So, how's your day going? Mac woes

So, how's your day going? At least my MacBook is staying on now. At least long enough to write this. Neil accidentally shut down my MacBook (he doesn't get the idea that you can put a MacBook to sleep). My MacBook has a faulty on-off button, so I always let it sleep. I couldn't get it to power on, and then, I couldn't get it to stay on longer than 15 minutes. It shut down, cold-turkey, at least seven times in a row. As if it were sneezing. I won't mention my external back-up drive that also went on extended holiday from all that sneezing. Probably because it no sooner mounted, then, the Mac shut down. Again. And again. And again.... Chain reaction. Ad infinitem.

At least my MacBook is staying on now. I had a divil of a time to get it to turn on, and stay on—the power supply is challenged. That's how my evening's going. I won't mention my external back up drive went belly- up. Yes, I have a back up drive of my back up drive, but there's been a few organizational file changes and I would've liked to have saved them. Now I need a new back up drive for my back-back up drive.

Bluetooth wars and harrd drive woes

For some reason, my mouse freezes every time I touch the numeric keypad (annoying). Ever the drama queen, it goes into cardiac arrest. Then I'm stuck with a frozen window. If it had tiny mouse feet, they would be sticking up in the air—dead dead dead. So I have to turn everything off and on, not a good plan. It all began innocently enough: after one crash too many, my back-up hard drives decided not to show up to the party. Of course, I went into super hyperventilate warp drive overload when my long-in-tooth Maxtor drives (which have outlasted the replacement drives) just don't want to play nice with each other at the same time. Must be having a tiff. New backup drive is on order.

I’m getting cleverer at reviving my screen. TG for the Force Quit window. As long as I kill any program, it'll unfreeze. Time to clean the keyboard—popping keys off and smacking its bottom hard is strangely satisfying. Hope it works. I think my keyboard is dying—at least the numeric pad is.. Talk about Mercury retrograde. No more frozen screen. Think I'll whack the keyboard again, just because I can. Where's that hard reset hammer when I need it?

At first I thought my typing skills went south, then I realized it's my keyboard. It's really old. I keep it clean but still, it has odd ideas as to how words are spelled and since I'm OCD about things like that.... it’s as if some of the keys went on walkabout! LOL. Some wingclipping is in order. I'm counting the days until my new backup hard drive arrives then I'll employ the hard reset tool to the old Maxtors. Solar flare might explain what’s going on. My keyboard is Bluetooth, my mouse is Bluetooth. They’re not playing nicely. And I’m far too dyslexic to use a manual typewriter...

New hard drive arrived today, just in time for the eclipse. Boy, was I ever torn between the two. Eclipse won out. Cloning old drives now. Still cloning; about half way there. I also added new RAM to the old MacBook (and a solid state drive a while back). It's tricked out with 8 MB memory. Super fast. A good way to extend life in legacy laptops, solid state hard drive (the fastest you can get), and max out the memory. Way cheaper than getting a new laptop. Of course it runs hot, which isn’t good for the motherboard, like a very hot cat on my lap. It’s only a matter of time when the motherboard goes south, and there’s no fixing that.

Macury Retrograde

PART THE FIRST: ROGUE ELDERMAC INSTALLS GONE WRONG

What's my status? Facebook has the temerity to ask about my status. What's on my mind? Does it really want to know? It is an it, you know.

Instead of posting the usual Facebook platitudes, this is my reality sandwich. A dubious long-winded nerd-joy story that probably only three master guru nerdlings in the world—like Piet Bess, Chris Devine and Micaela Wall—will fully appreciate. Maybe Brian Wimsett too—but he's a PC guy. Apples and oranges.

I can see your eyes glazing over now. It's OK, you don't have to read this. (Hint: skip the parenthetical techno-speech parts to speed-read this piece). You don't have to read it all, just because I feel compelled to read everything in front of me, then write about it. Call it OCD. Or maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome. I've bonded with my captive imagination.

What's my status? After last year's colossal Mercury Retrograde, which was my Macury meltdown during tax season, when my elder iMac went kabloom! after a series of power outages, is shaken. (Ask me how I found out that my three-prong surge bar plugged into old wiring dating back to the 1920s, is not grounded). I refused to freak out, and I Carried On. Stiff upper lip, and all that. (Insert Blondie's One Way or Another earworm here).

