The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Just in case you missed it, we’ve reached that time again, so Ask Me Anything! I’ll take queries via the usual routes: e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or comments on this post. I’m already getting good questions, but there is always room for more! Any topic welcome! Ask things that are serious or silly!
A couple of nice items this week:
:: Stephen Colbert, known for (among other things) his intense JRR Tolkien fandom, gave a short speech introducing a panel discussion of The Hobbit at ComicCon:
I was given hope that finally, finally people might not roll their eyes when I started talking about Middle-earth. That my head full of facts from Fëanor to Faramir might suddenly have some social value! That someone might say to me, “Hey Stephen, you know a lot about Tolkien. Can you explain something to me?” And I would say “Yes, oh God yes, I will!”
:: Lots of links around the sports sites on the Interweb, so I won’t bother, but I couldn’t consider myself any kind of real Buffalonian if I didn’t salute this guy’s enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
More next week!
After last week’s big dose of heavy Austrian Romanticism, a lighter work seems called for this week: the Symphony in C by Georges Bizet.
Bizet’s life was, in many ways, the archetype of the 19th century artist: he struggled to achieve success, and his moments of triumph were fleeting; he worked himself very hard, which, coupled with awful health habits, led him to an early death; the work for which he would likely be best known forever was unsuccessful at first. The Gods of Art can be a heartless bunch, but at least they let Bizet stick around long enough to give the world Carmen, which after its initial failure went on to become one of the most beloved operas ever written.
The Symphony in C dates from early in Bizet’s life, when he was just 17. He wrote it as a student piece while at the Paris Conservatoire, and though he would reuse tunes from the work later on, Bizet apparently never regarded the symphony as anything other than a thing he did for school, and it was likely never even performed in his lifetime. After Bizet died in 1875, his papers — including the manuscript for the symphony — went to the Conservatoire, where it sat in storage until someone dusted it off in 1933. The symphony’s first performance took place on February 26, 1935, almost sixty years after Bizet’s death and almost eighty years after he wrote it.
The work itself displays none of the heavy-handed German-Austrian density so common to the more familiar symphonic music of the day. Bizet’s touch is light, and the symphony sounds like a youthful work, not in the sense that it lacks sophistication, but in the sense that it abounds with gentle optimism. Here is Bizet’s Symphony in C.
I’ve seen other people do this, and I figured, why not? We’re heading into my favorite time of year (August through December are just awesome), when lots of my favorite things tend to happen, and this year’s even better because I’m publishing Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) in November. In fact, one hundred days from today is November 9. That sounds like an interesting date, doesn’t it?
Mainly this will unfold on Instagram, but it’ll spin out with appearances on Tumblr, Twitter, and, of course, here, the flagship location for All Things Jaquandor. It’s going to be a very busy few months, and I figure this little project will help keep my head from floating away. I have a book to finish editing, then an author website to create, then the same book to format, a cover to design, and then the last proofreading before publishing. And in the midst of all that, over the next few months, there are the County Fair and other stuff with The Family, going to see Guardians of the Galaxy, reading books, vacationing in October with our annual trip to Ithaca, possibly tie-dying some new clothes, and at some point receiving a few pies in the face. About the only thing I don’t have going on is a wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it.
More details on 100 Days of Happiness here. Come on, folks, let’s be happy! Or something like that.
(Hmmm…interesting timing, this little meme-project wrapping up on November 9…I may have to make sure that Day 100 is particularly interesting….)
So go ahead, folks — Ask Me Anything! (Answers will come on the back half of this month, as always. Questions may be submitted via comment on this post, or e-mail, or Facebook, or Tumblr, or Instagram, or GooglePlus, or Parcel Post when accompanied by something nice, like chocolate.)
This one’s more serious in tone than usual, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Roger had an unfortunate experience in a place he has naturally seen as something of a sanctuary. How do you deal with things like this — either this type of situation, or in more generic terms, a situation in which something or someplace you see in a certain peaceful way is violated?
I have a bit of an obsession with flash drives and external hard drives, in that I own three of the latter and more than half a dozen of the former. I love extra storage, and I’m all about backing up my work. But there’s one flash drive I use more than any other, and it’s this little fella right here:
The name used to be on it, but that’s worn off long ago. There’s a little plastic loop thing on the other end so you can put it on a keyring, but that broke off, too. This thing keeps on going, though, and it holds 32GB. I have all my writings on it, plus all my photos, plus I have several portable versions of programs I use frequently, such as Chrome and Photofiltre, so I can use this thing to do work on breaks whilst at the Day Job. The last few months, since the little key-ring loop broke, I’ve kept this drive in my coin pocket at work.
And this past Friday when I got home, I forgot about it, and tossed those pants in the wash. On Sunday I washed the pants, and then ran them through the drier. Twice, actually, since things were still a little damp after one cycle.
Yesterday morning I got up and got dressed, and when it came time to slip that little drive into my coin pocket, I couldn’t find it. I suddenly realized there was only one thing that could have happened, and sure enough, when I looked in the drier, there it was. It had gone through the entire washing and drying cycle, submerged in soapy water, then resubmerged in clean water, and then tumbled about a drying chamber in high heat. There was no way that little drive still worked.
Guess what.
I wish I knew who made it, because that thing took a beating and still worked just fine today. I’m impressed.
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
