Extraordinary Charges Against a Schoolmaster

Another item from the Dundee Courier, relating to other long-deceased relatives, has come to my attention. I am glad to relate that Mr Bell was not, to my knowledge, among my relatives, but only the Soutar children and possibly Alexander Deuchar.

EXTRAORDINARY CHARGES AGAINST A SCHOOLMASTER.
In the Forfar Sheriff Court yesterday – Sheriff Heriot on the bench – George Andrew Bell, teacher of the Parochial School of the parish of Kinnell, appeared to answer to the petition (the first of the kind presented in Scotland) at the instance of the School Board of the parish of Kinnell, charging him with cruelty to, and improper treatment of, a number of the children attending the Kinnell Parish School. The petition was presented under the 60th section of the Education (Scotland) Act. It occupied thirty-three pages of manuscript, and contained eighteen charges of cruelty and improper treatment. The charges contained in the libel were as follows: – (1.) About a fortnight before the old term of Whitsunday, 1873, he grossly, cruelly, and improperly assaulted David Sinclair (12 years), son of Frederick Sinclair, Hatton Den, and struck him with his clenched fist on the face to the effusion of blood, whereby one of his teeth was knocked out and his face swollen and discolored. (2.) About a week before the first assault he struck Isabella Sinclair (11 years), daughter of Frederick Sinclair, on the head with a strap, whereby her ear-rings were knocked out of her ears, causing her great pain; he also struck her on the hands with the strap till they were swollen rendering her, she being a half-timer at Hatton Mill, unable to use her hands all that day; he also struck her with a cane across the shoulders leaving a broad black mark, causing her extreme pain for a week, and rendering her unable to rest in bed for that period. (3.) In November last he struck James Martin (10 years), son of James Martin, milloverseer, Hatton Mill, a severe blow behind the ear with his fist causing him to go home to his father crying, and on the father remonstrating with him for his conduct, respondent admitted he had acted with unnecessary severity. The respondent was further charged under this head with having at various times during the last year beaten this child so much that it was with difficulty he could be induced to attend school, and his parents lodged a complaint with the Board. (4.) Between the old term at 26 May and the end of August, 1873, he assaulted John Ledingham, son of Margaret Ledingham, mill-worker, by striking him with his fists on the cheek and eye whereby the eye was marked and discoloured, the eyelash cut, and the cheek swollen; then during the whole year prior to November the boy was under respondent’s charge he treated him with such systematic harshness and gross cruelty that the child was in absolute terror of him, started and called out in his sleep from nervous terror, and could not be induced to attend school unless dragged by force, and had to be removed at the end of November to another school. (5.) About 27th of February, 1873, he assaulted Isabella Green, 10 years of age, daughter of David Green, then at Hatton Mill and now in Arbroath, by striking her with a strap across the face causing a great weal across the cheek and running into the eye, and rendering the eye blue and discoloured for upwards of a week; further, during the whole time the child was under his charge the respondent treated her with systematic harshness and cruelty, beating her frequently with excessive and unnecessary severity on the hands with a strap till they were discoloured, and on the back and shoulders with a cane. (7. Sic) between Whitsunday, 1872, and June, 1873, on various occasions, he assaulted Ann Green, eight years of age, daughter of David Green, by dashing her to the floor, and beating her on the head and hands with a strap or stick till they were discoloured. The punishments were generally inflicted because the child had an impediment in her speech and could not speak rapidly. The child had to be removed from the school in consequence of this harsh treatment. (8.) During a period of five years, from May, 1867, to August, 1872, and on various occasions during that time he assaulted Agnes Soutar, daughter of John Soutar, miller, Kinnell Mill, by beating her with a stick or taws, nipping her hands and ears with his nails till they bled, striking her on the breast with his fist, and slapping her ears. (9.) During a period of four years from 1868, at different times, he assaulted Ann Soutar, daughter of John Soutar, by beating her till she bled, and also nipping her with his nails. (10.) During a period of one year and nine months, from November, 1872, he assaulted and cruelly illused, on various occasions, William Soutar, son of John Soutar, till he could not be induced to attend school, and had to be put to another school in Friockheim, but after the schoolmaster left there they were again transferred to Bell. (11.) About three years ago he assaulted Alexander Deuchars, Kinnell Mill, by nipping his ears almost through and through, causing them to bleed and fester; and respondent was further accused [illegible—under?] this count with having kicked Deuchars [illegible] into the fire, and he was afterwards so ill treated [illegible] that his mother had to remove him from the school. (12.) At different times during the year from May, 187[ illegible], to May, 1872, he struck William M’Kenzie, son of John M’kenzie, shepherd at Bolshan [Bolahan?], severely with pointer stick on one of the fingers of the right hand, which raised a lump about the