My Typed Page

Many years ago I:

• wrote for the Celebrator Beer News
• would sit in front of the keyboard (ohhh, board, nice for Wordle) trying to come up with something to say.

Have you looked at Linda in DC’s (geez, I need to put in a red ribbon and get an erasure to erase with) Linda in DC’s link to her collection of typewriter stationery? Nice, very nice stuff. Looking her name up … hmmm why? It was published on Monday, May 2. I saw it was “for your use” which I needed to verify. Tomorrow, I promise to use one. It is nice to have a cob or printer. But tomorrow, not yesterday.

Not that it concerns you, but two years ago we had the driest April in history for Portland. This year we had the wettest one.

Are we not lucky? From driest to wettest. There I had to say it ~ to Someone and you are the someones.

There are times when our One Typed Page pieces turn to our own ruminations about ourselves. Why?

I voted the day after the ballots arrived in the mail. It is the only way to vote here in Oregon. By the mail.

I need to write something down. It is like something of a One Typed Page, but with a pencil or a pen and I fill the page. It needs doing. Now.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-05

Last Thursday Joe Van Cleve wrote about video editing which segued into Casey Neistat and his daily, yes daily, posting of video logs or VLOGs. As JVC wrote “daily activities in pieces that soon came to be known as VLOGs…”. Now to be clear here, Casey did not get VLOG as something that he invented. (do we call these pieces TLOG? Typewriter Logs?) I do not thing that JVC was saying this, but I do want it #¢ to be clear. Video logging of daily activities came to us with videos displacing film. Another event that marked was Vlogbrother, which launched on January 1 , 2007 when two brothers, John and Hank Green, vowed to give up all text based communication for a year. Instead they took turns sending each other a video daily. You can check Wikipedia for “vlog” and “vlogbrothers” for more information on this subject. And do watch a few Casey Neistat vidoes from the time he was sending out daily videos on his life. I watched all of them for a year. What a way to start each day.

Side note: I wrote a piece on this subject last Monday. It just didn’t sit well with me. This is a v2 version. You can catch that episode at https://saunter.us/my_typed_page/ and scroll down a bit to find VLOGing and Curiosity. e

You might, you just might, want to watch some Casey Neistat. I paused in this to watch “You Can’t” and “Make It Count* ‘Bike Lanes” is another one to don’t miss. In 2011 Casey got a ticket for not riding in the bike lane. He made a video on that subject. It was a video that launched his career.

Can you imagine shooting, editing, and getting a video up one day at a time for a full year? Even if you think you can’t, you can and if nothing else you will become a much stronger video
person.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-05-03

Disclaimer Alert: My recollection of the One Typed Page history is from memory. I apologize to all of you and Joe Van Cleve in particular for what I have wrong here.

A few days ago Joe Van Cleve credited Casey Neistat with creating VLOGs. A video daily or regular event you can see on YouTube. About 10 years ago the Green brothers, John and Hank did a daily event on YouTube. It was in the form of, essentially sending a letter to the other brother. The subject could be anything but they kept it up. You can find out more on their history at a Wikiepedia entry for Vlogbrothers. Suffice to say they started the communications via videos on January 1 , 2007 when they vowed to give up all text based communication. During that first y¢¢ year they founded the Project for Awesome which they used to fund their favorite charities. There is lots more, I recommend the Wikipedia article on them or perhaps watching them on YouTube. Just DFTBA, Now the Green brothers were not the first. That the vlog or vog invention goes to Adam Kostras in 2000. As you may know people do it all the time now.

SPACEBAR

In case you do not or did not read the comments SPACEBAR shared his credulity at my being correct in Curiosity Stream costing just $7 $12/year. Yep, that is the current price does not include Nebula. If you are interested in that the “easy” way to get there is https: //curiositystream.com/hai or /adamneely or other YouTuber who is part of Nebula. Yes it is true and yea the stuff available is pretty interesting. What else can you get for $127

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm ::2022-05-01

PS – I tried to use a typewriter erasure. It does not seem to work.

Staying up later at night. I have been doing that recently It used to be that I would conk out and my wife would stay up until 11:30, midnight or so. Now we have reversed our roles. I wake her up and she goes off to bed. Since we have been watching serials I would stop watching whatever so we can resume it on the next night. Then I flip to something to watch for half an hour or so. Lately that thing has been Cowboy Bebop. This is the original 1998 Japanese anime cartoon series. I am coming up on the end of the run. When that is finished I will switch to the 2001 live, meaning people acting, first series. For worse for me is the second series was canceled by Netflix so we will not see the completion of it. Shucks.

