Late Papers

A Solution or a Something?

2013-05-05T11:19:00.000-05:00

This article, How We Failed Our Y-Combinator Interview, points out the distinction between building a solution and building a something. A solution hits a clear need, but a something is more visionary. When pitching a solution, others get it pretty quickly; when pitching a something, however, some kind of traction is needed to validate that the world really needs this new thing.

Reactions can tell you if you're pitching a solution or a something.

If a something, everybody says "that's cool."
If a solution, everybody says "let me know when I can get it."

I would add that if it's a solution, you can convey the benefits to some particular person in one sentence. If a something, then many sentences are needed to explain how it hits all kinds of needs for everybody (think iPad commercials).

This other article, Foursquare doesn't have a revenue problem, it has a user intent problem, illustrates the long-term risk of betting on a something instead of a solution:

"To understand the bind that Foursquare constantly finds itself in, consider the screenshot to the right, which shows what happens when a big chain like Taco Bell pays Foursquare to promote its locations. Most people don’t open up the Foursquare app to find a local chain restaurant — they do so because they’re looking for somewhere new and different to go.

The problem is that those “new and different” local spots aren’t at all the companies that are going to pay Foursquare the money it needs to grow. Foursquare, then, is caught between two desires: those of its users and those of its partners."

To rapidly grow a new product, you need to find the intersection between the different groups that would use it, in this case big national chains, and customers looking to eat out (but not so much the hipsters or foodies). For most of us, this means starting by thinking of a solution instead of something in search of solutions.

The Book of Knowledge (BABOK).

2013-04-20T16:51:00.000-05:00

Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia (NOT the BABOK).

I've been reading the Business Analyst Book of Knowledge (pronounced BA Bock). Today, I got up through page 91, and I noticed that there had been repeated references to particular techniques, but no details. I noticed that the techniques all had citations of 9.1, 9.2, etc. Guess what? Yes, I skipped ahead to the cool stuff in section 9.

At our local IIBA meeting this past week, we practiced the process analysis techniques of context diagramming and functional decomposition. Someone who works at a small software company that uses agile methods (similar to my situation) asked how practical these tools are for companies using agile development. The group responded that these techniques are useful for noticing gaps early and for limiting unexpected changes later in the process. Reading the BABOK, I see that the agile environment is addressed throughout. It's especially helpful that each process and technique is presented with advantages and disadvantages. This descriptive approach enables professionals to be aware of trade offs for skipping items, but also provides a path for remedy if the process breaks down.

Unlike the Book of Knowledge Encyclopedia, there are no pictures, poems, or stories. There are lots of diagrams, and like the Encyclopedia, the BABOK does give a broad overview of wide-ranging topics.

What startup software companies are strengthening the heart of education?

2013-04-10T19:31:00.001-05:00

Yayoi Kusama, Passing Winter, 2005

photo by Sharon Mollerus on flickr

I work for a startup software company, and I see a wide range of entrepreneurs in our shared offices. I like watching Shark Tank, watching entrepreneurs attempt to get their companies funded by venture capitalists; and I like watching Kitchen Nightmares to see Gordon Ramsey help small restaurants focus on providing value to their communities.

As a sometime teacher, I have noticed with interest several local companies offering services in educational niches.

It seems to me that there are a number of ways that technology companies could serve education:

help students learn technical skills in an evolving job market;
help schools automate things that other niches may have already automated;
lesson the pains of compliance with a variety of mandates.

All of these above approaches have the potential to deliver good value to schools, but they leave me a bit cold. For me, the exciting part of education is the relationship between teacher and student, and the introduction of the student to all of reality. This personal criteria of mine leads me to a fourth category:

strengthening the heart of education.

What about increased individualized practice? I think this can be very good, and it is close to the heart of teaching. Another example is a CD player, which enables a teacher to seamlessly bring students close to a beautiful performance.

