Friday, May 21, 2010


This week I have had a Mouse on a Trike as my Facebook Profile Picture because it has been Bike to Work Week.



At the park Pierce Transit sets up for a free lunch for the first seventy-five Bike To Work Week participants. The Pierce Transit representative said he rode twice from downtown to Pierce Transit headquarters during the week. They are not sure how many riders will be at the event. All week it has been rain with thunder and lightning and sun breaks. It is dangerous to take a bike along a hillside in a lightning storm, but it was not that bad for my Bike To Work Ride - about seven and a half miles out, seven and a half miles back. One day, to my volunteer job. I can register my ride if I want to.



Red geranium, orange marigolds – the weather is cool and wet from rain. On my walk to the library I saw a bike rider heading towards the park for the Bike To Work lunch and fashion show. Bike riding leaves time to view some gardens from the street – one or two gardens had spectacular wisteria vines in bloom.


Saturday, May 15, 2010

Detective Fiction Read with The Maltese Falcon Reads Together

While reading The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, I read some detective novels from the present. Through Novelist, a novels-by-subject finder "the maltese falcom" brings up a novel by Joanne Dobson called The Maltese Manuscript. I read this detective novel and found that its series informs readers about women writers in the Nineteenth Century.
Within Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: The Woman Writer in Nineteenth Century America,, by Joanne Dobson, is an Emily Dickinson quote from a letter in which Dickinson comments about "newspaper reporting of industrial calamities". The comments are from Dobson:
Who writes those funny accidents, where railroads meet each other unexpectedly, and gentlemen in factories get their heads cut off quite informally? The author, too, relates them in such a sprightly way, that they are quite attractive.
Here the message pulls away from the subject matter; violence and personal calamity in a newly industrialized society are subordinate to matters of literary style, causing a fracture of expectation upon which the success of the passage, as a piece of writing, depends Through felicitous combinations, words are wrenched away from their meanings: accidents are "funny"…
(Perhaps this Dickinson observation about language led Joanne Dobson to write her series of detective novels to enlarge knowledge about women writers in history. )

Thursday, May 13, 2010

While reading The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, I read some detective novels from the present. Through Novelist, a novels-by-subject finder "the maltese falcom" brings up a novel by Joanne Dobson called The Maltese Manuscript. I read this detective novel and found that its series informs readers about women writers in the Nineteenth Century.

Within Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: The Woman Writer in Nineteenth Century America,, by Joanne Dobson, is an Emily Dickinson quote from a letter in which Dickinson comments about "newspaper reporting of industrial calamities". The comments are from Dobson:

Who writes those funny accidents, where railroads meet each other unexpectedly, and gentlemen in factories get their heads cut off quite informally? The author, too, relates them in such a sprightly way, that they are quite attractive.

Here the message pulls away from the subject matter; violence and personal calamity in a newly industrialized society are subordinate to matters of literary style, causing a fracture of expectation upon which the success of the passage, as a piece of writing, depends Through felicitous combinations, words are wrenched away from their meanings: accidents are "funny"…

(Perhaps this Dickinson observation about language led Joanne Dobson to write her series of detective novels to enlarge knowledge about women writers in history. )

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A Mural




Since the mid-nineties near Wright Park a wall of a market has featured a mural that portrays Wright Park. During a market enlargement a tin-colored metal chimney has been attached to the mural - it blocks part of the mural, and that is wrong. My gray outline shows the shape of the chimney somewhat. The stairs are gone, replaced by a deli addition - but this mural has been a nice part of the area.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Gradualism

During guided reading of The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, in other detective novels encountered along the way, in Steve Allen's Murder on the Glitter Box, how nice to encounter the following in the narrative - Steve Allen is tied up in a wine closet, the line is like this: I struggled to loosen the knots on my wrists, struggled, struggled, gave up. Rested, then started again... To me to have the gradualism reaffirmed - Yes, Never Give Up has a point, but in the story, Steve Allen knew when to rest.

Steve Allen needed twelve hours of sleep a night. He was known as a long sleeper.

There is such an interesting quote somewhere - never give up gradualism. Biked to get film developed and had along eight negatives from the nineties. The following day, took the bus to scan a hundred two images onto a cd. Gradualism. Stages. Never give up gradualism.