Author Archives: Theryn

Spin

I could have said that I am stepping down to spend more time with my children (which I truly want to do). Or that I am leaving to pursue other opportunities (which I also truly want to do). But I have never had much tolerance for others’ spin, so I can’t imagine trying to stomach my own. The simple fact is that not enough people watch my program.

—Campbell Brown

Apparently Campbell Brown is being applauded for Stating the Obvious.  Which, on the one hand, seems ridiculous, and on the other hand, is yes, refreshing (since it’s so rare). So isn’t it that startling honesty that’s appealing, not her “failure,” as the linked article seems to indicate?

[B]y admitting, in essence, to failure, she pulled off something quite magnificent: She appealed to those of us who have failed at one time or another. That is to say, she appealed to all of us[.]

—Meghan Daum

[btw: Google tells me that the phrase “failure is the new success” made its first appearance in 1999.]

The center-place of your experiences

There are three happiness killers – doing work you do not love and are not passionate about, surrounding yourself with people who you do not really like (someone who just fills time), and living somewhere that does not let you be you. Just stop it. Life is far too short. … your place, community or neighborhood is so important – it is not just where you live. It is the center-piece or should I say center-place of your experiences.

—Richard Florida

What Happened to my Cinnamon Bun?

J picked up cinnamon buns on his way home from the pool on Saturday. When I opened the box, I gaped in astonishment. (Really, I did! Then I ran to grab my camera.)

Bun #1 looked like this:

Cinnamon Bun #1

This is straight out of the box, placed as-is on plate. It looked like it was half-eaten. I don’t think it actually was, mind you, I think it was just mangled on its removal from the pan. Still! What would possess someone to place that mangled half-bun in a box and sell it as if it were a full bun?!

Fortunately, Bun #2 was perfect, so I can show you what they usually look like. Yum!

Cinnamon Bun #2

These cinnamon buns are delicious, btw. The worst part of the mangled half-bun was not its appearance; it was the loss of half the cinnamon bun goodness!

One bus driver’s salary

In the city [$3.40 an hour] bought you a house. We did, we went out and bought houses. In 1977 when I bought my house in Dunbar, it took one bus driver’s salary to buy a house in the city, even on the west side. And now it takes eight bus driver’s salaries to buy the same house. And that’s a huge change, in the city and the job and everything, the affordability of housing has massively changed.

—Angus McIntyre

I just did a quick search of Dunbar on MLS. Zero single-family houses under $1 million. Fourteen under $1.5 million.

The lowest priced house, at $1.195 million, was built in 1925 and has 7 bedrooms and 3 baths. The fact that there are no interior photos and the blurb includes the word “redevelop” means that it’s being sold for land value. The house may be perfectly fine to live in, but inevitably it’ll be torn down to the studs and re-built as a two- or three-unit “craftsman-style” condominium (never a proper duplex or triplex, always a condo).  In a year or so, each of those units will be sold for about $1 million each.

I try to be Zen about real estate in Vancouver, but sometimes it really grates.

A very small story

I had a lot to say and no one to talk to. So I wrote a story, a very small story, to send to friends and family.
…
Writing a novel is long and lonely. … I’ve been either off somewhere doing research or at home peering into art gallery catalogues for five years. So I fell out of touch with many people. If I saw anyone they’d ask what was going on with the novel. A hard question to answer, that.
…
New vocabulary was a bonus. From a friend living in Japan: “It’s great to hear about your progress, even if it’s a kolekutibu iimeeru.” (collective e-mail)

—Katherine Govier

Like they were notepads

Before I worked in publishing, and learned about things like first editions and galleys, I treated books like they were notepads, scribbling lists and phone numbers into them, stuffing articles between pages to read later. It’s these lists I flip back to now to remind me of who I was years before—a journal of sorts. … What will eventually become of these books with their treasure trove of notes and inscriptions? Electronic books are just pixels on a screen. These personal connections to the past make physical books so much more than that.

—Megan Alix Fishmann

I like finding ephemera that others have left behind in books. I love the idea of using a printed book like a notepad, a journal. I think that’s why I liked The English Patient so much.

And yet, I don’t underline or scribble in the margins of my own books. I don’t tuck things inside them to be found years later. I think this is mostly habit.

I didn’t actually own a lot of books as a child, so the ones that I did have I read over and over. Keeping those books note-free made each reading its own, uninfluenced by past readings. Most books came from the library, and of course, writing in library books was not allowed (never mind that lots of people do it anyway!). Later, when I’d run out of library books to read, I’d buy books from the used bookstore, read them, trade them back for store credit, buy a new set of books, and so on. Obviously, the better condition the books were in, the more credit you got. And things that were tucked inside would be lost (or become someone else’s).

By the time I started buying books and keeping them I was stuck in my not-writing-in-books ways (I also don’t turn down corners or anything like that).

Wooden tables with green lamps

[T]he fact of not going to the library [as a kid] never bothered me much until as an adult I found myself in one. It was a bit like a religious experience. Tall ceilings, imposing windows, rows of books, wooden tables with green lamps that loomed like ancient scholars bent over their ancient work. And silence, silence, everywhere silence. It was then that I realized that libraries are not just about the books. Yes, they are about the books, about voices from around the world that invite you into to slip between their covers, voices from the places one has not heard about, from people one could not have imagined. But it was the silence – being away from voices of one’s family, friends, inner voices of home-bound concerns, things to do, being away from voices that fills one’s mind so persistently and steadily that one mistakes them for one’s own – it was the silence that shocked me into listening, very hard, for faint whispers of a voice of my own.

—Maja Djikic

The rest of this quote is nice, but the sentence that got me was: “Tall ceilings, imposing windows, rows of books, wooden tables with green lamps that loomed like ancient scholars bent over their ancient work.” You mean there are actually libraries like that in the real world?!

Chalk this one up as one of the Great Disappointments of my youth. Every time I walked into a new library, I imagined it would be The One with the “[t]all ceilings, imposing windows, rows of books, [and] wooden tables with green lamps.” I spent the whole summer before junior high dreaming about the library, imagining it would be like this.

Why did I expect libraries to look like this? Because this is how libraries were depicted in books. And movies. But especially books.

When the junior high library turned out to be the usual—drop ceilings, metal shelving, Formica tables and plastic chairs, uncomfortably bright fluorescent lighting)—I was crushed. It was then gave up my dreams of wooden tables with green lamps. I still held my breath a little when going into a new library, but never in quite the same way, all wide-eyed anticipation unmitigated by cynicism.

Just get the words down

[M]y motto for writing (which is a big part of my daily existence and own happiness), one that I think applies to life as well: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Not that you should actually be drunk (the inebriated writer is a silly, antiquated idea, among other things), but that you should just get the words down whether you’re writing a letter, a report for work, or the story of your life, in six words or 60,000. Put the words down, don’t obsess over them, just effusively spill them down onto the page. Then step away—for an hour, a day, a week, whatever you need. And then edit. Edit like crazy. Be hard on words and yourself and make it better. And when you think you’re finished, edit it one more time.

—Larry Smith