Radius

2013-04-06T16:22:00.001-05:00

I walked to the park today, as I often do, and I walked around the lake five times. It's more interesting than sitting at home and pedaling on the stationary bike. I can feel the boisterous wind, see mothers playing with their children, and see the ducks, geese, and gulls. Even so, it can still be boring to walk around for an hour or so. Just as it can be a boring to repeat the same commute to and from work everyday. In the repetition and circumstances of life, a need arises for something more. Can this need be met by walking in different circles, bigger circles, circles with more things to see?

On Thursday night, I heard an analogy that opens a possibility for addressing this need. If the meaning of life is like the center of a circle, the path for meaning at any point along the circumference is toward this center along a radius. From anywhere on the circumference, one can return to the center, and from the center one can go to any point on the circumference. What does this mean for me? It means that in any circumstance, I can recall being looked at with mercy.

Circle from Wikipedia: en:User:Optimager

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

he can fall in love as much as he wants…

2013-04-05T16:07:00.002-05:00

"not a number, not a name…but I am a carefully laid plan"

I was reading Enzo Piccinini a few weeks ago, in particular a little booklet from a talk he gave about some letters on suffering by Emmanuel Mounier, and this phrase hit me strongly: "he can fall in love as much as he wants, but tenderness is lacking; there is a thrill that can seem like tenderness, but it is not, and this is demonstrated by the fact that first of all it is temporary, and then it is selfish, egocentric" ("The Otherworldly Present in this World," Traces #6: 2000). So often it has been my great hope to fall in love, to become infatuated, with a certain dream of life, a certain field, and then to use the energy of that affection to carry me through a transition. In high school, it was computer programming until I attempted to take a class in discrete structures as an undergraduate (computer science being a math major at the time). Later, it was literature until I got sick of the amateur theorizing in grad school. And, then it was education until I met the intensity of middle school. When I read this line about falling in love as much as you want, it was as if my eyes were opened to my own game and the thrill was replaced with a certain coldness. Over these weeks, I have realized that my disenchantment has to do with this approach of falling in love with myself as a plan, and does not necessarily impact the direction of business analysis. My experience in software and my background in education and literature provide many resources for continuing in this direction. Instead, it's an opportunity to walk forward with my eyes open. I have printed off my personal copy of the BA Book of Knowledge, and have begun to read through it.

Tenderness

The alternative to the thrill of infatuation is tenderness. As Enzo says: "Tenderness is a sensitivity to the joy of others, and it exists only in those who support, accept, and are as a child before Christ, like the apostles." A sensitivity to the joy of others— who would not prefer this in others? There are people we know who welcome our joys and give them room to blossom; but others tend to crush the joy, often without realizing what they're doing. A receptivity to our joy is something we all need to embrace happiness and to grow. In my experience, this sensitivity to joy springs from remembering that I have been looked upon with mercy, and this mercy opens me to others. It is this tenderness which encourages me to keep moving, to look for opportunities to be useful, to see ways of addressing needs that are unresolved.
---
I almost forgot to share this: Regina Spektor speaking with Stephen Colbert in 2012.

How can life have unity?

2013-02-28T05:00:00.000-06:00

"Life has unity if you put your heart into what you do. I don't mean the heart as sentiment. I mean the irrepressible desire for happiness, goodness, truth, and justice. It a desire you always have, and that by yourself you can never completely fulfill. Life can have unity if you put your whole heart, that is, your desire for complete happiness, into everything you do, whether easy situations or hard ones, fatigue or leisure, family or work. The heart is the irrepressible desire for truth, for beauty, for being loved and for loving. It's not a matter of philanthropy or manners; it's not a problem of technique. But tomorrow morning, when I visit my patients in the hospital ward, if I put my heart into it, I will recognize in them the same desire that I have, and I will look at them differently" (Enzo: The Adventure of a Friendship, p 18).

