Shan Hays – Writer And Reader Extraordinaire - My Passion Flows From Pen To Paper
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Shan Hays – Writer And Reader Extraordinaire - My Passion Flows From Pen To Paper
Uncategorized

The Outsider

This is classic Stephen King, and this is why I read almost everything he writes. (I haven’t read Gerald’s Game or the Dark Tower series.)

A decent police officer and a politically ambitious DA, a horrific crime, a popular teacher and coach, seemingly overwhelming evidence – but things aren’t what they seem. Eventually the detective agency from the Mr. Mercedes trilogy gets pulled in.

I’m not going to try to summarize beyond that; other GR reviewers are much better than I am at summarizing without spoiling.

As always, the characters are real. The good ones have a bit of heroism mixed in with a lot of human flaws. The bad ones have resentments, self-pity, and anger that can be manipulated to make them even worse. We spend most of our time with the good ones, which is what makes it possible for me to enjoy reading a book with such terrible things in it.

And the plot is a page-turner. I read half of it Thursday night and got to about fifty pages from the end on Friday; finished Saturday morning. It’s satisfying and wise.

I noticed a couple of places where a pop culture reference is explained, in contrast to earlier King where references are dropped in and readers are expected to pick them up without help. I wonder if it’s because pop culture is more fragmented now – we don’t all see the same tv shows and movies – or because King’s older now, so his references are drawn from a bigger pool of time that younger readers might not be familiar with – or if it’s just a new editor with different preferences.

May 28, 2018by Shan
Uncategorized

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth

Inspiring, entertaining, interesting, informative. Hadfield did the narration on the audiobook so I got to hear it all in his own voice.

I’m so glad there are people like Chris Hadfield in the world: hard-working, down-to-earth, smart, can-do, humble, friendly, and helpful. His book is a memoir with bonus lessons for living. There’s all kinds of interesting stuff about things like the 40-minute process to collect urine for a research project he participated in on the International Space Station (Peeing For Science), and what it’s like to adjust to gravity again after spending months in space. It’s all in the context of the importance of the space program, and with a little coda about the importance of protecting the Earth.

The lessons for living are down to earth and practical, too:
* Enjoy the process – the only thing you can control is your attitude. If your sense of self worth depends on achieving your ultimate goal (like space flight), which is affected by lots of things outside your control, you’ll never be happy. Study, learn, and appreciate every day.
* Practice negative thinking – visualize the worst and figure out how to prevent it
* Be humble – he calls this aiming to be a zero. Be competent and don’t get in the way while you observe and attempt to learn, rather than trying to impress others.
* Sweat the small stuff – we all know how important this is in the space program, where a tiny error can lead to tragedy.
* Appreciate and recognize other people’s efforts and sacrifices that enable you to work towards your own goals.

May 28, 2018by Shan
Learning

From blog to website

I’ve had a blog on WordPress.com for two years (thanks to my granddaughter Lorisa, age 11 at the time, who insisted). I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with it and have enjoyed using it to capture things I’m learning – mostly about writing, but also about playing the banjo – and to work through my thoughts about this and that. I think better with my fingers on a keyboard or holding a pen. Or a marker. I’m considering a future post extolling the glories of using a whiteboard to think.

But now I’m ready to graduate to a website of my own. I bought a domain (through Google Domains, $12/year) and signed up for a web hosting service (Site Ground, $3.95 a month). I’m using WordPress to build the site, with the aid of codex.wordpress.org, a step by step tutorial that suits my learning style to a T.

Stay tuned.

Decisions, decisions

So many choices! I chose Google Domains, Site Ground, and WordPress because my uber-energetic writing friend Becki uses them, so I figured I’d piggyback off her research and – no small consideration – be able to ask her for help when I need it. Another factor was the speedy and helpful assistance I received via Site Ground’s chat support while setting up.

Then – to use Jetpack or not? The installation buttons and information are all over the place when I log in as admin. I found this blog post that convinced me to go ahead and do it. […] That was quick. Scared me a bit with its offer of a bunch of different plans starting at $39.99/year. What? No! Then I spotted a little button at the bottom that said “start with free.” Free is good.

