Beowulf

August 31, 2007


I’m not sure if I’m excited for this or not.

But I love Beowulf. And this could be a pretty cool movie. Could. It could also be a cheesy misrepresentation of the English language’s first true work of art.



(Sound is quiet. Turn up the sound a little to hear it better.)

And if it sucks? Well, I can turn away, back to the epic itself. To the Seamus Heaney translation, which is, to date, the best I’ve read.

I have no doubt that this:
Beowulf, the movie
Won’t hold a candle to this:
Beowulf, the book

But it’s worth hoping, isn’t it?

Tags: Books, Literature, Movies, Random YouTube |

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Welcome, fellow BMOWP!

August 30, 2007


Welcome to the web, fellow Black Marks on Wood Pulp!

It’s late, but I’ve just discovered it. It’s been in business since March. And I hold no ill feelings about the fact that this new blog stole my name. Because, after all, I stole my name from an author. An author I’ve never read. Who happened to have a great quote about writing.

So there you go. Another Black Marks on Wood Pulp is here, one written by a woman from a UK address who may or may not be Australian. Welcome.

Tags: Blogging, Meta |

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Board certified

August 30, 2007


It was just last year that I was attempting to push myself into the world of volunteerism, grasping at the reasons why I should just give up with the cold shoulder of indifference and warmly embrace a cause that I felt strongly about.

For me, it was the South Dakota Festival of Books. Later, it became, for the second year in a row, The Big Read – a program that encourages people from around South Dakota to read the same, classic book.

Just a month away is the fourth annual South Dakota Festival of Books. It’s in Deadwood this year, and I’ll be going to help out – to expand my volunteerism from the cozy radius of my home and into the rest of the state. I’ll be there doing God knows what, live blogging a little and celebrating the art of the book in all of its glory.

And I’ll be doing it in a new capacity. For I am no longer a simple volunteer; a man that can forget about the formal connections and casually return home unburdened by the South Dakota Festival of Books’ baggage. No, now I’m deeply connected, integrated into the DNA of the group, forever associated with everything that the South Dakota Humanities Council does.

Now I’m on the board.

Board membership. Complete with an announcement in the newsletter and official meetings. Responsibility, and all that comes with it. Kind of scary, actually.

Let’s be honest – this isn’t a monumental announcement. People are elected to boards every day. I’ve actually been on the SDHC board for about two or three months, though we haven’t formally done anything that I have been able to attend. I haven’t said anything because, well, it didn’t seem very real. Or important. Or noteworthy in any sense of the word.

But the more I think about it, the cooler it seems. This is it – my first board appointment, at a young age, with no formal training or experience. This is it – my first turn as part of a group’s voice, as a representative of a cause.

I won’t lie – I’m totally excited. I’d always felt a twinge of jealousy at other people I’ve known who have been board members. I’ve wondered, “Why them?” I contemplated on how I could find a cause I truly cared about or a group I could back, let alone how I could make it on to the decision making machine that helped run it.

The prospect is part daunting, part thrilling. Will I do a good job? Will I impress the people that took a chance in selecting me? Will I succeed in representing the group – a statewide organization that promotes not just literature, but art, culture, everything that is everything about the humanities in South Dakota?

Next month, I’ll find out. I’ll be in Deadwood, in an official capacity, leading writers around or introducing or whatever it is that we board members do. Maybe I’ll just be working the information desk. Regardless, it’s my first shot at making a difference statewide, on backing up my words with action, on promoting reading and literature and all of that throughout South Dakota.

You could say I’m board certified in literature, I guess. Now I just have to prove it.

Tags: Books, Literature, Vilhauer, Writers, Writing |

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Crushed into submission

August 29, 2007


Three days ago. A five game winning streak. Things were starting to look up.

Then, a clash with the first place Cleveland Indians. Win the series, gain at least a game in the hunt for the playoffs. Sweep the series, gain three games, a rush of confidence, and narrowly dodge the proverbial nail in the coffin that’s been haunting the Twins these past few weeks.

They could dodge no longer, it seemed. A loss Monday. And Tuesday. And finally again tonight.

