PLANET OLLI

Telling our life stories may be the most important way we have of giving our lives meaning, healing those parts of our lives that may need it, making peace with ourselves, and gaining the deeper, broader perspective on life that they can give us. Through telling our life story we can experience release, recovery, resolution, or renewal, and, maybe most importantly, recognition of our connection to the world.

Knowing our own life story well helps us to know much more than just ourselves. We are only the beginning of what we come to know through our life story. Second, it also helps us to know all the others in our life better, what they mean to us, who they are, and what all of our connections to others, and to the world, ultimately mean to us. Third, it helps us to understand the mystery of life even more than we may have thought we knew it. We become much more intimate with the big questions of life we have struggled with and have come to understand better. And finally, it helps us get to know the universe around us better than we had before. As we remember our journey through life, we get to know even more how our life fits into the larger whole we are also part of.

Another way to review your life story – These four realms we get to know better through knowing our life story can be thought of as the psychological, the social, the spiritual, and the cosmological realms. Which one draws you the most right now to explore in a little more depth? Pick one of these realms that you have gotten to know better through remembering or telling your life story, and reflect upon what it is that you have gained in understanding this domain of your life much more clearly. How did getting to know this area of your life enrich you or your appreciation of life as a whole? After you have had time to put your thoughts together around this, share your story with us here of how knowing your life story broadened your knowledge of the world around you and your connection to it.

Well, never mind closing up the wall with our English dead. [Henry V, for those who are wondering.] We are again going to set out for Paris. Let us hope US Airways does not do us in again.

Meanwhile, things are looking very good for health care reform, and suddenly the chattering classes are discovering that Obama is a rather skillful and determined politician after all.

But the ugly news is out of Texas, where the state textbook committee, dominated by right-wing fanatics, has passed a series of secondary school textbook guidelines that will dumb down the next ten years of young people. Because Texas chooses books state-wide, publishers supinely cave in to their insane demands, and that in turn blights the textbooks used in other states as well. This really is an appalling country, for the most part. As I have often noted in this blog, the Evangelicals and birthers and Tea Partiers think that people like me look down on them. Well, damn it, I do. Why should I give them a pass for their absurd views when they spend their time congratulating themselves that I will be damned to eternal hellfire for mine?

France, of course, has its own problems, which I am able to ignore because I do not really live there.

I am afraid the enforced lay-over has made me dyspeptic. As the taxi crosses the Seine and approaches our pied a terre on rue Maitre Albert, my spirits will lift, and my Paris posts will be models of sweetness and light.

en avant!

Appearance definitely matters. This is no less true for pages than people, and I include both digital and paper pages. In a single afternoon I came across four  instances where choices of font, type size, color, or formatting made reading a challenge for me. It’s never a good idea to make reading difficult. It’s way too easy for readers to set your work aside, or click away from it.  Here’s what I found:

A memoir with double-spacing between paragraphs. The story seemed choppy. I finally realized that my eye was interpreting the extra vertical space as a “pause signal.” This format option is standard for business letters and web layout, where your eye needs the space as a marker to remain oriented on the page. But it is not standard on printed pages where it is typically used to indicate a break in thought or scene. 

A double-spaced manuscript printed in the old standard of 12 point Courier. Although they were the standard for college research papers, I never found this form easy to read, and was thrilled when Times New Roman edged out Courier for everything but complying with the demands of old-school editors.  I know the writing buddy who requested the help of my editorial eye will reformat before sharing more widely. By the way, if you are submitting work for publication, follow the submission guidelines on formatting to the letter!

Limbo is the region bordering Hell where reside the souls of such as unbaptized babies who, though innocent, cannot enter Heaven since their original sin has not been washed away in the blood of the Lamb. In the dumbed down amnesiac language of our modern age, limbo is any place where you are stuck, unable to continue on to whatever was to be your next stop -- like an airport departure lounge when your flight has been cancelled. Here I am, then, in limbo, innocent, unbaptized, waiting until Susie and I can tomorrow renew our trip to Paris.

Having taken out the garbage, done all the laundry, emptied the refrigerator, and even, this morning, Jiffy Lubed my car, I am left with idle thoughts. Happily, I have a blog, into which I can transfer them for the enlightenment of my small band of readers. Herewith, then, some idle thoughts.

The first is a poem, that came to my mind for some reason this morning. It is the haunting vilanelle by the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, known by its great first line. I will only say, by way of commentary, that when my time comes [not, if my son, Tobias, is to be believed, for another twenty years or more], I hope that my sons will speak in this way to me:

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

As I have mentioned before, I really look forward to the Book Festival every year. My favorite event is the annual Book Fair at the Omni. In previous years I have found the perfect books for my young friends at Jackson-Via Elementary School as I wandered through the exhibits during breaks between the Crime Wave mystery events.

Is your Book Bag full?  Complete information: Virginia Festival of the Book

The Annual Book Fair takes place between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. in the Omni Hotel Atrium amid Crime Wave mystery events and Publishing Day events. The Fair features forty + authors, publishers and sellers of other book-related items.

So I figured the one ray of sunshine in this raincloud of bad luck was that Susie and I would be able to watch the Friday episode of The Young and the Restless, which is always the boffo episode of the week. [OK, OK, so I have watched it every day pretty much for twenty years. I think of it as a very long War and Peace, only without everyone having three names.] But no. This is regional basketball playoff time, so Y&R is preempted. I mean, is this happening to me because I am an anarchist, because I am a Marxist, or because I am an atheist?

Here we are, all packed and primed for Paris. 5:50 p.m. on US Airways from Raleigh Durham, connecting in Philadelphia with a 9:00 p.m flight to Paris. I had already decided where we were going to have dinner our first evening in Paris. Then I get an automated phone call telling me that the 5:50 flight is delayed until 8:00 p.m., which makes the connection impossible.

The first time US Airways can rebook us is SUNDAY.

So, I take off my support hose [useful for counteracting swollen feet on long trips], and ask Susie where she would like to have dinner in Chapel Hill. We will go to Squids, where, if you sit at the bar, you can have oysters for $0.50 each. Susie usually gets half a peck of steamed oysters [no kidding].

I have explained to Christmas Eve [our surviving cat] that we are not leaving yet, and cancelled the cab. I have already done all the laundry and taken out the garbage. aaaarrrrgggghhh!!!

Bummer. We just got wet going to and from the local senior center that was having a St. Patrick's Day dance this afternoon. Well sort of a dance. What we found was about 15 tables of seniors waiting to be served corned beef, a tiny corner with no DJ present and music you could hardly hear over the roar of the crowd. Who's dancing? No one and after DH scanned the scene, we left.

Come to think about it, WHO plans a S P D dance on March 11th? What's wrong with March 17th? Of course now that we are home again, the rain has stopped and so has my taste for corned beef. DH hubby has promised me bouillabaisse* at Squid's tonight and so far as the rain clouds have moved east I think we can get there without getting wet.