My main Mac gurus (and suppliers of broken Mac bits), Piet & Micaela know how I've been nursing that old 2005 PPC iMac, with its lovely screen, for years. Lovely matte screen. Lovely. No reflected glare. Perfect for editing photos. When the iMac became long in tooth, most sensible people would've upgraded. No ifs, ands or buts. It's gonna gitcha gitcha gitcha.…

(How far behind the technological times am I? Let's just say that yesterday, I nostalgically fired up my old 1995 PowerBook which sported the first Motorola PowerPC processor (PPC). That's pre-G3, pre-G4, pre-G5. Who even remembers back that far? FWIW: it's  s l o w.  My PPC iMac was the last G5 ever made. A terminal case, yes, but it could also run the Paleolithic OS 9 software in Classic in emulation mode. OS = Operating System.)

(Those G3 and-G4s were cool dual-boot crossover Macs. They could run OS 9 and OS X software. The Neolithic OS X flavors 1-3 all allowed full OS 9 boot up. OSX.4 (aka Tiger) was an emulation version, it ran OS 9 in Classic mode. Unfortunately the emulation, or Classic mode is not good enough for my picky SCSI Nikon slide scanner, so I keep a working G4 with a SCSI card handy too.)

(Apple upgraded the PPC Mac line with the Pentium Intel core processor in 2006 with the Intel Core Solo—then the Intel Core Duo. The confusingly-named Intel Core 2 Duo replaced the MacBook 1, leaving bewildered Mac users to ferret out whether they had a 32-bit or a when-I'm 64-bit Mac. Is that an Intel 2 or the Intel 2-2? Macs in tutus? Leaping leopards with spots on top!)

(Apple also tossed out the lovely matte screen for a shiny new, highly reflective shiny screen. Emphasis on shiny. Collective shrieks abounded as myriad Mac users who upgraded to the newest iMacs and Mactops, saw, instead of their own photos onscreen, their own faces reflected back at themselves. Added a whole new dimension to being able to see yourself. Some hackers who hadn't seen themselves in decades, fainted.)

(In this convoluted tale of woe, even code names and big cat OS's don't help much to keep it all straight, but here's an OS X 1-9 list, in case you were dying to know: Cheetah/Puma (aka OSX.1), Jaguar (OSX.2), Panther (OSX.3), Tiger (OSX.4), Leopard (OS X.5), Snow Leopard (OS X.6), Lion (OSX.7), Mountain Lion (OSX.8). OK, so pumas and mountain lions are the same catamount. Catty circular filing system?) Here kitty kitty kitty.

(What's next, saber tooth tiger? Smiledon? That's one hell of a cat box to consider. No, for the next OSX reiteration, it looks like we're goin' surfin', dude. Coming soon to a Mac near you—Mavericks (OSX.9). Everybody's gone surfin', surfin' Californi-ay. What's with the surfin' USA bit—can one surf anywhere else in the USA? Surfin' Kansas-eye-a cornfields in August doesn't quite cut it. OK, so there's the Oregon and Washington coastline—but that's Bill Gateslandia. No little cute Macs on surfboards in that neck-o-the-woods.)

And yes, I was still using Tiger until last year. I girded my svelte money belt, I stuck with Tiger, the last PPC operating system (OSX.4). I cobbled on, using obsolete hardware while others upgraded (to the Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Core i5, Core i7, and Xeon processors) until there was nowhere else left to go. Tiger, tyger—your stripes of mourning, your markings of gold no longer burned bright in the forests of the night.

Are you glazed over yet? (Did you remember to skip the parentheses?) Well, by this point, I admitted defeat: my old software was defunct. Legacy doesn't even begin cover it. Speaking of Smiledon, Tiger (OSX.4) was so long in the tooth, it was positively geriatric. Hold that Tiger. It's dead dead dead. Mummified. Fossilized, even.

But I kept on keeping on, tweaking and flogging Tony the Tiger, using crazy workarounds when all manner of hell arrived, carrying its latest updated techno-snafu in a hand-basket. My new Macury Retrograde nemesis was the birth of iCloud and the dual deaths of iDisk and Mac.com. I did not go gentle unto that good night. Nor could I migrate my accounts over to iCloud with Tiger or Leopard.

