Anderson Thanksgiving 2009
Every Thanksgiving we gather with my Mom’s side, also Andersons, and enjoy a few days of food and fellowship. this year I decided to chronicle the festivities.
Analog Blog
I love to write poetry. There was a time when a spiral bound notebook was my best friend, full to the bursting with youthful longings and observations in stilted rhyme. I’d like to think my poetry has matured since then, but I’m still very much untrained.
In my late teen years my poetry made an exodus from the pages of notebooks to the word processor documents on my computer. I even found myself writing poetry on a keyboard instead of with a handy pen on lined paper. For me, poetry will always be a handwritten art form, but the editing and storage aspect had become digital.
I’ve found in recent years that this is no longer the case.
I love buying small leather journals. I have at least five. Some become personal journals, some become concept and scratch books, others don’t really have a purpose and remain mostly blank. I have, however, created what I call a poetry finishing journal–the final resting place for my poems that I deem worthy of this honor. Most of my poems still go on my hard drive, but I no longer trust this as a safe medium. I’ve heard too many horror stories about burnt out drives and viruses, and though I do have a Mac, I just feel that analog is safer.
I guess you can call it my analog blog. Hey, there’s a thought for the yuppies and hipsters! I could make a fortune on overpriced faux leather journals, maybe even start a cafe with public “analog blogs” chained to reading tables so anyone can peruse the newest entries. This could be big!
What I’ve Been Up To Lately
"And Another Thing" Book Review
I immensely enjoyed and was immensely annoyed by Eoin Colfer’s new book, “And Another Thing,” his reverent yet irreverent love offering to Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy series. I’ve always respected Colfer as a writer. His ideas are fresh and his stories are lean and fast paced, never wasting time with heavy exposition or overly detailed descriptions. That’s why I was so surprised by the slow, almost dragging pace of this, his first book for adults. There were moments when I wanted to skip ahead a few pages–especially when he dragged out the long and often pointless Guide entries.
In Adam’s last Hitchhiker book, our heroes were left on an exploding Earth, clearly all very dead. “And Another Thing” finds them all mysteriously at the end of long and full lives, looking back with some confusion on the past. This mystery is soon, and brilliantly solved and the action catapults into . . . three very long and dull subplots that don’t seem to go anywhere. Adams often had random and very anti-climatic things happen in his stories, but at least the action didn’t let up. I think Colfer has confused Adam’s “anything can and will happen” approach to storytelling with an “anything can and will be explained in long and pointless exposition while the characters sit around and do nothing” one. Arthur Dent, for instance, spends the majority of the book sitting on a bed talking to a computer.
The characters are also a bit skewed. Though their voices are largely intact, they don’t always act the right way. Zaphod is dumb, but this time he’s too dumb, Arthur and Ford sit around and are not funny, Eddie the shipboard computer has been replaced by a very obnoxious and confusing “Left Brain,” Marvin is no where to be found and Colfer has dredged up a minor character and done so much modification to him, that he’s unrecognizable, and not half as fun. The best characters in this book are of Colfer’s own creations. Thor the Thunder-god is strangely coherent and meek, with a hammer that plays rock music while he fights, and the small group of refugee human retirees and their personal trainers is on par with the sanitary specialist from “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.”
I’ll admit, it felt good to be back in Adams’s universe, and I had forgotten how much I missed theses characters. There’s also some true comic genius at work here. There were four or five moments where I found myself laughing out loud. There are also sections so dull, so overwritten and expositional, that it feels as if this was still the writer’s first draft. If Colfer writes book 7, which I hope he will, he should definitely focus more on plotting and less on aping Douglas’s Guide narration, as good as he can be at it about half the time.
SLIGHT SPOILER: Those who were depressed by the nihilistic ending of “Mostly Harmless” are in for another bad surprise. Colfer really hasn’t fixed anything.
Anderson Family Band
My Dad and my brothers have been playing together for about two years now. Here are some videos I made for them.
The Savior of The World
Sing this to the tune of Danny Boy. It is glorious!