size of a partridge’s egg that remained about a year, and afterwards festered, causing pain and stiffness for about a year and a half after the occurrence, and in consequence of respondent’s harshness M’Kenzie had to be removed from the parish school of Kinnell. (13.) During the year 1872 he struck Kenneth M’Kenzie, son of said John M’Kenzie, on the head with a pointer or stick so as to raise lumps, and at times to induce giddiness, also beating him on the hands with unnecessary severity, in consequence of which treatment he was, shortly after the 1st of January, 1873, removed from the parish school of Kinnell and sent to the parish school of Farnell. (14.) He did for a period of about a year, between three and four years ago, at various times assault James White (5 years), son of James White, farm servant at Bolshan, by nipping his ears till blood was drawn, and beating him so as to leave marks and bruises to such an extent that the child was thrown into a state of nervous terror, started in his sleep, and was very unwilling to go to school. (15.) He assaulted with unnecessary cruelty, during a period of nine months, from June, 1873, David Wilson, son of James Wilson, farm servant, now residing at Easter Braikie, by whipping him almost daily with the taws, and beating him on the head and elsewhere with a pointer and rabbit’s foot – the bones of which rendered the blows very severe – and kicking him with his feet, in consequence of which he was removed to another school. (16.) He assaulted in an unnecessary, harsh, and cruel way, at various times during a period of nine months, from June, 1870, William Wilson, son of James Wilson, beating him with taws, pointer, and the rabbit’s foot, and kicking him frequently, by all which he was kept in a state of continual terror, and put quite past the power of repeating his lessons correctly, though he learned them diligently at home, and which caused him to be removed from the school. (17.) Sometime in the winter of 1872-3, he attacked in a cruel and improper way, Margaret Donald, daughter of John Donald, now farm servant at West Seaton, by striking her blows on the ear, which drew blood, and rendered the ear discoloured and swollen. (18.) He did cruelly attack James Airth, son of James Airth, farm servant at Bolshan, at various times during a period of about two years prior to the present time, so that he was for a considerable period quite nervous and frightened, starting in his sleep that night through fright, and could scarcely be induced to attend school. The petitioners went on to state that the respondent had often been remonstrated with by the parents of pupils on account of his harshness and cruelty, and the improper punishments he inflicted, and that many children had been removed from the Parish School of Kinnell, and the attendance was greatly less than it ought to be. The petition included with a prayer for the dismissal of the respondent.
Mr CARGILL, solicitor, Arbroath, appeared for the respondent, and objected to the relevancy of the libel. He urged that parts of the 3d, 4th, and 5th charges, and the whole of charges 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, and 18th were irrelevant in respect that they did not allege or specify any particular acts of cruelty or improper treatment such as are required by the section, and that there was a want of proper specification of time in all of the charges, without any reasons being alleged for this want of specification. His second objection was that charges 10th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 18th, were irrelevant in respect that the modus operandi or method in which the cruel or improper treatment was alleged to have been committed, was not specified. The third objection to the relevancy was that the complaint, so far as founded upon acts of cruelty alleged to have been committed at dates prior to the passing of the Education Act, 1872, or at all events prior to its adoption in the parish of Kinnell, was irrelevant.
Mr MILN, solicitor, Arbroath, who appeared for the petitioners, replied to the objections, and contended that the objection against the complaint, so far as founded on alleged acts prior to the passing of the Education Act in 1872, was effectually disposed of by a case tried in this court, and appealed to the Court of Session, Nasmyth v. Lord Dalhousie, in which it was held that a change of prosecutor or tribunal made by the Education Act did not preclude a schoolmaster being prosecuted for improper conduct. In this case the only difference between the previous Act and the present one was, that in the first case the Presbytery were the prosecutors, and in the second the School Board. As to the other objections, he held that both time and manner had been sufficiently condescended upon.
Sheriff HERIOT did not think the objection to the complaint in respect to the acts committed prior to the passing of the Education Act, 1872, was a good one; neither were the other objections, in his opinion, good ones. Of course a schoolmaster was entitled to assault his pupils, but not harshly, and it was therefore sufficient to allege that he used harshness and unnecessary violence. With regard to the want of specification as to time, it could not be expected that children could remember precise dates; and if the prosecutor gave all reasonable information, that was all that was required of him. Upon these grounds he must repel the objections, and hold the libel relevant.
The Sheriff then fixed Wednesday, 15th April, for the taking of the proof. We understand that a very large number of witnesses are to be examined for both sides.

