This post is a little different. A break from current events.
I was thinking about what I needed in order to post or respond to a post on another blog. And the list was revealing. First, I need my trusty iBook. I am a Mac person, have been since 1984. This says something about me, of course, because only 13 % of the American population use Macs. Also, I need a very strong cup of coffee--spoon-stands-up-in-it strong, with real cream & sweetener. Usually a Sumatra brew. My grandfather was a Swede, and he thought coffee was the elixer of life. He gave me coffee for breakfast when I was a child, (it was mostly milk) so I was hooked. I can't imagine life without coffee. Usually 2 or 3 cups while writing will do.
I listen to music, sometimes, while posting. I am very eclectic--love about anything. I am the progeny of two professors of music, so classical music was the soundtrack of my childhood. But I ventured outside that rarified world. Love radiohead. Love Johnny Cash. Love Elbow. Love Nada Surf. Love Pink Floyd and Cuban music, Emmy Lou Harris and Rufus Wainwright Tricky and Massive Attack, Mozart and Sibelius. Love Radio Paradise, which you can find on the iTunes radio list under "Alternative." It plays everything from Beethoven to Camper Van Beethoven. Presently listening to this station, and a string quintet is playing Metallica, suitably weird. It is listener supported--no commercials.
The location I write in the sun porch of my 100 year-old house, at least during the summer. During the rest of the year, I write in my subterranean office at the university, where the only natural light is through a narrow transom near the ceiling. But the porch is on the second story in the back, and is high enough that I can use a small telescope and see Mars, Venus and sometimes Saturn, and of course the moon. The porch has eight windows, and yet it is only about 10' by 5'. I write while sitting on a wicker chase lounge. Earlier in the summer, I had to listen to blue jays battle each other over my mulberry tree--which is now completely denuded of berries. Glad that period has passed as these birds eardrum-splittingly raucus. Sometimes I listen to a baseball game (Detroit Tigers), or a hockey game (Toronto Maple Leafs) during the fall, winter, and spring. I tend to kind of tune games out until I hear the play-by-play guy's voice rising a few octaves, and know a big play is at hand.
So what do you need to blog or respond to blogs? And what are your surroundings like? Are you at work? At home? What do you listen to while blogging, if anything?
I was thinking about what I needed in order to post or respond to a post on another blog. And the list was revealing. First, I need my trusty iBook. I am a Mac person, have been since 1984. This says something about me, of course, because only 13 % of the American population use Macs. Also, I need a very strong cup of coffee--spoon-stands-up-in-it strong, with real cream & sweetener. Usually a Sumatra brew. My grandfather was a Swede, and he thought coffee was the elixer of life. He gave me coffee for breakfast when I was a child, (it was mostly milk) so I was hooked. I can't imagine life without coffee. Usually 2 or 3 cups while writing will do.
I listen to music, sometimes, while posting. I am very eclectic--love about anything. I am the progeny of two professors of music, so classical music was the soundtrack of my childhood. But I ventured outside that rarified world. Love radiohead. Love Johnny Cash. Love Elbow. Love Nada Surf. Love Pink Floyd and Cuban music, Emmy Lou Harris and Rufus Wainwright Tricky and Massive Attack, Mozart and Sibelius. Love Radio Paradise, which you can find on the iTunes radio list under "Alternative." It plays everything from Beethoven to Camper Van Beethoven. Presently listening to this station, and a string quintet is playing Metallica, suitably weird. It is listener supported--no commercials.
The location I write in the sun porch of my 100 year-old house, at least during the summer. During the rest of the year, I write in my subterranean office at the university, where the only natural light is through a narrow transom near the ceiling. But the porch is on the second story in the back, and is high enough that I can use a small telescope and see Mars, Venus and sometimes Saturn, and of course the moon. The porch has eight windows, and yet it is only about 10' by 5'. I write while sitting on a wicker chase lounge. Earlier in the summer, I had to listen to blue jays battle each other over my mulberry tree--which is now completely denuded of berries. Glad that period has passed as these birds eardrum-splittingly raucus. Sometimes I listen to a baseball game (Detroit Tigers), or a hockey game (Toronto Maple Leafs) during the fall, winter, and spring. I tend to kind of tune games out until I hear the play-by-play guy's voice rising a few octaves, and know a big play is at hand.
So what do you need to blog or respond to blogs? And what are your surroundings like? Are you at work? At home? What do you listen to while blogging, if anything?
posted by mariestaad at 11:14 PM
2 Comments:
I think people shouldn't really need much of anything other than a computer to blog or respond to blogs, but I've noticed that many people who read blogs rarely comment (another good blogger, The Heretical Jew, had a post about how people never comment as well). I don't understand why, because the coolest thing about blogs (in my opinion) is that anyone can comment.
For me, recently I've been listening to an Irish band called The Revs or Green Day's American Idiot album when I blog, and of course drinking copious amounts of coffee (at home, where I can make my own Guinness-Black insanely strong coffee). Or, I'll have one of the american Lying News Agencies on as motivation in the background.
Did you know that there's a Swedish beer named Mariestaads?
Cool. . .I'll have to listen to The Revs--I've heard a lot about them. The Mariestaad reference actually comes from the city in Sweden where my relatives are from, Mariestad. I had to use two A's because "Mariestad" was taken as an ID. I didn't know that there was a svensk beer named Mariestaad though!
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