A sweep.
Another loss for Santana. 0-4 against Cleveland this year.
A slowly shrinking deficit in the standings turned into a massive deficit of 8.5 games. And a 7 game deficit in the Wild Card race.
Hopes, dashed.

If this wasn’t the nail, it’s at least been marked and placed, ready for the hammer to swing down upon its season ending head.

They’re not technically eliminated, no. But a sweep like this does wonders in advancing a hang dog attitude. The Twins didn’t just need these wins for the standings - they needed them for their psyche, for their confidence, for something to rally around, a final push toward the playoffs with a whoop and a cry and a stomping of midwestern, small market feet.

The Twins are 67-66. There’s still a month of baseball left. And last year showed that even a team barely over .500 could win the World Series with a little bit of luck, a strong set of pairings and a hot streak near the end of the season.

Of course, you have to make the playoffs first. And with these crushing losses, I’m not sure the Twins have the heart left in them to even try.

Tags: Baseball, Minnesota Twins, Sports |

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Always looking up

August 28, 2007


This morning, as I left the house, I looked up to see an airplane heading straight south. I couldn’t help but stare.

From the ground, it seems so logic defying – a large steel craft rising further and further in the air, a plume of white trailing behind it, as if the airplane wasn’t really a passenger-filled vessel but actually a mythical rocket, being sent into space in some futuristic science fiction novel.

Yeah, I know. It’s an airplane. The technology has been around for years – centuries, really – and there are plenty of laws and theories in the field of physics that can explain why large lumps of metal can glide on air.

But even knowing these things, the sight never ceases to amaze me.

More than this scientific wonder, I usually wonder where these planes are going.

I always feel a rush when I enter an airport. I become pleasantly anxious, and once I’m belted in, the anxiety turns into full out excitement. I know that, in mere hours, I will be somewhere else. Somewhere completely different.

What used to take months, now takes hours. I love that. Through hundreds of connecting airports, the world has been shrunk to a once impossible size.

So when a plane flies overhead – when the sonic reverberations reach my ears and I find myself instinctively looking up – I imagine where the passengers are going. I think of my place here, on solid ground, and then think of their place, up there, flying, headed somewhere different, and I consider the difference between us – several thousand feet, completely different destinations, all feeling the rush of travel, either directly or vicariously.

For a few seconds, I travel with them. Then I look back down to earth and continue on with my day.

Tags: Travel |

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Where have all the readers gone?

August 25, 2007


One out of four people didn’t read a book last year?

I wasn’t going to write about this, simply because Tim from A Progressive on the Prairie summed his thoughts – and mine – really well:

Regardless of which survey you look at, my reading habits and consumption once more mean I am vastly outnumbered. Again, though, it’s a minority of which I’m proud. And for those who wonder how I manage to read as many books as I do: There is something called an “off” button on that mind-numbing device known as a television and the limited quality in that wasteland is easily perused in just a couple weekend hours with a recording device and fast forward button.

Just think of the wonderful impact on our youth and society if even half the hours “reality TV” is on in American households were devoted to reading.

My points exactly. Case closed.

But wait. One out of four? Shouldn’t I say something? Isn’t this what I’m all about? Didn’t I join a board and write columns and work by example to help, in whatever small way, to shrink that number?

I didn’t. But that number keep popping up. And the article kept sneaking into my vision. The full results strengthened my disbelief. Friends e-mailed me to tell me the news. One out of four. Really? One out of four?

And yet, here I am day later, still finding myself surprised when I know I shouldn’t be.

Let’s face it. In today’s society, reading is not given the attention it once was. Things are easier; ideas transferred more quickly and stories fleshed out more visually. Imagination has taken a different form, and reading seems, to some, like an ancient time-wasting activity, like standing up to change the channel on the television without a remote or washing clothes by washboard.

And yet, I find that people are truly becoming less and less creative. Sure, the ideas that truly creative people have are phenomenal, but it seems like the line between ordinary and extraordinary is thickening, as if the general public can’t be bothered with taking the time to create something original, be it an idea or an art or a business plan.

With the onset of easy entertainment has come the onset of easy thinking. I see it everywhere I go – I’ve talked to people that say they haven’t read a book in years. In years! How does that happen? How do these people not accidentally read a book? It’s disheartening, to say the least. And I find that those who don’t read books tend to stick to clichés. They tend to follow the trends, to the tee, even if those trends happen to be proven negative. It’s as if their imagination has withered away, placated by pre-packaged entertainment and propped up by paint-by-numbers ideas.

