What I Did Today (aka OMFG):

Only at camp.

This actually happened last summer, but I'm living in the same room so I was reminded of it on my way in tonight:

From the doorstep of my room at camp, one looks down onto the tennis court and basketball courts...

Ok, quick digression because it's too fabulous not to mention: like most things at Jew Camps everywhere, nearly every square foot of my camp is named after someone who donated the money to make that spot happen. For many many years, Judge Joseph Wapner and his wife Mickey have been patrons and supporters of the Institute that houses my camp. They gave the money for the courts. They are... the People's courts. Ohhhhh yes.

So: from the doorstep of my room at camp, one looks down onto the tennis court and basketball courts and one evening I stepped out of my room and did just that. There, under the basketball hoop, were some staff members hanging out during their free time. One was sitting on the ground with her computer, using the wireless internet signal from the office. A few others were sitting on the ground a few feet away, learning how to light a fire using a bow drill.

Wireless internet/fire without a match. Only at camp.

Except, I broke three nails doing it.

So, I was in the dining hall for breakfast at 8:20 this morning, as every day. And between then and now (5pm), I've had exactly three (non-consecutive) hours during which I was not teaching dancing somewhere or eating lunch back in the dining hall. In those three hours, I did not once come back to my room, though I could have. I didn't sleep or read or eat. During the first free hour, I played (and learned) frisbee. During the second hour, I joined a bunk for their mountain biking ride. During the third hour, I played frisbee.

Who is this and what has happened to RDB? More on this later 'cuz this is serious.

Reading is Sexy.

"Miss, I found out for you what the soup du jour is. It's 'the soup of the day'."

I'm in the town where I work, out on lunch break, looking for the local post office so I can turn in my temporary mail-forwarding form and buy some forever stamps (how romantic of a name!). I'm driving, and I call toll-free assistance and get the 800 number for USPS. I call them:

Me: Hi! I'm trying to find the nearest post office but I don't know what zipcode I'm in.
P.O. guy: Then I can't help you, I'm sorry. Have a good day.
Me: Wait, I can't just give you the name of the city and state?
P.O.: No, I need a zipcode.
Me: Ok, well, then, I need to find a zipcode.
P.O.: Ok, what's the city and state?

Like, written with a PEN. On PAPER.

If you know me in Real Life (or "meatspace", as some would have it, but that kind of grosses me out), you probably know that I'm about to leave for sleep-away camp. Which MEANS, clearly, that you need to haul out the stationery and the stickers and send me at least ONE hand-written snail-mail old-school tear-it-open LETTER between now and August 12th. If you don't know the address, check out my eponymous website. Hope your summer is as fun and crazy as mine! Deep breath...


(No, this doesn't mean I for sure won't be posting until August 12th. I've gotten a little bit addicted to this, so it'll probably continue. That does NOT relieve you of your above-mentioned obligations :)

(No, you dope, to *work* at sleep-away camp. I am, hard as it is to believe, no longer 16 :)

For example

So I got these fabulously glamorous acrylic nails and a french manicure. (This, from a girl who refuses to wear make-up? Welcome to Contradiction City, population: me.) And they're pretty long and pretty impressive. And a Kindergartener says to me, in the way that only a six-year-old can, when life is still simple and every word has its clear and obvious opposite:

"Wow! Your nails are pretty! Are they real or are they pretend?"

"The best tour I took was with a group of radical reference librarians in town for the Anarchist Bookfair in Golden Gate Park."

"The question of accessibility is a question of invitation: will individuals feel
invited to participate in and contribute to a democratic culture or will they live
in a world where most content is corporate-owned and -provided? The
promise of the Internet-as-Alexandria is more than the roiling plenitude of
information. It's the ability of individuals to choreograph that information
in idiosyncratic ways, the hope that individuals might feel invited by the
gravitational pull of a broad and open commons to "rip, mix, and burn"-to curate. This new sort of curator, in effect, is one definition of blogger: an amateur experimental librarian for the Internet, the curator of (in blogger/writer Cory Doctorow's phrase) a digital Wunderkammer,
a private informational choreographer who has made her alignments public."

I love Harper's Magazine.

Nu?

So, what do you think of the banner? BESIDES that it's too big; I already know that.

No, really.

Neither is worse-is-better.blogspot.com...

Today, a little something for my dear friend, Talk-to-the-bird. You know, *that* blog name isn't taken yet... :)

the meta-post

So, the thing is, I'm not sure why I started this blog, or why I somehow feel like I should blog, or what exactly is the Point of All This. The blogs that I like are those of real-life friends (I should say, for one in particular, those of real-life fiends!) of mine or those that are pretty specifically and intelligently about a particular topic. So, why should anyone read *my* blog? What do I have to say? Why do you care?

Ok, if you're my friend, maybe you care because you care about me. But still, if I go on and on about nothing, even you can get bored, right?

And what do *I* get out of this? It's not like I specifically need a place to put my daily thoughts and activities; I already have that and it's called my journal and I write in it nearly every single goddamn day without missing any days except in cases of extreme trauma or extreme exhaustion. (In the latter cases, I almost always make up for it the following day. In the former case... well, I broke up with him and eventually got over the block, more or less.)

I have considered a few different aims, or themes, or raisin-duh-etres for this blog, as follows:
0) I sort of started this around the time I started thinking more seriously of writing fiction, so I thought maybe this would be a good place to post bits of that and see what y'all thought (see this post, for example.) But I haven't really been doing that, and none of you posted on *that* particular posting anyway.
1) I already post my quick thoughts on each book that I read, elsewhere on the web, and I thought about expanding that a bit, since I also like to learn new vocabulary from what I've read, keep track of what I recommend, remember quotations from the books, etc... but it's not clear that I need a new place to do that, separate from where I already do it, and I'm clearly not up to reproducing the effort in two places, since I often fall behind in the one place...
2) I am a teacher, and I learn a lot from teaching. Sometimes I think my focus here ought to be recording my thoughts about teaching, since there are lots of days that I lose sight of my so-called "teaching philosophy" or days that I'm not the best teacher I can be, and maybe recording my daily ideas/triumphs/failures/illuminations about all that could be helpful to myself for remembering and possibly even helpful to others. Plus my students say damned funny things sometimes and I've considered the latest-best-kid-ism theme.
3) I believe the original or truest definition of the blog thing was not "here are my musings" or "here are my pictures" or "here's my diary" but "here's a link to something I found somewhere else on the web that you should see, and also here's my original and insightful commentary on that thing". So I've considered doing *that*, but who am I kidding? There are umptimillion people doing that better than I could... I hardly even surf!

Basically, so far this blog is still totally unformed and camp is imminent which means either: you won't hear anything from me for the next nine weeks and then I'll start all over or not, OR, this'll continue to be an unfocused mash of all of those things until a particular urge gets stronger and it becomes Something Real. In the meantime, if you *are* reading, I hope you'll comment and let me know what you think, because I am clearly casting about alone here :)

AND: Dude who claims to be the BoMD: reveal thyself! I'm tired of waiting :)