Electronic Writer

The last week, or so, has been extremely busy for personal life. I have been working double-shifts. I have been taking extra projects, and I have been putting extra effort into many aspects of my life.

While this sounds good, there are some unwanted side-effects. I am exhausted at the end of the day. My stress level have increased. I have very little energy for things like exercise and making/eating nice food. Also, I get into a “reward system” mentality. I will trade intolerable hours for a bowl of ice cream. Or, perhaps, I will reward myself with an afternoon nap because I stayed up so late working.

The truth is that balance is better.

I have been noticeably absent from Electronic Writer because of work. (And, even when I return, I write about being absent.) Truthfully, I feel better about work after I have written in the morning and added more content to this Website. After typing a few pages for myself or working on some poetry, I have a reason to toil in exchange for money–to pay for the opportunity to do what I love. That reminder makes it a bit easier to stay productive, and helps keep everything in perspective.

Add all of this together: a little leisure time, some exercise, good food, time with my friends, reading a bit, and some personal time. If these things can happen in the evening, I will get more work done during business hours, and it is easier to focus on the task at hand.

The next entry won’t be about my lack of entries–I swear it.

“Cathedral Building” is a term that has been appropriated by the business world to reference a type of long-term building strategy. Employing this strategy may require the sacrifice of some of the program or business strengths in the immediate term, in exchange for a grander vision–something that may take years or decades to achieve.

While this may mean dollars and cents in today’s world, it has not always been so. “Cathedral Building” referred to a commitment that artisans would make. If I agree to become a Cathedral Builder, I really agreed to 150 years worth of my family laboring as Cathedral Builders, as well. I was pledging the labor of generations of my family. Not just my own 30 or 40 years.

What did all of these Cathedral Builders make? What were goals that the architects of those churches were trying to achieve? What did the church fathers want the followers to feel? (By the way, I am wholly convinced that if there had been church mothers, we would much different architecture in those buildings.)

Many of the Catholic Cathedrals were designed to feel strong. In the medieval times, the church was the place where you hid from the invaders. The architecture made sure that the villagers felt safe, and encouraged them to not bother hiding anywhere else. The walls were built of huge, hand-cut stones, and the ceilings had large, exposed, solid beams across the top. There was a lookout tower of some sort, that served as a handy place to hang a bell–an early warning sign for trouble, and a reminder for Sunday services.

The Spanish Missions of California ironically resemble forts, as well. The influence of the Spanish architecture is evident in their designs: rounded window tops, and the thick white walls. Again, there are the exposed beams and giant, wooden doors that are testaments to the military value that was placed upon these buildings by the designers.

St. John’s Episcopal Church in Denver, Colorado was quite a sight. It is located in the downtown area of the city, and I had the rare pleasure to attend the singing of “Dixit Dominus,” by Handel. At the time, the choir at this church was the most-recorded choir in the World behind only the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

When I looked up, I found myself in almost a state of vertigo. The heights were dizzying–or, at least the church was designed to feel that way. Tall spires are placed at frequent intervals throughout the center room of the church, and they all converge together hundreds of feet in the air. The visual effect was caused by hundreds of floor-to-ceiling lines that lead your eye to the roof. And, every Sunday, it was designed to remind you of the dizzying power of God.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame was another experience altogether. Famed for its flying buttresses (I have wanted to type that word for years, and never found the right excuse.) and gothic style, it was designed to be another experience altogether. My timing was absolutely perfect when I walked through it last January. Although I thought the architects had originally intended the dramatic effects of this Cathedral to be a visual one, my opinion was changed after the tour.

While walking through the church, I watched a small procession of choir singers disappear into a room in the center. They were smiling and chatting, quite like most other choir singers that I have encountered. There was a performance scheduled for several hours later that evening, and they were rehearsing one last time.

As they started to sing, the sound did something I never expected. I lost track of where the voices originated, and ultimately, it sounded as if the very air inside the church was singing. It conjured imagery of angels (I even looked) singing the music. While the architecture is visually impressive with all the gargoyles and saints on the outside, I would argue that the designers wanted auditory effects with this church.

