapbook-y things that I wanted to, but I also didn’t want my writing to be sloppy. So I decided to slip a lined page behind the page I would be writing on. The notebook paper I used for this was barely visible through the thick sketchbook page, so I used a ruler and pen to go over the existing lines and darken them as much as I could. Now I have lines to go by without having lines on my page.

Unfortunately, the available light at home comes from the wrong direction; my hands cast a shadow and I can’t see the lines I’m aiming for. So I took my book and sketchbook to work, thinking that in the better light there I could make my notes neatly. But on this particular week I didn’t have much extra time in the morning before my work day began; I wrote out almost two pages of notes, and that was all I could do this week. I didn’t want to read ahead in the book when I was already so far behind on my notes, playing catch-up.

The second issue is the sheer size of each page. Last year for my reading journal, I used a dot journal with a 5-1/2 by 8-1/2 inch page. It’s the perfect size to write on at a desk, at a table, or even curled up in a chair. The sketchbook pages measure a little over 8 by 11 inches, and the the book is opened it is a heavy 11 x 17 product — not something you can curl up with at all. Even on a table it takes up quite a lot of room. (Just for fun, I put a blank sketchbook on my kitchen scale. It weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces.)

So I have to work on my logistics. Perhaps electronic notes would be better. Perhaps I should just read the book, then enter all of my notes. Perhaps I should do whatever works and not put quite so much overthinking into the project. I could just annotate the books directly, but I would like to pass them along to new readers when I’m done with them. That’s why I would like to allow my notes to be detailed: they are my lasting record of the project.

So I have some thinking to do before I move ahead.

I have also done some reading in the books I didn’t finish by the end of 2023, and I’m still adding items to last year’s reading journal. (I’m not keeping a reading journal for this year other than what I document for The Impossible Read, but I will be reading other books.) But the end is near: after I write entries for two books I finished and one that I didn’t, I will add lists of Did Not Finish titles and Did Not Start titles and call it a year.

The Did Not Start list might seem to be infinite, but it will consist of books I planned to read, assumed I would read, and printed out mini covers to add to the journal. Here’s one:

I’ll glue in these little covers, which will make space in the list for me to record the dates when I finally do read these books (anything’s possible). So my 2023 reading journal will include what I meant to read as well as what I started and what I finished. Returning to it to add this kind of data might tempt me to review the rest of the pages — and to enjoy the memories of the year I read more than 10,000 pages.

I have no new typewriters to report; I had meant to take the Skyriter out of its shell yesterday and start to give it a cleaning, but I spent much of the weekend sorting paperwork in the dining room. The dining room table was cluttered with this effort until this afternoon, when I was too tired to take on a brand new task. Next weekend should work out better, and I’ll take photos of the process.

Next weekend I’m also planning to do a mini writing retreat for myself and a friend, and I’m spending this week thinking about what kinds of texts and supplies we might need. It’s really going to be a “sit our butts down and just start writing” event, so I’ll have to restrain myself from over-planning. Paper, pen, and coffee should do it.

I don’t know yet which story I’m going to work on, so I’d like to plan that much. But you know what I mean.

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Knitwise, I added a few repeats onto the Thrift Stripe scarf. I’m now at 39 repeats out of 45. That would be doable within the next week, except that I keep occupying myself with activities — like reading — that are incompatible with knitting.

I didn’t start or finish any other knitting, but this week my Facebook friends and I came across a photo of a knitted (crocheted?) Coleus that has us all wanting to cast on.

Maybe I’ll start it on a day when I don’t have anything good to read.

The week of no easy answers

I’ve spent this long week struggling with logistical problems embedded in other logistical problems. To skip to the end, my beloved 2002 Forester is no longer drivable due to the condition that eventually slays all noble Subarus — a failed head gasket.

Apparently it’s been on the verge of failure for quite some time, as I struggled with coolant-related problems on a long trip I took last summer. We thought the problem was something else, but now we know the truth.

Fortunately, the day before I drove my 2002 to my mechanic’s garage he had purchased a 2011 or 2012 (I forget which) Forester from another customer after its engine failed. It’s exactly the model I was looking for, I love the color (pale teal), and the price is right.