“I Cannot Tell”
by William Young Fullerton.
I cannot tell why He Whom angels worship,
Should set His love upon the sons of men,
Or why, as Shepherd, He should seek the wanderers,
To bring them back, they know not how or when.
But this I know, that He was born of Mary
When Bethlehem’s manger was His only home,
And that He lived at Nazareth and labored,
And so the Savior, Savior of the world is come.
I cannot tell how silently He suffered,
As with His peace He graced this place of tears,
Or how His heart upon the cross was broken,
The crown of pain to three and thirty years.
But this I know, He heals the brokenhearted,
And stays our sin, and calms our lurking fear,
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden,
For yet the Savior, Savior of the world is here.
I cannot tell how He will win the nations,
How He will claim His earthly heritage,
How satisfy the needs and aspirations
Of East and West, of sinner and of sage.
But this I know, all flesh shall see His glory,
And He shall reap the harvest He has sown,
And some glad day His sun shall shine in splendor
When He the Savior, Savior of the world is known.
I cannot tell how all the lands shall worship,
When, at His bidding, every storm is stilled,
Or who can say how great the jubilation
When all the hearts of men with love are filled.
But this I know, the skies will thrill with rapture,
And myriad, myriad human voices sing,
And earth to Heaven, and Heaven to earth, will answer:
At last the Savior, Savior of the world is King
And Another Thing . . .
The sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book came out today. And I was there. And I had my towel.
Acclaimed children’s novelist Eoin Colfer is picking up where Adam’s left off in his series, with all the main characters dead. Adams, who admitted that he was depressed when he wrote the last book, reportedly intended to write a sixth book, bringing all of his beloved characters back. This is that book. Regrettably, Adams, who died in 2001 of a heart attack, is not the author.
I really like Colfer and I really want to like this book. But I already know it just won’t be the same. Adams had such amazingly witty and intelligent style. Colfer, who is a solid writer, just can’t compare. He’s even said that he thinks of this book as just a big work of fan fiction. Fingers crossed. I’ll post a review when I’m done reading.
Golden Half
I bought a Superheadz Golden Half camera for my birthday in August. It’s a Japanese-made plastic half-frame camera that shoots two photographs on one frame of 35mm film. I’ve been really enjoying shooting with it lately. Every roll I shoot brings out a different aspect of the camera, my favorite being the soft focus on the edges of the frame. Here are some of my favorite shots so far.
My Young Radio Life
It was a Saturday afternoon in October. I was ten or so and laying on my stomach on the faded yellow carpet of our living room floor with my ear to the speaker. Every Saturday, after chores with Dad, we’d turn on “Those Were The Days,” hosted by Chuck Shaden, an Old Time Radio show that ran from 1 to 5 on WNIB 96.9. Saturday was radio day in the Anderson home. When Shaden signed off at 5 to “Thanks for the Memories,” we’d dial over to Wisconsin Public Radio to hear a Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. Tacos for supper, Keillor for company and a bath for Sunday.
Now that I think back, my young life was practically submersed in radio. In the morning I’d wake up to WGN Radio 720 with Roy Leonard, “Spike” and Cathy and Judy. Every day at lunch we’d turn on Rush Limbaugh, and every weekday afternoon at 3 we’d tune into Moody radio to hear another episode of “Adventures in Odyssey.” John Williams would fill our afternoons with lively banter, and on Saturday mornings Lou Manfredini would tell us how to fix up our house and Nick Digilio would review the movies. On Saturday evenings after Keillor there was Weekend Radio and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.” Sometimes we’d stay up late to listen to Cub games announced by Pat and Ron and to Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg debating tirelessly into the night with obscure members of intelligencia. When I couldn’t sleep I’d lay in my bed with headphones clamped to my ears, listening to Wisconsin public radio talk shows, Chapter a Day, Le Show with Harry Shearer, and finally BBC news at 12. I heard plenty of strange things through those late-night headphones: Big-foot encounters in the north woods, rampant liberal ranting, British news.
