“If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die…”

His expressive sadness at the sweet strains of music reveals the Petrarchan sensibilities of the Duke; that he is ever willing to forgo ‘dejectedness’ for the explicit purpose of retaining his self-made stature of an ‘unrequited (courtly) lover’. In many ways Orsinio isn’t dissimilar to Olivia, the lady that he pursues for love and loves to pursue, in that both of them are self-imposed exiles, recluses as it were, from the world of loving men and women. The latter is more rigid and ritualistic in her manners, while the former is more pompous and pessimistic in his denial of love; the latter shuns music and the company of others to refrain from loving, the former revels in his ‘loss’ in gay company. It is quite interesting to note how Shakespeare ridicules both of them, and thus lambasts the institutions that they represent. Orsinio can be seen as the plumed knight decking the gallant order of the Cavaliers, while Olivia represents the institution of the self-denying, pleasure-revolting and ever mourning Puritans. Though it is Malvolio who has been marked by many, and definitely by Maria as “…somewhat of a Puritan”, one can better espy a Puritan, or rather the makings of one, in the character of Olivia with her (apparent) steadfastness for chastity and celibacy, delicately draped in black (the colour of mourning).

However, the opening scene of the play does more than just introducing the two chief institutions of Shakespeare’s satire: it sets the rhythm of the play; it strums the central string to which all other ensuing actions seem mere ornaments and decor. The pleasant settings of Illyria and its carnivalesque ambience add to the brilliance of the scene. The Duke gloats over his untamed love for Olivia, and he often minces words to rediscover the same topic again and again. When Curio mentions the word ‘hart’ (a stag, in connections the proposed hunting expedition) he easily reverts the discussions towards his ‘heart’;
“…O when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence;
That instant was I turned into a hart…”

Orsino is hopelessly in love with love. It is not Olivia whom he wants. It is the ‘pain’ of not being loved that fills the chalice of his heart to its contentment. He is down with the ‘courtly love’ fever and he lives in a self-made world of self-inflicted melancholia. And the cure that Shakespeare gives him is in the form and fluency of Viola (Cesario, as she disguised herself as) who, nothing like the delicately feminine and much sought after form of the conventional practices of poetry and pleasure, and embodying the ideals of modern womanliness makes him conversant with the reality and incredulity of true love.

And that’s not all: there’s also evidence that test-taking itself can improve retention for the material being tested. In a 2006 demonstration of a phenomenon known as the “testing effect,” for example, Roedieger and Karpicke had students read passages of text and then either repeatedly study them or repeatedly test their ability to recall them, without any feedback on how well they did on the tests. The students who repeatedly studied the passage were more confident about their ability to remember the content than those who were repeatedly tested. But the latter group considerably outperformed the former when it came to actual memory for the passage one week later.

So testing can be an excellent tool in an educator’s toolbox, but it’s one that needs to be used wisely. The American Psychological Association warns of the dangers of “high-stakes” testing in our nation’s schools, and a report from the National Academies of Science suggests few benefits to our current test-based accountability system.

Hestia Douglas, the Zesty Tart.

Hestia has taken the lead of the HWS Culinary Committee, guiding it with a firm hand and sharp tongue for the last five years. It is one of our most popular committees, with branches in nearly every single HWS chapter around the world! That’s thanks in no small part to Hestia’s tireless work and penchant for adventuring to distant countries, giving cooking demonstrations wherever she goes, and trying the local cuisine. She’s like a much-better-looking, under-the-radar Anthony Bourdain.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Hestia in person, here’s her official bio:

Hestia Douglas has been a member of the Hardy Women’s Society since her first semester at Tremlett College. To afford her studies in Botany and Culinary Anthropology, Hestia participated in work-study in the Tremlett College kitchens. Her sharp tongue and fondness for citrus tarts earned her various nicknames, including Lemon Lips, The Zesty Tart, and Zesty Hesty.