Meet Kinga Forester! My former/current Forester, Clayton, is in the background.

What I don’t know is when my new old car will be ready. I’m hitching rides to and from work (thank you, Rick), wondering how I will get to my PT appointments, and doing errands like grocery shopping only when they dovetail with the schedules of others (again — thank you, Rick). The situation has added a level of complexity to my everyday tasks in a way I could not have imagined.

The next puzzle will be how, exactly, I will pick up my new car when it is ready for me. I don’t exactly live in a Lyft zone, as the Lyft app informed me when I searched for a way to get my dog to his vet appointment on Friday morning (thank you, Carol).

On top of that, although a new well was dug for my house last Tuesday and the electrical work for it was prepared on Thursday, the well itself won’t actually be connected to the house until sometime this week. I’ve gone to a friend’s house a couple of times to wash my hair (thank you, Sheila) and to another friend’s house several times to do my laundry (thanks again, Carol).

The same level of complexity has been present in my tasks at work, too. A particular question might seem easy, but the most appropriate answer depends on a lot of context. At one point I needed to get some money from one of my bank accounts to a friend (for whom I was raising the money), and I could think of at least four ways to make the transfer. When the time came, I just walked into the bank, told the teller what I wanted to do, and let her pick the procedure.

A few days ago, though, I discovered a free app that is literally making a game out of keeping me organized and on task. (There are paid versions, but how much fun would that be?)

You make your to-do lists, your habit lists, and your daily task lists, and you get little boosts when you do them. And sometimes you get an egg to hatch, a sword, a potion, or a food drop. So far it’s a fun way to be accountable to myself. I’m getting my chores done and I have a Skeleton Dragon, a Base Dragon, and a Cotton Candy Wolf.

Princess Peachtree hasn’t shown any growth but she doesn’t seem to be dying. Maybe I should add “water the Princess” to one of my to-do lists.

When I’m not doing my chores, I’m trying to read and to catch up on putting entries into my reading journal. Over the past few weeks, I read the entire “Ramona” series by Beverly Cleary. During this process I realized that I had only read one of the books as a child. So it’s more of a new read than a re-read. I had thought it would be something of a tomboy read, but I was surprised to find a lot of passages that had to do with more autistic/sensory processing issues. Ramona is texture-averse to certain foods, particularly slimy ones, and she often self-regulates with physical actions such as smashing bricks on the sidewalk, or squeezing all the toothpaste out of a tube. There’s so much reality in these books, and the new illustrations help the books to keep up with the times. And now I have eight more book entries to create for my reading journal. There is also a lovely large book called The Art of Ramona Quimby that I’m working though. So that will be nine books about Ramona Q, one of my favorite fictional characters.

If you have any suggestions for my Tomboy Bookshelf, let me know!

No new typewriters were acquired this week. But I’ve been working on the logistics of picking up a 1934 Royal from a small town in West Virginia. Stay tuned…

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Knitwise, the Stripe Scarf is now at 42 inches long and I’m more than halfway through a grey stripe. I have just 12 grams left of the grey yarn, though. When I have finished this stripe I’ll weigh the remainder again and do a little math to help me see whether or not I will have enough yarn for another grey stripe. (I have 36 grams left of the black yarn, so no worries there.)

I don’t think that I’ve done any work on the other two current projects, though I’m sure you can understand why. We’re heading for a chilly week, so it will be good to concentrate on this one and get it to my son before he gets too cold.

Royal Canadian

The typewriter collection has grown to ten specimens, not counting what might be lurking in the basement, and it’s time to learn more about how to repair and maintain the various typewriters. I’ll start with the one that will be offered for use during the Creative Writing Festival that takes place the week after Thanksgiving. Just getting that one model ready for a full day’s use should be enough of a project for now.

The latest acquisition is another Royal HHE, manufactured at the end of the production year in 1955. That may have been in early December so that everyone was off for the holidays, so an exact date of manufacture may be impossible to pin down. However, rough estimates of typewriter “birthdays” are possible because serial numbers were typically noted on January 1, July 1, and December 1.

