monitorkitty

Evening - and I’m sitting here tap-tap-tapping away on the new laptop.

That’s right - I said new laptop. Something keeps me from keeping one in working condition for more than 3 years. I often wonder if there’s some electrical charge associated with some part of me that accounts for this periodic self-destruction of portable computer equipment….

In any event - after the Sony ate part of a chapter I was writing yesterday morning (then had a nervous breakdown, rebooted itself several times, looked at me sadly and said ‘it’s not you, it’s me…’ and then displayed the Blue Screen of Death repeatedly from 3 p.m til 6 p.m….) I marched into the nearest den of computer geeks and asked for advice.

About 1/2 an hour later and minus several shekels, I walked out of the store with a MacBook Pro and into a brave new world of dashboards and docks, widgets and menulets (which sounds ever so like something I learned to dance in fourth grade…) - and hopefully - finally - some sort of binary stability.

That’s right, my friends….I drank the KoolAid.

Thankfully, I’ve worked with different operating systems in the past. Wildly different in some ways. My first computer was a Commodore 64 with a tape drive. From there I graduated to a Commodore 128 and ran a BBS from my bedroom. I wrote my first major paper on Lexy’s Mac back in the long-ago…in the before-time. Then I went kicking and screaming into the PC world for nearly 18 years. I did spend some interesting weekends pulling together the Monitor Center imagery out of our Photography Department’s Macs (after a crash-course from the wonderful Sydney who ran off to Indianapolis….)

So I’m not a complete foreigner on these shores.

These beautifully, luminescent, virus-free shores…

From the William & Mary Quarterly, July, 1915, Volume 24, Issue 1 - so writes Robert L. Preston on page 66:

As fifty years have passed since that eventful combat, let us relegate to the rubbish heap all such tales as that the Monitor drove the Merrimac back to Norfolk, never to come out again. Burn up the histories, if they are incorrect, and re-write them. The hot blood of patriotism is excellent in time of war, but in peace by all means let us have the cold facts of history.

If fairy tales are necessary, serve them up to the little tin soldiers and the chocolate-cream generals, who have feasted on them so long. The real soldiers have no taste for them, and the children of the country need plain and simple food.

Now I’m hungry…..

From Monday’s a bitch

1. Have you ever been on a cruise?
Yes - several. But none of them are typical, and only one was on an actual cruise ship - and it had neither pool, nor floor show, nor shuffleboard. The rest involved square riggers and the leeward rail….

2. Do you own a gravy boat?
Sadly, no.

3. You’ve become the proud owner of a brand new boat.What do you name your vessel?
The HMS Burford, of course….

4. What is your favourite movie about boats?
Well - that would have to be ‘Jaws’ - since they need a bigger one….

5. Do you get sea sick easily?
65-foot square rigger, The Perfect Storm, galley duty…..you do the math.

…that i hate things that sting? without provocation?

yeah.

Today has given me pause, as I have only now found out about the death of the HMS Belfast’s ships’ cat.

I do hate people sometimes.

Anyway - I shall raise a glass this evening for ships’ cats past, present and future. And confusion to their enemies.

We drove to the end of the land, to a land where we don’t belong, yet we are welcomed. To a land where the view is sublime, yet the surroundings sobering. Where the flood robbed him of furniture, but not of spirit.

We entered the home of a genius - no furniture - but consumed in art. Stacks of paintings - boxes, closets, walls…full. Each as wonderful as the first, the last. Each an incredible discovery. Each one a blessing.

And he gave me three paintings…I wanted to pay. I wanted to give him something in return - yet he would accept nothing - saying that at nearly age 90 he had provided for himself, though I am unsure just how. And I worry.

I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to let the world know that this….this…is why I do what I do.

This is why we all do what we do - and why my colleague Tom is a giant among men, and why we all need to continue…to continue.

And I feel so unworthy. And I feel so desperate to do something.

And I feel so lucky.

So I’ve been in Montreal for the past several days - at a conference for museum techno geeks - and I’m still not sure what to make of the city.

When one is at a conference - particularly a technology conference - it is always hard to get a sense of place, especially since this conference has its rooms and its sessions in the same hotel. The first one I went to, a few years ago, was so completely connected with that city’s underground that I’m not sure I ever saw daylight. Here one has to at least walk out blinking into the sun in order to get to the underground… The second one of these I went to was very different and I came back not only full of ideas for our website, but with newly acquired ink on my arm. This time I’m guessing there will be no new ink in the offing, but no matter - there will be time, there will be time….

Conferences are about the sessions, no doubt. But they are also about the in-between places - the lobby, the hallway, the elevator, the exhibit hall. This one has been wonderful in that I have attended with two of my colleagues who I am privileged to call friends.

The fact that we spent the last hour drinking frosty adult beverages and spelling fellow staff members names out with pretzels only makes it that much better…..

So I spent the afternoon with Jim and Jeanette Gurney today. I can’t even begin to tell you what a wonderful experience it was - from the moment they walked into the museum to the moment he autographed my Dinotopia book.

He explained his paintings - how he creates them - what he does to get the lighting, the poses, how he gets the costumes just right. He described the inspiration he found in the cracked paint of a Chinese restaurant’s sign. He spoke in detail of the paintings he has loaned us.

And then Jeanette handed me his Moleskine and I was lost in its pages.