[lbo-talk] media

Chuck Grimes c123grimes at att.net
Tue Aug 3 00:41:04 PDT 2010


Anyone else have this experience?

Doug

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Yes and many related ones...

I was watching a series of long interviews with John Le Carre and Robert Fisk pushing their latest. These are men with remarkably similar sensibilities. They write in long hand and since they have professional secretaries to produce the text, I assume the file is returned to them as print material for further editing and additions. Fisk makes a great point at never using a computer or the internet. Le Carre hints he is a technophobe, so I assume he doesn't use one either or keeps to limited use.

I've noticed a really bad habit in watching recent lectures and presentations (on YouTube). The laptop as a lecture aid and powerpoint slides. It is much more impressive to follow somebody like Susskind (google cosmology). He has a table with notes and a felt tip on large plastic boards. I still prefer white chalk on a black board with sliding boards above...

I bought an reconditioned portable typewriter to experiment in the way I used to write back in school. I found it too awkward, but it is very nice for letters. I've played around with long hand in notebooks, then typed it into a computer file. This business of transcribing from one medium to another is a great way to re-edit and re-think something through.

My now gone to the pub-in-the-sky stepfather and I used to write. He used a typewriter, then later a wordprocessor like electronic typewriter. In later years when he could no longer type, he went back to long hand. I bought the old portable partly because the model was like one of his and sent the last few letters to him typed on it, as a present for old times. It was very nice to get his letters.

In my long standing hobby project on Strauss, when I have an insight, I write it out in long hand and meditate on it, use a 3-hole punch and put it in a notebook. I found one of Strauss's lectures recorded on the web and wrote notes in a notebook, like I was in class. I am very sorry to report he was an excellent lecturer.

If I find a relevant paper, I download the PDF and go over it like assigned reading in a course and make notes. I've gone back to a lot of old fashion methods because computers are just too unstable for a long term project.

As for poetry, my blind buddy brings his hand size audio mini-computer over and I listen to poetry. I find the ear is actually better than the eye for most of the work he brings by...naturally. If I read poetry by myself, I read it out loud anyway. In fact I do a lot of reading out loud in a whisper.

CG



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