Ramblings from the Artsy Asylum

I've still got so much to learn. How do you even begin to do it all?

Javascript, hosting a blog without a support- and to be totally frank, the whole "domain mapping" thing seems like brain surgery to me - I'll never get that one.

But that's not a surprise. Somehow in the meantime I appear on the blogebrity list?    Wow - this has been quite a year.  I'd love to have you join the fun of exploring new things with me.

I'm pasting the code below . .  So let's see if  this frappr map will work here on LJ

I'm crossing my fingers! But if you can't see it,  hop on over to frappr or you can check out the map on the right column of the Artsy Asylum blog


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In 2004 a lot of us were real beginners in the whole blogging bit. Then last year - barely competent using LJ - I decided learning new platforms would be a good thing.

After using and discarding Blogspot/blogger and squarespace I became a tyepad convert.  I guess people would say it's laughable how clueless I was and how overwhelmed I felt. 

So many times I was sure I couldn't possibly learn enough to be all techie and smart enough to do a decent job with a Typepad blog: Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum..  The process was positively brain numbing - and stayed that way for months.

Here's where I need an audio file so I could insert the sound of groans and moans and gnashing of teeth.

But I just keet plugging away. The best way to help my off-brand brain to learn anything is to do it repeatedly, making mistakes and relearning over and over - and then over again - continuing to do it so often that I finally get it on a cellular level.

It's been such a busy and mind stretching time and still I've got a lot of learning and work to do. There's nothing like a competency certificate on my wall - but I'm comfortable with the day to day entries. And I'm reassured that the typepad platform adds a touch of professional cachet. Or I hope it does.

And now I even know what a trackback is - and - I understand the term "permalink." Major Wow huh? I also "get it" about how to set up and send out a "feed" of the blog (which I had never even heard of) and setting it up so people can subscribe by feedblitz . . . .and all the rest of the stuff I didn't know exisited before I made the jump.

I've also started a type-pad blog for the new brainstorm: the Museum of Paper, which is now being built at http://www.museumofpaper.com And the artistamps are going to get a catalogue of their own - which will also be built on the typepad blog platform. Woo hoo.

• Until then they (the artistamps and collage clip files) are really not organized at all. They're in fact UN-organized in no particular order at http://www.susanreynolds.com/artistamps and http://www.lulu.com/ephemeria and I just don't think that's professional - so I've got to get busy. I need a 48 hour day to manage all this.

Actually with the Lulu ordering and Download portal now up and running, AND a new screensaver on the products list there - well maybe my tech-savvy geeky side is showing some potential. It's a brand new day in artist land. 

One of the cats in residence loves bags and crawls into them whenever possible. When she heard that I was moving my old blog entires from *LiveJournal, she apparently fixated on the word "moving" and decided to be prepared.

Now she's positioned herself neatly in an empty shipping envelope, therefore ready and waiting. We all know how exhausting packing can be.

So understandably, now she's busy napping.

Meanwile I've been moving entries and files, which has given me the opportunity to do some work both in adding images and rethinking some of the writing.

The moving and fiddling with stuff is time consuming but I'm actually enjoying the process. I can only hope that the somewhat edited posts have benefited from my latest reading material On Writing Well, 25th Anniversary Edition, by William Zinnser.

And these moved entries may provide a few bits and pieces some folks haven't seen.

I'm pretty much closing down the LiveJournal in order to make better use of time and consolidate energies. But I hope that LJ Friends and other LJ users will keep in touch. Visit me and all the insanity at the Case Notes from ther Artsy Asylum blog

Some of you may be following the back and forth over at Captain Ken's blog concerning morning cable news. Surprising to me was one recent poster who, after prefacing it with a warning that it may sound like a crazy conspiracy theory, wondered about Bill Hemmer's interview of his parents during the papal coverage. She said that he did a surprisingly long interview with them and she remembers thinking at the time that he was testing the management of CNN.

Her feelings were that revealing any religious affiliation in network news doesn't seem  like a safe move. Obviously now Hemmer's gone and many of us wonder about the real reason behind the shakeup.

This is a curious twist of the conversation, I admit. But it got me thinking.

Interestingly enough Chris Jansing provided the daytime coverage of the same for MSNBC & often joined Chris Mathews at night. She was very knowledgeable and I enjoyed her coverage, probably because she's measured and not prone to outlandish statements like the much more colorful Mathews is.

I admit to being surprised at the time that Jansing was willing to make comments and have conversations that displayed the breadth of her familiarity with Catholicism. I'd expect this from Mathews - but at the same time he's well known for being who he is - including his persona as a practicing Catholic who opposes much of church policy.

I didn't see much of Hemmer's coverage for some reason but from what was said over at Cap's I'm leaping to the conclusion that he was clearly identifying himself as Catholic. And as it turns out, Pew research says that 24% of Americans identified themselves as Catholic in 2002. There's not a larger block of the public when you get right down to it unless it's Democrats and Republicans. So maybe both Hemmer and Jansing were not making a risky move, but a savvy one.