My favorite of all the churches I have visited, however, was the 1626 Domincan Abbey in Oaxaca, Mexico. This church WAS the military building of the region when it was built. On the outside, it was a giant, 12-foot high, walled compound, bordered by a huge plaza. The church had gigantic wooden doors.

On the inside, however, something different happened from all of the churches that I have seen. When you walk in (through the tiny wooden doors that were built into the giant ones), the first thing you see beyond the rows of pews is the altar. The wall behind it was solid gold–from floor to ceiling. It was ornately carved, encrusted, and everything else that you could imagine.

To set off the “goldness” of that back wall, the ceiling was painted a deep, azul-blue with the exception of the hundreds of white, cherub faces carved right into the ceiling. Behind me, and facing the altar, was a huge rose-colored stained-glass window. Again, having good fortune smile upon me, I happened to walk into the church as the afternoon sun moved into the correct position.

In that church in Oaxaca, the setting sun streamed through the windows. Between the color of the glass, and the gold wall behind the altar, the air itself turned a golden-orange color. Above hovered hundreds of cherub-faced angels in a sky of dark blue.

In it, I had a moment of clarity. The testament of that church was not about the strength or power of God. It was not designed to make you feel dizzy, or small. It was not designed to reassure you, or make you feel safe. It was about the love that Humankind has for God. It was simply about the strength of Faith.

Over the last couple of months, I have been rather obsessed with truth, authenticity, lies, deception, and a whole host of other related ideas. Upon reflection, I have been thinking about another concept, altogether. In reality, the concept that has eluded me, and the concept that I wanted to discuss, is simply Integrity.

While more and more complex theories have led me somewhat astray, this last weekend (with quite a hang-over and in the coffeeshop in a casino in Reno), I was able to finally articulate the concept. Integrity is both important, as well as extremely abstract. But, I will try to articulate a definition, and then contextualize it later.

My definition of Integrity goes like this: Integrity is the behavior that governs the decisions that you make. Acting with integrity incorporates current events, self-awareness of your actions, and the relationship between those two. You, acting with integrity, would make the “best” choices that incorporate all of that information. The simple definition of just, “Do the right thing,” does not encompass the concept accurately. Although, if you act with integrity, you will always “do the right thing.”

The most troubled part of Integrity is the simple phrase, “best.” I do not believe in Absolute truths (he says, absolutely). From a relativistic framework, the most slippery part of Integrity is the making the “best decision” because what may be the best choice may not be the best if you had different, or more information. In fact, this is a great place to reference the entries on Authenticity, Truth and Lies, and even the entry about Unexpected Advice. The more information you have, the more complex it may be to make your decision with Integrity.

I have discussed many of these concepts over the past couple of weeks without any contextualization. The motivation behind the discussion is that I am truly grateful because I have surrounded myself with people of Integrity. I may have only a few friends, but every one of them acts with Integrity. And, of those friends who are married, they have all married people who have it, as well. My family is the same way. And, Integrity is also a concept that I try to embody in my own decision making process.

If you have no Integrity, there is a slim chance that I will ever have room for you in my life. It may sound like a soap-box or a threat, but it is not. It is merely the best choice with my current information. Why would I subject myself, my friends, or my family to the consequences of poorly made decisions? Why would I want to bring someone into my life who doesn’t strive to make the best decisions? I owe it to myself and my family to seek like-minded people.

People with Integrity wanted. No need to apply. I’ll recognize you.

The jury is still out on the Pay-per-click Advertising on the Electronic Writer Website. We are certainly not getting rich from it, but at the same time, advertisements of some sort are on EVERY website on the internet. It is almost a legitimacy issue: you are NOT a legitimate website unless you have advertisements running down the column or as a part of your search results.

Although the legitimacy issue is interesting and may be a subject for a future post, the more pressing issue is the time requirement. I am spending an inordinate amount of time managing the ads that are displayed on the site. The service calls them “Competitive Ads” and they give you a way to block your competitors from advertising on your site, but I don’t think of companies who sell essays as my competition. I think of them as my Antithesis!

Apparently, this is a hot market because everyone wants to sell essays. Along the fringes of this market, people are selling essay-writing services. Apparently, there is a market for WRITERS–and, they are somehow able to make it affordable to college students. It makes me a little suspect of the writing, as well as a little suspect of the company. Do you think they are actually able to afford staff writers to create your essay?