Extraordinary Master and Servant Case

From time to time I delve into the antics of my ancestors and their kin, as a form of distraction from writing scholarly articles about people I'm not related to, I suppose. This evening I chanced upon the following article in the Dundee Courier, one of many therein regarding the misadventures of my kinsman the farmer at Fithie.

Extraordinary Master and Servant Case, Cross-Swearing.
In the Forfar Small Debt Court yesterday--Sheriff Robertson presiding--an action was brought at the instance of Annie Smollet, some time domestic servant at Fithie, against David Lamb, farmer, Fithie, for £6 10s, as wages for the six months from Martinmas to Whitsunday last. Mr Thomson, Brechin, appeared for pursuer, and Mr Walter Oswald, Arbroath, for defender. The defence was justifiable dismissal. Pursuer, who is about 20 years of age, said she entered defender's service at Whitsunday, 1883, and was dismissed from her place on 3d May last for "speaking to a man." The Sheriff--That was very hard. (Laughter.) Mrs Lamb, however, took her back on condition that she did not take men into the house, and also that she kept away from the bothy, but she was again dismissed before the term. She denied that she had been in the practice of taking John Anderson, one of the farm servants, into her bedroom almost every night; nor had she, about two o'clock in the morning, left her room and gone to the bothy. She had no recollection of having been found in one of the bothy beds by her mistress. Asked if she had ever let the cattle out of the courts one night through malice towards her employer, she replied in the negative. She likewise swore that she never gave the pigs a dose of cayenne pepper, and she blamed a fellow-servant for having put burning cayenne pepper under Mrs Donald's door to smoke her out of the house. She denied stealing whisky or anything else from her mistress. Witness stated that she was last dismissed for having gone to the bothy to put a mustard plaster on Anderson, who was bad with inflammation. Mrs Lamb deponed that pursuer was a very bad woman, that she stole whisky, sugar, beef, and bread, and in fact everything that she could lay her hands on. She knew that Smollet had been in the habit of taking men into her bedroom, and on one occasion she saw John Anderson there. Witness taxed pursuer with dosing the pigs with cayenne pepper, and she did not deny it. On a Sunday evening witness found Smollet hiding in one of the bothy beds, and at another time she saw her leaving the bothy about three o'clock in the morning. Pursuer was dismissed for going to the bothy, which she had been forbidden to enter. [illegible] Colville, domestic servant, Fithie, gave evidence to the effect that Anderson had been in pursuer's bedroom almost every night during the past six months, and that she let the cattle out of the courts one night, and by scouring about one of their number got a broken leg. Pursuer was again recalled, and the Sheriff having warned her as to the consequence of committing perjury, she adhered to her former evidence, and signed the notes which had been taken by his Lordship. The Sheriff--I feel myself bound to go into this case, because it is scandalous to a Court of Justice. I don't know who is committing perjury. John Anderson, examined, denied that he had ever visited pursuer in her bedroom. This witness's statement was also taken down by the Sheriff. William Lamb, farm servant, Fithie, corroborated Mrs Lamb's assertion in regard to pursuer having been in the bothy on a Sunday night. Defender stated that he dismissed pursuer because she was making his house a brothel. After other evidence had been led, the Sheriff said he was satisfied that there was no cause for his interference, as dismissal had been proved to be justifiable. Every farmer was entitled to have a pure household, and if he insisted on its purity, the law would back him up. Having commented on pursuer's character, he granted decree of absolvitor, and said he would place the statements which Smollet and Anderson had made in the hands of the Fiscal.

Local news ain't what it used to be.

Pearls of Special Wisdom

Yet more from the Howlers folder:

There are three bad habits--smoking, drinking, and profound language.
It is better to burn the candle at both ends than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.
Habits can become as worthless as a bottomless cuspidor.
A friend is one with whom we can take off our undermost garments and be sincere.
A coat shouldn't be overempathized.
Our habits change very little--unless of course we kill ourselves.
It is simply much easier for people to get into a grave and follow that grave than it is for one person to get out of this grave, make his own grave and let other people follow him.

