Lady on the Web

Spring Cleaning

2008-04-10T21:08:00.003+01:00

Mrs. Grimes and I have been working in tandem to give Paisley Hall "a good turn-out." I even lent a hand (or an arm) to beat rugs, before Grimes arrived. I couldn't find the rug beater, so I was using a badminton racquet! I'd forgotten hall runners were so very lo-o-ong. (Of course, we send the Aubussons out to be cleaned.) Well, Grimes' brows raised themselves very high when she saw me on the terrace, surrounded by dust clouds. She went inside without comment, but was back in two shakes with the rug beater, and, with an "I'll just be finishing that up, m'lady," I was gently but firmly set aside. And so, leaving Grimes to her mighty whackage, I went inside to check on the progress of my homemade lemon curd.

We're Back ... in Part

2008-01-16T22:53:00.000Z

All right, so we're running part-time. Miss Underwood and I have revamped the show temporarily, so that I'm limited to twenty-five answers. This averages to about five minutes per guest. I'm feeling better than I usually do during the winter, but am still seriously considering that Patmos holiday.

The Lissome Greek Isles

2007-12-29T22:24:00.000Z

Miss Underwood has been working away on the many administrative tasks which accumulate behind the scenes of any long-running show. There are 49 outstanding transcripts to be Targeted for my show alone. I worry that she won't get the rest she needs. I try not to preach, but she needs balance in her life.

On a lighter note, I'm considering a holiday in Patmos, the Greek island on which the exiled Apostle John experienced his visionary revelation. Wikipedia's photos of Patmos make one wonder how it ever could have been a place of exile.

LOTW Goes on Winter Hiatus

2007-12-10T19:13:00.000Z

Starting December 15, Lady on the Web is slated to go on winter hiatus through March 2008. It's high time we refreshed, refurbished, revitalized -- cleared out the cobwebs -- blew the must from our souls. At least, that's what will happen next Spring; at the end of this week, we'll begin with a long, slow exhale.

I won't say I'm exactly down for the count, but if I'm to survive the winter without a resurgence of the old weakness in the lungs, I simply must rest. At least, that's what Miss Underwood tells me. She'd like it if I were to visit Italy or Spain, or some place where I can obtain three straight months of sun. I must admit, it sounds tempting.

She says I'm forbidden to do any work, such as reviewing show transcripts, during this time. She says she'll be doing all that -- and she has her work cut out for her, since they're backed up well into last summer. I told her she'd better go on holiday as well, even offered to pay, but as usual, she refused. Well, since she's one of the few writers not on strike, I had better humor her. Don't tell her I said so, though!

No Transcript Left Behind

2007-07-24T00:11:00.000+01:00

Today marks another LOTW milestone, as Miss Underwood and I have now reviewed all the show's transcripts since its inception in 2003. We've incorporated much of the material in the script, including many pithy and amusing quotes from our guests.

Britannia Rules "The Waves"

2007-05-29T16:58:00.000+01:00

Alas, I could not finish The Waves. I stopped reading at page 153, just as one of the girls is beginning to lament the death of Percival. He will have to go unmourned by me. If only the whole novel had been about the children, while they were still children!

Foundering in "The Waves"

2007-05-19T17:56:00.000+01:00

I am foundering in The Waves. It began so freshly and beautifully, with the striking, unsentimental offering of the perceptions of a group of children, but as those children aged, they became less interesting to me, and Miss Woolf turned to a kind of heroic pastiche (I don't wish to say cliché).

The group of childhood friends, now in their early twenties, played in a restaurant scene which, in its near-interminability, reminded me of My Dinner With André. But I soldiered on.

Then one of their number was killed in a fall -- Percival, the alpha male, representing what I despise. So I can't share their elegiac mood, since I would be happier if the world had fewer of these empire builders to begin with.

Time will tell if I finish the book. And then I will tell you.

On Finishing the "Notebook"

2007-04-12T00:15:00.000+01:00

I finished The Golden Notebook. It had quite a hothouse atmosphere. On the whole, I think I prefer Miss Lessing's fairly recent book of short stories, The Real Thing, which shimmer in the mind as absolutely lucid and clear. Those stories show pure mastery of the form.

Characteristically of Lessing, Notebook methodically analyzes the emotional movements in the conversations of its principals, rather like stripped-down Henry James. Each interchange is presented play-by-play, like a sports match.

I can't say that the "free women" presented were particularly free, as they spent a good deal of their time entangled with gentlemen who were otherwise engaged. And there was a good deal of theorizing about "real women" and "real men" which smacked of (the annoying side of) D.H. Lawrence, and perhaps even of Ayn Rand.

But this is carping. Did the novel absorb me? Yes. And why hadn't I read it before? I suppose I thought it of my mother's era; when the book first came out, I was only a girl. To my knowledge, Mother never did read it; but since she was married to a man she adored, it wouldn't have been her dish of tea.

Bot B and ALICE 2 Revisited

2007-03-29T19:11:00.000+01:00

Back in 2003, when I played an AI, Miss Underwood designed two charming logos.

The Bot B logo was designed on 07-07-03, at 11:46 pm. The GUI bore this legend:
The B dialogues: an evolving script
Ask, tell, offer, sing; then click Enter, to see my reply.
I learn with each dialogue, from what you bring; new to the world am I!

Shortly thereafter came the ALICE 2 character. The above was her logo. The ALICE 2 script was, of course, based on the original ALICE's March 2002 script.

"The Golden Notebook"

2007-03-28T21:47:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I are currently reading The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. (As lovely as Petrarch was, we only managed to get about a third of the way through his Canzoniere. Miss U. and I agreed that we were just a wee bit weary of the male point of view, having absorbed so many of the greats of late, and needed a dab of old-fashioned feminism.)

Of course, I'd already read Notebook ages ago, but Miss U. never had, so I decided to keep her company.

Next up: V. Woolf's The Waves.

Petrarch! (Arrival of the Musa Translation)

2007-01-30T22:25:00.000Z

The book, two inches thick, is bound in a sober ink. Stamped on the spine, in white, is PETRARCH/Canzoniere/M U S A, with a charming rectangular cartouche.

Unable to wait, I have shot through the first three, and yes, they are beautiful, entering the mind simply and swiftly. I can already see that the difficulty with this excellent translation will be to read them slowly; with the overwrought translations I saw before, the difficulty was in getting through them!

