ThatGrrl

"The Silent Book Club is a global community of readers and introverts, with more than 800 chapters led by local volunteers around the world. SBC members gather in person and online to read together in quiet camaraderie. Find a chapter near you or a virtual meetup at http://silentbook.club."

My local chapter has gone dark. I think it happens a lot to groups like this. Someone gets inspired to start, works at making it go, then gets discouraged when it doesn't work as well or as fast as they would like. Some hang in there, a lot don't and move on to the next fresh inspiration. People don't understand, or don't want to know that nothing starts out big. The groups that hang in and trudge along are the ones with a chance to grow and become popular, or at least get a regular attendance.

I thought about offering to take up the local group myself, to re-start it. But, I pulled myself back and waited. Its so easy to take on a new challenge when its fresh and you feel enthusiastic. For me, I'm better to wait and see if I still feel that way a week from now. I'd rather wait now than have another project started and left unfinished/ unsatisfied.

There are times you make a go of something and then something else comes along to muck it up. Its not always in your control. But, some of it is. Know yourself and don't jump in with both feet right away. Make sure its really what you want before you commit to it.

I have written in a book. A book I owned not one borrowed from someone else or a library. Also, not a book I was going to trade in at my local secondhand bookstore for more secondhand books. So, I didn't feel it was defacing the book, but it still felt as if I were breaking some kind of cultural barrier.

Quoted from the Amazon book description of "The Reader in the Book: A Study of Spaces and Traces" by Stephen Orgel.

"One of the most commonplace aspects of old books is the fact that people wrote in them, something that, until very recently, has infuriated modern collectors and librarians. ... The underlying question is at what point marginalia, the legible incorporation of the work of reading into the text of the book, became a way of defacing it rather than of increasing its value-why did we want books to lose their history?"

I made notes about what I was thinking as I read the book. I made wonderful notes I wish I could read again now and be inspired by what I thought years ago when I first read the book. But, I gave the book to someone else to read and they didn't value it the way I did. It's gone. I don't even know if they read it cover to cover as I did, or just humoured me when I said how wonderful I thought it was.

Beyond that sad little story, I think people who write in a book are those who did find more inspiration, more to explore, in the book than the people who read it (maybe even loved it too) but did not leave any notes. Leaving a note, making that decision and acting upon it to crack into the pristine pages of a book... it takes guts, for lack of a better word. Writing in a book, leaving a mark is one thing, quite a thing for some. But, that's just the start. Your personal thoughts are there, exposed, for as long as that book is still around.

A book has to be burned to be destroyed. Throwing it into the garbage is not a final end. Someone could still pick it out, clean it up a bit and read it. Composting, is closer to an end, but that takes time. Quite a lot of time and you're not going to be there to guard the spot where its composting for as long as it would take for that book to break down. So, your thoughts will be there beyond the time it takes to jot them down.

Knowing and thinking about all of this, would you write in a book? I still do.

I read a post about mudlarking. What to Know About Mudlarking. From Archaeology Now, London, England.

"Mudlarking is the romantic name for scavenging on the riverbank (also called the foreshore) when the tide is out."

Things I learned about mudlarking in England: you need a license (even just to poke around), there are places you are not allowed to go, and you must report your finds. The writer, Jill Brown, suggests a catch and release plan where you don't keep what you find, just put it back. Take photos, leave it where you found it. I can understand, those are the general rules for urban exploration too.

But, what if I want to keep it? I don't know if we have rules about beachcombing or mudlarking here in Canada, or Ontario. Maybe they do in Toronto, the city itself. I'm not sure if the same urban exploration rules apply for finding something washed up on a beach or forgotten under the dirt in a forest, etc.

I like the name mudlarking, but I would think of it as beachcombing. I wondered if they were two words meaning the same thing or is there a difference between the two. Reading the description from the post, they sound very similar. Unless you're some kind of elite purist and insist beachcombing can only be considered beachcombing if it takes place on an actual beach. I've never heard of forestcombing (as far as I can remember) and I know there is mud in a forest.

This is a history of mudlarking, quoted from the same post as above:

"Many 19th-century mudlarks were poor, desperate children. They made their miserable livings selling pieces of coal, bits of rope, and anything else they could find. Two hundred years on, the mud is still dirty, the water is still cold, and the extraordinary treasures are still few and unpredictable, but mudlarking has become amateur archaeology."

I don't think beachcombing started that way. It seems it has always been a hobby, finding little things to collect and ponder about.

I'm interested in Ontario history, including our rural heritage. (I volunteer with Ontario Barn Preservation).

Today I found several links about heritage apples, forgotten apple varieties and trees in Ontario, and information about pruning and growing trees from the seeds of the old apples you might find on a road trip here and there.

My Mother and Grandparents talk about the apples they used to have for making pies and wonder where they could still find those now. They don't see them sold in farmer's markets and certainly not in stores any more.

