Random synchronicity in blue#

While looking for an old poem of mine, unfortunately kitted up with a generic title, Out of the Blue, which I never found using Blogger’s internal search engine (seems like I like the word blue), I decided to hunt for my poem using the Google search engines. The next thing I knew I was on a Wikipedia page where I discovered in the footnotes, that one of my blog posts had been quoted as source reference. Whoa!

Now the irony is that I was watching a YouTube video on musical theory, listening to Celine Dion belt that E flat finale, All by Myself, that killer note, and then the musician Adam Neely lifted up a heavy tome and quoted W. A. Matthau. Wait? What? I know that person. This was beginning to be a case of random synchronicity in b(lue)#.

Well, I was in the middle of correcting a couple of typos in an old essay I wrote to W. A. Matthau, who goes by Aloudin, also called Out of the Blue. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Do you see where this is going? 

There’s nothing worse than a circular file in blue, which I seem to be caught up in. I still haven’t found the blasted poem. I think maybe my blog has Alzheimer’s. Or, at least the search engine does. On the other hand, it’s somewhat understandable that I have 4500 blog entries.

I know the poem is in my blog, and hopefully Google didn’t destroy it, (it’s done that before), because everyone keeps mistaking my poem for the Simon Armitage 9/11 poem also called Out of the Blue, Well, now, I was on a roll, so I decided to search for my Out of the Blue poem using my blog’s name, Literrata, instead of using my name.

I discovered that not only have I been used as a reference four times within Wikipedia, another blogger had used my photo of William Everson as well. I was less happy to discover that some dude ripped off my rather unique blog name (a Latin word), and used it for his own blog name on Tumblr. Grrrrr! It’s bad enough that Google decided to name one of its fonts literata. And to make matters worse, some of my blog posts have been Pinterested too. Ouch!

It looks like I finally made it into Wikipedia after all, but not quite in the way I had envisioned. But I’ll take it. Four Wikipedia entries have cited me. I’ve become an open source. Better than being an open sore. I still can’t find the blasted poem I was looking for. 

Ironic in that I created this blog in 2007 in order to keep track of my poems as the manuscript binders were impossible—especially when I couldn’t remember the names of my poems. Looks like I’m back to square one. Still no poem in blue in sight.

Taking stock, old inventories of the past, blog list

It took a couple of years to get the bulk of my poems posted online, a lengthy process I began in 2015 (Updating Old Poems) when I thought I had lost almost all my work due to a computer glitch—outdated software turned my files into UNIX bricks. I was able to salvage most of my work but it was a process done in fits and spurts.

Then in 2017, I found several handwritten journal entries, and revised first drafts. I scanned and posted those below the poems, so it's been a poetic archaeology hunt. The early poems were not in electronic format, so transmuting them to text from a jpg became another huge project I took on last year when I got some OCR software.

Salvaging the past seems to be an annual summer project. Taking old inventories as it were. I still hold out a dim hope that I'll find more work for the weak years: 2006 (19) 2005 (18) 1999 (21) 1978 (22). (Numbers have gone up by 1-3, not much, 2022). Only way to salvage those years is to find long lost notebooks. But we've come a long way, indeed.

Lately I'm collecting what little artwork I have left, and I've created a separate blog for that. The blog has a long way to go and is riddled with gaping holes. Sadly, my early drawing portfolios were turned into pulp during the winter of 2015. And few photos of my ceramics have emerged, I think that chapter of my life is forever gone—except for a few stray pieces that survived the odds. Makes me sad as I had taken slides for a portfolio. I've already scanned all my old slides, so unless I misplaced the ceramics slides in Forestville, it's a lost cause.

Maureen Hurley Art

Then there's my photography. Most of my people photos are posted on Google Photos, and I've sent links out to the pertinent people. But I'm woefully behind on uploading my landscapes. I probably should make another blog of a few of my best photos, but I want to find a different format for them (and my art) than Blogger. Right now they're just placeholders. I did this then—sort of thing. Google Photos is merely a storage locker, as no one can see them, sans link. So that's not particularly useful for simple sharing. I miss Picasa. So much easier to share things.

Right now, I'm beginning to scan my B&W negatives from the 1980s and 1990s. No idea where I'll post them as I haven't found the right venue, other than Google Photos. Suggestions? I’ve created another blog for them.

Maureen Hurley photos (added 2022)

The photos from the Russian River Writers' Guild, I'll eventually post photos on the blog I made last year. Lots of famous poets! We are missing most Open Hug flyers for 1985, and we are missing flyers from 1987 onward to the last reading. It still needs the final years of Obligatory Hug when we moved to Johnny Otis's cafe. I don't have copies. Wonder who does?

Russian River Writers' Guild

I can't even get into the blog I made for Marianne Ware in 2010, which is maddening, as I now have new photos to share on that blog.

Marianne Ware Memorial Page

I made a new art blog

I made a new blog, Maureen Hurley Art, to showcase some of my most recent art. Two new blogs in as many months, not counting another blog I made in December. A friend wants me to create an Etsy account and begin selling my work. So this is a stopgap. I may backfill with earlier art at another time. My artwork is lost in this massive blog. I’ve  managed to post most work when it was created, but when I post the older work, I’ll be lucky to get the year correct. Work is posted by month and by medium. As the river crests, during the record-breaking Pineapple Express storm that threatens to rival the 1986 Valentine’s flood, I am surrounded by floodwater. Massive slides, multiple road closures, the only way out is through art. So below is today’s offering, a pastel of  the Nicasio Reservoir from the spillway side.

Queen Mary Scottish Games

We were featured at the 17th annual Queen Mary Scottish Games in Long Beach last weekend—our first time both performing and participating. It was a pleasant shock to run into so many old acquaintances there—including someone who read this blog—other than the spambots. They have turned me off to the point where I thought about deleting the entire blog just to get rid of them. They're worse than whale lice.

Now, I am under the profound illusion that there are 11 people in the world who are remotely aware that I even post a blog. But those 11 people don't actually read the blog— they're all those cute little postage stamp icons on the right column below the archives. Spambots don't count as they clearly don't have an aesthetic bone in their cyberbodies—though they are rather inventive at spelling/punctuation variations of Viagra and penis. Someday I'll make a list.

So imagine my surprise when one festival goer who is a fan of Neil O"Neill, Celtic Troubadour, said he'd actually been reading my blog. He showered me with compliments. Words like "talent," and "wisdom" were bandied about. My mouth gathered a profundity of flies (apparently Sarah Silverman had been seriously smutting down across the channel at the TEDTalks—a few disgruntled TED goers jumped ship—er conference hall—who came over to slum on the Queen Mary and maybe to look up men's kilts. You know those little cosmetic mirrors glued to the tops of their shoes?)

Anyway, all this to say that I've turned the comments section back on beneath most of the blog posts that I had previously blocked due to the literary spambots who write me lovenotes in such strange broken English. I found a new section that allows me to post a captcha and I no longer allow Anonymous posts—hopefully that will keep the thundering herds of spambots at bay. Hopefully. And with that, I might actually return to the blog arena again.

What my sole soul reader did say is that my blog was hard to follow in that there is no apparent order. That comes from my many writing hats. Maybe I should consider splitting the blog into several sections, or create different blogs. but it's hard enough just to keep one blog alive.

Should I pull all the poetry & post it in one blog? Post all the old newspaper articles in another blog and then create a separate Marin memoir blog? Problem is, the categories are all so fluid and they do inform who I am. I have never been good at separating my art genres. Is there a way to also thematically arrange the posts—other than by post date? Moving them means I lose the comments, BTW, and I do deem any genuine comments more precious than gold and Viagra. Any suggestions?