A Few Words About Tools: Snow and BPMN

2013-02-26T15:41:00.000-06:00

I used a snow shovel to sculpt the base of this snowman

Today we received about 8" of wet, heavy snow. Last week we received 12" of snow, and as I dug out of it with one of our shovels, I looked with envy at the shovels of my neighbors: great curved snowplows of shovels, shiny and in great shape. Of our several shovels in various conditions, my chosen shovel has a plastic scoop attached to a wood base. It has a hole from previous shoveling tasks. Shoveling over several days gave me plenty of time to reflect on the tool at hand and to recall the saying that it's a poor worker who blames his tools. I came to the following conclusions:
1. a good worker uses the tools he has; 2. a good worker knows his tools; 3. a good worker looks for good tools.

Using the tools I have

As a citizen of Kansas, which has four seasons all with distinct yard keeping tools, I like to have tools proportionate to their usage throughout the year. We may get a couple of significant snowfalls each winter, but snow removal is not a weekly task, as in other parts of the country or world. So, I keep some adequate snow shovels on hand and replace them as needed.

Knowing my tools

Knowing your tools comes in the process of working with the tools. If a shovel has a plastic scoop, you know better than to overload it. In the process of clearing the driveway, I definitely grew to love the lightness of the plastic scoop as well as its limited capacity. Today, however, with the wet, heavy snow, I preferred the shovel with the heavier aluminum scoop. What I love about it is its capacity to lift dense snow and the way the slush slides off neatly as I tilt it.

Looking for good tools

Using the shovels that I have teaches me what to look for in replacing or upgrading tools. I would be happy to use either of these shovels again, but I may look for sturdier plastic or I may try some different shaped scoops.

Tools and BPMN

As a business analyst, I've been learning the symbols and syntax of Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN). BPMN is a way to model processes, incorporating the strengths of previous flowcharting methods. The benefit of BPMN, according to Bruce Silver, is that "BPMN bridges the worlds of business and IT, a common process language that can be shared between them." (BPMN Method and Style, Second Edition, location 739/7355 Kindle, near the beginning of Chapter 1).

A Sketching Tool

I recently attended a presentation on BPMN at my chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). Excited to apply this modeling process, I tried Gliffy, an online sketching tool that I had used previously for flowcharting. Using this sketching tool, I modeled a core process for the facilities software I work with. I discovered that a key event was actually a generalization of two events that should ideally be separate (approving a service request and assigning a work order to a service request). Because the events are combined, the notification is sent to the requestor only if the staff assigns a work order at the time of approval and not in the exception where the staff approves and assigns in two separate steps.

A Modeling Tool

When I shared my model with fellow business analysts online, they pointed out a few confusing elements of my process. I saw that Gliffy has symbols for BPMN, but does not support all of the symbols available in BPMN 2.0. Flowcharts are just one use of Gliffy, and as a sketching tool, there is clearly not an interest in BPMN 2.0, which sets standards for conformance and cross-platform support— not only as sketches, but more critically as models. So, I looked for a better tool. I found Bonita Open Solution. It is an open source tool, closely aligned with the BPMN 2.0 standard. It's a powerful tool, but available for free download and use (you do need to download a Java run environment for it, also free).

Conclusion

As I seek better ways to work together with users, domain experts, database designers, and developers, I am learning from the tools available to me and finding better tools as I go. I especially like having Bonita Open Solution available to me directly, without having to depend on my company to provide a tool.

Before Business Analysts there were Troubleshooters

2013-02-25T06:00:00.000-06:00

Zenna Henderson's Holding Wonder

I was reading Holding Wonder, a collection of short stories by Zenna Henderson, and came upon this description of a compiler:

"A Compiler would have been called a troubleshooter in the old days. He compiles statistics, asks impertinent questions, has no reverence for established methods, facts, habits, or thoughts. He is never an expert in the field in which he compiles— and never compiles twice in succession in the same field. And very often, a Compiler can come up with a suggestion or an observation or neat table of facts that will throw new light on a problem and lead to a solution" (72).

