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Post by Petra on Jan 4, 2022 0:29:47 GMT -5
Speaking for myself, i would be interested to know where everyone is from. I'm from northern california, on the coast. About an hour from Oregon difficult to imagine how large California is so i will offer this for scale. I have a daughter who lives in Redondo, she is moving to Wisconsin, still she will be approximately the same distance from mei don't expect too many responses because it appears no one looks in here. Still i am curious.
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Post by agrimmeer on Jan 8, 2022 16:11:49 GMT -5
I'm currently sitting in Texas (but I often travel to other states).
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Post by judih on Jan 22, 2022 2:39:26 GMT -5
edit: Thanks to agrimmeer, I found Petra's original post. I've moved it here. ------ Somewhere in AC, petra began a thread asking for member locations. I can't find it, so I'm beginning a new thread here. Petra, if you wish, you could offer a link, or repost your contribution here. So.... I'm on a kibbutz in the Western Negev of Israel. A kibbutz is a small cooperative settlement, once economically based purely on farming and now a mixture of farming and industry. We grow carrots, wheat, pomegranates, avocados, potatoes. (I think that's it). Our factories include paints and solvents, and our hothouses have been turned over to the Medical Cannabis industry, the location of one of the largest such companies in the world. It is highly guarded, so I haven't toured the expansive facility. We also raise chickens and there's a dairy farm on the kibbutz. I'm partially retired but work nearby in the regional high school, teaching mindfulness, a lesson that has been incorporated into the 7th grade weekly schedule. I also get to teach 8th graders who've chosen to learn mindfulness once a week. I'm involved in a School Twinning project, and have been coordinating it since 2008. We work to create a living bridge between teens of our school and a school in Albany, NY. If covid ever allows it, our teens will make an exchange visit, so I might once more see the shores of New York. (which is my birth state). I also facilitate mindfulness on my kibbutz, twice weekly, something that has helped maintain some connection and sanity during these past years. Covid, a trial that we all share, is just one of the elements of daily life here on the border with the Gaza Strip. My daily haiku also allow me therapy and I've chosen to post them here on AC, as well as on my blog: judihaiku.wordpress.com and in a few other forums. And that's my story in a nutshell. Who else?
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Post by sasha on Jan 22, 2022 11:48:25 GMT -5
I've lived in New England (far northeast USA) for most of my life, and still do, as a fully retired engineering physicist in a small NH town (Fitzwilliam) sitting right on the border with MA. I live on a dirt road within walking distance of a recreational lake, a well-used rail-trail, and surrounded by several hundred acres of undeveloped woodland. On more than one occasion, I've seen deer, moose, and bear wandering through my front yard - and I wouldn't have it any other way. My professional field of interest was numerical analysis - the art of turning data into information. There was a time I was regarded as the go-to guy for experimental design and regression analysis, but that was a long time ago, and today my mathematical dabbling is just that - idle play. Nothing wrong with idle play - it keeps the engine from seizing up completely. I became interested in writing at an early age, inspired by those dreadful "big bug" sci-fi B-movies that overran the 1950s. My first opus was a 2-page epic of cosmic horror called "Space Monster", penciled at the tender age of 10. It was as hilariously awful as the title would suggest. I continued churning them out through my school years; and because my SAT scores exempted me from the requirement that all incoming college freshmen take a remedial English course, I enrolled instead in a junior-level fiction workshop. Me! A lowly frosh, a physics major at that, in a junior level English course! Wasn't I Bad! And to show just how Bad, the prof read my first submission aloud to the class - as an example of how NOT to write. As humiliating as this was (even though he never revealed the authors), it held some important lessons: Write what you know, not what you've seen on TV. Big words do not equal big ideas. Adjectives are seasoning, not the main course. And Character, Character, Character. By its nature, the course could be repeated for credit, which I did in my final year - and he again read one of my stories, this time as an example of something Almost Good! So I guess that Almost makes me a Writer! Besides writing, my non professional interests are photography, audio recording/editing, and day hiking, the latter of which hip-replacement surgery has allowed me to resume after a forced hiatus. I'm still on the mend, walking only about 2 miles a day, and only when the weather allows - which, lately, it has not. But it will, and I will, and I'm more than delighted to get back into it. You can see some of my photography at my YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/lesnyk255/videos. Or not.