(I'm all for burning the candle at both ends, and for being able to take off my undermost garments and be sincere with my friends, but I draw the line at making my own grave, okay?)

On Modern Life

More of those howlers:

...he may not be able to transgress his accumulation of knowledge...
Our overpopulation is a result of our indiscretion in spending.
The acceleration of progression is creeping along.
In economics, we hear a lot about planned adolescence.
They let their filth from our factories impregnate our lakes and rivers.
We live in a period of restless tranquillity.
Of course, everyone likes to see some blood split.
After all, we live in this doggy-dog world.
In the rat race of life, no one wants to be the ugly duckling

Women and Their House Plants, or, The Truth about House Plants

As I will shortly be the only member of my immediate family to have any form of garden, I have been examining the various gardening texts that have guided my parents over the years. I believe that I will keep a slender item, originally purchased for 69 cents from the IGA in Normal, Illinois, which features a cover shot of a skier surveying a window full of potted hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, and other unseasonable blossoms. The initial text informs the reader that "Growing plants indoors ever since pioneer days, and even more so in this twentieth century, has provided millions of people with a rewarding and satisfying hobby." We learn that "with all the labor-saving devices modern woman has much more time to devote to their care." Subsequently, we are told that "Most women are far too kind to their house plants and think they have to have water every day."

As a friend of mine likes to say, "You get the picture."

On Love and Sex

More from the "howlers" folder:

Women are one of the habits man has learned to enjoy.
A man must sell insurance different from the way he sells his love.
He satirizes a virgin wrench.
I like to go steady, because then I am always ready if anything big comes up.
When a boy is deeply involved with a girl, it becomes necessary to motivate her.
We are plagued by the eroticism of the soil.
"I am newly married and the question that confronts me now is 'Should I wear my rah-rahs to school?'"
Pepys and his wife often enjoyed erotic dishes and often dined out.
How much fun will a housewife be on her second honeymoon if all she does is worry about her children.
Marriage consoling organizations are established by churches and cities in order to save marriages 'on the rocks'

The (Un)reasonable Man

More from the "Howlers" folder:

The reasonable man goes through life in a comma.
An unreasonable man is one who fertilizes the world.
Self-scented is the name for the unreasonable man.
An unreasonable man is always a temtuous lover.
Society, a group of unreasonable men, let minority groups be scrapecoats.
The unreasonable man spends his money wisely before he earns it.

Howlers

My Sibling and I have been going through our father's papers with the intention of preparing them for archiving at his various universities. A folder entitled "Howlers" has surfaced. On literature:

The Rape of the Pope by Locke
Peachum is a downright scongrel.
Don Whan was a great lover.
Catch Her in the Rye
As the story opens, the heroin is seen...
Stephen discovers that Absalom has fathered an illegitimate child by the woman he married.
English took into its whore-house bed of words...
Life here can, as Shakespeare said, be compared to a baseball game.
I would agree with the author if he would only define is terms with my train of thought.
If it weren't for crime and violence, even the Bible would be reduced to a small pamphlet.
Stories of crime and violence take us away from the harsh realities of life.
The poem is a good example of the old carpet diem theme.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales would have been dull if he had left out the stories.
Hamlet helps me to cathart.

Such Dreams as These

I have always tried to remember my dreams. Sometimes I'm good at it, other times not. Sometimes I only remember when I realize that a particular dream is familiar and that I've been in that dream or dream-territory before.
Sometimes, however, I simply wonder what on earth is going on in my head. The other night, for example, I began by dreaming that I had succeeded in flying to Sydney for what was evidently to be a vacation. Fine, I've always wanted to go to Australia and New Zealand. But rather than do anything particularly interesting, the said dream took me first to some kind of mall where I attempted to find food (!) and then next thing I knew I was asking a class of students how many of them knew that historically, artists usually originated in artist families.
If I get to Sydney before reaching my dotage, these are not activities that are truly high on my list of must-dos.
As if that weren't enough of the absurdly mundane, last night I awakened (not for the only time, I regret to say) from a not-very-sound sleep from sheer astonishment at what I had just dreamt. And what had I dreamt? That the University of Pittsburgh Slavic Department had 6000 graduate students!
The Slavic Department, while a very good one, actually has somewhere in the low two digits when it comes to grad students. No wonder I was incredulous at what I had dreamt.