I found a few good links and then this book, by Sher Leetooze, "Identifying Heritage Apples Across Ontario". I bought a copy of the book. I'm hoping it will include greening apples. A variety my Mother mentions every year. She remembers them being the first, early apples available each year. They grow (grew) here in Ontario but we haven't found any yet.

Orchard People

The Kitchen Orchard

The Ontario Heritage and Feral Apple Project

Pick some wild apples this year. You could even try planting some of the old trees seldom seen any more. Give them a chance to get a new start and have apples close at hand when you get into pie making mode.

I've looked at so many interesting things related to minimal web site designs yesterday and today. My mind is full of this and that. I created an idea for this site, doodled the layout I'd use. Then, I found this software, Chyrp-lite.

It has enough features to work with my old site and yet its simple to deal with. So far. I've thought others were going to work, gotten enthusiastic and then found they just didn't work for one reason or another. I wondered if I was just being too picky. Or, finding ways to nitpick and procrastinate about getting the site up again. I hope not.

Installing it wasn't difficult. Looks like it uses markup which I will have to get used to. Unless there is another option. This is my first post with the software. No problems found.

I joined the Dull Women's Club, on Facebook.

When asked what I thought dull meant, I wrote: Simple, plain, normal, sane. Able to appreciate the smaller things in life, if not the better things.

This is what I wrote as my self introduction:

I'm excessively dull. Sometimes the highlight of my day is finding my backscratcher to get rid of an itch on my back. I live in Ontario, the small city of Barrie. At the end of this year I will be 60. I live with my Mother, who is now 80. I collect books, more than I can actually read. I make ASCII art. I have been a writer and editor online for years. I used to crochet and sew. I'm divorced with no children. I drink coffee. I couldn't find a photo of myself though I have easily a thousand photos I've taken of old farm houses around Ontario. I'm a volunteer with Ontario Barn Preservation, writing the newsletter, etc.

A later comment about growing foot size as we get older:

I think everything you don't want to grow, grows as you get older. Things you wish would grow, like getting just a bit taller, don't grow. I started wearing men's shoes because I could get the same size (more or less) by number but they were wider and longer than women's shoes. Once upon a time I was a size 6, now I'm a 10. Not a 10 in the way I'd like to be a 10, just the dull way of having bigger feet.

Listening to people, family, and the media go on about your life and health as you get older, some days it feels like living with a jack-in-the-box. Any time it could pop up and that's it your time is up. I'm going to be 60 at the end of this year. I do wonder how many days I still have. I don't feel stressed about it but, I don't like it.

I wonder if there have been people who also didn't like the unknown date lurking in their future. Has anyone ever decided they didn't like the suspense and chosen their own expiry date? Not due to despair, or ill health. Just because you don't want to leave it random and unknown.

I don't think its suicide. It's not a decision made due to sadness, or ill health. I don't think its morbid either. Younger people may see it that way. Your experience is different. But, unless immortality becomes an option, I think its entirely reasonable.

Compare it to doctors deciding a birth date for babies by scheduling a caesarian for women. They don't know what the real birth date would have been, if the baby had been left in the womb until it made its own way, in its own time. I think choosing your own death date would be the same really.

You could have all your affairs in order, make sure your will is done right, write instructions for your funeral, burial, or whatever you want done with your leftover body. Decide where your possessions go, are distributed, knowing there isn't much of anything you can take with you. Spend that extra time with family and friends you've kept meaning to visit but didn't make time for. If you are a bucket list person, finish your list. Find a good spot and plant a tree! Otherwise, do those things you'd like to have done, travel to those places you would have liked to see, knowing your plan for how many days you've decided you have left.

In the end, you might choose to extend the date. There would be not reason you couldn't. That alone would be a good reason not to tell anyone else about what you're doing and the cut off date. Who wants someone reminding you about it. You might change your mind entirely. But, if you wanted to stick to your date and not keep waiting for it to come along and happen to you - why shouldn't a person take their own fate in their own hands and choose their last day for themselves?

One way or another I've done what I wanted for the site layout. Not exactly as I envisioned it but its done. Sometimes I can get lost in the details and use that to procrastinate from the bigger work at hand. Not 100% wanting to start on the big picture.

I tried using the FSE (full style editor) with WordPress. I even liked the idea of it. But, at this stage its more work to deal with it than to go back to GeneratePress, which I've gotten to know and find pretty reliable. So, that's what I did. Chalk it up to a learning experience as far as the FSE editor.

I also added a contact form. Something new for me. Will see how much spam it gets and then decide if I want to keep it. I'm not even sure how it works yet. Does it need an email address? I didn't give it one. If it stays in WordPress that will work out well enough. I'm not expecting to hear from many real people versus spam, other than my Mother.

Next I will start going through all my posts from the last 20 years to update them, decide whether or not to keep some of them, and fix the broken image files on all of them. Thank you WordPress for not exporting them this time. (I'm sure it did before because I don't remember having to fix this many other times I've moved the site). Anyway, it will be like re-visiting myself, reading an old diary. Along the way I will tidy up categories and maybe even tags.

Then, what can I do about content scrapers? Nothing I've found or tried seems to work.