Since graduating from Tremlett in 2002, Hestia has gone on to become a renowned scholar and world traveler. Her publications include “The Hottest Sauce: An exploration into the origin and traditional use of the ghost chili,” “Fire and Red Maids: Traditional land management techniques of the Ohlone,” and Manzanita Manzanita (A Tale for Tots). For relaxation, Hestia enjoys rock climbing, sailing, and piloting hot air balloons.

Let’s give a cheer to Hestia and her amazing work! She always keeps things interesting, whether it’s frying up squash blossoms in the kitchen, or pioneering the art of pit cooking with tofu in the Australian Outback.

Please be mine…please be mine….

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Second request: a trip to Paris.  She awoke early Sunday morning and while everyone else was sleeping, we walked to the town park, decided to call it Paris, and frolicked around in the early light.

Third request: 2,000 hugs.  A work in progess.

Fourth request: Build-A-Bear.  This past month of activity has set a record for our family: highest # of visits to a mall.  May that record hold for the rest of our history.

Fifth request: To smash her face into a piece of cake.  

And so, teaching us little lessons about going all out in the moment, Vi took advantage of this special day and ended the celebration as she had been hoping to for months.

To Violet: A , caring, wild-hearted, creative, passionate, thoughtful, loyal, excitable, thinking, hopping, skipping, loving gal.  Words cannot contain you, Mae Bug.  

We’re showcasing our Anavio family of classical Roman inspired typefaces this week. Anavio is currently offered at a 40% discount on Myfonts.com and Fontspring.com.

Today’s collection includes re-imaginings of travel posters for Rome and London and an advertisement for a cosily old-fashioned firm of gentlemen’s tailors.

Sims 3 Inspirations

download

I went on a picnic today.  Brought my camera & tripod (just in case).  I’ve been starting to bring my camera along with me on road trips and I’ve seen some nice countryside scenes but I just can’t get into landscapes.  I guess they don’t interest me enough to delve into that type of photography.  However… I see that as something I need to work on, a challenge maybe.  But I still have yet to pull over on the interstate and shoot something.

As far as the picnic goes, I went to Ritter Springs Park.  Just north of Springfield, MO.  There’s rivers/creeks (other bodies of water or whatever you want to call them) and to get to these spots, there’s a lot of walking.  The plan was to find a nice spot by some running water, but the lid for one of the coolers fell off, and we noticed after we had walked a distance.  Dammit!  Walking back to find this stupid lid was kind of exhausting, but it was found… by the entrance to the park.  Double dammit!  Screw walking back down a massive path in 90 degrees.  So we settled on a spot under a tree near the parking lot.

Needless to say, no real photos of landscapes and nature today.  I do have a few candid shots to share.  Nothing too awesome though.

Caterpillars were everywhere.

I wore a dress today.  A white one.  A bit out of the ordinary for me.

I don’t know, I thought it looked cool.

Was that out loud?

Free, Peeps! FREE! Let’s spread the word!

Anywho, lots of good stuff to catch you up on from the week, starting with Dark Mark and Dreadful Tales and a rootin’ tootin’ review of my upcoming serial novel SAVAGE SPECIES (You’re praying I won’t carry this cowboy metaphor through to the end of the post, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll stop with the yippee-ki-yays and the ornery cusses as long as you promise to download the FREE first installment of SAVAGE SPECIES, NIGHT TERRORS. Okay? And if you have already pre-ordered it, tell ten friends about it. Or six. Or I’ll come at you with my lasso and my strident ululations. And you don’t want that).

Oh. The review: http://dreadfultales.com/2013/05/16/savage-species-by-jonathan-janz/

Home of Dark Mark, Meli, and Other Twisted-but-Cool Folks

Secondly, I’ve announced it elsewhere (including the above article), so I might as well say it here too. I’m writing a sequel to THE SORROWS. It’s called CASTLE OF SORROWS and picks up where the last novel left off (which I guess is what most sequels do, huh?). I’m not going to go on about it because I don’t like to talk much about works-in-progress (including the new trilogy I’ve begun and the young adult project I’ve done some work on). Let’s just say I’m pumped about CASTLE OF SORROWS and leave it at that.

