As Telus, the Internet Service Provider which allows VanRamblings consistent access to the Internet, has been ‘down’ since late Saturday morning, VanRamblings has been off the ‘Net and unable to post items.
Okay, okay: we could have ‘borrowed’ a friend’s ‘Net access, or trucked on down to the local Internet café … but we didn’t, and, of course, there was no Unbelievable Truth last evening. Oh well.
Now we’re back, though.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of Sunday looks to be particularly busy (being Mother’s Day, and all), so posting will have to hold off til later tonight, Pacific Daylight Savings time. We’re back, and will post.
Change is in the air in this sparkling picture of Vancouver’s waterfront, at night
VanRamblings’ tech genius, Michael Klassen, implemented a few changes to the blog today that we’d been talking about for awhile.
Effective today, if you want to e-mail (my spelling, Michael insists that email — without the dash — is the correct spelling) any article published on VanRamblings, on the post line below each published article Michael has implemented an “email to a friend” facility.
More salutary changes: on the right-hand side of the page (including all of the category pages, effective today), you’ll find a monthly archive of all articles ever published on VanRamblings, dating back to February 8, 2004 (a week before the official ‘birth’ of the blog you’re reading).
As always, in the keyword ‘site search’ a searchable archive of VanRamblings articles remains available to readers. Archives of all site articles are also available by clicking on the category buttons at the top of the page, or any one of the category items along the right-hand side.
Comments now come up in the Permalink feature (Permalink is also a new addition), rather than as a pop-up.
There are more ‘technical’ changes on their way in the months to come. The focus of VanRamblings, though, remains on regularly updated (and with the exception of The Unbelievable Truth) readable, timely, pungent content.
… it becomes clearer and clearer that fundamentally solitude is nothing that one can choose or refrain from. We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. — poet Rainer Maria Rilke
Writerly solitude, on a park bench alone
For many, the most salient aspect of writing is the time that is spent alone in front of the computer (or, in some cases, typewriter, or writing pad). In a world that demands some form of sociability from us, how wonderful the notion can be of simply spending some time alone, seeking only one’s own counsel.
There is a certain amicable integrity to solitude, as well.
If you’ve been a reader of VanRamblings for awhile, the thought must have occurred to you as to why the sobriquet VanRamblings was chosen as the identifying URL. Well, if you haven’t figured it out already, this writer tends to ramble; the rambling on VanRamblings tends to be reflected in run-on sentences, paragraphs, and brief essays — thus (Van)rambling(s).
By extension, if one rambles when writing composition, there’s not much of a logical leap that need be made to imagine the nature of the personal, communicative interaction one might enjoy with such a person. Which is to say, I ramble in public, as well: on and on, words and sentences, paragraphs and whole essays of thoughts. Writing — quite pleasingly — affords me an opportunity to gather my thoughts, edit my presentation, and afford the person(s) with whom I am communicating the opportunity to read, or listen, to those thoughts (and, if the reader is not captivated by my thoughts, the next web page is only a matter of a click away).
The Globe and Mail’s Leah McLaren ruminates on the solitary life in her Saturday newspaper column, in which she quotes a friend as saying, “I just need to be alone a lot. It’s my absolute favourite thing.” Me, too.
Megan Jessica Tomlin, in Vancouver, at 4 years of age
Twenty-seven years ago today, while down in Vancouver on spring break, ostensibly to attend the AGM of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (Cathy and I were living in the Interior at the time, where she worked for the Ministry of Human Resources, and I was employed as a primary school teacher), Megan Jessica Tomlin decided that she wasn’t prepared to wait til mid-April to be born, as the doctor had suggested, but chose instead the last weekend of March 1977 to announce her arrival into the world.
The picture you see of Megan, above, is the picture you would see of her today, and the picture you would have seen of her at her birth.
The soulful almost melancholy eyes (sometimes the world can be almost too much to bear) that peer right into you, providing not just a sense of her but of yourself as well; a present sense of vulnerability tempered by an unending strength that has been a part of who she has been always, even from birth; a sense of style and grace and of how to carry herself in the world; the long delicate fingers with which she plays piano, writes and conducts post-graduate university work; and an inner and external beauty that is generous and warm-hearted, aloof yet unremittingly soulful, and more meditative and gracious than words may be found to describe.
Happy birthday, Maggie Muggins. We love you.