Next was the critical choice of Theme. I started with the default WordPress theme for 2017 (creatively named Twentyseventeen) but then I met a writer whose website I love. Her name is Maren True and her website is marentrue.com. Maren uses Fluida and she said she didn’t mind if I copied her site, so I went ahead and activated Fluida – although I’m discovering my site is still going to look very different from hers by the time I’m through.

Loving the library

I think of myself as a trial-and-error learner, but that’s not exactly true. I prefer having a scaffold to hang information on and a net to catch me when the error part of trial-and-error shows up. It’s like traveling to a new city – I love discovering places on my own, but I still want a guidebook so I can make sure I don’t miss the best ones. My favorite guidebook at the moment is the Comic Guide by Nate Cooper. It seems to suit my learning style to a T. I don’t know how much I’ll actually use the html basics, since it seems like so much is already built in to WordPress and the Fluida theme, but I feel more comfortable knowing how to read the stuff that shows up when you right-click on a web page and ask to view the source.

Update: An expert to the rescue!

Well. I got distracted, and with one thing and another, my website was just hanging out there, unfinished, for several months. Now and then I’d think about finishing the setup, but as soon as I got started I realized I didn’t remember anything I’d done before. Lucky for me, I met Diane Shreve at a NaNoWriMo write-in.

Diane has lots of experience with WordPress, and she actually developed and maintains the website for a famous actor. When I met her, she gave me a few words of advice that helped kick-start my efforts to transition from draft mode to finished website. I made a bit of progress, but still had a bunch of nagging issues on my to-do list. The next time I saw her, we talked, and I discovered she was available. I hired her for a reasonable fee, and in less time than it would have taken me to review my notes on what I’d done so far, Diane transformed my clunky site to the elegant, professional-looking site you see before you. The current version uses the Brixton theme.

Here’s hoping I can keep it looking good.

If you have experience making this kind of transition or any advice for me, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

 

May 27, 2018by Shan
Learning, Self-help, Writing

The astronaut attitude

Not everything has to be geared towards achieving a specific future purpose to be worthwhile.

Let me rephrase that:

Don’t try to live in the future. Appreciate the present.

My dad was a storyteller. He grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan, and he had a great fund of stories featuring hard work, honesty, thrift, and generosity. The theme, in addition to whatever specific value was being imparted, was that living by that value would pay off in the end. Hard work pays off in a satisfying career. My dad’s thrift as a child enabled him to lend his parents money when times were tight in the Depression. His honesty in remembering all winter that he had to repay a penny as soon as the roads cleared earned him a whole bag of penny candy from the surprised storekeeper. His mother’s generosity to a band of traveling Cree people was repaid with moccasins for him and his brother every year.

The corollary my subconscious pulled out of Dad’s stories was that you shouldn’t waste time on things that don’t have a purpose.

Or, as that annoying student used to say (there’s one in every class): will this be on the test?

This isn’t fair to my dad, who was great at having fun for the pure joy of it. But – you know how it is with your subconscious. It thinks what it thinks.

Work hard. Enjoy it.

In An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield proposes a different approach to thinking about what you’re doing. An astronaut who gets all his or her job satisfaction from space flight is going to be a miserable astronaut, because space flight is such a small and uncertain part of the job. For one thing, there are years of training for one day of space flight. For another, many factors outside your control determine whether you’ll actually go to space. When the U.S. space shuttles were retired, astronauts who were too tall to fit in Russian ships had no chance of space flight. Congressional budgets, disaster investigations, illness, family events – all can mean you miss your window of opportunity.

Your sense of self worth, identity, and happiness can’t be tied up in an ultimate goal that might never happen. The training and everything else that goes into the job is hard, fun, and stretches your mind. Space flight is a bonus. You don’t determine whether you arrive at the desired professional destination, but you can determine your own attitude. Work hard and enjoy the process.

Chris Hadfield is the astronaut who recorded David Bowie’s Space Oddity IN SPACE, so it wasn’t a surprise to hear him talking about learning Rocket Man before he met Elton John, just in case. He pictured the most demanding challenge he could imagine – being asked to perform on stage with Elton John – then determined what he’d have to do to be ready to meet the challenge, then practiced until he was ready. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t actually asked to perform on stage. The important thing is that he was ready.

