Arnold Bennett quotes

(from the Moleskine harvest)

Quotes from Journal Of Things New and Old, by Arnold Bennett (about 1923)

All political parties in all countries disappear sooner or later, except the Conservative, and the Conservative is immortal because it is never for long divided against itself. How many times in Britain has the Liberal Party split? The first and most powerful instinct of Tories is self-preservation. They do not really want anything but the status quo.

The best part of a holiday is that daily habits and rituals are broken.

When a good novel falls away at the end or near the end, it’s because the writer simply ran out of power. He miscalculated his creative strength. Nobody can pour a quart out of a pint pot.

[Man, was that ever true in the case of Stephen King’s Wizard and Glass. The middle part of the book was strong and powerful. The coda in the Emerald City was anti-climactic and sodden by comparison. And I could tell King was trying to goose it along, trying to make the characters frightened and anxious. But it only made me annoyed. The book’s real story had been told and this last bit was simply the connective tissue to get them moving back along the Path of the Beam.]

[Attending the performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sadko lifted his spirits regarding his in-progress novel.]

A novel in process of creation has to be lifted up … [maybe] again and again. The large mood for it has to be recaptured again and again, to work its miracle there is nothing so efficacious as the sight or hearing of a great work of art — any art. Many times have I gone into the National Gallery, or to a fine concert … to recover the right mood.

An artist engaged in a work ought never to read or see or hear second-class stuff. If he does, he realizes the resemblances between his work and the second-class; and is discouraged. Whereas if he sticks to first-class stuff, he realizes the resemblances between his work and it, and is enheartened thereby.

It is well not to chatter too much about what one is doing, and not to betray a too-pained sadness at the spectacle of a whole world deliberately wasting so many hours out of every day, and therefore not really living. It will be found, ultimately, that in taking care of one’s self, one has quite all one can do.

Can you deny that when you have something definite to look forward to at eventide, something that is to employ all your energy, the thought of that something gives a glow and a more intense vitality to the whole day?

Moleskine harvesting

I recently finished off one of my little squared Moleskine buddies. I don’t number the pages, but I do date every entry. This book was with me from about 30-Mar-04 to 21-April-05. Plenty of pauses for no-entries, but it was with me during significant times.

There are entries on the letter Cara sent me that knocked me off-kilter, our trip to Toronto, drawings, details on job interviews, quotes, notes on my NaNoWriMo novel, my mother-in-law’s final illness and death, various journal entries, booknotes, Liz’s health crisis from earlier this year, my ongoing job-search efforts, and various lists, plans, and muslings (a new word I just invented blending “musings” and “noodling,” with elements of “doodling” not to be denied).

After I’m done with a journal, I write up a date-based index on the last few blank pages, with brief indications of what I wrote about that day. Post-Its hold the overflow when I run out of pages. It’s a terribly linear way of recording my life and thoughts, I suppose, but I like the juxtaposition of a visual journal entry next to my wailing about “will I ever find a job?” next to my mini-comic ideas.

So the next few blog entries will be me dumping various entries I deem blogworthy from my recently retired Moleskine.

The Joys of Total Recorder

Without a doubt, one of the most-used programs on my PC is Total Recorder (I have the Professional Edition), which I use to record RealAudio feeds, most notably the BBC4’s In Our Time series, NPR programs, Edison’s Attic, interviews, All Songs Considered, and whatever else catches my magpie attention.

I use MediaPlayerClassic as part of the RealAlternative package, in my quest to rid all computers of RealPlayer. I’m still a happy member of Rhapsody, which no doubt has Real software entwined about its innards, but that I can live with.

I recently figured out how to use the TR Scheduler, so now I can record the entire In Our Time archives and listen to them on my commute, when I do the dishes, etc. I stack up about 5 programs at a time and set them to record when I’m in bed or at work. And the little MP3s are waiting for me when I get back.

(For the GTD geeks who care, I have the following folder structure: C:\Music\@Inbox\InPlay. The new MP3s go into the inbox, and when I load them on the Digisette, I also move them to the InPlay folder. After I’ve listened to them, I either delete or archive them.)

It doesn’t quite replace Audible–there’s room at the table for both. But I’m interested next in digitizing some of our old albums, and Total Recorder includes a plug-in to help clean up those scratchy audio captures. The only thing TR doesn’t have is a CD-burning mechanism, but that’s pretty ubiquitous. I still use Roxio CD Creator 5 for that (one of the few things I still use Roxio for).

TR is a great program at a very nice price and one of my pieces of Essential Software.

Stoicism

I was just listening to a BBC Radio4 discussion
on Stoicism and thinking how that and the Tao te Ching seem to be my natural philosophies. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Constructive Living, but that’s also close to my heart. (Here’s another good place to learn about CL.) I wish I could remember their precepts in the heat of the moment, but it’s when you’re under the gun that you become teachable, or that seems to be my case anyway.

Does Stoicism mean you become a passionless robot? I don’t know enough to say. But I think it is useful to channel those passions, to turn that random energy into more useful paths so that you’re not damaged by it. And that probably standing a bit back from yourself, and seeing yourself as others see you, may be a very useful self-management strategy.

I was beside myself yesterday at work, pushing to get a project out the door and realizing that there simply wasn’t enough time, that you can’t pour a quart into a pint pot. I left to get something to eat, came back to the office, sat, and cleaned up what I could. I sent out emails that I think were measured and judicious. And I was counting on the rest I’d get this weekend to give me perspective and new ideas by Monday morning.

My main source for Stoic resources is/was the Ptypes web log (P for Personality Types) (maybe, P for Pita? I didn’t know people still used that service.). He seems to try all the new blogging technologies: his Blogger log doesn’t seem to work anymore, but he has links to an RSS feed and a Yahoo My Web page.