Seller’s photo (with stuck keys).

This particular typewriter was manufactured in Canada, and that’s almost all that I know about it. Unfortunately, after I moved the carriage all the way to the left so that I could locate the serial number, I was unable to get it to return to the right. Oh, dear, it looks like I shall have to learn more about typewriters in order to fix that. Whatever shall I do?

Buyer’s photo (harsh interior lighting).

In other news, Princess has been slowly growing along (though she doesn’t look much taller this week). My standards for horticulture are not particularly high; I’m looking for benchmarks like “didn’t turn black and shrivel up.” Still, perhaps she could use a bit more exposure to sunlight now that Wisconsin has entered the Lean Light Months.

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Knitwise, I have continued to work on the Stripe Scarf, which now measures over 34 inches long, and the Very Narrow Shawl.

It’s been a busy weekend and now it’s a late night — so here is a short post, with hopes that next week’s will be longer and feature more photos.

The worth of water

Tucked away somewhere in my house is a powder blue t-shirt that was screen-printed in the middlish 1980s with a sketch of the Oxford, Ohio, water tower and the text “ANNUAL WATER EMERGENCY.” The combination of an aging water tower and the arrival of thousands of students to the Miami University campus had precipitated (sorry) a crisis that eventually resulted in timed showers and the distribution of one gallon of water per student for other personal use. (I know that George Z. and Stephanie T. remember this; does Mary W.?) I seem to recall that the Ohio National Guard was called up to organize the water distribution. Time passed, we managed our water use the best we could, and eventually Oxford updated its water processing facilities and — sadly — tore down the uptown water tower that had become a symbol of the town.

In the scrapbook I kept of these years, back when scrapbooks were made from three-ring binders and plastic-covered adhesive cardboard sheets, which is just about as awful an environment as you could possibly think of for photos, ticket stubs, and newspaper clippings, there is a tag from a teabag that reads “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” I preserved it because I made that cup of tea during the Water Emergency we were enduring at the time.

Fast forward to last week, when I found myself in a different water emergency at my house. All seemed well on Thursday morning, but when I turned the handle of the kitchen sink faucet that evening there was almost no water pressure. I called the landlord to investigate, and the news wasn’t good — the water pump was failing. I filled some containers with water we could use for personal hygiene until the situation was remedied.

After some work on Friday, I thought that the problem had been solved. After using one stock-pot of water to make penne for dinner, we poured out the rest of the saved water. As it happens, that wasn’t really the best idea.

On Saturday morning I dropped off Youngest at the mall and went to watch Austin Kleba, the son of my high school (and Miami!) classmate Stephanie, skate in the National Speedskating Championships at the Pettit Center in Milwaukee (okay, actually West Allis). He eventually qualified for the World Cup Team for the 500m.

After those heats were done, and while the Zamboni freshened up the ice for the next event, I picked up Youngest and did some more shopping before returning home. There was my landlord in my front yard, sealing a concrete piece that I had never realized was the cap for our well. (I have lived here since 2007? 2008?) It turns out that the pump wasn’t the only problem: the well was running dry. (That explained why the water had slowed to a trickle during my morning shower; unfortunately, that was after I had thoroughly wetted my hair.)

It probably looked a little something like this.

We don’t know who might be able to drill a new well, or when that might happen. This morning I packed up my laundry and went to my friend Carol’s house to wash and dry it. I picked up some jugs of spring water on the way home. I’m not sure how we will do what needs to be done until we have dependable running water again, but we will do our best. We definitely appreciate the things that we took for granted last week.

Last week I did not buy another typewriter, though I did read a few more pages in a maintenance-and-repair manual for Smith-Coronas. You never know when that kind of information will come in handy.

In horticultural news, Princess is now almost two inches tall. I’m so proud!

I also received a Level 1 accordion instruction book in the mail and downloaded an accordion app to my iPad. Look out, world!

