Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1232 (SoD #2500) - 2500 Sense of Doubt blog posts



Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1232 (SoD #2500) - 2500 Sense of Doubt blog posts

Hi Mom,

It's been a while since I wrote to you. I wanted to write today because I have done a thing I am rather proud of. Today, I am celebrating having published 2500 blog posts on my SENSE OF DOUBT blog, of which with today's installment  1232 are letters of some kind or another to you.

It's also fitting that the 2500th post comes along during the Christmas holidays because it is the time of year that I feel your presence the strongest. I feel you at other times throughout the year: random times, Mother's Day, your birthday, the anniversary of your death, and the anniversary of your time in the coma fifteen years before your death. However, it is the holidays at the end of the fall and the beginning of winter when I feel you the most, the strongest, the closest to me, a spirit shroud around me and behind me and next to me, my guardian, my guide.

I am writing these words minutes before I have to leave to take the dogs to the vet for their annual wellness check-up. As always, fitting what I can around the necessities of life. I will have to finish what I want to say later, which is also fitting as I need to think more about what meaningful words I can share on this occasion of reaching 2500 posts since I started this blog in 2007 but not posting daily until I started HEY MOM on July Sixth, 2015 and then continuing daily until now with a brief foray into TWICE daily when I was making posts about David Bowie following his death.

Prior to that day in 2015, I had only made forty-two posts since 2007, and I made twenty-five of them in 2014 after I ended the 365 T-shirts blog on March 21, 2014. I was trying for a weekly routine, and I was only moderately successful at that schedule.

I can't even believe I am still doing this blog thing some times let alone that I have done 2500 of these posts in six years. I couldn't have done it all without you, Mom... for so many reasons.

Maybe that's all that needs to be said (or, actually, written).

Instead of waxing on, I am going to share some poems shared with me by my friend ABBIE for Solstice, and then follow that with a reprint of post 1900 from May 2020 that recapped quite a bit of the bloggy greatness of my work.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS Mom. What do you think of all this?

Putting this here again because it should be in all of my posts at this time of year:



Again a Solstice

It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked
for bacon in my sandwich, and then

I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar:

I did not use a knife. I lied
about what he did to my faith
in loneliness. Both mistakes.

That there is always a you. Mistake.
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,

is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!

We swim in glittering murk.
I tread, you tread. There are children

testing the deep end, shriek and stroke,
the lifeguard perilously close to diving.
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick.

It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.

I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake.
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion

I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake,
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.

What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I'm correcting my mistakes.

It means I don't want to be lonely.

Credit

Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Chang. Used with permission of the author.








Jennifer Chang is the author of Some Say the Lark (Alice James Books, 2017). She lives in Washington, D.C.



Gabrielle Calvocoressi



Captain Lovell, ["My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars"]

reading: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/play/76866

BY GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI



My eyes are shaky and glimmer like the stars.
My head turns to the left and it moves
just like a pendulum. The kids laugh and shake
it back to me, all the ways I’m stupid,
not like them. But I know how the grass sounds
when the locusts come, like a spaceship
taking off and how it makes the air shake.

Captain Lovell, I heard it in the branches
and the leaves. I heard the rocket leaving.
My teacher said it wasn’t so, that you’re
past hearing but my father said I could.
He puts his hands hard on my shoulders
from behind and holds my head still
with his looking. But I can feel how much

I want to shake and let myself go loose
and double like a cloud of mayflies on the lake,
you know just how they rise so you couldn’t
see just one of them, not even with your thumb
held up to catch one with your eyes. It’s something
I can’t do that Babe and David can, can’t sight
the stars or use a telescope or ever fire a gun.

Dr. Lovell, I like to think you’re spinning
and can’t feel it like I can’t feel the world shake
unless I’m really tired and then it’s like a gift
to let it go and just stop trying so hard. I like
to think you let go too and when the kids
run at me and move their heads from left
to right and call me “Zigzag” I look up

and wish myself up there with you
just calm and swinging through the stars.

Source: Poetry (April 2014)


REPRINT

Friday, May 1, 2020

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1900 - Another milestone 1900 posts and blog recap



A Sense of Doubt blog post #1900 - Another milestone 1900 posts and blog recap

Here we are. 1900 posts. I figured that deserved a comment, well, a bunch of comments. I have not done a real blog recap in quite some time, one in which I do some investigation of what's been popular. The popularity statistics are skewed now because I direct so many of my students here for various things.