As a visionary writer, Henderson saw that increased domain specialization would require an increased need for people to bridge between these domains. This description of a compiler is a bit romantic: having no reverence for established methods and never compiling twice in the same domain, but the essentials of business analysis are there: asking impertinent questions, and being able to synthesize information to discover solutions. And even for its romance, I have met established business analysts who prefer to learn new domains instead of working in the same domain. I do see a certain attraction in learning new domains, but there's something to be said for making a commitment to a particular domain so that one could make the kind of contributions that are only possible through time.

There's really no excuse for a business analyst having "no reverence for established methods, facts, habits, or thoughts." Instead, a BA should have a certain irony, an understanding that there are many methods to reach common goals. This means having a great capacity for respect, and an ability to respect different perspectives simultaneously. The BA needs to resist the temptation to absolutize any one method, but in doing so is able to respect the true value of each approach.

Liberal Arts Business Analyst

2013-02-21T13:21:00.000-06:00

Kandinski - Red Spot II - 1921 by *clarity* on flickr

The experience of studying the liberal arts has been one of the great formative experiences of my life. Liberal arts starts with the premise that reason travels many roads, many methods, in understanding a single reality. Students study diverse subjects in order to broaden their understanding of reality. As an English major, I took classes in philosophy, theology, political science, sociology, history, biology, music, and art history in addition to my core area of study. As a member of a social fraternity, I became friends with accountants, biologists, philosophers, historians, and those who planned to go into journalism and business. Although the premise of liberal arts is that reality is one, each professor tended to identify his or her expertise as encompassing all of reality, leaving the students alone in their efforts to negotiate between these competing claims of absoluteness. Historically, students were aided in the synthesis of these disparate fields by a robust study of theology. In practice, however, theology ended up being the least aware of the totality of knowledge, and the most devoted to its specialized silo preoccupied with ancient texts, cut off from the full experience of religion in history and literature. Nonetheless, I, like others, became adept at making connections between these different domains, learning to appreciate the true value of each field, and bringing insights from one domain into dialogue with that of another.

Working for the last few years in software, I have found that this liberal arts formation has been the most realistic formation for the tasks of work. In my daily experience, I often work as liaison between operational business leaders like facility managers, creative experts like architects, and technical experts like programmers and database designers. Having studied many roads to approach a common reality, I learned principles that help me understand the approaches of a diverse group of individuals, all experts in their own domains, but often lacking the big picture awareness of how everything works together.

As I have grown in my understanding of my work, I have sought to educate myself through blogs, articles, and books. To begin with, I discovered the practice of usability: sound principles of designing for good user experience, and ways to validate good user experience through testing. Then, I became aware of business analysis as a profession. The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) defines business analysis as: "the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of an organization, and to recommend solutions to enable the organization to achieve its goals." Recently, I joined the International Institute of Business Analysis and my local chapter. I now have access to a library of webinars, live professional development, and a community of professionals.

Along the way, I am discovering some great resources in my background for the profession of business analysis. The liberal arts is one of these assets, but others include the analysis and communication skills of my study of English literature and writing, and my graduate level education classwork which culminated in certification as a Secondary Language Arts teacher.

Near My House: the Commercial Area

2012-09-04T06:00:00.000-05:00

When there was a harmful algae bloom near my house, I walked a few times to a commercial area near my house. And what did I see?

Beam from the World Trade Center.
At the Association for Animal Control Officers

Deaf Cultural Center, across from the Kansas State School for the Deaf

across from Walgreens

The View from My Front Porch…

2012-09-03T09:05:00.003-05:00

My guest post is up at Front Porch Republic.

Welcome Front Porchers! I plan to post here soon a bit about my experiences walking near my workplace.

Friday and Saturday of this Labor Day weekend, the remnants of Isaac came to Olathe and filled our little lake. I'm reminded of Pascal's words— that "a trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us." And yet it does console me.