There are also single-subject essay selling services: you can purchase all of your essays for law school, for example. This has got to be the most idiotic game to play in law school. In an industry where you are being trained to memorize vast portions of documents and recall them during an argument, the last thing I want to do is purchase someone else’s writing and: skip the training that I need, as well as possibly using your instructor’s paper.

My biggest problem with the essay-selling business is an ethical one. I understand, and actually support a fair market economy and capitalism, but there is a point in which you must ask yourself if you are doing good things for your community. Are you making your world a better place? If you are selling essays to students, you are targeting the same marketplace as the tobacco companies. You motto may as well be, “let’s get them while they are young–before they know any better.” And, most likely, those students haven’t taken a college-level course in ethics.

I am unwilling to paint students as shapeless lumps of intellectual clay, but I will say this: college students are in a transitory place. Most students are leaving the comforts of their home and are confronted with new issues such as: feeding myself, and washing my laundry. These are base-level issues that they most likely did not have to address in their homes. And, while these same students are busy worrying about food, clothing, and shelter for the first time in their lives, there simply may not be enough time left to think about ethical issues and consequences.

If there was a disclaimer that said, “Using a plagiarized essay may get you expelled from your University!” on the Website, would you use the service? I would stop and think about it.

I am not lobbying for government intervention, nor am I lobbying for censure (in any form). In fact, I am building this site as part of a response to these services.

There is something else that needs to be said, and it is to the owners, the inventors, the maintainers, the hosters, the writers and everyone else involved. It is an important question that can cascade to all levels of society, as a matter of fact. This is not my own ethical question. In fact, it was originally posed to me by a Nuclear Containment Engineer.

While we are busy asking “Could we,” what about answering a different question–Should we?

Last weekend, I went to Reno. It was a drunken debacle of gambling, booze, smoke-filled casinos, hang-overs, all-you-can-eat brunch buffets, and whatever else. It is not a typical thing that I do for relaxation, however, I did it this weekend and had a great time. While I was there a nice and unexpected piece of advice for living unfurled.

The dealer at one particular Blackjack table put on one heck of a show. He was funny in an almost abusive (though non-offensive) way. A really tough line to walk, but it was working. We were laughing at him, at ourselves, at the idea of being in Reno and gambling, and of course at the play of the card game. He coaxed, coached and cajoled us through hand after hand of cards, and we all won money.

The biggest obstacle between you and winning at Blackjack is usually the other players, sometimes the alcohol, and most often a combination of the two. The dealer has an extremely limited set of rules for play that are, of course, based upon statistical odds in the casino’s favor. Luck, oddly enough, only manifests itself in tiny moments during a hand. A good set of rules will win more money for you more often than merely luck. If the other card players were SMART, they would adhere to a set of rules that were equally as strict as those followed by the dealer. When you can find a table where everyone is following these rules, sit down and do not leave–you are going to win.

At one point, the dealer turned his comedic attention towards me. I sat at the last seat before the dealer on the far left side–the infamous “third base.” I needed an strange card (like a 5) in order to beat the dealer, and my odds were poor. Someone else on the table asked for a card, and the dealer gave her the card that I needed. The next player asked for a card, and the dealer gave him a card that would have substituted nicely for the one that I originally wanted. And, each time that happened, I mumbled something like, “That card would have worked.”

Before the dealer gave me my card, he gave me a brief, but appropriate few words of wisdom. He said, “You have to have fortitude to sit at third base. You have to have the strength to see everyone on the table take the card that you need. If you can’t do it, you need to move.” He punctuated his last words by throwing my card at that very moment.

The interesting part was not the implications of his advice upon the card table, but rather the implications that it holds in all of life. When sitting at third base, you get to see more of the cards played before you get to play your own hand. You get to have more information to make your own decisions. That might make your decision easier, or it might make your decision more complicated. That is an externality of possessing more information.

The same is true with life. More information can make your decisions easier, or it can make them more complex. If you stay inside of your self, you may have an ignorant, happy life–but you will not get to see very much of the world. And, if you decide to pursue more information, or more of life, you have to have the strength to see everyone else take a card that you could have taken–making choices that could have worked for you.

