textiplication.com

Here we are in late autumn, and Boston is socked in.

Doesn’t look so deep here, but this is in the middle of active plowing.  Out front of the restaurant there’s a guy shoveling - by the time he got to the end of the sidewalk, a quarter-inch of fresh snow had fallen on the part he did first.  That would mean we’re getting four inches an hour.  There’s certainly four inches sitting on the roads unplowed. 

I left the office at 1 today trying to make sure I got home for dinner.  It took two hours to go twenty miles.  When traffic completely stopped - three cycles at a stoplight without any movement on the other side of the light - I got off the road for lunch.  Two hours later I tried to go head home, but here I am, at Flatbread in Burlington, after a mile or two of the scariest driving I’ve ever done.

My mother died unexpectedly about three weeks ago.  We held her memorial service this past Monday, a remarkable experience I’ll probably write more about.  I’m posting my remarks at the service below. 

We are made of memories and our relationships are built on memories, the memories of experiences we have shared together.  Everyone who knew my mother had many memories of her, and had them while she was still alive, and and every experience we shared with her created new ones.  Now that my mother has passed from the world of experiences into the realm of memories, we gather here to share memories with each other, and build new ones together.  I thought I would start by sharing some of my own memories.

My mother once pulled out a file folder in which she had accumulated a small number of newspaper clippings about a college called St. John’s.  She had at some point heard of St. John’s and decided that it was a wonderful place, and collected the clippings as she found them so as to be prepared to convince me likewise as soon as I was, in her judgment, old enough.  I remember the folder, and the cut-up newsprint; one of the articles had a picture of a student with a bushel of curly hair, and a tree behind him.Memory is not infallible; I am not sure how long my mother bided her time, whether she waited until fifth, sixth, or as late as seventh grade to begin her campaign for St. John’s.  However, the result is certain: I did go to St. John’s, and my mother scrimped and sacrificed for years to ensure that I would be able to go there.  And she was right about all of that, and those years are a huge part of why I am the way I am. 

For better or worse, I suppose.

I could mention any number of other things.  My mother was in this church a double handful of times, always for the most wonderful occasions.  In the ceremony in which Margaret and I became husband and wife, my mother stood nervously at the front with my father as Margaret and I had deemed they should, but firmly made assent to the question posed by Helen Cohen, the minister here at the time.  My mother was never one to run to the front of the room.

I loved my mother’s laugh.  She had a wonderful sense of humor, and would laugh as at anything from the subtlest wordplay to the simplest children’s jokes.  The last time my mother was here at First Parish was for the Christmas pageant last year in which my older son Ben had a small part.  My mother was holding my younger son Thomas, trying to keep him quiet and happy during the performance.  At what must have been the quietest moment in the pageant, Thomas, facing backwards on her lap, remarked upon the sizable timepiece on the front of the balcony,exclaiming, in a voice that I was certain carried throughout the sanctuary - "Gwanma! Look at that huge clock!" and, as he generally used to do, pronounced the word "clock" without its extremely important letter ‘L’.  Convulsed with laughter, positively crimson-faced with the effort of remaining quiet, my mother turned to me and said, "Did you hear what he said? He said, ‘Look at that huge clock!’" using the sort of stage whisper that actors spend years learning to project to the remotest seats in the theater, and, of course, also omitting that extremely important letter ‘L’.

It was almost exactly seventeen years ago, give or take no more than a few weeks, that I first took Margaret to Annapolis to visit my family.  I vaguely recall doing the normal Annapolis things  - walking down by the harbor, lunch at Dimitri’s - but I vividly remember when my mother pulled me aside and said intensely, "Skott, this Margaret is a good one.  Don’t you let go of her, you understand?"  And I didn’t, and my mother was right about that, too.

So many memories, so long and wonderful a life, however much longer I could have wished for it to be.  Anyone who knew my mother knows that she loved children, and above all other children she loved her grandchildren.  My last memory of my mother, the last time I really saw her, was the last time that she babysat Ben and Thomas so that Margaret and I could go see "Gone, Baby, Gone."  As always, the boys had a wonderful time with her and my father while we were out, and when it was time for us to take the boys home she and my father walked us down the back stairs.  My mother came outside to wave good-bye as we buckled ourselves into the car.  So the very last time I saw my mother, we were waving good-bye to each other, and I was saying "Thank you!" through the car window, knowing that even if she couldn’t hear me, she would see my lips move and know what I was saying.  So that was the last thing I ever said to my mother. "Thank you!"

I said it as often as I remembered, which was still, I’m sure, not nearly as often as I should have.  But I’m very glad that those were the last words I ever said to my mother.