I hate technological obsolescence. I only buy refurbished Macs and I keep them alive way past their kill-by date. (Maybe I should switch to Dell. They die early and often.) When the PPC iMac hard drive died right after the warranty ended, I carried on. No problem. I just booted the iMac off an external firewire drive. Ditto with the optical drive. (Opening the last PPC iMac is a nightmare—bent credit cards are involved). External was cool. Safe computing, and all that.

Besides, everything was backed up on DVDs and three external hard drives. Or so I thought. FLW. What could go wrong? But you can never be to rich or too thin or have enough back-up hard drives.

I was locked in tighter than a tick in last decade's technology and the only way out was through—if I ever wanted to surf the net and read my email again. It was time to upgrade, in a big way. My browsers no longer worked, Adobe Flash abandoned us (alors, no more CSI?), I couldn't access my Mail, thanks to the new iCloud upgrade. Blah-blah-blah. I was in upgrade denial for a decade. But I digress. (What else is new?)

Movin' on, I got a Craigslist special—an ailing, headless first generation MacBookPro (MBP's code name: Santa Rosa) with—shall we say—issues? The Craigslister said he was a musician but I think the no-longer-20-something guy used the MBP for a skateboard as it was seriously bent, in need of a backlit screen, an optical drive, speakers, a software upgrade to OSX.6—and some serious autobody work. We ran it through its paces, I mentally noted all the work-arounds I'd have to implement. Doable.

This MBP was not a unibody model—it came apart. Cool! If I can look under its hood, I can fix it—but I was playing poker. You know, The Girl Card. I don't kno-ow.... Skateboard ManDude, seeing my hesitation, dropped the price some more and threw in an extra MBP carcass and innards to sweeten the deal. Sold!  I'm, sure he whispered Sucker! or Old Fhartette under his breath as I left. (I forgot to mention I'm in my 6th decade, but I don't look it. He, on the other hand....)

I saw the inner beauty and retro potential of SkateboardMan's sleek aluminum technological castoff. I needed a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo to access my locked-up emailbox which was being held hostage in the iCloud as Mac.com and iDisk were phased out as in hunted down to extinction. Dead as Tiger. Or Smiledon. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my iCal, and  iTunes access was also now tied up in this iCloud Celtic gordian knot conundrum. Not exactly knockin' on heaven's door, iCloud was cumulous gift that kept on giving.

The price on SkateboardMan's ManBookPro was right. Half of what others were asking for their equally thrashed old MBPs. (What's with all these Craigslisters with over-inflated egos, selling obsolete crappalola for more than direct Apple refurb prices anyway? And the snide "don't waste my time, don't lo-ball me" sign-off, as they try and low-ball you. Yeah, right.)

Luckily, this 2nd generation MacBookPro in a basket also came with spare parts—another 2 g. MBP. What's not to like? I can do this. FLW. It was fast and sleek but it wore Leopard spots (OSX.5). I also needed the last cloud cat, Snow Leopard (OSX.6) upgrade in order to access the rarified air of the iCloud. And this somewhat elderly MacBookPro had the right tutu to dance with iCloud. I was pirouetting with joy.

I rolled up my sleeves, ponied back my hair, scraped off the thrashed music stickers, and got to work. We had beauty. Well maybe, in the eyes of the beholder. It looked pretty sick. I hammered out the frame. steelwooled it, and got everything connected up, including all the hard-and software workarounds. I loved my new MBP—and was it fast. That 64-bit intel processor ran smoke rings around my elderly 2006 Macbook. (And Rosetta emulation let me run all my old Universal software—but OS 9, and PPC OSX Tiger software was X'd out.)

However the iCloud was calling. Or, lack of iCloud access was raining on my parade. Time to upgrade, to bring in another cat: the Snow Leopard, so I could access my email. An easy upgrade. Right? Catch a cloud leopard by the tail. Not. More like a cat tail caught in the door. Or cat-o-nine-tails flogging me.