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Post by judih on Jan 22, 2022 12:20:27 GMT -5
I've lived in New England (far northeast USA) for most of my life, and still do, as a fully retired engineering physicist in a small NH town (Fitzwilliam) sitting right on the border with MA. I live on a dirt road within walking distance of a recreational lake, a well-used rail-trail, and surrounded by several hundred acres of undeveloped woodland. On more than one occasion, I've seen deer, moose, and bear wandering through my front yard - and I wouldn't have it any other way. My professional field of interest was numerical analysis - the art of turning data into information. There was a time I was regarded as the go-to guy for experimental design and regression analysis, but that was a long time ago, and today my mathematical dabbling is just that - idle play. Nothing wrong with idle play - it keeps the engine from seizing up completely. I became interested in writing at an early age, inspired by those dreadful "big bug" sci-fi B-movies that overran the 1950s. My first opus was a 2-page epic of cosmic horror called "Space Monster", penciled at the tender age of 10. It was as hilariously awful as the title would suggest. I continued churning them out through my school years; and because my SAT scores exempted me from the requirement that all incoming college freshmen take a remedial English course, I enrolled instead in a junior-level fiction workshop. Me! A lowly frosh, a physics major at that, in a junior level English course! Wasn't I Bad! And to show just how Bad, the prof read my first submission aloud to the class - as an example of how NOT to write. As humiliating as this was (even though he never revealed the authors), it held some important lessons: Write what you know, not what you've seen on TV. Big words do not equal big ideas. Adjectives are seasoning, not the main course. And Character, Character, Character. By its nature, the course could be repeated for credit, which I did in my final year - and he again read one of my stories, this time as an example of something Almost Good! So I guess that Almost makes me a Writer! Besides writing, my non professional interests are photography, audio recording/editing, and day hiking, the latter of which hip-replacement surgery has allowed me to resume after a forced hiatus. I'm still on the mend, walking only about 2 miles a day, and only when the weather allows - which, lately, it has not. But it will, and I will, and I'm more than delighted to get back into it. You can see some of my photography at my YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/lesnyk255/videos. Or not. Thanks, Sasha. That was beautiful! 'Almost good!' - indeed. I'd elevate that status to 'Almost amazing!'
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Post by goldenmyst on Jan 23, 2022 22:58:22 GMT -5
I live in a Baton Rouge of the mind where ghosts, residual effects, of the past live on in poverty and the lingering sadness of events that transpired about 150 years ago. But my neighborhood is a short bus ride away from the university where a coffee shop and historic diner reside. So I roam avenues of memory to find a world long gone. A swamp park can be found just a few miles away where years ago I took photos of the forest reflected in a perfect mirror of the sky. My writing is born of the imagination with roots in reality that sustain me in my solitude. Mostly I write prose now which is too long for most to wade through. But it takes me places beyond the bus routes where a car took me and my beloved years ago most notably to the grand canyon and points between. But the Miss/Lou region is a locale of rich memoirs. I could ramble on but need not for life fills the gaps in my heart.
John
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Post by judih on Jan 24, 2022 1:12:55 GMT -5
I live in a Baton Rouge of the mind where ghosts, residual effects, of the past live on in poverty and the lingering sadness of events that transpired about 150 years ago. But my neighborhood is a short bus ride away from the university where a coffee shop and historic diner reside. So I roam avenues of memory to find a world long gone. A swamp park can be found just a few miles away where years ago I took photos of the forest reflected in a perfect mirror of the sky. My writing is born of the imagination with roots in reality that sustain me in my solitude. Mostly I write prose now which is too long for most to wade through. But it takes me places beyond the bus routes where a car took me and my beloved years ago most notably to the grand canyon and points between. But the Miss/Lou region is a locale of rich memoirs. I could ramble on but need not for life fills the gaps in my heart. John thanks, John!