I took a big pile of unread books up to Vermont with me over the Thanksgiving Holiday, and read, read, read. 

Jamestown, Matthew Sharpe.

A retelling of the story of the Jamestown colony, thrust forward into a post-apocalyptic future.  Captain John Smith, John Rolfe and the other colonists drive an armored bus down 95 from a wrecked Manhattan, narrowly escaping the collapse of the Chrysler Building.  Pocahontas, Powhatan and the rest of the Native American population are people from all over the US who have resettled Virgina after the war.  Told in rough epistolary form, a series of wireless e-mails between Rolfe and Pocahontas.

If writing were jumping ability, Sharpe would have some serious hops.  English in his hands is in turns comical, moving, or even terrifying. 

The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall

It’s one of those openers that agents constantly say they have no interest in reading: the narrator wakes up without any idea who he is.  Raw Shark Texts is Figure 72 in the ongoing proof that you can break any of the rules as long as you’re good enough.  The narrator is under pursuit by the dread Ludovician shark, most ravenous of all conceptual fish.  Shark Texts has almost as much fun with typography as House of Leaves - there’s even a flipbook, illustrated with words, at the climax of the story.    For all its games with words and ideas, Shark Texts is ultimately a beautiful story of love and loss.

Acacia, Book One: The War with the Mein, David Anthony Durham

Two extraordinary experimental novels, then a really good traditional epic fantasy.  This was quite a transition for me, reading Acacia after the Jamestown and Raw Shark Texts.  Acacia’s a sterling example of the form, with intriguing novelty and surprising turns.  I’m glad I didn’t wait for the remainder of the series to come out.

Rumo, Walter Moers

Bizarre and wonderful.  All of the characters in Rumo are different forms of mythical animals in the land of Zamonia; the main characters are Wolpertings - bipedal sword-wielding attack dogs, essentially - and a Shark Grub.  The story follows Rumo the Wolperting from early puppyhood into his first great adventure as an adult.  Even in translation from the German, one of most plain fun reads I’ve had in a long time.

Moers is a writer and cartoonist; his  illustrations are as entertaining as his text. I’ve already ordered all of his other books.

Halting State, Charles Stross

Stross is one of the most imaginative hard-sf writers around.  In Halting State, he’s focused on the near future.  Lately he’s blogged about the unlikelihood of human space exploration, so I’m not surprised to see him writing Mundane SF, and making the near future as fascinating, mind-bending, and vital.

Halting State’s written in rotating second person, which may be a first.  Stross has the chops to make it work, but I’m not sure that second person adds value here.

"Everyone is going to jail; every single person is going to jail in this courtroom unless I get that instrument now," he went on. "If anybody believes I’m kidding, ask some of the folks that have been here for a while. You are all going."

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9824710-7.html?tag=nefd.top

I like this guy’s approach better.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D-8666853249964284510&ei=Yp1NR8ubC6XWesPDpYQN&usg=AFQjCNHLvOs7s003O7nTviGJIx5UGx7AUA&sig2=ws9ALMdoYD4PtJUDoQVAGw

Again from Lijit.

1.  scott klebe

Damn it, it’s Skott Klebe!  Google’s probably offering to correct my spelling.

2. charles stross tsp

Yes, I blogged that.

3. history teacher+ fuck + less information + loewen

=? Got me.  I would go to Loewen for more information, not less.  And it sounds like you’ve got some unresolved issues with your history teacher, notwithstanding any lies your teacher told you.

4. la-di fucking da

My friend Bob Selacchi has been known to say that on occasion when he blogs here.

5. sark hybrid

Half man, half Maher?

6. Laslo Moholy-Nagy Finnegans Wake book

Ah, a more intellectual caste of visitor.  Glad to have you.  We have a fine collection of surrealistic GMail ads in the room over there, one of the world’s finest collections of human-shark-hybrid fiction in those three posts over there, and a sadly underused comments section.  Welcome!  And it’s Lazslo, BTW.  Props for leaving out the apostrophe in Finnegans, though.

7.  shark hybrid

Over there.

8.  jeff hayes myspace new jersey

No,  this Jeff Hayes.

9.  vamporn

None in stock at the moment.  And we’re all out of werotica and faerotica, as well.

10. Found Objects Sharks

“Hey, dude.  Look at this object I found.”

“That’s a fucking shark, you moron! Aah!”

11. “Tobias Lüttke”

Leading Ruby on Rails developer, creator of Typo and Shopify.  He’s not here.

For all your duck needs.

O excellent! I love textiplication better than figs.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

via the0phrastus.

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die no textiplication will pity me.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

Get your own quotes:

Damn straight.

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