Let's just say that the online Apple software (OSX.6.8) update hung. Things went further south—thanks to ATT throttling my DSL speed to near-zero. Not good to have flailing DSL when you're in the middle of an online software upgrade. Suddenly my easy-peasy itty-bitty cloud cat OS upgrade install was a victim of Macury Retrograde on steroids.

So when things went really south, and my new MBP was an inert pile of metal, I tried to move on with my creaky vintage white plastic first generation 2006 Intel MacBook (which doubles as a lapcat, it runs so hot).

But the plot thickens in this comedy of errors. My two trusty back-up drives (done this one before), and my shiny new Plan C Seagate GoFlex PC wifi drives were attached to my MBP when I was upgrading the software on my MBP—what could go wrong? Never dawned on me to disconnect them.

What could go wrong? Lockdown, that's what. Little padlocks on all my files. And little padlocks on all my back-up hard drives. Permission denied. Did I mention Mac(f)ury Retrograde? Add some PC crossover issues into the matrix with the Seagate GoFlex drive.

Poof! Now, I had no software, no files, no back-up files!—and then I found out the hard way that TurboTax needed Snow Leopard. Lordluvaduck, I'm fckd. Haunted by cloud cat spots. So, I went to Starbucks wifi and upgraded to Snow Leopard on the elder Macbook. Pieceacake! Sideways progress. Did I mention that TurboTax also needed a 64-bit processor (this info was not posted on the box because...?) Poor old plastic MacBook with its obsolete 32-bit processor. Foiled. Again.

So it was back to getting that aluminum MacBookPro up and running, or nada. I tried every trick in the book—I was locked out, it was hanging, mid-install. And ALL my back up drives: plans A, B, & C were inert lumps of cybercoal. Moral: NEVER leave external drives attached when doing a software upgrade. Never. TLN (too late now) was the new motto stamped on my forehead.

I was also trapped in some kind of weird install hell without access to a working backlit screen, let alone, a blue screen of death. Did I mention the MBP was not only sans functional computer screen (the backlight was out); it was also sans working optical drive—so a DVD disk install (the normal method) wasn't an option. I was running out of workarounds.

No battery, no screen: so dragging the MBP down to Starbucks wifi wasn't even an option. Flashlight held at just the right angle in a dark room to see the shadows of install icons was my workaround.

Another TLN moment: My big Apple monitor and DVD player both needed working software to run. Detail. I found this out the hard way. By this time, I hated Snow Leopard. Endangered species or not—I wanted to shoot the damned occluded cloud cat.

So, 24 tiny screws later—trying to find a screwdriver that small was another dubious joy, I managed to yank the bleeping stalled MBP hard drive out, and I stuck in my original old MacBook Tiger drive. (Remember that 32-bit part?) Shockingly, the tiny 2006 Apple drive (why I yanked it in the first place was its size) worked.

But it was still no dice for all my now padlocked back-up hard drives with no Permission Access. And of course, my last ace card, my PC-flavored Seagate GoFlex wifi time machine back-up drive with ethernet, treated me like an evil hackster because the software, the hard drive and Mac no longer matched up. More like having a joker card up my sleeve.

So, I cloned the working Snow Leopard OSX.6 from my white 32-bit MacBook hard drive to a new hybrid SSD hard drive from OWC. I popped the cloned hybrid drive into the MBP (23 screws later—I only lost one screw, but I was already so screwed—what's one more/less loose screw?)

Surprise! The cloned SSD hard drive fired right up. It worked—despite a 32/64-bit software differences of opinion. It was cool, it was quiet, It was also 500 GB big. You can never be too rich, thin or have a hard drive that's too big. I was in. Or up. Or something. I had access to the iCloud, my email, and TurboTax now loaded. Sweetjaysus! It worked. The MacGawds must be smiling on me. What about all my backed up software, and files? Argh! Still padlocks on everything. But my Can Do attitude was in tenacious Ramboverdrive.

I eventually resolved the back-up drive lockdown with the help of MacWorld's Chris Breen, and an app called BatChmod—l also learned lots of other batty & bitchin' stuff I would rather forget. Padlocks begone. I could open all my back up drives. Permissions (mostly) restored.

But alas, I wasn't out of the cyberwoods yet. As I rounded up my orphan files and poems, I discovered my old Word 5 files turned into rogue Unix files when I joined this decade's operating system. No way to access them. I tried everything. Try not to panic. All my old writing. All my old photos. No no no no!