But hey, 1900 posts. That's almost 2000 as you can plainly see, which means that in a little over three months (September), I will hit that magic number. I never believed I could sustain a daily blogging schedule for that many posts.

HEY MOM is also on the cusp of reaching 1200 posts. This post was originally going to be a HEY MOM post as two of the last three hundreds were HEY MOMs, as you can see here:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1800 - This number 1800 seems special

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1194 (SoD #1837) - 1700 days and a dream reprint

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1190 (SoD #1737) - It's been 1600 days

However, I decided making this post a HEY MOM defeats the purpose. This is the 1900th SENSE OF DOUBT post not the 1900th HEY MOM post. SENSE OF DOUBT has contained many more posts than HEY MOM.

So, hey, how ABOUT SOME HISTORY of my blogging? Okay.

While doing HEY MOM but uncounted at the time, there was the DAILY BOWIE;, I did not count those posts with an explicit number as a SENSE OF DOUBT post.



Here's a couple of my favourite Daily Bowie posts, a feature I started when the great David Bowie died in 2016.

The Daily Bowie #6 - "Fill Your Heart"

The Daily Bowie #16 - "Buddha of Suburbia"

The Daily Bowie #25 - "Lazarus"

Among the uncounted are all the posts before HEY MOM as I started the blog back in 2007 with this post:


the last of which I should re-do as a current MUSICAL MONDAY.

I was trying for weekly consistency but I was not making it. Then after I got married, I stalled out completely for about three years until in 2013 I started the t-shirts blog, here:


and I kept things rolling for a year straight from the first on March 22, 2013:


and the last one on March 21, 2014:

T-shirt #365: The last shirt in the blog year


I considered the T-shirt blog complete after 365 entries, but I thought I might post there occasionally. I only managed a few posts since March of 2014. After a bit of a break and a breather from the grind of posting daily, I tried to get back on the horse for weekly delivery at SENSE OF DOUBT starting with posts about weekly comic books on March 29th 2014 (so not much of a break) with a post that collected comic content from the T-shirts blog:

WEEKLY COMICS LISTS from 365 T-Shirts.


But notice that I was not yet numbering.

I did okay, but there were big gaps. I was on track with weekly, but then this post

Weekly Comics for 1408.27 came out on April 19th, 2015 along with a super secret hidden post of NOVA covers, which has now become part of the count, of course.


When my Mom died on July 4th, 2015, two days later, I found a reason to re-commit myself to daily posting with HEY MOM, which, despite the Bowie series, was all I did until 2018 when I ceased the daily transmission.

It all started here: 



The last daily HEY MOM has some nice recap in it, though I will not reprint it all, I will reprint this bit:


On the subject of reading, I just finished Stephen King's The Outsider, and this quote near the end really struck a chord.

"Reality is thin ice, but most people skate on it their whole lives and never fall though until the very end. We did fall through, but we helped each other out. We're still helping each other." -- Holly Gibney to Ralph Anderson in Stephen King's The Outsider pg. 559

This quote cried out to me, deserving to be featured.

And so, I devoted myself to intermittent HEY MOM, and I started posting SENSE OF DOUBT posts with this one:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1233 - The Source.

I didn't explain it either. I just did it and used what seems obvious: the total blog count on that day, which included those DAILY BOWIE posts and the posts before HEY MOM, which is why the count jumped from 1096 HEY MOM posts to 1233 SENSE OF DOUBT posts.

In the last two years, I have featured HEY MOM less and less. I had planned to do two a week, then that became one a week, and then some weeks I had none at all.

Posting in a timely fashion has always been a struggle with a daily schedule. If I get ahead on it, as I did with my last trip as I explained here when I went to Michigan in 2018:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1408 - Gone Fishin' : Going Back to Michigan.

Otherwise, there were times when I fell far behind. One huge gap came when I had fallen ten days behind and had to catch up with a bunch of quick and easy posts. Back in 2016, when I was about that far behind, I decided to start the category "photo series one" and post old photos from that first photo album. Every day, just a photo and a few remarks, what I had originally thought the blog would always be until it grew into something more.

This post (below) was the first of those that ran from 11/19/16 to 12/01/16 with only one skip for a Thanksgiving post.

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #501- January 29, 1962 - photo series one #1.