It was a Saturday afternoon in October and Chuck Shaden had just announced “Adventures by Morse, Episode 1: the City of the Dead.” The City of the Dead was a massive graveyard that lay in an abandoned valley. Only two old men tended it. I could see it in my mind, stark grave stones mounting in thousands of jagged rows against the darkening sky. The two men had heard the bell ringing in the old church, the bell that had been removed almost ten years ago. They went to investigate the ruined building and encountered a screeching thing in the belfry that attacked them and tore at their faces. I had never been more terrified in all my life. I lay stock-still on the carpet, sweating and straining to hear what would happen next, what this monstrosity might do. I never heard the end of the story, I must have turned it off in terror.
I just discovered this series online. What seemed then like the most awful imagination of man now sounds tame to my ears. The power of radio has lost some of its hold on me, but I still listen.
Probably Okay: Hands
We finally made a new Probably Okay.
The Fragile State
She turned and her smile broke,
She wore herself thin.
Broker in charm, investments glass,
It shattered, it slit along spider lines.
Nervous pearls clicked,
She glowed pale in the fragile state
Flushed, like bleeding fingers
I picked up the shards,
I left them for another.
Ages Lost
I walked down a lonely dock in the misty sea air.
I climbed high in pine trees that grew from the ocean floor.
I rode in a boat towards a massive tree made of stone.
I watched in awe as a world I had come to love fell apart because of what I had done.
Cyan made magic. Rand and Robyn Miller created worlds so real they made me cry. I wanted to visit the lost city of D’ni and breath the air of ancient tragedy, to climb to the summit of Riven’s main island and watch the lake people work on the sun-baked rocks. I wanted to sit with Atrus in his cavern study, listening to him talk of the science of word bending and world building, to peer into his three cursed prison books and speak words of sad forgiveness to those too dangerous to release.
Myst is no more. The worlds have faded into antiquated computer programs and slowly dying sequels. The “3D” realm of Myst V held only a scent of that forgotten dream. Perhaps such beauty cannot be repeated. Perhaps the Myst games, like the ancient civilization of D’ni, will be covered by the dust of ages. But I still dream of the blue waters of Riven.
Williams Park
I shot this footage back in spring when I was shooting my Sugar Mountain short. Taking a break from cataloging the ski slope I happened on this charming little park with a beautiful mountain stream that was still half-frozen. I originally planned to edit this into Sugar Mountain, but it just didn’t fit.
I’ve learned a lot about essay shooting since I shot this, the most important lesson being to only shoot when I know I have exactly what I want. While editing this I had to wade through hundreds of shots made useless because I mashed the red record button before I was sure of what I was capturing. No more!
Probably Okay: Word Of The Day
Death Eaters Are Alive And Well And Living in Greenville
(But apparently some people think they share more in common with Dumbledore.)
The Toy Camera Insanity Continues . . .
This summer I got hooked. I found some websites, read some articles, looked at some jpegs and fell in love. Over the summer my collection has grown from one plastic 35mm camera to seven cameras of various sizes, shapes, and film types. I’ve shot more rolls of film than I ever have before and created some really exciting images.
I’m still new at this, but I’ve already taken some grief from my photography friends. They think my toy photography is either dumb or pretentious or both. I just think its fun. I guess I don’t take the actual photographic process very seriously, just what comes out of that process. For me it’s not a job or a competition, it’s a game and an adventure. I never know what I’m going to get.
But this isn’t completely true. I feel that regardless of the lo-fi nature of my cameras, I have grown in my photographic art. By shooting with no options in regards to lens choice, depth of field, or zoom, I’ve been forced to focus on the subject matter of my shots. I’ve learned about the importance of human interest and the placement of subjects in the frame. I’ve also had the opportunity to create some very distorted and crazy images. And it’s been a blast!
Here are some of my favorite Toy Camera shots from this summer.
Probably Okay: Restaurant Review 3
Another restaurant review by many talented Mike. This time, we go to our favorite sandwich place, Atlanta Bread Company.