You might learn things you’ll never use, but it’s better to know them and not need to than the reverse. You’re getting ahead if you learn, even if you stay on the same rung of your career ladder. Learning is the point.

What does this mean for writers?

A writer’s chance of getting a book published and having it succeed with readers, like the astronaut’s chance of spaceflight, is affected by a whole range of things that aren’t in the writer’s control. Writing, studying the craft, writing, researching, writing, connecting with other writers, and writing (not to mention querying, networking, developing an author platform, etc.) are hard, fun, and stretch your mind. Don’t base your sense of self-worth and satisfaction on the end result. Challenge yourself, work hard, and enjoy the process!

Watch this!

After you read the book, check out this little video that sums it up nicely. I’m listening to the audio version of the book, which is especially wonderful because it’s narrated by Colonel Hadfield himself.

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

 

May 24, 2018by Shan
Health, fitness, and living well, Knowledgeable people, stealing from, Learning

The Whole Earth Catalog

Before we had the Internet, we had this:

IMG_1970

This copy was printed in 1971.

It’s where I learned about Buckminster Fuller, Gurney’s seed catalogs, and how a guitar is put together. I ordered the parts to build a clock from a supplier listed in the catalog. The “access to tools” subtitle gives you the original idea, which was to be a resource for  people in the back-to-the-land movement, but it’s more than that.

It’s a way of organizing knowledge.

I’m thinking about a website and the best way to organize various things I’d want to put on it, which made me think about the Catalog.

Here’s how it’s set up:

WHOLE SYSTEMS — cosmos, universe, earth, energy, geography, surface, clouds, laws, connections, form, general systems, human beings, being human, Jung, anthropology, thought, history, future, eastern future, Think Little, future biology, funky future, world game, world organism, evolution, human evolution, ecology, ecology issues, population, liferaft Earth, ecology action, ecology periodicals, more ecology, desperate ecology action, Four Changes
LAND USE – agricultural origins, land life, organic gardening, compost, biodynamic gardening, pests, soil, vegetable & flower seeds, trees & flowers, herbs, indoor gardening, exotic crops, wildlife, goats, livestock, rabbits, chickens & horses, energy, wind & sun, water & sanitation, wells, water, mining, tools, roads, surveying & blasting, trees & saws, land buying, Canada & Alaska, wild foods, mushrooms, land use, Soleri
SHELTER – natural structure, Gaudi & Wright, Japanese house, design considerations, architecture, mode, stained glass, dome geometry, domes, owner-built home, low-cost construction, carpentry, building, stoves, lanterns, tipis, cabins, adobe, stone buildings, concrete, Frei Otto, inflatables, plastic, materials
INDUSTRY – alloy, design, Chinese technology, inventory, engineering, inventions, village technology, knots, science, technology, handbooks, plastic, data, tips, modular materials, appliances, lab suppliers, plastic, welding & winching, nifty tools, government surplus, tools, surplus, precision tools, fine tools, tool use
CRAFT – woodcraft, wood, furniture, reed craft, frontier crafts, country crafts & antiques, craft design, philosophy & craft access, craft supplies, jewelry supplies, jewelry, glass, sculpture, candles & bonsai, pottery, kilns & throwing, potters & wheels, ceramic supplies, weaving, spinning, dyeing, looms, wool & yarn, knitting, sewing, embroidery & quilts, macrame, dye, leather
COMMUNITY – forebears, funk living, Japanese communes, schemes, the commune lie, consideration, organization, market, business, funds, food, cooking, kitchen, vegetables, woks & Dutch ovens, preserving, storing, grinders & juicers, gourmet equipment, gadgets, wine & beer making, sauna, massage, Go (the board game), stuff, dogs, animals, dope, mental health, health, emergency medicine, first aid, doctoring, drugs, country cures & medical stuff, home delivery, birth, baby stuff, sex, women, death, bargain living, bargain buying, Sears, Wards, shopping, shoes etc., Hong Kong, outlaw, time, justice, organization, politics, down home, country, kindred, the arts, kindred, New Mexico road
NOMADICS – the Great Bus Race, buses & campers, campers & trailers, Volkswagen, car repair, vehicle repair, off road, motorcycles, bicycles, The Way, walking, aloof, mountains, horses, boots, moccasins, camp clothing, tents, sleeping bags, packs, outdoor suppliers, snow equipment, north, camping, camp, survival, guns, knives, bow & arrow, bowhunting, fishing, canoeing, canoes, kayaks & inflatables, boats, scuba & surf, diving, sailing, seamanship, cruising, ocean, boatbuilding, boats, boat supplies, flying, airplanes, sky sports, exploration, trips, Nepal, travel
COMMUNICATIONS – diagram, image & control, silence, culture, style, language, universe, mind, sense, brain, information, math, organization, computer design, computers, electronics, radio, electronic equipment, high fidelity, managing rock, tape, electronic synthesizers, music, instrument making, guitars & banjos, dulcimers, exotic instruments, wind instruments, music, economics, non-profit, tokens, money, capitalism, video, theater, filmmaking, film, photography, photography supplies, art, image, art, painting, silk screen, printers supplies, writing, bookmaking, printing, books
LEARNING – parent, toys, children’s books, home school, children’s art, learning books, nature, astronomy, history, pioneer, wilderness, Indians, games, kites & paper airplanes, kid technology, science, teaching, schools, school methods, school things, free schools, correspondence schools, what to do, culture, The Game, dope, psychedelics, discorporate, paranormal, mysticism, psychology, mind, centering, self-hypnosis, meditation, yoga, calisthenics, myth, China & Tibet, excursions, Don Juan, mysticism, thinking, serendipity