I also invented LOW POWER MODE and THAT ONE THING to deal with the daily grind.
I like these examples of THAT ONE THING even more:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1553 - Heady - THAT ONE THING with a great quote from Sallie Tisdale's Talk Dirty to Me.
and

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1555 - THAT ONE THING - Queen of Ghosts



Of course, a constant practice since nearly the beginning of the HEY MOM run has been SHARING. I cannot produce original content every day even in LOW POWER MODE or doing THAT ONE THING or sharing old photos. I figured this out quickly during the first days of HEY MOM with this very first share:

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #18 - the new Muppet show
And so, once I opened the flood gates, you will find if you look that I have shared other people's content much more than creating my own because, well, duh: the daily grind, need to work, and so on.

The thing about the sharing is well explained in that the blog is my study and not my teaching or practice:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1578 - Not my Teaching But My Study

Sometimes the blog was only just a note about how slammed I was with grading:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1307 - Status - Grading Hell


And so it goes.

As part of this re-cap, I thought I would examine popular posts.

As I review, I have discovered that my very first post is not popular because of the content but because it has been used to store tons of useless URLs in the comments, some kind of data mining advertisement crap.

Here's the list of my most popular posts all time (below).

Some do not make sense. Why has this one had 241 views?

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #498 - Test Tomorrow & 500 Days
Weird.

Posts


It appears that SENSE OF DOUBT #2 -- “Keeping Misogyny Alive and Well for Geeks Nationwide” -- was popular not because it was about the TV show HEROES or people care about misogyny but because some asshole data mined and used my comments to stash a bunch of URLs that I just discovered, and I am in the process of deleting them all.

Other posts on that popular list are there because of the content like #675 for my review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or my self introduction shared with students in #1286. I also pleased to see my posts on Buffy, Famous Monsters, and Big O notation also charting high numbers.

Since sheltering at home, I have been trying to create more original content, but I am still challenged to do that frequently. I have many half-finished original posts in my queue.



TODAY'S SOUNDTRACK








Here's some good re-caps on what O have done so far.

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #600 - Focus Knob and blog recap

Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1143 - Best of Blogs - Year End - HEY MOM REPRINT with added

And so to commemorate 1900 posts, I thought I would end with a cool post with tons of neat content but first featuring two quotes from that post for emphasis.

As always, thanks for reading, all two of you. 1900 and counting. Here we go.





There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results. --Mahatma Gandhi

FROM FREE CODE CAMP -

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.






A Sense of Doubt blog post #1689 - Throwback Reprint for the best day of my life




A Sense of Doubt blog post #1689 - Throwback Reprint for the best day of my life

Because of low power mode, it's time for a reprint. This one was close to this same date last year.

But, this one was this date last year because, greatest day of my life.

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/10/a-sense-of-doubt-blog-post-1320-ninth.html

but here's today's reprint:

https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2018/10/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-1120-me.html


Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1120 - Me and Moby - First Pet - Throwback Thursday on Saturday 1810.06

Hi Mom, I am so tired of being grading robot that I have no energy for chatter and updates this week.
Please accept all of this show and tell and social media and photos and such as a substitute for words and descriptions and anecdotes and ruminations and feelings. More overwhelming feeling lately is exhaustion plus I have been fighting off a virus. Almost 100%. More next week.

BTW, I love this Throwback photo. My Dad took a great one. First pet, a fish, hence my love for them, 1967.



FROM FREE CODE CAMP -

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.













Aldous Huxley




There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results. --Mahatma Gandhi

Placed here to show my Concordia students...
from the book Culture Jam. 
THESIS: Because American mass media is highly addictive, manipulative, and driven by corporate interests, media consumers need to break the media trance by uncooling the spectacle, revealing the true cost of fast food, vaccinating against the Huxleyan “soma,” and defeating the corporate “I” to usher in a new age in which true individuality is not a marketed and trademarked brand.

Just putting this link here. Regards an instructor at Concordia. Just for my own FYI, but there's a Michigan angle for those who are interested.


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/books/review/curtis-dawkins-graybar-hotel.html








SOCIAL MEDIOCRITY






















PHOTO GALLERY FROM A WALK IN PORTLAND MONDAY OCTOBER FIRST

Books to get as presents for Christmas!




A door, someone likes JOY DIVISION...




Scenes from Portland, downtown, from Couch and sixth to 12th and Flanders.














Here's this disclaimer again because it's awesome. Expect to see this more often.

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This supersedes all previous notices.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2005.01 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1763 days ago

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Reflect and connect.

Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.

I miss you so very much, Mom.

Talk to you soon, Mom.

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- Days ago = 2364 days ago

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2112.22 - 10:10

NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.


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