Apple Foot

Old forgotten words or ancient melodies

I just think this is a lot of fun. I don't think I much liked Toto the first time around, but I've grown very fond of this tune a capella (via Metafilter).

Tough Times, charitable division

Article headline in this week's newsletter from massnonprofit.org:

[organization] Launches Five-Year, $63 Capital Campaign

I know times are tough, but I had no idea expectations were so low.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Fooling around, I discovered the NYU N'Harmonics excellent cover of Bohemian Rhapsody.

Art, autism, history

I was reading an article in today's Boston Globe about an artist with autism, since the article dovetails nicely with my sister's interests and concerns, when I came across a throwaway line about the artist's sister, a Harvard professor of the history of science. I had a professor by that name at Wellesley, and her specialty was the history of science. Sure enough, it's the same woman.

When I was a prospective student, I spent a couple days on campus, staying on the floor of a sophomore double in Severance. The student I was staying with took me to her history class. The professor was Katie Park, and the course was a survey of medieval Europe. I was still supremely confident (if not arrogant), and so when she asked a question of her class, I, a guest, did not feel awkward offering my two cents. This was my first, humbling, step into college. The professor showed an ancient (Viking, I think) map of the world--it basically consisted of a circle with a couple lines dividing it into two or three vague sections--and asked what did it mean when people drew a map so lacking in detail?  I answered that it meant those people knew the area well, and didn't need a map. She looked at me kind of oddly, with that look that says you've startled your professor with something so incredibly stupid that they're concentrating very hard on not looking stunned. The real answer, of course, was that you draw a vague map when you don't know the area well, and you've no idea where things are.

As a Wellesley student, I wound up taking that same course with that same professor, and my senior year I took a course in Renaissance history with Park. I didn't really know much about her, but there ways in which I wanted to be her. She seemed young, and slim, and she wore these sort of nerdy glasses that looked very hip on her, and she was very, very smart. Top of her field. By the time I came to Wellesley as a student, I had less confidence than I'd had in high school. I knew that I would never be anything like Katie Park.

During the first semester of my senior year, a student on exchange from a women's college in California lived across the hall from me. For some reason she latched onto me. She wasn't a bad person, but she tried too hard, and I can't imagine how she must have felt, alone at Wellesley. She was also in the Renaissance history class. I remember she sat the next row over from me, and she was always trying to get my attention, whisper things to me. I think at first I smiled tightly, trying to convey that she was being very rude to our teacher. Eventually it got to the point where she was speaking at a near-normal volume, waving her hands and trying to get me to respond, and I sat stone-faced, staring intently at the professor, while other students around us shifted uncomfortably and my friend Lauren, behind me, hissed "Shut up!"

Last summer I spent some time clearing out a file cabinet at my parents' house. Going through my old college papers, I realized that my memory had glossed over my academic career. The evidence in my hands suggested I was much less smart than I remember. I didn't need to see the papers to remember my embarassing failure in Katie Parks' class senior year. She suggested I use a play as a basis for a history paper... oh, hell, I still don't understand what I was supposed to do. I turned in a fairly dull English major paper, in which I tried to stick a few historical facts. Even her assignments were way smarter than I could deal with.

Flat Stanley in Boston

Dear J,
Thank you for sending Flat Stanley to visit. We had fun walking around the city of Boston. I'm sending you some photos so you can see what we did.
Love,
Aunt AppleFoot

I sent my nephew a selection of photos, but you can see the complete, annotated set right here, if you're so inclined.

Enterprise Finale

Slice of SciFi quotes an IF Magazine interview with Brannon Braga, who admits:

“I think that final, final episode [of Enterprise], I may be understating it when I'm saying it didn't turn out as well as I hoped."

Thanks to io9 for categorizing this as "too little [too late]".

Why Wikipedia sometimes sucks

About 8 PM Saturday, I was looking for more information on Odetta, who died this week, and just about leapt out of my skin when I saw this.

Recently misinterpreted

What the sign near the loading dock said: NO IDLING

What I read: NO BLING

Vanities

I got new glasses last week. I can't decide if I'm too old for them, or not old enough. They're black plastic frames, and I think it's possible for them to look hip. It's also possible they say, "Medicare".

My sister has just joined Facebook and has been spending time answering the question, "Whatever happened to--?" The idea holds some fascination for me, too, but since I don't particularly want to connect with any of those people, and since I certainly don't want them connecting to me, I have so far managed to resist temptation. All of this is somewhat self-important, since it assumes anyone from back in the day would care to know about me.

I just finished the second volume of Showcase Presents... Wonder Woman -- because one 500 page volume of Bob Kanigher's work isn't enough. This volume re-prints more of Kanigher's doppelganger stories (along with alien invasions and adventures with Mer-boy). Of course, Shakespeare made a lot of hay out of the 'mistaken identity', 'identical cousins' -type plot, too, but Shakespeare's twins were not alien-made robots, living reflections created in a mirror dimension, or contemporaneously existing versions of the protagonist at various life stages. I'm pretty sure that one could make some sort of Freudian subtext out of the Wonder Woman/Wonder Girl/Wonder Tot adventures, or find something important to say about identity as seen in Steve Trevor's interest in Wonder Woman at the expense of alter ego Diana Prince, or something like that. I could probably even do something in the feminist vein about body image, seeing as how WW is variously made fat, made giant (and shown scarfing down Guinness Book-worthy sandwiches), made very tall and thin, etc. However, this is Bob Kanigher, so instead of analyzing, I just sit back and enjoy lines like, "Our Amazon Guinea Pig does not know it--but when the giant-fruit-bullet inside here is fired--it will track her down magnetically."

Globe has no guts

Post-election Doonesbury strips drawn a few weeks back assume an Obama win.

Today the Boston Globe chose to run an old strip instead, just in case the win didn't happen. Do they somehow think that incorrect strips would make the Globe look bad? Because personally, I think the responsibility and consequences all fell to Gary Trudeau.