It’s not that people don’t have time to read. A person has time to do whatever they want to do. It’s a matter of making time to read. It’s a matter of lining up your priorities and creating space in a busy life to read. With the number of time-saving devices and the onset of faster information, shouldn’t we have more time to do the things we want?

Reading is a special act. The idea of reading itself is one of patience, of slowing down and enjoying, word for word, a fully fleshed out idea. It’s taking in every detail of a story, non-colorized and edited, from the most basic thoughts to the grandest theme. It encompasses several great virtues, it leads to monumentally creative thinking, and it strengthens the written word.

There are still readers out there. Three in four, apparently. And those who are writing great works of literature don’t have to write in vain. We’re still reading it.

But who am I kidding? It doesn’t have to be a great work of literature. I try not to be critical of any work of literature, non-fiction, poetry, any form the written word takes. I appreciate the buzz that the Harry Potter books, or Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code make. I welcome the potboiler fiction that flies off of the shelf. People are reading, and in my mind, that means people are learning. They are bettering themselves. They are enjoying lives outside of their own.

Reading doesn’t have to be in paper form. Reading can come from a magazine. Reading can come from online. From the newspaper. From whatever form it happens to take.

But, in my mind, there’s nothing more fulfilling than carrying a solid book around, a block of paper, a ream of bleached wood pulp covered in black marks, and casually opening it to renew your relationships with a set of characters that could never possibly occur in real life.

So when I read that 1 out of 4 people aren’t reading, I don’t begrudge them their choice.

I do, however, wonder if they even know what they’re missing.

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading |

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On picnics

August 25, 2007


On picnicsI find comfort in knowing that, regardless of how big Sioux Falls gets and how many people flock to its parks to bask in the warm late-summer sunshine, I can still find some uninhabited green spaces – areas where, if I shut my eyes, I can imagine being in a National Park, or somewhere in another country.

Forgive me for being too Garrison Keillor for you. I went on a picnic today – my first in a long time – and I left feeling refreshed, like that first spring walk or the first fall rake. Refreshed in rediscovering something I always take for granted. Refreshed in the beauty of an open green field.

Picnics are never on my priority list. I just don’t see the trouble, sometimes. You sit on the ground, you eat food, you spend more time packing than you do enjoying and, no matter what, the weather takes a turn for the worse; blazing heat peeks through the shade you struggled to find, or clouds break open to release torrents of picnic-hating rain drops.

Today, though, it was just the thing. The food was good. The day was wonderful. And our location was perfect.

Sioux Falls is an incredibly green city, and I tend to forget this. My daily Interstate-bound travel path and my corporate-tied industry and my reluctance to leave home once I’ve returned, exhausted and ready for bed takes a toll on my nature-watching.

But there it is – in the middle of Sioux Falls, a green area that could just as easily be grassland that has never been tampered with. We walked through a city park, onto the bike trail, and then about a football field’s length off of the trail. We laid our blanket down and looked around. Despite our proximity to the city park, and despite our arrival via Sioux Falls’ most used recreational trail, we found relative peace and quiet.

With our backs turned to the trail, we glanced over an often forgotten corner of the park, separated by an often dry stream and located just off of a trail bridge. We looked up and imagine we were in Hyde Park, or laying below Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. We looked around and found ourselves in the rolling hills of New England, or on the edge of a darkened Minnesota forest. We turned around and reminded ourselves that we didn’t need to travel to get beautiful green fields and darkened woods – we could get them right here in Sioux Falls.

We ate, and we talked. We discussed future parenting and we tried to un-fuss Sierra’s day. And we picnicked. We took on an ancient ritual – that of eating on the ground, the way nomadic people did before tables, before sturdy homes, before anything of substance was nailed to the ground, places set and order succumbed to. We imagined the prairie the way it was before the park, the city, the trail, the bridge, and we simply got down to basics – enjoying each other, enjoying the day.

And I vowed to myself not to take picnicking for granted anymore.

Tags: On..., Outdoors, Sioux Falls |

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