(Dear Readers of this blogged down bloggybit (all 218 of you know who you are… Whoa Nellie, now it's 493 readers? Really? Who are all you people? Or is this sudden readership shunt the work of busy web spiders? Vampire stats feeling a little peckish, or what? And, no, I haven't visited my own blog THAT many times. Not even during rewrites. Besides, Blogger doesn't count my visits.)

I was gonna say …take a breather. Or better yet, run out of the room screaming from this Mary Roach styled techno-rant—while you can. I would love to offer you cyber chocolate kisses or Irish coffee lattes for getting this far. Really.

Maybe it's more of a  Myles na gCopaleen than a Mary Roach tale. All part of the Irish postModern contunuum. Sorry, no sexy bits ahead, but old fharts are involved. Read on, if you dare. Time to take the earworm DJ down another notch: rock-a my head in the bosom of migraine....)


PART THE SECOND: ALL MY OLD FILES ARE UNIX FILES, REALLY?

Here's the bite: my laissez-faire approach to upgrading software just got up close and personal. All my old writing and my MA and MFA research files and writing were meticulously filed, archived, and DiskDoubled in Word 5 docs, and/or old AOL memo format—both completely unopenable under Snow Leopard.

Many of my 1980s files were at least 5 motherboard generations removed from cyber reality. I used AOL instead of the grandfather of TextEdit? Really? What was I thinking? I'm from the if it ain't broke school. Define broken. Duct tape and bailing wire are my friends.

Feeling like Arthur Dent at the end of the universe, in need of a strong cuppa tea and a wet towel, I kept at it. Time to go retro on the earworm: Sweet dream are made of these. Movin' on. Hold your head up! I remembered that I had them backed up on DVDs! Yes, Virginia there is a Plan Z.

But those back-up DVD files also morphed into gray Unix files with evil green lettering. OMG, it's the feckin' OS.6 software. I've been hung out to dry by a catty Snow Leopard. Will I never be able to access all my old writing, photos, and art again? Decades of poetry and news stories, Gone. I mourned. I raged, I gnashed my teeth. Then I got mad. I got even. Surely there was a way around the problem. So many technological barriers to overcome. The solution came to me—I kid you not—in a dream. Poof! I had a plan.

So, I resurrected my neighbor's old 2005 PPC Mac tower, it fired up like a champ after sitting in the closet for ages. I CCCloned most of my old iMac OS.4 Tiger hard drive (in this case, 5th time's a charm) onto it. And it fired it up: voilà! I now have access to my OS 6-9 files. (Short version of story). I can run OS 9 under Classic mode in Tiger. PPC was the last Mac chipset able to this particular pony trick. And Tiger was the last OS to support OS 9. See how antiquated I am? See my stripes? Hear me roar!

So, I've got OS 9 running on Tiger and hooked up to a Visio widescreen TV—curious admixture of old and new technology colliding—they're playing nicely. Chris Breen would be proud of me. And now I just might be able to access my Seagate GoFlex wifi drive. A whole lotta good that particular purchase did me. I should've stuck with Apple's Time Machine—but I thought I was saving money. Yeah, right. Gonna kill it (sing: kill it kill it kill it, then erase it. Erase erase erase it.) That is, if I can remember the bleeping password. Anyone want a Seagate GoFlex wifi drive gone rogue?

As I reacquianted myself with my archived writing (DiskDoublr behaving nicely) I now get why I left all my writing in Word 5, rather than bringing them into the 21st Century. Should I mention that Word 5 docs open blazingly FAST? Microsoft failed big time with Word 2000, 2001, 2004, 2008, etc., upgrades, etc., ack, ick, is all I can say. Bloatware galore. Sluggards all. I won't even mention Windows. Nothing rhymes with orange.

Last night's Tiger breakthrough came at a price: replete with another colossal kablam! This is where I came in. Loud fhart noises. Kablooey and kablam are not sounds you want to hear around computers. Not too sure what the explosion was—a surge bar overload? Electronic burp? One external speaker quit on me—a Jerbil woofer subfhart? I'm sure I'll find out the ramifications later, but hey, I'm in. I'm all in. Another set of problems to solve. Another day, another night to redo those taxes the IRS lost, yes, lost—twice (another story).