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Post by agrimmeer on Jan 24, 2022 13:41:01 GMT -5
My background appears to be a cacophony when I try to write it out, but here goes:
My family was originally from Italy and Quebec. I currently reside in Texas, but I grew to adulthood in the New Haven area. I’m often in upstate NY—a home-away-from-home—for many weeks at a time, but not so much during covid peaks. I explore Texas when I have free time, and it took years for me to finally sample each of its corners. So many of my old pics often distract me from what I’m supposed to be working on at any given moment (and some’re on InstaG and the Book of Face).
My first degree’s in physics, but I’ve hardly used that one in my lifetime (just a few-month stint in a specialized machine shop for an inventor), and so that area of knowledge grows rusty, and I’ve somehow ended up in the legal field. I used to work a bit for the G W Bush admin and Halliburton, in a private capacity (through a law firm), but then I shifted to affordable housing, corporate law, and infrastructure work, which is really where I’m still at now—mostly the affordable housing. On some given days, I don’t know which hat I wear. For one year I was a teacher in Houston, but I ruffled too many feathers with the administration there, and I got the boot. I was trained to do hair and nails. And I was a delivery driver, for years. Anything for a paycheck.
Agrimmeer DeMolay is a pen name I had to choose during a sticky situation decades ago, when a poem about a certain oil co’s actions was about to be published when that co simultaneously appeared on my desk, signing on to be a new client. I had to quickly quarantine my poetry-life from my law-life, so I had to obtain a new name there-and-then—to refrain from “crossing the streams”. Agrimmeer means ‘lake of life’ and ‘DeMolay’ is a nod to my dad’s following certain knightly tenets (e.g., “The well-off are obligated to give aid to the downtrodden.”). Friends in TX call me ‘Ag’. Some have dubbed me ‘Mr Silver’, which has grown to make more sense over the years as my hair turned that color. (Hm, did it begin to change right after I was dubbed thus?! Was it cause or correlation? Ack!)
In my off-time, I study chen style tai chi (mostly for health reasons), hang out with the kids-turned-adults, and write stories and poetry.
About the latter, I feel like all poems, like stepping stones dropped in a jagged row, are really just all portions of one long poem in progress. In fact, it sometimes feels like the past writs aren’t ‘mine’; rather, they commingle and connect up to everyone else’s contributions, all part and parcel of some spiritus mundi, a grand unified field theory of (human) creation.
Hm, what else? Oh, I wrote a few sci fi novels, and self-published one of them, which hasn’t really sold well in the US. Sometimes the kids, their friends, and I gather in person to play D&D or Traveller, and guess who usually runs these games. Me. Such sculpting springs from the same part of the brain that’s used for writing.
I promised a cacophony. Did I succeed in delivering? Heh.
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Post by judih on Jan 24, 2022 21:55:10 GMT -5
My background appears to be a cacophony when I try to write it out, but here goes: My family was originally from Italy and Quebec. I currently reside in Texas, but I grew to adulthood in the New Haven area. I’m often in upstate NY—a home-away-from-home—for many weeks at a time, but not so much during covid peaks. I explore Texas when I have free time, and it took years for me to finally sample each of its corners. So many of my old pics often distract me from what I’m supposed to be working on at any given moment (and some’re on InstaG and the Book of Face). My first degree’s in physics, but I’ve hardly used that one in my lifetime (just a few-month stint in a specialized machine shop for an inventor), and so that area of knowledge grows rusty, and I’ve somehow ended up in the legal field. I used to work a bit for the G W Bush admin and Halliburton, in a private capacity (through a law firm), but then I shifted to affordable housing, corporate law, and infrastructure work, which is really where I’m still at now—mostly the affordable housing. On some given days, I don’t know which hat I wear. For one year I was a teacher in Houston, but I ruffled too many feathers with the administration there, and I got the boot. I was trained to do hair and nails. And I was a delivery driver, for years. Anything for a paycheck. Agrimmeer DeMolay is a pen name I had to choose during a sticky situation decades ago, when a poem about a certain oil co’s actions was about to be published when that co simultaneously appeared on my desk, signing on to be a new client. I had to quickly quarantine my poetry-life from my law-life, so I had to obtain a new name there-and-then—to refrain from “crossing the streams”. Agrimmeer means ‘lake of life’ and ‘DeMolay’ is a nod to my dad’s following certain knightly tenets (e.g., “The well-off are obligated to give aid to the downtrodden.”). Friends in TX call me ‘Ag’. Some have dubbed me ‘Mr Silver’, which has grown to make more sense over