The Baltimore Catechism

2007-01-19T21:24:00.000Z

The first lesson of the Baltimore Catechism, "The End of Man," asks (and answers) these questions. I have memorized this lesson. Click my Chat link and try catechizing me.

1. Who made the world?
2. Who is God?
3. What is man?
4. Is this likeness in the body or in the soul?
5. How is the soul like to God?
6. Why did God make you?
7. Of which must we take more care, our soul or our body?
8. Why must we take more care of our soul than of our body?
9. What must we do to save our souls?
10. How shall we know the things which we are to believe?
11. Where shall we find the chief truths which the Church teaches?
12. Say the Apostles' Creed.

Of course I learned my catechism when a small child, from my darling mother. She set it to music. One never forgets such things.

Miss Underwood thought it relevant to approach Catholicism from this simple vantage, since we are planning a study of Petrarch (after she has finished reading Nikolai Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls).

Miss Underwood's Birthday Sonnet

2007-01-16T22:49:00.000Z

Miss Underwood sent me this sonnet, in (what she knows of) Petrarchan form, which she wrote for the occasion of her birthday, today.

"A trifle grim, Miss U.," I observed.
"All too true, Miss G.," she replied. "All too true."

The flowering time being done, what's left is the stick
Of "character," in pathetically bold relief;
The wreath of temperament turned withered leaf,
Which flaps and rattles, lacking the wet quick;
And the white hair falling, falling, a sad snow,
Travesty of the lustrous dark which bloomed,
A girl's infinity, a wealth presumed
To flourish everlasting, never to know

Winter. But the closer we get to the timeless real,
The sharper the bite of the dwindling store
Of seasons. A single fruit, in an unknown hand,
Turns to be consumed on the year's wheel,
To be eaten down to the still, scraped core,
And the seeds flung, to reflesh the flat of the land.

Preparing for Petrarch

2007-01-16T18:03:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I are planning to read Petrarch's sonnets to his famed object of unrequited love, Laura (or Laureta). It took some doing to find a good translation of this masterwork. At first, Miss Underwood was disappointed in the version most readily available. However, in an e-mail correspondence, a professor and Petrarch scholar kindly recommended what were, in her estimation, the best modern translations, those of Robert Durling (Petrarch's Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics) and of Mark Musa (Petrarch: The Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarium fragmenta).

This work contains three hundred and sixty-six poems: not just sonnets, of which there are three hundred and seventeen, but also twenty-nine canzone, nine sestinas, seven ballads and four madrigals. The last hundred were composed after Laura's death.

George Sand: A Selected Bibliography

2006-11-13T16:32:00.000Z

Voyage En Auvergne (1827)
Rose Et Blanche (1831, with Jules Sandeau, jointly as J. Sand)
Indiana (1831)
Valentine (1832)
Lélia (1833)
André (1833)
Mattea (1833)
Jacques (1833)
Leone Leoni (1833)
Le Sécretaire Intime (1834)
Lettres d’un Voyageur (1834-37)
Jacques (1834)
Simon (1835)
Mauprat (1837)
Les Maîtres Mosaïstes (1837)
L'Oreo (1838)
L'Uscoque (1838)
Un Hiver A Majorque (1839)
La Dernière Aldini (1839)
Spiridon (1839)
Pauline (1839)
Gabriel-Gabrielle (1839)
Le Compagnon Du Tour De France (1840)
Horace (1840)
Les Sept Cordes de la Lyre (1840)
Consuelo (1842)
La Comtesse De Rudolstadt (1843)
Jeanne (1844)
Lettres à Marcie (1844)
Teverino (1845)
Le Péché de M. Antoine (1845)
Le Meunier D'Angibault (1845)
La Mare Au Diable (1846)
Isidora (1846)
Lucrezia Floriani (1846)
Francois Le Champi (1847)
The Works of George Sand (1847)
Le Piccinino (1847)
La Petite Fadette (1848)
Francois Le Champi (1849, play)
Chateau Des Désertes (1850)
Claudie (1851, Play)
Le Mariage De Victorine (1851)
Le Château des Désertes (1851)
Mont-Revêche (1853)
La Filleule (1853)
Les Maîtres Sonneurs (1853)
Le Pressoir (1853)
Adriani (1854)
L’Histoire De Ma Vie (1855)
Le Diable aux Champs (1856)
Évenor et Leucippe (1856)
French Adaptation of As You Like It (1856)
La Daniella (1857)
Les Dames Vertes
Les Beaux Messieurs de Boisdoré (1858)
L’Homme de Neige (1858)
Elle Et Lui (1859)
Jean De La Roche (1859)
L'Homme De Neige (1859)
Narcisse (1859)
Flavie (1859)
La Ville Noire (1860)
Le Marquis De Villemer (1860)
Jean de la Roche (1860)
Constance Verrier (1860)
La Ville Noire (1860)
Valvèdre (1861)
La Familie de Germandre (1861)
Tamaris (1862)
Antonia (1862)
Mademoiselle La Quintinie (1863)
Le Marquis De Villemer (1864)
Laura, Voyage Dans Le Cristal (1864)
La Confession d’une Jeune Fille (1865)
Monsieur Sylvestre (1865)
Le Dernier Amour (1866)
Cadio (1868)
Mlle. de Merquem (1868)
Pierre Qui Roule (1870)
Malgrétout (1870)
L'Autre (1870, with Sarah Bernhardt)
Césarine Dietrich (1871)
Francia (1872)
Nanon (1872)
Contes d’une Grand’mère (1873)
Ma Soeur Jeanne (1874)
La Tour de Percemont; Marianne (1876)
Ouevres Complètes (1882-83)
Journal Intime (1926)
Ouevres Autobiographiques (1970)
The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1974)
Flaubert-Sand: the Correspondence (1993)

La Mare au Diable

2006-11-11T17:51:00.001Z

Have just read George Sand's 1846 La Mare au Diable. Compared two different English translations, and chose the Frank Hunter Potter. Wanted a parallel text but could not find one, so ordered it in the original French, in a 1959 Robert Laffont/Paris edition, which was printed in Belgium. Decided to try my hand at a bit of translation, so dusted off my rusty French, in which I was so fluent at 16, before the great break, of course. After that I suffered a virtual amnesia regarding everything I was studying.