Gabriel Gets a Sequel!

Moving on…

Outstanding fellow Samhain Horror author Russell James had this to say about my recently-released novel THE DARKEST LULLABY: “This haunting, horrific book will stick with you long after you turn the last page. Through deft prose and illuminating description, Jonathan Janz creates this story of a couple trapped physically and psychically in a farm house in the midst of the forests of rural Indiana.” And one more: “DARKEST LULLABY hits every horror high note with perfect pitch.” Here’s Russell’s Goodreads review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/599453786

And lastly, author M.R. Gott was kind enough to read and review my sophomore novel HOUSE OF SKIN. See what M.R. had to say right here.

And that’s it for now. I’ll see you soon, pardn…friends. And remember that free download. If you don’t, you might just hear spurs janglin’ up your sidewalk tonight!

If you can make it to Louisville, Kentucky this October 7-9 and are at all interested in Nabisco/National Biscuit Company (NBC) – now owned by Kraft – collectables and history you owe it to yourself to attend the 2013 Fall Nabisco Collector’s Convention. In addition to being able to view the world’s largest collection of Zu Zu Ginger Snaps collectables and historical documents you’ll be treated to some of the most amazing Nabisco/NBC collectables and be able to speak with some of the people who know that history best (and some who made it).

In attendance will be the Kraft/Nabisco archivist, corporate visitors and “other head honchos.” There will be a screening of a video, narrated by Wayne W. Guest, detailing the Nabisco’s corporate collection before it was closed and shipped to Chicago after Nabisco was acquired by Kraft. And now in Louisville you will see the largest private National Biscuit Company collection known to exist.

The convention will be held at Charlie and Prissy Brown’s historic Louisville home built in 1790 and is on three separate historic registers. This blog would not be possible without Charlie’s unflagging support. He has been very kind to the Zu Zu Ginger Snaps community by supplying information, background and even going so far as to photograph items from his and Prissy’s vast collection.

The schedule is still being developed but here is a rough outline:
Monday, Oct 7: Member recognition set/up day and get acquainted, Wayne’s video, lunch brought in, dinner at a local restaurant (dutch)
Tuesday, Oct 8: Silent auction, auction and a tour of Charlie and Prissy Brown’s barn with some of the collection, lunch brought in (dutch) and maybe a grill out
Wednesday, Oct 9: Country Ham Breakfast (included) and hands-on tour of the house and the collection.

Please email Charlie and Prissy Brown at dolphgreen@aol.com for details including cost and scheduling. I’ll post more details as they become available.

Well okay, for the nitpickers out there let’s say: almost for free and almost no skills.

If you know how to compose text in a Word document and attach a photo to your email, then believe me—you’ve got all the skills you need to make yourself a sharp-looking and (nearly) free website.

I just tried this myself for my current book project REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague. You can see the results here and judge for yourself: http://electroplague.com.

I was so impressed with the result (and that I somehow accomplished this technical feat all by myself!) that I had to blog about it.

My cost for my new Refugium website: $48/year.

Here is the homepage for my new Refugium website. It’s really a free WordPress.com blog. But I designated a static front page as my homepage instead of going with WordPress’s default homepage, which is always the blog.

In a nutshell

The method I used to achieve this result is amazingly simple:

1. I started with a free WordPress.com blog. (The URL I registered for free was http://electroplague.wordpress.com/, but you’ll notice that isn’t what shows when I’m done.)

2. I then set it up as a website instead of a blog by designating a static front page as my homepage (i.e., what the site opens up to when the link is clicked).

WordPress theme Twenty Twelve (free), which is what I used for this experiment, was designed for this purpose: http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/twentytwelve/.