He gave me a face card, and I busted. But, the table won . . . .

Believe it, or not, fine dining has seasons. During the summer time, when the default meal is to barbeque and be outside with friends, upscale restaurants are filled with bored food servers who are pleasantly surprised if the night gets busy. Friday and Saturday nights of the summertime will find the same restaurant staffed by blood-thirsty waiters trying to squeeze every penny out of every table to compensate for the slow nights the rest of the season. By contrast, as the weather reaches lower and lower temperatures outside, you will find higher and higher numbers of recreational diners inside. There is a direct correlation between temperature and the amount business in restaurants.

Certain holidays, however, mark the exceptions to the seasons. They are the sudden heat wave in the middle of winter. The mid-July snow. Of all the Holidays on the calendar, there is one perched aloft the highest pinnacle of painfulness. From a food server’s perspective, Valentine’s Day is simply the most foul of all the holidays.

This particular holiday falls in the middle of the dining high season. So, first of all, it spoils what would usually be a good night. The calendar year, however, determines the actual evening, and while there are no good nights to stage one of these Valentine’s Day “celebrations,” it is usually best if it falls on either a Sunday or Monday night–the slowest nights of the week.

This is the point where you ask, “What makes Valentine’s Day so awful?” Quite simply, it is the people. Middle America opens its gates for one evening of every year, and out spills a huge throng of people who never dine, who watch television from the big-screen TVs in their living rooms, and who order delivered pizzas to eat while watching rented movies as a part of a typical Friday night. While there is nothing wrong with those activities, there is, however, a fundamental problem with the idea of Valentine’s Day. It forces all of the people who are comfortable with those activities to put on a tie, or perhaps a skirt, and go out to an expensive restaurant where they have to pay to have someone park their car, pay four times more money for their dinner than if they had just ordered a pizza, never get enough food of their plate for all the money they are spending, and have them sit in that “stuffy” restaurant for hours upon hours. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Let’s take a peek at the hostess stand for a moment. Regardless of the day of the week, there are 600% more reservations than the restaurant normally seats on any given evening. A large percentage of them have been made by crafty guys who have made similar reservations at three other restaurants at 1-hour intervals in case they are running a bit late. The location is invariably “a surprise,” so they can take their dates/girlfriends and boyfriends /wives/mistresses to whichever of the three locations is the most convenient. Regardless of the drop-off rate, the Valentine’s Day reservations reach alarming proportions from the perspective of the restauranteur.

In response to the sheer suggestion of those kind of reservations, every employee the restaurant has ever employed is working that night. All of the part-timers who have “real” jobs and who are trying to quit the addictive cash-in-the-pocket-rush of waiting tables are scheduled weeks in advance to take a temporary hiatus from their twelve-step programs to return for just this one night. The normal wait-staff are locked into a closed-room meeting and flatly ordered to attend. No vacations. No plans. No excuses. If, for any reason, sickness-included, they decide to be absent on Valentine’s Day, they will not have a job when they return.

Once the diners arrive, the real fun begins. They grumble as they pay to have someone park their car. They grumble when they realize that even WITH their reservations, they are going to have to wait 10 minutes for their table to be ready. They grumble that the two drinks that they ordered while waiting cost almost $15. They grumble as they peruse the menu to see the prices on the steak–the one menu item that doesn’t have French words in the description. They grumble at all the other people standing around them grumbling in the exact same ways about the exact same things.

Meanwhile the staff is grumbling because there are 300 parties of two, and not a single table of four (twice the tip money for the same amount of time). They are grumbling because their dates/girlfriends and boyfriends /wives/mistresses are at home watching chick-flicks and complaining because their Valentines are at work on the “one night of the year” when they are supposed to do something special for them. The staff is grumbling because they watch the diners’ eyes travel over to the price column on every item of the menu. They know the restaurant will sell out of the cheapest wine, as well as the menu items without any French words in the description. And, the staff is grumbling because every guest will want to stay for twenty extra minutes. After all, when was the last time they had spent this much money on dinner.

When posed with that question, my guess would always be . . . last year, on Valentine’s Day.