If you like TV stuff you can get a great streaming service that is $12 per year. Shit, you cannot go wrong on it. It is called Curiosity Stream. It runs documentaries. But it also is bundled with Nebula, a well I am not sure what its niche is. It is a place for people that cannot do everything that YouTube allows – as in run clips of music without being shut down by litigious music companies. They also have a thing called Half As Interesting which explores stuff you can find on YouTube but without the ads. I have been watching TLDR (Too Long; Didn’t Read is the meaning of it) lots of news, with no ads and short bits of stuff that matters ™ Ummm, where was I going here? Damned if I know. I will pick it up tomorrow.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-0h-30

Some bits of shout out to people here:

!&? – What a pretty typewriter! All the more great looking when I read about the issues you had with it. Yeah! What a great job. Typically I don’t really care for stories of typewriters. This is an exception.

Leo — 5-minute poems keep on giving to us. Thank you for them.

Um, who? Who is doing the watercolors and poems? Nice short bits with mind absorbing illustrations. Please keep it up for us.

When you eat a banana, provided that you do, which end do you peel it from and hold it? I read that gorillas peel from the end and hold it from the stem. At least if they have seen it being done. Just see it one time. You have a nice handle on it. Not wishing to be shown up by those guys I do it that way now. OK, it may have been monkeys or orangutans, or other sibling but whatever form it was, they learn quickly.

In the Two Things category I am up to zero or one depending how you count. A friend whose birthday is today came over. We shared some whiskey. (The with E spelling comes from the bottle. It is an American single malt made in Oregon.) After that I was not going to drive anywhere. I am not walking anywhere. Safe journeys.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-28

I do not write well with some whiskey distracting me.

One guy that I was talking to commented that, for him, getting one thing done every day was enough. It is not like when you were working and then had to do shopping, yard care, and all those other things. Now, to us retired guys, one thing a day makes for a complete day. Got something done, yeah it is good.

Today I am feeling great because I got two things done.

As a member of the Portland Art Museum, I get to visit it for free as much as I like. Even better it opens up an hour earlier for members. As it turns out I don’t take advantage of that benefit too much. I have not noticed people to be in abundance yet. The official title of the show, the special show, on now is “Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism”. There is a lot to see in this show. I have gone four times (I think that is how much) and once again I saw new to my eyes works. Like two paintings of the same subject showing the differences in their approaches to the same person. Or a line of portraits from the late 20s through the 40s. 1930 featured a, well had the photo was not featured at all, but if you are a photographer seeing an Edward Weston and Imogene Cunningham is special. There was also a series of drawing by Frida Kahlo with her notes in preparation for a painting. T have until June 5 to get my fill. Hopefully, I will not be discovering new to my eyes pieces by then.

How is your experience with getting anything done with a medical person? For me, it involves waiting. Minimum 15 minutes. I take books every time. Or meditate. Or something that I have to do because just sitting there and waiting is not what I want. Today, however, was different. Show up, park, figure out where I need to be, walk-in, and BOOM I am into the maw of the medical folks and I do not stop moving until I am done. If only everything could be like getting an initial shot or a booster. Which is what I did today. Got my second booster for Covid. — ea

I might have two things scheduled for tomorrow. But, I den! + know, I do not want to overwhelm myself here. We will find out.

~~ MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-27

A couple of days ago I talked about Syllabus, from Lynda Barry. After thumbing through it to find a page to share here, which I did not, I started to read it again. There are sticky notes throughout. It seemed like a good time to reread it. And then I found it. It being on the subject of being in class:

Attendance is more than being physically present in class. From the moment class begins until it ends, you are expected to participate fully in class activities. During the entire 150 minutes of each class session I ask that you not check personal devices, use your computer, wear headphones, etc. This includes break and field trips.

No focus stealing devices to be used in Lynda Barry’s classes, These instructions came from a teacher who had a first class that was coloring in coloring books, eating candy and watching The Bad News Bears – original edition. She also had people memorize a poem. Or by a timer draw a single page of drawing for 30 minutes.

Have I mentioned that you use a composition book? The good ones are made in Vietnam. These are 9.75×7.5 inches in size. I bought a case of them to use fa my Morning Pages. There is no pressure to “set it right” I bought the notebooks to write in without worrying about keeping up with some nice paper. It is like using newsprint paper. And, like newsprint, you are expected to use a lot. Fill it with any thing. This is really like One Typed Page on steroids. Except to fill up a book in three or four weeks. Paste in some ephemera from your life. Just keep putting stuff into the book.

I am thinking and are afraid to check it that I have blathered in my last paragraph. Cannot look back.