So, it's been a long learning curve, the old PPC iMac with its lovely matte screen was sent out to e-waste pasture—fixing blown power supplies and capacitors is way beyond my paygrade. As Chris Breen so sagely said to me: "it's time to practice Catch and Release on that old iMac. It's served you well and you've certainly gotten your money's worth out of it."

Infomercial: Because I was working with the Mac platform, I was able to creatively problem-solve, and rescue old files. I did not give up the ghost, or chalk it up to PC hell, and move on, abandoning old files—which is what most people are forced to do.

What's my status? Red-eyed and rather cranky.

You shouldn't have asked. But hey, I have a workaround: I can now open some of my old locked "Unix" files.

And Facebook won't let me post my status? What's with that? Where's the Dislike button?






More Mac-related blogs:

On iClouds & Motherships
Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy
Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience

Tech wars

Anyone have an old T-Mobile phone they're not using? Or an old iPhone (3Gs or newer)—I can unlock and use my T-mobile SIM in? Cellphone no longer holds a charge & the new pay-as-you-go model at Costco is primitive. New battery is nearly the price of a new phone. What's with that? It's a BATTERY fergawdsakes!!!

I'm reaching crisis point meltdown with my electronic gear all at once—and duct tape will not work. PPC iMac—code name: 'Ol Lazarus, Neil's Wind Tunnel G4—dead power supply (kaBOOM!); my main MacBook has one dead hard drive—tinkering with it now. 

Last summer's brownouts finally coming home to roost. Truth be told, I can't believe I kept these old  discarded Macs alive this long. The G4 I souped up for Neil was 1 GHz MDD (mirrored door drive—looks like a caddy grill on front) code name: Windtunnel, not one of the older models. So it was special—and fast. And it has SCSI ports—for my old Nikon film scanner. All this fuss over keeping old tech alive so I can scan some negatives. But with the G4, I think I have to call it quits. It went kabloom Literally.  It’s dead, Jim. Time to hit Craigslist.

I'm a feckin’ miracle worker at resurrecting old Macs, but when the power supply goes kabloom, and smoke issues forth! Not much I can do. Except to back off. So glad I was wearing glasses at the time.

Why my trusty MacBook also had to enter into the electronic fray of the obsolete and dead Mac pile at the same time with a failed hard drive, is a mystery. Bad timing, or that brownout is wreaking havoc. So now we really are Macless. And hard drives are now so shitty they don't even last 2 years—my second sucky Hitachi drive in 2 years—was under warranty first time around—is now toast. Solid state drives are more reliable. Wish they weren't so pricy.

I desperately need a working MacBook for the CPITS Symposium, and to take writing intensive with Camlle Dungy this weekend (I very nearly made my goal—fill the beds, and bring in 60 people for Saturday. Only 12 more to go...)

My emergency Craiglist find is a deranged headless MacBook Pro (no working screen, DVD drive, or internal sound, plus a dead battery—hey it was cheap—the previous owner must've learned skateboarding with it). But it fires up, and with a lot of coaxing, is serving as a motherboard hub—everything is peripheral! Think: e-octopus. It took some serious working, and a few miracles, not to mention, an external screen, keyboard, speakers and DVD drive, but I have a working Mac. Mopping up the software mess now. The MacBook Pro, though the same age as my MacBook, is infinitely faster. I was able to get some work done, and managed to fill the last of the beds for the CPITS conference.

Tech wars continued: Managed to get a tiny old hard drive working in my old MacBook 1.1—it fired right up, but updating it from 2008 is another issue. Still fussing and fighting with it hours later. I was able to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard, via an external DVD drive (the internal drive also went south)—but Snow Leopard just won't take. And Leopard is obsolete. Augh.

How did I ever function with a 60GB hard drive? Had to jettison most of my music and photos in order to upgrade. Poor ting sounds like a helicopter with the old hard drive. And it’s warmer than a hot tin cat on the lap too. Research on a solid state drive is in order. I need a new hard drive. At least I now have a clean system to clone! We'll eek another year of use out of you yet, Mr. MacBook 1.1!