But you can achieve something similar with most of the free WP themes. Full instructions are here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/front-page/ .

(By comparison, the site you are reading this article on—Pig Squash Press—is a WordPress.com blog that HASN’T been altered to look like a website.)

3. At that point, the blog portion of the site with all of my postings (which is the default homepage on any WordPress.com site) simply becomes one of several menu items on my menu bar at top. I chose to name that menu tab “Blog” because people know what that is. But you could call it “News” or “Posts” or “BS Spew” or whatever you want.

Here is a screen shot of the blog portion of my Refugium website. Unlike the homepage shown in the previous illustration, the blog has the typical sidebar filled with various widgets for doing different things. I kept that off my homepage for a cleaner and classier look to further establish the site’s identity as a website rather than a blog.

You can also ditch the sidebar of bloggy-looking widgets for your new static homepage (as I did in the first illustration in this article) by selecting “Front Page Template” in Twenty Twelve or “single column” in other themes for that particular page.

Et voila! A website is born… and all for the grand price of a WordPress blog, which is free, although I chose to pay $30/year to keep ads off the site.

And to completely cement the site’s identity as a website instead of a blog, I paid for the $18/year domain-name upgrade so the link that you see and share is “electroplague.com” and not the underlying “electroplague.wordpress.com”.

So all told, I’m paying $48/year for my Refugium website, which I can easily add to, update, and expand whenever I want and with no special technical skills required.

And by going with WordPress.com (in other words, WordPress.com is hosting my site), I have access to seemingly unlimited free tech support when I do have questions.

Author, Get Thy Website in Order!

If you are an author, then you have been told umpteen times by everyone from your publisher and agent to your next door neighbour that you absolutely MUST have an author website to promote yourself and your books.

Of course, plenty of other folks need or want websites too. But authors today are strafed from all quarters (and with a fury approaching apocalyptic proportions) with edicts to get their ‘brand’ on the cybermap with a sharp-looking website.

The problem, of course, is that most writers (myself included) don’t know how to build a website. Nor do we particularly want to learn. We would rather spend our time, well, you know—writing!

The Money Pit

Consequently, professional-looking websites (and even unprofessional ones, unfortunately) tend to cost money—often lots of money (which is another thing most writers don’t have but do need).

You must pay a web designer to create your site, and a webmaster to maintain it and add new content announcing your activities, and straighten out inevitable problems, incompatibilities, virus attacks, etc.

And then there are the annual fees to the server that hosts your site for you. And even after all that, unless you know how to update your website yourself, you are unable to add or change your own content. You are essentially at the mercy of the specialists you are paying.

I have author colleagues who have spent many thousands of dollars trying to get a functional, professional looking website that operates as intended and isn’t riddled with virus. I have author colleagues who have been locked out of their own websites by unscrupulous webmasters who hold them hostage until they pay outrageous bills to fix glitches that the webmaster created in the first place.

All of these problems disappear with a free WordPress.com blog that you set up to look like a website. Blogs (including blogs that look like websites) are extremely simple. Anyone can set up and maintain a blog without hired help.

No, I don’t work for WordPress. But I gotta say, I’m impressed.

Next door to the Open Bottle in Ukranian Village (Chicago) – cool brunch/dinner place – I had short rib hash today – delicious.  Worth a visit.  Relaxed atmosphere, great wait staff.

Bite Cafe.

On a related noted, I recently saw a reference to Templeton the Rat’s blissed-out song about leftover fair food, looked it up on youtube, and nodded with recognition that this had been my favorite part of the Charlotte’s Web movie (even though it concerns trash food).  Oh, and the always delightful and campy Paul Lynde (aka Uncle Arthur) is singing.  So yeah, enjoy. 

I’ll be posting over the weekend, but I won’t be posting on Monday during the tech updates, so look for a fresh delivery of Pizza on Tuesday!