the years as my hair turned that color. (Hm, did it begin to change right after I was dubbed thus?! Was it cause or correlation? Ack!) In my off-time, I study chen style tai chi (mostly for health reasons), hang out with the kids-turned-adults, and write stories and poetry. About the latter, I feel like all poems, like stepping stones dropped in a jagged row, are really just all portions of one long poem in progress. In fact, it sometimes feels like the past writs aren’t ‘mine’; rather, they commingle and connect up to everyone else’s contributions, all part and parcel of some spiritus mundi, a grand unified field theory of (human) creation. Hm, what else? Oh, I wrote a few sci fi novels, and self-published one of them, which hasn’t really sold well in the US. Sometimes the kids, their friends, and I gather in person to play D&D or Traveller, and guess who usually runs these games. Me. Such sculpting springs from the same part of the brain that’s used for writing. I promised a cacophony. Did I succeed in delivering? Heh. promise has been kept, beyond expectations! Thanks, Ag (if I may). I'm sure that your experiences intersect with many of us here on AC.
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Post by agrimmeer on Jan 25, 2022 14:39:30 GMT -5
Reading about all 3 of you, it all seems familiar; your descriptions reflect y’all’s writings.
Judih, I just saw that you practice chi quong, which I think is not so far from chen style. What are the odds of meeting someone else who does that too—on a poetry website? I was taught that Negev was desert. And yet y’all farm so much! I learned something new. Creating this thread was a good idea, for both you and Petra (who posted the other thread in Literary Journals subpage).
Sasha, is the numerical theory you use like the works of Paul Milgrom & Robert Wilson Re: auction theory? Oh, a book you might like (from the 90s) is: Cryptonomicon. I looked at your pics—Wild Things. How close did you get to that bear?! I learned something new here too—about those towns buried under water.
John, I once saw you post elsewhere under one of my TX pics (from hiking thru a marsh) that it looked like home. I now understand why—we’re in the same climate. Even though you live in a humid place, I sometimes get the impression that you’re more at home in arid lands. I think I saw you post pics of the grand canyon. I too am more at home in arid climates; the kids and I hiked in palo duro canyon. That was the last family trip for us, right before covid hit.
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Post by sasha on Jan 25, 2022 16:21:56 GMT -5
Reading about all 3 of you, it all seems familiar; your descriptions reflect y’all’s writings... ...Sasha, is the numerical theory you use like the works of Paul Milgrom & Robert Wilson Re: auction theory? Oh, a book you might like (from the 90s) is: Cryptonomicon. I looked at your pics—Wild Things. How close did you get to that bear?! I learned something new here too—about those towns buried under water.... Thanks for checking out my channel! I was probably about 200 ft away from the bear, and would have gotten closer had I not run out of cover. I was downwind of him, so it wasn't likely he'd catch my scent & come after me - or more likely, run away. But I was still looking over my shoulder on the return trip to my car. Situational awareness is a Good Thing. I was maybe 100 ft away from the moose calf, when Mama stepped out of the brush behind it. There was no question that they saw me, because I was in the middle of the rail trail, out in the open, and they were staring my way - so I just froze. We stood eyeing each other for about 14 hours (maybe 30 seconds in your frame of reference), then they turned away and headed away, in the same direction I was traveling. I remained frozen until they left the trail for the woods several hundred feet further on. Most of the mathematics I employed in my engineering job were geared for solving specific problems. We were characterizing various solid state lasers to incorporate into our own products: industrial product marking machinery. In order to design the optics (NOT my area of expertise), it was important for us to know how the energy was distributed within the beams' cross sections, so we could calculate the total energy incident upon our components. Most of these were normally distributed (hottest along the beam axis, cooler at its edges), and the Gaussian function is notoriously non-integrable over a finite region. [EDIT] One of my YT vids explores this in a little more detail [/EDIT]. So I wrote a lot of code (let's hear it for Fortran!) to perform these integrations numerically. (Paradoxically, numerical differentiation is a much more difficult problem, even though analytical differentiation is usually quite straightforward.) Also wrote a suite of curve-fitting and smoothing programs (linear and nonlinear), statistical analyses (ANOVA, e.g.), contour mapping, polynomial root-finding, stochastic simulations... lots of fun stuff. I read "Cryptonomicon" many years ago. I liked it, but didn't find it an easy read. I read another of his, "Snow Crash"; but I just couldn't get into "Diamond Age"...