To make matters worse, my cellphone fell off the wagon, it needs a long, cool ele-drinkypoo every 12 hours or it beeps piteously at me like an orphaned kitten. Then it chirps like a bird when it's well-fed. What happened, an electronic pulse? And it’s so old, I can’t find a battery for it. 

Just received an extraordinary care package from poet Kathleene K West in New Mexico—a very fancy T-Mobile phone and myriad tchatchkiis. Go raibh maith agat! All she wants is to be reimbursed for postage. Deal.

Still in computer purgatory... So I salvaged my old Macbook after the HDD died, with an old HDD from 2008—upgrading it was, well, pure hell. Do computers also have Mercury retrograde days? I managed to get it working again but, it's too old. All was swell until I OK'd the combo update (on both MBs). What was I thinking? I couldn’t leave well enough alone, now, could I? I had to go and update both MacBooks and now I have to MacBricks.

I think our DSL is so slow, the software was corrupted as it happened TWICE. Due to a series of flukes (MBP install disk was in DVD), I was able to save the old MacBook—and install Snow Leopard—probably b/c the combo update stall had thrashed Leopard, that it had to load. Never could get it to work before. So I'm half-way there. But the MacBook Pro is another story. In geek purgatory. But I really need an intel core duo 2 Mac (that #2 is important!) to access the iCloud. At least I was able to save my Apple email account with the now daid MacBookPro (MBP). Well, I’m still Mackless on all fronts. I’m afraid that MacBook resurrection 2.0 is on hiatus until after the conference.

Note Bene: I bought a portable external hard drive at Costco and managed to run the ailing Macbook off the external drive, then update the combo OS update at IONs Institute, as they had faster WiFi. Thinking outside the boxes’ box is exhausting. But, success! Now to remedy that MacBook Pro still stuck in limbolandia when I return. Having the combo update on the external drive saved my bacon. Let the clone wars commence.

Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy

Lloyd Reynolds by Henk Pander, cover of Encore (Jan 1978)

About the time I began writing poetry in the late 1970s, I studied calligraphy with Sonoma State University French professor, Adele Friedman, who was a student and friend of Georgianna Greenwood; both were students of master calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds.

So depending upon how you want to count, I am within one or two degrees of separation from both Lloyd Reynolds and Steve Jobs.

At the time, I didn't have a typewriter, so I hand-calligraphed all my poems in a sort of Japanese "running grass" style Italic chancery cursive script for David Bromige's poetry classes. He seemed to like that—and told me it was a Reed College tradition: Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Gary Snyder, etc., (all of whom I had met, so I was in good company.)

Calligraphy, a Greek word, literally means "beautiful writing." Beautiful, my handwriting was not—it was really awful and disjointed (I'm dyslexic). I hated writing, but after I studied calligraphy for a year, my handwriting dramatically improved. So did my brain. Calligraphy is much more than the sum of its parts: not only is it the art of fine penmanship, it is a state of being.

I never intended to become a scribe. Calligraphy and poetry honed my critical thinking skills and allowed me a visual workaround to combat the dyslexic roadblocks and labyrinths that had plagued me all my life. It was a major miracle that I even made it to junior college, let alone, earn a BA in Art—with a side order in poetry.

The introduction of Apple and Mac computers allowed me to write. The technology unlocked the doors of my convoluted brain. I taught myself how to write on an old Apple IIc with floppy disks. I began small, with poetry, and then branched out to write newspaper stories, and grants—which led to my life's work, teaching poetry and art to kids in the schools.

One of my first artist in residency jobs was at Healdsburg Elementary School teaching RSP/Learning Disabled kids how to write calligraphy (and poetry)—when all else had failed them. I redesigned my approach to the letters, and made up stories about them so the kids could really see the shapes as shapes—not letters. We flourished. Kids wrote poetry and their handwriting and reading skills improved.

During this time, The Calligraphy of Lloyd J. Reynolds was my Bible. I found a battered copy of the rare, o.o.p. book and it was the most money I'd ever spent on a used book.

Letters have fascinated me ever since I found their power and beauty when I was five years old.  I learned to read.  I was always drawing and letters were a favorite subject. —Lloyd Reynolds, Autobiographical Notes

When Lloyd Reynolds (1902-1978), a poet who taught at Reed College for 40 years (1949-1984—the year the Mac was invented), first discovered calligraphy in 1934, he said "The letters would not leave me alone…."