This afternoon, I posted “When in doubt Peanut M&M’s” as my FB status. In less than two hours, I had 12 Likes and the following suggestions:

• Lindt
• Peanut Butter M&M’s
• Chocolate M&M’s
• Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
• Dark Chocolate Peanut
• Dark Chocoalate . . . in the freezer

Since I am taking the coming week off to work on my novel(s), I suspect the main impact of this flurry of suggestions will be to help me fill out the bad portion of my Brain Food, Bad Food, Beer, and think like a bachelor novelist grocery shopping list.

That said, two days ago I made a post exploring next steps for the writing process as opposed to the junk food eating portion of the coming week. At the end of said post, I welcomed feedback and even though about 20 people have read it so far, no comments. So I am wondering whether my junk food shopping list or suggestions for my writing process list will fill faster.

Here are a couple of pictures I took at his last show ‘Carpet Remnant World’ – a show I loved so much, I went to watch it twice!

He had these rolls of carpet remnants behind him during the duration of the show:

In the last few minutes of the show, the carpet remnants became Carpet Remnant World:

The first time I saw this happen, I gasped with delight at the beautiful scene. The second time I went to see him, I enjoyed hearing other people gasping with delight at the beautiful scene…

UPDATE: We didn’t go on Saturday night because I was unwell. It’s ok though, we have tickets for November!

Pope Francis has been really convicting me lately, first by talking about the “Gentrification of the Heart” that comes from primarily seeking a life of comfort, and then with his call to “annoy” people with the Gospel. Ouch, Papa, I’ll get on those things ASAP. As much as I miss Benedict’s love of beauty and faithful teaching, I think Francis is going to be good for us all…

~Two~

Ok, JT, is this supposed to be a love song? ‘Cause, seriously, if my husband told me he loved me because loving me was like loving himself, I’d smack him right on upside the head. No hesitation, no regrets. No kidding. Sigh, I liked you so much better when you had *NSYNC to chill your ego a bit.

~Three~

I really hate having strangers in the house. It makes me feel violated somehow, but it seems to be happening a lot lately. First, I had to have a man come in to give me an estimate on housecleaning services (for after we’ve moved out) that we didn’t even end up scheduling. I totally understand now why people clean before the maid comes. This afternoon a lady from our property management company is showing our place to a prospective renter, which I guess is going to be happening a lot from now till we leave. I just wanna be left alone, ‘kay?

~Four~

Speaking of moving out, um, so I haven’t packed anything, except one box of winter/maternity clothes. Oh, and I guess I packed up all the Christmas goods right after the holidays, but I don’t feel like that counts as ‘packing,’ since I’d have done it anyway. I’ll be packing books and seasonal clothing next week, but I still feel terribly behind. A bit more than three weeks till departure! Eek!

~Five~

Parenting is all about trade-offs. This morning I needed to fold laundry. Clementine needed to entertain herself upstairs, where the bedrooms and bathrooms are. The pro of this situation: Folding the laundry in peace. The con: Hearing noises that mean I will have to go upstairs later and rearrange the diapers (again), put away all of the clothing she’s pulled out of her drawers, and make sure nobody’s toothbrush is in the toilet. Is this trade-off worth it? I can’t tell just yet. I have finished the laundry and done a fair bit of cleaning downstairs (see #3), but we’ll see how many necessary hygiene products are missing tomorrow…

~Six~

I just read a article in the New Criterion about a book called Tombstone, about a deadly famine in China near the beginning of Mao’s reign. It seems that overzealous implementation of Communist principles combined with a lack of communication and fear of retribution from on-high caused millions of deaths by starvation in a three year period, even though there was plenty of food in the country. Chilling. I’d love to read it, as it’s been compared to The Gulag Archipelago, but I should probably read The Gulag Archipelago first, oops.

~Seven~

So, how does Eric Holder still have a job? To quote Holder himself, “I don’t know.”

Thanks to Conversion Diary for hosting!