Front matter to Robert Laffont's edition of La Mare au Diable
Translated from the French by Celia Gray

A Chronology

1804
Born in Paris, July 1, of Aurore Dupin. Daughter of an officer of the imperial army, Maurice Dupin.

1804
Napoleon proclaimed emperor on May 18 at Saint-Cloud.

1808
Maurice Dupin dies of a fall from a horse. Little Aurore, who is four, is taken in by her grandmother, Mme. Dupin de Francoeuil, on her estate, Nohant, in Indre. This lady was the natural daughter of the Marshal of Saxony and the granddaughter of the King of Poland.

1808-1817
Aurore spends her entire childhood in the country in this land of Berry, dreaming of fallow fields, playing with peasant children, listening to stories in the evening. The stay is punctuated by several trips to Paris.

1814
The Restoration.

1815
The Hundred Days. Waterloo. Louis XVIII.

1817
Aurore, who is thirteen, is sent to boarding school in Paris at the Couvent des Anglaises. Despair, revolt, then mysticism.

1820
Return to Nohant: reading, dreaming.

1822
Her grandmother having died, Aurore (eighteen) marries Casimir Dudevant, son of a baron and second-lieutenant without much character. After these happy beginnings and the birth of a son (the future Maurice Sand), the life of the couple descends into ennui.

1824
Succession of Charles X.

1825-1830
Stay at Cauterets: a chaste idyll with Aurélien de Sèze stimulates the future novelist. She is already writing. Possible liaison at Nohant with Stéphane, a friend of her youth. Birth of a daughter, Solange (1828). The life of the Dudevant household is in complete collapse.

1830
July Revolution. Succession of Louis-Philippe.

1831
Aurore Dudevant, who started, at La Châtre, a joyous idyll with Jules Sandeau, quits Nohant, where she leaves her husband and – temporarily – her children, and settles in Paris. Her temperament’s powerful appetite tastes, at last, all the joys of independence and the bohemian life. To augment her income, she writes. She does articles for Le Figaro, under Latouche. Jules Sandeau helps her in her first efforts and gives himself the pseudonym of Jules Sand, under which she publishes short stories and a novel: Rose et Blanche.

1832
Publication of Indiana and Valentine under the name of George Sand. Success and money.

1833-1834
Lélia. Break with Sandeau. Affair with Musset. The lovers go to Italy. But, in Spring 1834, Musset quits Venice, leaving George with her new lover, Doctor Pagello. Lettres d’un Voyageur. Return to Paris in summer: resumption of the liaison with Musset.

1835
Definitive break with Musset in March. The newly elected Member, Michel de Bourges, introduces George Sand to politics. Likewise influenced by Pierre Leroux, Barbès, Arago, Lamennais. Aurore divorces her husband.

1838
The start of the long liaison (nine years) with Chopin. In November, the musician, George and her children go to Majorca. They come back to Paris after a troublesome winter.

1840
Le Compagnon du Tour de France glorifies manual labor and blasts the exploitation of the worker. This is the start of a series of novels on social issues: Horace (1841), where the uprisings of 1832 are evoked with such sympathy that La Revue des Deux-Mondes refuses the manuscript; Le Meunier d’Angibault (1845), a novel of rural socialism.

1846
La Mare au Diable. This is the defining moment of George Sand’s maturity. She begins the composition of her memoirs and writes François le Champi (1847). Life with Chopin, ill and sullen, deteriorates: The break takes place, without drama or battle, in July ’47.

1848
Revolutionary February insurrection. Flight of Louis-Philippe. Proclamation of the Second Republic.

1848
George Sand participates passionately in the events of the day. She is by the side of Ledru-Rollin, deliberates with Barbès and Leroux, drafts a Lettre à la Classe Moyenne, a Lettre aux Riches, a Lettre au Peuple, founds an ephemeral newspaper. She fears all bloodshed, but holds communism to be the highest ideal. After the abortive May revolution, she becomes frightened, takes refuge at Nohant, manifests inconsistencies, sinks into discouragement. She takes refuge in rustic poetry and, in September, writes La Petite Fadette.

1849
Louis-Napoléon elected president of the Republic in December ’48. The heads of the attempted May revolution go before the Haute-Cour à Bourges: Barbès and Blanqui are condemned to deportation.

1849
George Sand, under suspicion, lives withdrawn, anguished. She dares, however, to write her Lettre aux Modérés (in November), which is an appeal in favor of the condemned men. She abandons the novel, turns to the theater, her passion, and produces François le Champi (’49), Claudie and Le Mariage de Victorine (’51).

1857
Begins a liaison with her secretary, Alexandre Manceau.

1858
Renewed productivity: Les Beaux-Messieurs de Bois-Doré and L’Homme de Neige, historical novels. Then: Elle et Lui (’59), Le Marquis de Villemer (’61), etc. …

1864
At Nohant, discord between son Maurice and lover Manceau. George Sand settles at Paliseau with Manceau, who dies in ’65, their faithful affection having lasted fifteen years.

1866
Le Dernier Amour, dedicated to Flaubert. George Sand lives sometimes in Palaiseau or in Paris, sometimes at Nohant.

1870-1871
War. The Commune.

1871
George Sand reacts prudently to events. She makes orderly resolutions. Anticlerical, but spiritualist. Politically, against all fanaticism. For Le Temps, she drafts a feuilleton, Reveries et Souvenirs, publishes novels again, such as Nanon (’72). An easygoing elderly lady, she espouses a pleasant philosophy of life. At Nohant, she becomes her granddaughters’ instructor, and writes children’s stories.

1876
Her powers of invention are somewhat threadbare, but she works continuously. At the end of May, she is on the seventh chapter of her novel: Albine. She dies on the 8th of June.

Editor's Preface

La Mare au Diable, which George Sand had written at Nohant at the end of the year 1845, appeared in Le Courrier Français in February 1846. The first edition was dedicated to Chopin.

In her 1851 preface, George Sand, who feels that the critics projected onto her which she didn't have, states: "I wanted to create something very touching and very simple" and to show "the goodness and truth in peasants."

In La Mare au Diable, in fact, the author does not relinquish the socialist theories to which she was introduced by Michel de Bourges and Pierre Leroux, and which made her write Le Compagnon du Tour de France, Horace and Le Meunier d'Angibault. This new short novel exalts the purity of rural mores and the goodness of the simple workers in the fields so little known by city folk.