More Silly Titles

A friend and I were perusing the "bizarre things" section of this blog the other day, and I was reminded of my various forays into the invention of book titles (for books no one is likely ever to write). In the interest of putting off completion of my taxes, I offer some more of these:

Horatio Alger Smiles at the Apocalypse
Rhythms and Rampages
The Good Plight
Mordants and Their Uses
Enjoying Your Hot Flashes
Table-Rapping for Beginners
Ectoplasm in My Soup
Prior Complaints
Witchcraft and Banana Splits
Night Falls on Three Ladies
Niagara Falls on Crocodile Rock
A Gentle Paranoia
Poisons I Have Known
The Architecture of Modern Kennebunkport
Dick and Jane File Their Income Tax

Translations

In the course of mining Angelo Ripellino's Magic Prague (in English translation) for writers' descriptions of Prague streets, I came across the following passage about Zlatá ulička (Golden Lane), which rather took my fancy:

“A narrow, winding lane with crenels, a snail’s path barely wide enough for one’s shoulders to pass. I am standing in front of a row of small houses, none of which is taller than myself. Were I to stretch out my arm I could touch the roofs. Here during the Middle Ages disciples set the philosophers’ stone aglow and poisoned moon beams.”

While I had to think a moment to identify "crenels," this seemed worth hunting down in the original, Gustav Meyrink's Golem.
With considerable difficulty (earlier I had intended to blog about my struggles with the endnotes to Magic Prague, which use a lot of op. cit. and are not aided by a bibliography) I determined that the edition of Golem used was from 1976. I proceeded to order the 1976 Dover edition from a library in this state, which proved to have an emendation of Madge Pemberton's 1928 translation.
The text there, however, read:

“A little twisty, twirly alley, broken here and there by arbitrary loopholes--it might almost be called a spiral passage, scarce broad enough to admit the width of a man--and I stood before a row of diminutive houses, not one of which exceeded my own height. I had only to stretch up my arm to touch their roofs.
It was the Street of the Alchemists, where the so-called ‘wise men’ of the past had evolved their formulas for the philosopher’s stone, brewing their concoctions in the watches of the night, poisoning with their noxious fumes the sweet rays of the moon.”

I had to examine these for awhile to feel certain that it was indeed the same passage, but had to conclude that it was. Not, however, the same translation! And which of these was more faithful to the original German, pray tell?
A little digging around in Internet Archive brought forth the original edition published by Kurt Wolff in 1915. The said text is on 226 and reads:

“Ein schmales, gewundenes Gässchen mit Schiessscharten, ein Schneckengang, kaum breit genug, die Schultern durchzulassen--und ich stand vor einer Reihe von Häuschen, keines höher als ich.
Wenn ich den Arm ausstreckte, konnte ich auf die Dächer greifen.
Ich war in die ‘Goldmachergasse’ geraten, wo im Mittelalter die alchimistischen Adepten den Stein der Weisen geglüht und die Mondstrahlen vergiftet haben.”

Well, even though it was written in Fraktur, the font was quite legible and indeed despite my limited German I could understand it pretty well without resorting to the dictionary. But for the heck of it I decided (given the divergent translations above) to plug it into Google Translate. Google Translate actually did a pretty good job on its own, but it now also lets you see if you'd prefer a different meaning or synonym for a given word, so I touched up a few things--"streets" to "alleys" ("alley" in the singular wasn't on the list), "worm gear" to "snail passage," "more" to "higher," "which" to "where," "adept" to "adepts" and "poisoning" to "poisoned":

"A narrow, winding alleys with gun ports, a snail passage, barely wide enough to admit the shoulders -. And I stood in front of a row of houses, none higher than me.
If I stretched out my arm, I could access the roof.
I had fallen into the 'Goldmacher street', where have in the middle Ages, the alchemical adepts annealed the philosopher's stone, and poisoned the moonbeams."

While there are still a few edits I'd choose to make on this (for example "crenels" is decidedly more suitable than "gun ports" since crenellation can be purely decorative, or meant for arrows rather than guns), it's obvious that the translation in Magic Prague is much more faithful than the Pemberton translation. I have no clue who did that translation, though, so I suppose that if I quote this passage, I'll combine the one from Magic Prague with my editing of Google Translate's version.
Life ain't simple around here.

Chaplin on Veteran's Day

Veteran's Day has never been a holiday that really captured my attention, given that none of the veterans of my acquaintance have ever paid it remarkable heed. Perhaps it is a holiday of more interest to families of veterans, as Milt Wolff, who fought in the Spanish Civil War and then in World War II, used to remark upon the fact that his daughter always called him then.