No more tonight. Nothing else. Tomorrow, well I will come up with something.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-25

Good writers, or so I am impressed, start each paragraph with a sentence that sums up the paragraph. Thank Got the author of Stolen Focus is a good writer by that standard. It enabled me to skip sections of having Covid and note talking face to face with people. I get the gist of what he was saying. Two chapters down, 12 or so to go.

A few weeks ago Keep on Truckin’ Mike asked if we prepared our One Typed Page or just sat down and winged it. I stated that I just dove in. For that matter I do not even read what I have written. I do read the highlighted words when I import them into my blog post. I need to confirm what word they chose a, the, “correct” version is indeed so. So I read the misspelled words and the end of each paragraph to ensure I put the line and paragraphs where they belong. This canes to mind from my experience of reading a few lines into a piece before I realized that it was written it. I will give it a year and then read it. It was a habit of many photographers Or do not look at a photograph for a year. I am referring to art photographs here.

Speaking with a friend recently he commented that his wife did not do much crafty like stuff because she thinks she cannot draw. Does that sound familiar to you? As in you, yourself? Inspired by this talk I hunted down my copy of Syllabus by Lynda Barry. What is that? From the book itself:

The Unthinkable Mind
What it is
Write what you see
Making Comics

It is a book about, well, remembering and making stuff from those bits of memories you have. You do make a comic book as part of the class she describes so you need to write a story and make drawings to illustrate it. But you, every one of you, can do it. Syllabus is also a thing that is part of every class what it plans to do. You get it all and a lot of side stories to liven things up and teach you a bunch.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-24

Yes, I had hopes. Hopes to finish the chapter on Sustained Reading. With some effort, I have finished the chapter. It does not contain any reminders, or suggestions for that. Unless you take the inference of shutting out social media, in this case Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I decided to try the section Attention Rebellion, It starts, “If this was a self- help book, I would be able to serve up a delightful simple conclusion to the story. … In fact, at this moment, as I write this in lockdown, my attention has never been worse.” One cannot fault Johann Hari for giving false hopes. He does go on to give his attempts to recover his Stolen Focus. I have started to read this section. Hopefully I will be able to share something from it in the future.

I did read an entire book today. I got it from the library because a Texan library has pulled it from their shelves. It is, well I am not really sure what they found objectionable. The book is We Are All Born Free. It is from Amnesty International. It has a sub-title of “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights In Pictures”. Drop by your library and check it out, or browse it there. See if you can find something objectionable there. Perhaps they found it too political?

But I did finish the book in one day. Now to raise the bar and read something with some depth clouded in a novel. Or I can turn to An African American and Latinx History of the United States. I put on hold at the same time and for the same reason as We… Born Free, it was banned from a Texan library. I am already wondering if it follows the same trajectory as A People’s History of the United States, from Howard Zinn, Zinn does not “appear in the index so there is nothing overt. I will start something and continue with Stolen Focus.

In the Frida Kalho show of stuff that surrounded her with just enough stuff painted by her and of her to have her name hanging on the promotional items in that show there is a watercolor painting that, if you did not pay attention, looks like an oil painting. Perhaps I am being inattentive on what makes an oil painting look the way it does. There is a lot of painting of people in realistic poses – before the time of color photography. Another reason to visit the show.

Many things to read and to view – it is a good life.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-23

Amazon delivered. It was late in the day, but Amazon delivered. You may recall that I typed about Stolen Focus, a book about how our focus is no longer with us. I could not wait for the list of 112 people declined to make my turn to get a copy. So I ordered one. I thought I would get the book and do a quick once over and write about it. Amazon delivered but it was too late in the day for me #% to follow through on that plan. Wednesday is my usual day to go to the Portland Art Museum. I did not go because I was waiting for Stolen Focus to arrive. So the next day with the book on hand I went to the museum. Lots of attention paid to the book and my focus was stolen. I went on to meet friends, like we do the third Thursday of the month. We had a great time again. So today, Friday , I dive into the book. The book has 12 chapters. Bach one is on a case of a focus. I decided to start with “Cause Four: The Collapse of Sustained Reading” It lasts for 12 pages. I am 10 pages into that chapter. Why the author, Johann Hari, delays a book on reading in a book. Can or do people get that far into the book? I skipped the earlier chanters because this on is big for me. I have not read like I used to, this is what I am hoping for. I want to do sustained reading again. It is going to take some sustained focus. I may just skip to the section “Conclusion Attention Rebellion” After that I should, I hope I will be able to have the focus to finish the book. Or so I hope.

— MichaelRpdx :: rkmm :: 2022-04-22