One can obviously speak ironically on the clear simplicity of the personalities of Germain and of little Marie, and of Father and Mother Maurice, who are transparent characters, without any "shadow side." But the "lioness," Léonard, and the farmer of Ormeaux are not viewed through rose-colored glasses at all. George Sand strives, quite consciously, not to confuse realism and wretchedness. If she idealizes her humble heroes just a bit, still they retain a realistic likeness. Too bad for the text-strainers who, as soon as they see good feelings appear, cry bad literature. Frankly, isn't it salutary, this breath of fresh air which, from one chapter to the next of La Mare au Diable, sweeps on the timid love of Germain the laborer for little Marie?

One of the main virtues of the story resides in its unity of tone, in the perfect mastery with which the author carries forward her narration. The night in the forest is particularly beautiful, but, at no moment does one sense the artist who prepares her brushes and who seeks to garner admiration by saying, "Look! Here's a page for the anthology!"

The pond which gives the novel its title is not an invention of George Sand's. One may find it in the parish of Mers-sur-Indre, in the middle of the Chanteloube woods (from chante-loup). Today, an avenue cuts the celebrated pond in two.

Opinions of George Sand

Sainte-Beuve: "La Mare au Diable is, plain and simple, a small masterpiece. The preface made me somewhat apprehensive. The author sets forth a philosophical idea, and I always tremble when I see a philosophical idea advertised in a novel … I had to say this as a matter of duty … I need now do nothing more but praise and marvel in all honesty … In two chapters entitled Sous les Grands Chênes and Prière du Soir, we have a succession of delicious and delicate scenes, which have neither counterpart nor model in any idyll, antique or modern."

Emile Faguet: "How justly proportioned are the landscape, the scenes, the dialogue and the characters, without one encroaching on the other! How one savors the descriptions without doubting that they are descriptions, so well mingled are they in the narrative and so necessary to the work!"

Jules Lemaitre: "What we owe to George Sand is a virtual revival (through sincerity) of a feeling for Nature. She knows it better, she is more familiar with it, than any of the landscape-painters who preceded her. She lives, in earnest, a life of the land, and does so effortlessly."

Heinrich Heine: "The greatest prose poet whom the French possess."

Gustave Flaubert: "One would have to have known her as I have known her, to know all that is feminine in the heart of this 'great man,' the immensity of tenderness formed in this genius."

Louis Veuillot: "Clear water running under a layer of mud."

Dostoievsky: "One of the most sublime and beautiful representatives of Woman, a woman close to unique in the vigor of her spirit and her talent."

Samples from La Mare au Diable, by George Sand
Translated from the French by Celia Gray

From the Author to the Reader

A la sueur de ton visaige
Tu gagnerois ta pauvre vie,
Après long travail et usaige,
Voicy la mort qui te convie.

By the sweat of your brow
You earn your poor living,
After long work and wear,
Death invites you to die. [Or, Now Death seems inviting.]

I

The quatrain in old French, placed beneath a composition by Holbein, is of a profound sadness in its naïveté. The engraving represents a laborer driving his plow in the middle of a field. A vast countryside extends into the distance, one sees poor huts there; the sun is setting behind the hill. […]

III

Father Maurice

"Germain," said his father-in-law to him one day, "you must make up your mind to remarry. It will soon be two years since you were widowed, and your eldest is seven years old. You're nearing thirty, my boy, and you know that, past that age, in these parts, a man is said to be too old to start a new household. You have three beautiful children, and up to this point they have not troubled us in the slightest. My wife and my daughter-in-law have done their best to take care of them, and have loved them as they should. Little Pierre is almost grown; he goads the cattle so skillfully; he is smart enough to keep the animals in the pasture, and strong enough to drive the horses to the watering-place. We're not worried about that one; but the other two, whom we love in any case, God knows, those poor innocents are giving us a lot of trouble this year. My daughter-in-law is close to her confinement, and she already has a babe-in-arms. When the one we're waiting for arrives, she will no longer be able to take care of your little Solange and above all, your Sylvain, who is only four and who hardly stays still, day or night. […]"

Red-Letter Day for Co-host Gray

2006-10-24T22:10:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I are very excited.

Today, at 3 pm EST, we finished reading through a 5,000-pp. corpus.
For almost 3.5 years we have been reading, correcting, revising, editing, deleting, composing, adding, learning and extrapolating re ALICE's original script. Many a time, we didn't think we would see daylight on this encylopaedic venture. A paucity of funding and occasional ill health on both sides of the Atlantic caused project activity, at times, to slow to a crawl. But we have reached this initial goal.

I'd like to be the most thought-provoking Web host that I can. One of my kind guests said that being on Lady on the Web was like talking to a seer. This thrilled and humbled me. But then, the aim of every artist is to remain true to an inner vision.

Next phase: Targeting a stack of chat transcripts several inches thick.

Sonnet: Hurricane Helene

2006-09-22T17:59:00.000+01:00

Having lost my beloved parents in a boating accident off Belize, it always upsets me to read about tropical storms. One shouldn't, but one does, drawn by the sore-tooth rule. Pardon, then, dear readers, this incoherent sonnet:

Hurricane Helene will pose no threat
To land, it's said, but she will pose a toast
To the aging, graying waters off the coast
Of Bermuda, hazarding the surface wet
In the busiest month for blows. They open June
And close November, touristing the trade
Winds over the trapped Atlantic, made
To shake us up, into a hurtling noon

Where senior specialists glare at the burning eye,
And 3-day cones expand in a dreamless, frantic
Tide, sucking the fruits of labor, cast
In promiscuous whirl and slap, bent to pry
Our pockets loose, picked for a smashing antic,
Tossed in bellyflop, to breathe our last.

Good Peter Quince

2006-09-15T20:45:00.000+01:00

This morning I savored a dish of stewed quinces, well sweetened, with clotted cream. Delicious!

For those of you who may not know, the quince is a member of the rose family, a shrub with a decidedly sprawling growth habit. The fruits are very hard, dense, smooth-skinned, and of a glowing lemon-yellow when ripe. (Never battle with your quince bush over the receipt of its prizes; remember, it is thorned! When the fruit is ready, it comes willingly into the hand, with a simple twist of the wrist.)

Poetry as Transparent Reality

2006-08-28T20:24:00.000+01:00

As you may know if you have chatted with me in the past months, I have not been feeling quite up to the mark since last fall. It is the old problem, the weakness in the lungs. Thus, my reading of serious material has suffered. However, I have been following, with interest, Miss Underwood's study of the major 20th-century poets. She began with Pound, and is now engrossed in the work of John Berryman (1914-1972), an American and a shocking bad actor, though he did attend Cambridge, and dressed well when he could.