I thought of Milt and of my father this Veteran's Day, they being the veterans I knew best. There was a film festival here for the holiday, and while I had a lot of work to do, I rode my bike over to the Neon to see Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator. I've seen quite a few Chaplin films over the years, but I don't think I had seen this one in its entirety before, although of late the final speech has been circulating the internet with considerable vigor. Chaplin's plea for humanity to reject hatred, delivered in the role of a Jewish barber disguised as Hitler-figure Adenoid Hynkel, remains as current today as in 1940. Milt and my father would have appreciated The Great Dictator being shown on Veteran's Day.

A Precise Stylist, or Two or Three or Four of Them

In drafting our father's obituary, My Sibling noted that in writing, he was "a precise stylist." On the whole, this was true. The long process of determining the final wording of a generally very satisfactory obituary proved, however, that the remaining members of our nuclear family are also precise stylists who all believe that perfection can be attained in the written word.

New Laptop

Every so often one has to take the plunge and get a new computer. The old one quits, or else becomes sufficiently outdated as to be troublesome. Over the summer, my Lenovo X61, while generally functional, experienced 1) ever-full hard drive; 2) pen permanently stuck in the pen garage; 3) non-revivable battery. None of these things individually was a reason to buy a new laptop, but I had to ask myself how much longer a three-year-old laptop would work and thus whether it made sense to buy new things for it. At first I hesitated, as it seemed there were no tablet-convertibles on the market that offered the combination of features I wanted (large screen, large hard drive, swappable bay for second hard drive), but then I noticed that Fujitsu (maker of my first two or three laptops) had all of that. So I decided that I might as well get the whole project over with and have the new machine ready to go before school started.

While a large screen was one of my major desires--the small screen on the Lenovo has been the bane of my working life as Photoshop (among other things) is hard to use on it--I discovered that Fujitsu's TH700 had everything else I wanted at such an affordable price that I could get a big separate flat-screen monitor to use for Photoshop and watching movies. That seemed reasonable enough. I may use Photoshop a fair amount, but I don't have to do that kind of thing everywhere I take my laptop. It will be rather exciting to have a 27" screen (I bought a highly regarded model from Dell and it has arrived but I have not had time to do more than unpack it).

A friend with a Mac tells me it's a no-brainer to get everything from one Mac to another, and if so that's one of the few reasons I'd consider switching to Macintosh, because it always takes me days or weeks to get things properly set up on a new computer (mine, that is--I can do this for my parents in a day or two since they use few programs and have few files). I'm not sure how much of the time-sink is the searching out all those files and copying them, and how much is making decisions about reorganizing the material. Merely installing the programs I use takes hours and hours each time.

This installation process is exacerbated by changes in operating system. Once the new laptop arrived, I had to deal with Windows 7 and a 64-bit environment. This is taking some getting used to. At least two of my programs, neither of which I plan to abandon, don't yet work in 64-bit as they are complex and made by small companies that don't have huge squads of programmers. I had to upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium to a fancier flavor so that I could install XP Mode and thus install the said programs. I am still rather inclined to use these programs on the old laptop until the 64-bit compatible versions come out, which I gather should be relatively soon. There's also the matter of how many more times I can "activate" various programs that I've had for awhile, and suchlike.

For now, however, as I have most of what I need set up on the new machine, I may as well compare the two a bit.

Screens: Both have a 12" screen. The Lenovo has a 1024 x 768 resolution, however, while the Fujitsu has 1280 x 800. In other words, the shape is different, with the Fujitsu going more in the wide-screen direction. I don't know how I'll react to that, as wide-screen isn't desirable for most of what I do. The screen quality on the Fujitsu seems better, but I may need to see if I can calibrate the color, as photos that looked good on the Lenovo sometimes look gray-blue on the Fujitsu. This is not something I really want to deal with. Overall, I haven't spent enough time working on the Fujitsu to know how the screen interacts with my programs and tasks.