Many months of deliberation have expired, and finally the Electronic Writer project is starting to move forward. I have been watching the traffic and people are visiting the Website. They are clicking through the pages. We are starting to gain some momentum.

After a couple of weeks of tinkering, I finally have the Navigation in the right places–at least, I think so. If you have differing opinions, please tell me. The bulletin board will be completed and available sometime today, so register and tell me in the Comments section.

Now that the foundation has been poured, and the walls of the structure has been built, I get to start working on the content. I have already created much of the stuff. You learn so much more when you teach something, and under that premise I have always been trying to teach everything–as a back-handed way to get access to more of the information myself.

In my early 20’s, I composed a poetry-writing course for my own edification. The essay writing information is from a recent English 1a course that I taught at a community college. The fiction writing information is also a spin off of several attempts at teaching fiction writing, in an effort to learn the craft better myself.

I apologize, in advance, because my politics will enter the dialog. I will, however, always make my politics evident and allow you to decide how you want to deal with them. You do not have to agree with me, nor do you have to like my politics. My opinions and views, however, are informed and chosen. None of what I believe have been simply handed to me by peers, parents, church, or instructors. If you have a compelling argument, and it passes my own fact-checking process, perhaps you can change my opinion. I am, after all, always in search of the Truth, or truths, or a better version of the truth . . . .

I expect that if you engage in a dialog, that you respect the opinions of others. Disagreement is a good thing. Destructiveness is not acceptable. My term for it is dissonance. We are all happily NOT agreeing, not trying to break each other down, and yet fully committed to forwarding our own agendas–because we believe they are correct (otherwise why would you believe it?).

Intolerance will not be permitted.

Roland Barthes composed a great theory about language that he called “Joissance”–a derivative of the French word for “playing.” In his theory, he argues that language and the usage of language, and the act of composing sentences and better ways of saying something is a FUN process. Even engaging in the dialog about the usage of language is a FUN, playful process.

While it may be a bit obscure, I have clung to this theory since my first read of it. I believe that language is fun, writing is fun, talking about language is fun, talking about writing is fun, and that it is a dream job to spend the day creating a sentence, and then tinkering with it to get it to say what you wanted it to say better, more descriptively, more succinctly, more accurately, etc.

So, Roland Barthes’ theory will prevail in Electronic Writer. Have fun with this place, and have fun with your writing. More importantly, have fun with the other writers who are here to do the same.

Tonight, after work, I made a nice dinner for myself. I love to feed myself with good things. I had some minnestrone soup, and a salad with feta cheese and grilled chicken. It was easy stuff to prepare, but I feel better about myself when I take some time out of my life and make me something yummy to eat.

I finished the dishes as my espresso percolated to a finish. I could smell the oily coffee over the scent of the soap and warm water. I dried my hands, poured the inky blackness into a clear glass, and finally sat back to sip that espresso.

It has been a long week–for many reasons. I am glad it is finally over. There will be a chance to do some things for myself for a couple of days–more cooking, and more writing. There will be a chance to get my mind off things for a couple of days before I return to the week-long money-earning process.

I have always imagined myself to be surrounded by a bubble of sorts–a thin membrane separating the crushing weight of the universe pressing inwards towards me. During my short 90 years on this earth, I suspect that I will always push that membrane outwards. I will ceaslessly expand that space inside that I occupy, or else I will surely be crushed . . . . This is the measure that I use to evaluate my efforts. Am I winning, or is the pressure of life stronger than me.

Right now, I am making progress on expanding that bubble. I AM growing, and life is currently NOT pummeling me, but I could be happier. As I sit, relaxing for the first time all week, I let my mind wander a bit, and the CD is playing in the background. It is Jackson Browne’s, “the next voice you hear: the best of jackson browne.” The songs have wound their way along to “Sky Blue and Black.”

This song has always evoked a mixture of feelings for me. It is a love song, but a sad one. It is a song saying that he is sorry and that he misses her. And, there was a solemnness to it when I saw him sing it at Red Rocks. There was something about how his voice formed the letters in this one that set it apart–something in the way he sang this song that even the casual listener heard.