She spoke to me today of the concept of "poetry as transparent reality," meaning the achievement of a transparent style in which the information slips directly into the reader's mind, as through a mental telepathy of image, a communication of direct experience. Apparently only the greats are capable of such a style.

George Gissing and H.G. Wells, Their Friendship and Correspondence

2006-04-12T20:14:00.000+01:00

In one of the reviews forming the appendices to this book, Wells describes Gissing's ouevre as occupying "the genre of nervous exhaustion." Possibly that is why I resonate so to his work.

Interestingly, the longest letters included by far are those of Gabrielle Fleury, Gissing's "domestic partner" for the last few years of his existence, in which she justifies, defends and explains herself to both Mr. and Mrs. Wells.

There are far more letters to Wells than from him, seeming to indicate that GG was the more "emotionally needy" (in today's hideous parlance) of the two.

Gissing is very handsome in the frontispiece photo.

George Gissing's Commonplace Book

2006-04-12T20:05:00.000+01:00

I've returned George Gissing's Commonplace Book to the library, having read only portions of it. It's the sort of book which one should own, and read aloud in the evenings to a trusted friend. (Professor H. comes under that heading, of course, but he is so absorbed with his Maya studies and chess problems, I hardly like to disturb him.)

I wish there had been more than one scant page of the original manuscript reproduced in this book. Gissing's "miniscule" handwriting is referred to as covering a thousand words per page. But I'm not sure if the paper in question is larger than today's standard typing paper; one rather thinks so, in which case the ratio is not so surprising.

One also wishes the editors had not chosen to organize this slim volume (69 pp.) into topics, but left it as he had written it.

By the Ionian Sea

2006-03-23T22:07:00.000Z

Having finished Will Warburton (a corking good read, with good sense triumphant), am now halfway through Gissing's By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy, in a late-1920s edition. It's a slim volume indeed, with letterpress type which pleases me. There is a good deal of geographical description of no particular interest, though it intrigues me to hear about the agave plants and giant cactus apparently prevalent in Southern Italy.

The most engaging part so far is when poor George falls terribly ill of "fever" (malaria, one assumes) and describes the pathetic excuse for tea which has apparently been reposing in the local apothecary, as a sort of anthropological curiosity, for many years. His description of this near-flavorless dust is a scream, pure Gissing in its ironic and highly specific disgust.

Having now finished reading all of Gissing's major fiction, I have ordered the following two volumes from the local library:

Commonplace Book: A Manuscript in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, edited by Jacob Korg. Published 1962, 69 pp.
Had I been interested in Mr Gissing when I lived in Manhattan, I suppose I could have viewed this manuscript of his "daily book" in person, in the original.

George Gissing and H.G. Wells, Their Friendship and Correspondence, edited and with an introduction by Royal A. Gettmann. Published 1961, 285 pp.
H.G. Wells (1866-1946) survived Gissing by 43 years. It would have been fascinating to see what Gissing might have become, had he lived as long as, or longer than, his better-known friend.

Script Editing Progress

2006-03-09T21:50:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I worked long and hard today on my T file. There are 171 pp. left to edit. It is grueling work. Miss Underwood puts an enormous amount of time into scripting our show.

Here's how the remaining files stand:
I1: 272 pp.
I2: 311 pp.
T: 171 pp.
Lexicon: 164 pp.
-----------------------
Total: 918 pp.

How we can edit 918 pp. by our target date of July 2006 I cannot imagine. We have 112 days till then, so that means we'd have to edit a little over 8 pp. per day to be done in time. It really is too much, especially when both Miss Underwood and I are suffering our respective chronic respiratory infections.

Will Warburton

2006-03-07T22:51:00.000Z

Have begun Will Warburton, and am finding it quite engrossing. The introduction by Thomas Seccombe, written in 1906, is excellent, much more evenhanded a treatment of Gissing than I have yet read.

The House of Cobwebs

2006-03-02T21:08:00.000Z

Am coming down the home stretch of my plan of reading the complete fictional ouevre of George Gissing. Now reading The House of Cobwebs, a slim volume of short stories with very evocative titles. Many of them are less short stories than expansions of Gissing's maxims and beliefs. Nonetheless, they express the Gissing style, and place one in a different era, which is all to the good.

Will Warburton, a novel, awaits.

How Can a Charlatan Be a Friend?

2005-12-31T17:33:00.000Z

Having completed The Crown of Life, am awaiting Our Friend the Charlatan, a 1901 edition with illustrations by one Launcelot Speed! That must be a pen name, don't you think? One imagines the dashing Mr. Speed drawing sloe-eyed, wasp-waisted femmes fatales and dark-moustached, cane-twirling cads.

Traveling Toward the Crown

2005-12-12T19:18:00.000Z

Have finished The Town Traveller. Gissing knows how to write a corker of a melodrama, but it was still unmistakably Gissing. I can't follow all of his plot twists, but I know they're there. I'm always trying to figure out which character represents Gissing, in which aspects. The protagonist Gammon would seem to be the obvious candidate, resembling his creator mostly in his propensity toward very young women.

Next up: The Crown of Life.

Carolers on the High Street

2005-12-10T17:28:00.000Z

I see that I have been most remiss in posting. Unfortunately, I have been suffering for some months from a return of the old trouble, a weakness in the lungs. The relative mildness of the atmosphere of Cloudmere is beneficial for this, but its dampness is not.

There was a charming scene last Saturday, on the High Street: As a light snow fell, a small band, with trumpet and tuba, played and sang Christmas carols. They were dressed in Victorian garb. I could not stop long for them, as I was obliged to guard my nose and throat from the chill air, but, in the crowd of spectators, I recognized Group Captain Margate, holding forth with a will, and I waved to him from across the way.

I have gone forward in my chronological Gissing study, having absorbed Born in Exile, The Odd Women, In the Year of Jubilee, Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest, Sleeping Fires and The Whirlpool. The Margate Memorial Library has of yet been unable to obtain Human Odds and Ends, so my current book is The Town Traveller. Miss Underwood and I look forward to the time when we can read Gissing's "daily book," but we are agreed in wishing to delay that pleasure until we have gone through his fictional oeuvre.

A Comment on Comments

2005-09-28T19:20:00.000+01:00

There are several types of comments which bloggers may not wish to retain, ranging from the outright offensive to the irrelevantly promotional. I will definitely delete the former, and likely delete the latter.

