This month’s challenge will centre around the image below (source). It’s entitled Fish room, and it’s one of the postcards featuring the wonderful art of Nicoletta Ceccoli.

  Gold Medal Winner: 

Quaeritata

  Gold Medal Winner: 

iconoclast

Literal Minded really looks neat! Great job everybody. Here’s some stuff I’ve written

here and there, if anyone would care to take a look - http://stokeycat.blogspot.com

Thanks, and keep up the excellent work you’re doing here.

- Mike Covey

PS - also, a zine I started if anyone would like to submit something or just take a look

As some of you know, the site email services (reminders, invitations, registrations) are dependent upon the email server installed on the server.  What this means is that since the move, no emails have moved from this site or any of the others. 

Now the situation has changed.  At the moment the email server was brought to life, the email capability of various sites was instantly switched on.  With a modicum of foresight, while installing the new email server and configuring it, I fortuitously deleted the thousands of emails the websites had tried since the move to inject into a non-existent mail queue.  So we are safe from avalanche.  However, the new email server, while running, currently has no spam or virus checking and only rudimentary connection security.  Emails generated by the sites should be okay, but the email server is not ready for regular use.  I haven’t even recreated all the email addresses (which a certain person forgot to back up).  I will post an update when we have full secure email back.

Today I like: walking out of a bookshop, thinking I’ve just spent sixty euros on books, and then realising that I won’t miss them; drinking a glass of quality whiskey and simply enjoying it without having to worry about not spending too much; carefully assessing the demands an upcoming challenge will make on me and realising I’m up to the task.

Today I don’t like: forgetting which way to twist a tap to turn it off; realising I’m still way behind on my required reading; realising I’m making jocular remarks about people over thirty because I’m afraid of growing old and incontinent and disabled and it’s scaring the shit out of me.

I’ve just had a quick look at the referrer sites — those web pages visitors to LM were viewing right before they came here. The results are somewhat amusing, though fortunately I can’t spot anything that would creep me out.

Here is a list of the search engine results that sported a link to LM:

Google.nz:
how long does it take a rose to wither

Google.ca:
inventor of petroglyph

Google.be
insult generator may your camels

Google.com
- purging through poetry
- analyze the wound dresser
- british parliamentary rules of debate
- writing styles of hemingway and faulkner
- Ambrose Flack: biography- ” Strangers That Came to Town”

Google.co.uk
william wayness

search.yahoo.com
the book thief quotes

search.aol.com
thoughts on the lottery shirley jackson

I picked up this book at the used bookstore a couple of days ago in my never-ending quest to understand other humans.

I’ve only read the first two stories, but they both made me think.  The first story showed that people can believe in the dogma of an organized religion but still get ethics and morality right - it was about two women who ran a soul food restaurant.  They were devout Christians but they didn’t judge and hate and try to control people.  Instead they accepted and loved them and helped people who needed it.  Which, yes, I knew that there were some Christians who were like that - the guy who owns my company is one, for instance.  It’s just nice to occasionally have reminders.

December 20, 2006

I’ve been reading Walden, by Thoreau, which the library wants back (*sob*), and which is so good it’s almost painful to read. Every word that man wrote seems to “reverberate within my soul”. I find myself reading a page or two, and then putting the book down, not because of any lack of interest, but because his writing amazes me. Very few authors affect me that strongly. I have an inkling that Wendell Berry is about to be added to that list; I’m just waiting to get my hands on some of his work in actual book form.

I’ve had that nagging feeling that I should be blogging or posting something about the book; maybe it would help me better keep track of my thoughts on it, or just bring up interesting discussion on authors. I was going back to look up this sentence, which I ran across this evening: “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book!” but instead ran across another passage that struck me, with a coincidence attached (which is in the quote at the end of this post).

Thoreau was writing on his once having almost “owned” a farm; in fact, he did, until the farmer’s wife changed her mind about the sale. His description of why he originally fell in love with the place is a perfect example of why I feel such connection with his words…he described precisely the notions I had about the place where we live now: “The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or in short, had made any more of his improvements.”

We have no river bounding our place, but if you’ve seen it, you’ll know that I have a certain fondness for dilapidated buildings; they have character. I also remember a day last year, when the persistent rumble of bulldozers had me worried. I went out in the yard at different points during the day, the noise kept getting closer to our house. Early the next morning, trees on the neighboring lot (still for sale) were swaying, then cracking with that horrible dying sound that trees have. I was on the phone with the realtor, who kept assuring me that they were just “defining some of the property lines”, while trees continued to fall. A neighbor stopped by, and confirmed my fears that something more was going on than a little “defining”.

Beyond our house, and the next in line for improvement, was a completely wooded lot, with no “suitable” spot for a house or driveway. What would they do to the woods I already loved, the oaks and hickories and a secret little grove of pawpaws, where the trees were so thick there was not sun enough for brambles, and your steps were so quiet you could surprise a deer? What about the “waterfall oak”, where the leaves clung on determinedly through the winter, the sound of the wind blowing through them once causing my son to think we must be somewhere near flowing water?

I took one more walk, trying to make up my mind. I couldn’t leave the children for long, so I brought a two-way radio with me, and ran down through the ravine, hurriedly searching for the property lines, trying to get a more definite feel for the place, arguing with myself the validity of spending the money to “save” a piece of land. I looked at trees, I cut across trails; I was out of breath by the time I hit the top of the next ridge. I considered lumber values…could I justify years of extra payments with those, knowing that we would probably never cut a single tree? I ran through a clearing, pausing long enough to see that it was still the perfect spot for a hidden house…then down the hill…all the while, I could still hear those bulldozers. My shoes were soaked; the dew was still on the grass and weeds. Then I came to the old fence line. There are old oaks here that belong in some fairyland, the line runs across the remnants of what was once a farm. Below this line, there is a ravine that is dark, cool, and silent. The ground is covered in moss, and the tree roots provide homes for little folk, my daughter and I are sure.

All the way back up the hill, and toward home, I debated with myself, told myself how crazy it is to fall in love with trees. I came up with all of the practical arguments I knew my husband would have when - if - I called him at work. But then I took one last side trail, back into the trees that would certainly be the first to go…and saw the light there, the stuff they call “dappled” in the summer, and that as you go deeper into the woods takes on a mystical feel…am I a romantic? I had to make the call.

We now “own” that other piece, but we haven’t touched it, other than to gather hickory nuts and explore the trails. There may be a day when we build a house back in that clearing. Or maybe not. But at least it’s there. What is a clearing without the woods around it?

“To enjoy these advantages, I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders, - I never heard what compensation he received for that, - and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone.”

*** Edit 09/08/2008: apparently no-one found the time to participate in the July Challenge. The Challenge for August will be up by the end of the weekend. ***

This month’s challenge will be open to both prose and poetry: the requirements have been set up to allow for either type of entry. Style, theme and subject matter are pretty much for you to decide.

If you would like to participate, you can submit your entry by clicking the “Create new Challenge Entry” link below.

Because of the continuing problems with the server’s operating system, there will be a scheduled downtime on Friday and Saturday, 18 and 19 July 2008.  During this time, a massive overhaul will be undertaken, which will leave the server with more disk space and a new operating system.  This site will be unavailable during that time.  More details to follow.

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We have had some database problems, but have had a valid backup to keep all the data safe throughout.

The problem has been ongoing, but I think I’ve got it all stabilised.  I’ll keep frequent backups until I’m sure.

As far as the character set problem we still have, I will find a way to run a search and replace in the database soon.

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