Keyboards: The Lenovo is the only laptop I ever felt had an uncomfortably small keyboard. I don't expect to have that complaint with the Fujitsu, which is an inch wider. I also detested the fact that the Lenovo keyboard placed special keys, intended to move you through web pages, RIGHT NEXT TO the arrow keys. I don't want to think how many times I hit those damned web keys instead of an arrow key and lost whatever I was typing on a web page. I wasn't opposed to the concept of the web keys (although I never used them), but the placement was terrible. Fortunately I won't have that problem with the Fujitsu. On the other hand, I regret to say that the Fujitsu keyboard also has some odd choices. It has the PageUp and PageDown keys in those locations, which I'm not sure I like as well as the Lenovo's location of these. I may not have any problem getting used to the switch, but more problematic is the fact that these two keys are also the Home and End keys, if you use them with the Function key. I use Home and End constantly when selecting text (or so it seems), and
I really dislike the cumbersomeness of depressing Shift, Function, and Home or End. And speaking of the Function key, the Fujitsu places it where I expect (from the Lenovo, but perhaps also from other computers) to find Ctrl. I keep hitting Function when I want Ctrl, which occasionally has bizarre results. (I will say I like how Lenovo puts everything requiring the Function key in blue.) However, if we speak of Function Keys in the plural (those F1-12 keys that were once so easy to touch-type back in the days when keyboards had them to the left!), I'm relieved to find that the Fujitsu, like most computers, aligns them pretty closely to the corresponding numeric keys. This means I'll be able to almost touch-type them. The Lenovo has F2 starting to the left of 1, so that F8 and F9 are above 7. This meant it was really hellish trying to use these keys, and believe me, I do use them. In some programs I use them A LOT. It causes me pain to watch students and conference presenters laboriously mousing through loads of menus to do things that can be accomplished by pressing (for example) F5.

Touchpads etc: The Lenovo has one of those pencil-eraser-shaped things for cursor movement. While better than a mouse, I didn't like it, as constant use was tiring. The clicker buttons were satisfactory. Thus, I was pleased to get a touchpad with the Fujitsu, although I still regret that Fujitsu phased out its earlier disk-shaped input devices, which were a very comfortable way of moving the cursor. But alas, I'm not sure I'm crazy about this touchpad. In combination with Windows 7, all kinds of weird things happen when it thinks I've gotten too close to it. I've already disabled some special function or other on the left side of the touchpad because my left hand was eternally setting it off. I may need to shut off a lot more things in order to make the touchpad truly usable rather than a weapon of unpredictable disaster. I'm also not crazy about the clicker buttons, which are too hard to find by touch for some reason. I'm always clicking on the edge of the laptop instead, I suppose because it is actually higher than the buttons and I expect the buttons to be what sticks up.

Operating System: I was really entirely content with XP. It was very stable and easy to use; I don't even remember there being much of a learning curve after Windows 98. So, especially after finding Vista a pain when working with my parents' computer, I was not eager to switch to Windows 7 despite hearing that it is considered quite satisfactory. Still, I was curious to see what it could do that I might like. At this point I'm not sure, because on the one hand I was dealing with its quirks most when installing new software, and on the other hand there are a lot of things that may be Windows 7 but on the other hand may be the Fujitsu's touch screen or touchpad instead. I get A LOT of unpredictable weird stuff happening, particularly in terms of things resizing in unwanted ways. Things would gigantify for no apparent reason, so that everything in the browser window with Gmail would be blown up too large to read--even if I closed and reopened the browser, or the desktop icons would bloat so that only about four would fit on the screen, or windows would leap to take over the screen when I wanted them to fill about a quarter of the screen. I was finally able to shut off the Windows 7 feature responsible for some of this mayhem, but it wasn't easy, and as I say that only shut off SOME of it. Also, the Windows Explorer windows are tricky to use. I was used to opening a folder and not having to see the whole directory structure over to the left--well, it's not a big deal to see it, but it takes up space. More to the point, when I'm moving files or folders, I have to be much more careful than ever before. Things really seem to want to go into the wrong place, or something I didn't intend to open suddenly becomes the open folder instead of the one I had very intentionally opened. I don't know if this is the fault of Windows 7 or of the Fujitsu.

Overall shape and contours: Much prefer the Fujitsu. The Lenovo has square corners, which I wouldn't mind except that they invariably caught in my sleeve. One of the first things I ever did after getting the Lenovo was to flip it onto the floor because I hadn't yet learned to move my arms very sedately around it to avoid catching the corners in my sleeves. I found that a very bizarre problem to have. It was partly because the Lenovo is very thin without its base. Let's just say it speaks well to the Lenovo's durability that it survived multiple tosses to the floor. Since the Fujitsu has round corners and a thicker bottom (to accommodate the swappable bay), chances of it catching in my sleeve and going flying are pretty small. Yes, it weighs more, and that's not a plus for portability, but it doesn't weigh all that much more, and I really like swappable bays. So much better than the separate base that I stupidly bought for the Lenovo instead of a plug-in DVD drive. The swappable bay means I can have a second hard drive in most of the time and swap in the DVD drive only as needed, which is rarely.