It’s kind of like a random walk through sixties counterculture. You can see the interest in other cultures, the reaching back to the past for skills, and the hopeful looking upward, outward, and into the future.

Not very helpful for organizing my future website, though.

It’s a cautionary tale

1971 was two years after Woodstock and seven years after Ken Kesey’s psychedelic road trip that Tom Wolfe wrote about in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. By the time this final catalog came out, people had experience with actually living in communes and trying to live a better life away from the repressive Establishment. The Community section is peppered with sad letters and essays, and this photo that says a lot about the reality of living with other people:

IMG_1972

It’s a historical artifact

The counterculture has moved on. Stewart Brand, the genius behind the Catalog, has moved on and rethought a lot of what he wrote in the sixties. For one thing, he’s now saying that the environmentally responsible thing is dense urban living, not dropping out to live on a tiny farm. Here’s a link to his current work with the Long Now Foundation, and here’s his Ted talk at the U.S. State Department.

Politics have shifted. The page on guns includes an affectionate note about the NRA, its useful magazine with tips on things like storing and preparing game, and the help it provides to any member who has a question. The writer says there are a lot of “flag-freaks and super-patriots” involved in the organization, but it hadn’t yet taken on the boundless power it seems to have today.

And I think this page on computers is a perfect illustration of how technology has grown since the year I took Fortran in college. Check out the features of the $4,400 and $4,700 desktop calculators, compared in the bottom left corner of the page.

IMG_1971

It’s hope and confidence

One thing that comes through loud and clear is the idea that people can do anything they put their minds to. Want to raise goats and churn your own butter? You can learn how from this book, and buy the supplies you need from these sources. Want to build a camera and create your own movies? The resources are here. Same for raising wool, spinning yarn, and knitting sweaters. There’s a pitch for the USDA Agricultural Extension Services, with free help and information on all kinds of things.

And bigger problems, like overpopulation, pollution, and poverty, aren’t insurmountable. Read this book, and think about these ideas, and use your ingenuity to invent solutions using these tips.

Well, this trip down memory lane didn’t help me much with the website organization question I came in with, but it gave me a lot to think about. And it led me to the Long Now and its optimistic podcast series. Just what I need in 2018.

If you also remember the Whole Earth Catalog, or if you’re from a different generation and have something else that brings your era to vivid life the way this did for me, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

 

 

 

May 18, 2018by Shan

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My goal is to write the kind of prose I like to read: friendly, beautiful, interesting, optimistic, and informative. ~ Shan Hays

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