It was like "a bolt of lightning," he wrote: "It seemed perfectly obvious—the only logical approach is the historical one. Learn to cut reed and quill pens and write your way through the history of the alphabet!" Lloyd spent the next few years studying paleography. Connect the dots. (Autobiographical Notes).

[Lloyd] He respected students, and he added joy to the skill. Legibility, communication, clarity, and respect for others—all these were tenets in the religion of Lloyd Reynolds and calligraphy. You got as much from who he was as from what he was teaching, and that’s the talent of a great teacher. —Georgianna Greenwood (Reed, ’60)

In 1972, Lloyd Reynolds was honored as Calligrapher Laureate of Oregon‚ the first title ever bestowed in the nation. Reynolds, who revived the art of calligraphy in the West, saw it as a means to work one's way back into the origins of literature. A gateway to history.

It was also very Zen. One had to approach the blank page with a meditative approach. The mind had to be stilled. It was a true Vulcan body - mind meld. There was no room for hesitation or false starts.

I had to wipe my mind clean: in that state of mind, I could recognize the letters I needed to write, but I couldn't say what the word was nor could I spell it. If someone talked to me, I immediately made a mistake—I misspelled the word—or added the words they said—usually a noun. Wherever my mind went while I was calligraphing was not of this world—it was a tranquil white place of suspended time.

During the late 1970s and early 80s, I became the resident calligrapher / sign painter at Sonoma State University. I traded in my steel pen nibs to dance with fat greengrocer felt paint brushes, I pushed the art form into large format. My ephemeral signs and banners on butcher paper graced every corner of the campus.

I made signs for The Student Union, the InterCultural Center, Peter Scarlet's Sonoma Film Institute, and campus events including backdrops for Pete Seeger, Daniel Berrigan, The Jewish Oral History Project, Westwind, The Dead Kennedys, James Burke, etc. Many performing artists who visited SSU, took my banners home with them.

I also did some freelance calligraphy (I called my business Calligrafix). I made wedding invitations, obituaries, cards, menus, programs, tickets, etc. All our posters and broadsides for The Russian River Writers' Guild were hand-calligraphed as getting anything professionally photo-typeset on a huge Compugraphic machine the size of a VW bus—was prohibitively expensive. Hot lead press typography was still in use. Desktop publishing was still a nascent glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye.

About the time I gave up my IBM Selectric typewriter with its daisywheel fonts, is when I quit doing calligraphy. I began to use the Apple and the Mac (and a Laserwriter) with multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts. The desktop publishing revolution had begun.

This post is a funny circle back to Tim Girvin's blog about his connection with Steve Jobs, and Jobs' connection with Lloyd Reynolds and the evolution of the Mac's superb typographic legacy. Reynolds is really the godfather of desktop publishing.

I guess I unconsciously recognized Lloyd Reynold's long-reaching influence on the art of lettering and typography even on the Mac. Steve Jobs stated, "If I had never dropped in on that single course [and audited] in [Reed] college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Interesting to note that Tim Girvin's own chancery examples look a lot like Georgiana's work. Lloyd had a strong influence. A distinctive style imprinted upon so many of us—even those of us once and twice removed from the source.

Even Joan Baez kept my calligraphy sign.

Lloyd Reynolds

Note Bene: This blog entry is in response to an interesting calligraphy link posted by Oregon poet Jim Carmin, whose day job is an antiquarian rare book collector and manuscript wrangler for the John Wilson Special Collections at the Multnomah Library. @JimCarmin tweeted: GIRVIN: Steve Jobs, Calligraphy, Lloyd Reynolds and Reed College. Check it out.

SOME LINKS AND CLIPS:
Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting with Lloyd Reynolds
Lloyd Reynolds: Italic Calligraphy

Lloyd J. Reynolds Biography
The Dance of the Pen
'Lloyd Reynolds: A Life of Forms in Art,' on view at Reed College

Steve Jobs Stanford Commemoration speech 2005

My links:
Calligraphy doodles (art)
see also my early calligraphed poems from 1978, 79... (uneven work—some were drafts, and some were silly poems)