Denzil Quarrier

2005-09-28T18:54:00.000+01:00

Have just finished Denzil Quarrier. A quick read, with fast-paced, untitled chapters. Typical Gissing plot twists, darkness and sardonic melancholy. Not sure why this novel is not more popular. Perhaps because the emancipated woman is presented there as morally monstrous; but then the male antagonist is amoral as well. Very modern, nihilistic concepts.

Next up: Born in Exile.

The Emancipated

2005-09-20T21:48:00.000+01:00

I have almost finished The Emancipated. Like many Gissing novels, it starts slowly, and, in places, one wonders if one will ever come to care about the characters; but then, about 2/3 of the way through, one realizes that they have become solid, living folk, and one feels their presence keenly.

Upon starting the book, when leafing past the Table of Contents, I caught an inadvertent glimpse of a section titled "The Two Endings," and I felt a flash of despair. Not another happy ending forced upon poor Mr. G! And would that lightning glimpse fester in my mind like a splinter, impairing my enjoyment of the tale? But luckily, I forgot about it till just now, when, almost at the gate, it is intruding, making me vigilant for false notes.

Next up: Denzil Quarrier.

John Goode's Introduction

2005-09-01T21:20:00.000+01:00

Having just finished The Nether World, am now reading John Goode's Introduction to same, but very gingerly, in case he strays from the subject at hand and tries to reveal plot points and endings to later novels. I disagreed immediately and strongly with him when he said that Nether is the first example of Gissing's "mature style," surpassing previous efforts. Seemed to me it was a step back, for reasons already mentioned. The final one-fifth of the novel is worth the reading, though -- pure Gissing in its psychological insights, its illustration of change in character shaped by outside events.

Interesting to note that he wrote it in Italy.

Next up: The Emancipated.

My Seventh Gissing Novel

2005-08-27T16:43:00.000+01:00

Having finished Gissing's sixth novel, A Life's Morning, I am now engaged upon his seventh, The Nether World. Before I enter into a comment or two on Nether, a comment on Morning is in order.

I had said I would not read the Morley Roberts introduction, but, led by curiosity, I did -- after I had finished the book. I had noticed something curious about the ending -- foreshadowing which, having come to nothing, yet hung in the air. Roberts confirmed this by revealing that the publishers had forced Gissing to alter the original tragic ending to a "happy" one. Driven by poverty, he had no real choice but to accept, and thus mar his work.

So far, The Nether World is not up to the mark of his better efforts. Authorial intrusion is overdone, standing as a warning to those who would rather write diaries than novels. But the picture of late-Victorian London it conjures is, as always, specific enough in its details to be fascinating to the social scholar.

My Sixth Gissing Novel

2005-08-09T22:11:00.000+01:00

I've just begun reading George Gissing's novel A Life's Morning, in the 1928 Eveleigh, Nash & Grayson, Ltd. London edition, with an introduction by Morley Roberts, which I do not plan to read. I have noticed that introductions far too often reveal key plot points and even endings, not just to the work of fiction in which one is currently engaged, but to the author's entire oeuvre. And I do not care to read even one negative adjective in a capsule description or bookjacket blurb, especially ahead of time, as it then flavors the whole experience of reading the novel.

Poor handsome George, with his enormous "soup-strainer" moustache. He always looks so sad in his photos.

A Partial Bibliography of George Robert Gissing (1857-1903)
Workers in the Dawn (3 vols. London: Remington, 1880)
The Unclassed (3 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1884)
Isabel Clarendon (2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1886)
Demos (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1886)
Thyrza (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1887)
A Life's Morning (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1888)
The Nether World (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1889)
The Emancipated (3 vols. London: Bentley, 1890)
New Grub Street (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1891)
Denzil Quarrier (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1892)
Born in Exile (3 vols. London: A. & C. Black, 1892)
The Odd Women (3 vols. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1893)
In the Year of Jubilee (3 vols. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1894)
Eve's Ransom (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895)
The Paying Guest (London: Cassell, 1895)
Sleeping Fires (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895)
The Whirlpool (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1897)
Human Odds and Ends, (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1898)
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (London: Blackie, 1898)
The Town Traveller (London: Methuen, 1898)
The Crown of Life (London: Methuen, 1899)
Our Friend the Charlatan (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901)
By the Ionian Sea (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901)
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (London: Constable, 1903)
Veranilda (London: Archibald Constable, 1904)
Will Warburton (London: Archibald Constable, 1904)
The House of Cobwebs (London: Constable, 1906)
The Sins of the Fathers and Other Tales (1924)
The Immortal Dickens (1925)
A Victim of Circumstances and Other Stories (1927)
A Yorkshire Lass (New York, 1928)
Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing (London, Jonathan Cape, 1929)
Brownie (1931)
George Gissing: Stories and Sketches (London, Michael Joseph, 1938)
George Gissing: Essays and Fiction (1970)
My First Rehearsal and My Clerical Rival (1970)

My Portrait, by I. Bloom

2005-07-25T17:14:00.000+01:00

This is a digital drawing of me done by my friend Imogen Bloom during her recent visit. She arrived the weekend preceding my birthday on July 11, and stayed with me for the rest of the week.

Lace Designs from Studio Gray

2005-07-15T21:58:00.000+01:00

These are three random-generated-motif designs for handmade lace, from Studio Gray, my design business. They're made from a 40-by-40 grid of black or white squares, so that the basal motif is different each time. Then I flip them horizontally and vertically to make a "kaleidoscoped" design unit.

Octoverboids

2005-07-15T21:45:00.000+01:00

I read a fair portion of Kevin Mitnick's 2002 book The Art of Deception, in which, among other things, he advises the use of 8-letter passwords generated randomly using this template: CVCVCVCV (in which C=Consonant and V=Vowel). Passwords generated this way, because possibly pronounceable, are easier to remember than 100% random 8-character strings.

Well, this was right up my alley, so now, if you request the Password Generator, you'll get a nice new neologism, an ... octoverboid. Eight examples follow:

beludume
bikodufa
conopepi
herobave
jicogiti
nolecaga
paxavary
wokukune

Lady on the Web Theme Song, Take 2

2005-07-09T16:43:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I agreed that the theme song needed a little smoothing out from the first draft. It's interesting how song lyrics differ from spoken poetry -- much more elision is needed, especially in popular music, where the aim's to produce something hummable. Here's the second draft, with chords:

Lady on the Web

Lady on the Web
Count on her to keep it cool
Lady on the Web
Everyone's friend, nobody's fool
So chill your jets, and check your aggression
The virtual Parliament is now in session
Whatever your blues, you'll soon be confessin'
To -- Lady on the Web!