AnnualCreditReport

I applied for a state government job a few months ago that required a security background check. The contracting company I was working through used Choicepoint, which of course fills one with confidence. The report came back with three outstanding warrants against my first and last names in Arizona and Virginia. I called Choicepoint to dispute the report and gave them more information (middle name, height, SS#, race, weight, etc.), and they ran this extra information past the outstanding warrants. Of course, that cleared me. I have to admit they attacked the problem and cleared up the report within 48 hours.

It made me think it was time to get a credit report as well, to see what might be lurking in the background there. Back in the late ’80s, I applied for a loan at a computer store to buy a Mac and was refused. When I got the credit report, it was clear my name had gotten mixed with the name of someone who shouldn’t have been allowed in the parking lot of a bank. I got that cleared up (and wound up not buying the Mac, after all). We had no problems later when it came time to apply for mortgage loans or when we refinanced.

Still, it’s something that needs to be checked from time to time. I wish my credit union offered a service through which I could get a copy of my report. I saw that the FTC’s credit website had a link to something called AnnualCreditReport. It looks pretty good: look up your state and see when you’re entitled to request a free copy of your credit report from each of the big three (Experian, Equifax, Transunion).

From the home page: “This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.” Note that the site is co-sponsored by the Big 3.

You can request three reports at one time (one report from each of the three, which means you can’t request again for another 12 months), or request a single report every four months and rotate through the three that way. See the FAQ more info.

From the site, you can check to see when you can request your free copy. (I can’t request a free one till September 2005.) According to federal law, you can only be charged $9.50 for a credit report, so it’s not expensive in any case. But since the credit-reporting companies don’t make much money on them, they do offer extra add-on packages to the standard report that strike me of dubious value.

BioWork-related Links

During the winter of 2005, I took the BioWork program at Durham Technical Community College. It’s a 128-hour course designed to re-tool students to work in biotechnology manufacturing. Given that this area is losing lots of unskilled and skilled manufacturing jobs, and since this area is also attracting biotech manufacturing facilities, BioWork is a good attempt to re-educate a workforce to take on these new manufacturing jobs. Also, for many biotech firms, a BioWork degree equates to 6 months of work experience.

Following are locations related to the biotech industry in North Carolina. Some are to the companies, others to non-profits, associations, or other job-search sites. [If I have time, I’ll eventually add live links, but right now, it’s enough to list them.]

Clinipace
Hatteras BioCapital
NC Medical Device Organization (NCMD)
NC Center for Entrepreneurial Development
helpdesksolutions.com
triangletechjournal.com
crashnet.com
carolinanet.com
synthematix
voyager pharmaceutical
biospace.com
biotech.org
Diosynth

Staffing Services
clinforce
accstagging
hirehealth.com

ADDENDUM: Durham Tech has since added many supporting chem courses to its biotech line-up.

The Limits of Reading

Anthony Lane, in an excellent appraisal of PG Wodehouse in The New Yorker (April 19 & 26, 2004 – not online), includes this quote from Marcel Proust:

Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit, it tends to substitute itself for it, when truth no longer appears to us as an ideal we can realize only through the intimate progress of our thought and the effort of our heart, but as a material thing, deposited between the leaves of books like honey ready-made by others, and which we have only to take the trouble of reaching for on the shelves of the libraries and then savoring passively in perfect repose of body and mind.

Lane, who loves Wodehouse in precisely measured doses, draws a good dividing line between artists of the first and second ranks (there are further ranks, of course). An artist of the first rank creates a world with clear and real correspondences to our world–“who returns us with a vengeance to our own travails.” I think of Chekhov’s stories of peasant and middle-class life, which, though they occur in a place and time so different from ours as to seem another world, resonate with the life I see around me every day.

An artist of the second rank, such as Wodehouse, Doyle, Tolkien, instead create a “complete alternative world, fully furnished and ready for occupation.” The worlds of Sherlock Holmes, Hobbits, and Bertram Wilberforce Wooster (and dare I say, “Star Trek”?) offer cozy cubbies to curl into, and there is real pleasure in that. I never want to give up those worlds.

Without denying Wodehouse’s mastery, Lane uses Proust’s quote to turn his essay to what happens when we stay too long in those worlds, as Wodehouse did and as Lane’s Uncle Eric did. Lane describes in his article how his Uncle Eric had two complete Wodehouse collections, one for upstairs, one for downstairs, all heavily annotated by himself in pencil. When he needed to look up a reference, I guess he needed to do it immediately. Uncle Eric never married and though he led a busy life, it ended rather narrowly, as a bit of a genteel hermit, without many friends apart from distant family.

A few quotes from Lane’s piece:

…When you fall afoul of the real world, your exploration of the unreal will grow ever more quizzical and devout. Comedy is still our least bestial way of admonishing the wreckage of our lives–no animal has ever laughed–but too much comedy, or nothing but comedy, has a subtle, feline habit of pushing our lives so far away from us that they cease, as if in a dream, to be our responsibility…The journey that is charted in Uncle Eric’s Wodehouse collection, in the self-persuading chatter of his annotations, is a journey away from the great things–from the predations of love and war–into the wavelike soothings of the small.

…Like many of us, [Uncle Eric] wanted the good life, or, failing that, the quiet life, and he found tht it was most readily available between hard covers….There are times when the quest for good, or the belief that the good and quiet life are all that matters, can shrivel into a minor kind of evil–when the desire to be innocent, unfoxed by the dust and dirt of relationahips, and unscraped by the presence of people very different from ourselves, can dwindle into the loneliness of the bigot. We have to give a damn.