by bawriting | Aug 17, 2017 | Miscellaneous
So yesterday there I was—sitting in a fancy conference room with a new client (an emeritus professor) and three of the team members of his project, which includes the book I’m editing. They’re asking questions. My opinions. I’m trying to remember a really famous book, mainstream metaphysics, to use as an example. The title won’t come. The name of the famous author won’t even come. So I think (and talk) fast and use a different book to make my point. The meeting goes on. When it ends, the professor hands me a check and escorts me through the lobby to the gate. Cordial conversation. When do I remember the book title and author? About four hours later.
Read More by bawriting | Apr 29, 2017 | Charles Ardinger, Editing & Publishing, Miscellaneous, Short Nonfiction
My guest blogger this month is my son, Charles, to whom I gave his own page on this website. http://barbaraardinger.com/charles-ardinger/ . He’s an English teacher at Coastline Community College in Orange County, CA, where he’s taught classes on science fiction and Harry Potter. Mostly, however, he teaches pre-English 101 classes for students who aren’t quite ready for freshman comp. This is why he can speak and write so clearly and cogently about the esoterica of Gooder English.
Read More by bawriting | Mar 23, 2017 | Miscellaneous
We’ve just passed the vernal (spring) equinox, one of the two days of the year in which day and night are supposed to be equal in length. (Here in SoCal, there’s about a five-minute difference.) As we all know, the dark and the light are often used metaphorically. Here are two pages from Pagan Every Day in which I wrote about “endarkenment” (yes, I’ve always enjoyed inventing words) and enlightenment. Too much of either is, I think, kinda dangerous.
Read More by bawriting | Jan 21, 2017 | Miscellaneous
At noon last Sunday I cleared everything off my table. Next I got out the plastic folder in which I keep images torn from magazines and catalogs, pictures of cats, and fancy colored paper. Then I found my elementary school-size glue stick, a couple pairs of scissors, and my collection of sparkly stickers. Four hours later, I finished my 2017 collage. I started making these yearly collages in 1994, when my friend Suzan called together a group of her friends to make goal boards. We all brought our own poster board, and Suzan had a big pile of (mostly business) magazines on her floor. She directed us to search through them for images of goals we wanted to meet and things we wanted to acquire in 1994. Here’s my first goal board. It’s the only one that has corners.
Read More by bawriting | Sep 21, 2016 | Miscellaneous, Shakespeare
I’ve read Shakespeare. All of Shakespeare. (And, yes, I can sing along with Cole Porter’s “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”) My M.A. and Ph.D. major was English Renaissance literature with an emphasis on the drama. That means Shakespeare and that bunch—his friends and rivals. I’ve also read a lot of Elizabethan and Jacobean history and Shakespeare criticism. Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed by living actors, and that’s why I prefer productions with actors on stage, either live in front of me or on DVD. I have, in fact, a whole shelf of DVDs of Shakespeare’s plays, plus the big box of all 37 plays as produced by the BBC in the early 1980s. I once spent a month watching them all and wrote a blog about it.
Read More by bawriting | Sep 21, 2016 | Miscellaneous
“Mother, it’s time for you to join the 21st century.” This is what my son has been saying for twelve or thirteen years. He said it again a day or two ago. I’ve heard him every time. Gee whizzly—I know it’s a new century. Didn’t I work on a Y2K project?
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