How To Tell When You Are Distracted
All evidence on this blog to the contrary, I do not have ADD. When I want to, I can buckle down and focus just fine. Nothing I say in the rest of this post will prove that, but I assure you it’s true.
So I am plugging away this weekend on my new project site, the bigger, better, more powerful version of O Pegasus. This is why it’s taking me so long to get that site to beta release—
First, there was Adam Lindsay Gordon. He wrote a poem or two that is already archived on O Pegasus. I copied “How We Beat the Favourite” over to the new site and, as I was cataloging it, wondered if the horses mentioned in it were real.
A few Google searches later, and I had a biography of Adam Lindsay Gordon in my hands. Well, on my desktop. Said biography contains a plethora of annotations. I stop entering “How We Beat the Favourite” in the database and make the general record for the biography. It’s clear this book is going to be very useful.
The new biography has pictures. Lots and Lots of pictures. I begin entering the pictures into the database.
One of the pictures is captioned with a stanza from another poem by Gordon. The stanza is part of an eight-part series. It is part of the last poem in the series, to be precise.
I stop entering pictures and start entering the series. Starting with the first poem. Of course.
Every poem in the series has an inscription / introductory quote. Suddenly I am entering Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” (awesome) and Juvenal’s Satire VIII (seriously less awesome). It is only when I am contemplating whether or not I want to track down a poem referenced in the introduction to one of Sir Walter Scott’s poems that I realize I’ve gotten a little distracted.
After all, I’m supposed to be entering the poem in Gordon’s series so I can finish entering the photo in the biography, so that the biography will be done and I can go back to “How We Beat the Favourite” and footnote it.
I couldn’t tell you how many entries I actually created during this little side jaunt, but I can tell you that O Pegasus has 108 authors, 8 books, 169 texts, and 111 images. The new site has 101 people, 112 texts, 25 books, and 295 images. And I am nowhere—nowhere!—near to having all the OP texts moved over.
I can also tell you that when you are tired, “Bensurdatu attacks the Seven-headed Serpent” looks a lot like “Bensurdatu attacks the Seven-headed Squirrel.” I have to admit I’m a little disappointed; there is no way a fairy tale about a seven-headed serpent could be anywhere near as interesting as one about a seven-headed squirrel.
I bet someone, somewhere has written about seven-headed squirrels. Maybe I should go look it up… I mean, so what if I never get the site to beta stage because I can’t keep my Google impulse under control? Clearly I’m amused and keeping myself out of trouble. That’s a fairly significant accomplishment in and of itself.
Gordon. Adam Lindsay Gordon. I am supposed to be focused on Gordon. Why couldn’t he have written about seven-headed squirrels instead of nineteenth-century racehorses?
Source?
Does anyone know the source of the following quote?—
When God created the horse, he said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast thy enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon they back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to me. And thou fly without any wings, and conquer without any sword.
Before you say the Koran, I’ve searched several different online versions and can’t find the the passage. Maybe my search skills are still on the fritz, but then again, maybe someone mis-attributed the quote and the mis-attribution has spread across the internet as it so often does.
If you know definitively that this comes from the Koran, would you let me know which book? Of if you’ve been rolling your eyes for ages at all the mis-attributions because you know this really comes from _________, would you let me know what _________ is?
Thanks!
Do you know these books?
I’m feeling nostalgic today. Anyone know the title/author of these children’s books?
1 -
The book is set in England (probably published in England), I think, with a girls whose parent(s) (maybe mom only?) runs a sweet shop(?). One way or another she ends up riding a chestnut horse named Quest. They compete cross-country, I think.
2 -
The horse’s name is Farfalla or something similar. I think Farfalla is right, because I just looked it up and it means Butterfly, which is what I remember this horse’s name meaning. There’s a race involved. I don’t remember the setting, but it’s somewhere in Europe. I’m very fuzzy on this one, but I think the angst of the story was whether or not the horse would be selected to compete in the race and, if she was, whether or not she’d survive it (much less win it).
3 -
A girl is out riding when she and her horse are hit by a tractor trailer. I forget the rest. No… that’s the Horse Whisperer. The book I’m thinking of predates that. Hmm. The girl has polio? Stuck in bed for a long time? Her miraculous emotional recovery is aided by her horse, who she finally rides, possibly in some sort of emergency situation? Maybe I’m just making up a story I wanted to read now.
What literature says about values
I find this teaser excerpt from LM Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside interesting, mostly for what it says about the type of book publishers thought would sell in 1985 (the book was originally published in 1920).
“Rilla-my-Rilla, what are you thinking of?”
“Everything is so changed, Walter,” said Rilla wistfully. “Even you—you’re changed. A week ago we were all so happy—and—and—now I just can’t find myself at all. I’m lost.”
Walter sat down on a neighboring stone and took Rilla’s little appealing hand.
“I’m afraid our world has come to an end, Rilla. We’ve got to face that fact.”
So the two sat there in the old valley until the evening star shone through a pale-grey, gauzy cloud over the maple grove. Walter felt, for the time being at least, that it was not such a despicable thing after all to dread the horror of war; and Rilla was glad to sympathize with him. It was one of the evenings Rilla was to treasure all her life—the first one on which Walter had ever talked to her as if she were a woman and not a child.
For those of you who don’t know, Walter and Rilla are brother and sister and the book is set during World War I.
I don’t know…. do kids today say “I want a book about the end of the world and a woman coming of age!” I get the feeling they say “Wizards! Pow! Magic! Kazaam!” This was one of my favorite books as a kid, and I was a little disappointed when I re-read that teaser text. It’s so… meh. Anyway. I find it interesting that that’s the part that was excerpted.
In other news, every kid should have to read Laurence Yep’s The Serpent’s Children.
Oh April, why do you torment us?
April is National Poetry Month. Remember? Some of us do stupid things, like agree to write a poem a day.
And then we don’t write anything for an entire year after that, we’re so burnt out.
We. Me. Whatever.
The question is not “Why does she use the royal ‘we’?” The question is: Is she going to write a poem a day again in April?
And the answer is—