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Post by goldenmyst on Jan 25, 2022 22:53:35 GMT -5
agrimmeer, my wife and I drove past Palo Duro Canyon and I felt the pull of the place. We did make it to the Grand Canyon once. I also went there with my sister. Indeed if it weren't for family and friend connections here I probably would have relocated long ago out west. But I have discovered the mystique of our swamps and marshes here in Louisiana. Sunset over the swamps can be a magical time. And it doesn't take too much driving or fascination to arrive at the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Ship Island not far from Horn Island where Walter Anderson illustrated the mysticism of the islands there.
John
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Post by winddance on Jan 26, 2022 12:39:16 GMT -5
I am a longtime resident of a small town named beaver, on the edge of the rainforests of olympic national park. though not a big fan of the everpresent rain, I love the green, the forests and the water. Started my life a "valley girl" in LA. Writing and reading kept me sane until I discovered the forests near big sur. I joined the great northern hippie migration in the 70's, ending up in washington state with someone I picked up hitchhiking and having three children. Now I am a retired library worker, living with husband number two in a place near paradise. The ocean is twenty minutes away and trails through the woods even closer. We have owned several small sailboats mostly for lake exploration and collect and play ukulele. We also enjoy making yearly trips to the deserts to dry out and look for rocks. My writing still helps keep me sane. I have always leaned toward haiku and the short forms being short myself.
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Post by judih on Jan 26, 2022 13:23:29 GMT -5
I am a longtime resident of a small town named beaver, on the edge of the rainforests of olympic national park. though not a big fan of the everpresent rain, I love the green, the forests and the water. Started my life a "valley girl" in LA. Writing and reading kept me sane until I discovered the forests near big sur. I joined the great northern hippie migration in the 70's, ending up in washington state with someone I picked up hitchhiking and having three children. Now I am a retired library worker, living with husband number two in a place near paradise. The ocean is twenty minutes away and trails through the woods even closer. We have owned several small sailboats mostly for lake exploration and collect and play ukulele. We also enjoy making yearly trips to the deserts to dry out and look for rocks. My writing still helps keep me sane. I have always leaned toward haiku and the short forms being short myself. Very romantic bio, ms winddance. And i never thought of it before - short stature, short poem! I guess I have something new to put on a t-shirt. Thanks for sharing.
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Post by sasha on Jan 26, 2022 15:55:28 GMT -5
A few items omitted from my 1st bio:
* I joined the original AC maybe some 5-6 yrs before its dissolution, and there's a lot of comfort in hearing from a lot of the old familiar names.
* I was active in scuba diving for many years, until a near-disaster underwater convinced me that hiking was a far safer - and less expensive - hobby to pursue.
* I discovered haiku in a slim volume my ex-wife kept next to the upstairs toilet. I began dabbling in it ("how hard can it be?"), gradually transitioned from strict 5-7-5 to freeform at the Interractive Poetry Pages, and now, maybe some 30 yrs later, I think I can answer that question. I won't live long enough to achieve mastery, but that won't stop me from trying...
* And speaking of impending mortality - it's increasingly unlikely that I'll ever see fusion power become a thing; or whether the seas of Europa or Enceladus contain life. The secrets of dark matter & dark energy will probably remain elusive during my remaining days; ditto a workable theory of quantum gravity. No proofs of the Collatz Conjecture or the Riemann Hypothesis seem to be on the horizon; and it sure as hell doesn't look like a radio telescope will get built on the far side of the moon before I fall off the perch. Dammit. At least we've got the JWST...
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