Bill Hemmer's been "allowed" to resign rather than take the White House reporter's beat? CNN-suits, come on and say it isn't so! And you're moving Jack Cafferty to afternoons? If Cafferty were replacing Judy Woodruff or- better yet - Wolf Blitzer that would have my vote. But somehow I doubt that's the case.

Ah for the good old days when Hemmer was stuck in Florida reporting on the recount & we'd look forward to his next live shot amid protesters and spin-meisters of various stripe and variety.  We were left to speculate if he  would find a fresh shirt for the following day not to mention wondering when, if he'd ever, he'd come "home" to Atlanta.

Before New York; before CNN’s slip to the dark side of glitter and glitz; before Soledad O’Brien & maternity leave there were the reliable years during which Hemmer’s on-air relationship with his then news partner Daryn Kagan looked and felt genuine and easy. They seemed to be bringing me the morning happenings with a certain amount of good-natured banter - but not frivolity.

In those days I was unaware of much if any of what has now become such obvious political spinning and leaning that has since caused me to turn off CNN after the morning shows. Bill Hemmer was steady and measured on air, not prone to prodding insensitively but still savvy enough to be able to ask the tough questions. I didn't know how he voted and I didn't want to. Life was good.

And of late - in spite of New York - he's provided a balance to the star struck qualities that seem to be whirling around CNN, especially as it relates to the glitzy Manhattan operation.

Beyond the Hemmer factor, Jack Cafferty has got to be the curmudgeon I’d vote most likely to be asked out for coffee by just about any person, young or old, male or female, who has ever spied one minute of the Cafferty file. He's the coworker who tells the boss he is absolutely going to skip the board meeting to take the day off to go to his son's class assembly or breaks it to grannie that the turkey isn't actually cooked in the center. The man calls it like he sees it, including put-downs of the fluff that is much of Soledad’s obvious viewpoint. It has been just classic!

Let’s face it. CNN’s operation has been going downhill ever since the era surrounding the Turner turn-over, including the entrance of - remember this one – Paula Zahn, in a $2,500  suit smiling brightly while feigning understanding of the poverty in Botswana, then slipping seamlessly into telling us about the deaths in an overnight fire and the latest train derailments. All at the same time I was eating breakfast. Ewww. That brought me to write my first and only email to CNN.

Gag me - but only if you're exquisitely manicured - with a sickeningly saccharine Tiffany's teaspoon.

And then there was the infamous Iraqi UN representative Mohammed Al-Douri, leaving the United States last year. Before leaving New York he spoke only very briefly to reporters but when he finished, he walked over to thank Richard Roth, CNN's United Nations reporter and they exchanged kisses on the cheek.

Talk about looking like one is in bed with the bad guys. Oy.

After that bad move, CNN's choice of Carol Costello or Kelly Wallace for the morning headlines over the snappy and smart Heidi Collins seems minor. But again it indicates how a news organization can lose touch with Americans – or at least my rather diverse slightly left, fairly right and overall centrist leaning household of the same.

At this point I’ll either be watching CNN later in the AM or not at all. And I’m crossing my fingers that MSNBC or Fox News Channel get smart and grab both Hemmer and Cafferty. Adding Collins to the mix would be just too much to hope for.

I'm thinking it's time for a black crepe draped artistamp commemorating the dearly departed Hemmer-Cafferty days. Stay tuned.

Just a few words on the topic of Memorial Day, for which my son serving in Europe would kick me. We just won't mention it to him will we?

So since he's not reading this I can admit that when I hear from him there are words that come over the phone that can chill me to the bone. I don't dwell on it, as it's not the norm and doesn't reflect his normal demeanor or attitude but it's there nonetheless.

He is upbeat and informative considering his quiet nature and most of the time he will answer questions when I ask about weather or weekend trips, driving, email, what's happening at the office and sometimes even when I drop the word security.

But then there are other times, those that send a shudder through me, when I hear something from my 25 year-olds’ lips that I would never have dreamed I’d hear.

It goes something like: "I am unable to confirm or deny that".

I've heard it repeatedly since September 11th 2001 and still it stops me in my tracks.

The symbolism of that phrase strikes a chord in my soul. It is serious business these young people are about and they know it is.

It’s clear that they are cognizant of being in at least some danger just going about their daily lives. Sometimes he'll casually drop word that they have had a briefing about this or that, and /or indicate vaguest terms that they are under orders about where they are well advised not to go.

He never complains and will not accept praise. He simply says "I'm just doing my job." 

This isn't something I mention in order to get any special accolades for them, but as a reminder this Memorial Day weekend that it’s all of our service members that are at least in some peril, whether they have a desk job at the Pentagon, are with an airplane crew in a stand-off location, or are assigned in one of the theatres of more intense operations.

I never would have grasped this kind of issue before my experience in Arlington on 9-11 and in the current climate here in northern Virginia - but especially through what's not said in conversations with my son.

Now as I look at a different world my eyes are opened and my heart touched. I give our service members all around the world, serving in any capacity, just as much credit as I do his dad who, as a 21 year old still wet behind the ears, served as an Army officer on an LZ in Viet Nam circa 1968.

Food for thought, I suppose. How times have changed, at least for me.