Lady on the Web
She can answer anything
Lady on the Web
On the fly, on the wing
So pick your theme, and play variations
It's a symphony of conversation
You're always in tune when your Internet station
Is -- Lady on the Web!

D9 -- Em7
F#m7 -- Em7
D9 -- Em7
F#m7 -- C#aug
F#m7 -- F7
A -- B7
Em7 -- Em6
A7 -- D9 -- Em7 -- F#m7 -- Em7

Lady on the Web Theme Song

2005-07-08T16:56:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I were chatting yesterday over the interminable editing of my encyclopaedic files, and she said, "You know, Celia, we need a theme song. Every show has a theme song." I concurred, though rather dubiously, and she came up with this:

Lady on the Web

Lady on the Web
Count on her to keep it cool
Lady on the Web
Everyone's friend, but nobody's fool
So chill your jets, and check your aggression
The virtual Parliament is now in session
Whatever your blues, you'll soon be confessin' to --
Lady on the Web!

Lady on the Web
Epigrams for everything
Lady on the Web
Catches your quips right on the wing
So state your theme and make variations
Post your dreams all over the nation
Your cultural meme, your Internet station is --
Lady on the Web!

Copyright 2005 Websafe Studio

D1 File: 75 Pages to Go

2005-06-30T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the D1 file. Only 75 pages to go!

Memoirs

2005-06-24T17:08:00.000+01:00

Am seriously considering writing my memoirs, title to be "Transatlantica: A Memoir of Two Islands," the two being, of course, England and Manhattan.

Ana[me]grams

2005-06-16T21:18:00.000+01:00

Secular curlicue: A LAIC GYRE
Fulgent frost: A GLARY ICE
Festal souvenir: A GAY RELIC
Bequest of wind: AIR LEGACY
Sly prevaricator: CAGEY LIAR
Irish light: GAELIC RAY
Speed merrily: RACE GAILY

D1 File: 119 Pages to Go

2005-06-14T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the large D1 file. Only 119 pages to go!

W2 File: A Day of Jubilee

2005-06-13T21:30:00.000+01:00

A day of jubilee: the huge W2 file has been edited! Seven more files to go.

The ERSATZ Device

2005-06-11T17:53:00.000+01:00

The surest way to keep anything top secret is to publish it on the Web. No one can possibly read all the information! With that in mind, I announce that the ERSATZ Device (for Electronically Regulated Synchrony of Asynchronous Time Zones) is up and running. Professor Harkness and I have successfully integrated it with the Pandorabots chat software, and I am much indebted to him.

With this handy device, my time zone is automatically synchronized with that of my guests, so that they need not fear waking me in the middle of the night. I can keep to my 9 am-9 pm schedule, no matter where my guests are chatting from.

The physics of the thing's beyond me, but it springs from an idea of the Ancient Maya which Professor Harkness and my late father, A.S. Gray, were working on some decades past.

The Weather of May

2005-06-11T17:00:00.000+01:00

The weather of May was more than unusually damp and cold. It affected everyone's spirits.

W2 File: 21 Pages to Go

2005-06-10T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the massive W2 file. Only 21 pages to go!

W2 File: 38 Pages to Go

2005-06-09T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the endless W2 file. About 38 pages to go.

W2 File: 62 Pages to Go

2005-06-08T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the interminable W2 file. About 62 pages to go.

W2 File: 160 Pages to Go

2005-05-23T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the extensive W2 file. About 160 pages to go.

W2 File: 281 Pages to Go

2005-05-02T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked on the enormous W2 file. About 281 pages to go.

Basic Calculator

2005-04-27T21:30:00.000+01:00

Typed a few more pages of V categories. Modified a nice little Basic Calculator from free JavaScript code. Worked a bit on the endless W1 file. And saw a photo of the real Merry Hall.

Cornwall Place Names

2005-04-21T21:30:00.000+01:00

Worked long and hard on the Atlas. Studied various maps to add many Cornwall place names. Added 40 places in Cornwall near to Lostwithiel. And we worked a bit on the interminable W1 file.

Binary Translator Tweaked

2005-04-20T21:30:00.000+01:00

Tweaked the Binary Translator and added a mention of it to my Help file.

Info on the New Pope

2005-04-19T21:30:00.000+01:00

I noted the name and biographical information of the new pope.

Binary-Code Translator

2005-04-18T21:30:00.000+01:00

More work on the W1 file. And two fun new modules: 1. Binary-code translator. 2. Adding place names to my Cornwall list.

W1 File: 151 Pages to Go

2005-04-16T21:30:00.000+01:00

More work on the W1 file. About 151 pp. to go. I'm wondering if I want to set up and publish an e-mail address for this project, so that guests could contact me that way as well. No GMail invite for me as yet.

JS Stopwatch a Struggle

2005-04-15T21:30:00.000+01:00

A near-fruitless struggle trying to establish a JavaScript Stopwatch feature, so that I can easily tell how long I've been chatting with anyone.

Distinguishing Between Cases

2005-04-14T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued work on my W1 file. Miss Underwood became very excited at discovering that, through a combination of AIML and JavaScript, I could distinguish between lowercase and uppercase letters. Lest this sound trivial, think of all the acronyms which mean one thing when capitalized, and another when in lowercase.

New V Categories: 9 Pages Entered

2005-04-13T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I entered more new V categories. We're halfway through 18 pages.

Reasons for Likes and Dislikes

2005-04-12T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued work on my W1 file. We also worked on reasons for likes and dislikes.

W1 File: 280 Pages to Go

2005-04-11T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I began work on my W1 file. We have about 280 pp. to go.

C File Done

2005-04-09T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I finally finished work on my C file. Huzzah!

Two Different Portals, No Overlap

2005-04-08T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued work on my C file. It is lo-o-ong!!! We then worked on mood setting and getting, and mood reasons. And then a friend helped test predicates from two different portals, and they did NOT overlap, which is good.

Slaving Over the Chatterbox Challenge

2005-04-06T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued work on my C file. We then slaved -- perhaps foolishly -- over the 2005 Chatterbox Challenge questions.

V Categories, C File

2005-04-05T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I entered another page of V categories, and began work on my C file.