Here are some photos of the lake as it was, very dry. In fact, the dry cracks totally surrounded this little bush that seems to thrive in the water.

Beauty in Dryness

And here are some photos of the lake after Isaac's rain:

The little bush is swamped again.

even flooding at points, which is totally normal

Dock is floating again.

A Good Hard Look: Flannery O'Connor Fan Fiction

2012-08-20T06:30:00.000-05:00

Because I teach college classes from time to time, I occasionally receive books to consider for classes: exam copies. This is one I received from Penguin Group USA. In addition to the novel, the book includes "How I Fell in Love with Flannery O'Connor" by author Ann Napalitano, an interview the Napolitano about the book, discussion questions, and a recipe for "Flannery's Favorite Peppermint Chiffon Pie."

Although I'm connected with fans of Flannery O'Connor, I had heard nothing about this book before Penguin brought it to my attention. It looked like an irreverent, audacious, and provocative project: to write a story about a contemporary author who died young, especially an author with such devoted and opinionated fans.

What Is It?

Fan fiction based on Habit of Being, the selected letters of Flannery O'Connor.
Set in Milledgeville, Georgia with Regina, Flannery's mother, as the other key historical figure.
Peacocks play a persistent and critical role throughout the story: from the first page of the book in which their incessant nocturnal screeching disrupts the sleep of the town and provokes a soon-to-be wed couple to conceive.

What I Liked

The intimate and irreverent dimension of fan fiction made this book great fun to read.
One of the main characters is a local woman who has formed a kind of rivalry between herself and Flannery, and is astonished to see her heart unmasked by O'Connor's writing.
Napolitano commits herself entirely, with no sentimentality or flinching at her audacious task. The result is a book that does justice to O'Connor's style, even if O'Connor herself would have argued with it.
O'Connor is not the protagonist, but a supporting character in the story of a fictional couple.

What I Would Have Liked…

The scope of the writing was O'Connor and her social peers in Milledgeville. I missed seeing the interaction with O'Connor with the white tenant farmers and black people of the town.
O'Connor has a crisis of faith— which would be absolutely essential in any fictional treatment of O'Connor, but the crisis is inadequate to O'Connor's faith— as could be seen in her letters. The crisis is more along the lines of what an unbeliever would imagine a crisis of faith to look . She also has a moral crisis in the story, and this is both more central to the story as well as more credible.

Buy A Good Hard Look by Ann Napalitano via Late Paper's Amazon store.

Vacation? Whew!

2012-08-18T12:02:00.001-05:00

some friends at the summit of a hike

We went on family vacation for several days in early July. Fr. Michael led the vacation and the hikes. He said a couple of things that stuck with me (expanded with my own thoughts).

We're tempted to live 'little Smurf lives,' lives with a limited horizon, lives with petty stereotypical concerns, concerns that don't go to the depths of the human heart, that ignore greatness, beauty, destiny. Vacation is an opportunity to pierce the heart.
Vacation is a paradigm for life. On vacation, we discussed politics and the HHS mandate with Dean Shankman of Benedictine College; we sang songs: secular and religious; we played games, hiked mountains, and looked at the moon. This vacation I anticipated one hike, but instead I found myself hiking every day. I realized that on vacation I had lived a kind of boot camp— an intense training but one that did not wear me out. Since returning from vacation, I have found that life itself has become a boot camp. I am living the real intensely. I am meeting the challenge of supporting my family with renewed vigor, and I am welcoming new challenges and opportunities. And I don't expect that this renewal will fade away, but instead I feel like it is a key change, a musical bridge ramping my life up to a new level.

I do have a couple of book reviews that are almost ready to post. I should be posting them soon.

Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe: Mystery of History, Mystery of Self

2012-07-02T05:00:00.000-05:00

Look what I found… Unveiling by Suzanne Wolfe. I was in a thrift store the other day and found this intriguing first novel.

