Are You LinkedIn?

I recently got my second invitation for someone else to link to me at LinkedIn.com. What's the deal with this site? Can someone explain it to me? Is it useful? It seems to me that people enter a lot of personal information, which must be valuable to someone. Also, it seems to make unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims, such as, "If you fill out this section, you're 3.1 times more likely to get a job offer."

So,

• Are you registered with this site?
• What good has it done?
• Do you want to be connected to my site or vice versa? (Are such relationships commutative?)
  

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Wharton is an author who I've heard of and thought I probably should read, so I picked up the short (4 CDs) audio edition of Ethan Frome.

The novella is set in rural Starkfield, Massachusetts ("where it's always winter!") near the turn of the last century, though the bulk of the book is a long flashback to 20 years before the present. In the short opening, the narrator meets the impressive but crippled and unapproachable Ethan, and tries to piece together his history and the cause of the "smash up" that left him in his physical state.

This is yet another one of those "evil, controlling, hypochondriac wife" stories, and 20 years previously, Ethan finds himself married to one. When his wife's cousin Mattie arrives to help out around the household, Ethan sees another side of womanhood and longs for her. Wharton is a master at building the tension. I can just imagine post-Victorian (Taftian? Wilsonian? Georgian (V), I suppose) ladies reading this and wondering if or when Ethan and Mattie will get together.

Wharton, however, paints Ethan as basically a good man. When his wife decides to send Mattie away and bring on another hired girl, Ethan feels trapped. He longs to run away with Mattie, but can he break his vows to his wife and leave her destitute?

Like the last book, this one seems to be geared more towards the female side of the reading audience. It's not bad, especially if you like hypochondriacs and tension of the sort described above. Recommended, but not highly.

Runaway by Alice Munro

Runaway, a collection of stories by Alice Munro, won the Giller Prize for 2004, which was reason enough for me to pick it up when I saw it in the library's audiobook section. The stories are:

• Runaway - Carla seems trapped in a bad relationship. Can she escape and where does she belong?
  
• Chance - Juliet meets a stranger on a train.
  
• Soon - Juliet returns East to visit her parents with her child.
  
• Silence - Juliet is estranged from her adult child.
  
• Passion - Grace meets her fiance's older brother and her life takes an turn that's not ordinary but not surprising.
  
• Trespasses - 10-year old Lauren doesn't seem to have many friends, except for the hotel cleaning lady.
  
• Tricks - Robin's life reaches a turning point. We check in 30 later to see how it turned out.
  
• Powers - Nancy's friend Tessa is an unusual girl. We check in 40 years later to see how she turned out.

So, there are a few common themes:

• All of the stories have to do with a woman's (or girl's) relationships.
• In addition to "Runaway", some other stories have that theme; thus it's a good name for the collection.
• In a few (the Juliet trilogy, Robin, and Grace) we come back later to see how things turned out.

All-in-all, it's not bad. I thought the Juliet sections were the least interesting, and she got three stories of the eight. In it, she encounters a Christian pastor who seems so incompetent that Munro's apparent stereotype made me upset with her. But it turned out that he may have had a reason for acting as he did, and as her saga ends with an interesting point on parenting, the reader is left to wonder if the pastor was right after all.

If I had to choose a favourite, it might be either Trespasses or Tricks.

As it's a book about women and their relationships, it would, of course, be most interesting to someone who is, well, interested in that kind of thing. Still, it was less a "Romance Novel" than was A Student of Weather, which I selected because it was a Giller Prize finalist in 2000.

I give Runaway 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

4H Clothes Project - "Ready, Let's Sew!"

Coats of Arrms

Have you ever had to make a coat of arms, like for a school project or anything? I never had. I also know next to nothing about heraldry.

For some reason, tonight while running, I had an idea for a coat of arms. This is probably overly complex and in violation of the normal heraldic rules. I won't describe the components; they all may be obvious, or maybe not. Also, when they saw me working on this, my kids wanted to make their own, which they began before bedtime. When they complete them, I may post them here.

I used what may be called "primitive" tools to draw my design, and was it was intended to be a quick prototype. (It's been years since I've made this kind of little art project.)

Are My Golf Clubs Legal?

I try to go golfing once or twice every decade or so. One of these occasions is scheduled for Sunday. I took a look at my golf clubs and wondered if my 3 wood and 5 wood were legal. They're not titanium. They seem to be made out of some sort of unidentified light, fibrous material.

MillionCount.com

Check out millioncount.com (within a month or two of this post). The person who forwarded me the link said "THIS IS SPECTACULAR." I'm not sure about that; I haven't made up my mind yet. I suppose if it's for a good cause...

Three Cats

The artist at work:

Overnight Guests

Interestingly, considering my last post, it's just me and the boys tonight. The rest of the family has gone. The question is, will I be able to handle it?

I've already been asked my views concerning bed time. My philosophy is that I am most concerned about my own bed time. If I am trying to sleep and am awakened, I won't be very happy. So, it would be wise to avoid loud voices, crashes, explosions, etc., after that time.

And, here's looking at the world through fly's eyes:

Hospitality

"Practice hospitality" - Romans 12:13b

For the past two summers (2005, 2006) we hosted a short-term (4 months and 1 month) international exchange student. While we found it quite enjoyable, we didn't sign up to participate in the program again this year. Thinking about it, one reason (though not the only) is because, as our family grows, our house seems to be growing smaller, making it more difficult to imagine adding another resident, and committing a bedroom for that purpose.

One thing we'd like to do is to be able to practice hospitality as the verse states above. We'd like to be able to host a short- or long-term exchange student. We'd like to be able to more comfortably host parents, in-laws, or foreign or domestic travelers for some period of time. Of course, we can still do that now to some degree, but not to the extent that such visitors deserve.

So, this raises the question, should we get a new house? Would you be more likely to stay here overnight if we had more space?

And, the $100,000 question: Does anyone have an extra $100,000 or so laying around that we can use for such an upgrade?

The Jungle by Upton "Axl" Sinclair

Opening Launchcast Music:
Dafür Ist Das Leben Zu Kurz by Nena

The famous quote about The Jungle by its author is "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." This is obvious from reading it. While it does describe Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus' time in Chicago's Packing Town and the conditions therein, it's a lot more than that. Jurgis also spends time as an unemployed homeless bum, a steelworker, a wandering hobo, a farm machinery factory worker, in jail, on a railroad construction project, as a Republican party operative, and more.

Sinclair certainly gives a detailed look at life at the turn of the previous century. Most striking to me is the lack of any sort of (small-s) social security. If a worker is injured or loses his job, his entire family may lose their house and face starvation.

Jurgis' life goes through its ups and downs, with more downs than ups, until the conclusion of the book, where he is introduced to the concept of "Socialism". To today's ears, Sinclair's "Socialism" most closely resembles Communism. With "Socialism", life finally has meaning and things are looking up for our hero.

The entire work needs to be taken with a grain of salt and taken for what it is, a piece of political propaganda. But, as long as that is kept in mind, I found it to be highly interesting, though perhaps too long. Highly Recommended.


Closing Launchcast Music:
Ricky by "Weird Al" Yankovic