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Knitwise, I made progress on all three of my active projects. I have been pushing myself to knit in situations where I would otherwise be sitting and staring at a screen, so a certain amount of forward progress seemed inevitable.

Stripe Scarf is now several stripes long. Interestingly, the black sections take 9 ridges (18 rows) and the grey sections take 10 ridges (20 rows) to complete.

The striped scarf made from the thrift store yarns is longer now, too. I still have the work on the huge aluminum needles, so I get a forearm workout whenever I add a few rows.

Finally, I also worked on the Skinny Shawl made from the purple thrift store yarn. It’s hard to tell how wide it is, so I’ll just keep working on it until it’s done. This light is bad and doesn’t show the true colors of the yarn.

So we knit on….

In the presence of Royalty

The littlest peach tree is quietly growing away, and we have dubbed her “Princess.” She seems to be getting enough water, and every day I make sure to open the curtain and let her get some sunshine (well, as much as there was to have in this rainy week).

Friday

Sunday

I just love the way she’s coming along, particularly with so little assistance from me. I’ll leave her at home sitting in the big window in the library, unless it becomes obvious that she needs to be in the light from the lounge at my workplace.

This week I acquired two more typewriters. One is a Smith-Corona electronic that came with its own table and some supplies: typing paper, sheets of carbon paper, and the backing from a package of the ribbon cartridges that it takes. We plugged it in, and it works just fine. It’s not the same model of electronic typewriter that I had in the mid-80s, but it’s close. I didn’t do a photo shoot (but I could, if anyone wants to see it).

The other typewriter is a Royal HHE manual that was manufactured in late 1952. It’s in pretty good shape except for a missing key, and the ribbon is almost perfect. I’m not sure that the last owners knew that they had to press a special button to open the cover. After I opened the lid and un-jammed the stuck keys, it typed beautifully. I did buy some compressed air this weekend to help me blow out the dust and crud from underneath all the moving parts.

As I putter and play with these new toys, I’m getting story ideas. We’ll see what becomes of it all. Right now it’s hard to keep up with just the books that I’m reading, but the stories I want to tell are insisting more strongly that they be told.

In the meantime, I have a lot to learn about repairing, cleaning, and maintaining these old typewriters. I now have nine unless there are more in the basement.

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Knitwise, I made some progress on Stripe Scarf this week, and I cast on for another scarf project.

The stripes of Stripe Scarf are about 20 rows deep. I’m not counting the rows as I knit — mostly because I’m knitting while doing other things — but it’s not hard to tell when I’m getting close. At that point I fold the work over so the current stripe is directly on top of the last stripe. Then I ask myself, “Do I need to knit 2 more rows or 4 more rows?” The answer should be fairly obvious. As of this evening, the total length of the work is 14 inches.

Un-woven ends are tucked under the work in these photos.

Made you look!

Two weeks ago at my musical night out, I discovered that another attendee and the owner of the bar were both knitters. I resolved to bring a project the next Wednesday — but which one? Stripe Scarf was too dark and fussy to work on in a dim bar, and the skinny purple shawl was really a project to work on as I relaxed in my bedroom.

I put together a project bag of some Lion Brand Homespun that I had recently picked up at a thrift store. There were two partial skeins; I didn’t weigh them (what do you take me for?), but one of them seemed to be about half the size of the other. I decided to make a scarf with shallow stripes: two ridges (four rows) of the main color and one ridge (two rows) of the secondary color. I forgot to check my needle inventory before I headed off to work, so I was stuck with starting the work on a pair of straight aluminum needles in size US15.

These needles may be the reason you can’t take knitting needles on airplanes. On the other hand, nobody messed with me at the bar.

I have no idea what colors are in each skein, so it may be interesting to see what emerges as I knit along.

I’m not worried about the ragged-looking edge. This is [3 dollars’ worth of] acrylic, and it should work itself out when it’s washed and dried. I have the same number of stitches on each row, so it’s probably just a tension issue.

I’ll make some progress on the skinny purple shawl when I can sit in my bedroom chair again; it’s covered in two weeks’ worth of clothes that I haven’t hung up yet. I can only get so much done in a week (or two).