A recently-divorced painting restorer, Rachel Piers, travels to Italy to restore a painting. If the painting is by a famous master, it will become a fund raiser for the corporation which sponsers the restoration. If not, it could become a professional embarrasment.

What I liked:

A good story: well paced, and with surprises throughout.
A psychological mystery: family secrets brought into the light, forgiveness and healing.
A hermeneutic mystery. In cleaning the painting, the protagonist recovers and restores a transient human drama that had been lost to history.
A verisimilitude of work. The well-researched world of painting restoration comes through nicely.

What to watch for:

The early part of the book has a number of intensely descriptive scenes. While these scenes are well-written, it was a bit tiring to keep being drawn into this intensity. In retrospect, I see that this lapidary intensity fades as the book goes on, coinciding with the progress in cleaning the painting. It's a risky strategy, but it pays off in the conclusion, which has a calmness, a certainty, and a beauty that arise from craftsmanship and a well-told story.

At under 200 pages, this would make a good summer read, a vicarious trip to Italy.

Unveiling: A Novel by Suzanne Wolfe, available now at an Amazon Affiliate link (cost is about $6, which is about twice what I paid, but without those strange black stains in my used copy).

Received: A Good Hard Look

2012-06-27T23:28:00.000-05:00

I received A Good Hard Look: A Novel of Flannery O'Connor, a review copy from Penguin. It's not a novel by O'Connor, but a novel in which O'Connor is a character. This is a bold if somewhat risky conceit, but the opening section was pretty funny— with havoc wreaked by screaming peacocks. This edition has a reader's guide in the back, with an interview with author Ann Napolitano and discussion questions.

Also, I'm planning to complete my review of Joseph and His Brothers tomorrow, to be scheduled soon.

Marriage: Utopian Scheme or the Good of the Other?

2012-06-23T16:56:00.002-05:00

My friend, Don, recently recommended The Marriage Plot: A Novel to me, and remembering my own time studying English in graduate school, I read it. I also have read Mark Bauerlein's article, "Liberalism Is Bad for Literature" and Santiago Ramos's response to that article. In the novel, the main character, Madeleine, takes an undergraduate seminar with an old professor who opines that "the novel had reached its apogee with the marriage plot and had never recovered from its disappearance." While Bauerlein agrees with the old professor, another verdict came out when I surrendered to the events of the book as they unfolded. Perhaps the decline of marriage was already indicated by the marriage plot itself: that odd 19th Century fantasy that happiness and marriage are conterminous: to be happy is to be married, and to be married is to be happy. Such a confusion puts impossible demands on marriage, and short circuits the search for happiness. One sign of this confusion is that the average cost of a wedding in the United States is over $25,000, not including the honeymoon. After all, no finite cost is too great for an infinite good, such as happiness.

But The Marriage Plot is not a series of statistics or a systematic analysis of trends. It's a story about three people: Madeleine, the English major enthralled with literary theory trying to get into graduate school; Leonard, a biology student who gets a post-grad research fellowship; and Mitchell Grammaticus, a religious studies major who wanders Europe and ends up in India while he considers his professor's recommendation that he get a doctorate of Divinity degree and teach. I like these people. They remind me of my professors, fellow graduate students, and myself. This is a funny and thoughtful reflection on the books and experiences of academic life, and on the confusion and enlightenment that students run up against when they take these books seriously in their lives. Eugenides gets the books and the ideas right, but he also gets right the impact the various books have on people's lives. He describes the confusion of those wrapped up in deconstruction or analysis of desire, and he discovers that the happiest English literature academics are those studying 19th Century women's fiction.