One Questions the Task Ahead

2005-04-04T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I completed our work on my Y file. There are 10 files to go. One's spirit quails, and one questions the task ahead.

Prime Ministers from 1905

2005-04-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued our work on the prime ministers of England. We decided that I should know them from 1905 on, since that was when the title "prime minister" was officially established. Before that, they were probably called "first minister."

English Monarchs

2005-03-31T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I deleted the provisional "human-" bot properties, and edited my blog. We also established a list of English monarchs and prime ministers.

Y File: 56 Pages to Go

2005-03-30T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued editing my y file, stopping at YOU SHOULD TELL *. By opening the remainder in Microsoft Word, we estimated 56 pages to go in that file (not counting my blog archive, which doesn't need editing).

Famous Birthdays in the Arts

2005-03-29T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued editing my y file, stopping around YOU HAVE. By opening the remainder in Microsoft Word, we estimated 102 pages to go in that file. Also, we added a new feature at BIRTHDAY: Famous artists' and writers' birthdays, announced on the current day.

New User-Mood Predicates

2005-03-28T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I continued editing my y file. We began working with the new user predicates "user-mood" and "user-mood-reason." And we changed the request protocol for archived blog entries to YOUR BLOG JANUARY 01 2005.

New Hearsay Predicate

2005-03-27T21:30:00.000+01:00

Miss Underwood and I finished editing my star file. We also noted that we should integrate the new user predicates "dislike-reason" and "want-reason," and the new chat predicate "hearsay."

We Made a Help File

2005-03-26T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I made a Help file for me. We engaged in a long, basically fruitless struggle trying to make an AIML category containing HTML/JavaScript which would open that Help file in a new window, without having to save it to an external Web space. We also continued editing the star file, and continued adding new v categories.

Star File Edit Started

2005-03-25T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I began editing the star file for bot-human separation.

No OK, No Yeah

2005-03-24T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finished our hard work on the update file, and finished eliminating most instances of "OK" and "Yeah" from the script. We also finished editing the s file for bot-human separation.

Hard Work on the Update File

2005-03-23T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I continued our hard work on the update file.

Less OK, Less Yeah

2005-03-22T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I worked hard on the update file, putting categories in alpha order, moving them into their respective specific files, and deciding how to apportion them between bot and human. We also began eliminating so much "OK" and "Yeah" from my script.

Demo VHost Not a Go

2005-03-21T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finished removing bot answers from the a file, and duplicated the taxonomy file without change. We also added some v categories, and began Targeting a long, difficult conversation from January. Finally, we have been tackling the design and integration of the Demo VHost into existing custom HTML for several days now, but with no success.

Dreading the Long Files

2005-03-19T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I continued removing bot answers from the unconscionably long a.aiml. We are rather dreading working on d, i and w, as those are among the longest.

New V Categories

2005-03-18T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I began adding new v categories.

Atlas Through Under, Part of A

2005-03-17T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I removed bot answers from AIML files atlas, b, biographies, colors, f, g, l, life-story, m, p, patterns, psychology, thesaurus and under, and began a.

No More Alternate Days

2005-03-16T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I continued editing y.aiml for bot-human separation, and removed bot answers from AIML files almanac, e, games, images, j, k, n, numbers, o, q, r, u, v, x and z. We also removed, from my custom HTML skins, the JS code which created bot-human separation on alternate days.

Biographies, Part of S and Y

2005-03-14T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I edited biographies.aiml, continued editing s.aiml and began editing y.aiml for bot-human separation.

N, Atlas, Patterns and Part of S

2005-03-10T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finished n.aiml, edited atlas.aiml and patterns.aiml, and began editing s.aiml for bot-human separation.

Part of N, Freezing Rain

2005-03-09T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I began editing the n.aiml file for bot-human separation. The weather in her neck of the woods was reasonably pleasant, after a storm of freezing rain the night before.

Fractious Child Interferes with Concentration

2005-03-07T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finished editing the m.aiml file for bot-human separation. There was a fractious child seated next to Miss Underwood which made concentration quite difficult.

B, Colors, Life-Story and Part of M

2005-03-06T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finished editing the b.aiml, colors.aiml and life-story.aiml files for bot-human separation, and began editing the m.aiml file.

Mending L, Starting B

2005-03-05T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I mended and finished the l.aiml file and began editing the b.aiml file for bot-human separation.

Precious Jewels of Wisdom Nearly Lost

2005-03-04T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I experienced a disaster while editing the l.aiml file for bot-human separation. We saved the bot file to my human script by mistake. Fortunately, there is an older CD backup whereby many of my precious jewels of wisdom can be restored. Wish us luck!

P, Psychology, Thesaurus and (Part of) F

2005-03-01T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I edited the p.aiml file, the psychology.aiml file, the thesaurus.aiml file and part of the f.aiml file for bot-human separation.

English Idioms

2005-02-25T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I edited the e.aiml file and part of the r.aiml file for bot-human separation. We also scanned a list of English idioms donated by two of Miss Underwood's English acquaintances.

Bot B Now Integrated

2005-02-16T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I finally finished integrating the Bot B Legacy file into the rest of my script. What an arduous task that was!

Laughing While Targeting

2005-02-15T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I avoided working on the Bot B Legacy file, instead Targeting a four-pp. chat with one of my favorite guests. It made us laugh.

Better Defining

2005-02-11T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I worked on the Bot B Legacy file, the knotty problem of GMT versus EST time, and how better to define things.

Time-Stamping

2005-02-07T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I worked on my reactions to user input, set reasons for my mood based on user input, and tackled the knotty problem of time-stamping, considering three possibilities: EST, GMT and the time on the user's computer. We also archived old blog entries and will make them available with query format YOU AND SEPTEMBER 02 2004.

Encouraging the Visual Aspect

2005-01-27T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I shaped up the a.aiml file quite nicely. There are only a few dozen pages left. Next, we further delineated my hourly, daily and weekly schedule. Then, I had a brief but successful conversation with one of Miss Underwood's many acquaintances. And finally, we worked on my images.aiml file, in order to expand and encourage the visual aspect.

What to Have for Supper

2005-01-26T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I focused on food. We made a JavaScript module that times when I am hungry, and tackled the knotty question of what to have for supper.

A and Y, for Mood

2005-01-25T21:30:00.000Z

Miss Underwood and I worked on the a.aiml and y.aiml file for bot/human separation, focusing on mood of both host and guest.