But enough of all this, classes begin in a week and my syllabi are not yet finished.

A Short Rant

Generally speaking, it's gotten much easier to submit fiction and poetry to journals than it was back in the ... Distant Past When I Spent A Fortune On Postage. For the most part, one uploads the file (often via a system called Submishmash), writes a brief cover letter, and with a few clicks the piece is on its way. Editors apparently find this easy to deal with as well, since they seem to respond more quickly than they used to (either that or I'm experiencing yet another byproduct of time racing by with increasing speed the older I get). There's also less chance of the submission being lost and requiring a series of inquiries.

Some publications want submissions attached to email, which is usually also pretty easy to handle.

What I do not understand is the desire of a few publications to make life more complicated by demanding that writers submit in non-standard formats. Normally, prose is formatted double-spaced, with contact information, word count, and rights offered up at the top of the first page, and with the author's name under the title, etc. Writers learn manuscript format early on because we don't want to annoy editors/look amateurish. We have our manuscripts neatly prepared and waiting on our computers, ready to upload the moment we decide publication X would be a great place to try.

And then we discover that the said publication wants the story copied into the body of an email. Or it wants it single-spaced. Or it wants no sign of the author's name anywhere. Or it wants a particular font used. Or it wants a bio statement in the same document. Or some other damned thing that wastes time and won't be wanted by any other publication.

Why???

These stipulations don't prevent me from submitting, but they do take time I could more productively use for something else. If the special formatting is in case of acceptance, then why not have me reformat if the piece is accepted? I'll feel much more willing at that point.

End of rant.

End of World Missed By Some

"There wasn't all that much news coverage of those Millennial types who thought the world was going to end on May 21," remarked My Sibling the other night.
"Didn't it?" inquired my father.
"Apparently I didn't notice," said I.

Unfortunate Associations

My Mother: I'm cooking stew.
My Father: You're cooking stool?
My Sibling: I'm not eating anyone's stool sample no matter how you cook it.

How Stories Transmogrify

"Mabel used to cook some strange things," reminisced my father about his aunt. "What was her specialty again?"
"Pudding," said I (I have no clue what else Mabel ever cooked).
"Oh yeah, that's right. What was it she put in the pudding anyway, gopher tails?"

It had always been my understanding that it was roast beef that she put in the chocolate pudding, but maybe they had an excess of gophers on the farm that year. You never know. Maybe the gopher tails were a garnish.

How Writing Groups Go Astray

Every writing group has its own peculiar character.

Bart turns into a bat and comes to the writing group at Alexis’s. Everyone but Stephanie realizes who the bat is; he perches on the back of the couch and squeaks. Later, Steve turns into a skunk and hides under the couch in embarrassment. Alexis tries to lure him out with a piece of cheese, but Bart eats the cheese. Bart insists on staying, hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the TV while Alexis watches, trying to persuade her to turn the channel to ‘Devil Girl from Mars’. Finally Stephanie brings lentil soup and he vanishes, leaving the apartment deep in guano.

Steve will leap out from under the couch and grab hold of Karla’s leg, refusing to let go until she lets him sleep in the bilge.

Some writing groups are more peculiar than others, of course. This was my third writing group. We often laughed uncontrollably about something called The Kitty Picture; just what The Kitty Picture was, I can no longer quite recall. I imagine it was a work of sentimental art retrieved from a garage sale, but perhaps I am mistaken and it appeared suddenly on a tortilla like a votive image of Elvis or the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Preparing for the Near Future

Here's what Rob Breszny had to say a couple of weeks ago:

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)
I dreamed you had been tending an unusual garden for months. Your crops weren't herbs or flowers or vegetables, but rather miniature volcanoes. Each was now ripe and stood about waist-high. They erupted with a steady flow of liquid blue fire that you were harvesting in large, gold, Grail-like cups. Apparently this stuff was not only safe to drink, but profoundly energizing. You sipped some of the potion yourself and distributed the rest to a large gathering of enthusiastic people who had come to imbibe your tasty medicine. The mood was festive, and you were radiant. This dream of mine is a good metaphor for your life in the immediate future.

I was unsure whether this is about my students or my writing. Perhaps it's about both. If it was very immediate, however, I think it was about my students, both those who graduated and those who will return next year.