In reading this book, I kept thinking of two other works in particular: Jane Austen's Emma, in which the heroine wavers between her dream man and a man of true chivalry, and The Fantasticks, that musical about a boy and a girl whose romance falls apart when they presume to have reached happiness together. Though both of these works end in romantic union, they also warn of the danger of equating romantic love with happiness in a facile or dreamy way. While the novel raises the expectation of a happy union in the end, it more strongly raises the question of the good of the other, a virtue once regarded as part of chivalry. At the end, this sense of chivalry is honored through personal sacrifices. If marriage is to continue to be a vital form of human living, it will only do so by keeping the good of the other in mind— and not by perpetuating the confused notion of marriage as the summit of earthly happiness.

A Glimpse of Enzo

2012-06-19T22:02:00.002-05:00

"The first novel that Father Luigi Giussani gave Enzo to read was To Every Man a Penny by the English writer Bruce Marshall. To Enzo the book seemed to be 'the usual stuff of priests,' too full of religious matters. He read only a few pages, then closed the book and set it aside. When about a month later he met Father Luigi Giussani again, he heard him asking what he thought of the novel.
'I made an immediate connection," Enzo continued. 'He's a priest: I have to say something that priests would like. So I acted serious and I answered, 'I would have to say that it taught me to pray.' Giussani started laughing, and I realized it was useless to cheat with him. Then he said, 'Listen, Enzo, this is a book that you read on the beach.'" (Enzo: The Adventure of a Friendship).

My wife is still reading this one, but I feel that this connection between Enzo and Father Giussani is an important inspiration for this blog.

My Kindle Book: Rare Accidents

2012-06-18T21:57:00.000-05:00

I have published eleven poems as a Kindle book: Rare Accidents.
On June 19, the book will be available for free purchase from Amazon.

Why did I publish this book?

as an author, this blog is now available through Goodreads;

I wanted to learn the process of publishing a book;

It means that as a critic, I have put myself on the line in the same way that I treat other authors. As Dana Gioia has noted: good criticism is essential for good writing.

What have I learned from this process?

Words on the cover need to look good when the book cover image is the size of a postage stamp. I made some adjustment, but my cover is too hard to read when tiny.
To get 70% royalty, the book has to be priced $2.99 or more.
You prepare the book for Kindle using Microsoft Word headings and table of contents— a process I was already doing for training guides that I write for work.

What should you know about buying the book?

the poems are ones that have been with me for a long time, and it's time to let them go. If you've read this blog for a while, you've seen them.
Amazon keeps all buyer information, so I won't know who buys or doesn't buy the book.
There's no DRM (digital rights management), so the book can be converted to Epub or whatever using a program like Calibre.
I will promote the book for free several times, and I do get a cut if the book is borrowed through the Amazon Prime program.

Reading

2012-06-17T23:14:00.000-05:00

I'm about 2/3 through my review of Joseph and His Brothers, and I've started a review of The Marriage Plot. I've also started reading the new bio of Francis of Assisi. What I like about Francis so far are the details that Thompson uses to draw out the human motivations of Francis, his father, his bishop, and the pope. He's proposing Francis's charism as novel in that it didn't propose a rule to follow, but his person. A riskier but at the same time a more complete approach to Christianity.

My wife is halfway through Enzo, but my 9-year-old daughter read the prologue to Enzo and wants to read it now also. So I'm not sure when I'll get a crack at it. I did see a video on Enzo a few weeks back, and I was intrigued.

Once I get The Marriage Plot review written, I'm going to start reading The Unintended Reformation by Brad Gregory… I'd like to have a balance of semi-current books and old books.

2012-06-17T19:43:00.000-05:00

"Who saves all of her and all of me? Who saves everything? In other words, is there something that saves everything from ending up in nothingness?" Spiritual Exercises 2012

This all, this everything, is what interests me. I'm not interested in any partial or truncated salvation. I'm not interested in any salvation except the one made tangible in Jesus's person, the salvation which means that the beatitudes are good news for me, now.

Arrivals

2012-06-09T21:23:00.001-05:00

Enzo: The Adventure of a Friendship arrived in the mail today. I got Thompson's Saint Francis on the Kindle. I was working today on a review of Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers. Also, expect to see my Trek Poles on Monday.

