Sent to my computer tech:
I am distressed to hear you were unaware of Beverly Cleary! I thought everyone was raised on her work, required reading and all that. Please get the Ramona Quimby and Henry Huggins series either in print or on audiobook, both are wonderful! I was very thrilled that Walla Walla is mentioned several times in Henry and the Paper Route. I must have noticed this when I first read it, but didn't remember as I hadn't read it since fourth grade. I kind of prefer the audiobooks, but as an adult it's your preference whether you like print or sound better. She won the Newbery medal for Dear Mr. Henshaw over thirty years ago when she had been writing for over thirty years, back when Newbery medal winning books were good. Also I believe she is the only gold medalist to have reached 100 so far. I went through something similar with recent Newbery medalists, all of which I am reading along with many honor books, as with iTunes--is it them or is it me?--and again found people making the same complaints I had. At some point everything just went south. It wasn't just me getting old. Obviously I shouldn't doubt myself so much. For a long time I simply dismissed, for instance, people assuming everything going wrong was my fault, as being obviously unfounded, but twelve years ago I learned they were actually right regarding something about me of which I had absolutely no idea and came as a profound shock which shook me to my very core, and since then everything has gone so consistently wrong now I have to go over everything at least three times rather than once--first thinking something else must have gone wrong, then thinking it must be me, then thinking well if it's not just me, why does no one else notice and fix it? Then thinking it must be me, then feeling bad that it is me, then feeling upset because I know it's not me, then thinking, why don't I just admit it IS all me, even if it's not true it doesn't matter, everything is going to be horrible anyhow and if I take the blame at least somebody will be happy saying I told you so instead of everyone being unhappy including me? I really only don't do this as it's not only not right, but wouldn't solve anything. It's not because I'm stubborn. If I thought not being stubborn would help, I would try that, but nothing helps.
My favorite Beverly Cleary memories are (some spoilers for events in the stories):
Henry and the Paper Route--In the fourth grade I became so engrossed in reading this book in class, when I looked up the entire class had left without me hearing and the teacher was in conference with a parent. They didn't notice me and I slunk out.
The Mouse and the Motorcycle--Sleeping over at a friend's house and staying up all night reading this.
The Canadian PBS series of the Ramona books, made years before the Disney movie, was on when my sister Klara was visiting after adopting two kittens she had left alone for the first time. When it came to the point of the cat being found dead, my sister burst into floods of tears! This is one of my best memories of my sister.
Man, you really need help! It was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was so far back I'm sure he wrote with a quill pen or at the latest a steel pen--way before fountain or ballpoint! (He was contemporary to Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Walt Whitman.) Thoreau was the dude who sat around in a cabin grousing about technology being too much during like the 1830s-1840s. They would be totally freaked at a keyboard, let alone an electronic one or recorded sound, so I shouldn't really be complaining. Harlan Ellison is a writer of rather dystopian science fiction, one of the few still living of that generation. This story of his about a guy for whom everything went wrong and so the universe sort of took revenge on the guy who caused it, but it didn't help the original guy who was still a wreck, has been running through my mind. Harlan Ellison, to my knowledge, wrote for years on a manual typewriter. He railed against electrics and I don't know if he ever got a computer or not. Ray Bradbury went as far as an IBM Selectric II and that's it. Absolute death on computers or the internet. After his stroke he had to go through a laborious process of dictating stories over the phone to his daughter out of state, who typed and returned print copies by way of a FAX machine, which must have been quite an adjustment, but he didn't quit, and as long as he was alive I really tried not to quit. It's the last three years since he's been gone I have really felt like quitting. I would invite you here to look at the computers but I've been so sick I'm afraid to be around anyone. I've been running to the store for food and medicine and straight back home, that's it. Not even working outside for days.
As for Beverly Cleary I know she started on a manual typewriter but I have no idea how she kept up or with what. Only that her books were written over many decades and each one seems to be set in the decade in which it was written and yet is still relevant to contemporary life. A remarkable feat not every author was able to achieve. I listened to a little bit of a Henry Huggins book while washing dishes and that's literally all I did all day apart from the store and the computer. The Omaker speaker is working great. I wrote a glowing review of it saying I could tell it was not an Apple product because it worked immediatelywithout giving me any grief!
As for iMovie--I kept hoping by the time I had time to deal with all my videos they'd have invented a version I could handle--iTunes has now destroyed all my hope and all my faith unless I hear very definite indications to the contrary! I feel bad enough not being a famous author, but worse not to be able to do tech things so many kids seem to enjoy as hobbies, which are grueling to me to the point of becoming punishment! I don't think consumer goods should punish the consumer. Thanks for your help.