While I lived in Denver, I had become really close over the course of 8 or 9 months with a friend who was from Morocco originally. He had been living in the US for years–and was about to gain his citizenship. Although his English was great, we spent a good deal of time speaking in French to help me get back into practice. In fact, we literally spent months talking only in French.

My restaurant vocabulary was particularly acute because we both worked in a restaurant. As we ventured out to other conversations about friends, girlfriends, travel, families, hates and loves, however, I had to stretch my vocabulary. The more we talked about literature and pop culture, the more words I had to learn. The more I had to learn to be able to describe. The more that the subtleties of language mattered, the harder I had to work to voice them in the French language.

When Jackson Browne was schedule to play at Red Rocks Amphiteatre, I bought tickets. Red Rocks is a mystical place for a summer concert. The short-sleeve t-shirt weather, the lights of Denver flickering in the background, the afternoon thunderstorm lumbering across the plains towards Nebraska, the stars, and the wavy and colorful stratified sandstone lining the edges make it a perfect place on earth to experience music. I had been dating a woman in the run-up to the concert and things in our relationship had finally gone awry about a week before the show. I gave the spare ticket to a coworker, and went to see the show basically by myself.

The following week, my friend and I had both worked a lunch shift, finished early in the afternoon, and caught a late lunch on a patio somwhere in the downtown area. We took the time to talk over a couple of beers while waiting for the afternoon shower to dump the hour of rain and move East towards Nebraska. After the rain finally let up, we walked back towards our neighborhoods, and he inquired about my obsession with Jackson Browne’s music.

It was not an obsession, I told him, but rather that his music has an element that speaks to me. He sings about common things: love lost, broken-down cars, drug problems, and spending your whole life working for money–and how empty that makes you feel. Jackson Browne also, at times, shines like a poet. He puts words to moments that I have experienced. And, “Sky Blue and Black” has one of those moments:

I remember as we walked that afternoon how important it was for me to translate the subtleties of the word choices from English into French. It was difficult to convey just exactly how the simple imagery worked together to make the lyrics into something much more complex. Those simple details had become reminders of both his loneliness and his acceptance of the way things had ended. They were simple things that we cannot escape–that sound of your tires in the rain, or seeing the reflection of a sunset. But rather than becoming a trap, he see the beauty in them. That is how he thinks of her. The beauty of the little things everywhere around him remind him . . . of her.

It was a great experience working through that song–translating the subtleties into French. Every time I hear it, I think of that afternoon. And now, perhaps, I will also think of her.

Since adding the Google Advertisements to the Website, I have spent a great deal of time trying to keep the essay-selling Websites off of the Electronic Writer website. And, it got me thinking . . . .

One of the primary motivations behind Electronic Writer surfaced while I was teaching English 1A at a community college. Searching for online resources to assist my writing students proved to be a difficult task. In fact, it proved to be EXTREMELY difficult. The sparse resources that I found were often supplimental materials produced by other Writing instructors to assist their classes. I am sure that these resources fit nicely into the class they were intended to suppliment, but they may not have been applicable to other writing students.

What I was able to find in abundance, however, were Websites that sold essays. Try typing “writing help” into google. You won’t get a list of places with online activities. Instead, you will get a list of places where you can purchase an essay. Putting myself into the student mentality (not all students, of course), I saw how much easier it would be to make that purchase and modify an essay for class than it would be to keep searching and find a place that can help me become a better writer.

And, that is the motivation behind Electronic Writer. This is a place where you can practice writing, where you can interact with writers, and where you can easily get assistance in becoming a better writer. Soon, we will have the bulletin boards installed for you to post and receive writing help–and, interact directly with the people who are making this community work. But, it will take your participation to make it successful.

Right now, students most likely have access to writing labs, tutors, and writing workshops through their colleges–face-to-face resources to improve writing. But, the more our culture relies upon the Internet for information, the less those face-to-face resources will be utilized. And, the more we need your participation to transform Electronic Writer into the best writing community on the Internet.

Let’s start today off with a bit of fun . . . . These are GREAT samples of none other than our very President of the United States. Funny stuff. Perhaps my favorite is the “My Generation” clip towards the bottom. Enjoy!

http://www.diymedia.net/collage/gwb-nan.htm