I'm making my way through The Marriage Plot. Will it meet or disappoint the expectations of a marriage in the end?

Desire Unrequited

2012-06-08T21:12:00.002-05:00

When I arrived at Fordham grad school, one course that caught me eye, but it was already filled: Literature of Desire taught by Philip Sicker. I pleaded but Sicker was unyielding. Why did I want so much to be in this class? The only thing I can think of is that it was the coolest looking thing on the syllabus. Instead, I went to the bookstore and bought all the books: Denis de Rougemont's Love in the Western World, Madame Bovary, Swann's Way, some D. H. Lawrence (Foxes?), and several other novels. I don't remember Barthes from grad school, but the bits I read in The Marriage Plot would have intrigued me.

Reading The Marriage Plot reminds me of this time in my life, since it begins in 1982 and grad school began for me in 1993. Deconstructionism still impressed many of the students like a secret society, but the savvy ones were quick to align themselves with one political theory or another. I could never take these theories seriously enough to master them, but even so, they pervaded me with cynicism and nihilism. The brightest spot when I was there was Constance Hassett, whose love for 19th Century American women's writing, for teaching, and for students— both undergrad and graduate was evident. I remembered Hassett when I read of Madeline's happy discovery of Victorian women's lit.

ha!

2012-06-05T23:22:00.001-05:00

p94 of The Marriage Plot, a reference to Henri de Lubac's The Drama of Atheist Humanism.I figured that would come in handy at some point…

Power Outage

2012-06-05T07:24:00.002-05:00

Sat on my porch enjoying the moonrise and praying the joyous mysteries. Crickets, the swell of the wind, cars on the highway...

Fred KaffenbergerYesterday 11:12 PM

Oh, and fireflies!

I've been working on putting some posts together with some poems as a Kindle book. My primary reason for doing this is so that I can be an author on Goodreads, and import the blog. For me it's astonishing to see in retrospect how books have been a companion to the events of my life. If a good science fiction story is a good story that wouldn't have happened without the science, then my life would never have unfolded as it has done without Chaucer, Milton, Conrad, and others. This realization gives me a better sense of the mission of this blog, and of my writing in general. I was on retreat a couple of weeks back when a friend mentioned the novel, The Marriage Plot: A Novel. The novel opens with a description of the main character's library and the following situation:

"There was, in short, this mid-size but still portable library representing pretty much everything Madeleine had read in college, a collection of texts, seemingly chosen at random, whose focus slowly narrowed, like a personality test, a sophisticated one you couldn't trick by anticipating the implications of its questions and finally got so lost in that your only recourse was to the answer the simple truth" (3).

How familiar this sounds! A book about my kind?

I didn't get anything read last night, but thankfully the power is back on today!

Camino de Lago de Frisco

2012-06-02T10:13:00.000-05:00

Walked in Frisco Lake Park today, as I do on many days. Typically, I carry my rosary, and lately the rosary I'm carrying is my grandfather's (my olive wood one is missing). Although the beads are normal sized, it's a bit clunky because it has the big long beads for the Our Fathers with the mysteries printed on them.

This morning I saw a couple walking: she in a white workout jacket and black pants, and he in black shorts and t-shirt. He was listening to salsa music on earphones, and she was speaking loudly to him over the music. On the next loop, she beamed at me and gave me a thumbs up— for the sake of the rosary. On the next loop after I had pocketed my rosary, she asked "Done?" And I smiled and answered "Yes!" After that, we returned to mutual anonymity, although a couple of passes later I thought I recognized the cadence of the Our Father in Español.

Thinking of Webster in Spain and Allison in suburbia, I thought of the title to this post: Camino de Lago de Frisco. The lake is an old reservoir for steam trains, where it presumably gets its name. Thinking of the lake in Spanish made me realize that Frisco is short for San Francisco, that is Saint Francis. Like Webster, I am on a path whose name recalls the memory of Christ.