Biggest understatment since BP’s last press release:

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 29, 2010

“During operation of the self-cleaning oven cycle, occasional smoking and smell of burned food may be present.”

Posted in Tech | Leave a comment

And it’s E-Book on the rail…and E-book wins it!

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 20, 2010

Amazon reports that for the past three months, E-books outsold those old-fashioned paper-with-covers things known as “books.” Check out New York Times story, here.

Posted in Ruminations | Leave a comment

Not a vookworm. Yet.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 18, 2010

If there is a better definition for “ambivalence” than the feelings aroused by reading about “vooks” (electronic books with interactive video), I don’t know what it could be.

Los Angeles Times reporters Alex Pham and David Sarno write about how iPad-driven vooks make even Intro Chemistry interesting, something that makes me wish they’d existed when I tried, and failed, to like science in my freshman year of high school.

I’m more acquainted with the sentiments expressed by essayist Gary Shteyngart in this week’s New York Times Book Review, in which a vacation outside of cell range forces him to confess misgivings about a Facebooking, tweeting, arrow-driven, iPhoning inner life. The life that used to require only a book and a brain.

Reading a plain old physical (non blinking) book is an act as close to perfection as possible. There is nothing to fix about that experience. Yet I too am hooked on the device that is the gateway drug to vooks: the iPhone.

I am more likely to forget shoes than my iPhone. If I leave it behind by accident, I experience a wave of anxiety similar to that felt when buckling a seatbelt aboard a transcontinental flight, only to remember that the oven is still on.

This makes sense if one works and lives in a world requiring 24/7 connectivity. I do not.

I tap a keyboard most of the time, and almost none of what I write could be called “news” or “timely.” I live with my Best Friend and domestic time is typically spent within an arm’s length of each other. My pre-Best Friend best friend phones across three time zones every two days or so, the norm for much of the 39 years we’ve been acquainted.  The generous soul I consider a life-raft girlfriend here in town is, like me, temperamentally suited to short and intense meetings in person. A GPS-enhanced phone I need not.

So, what’s the allure? I think it must be a variation on a behavior I used to observe in my father. An extremely intelligent man with little formal education, he loved reading, reference books and electronic gadgets. The first two because they served as his ongoing college; the latter because mastering the newest technology was a way to have an edge over some smartass who went to Harvard but couldn’t rewire the stereo.

I managed to get the schooling he missed out on, and I’m not worrying much about keeping up with the smartasses anymore, but the iPhone is my hedge against the (many) gaps in my education and my skimpy pop-culture knowledge. And I have something he did not. The aps in my pocket supply me with English and Hebrew dictionaries; medical reference guide; new-music updates; NYTimes, the Constitution; NASA reports, food-safety database; Revised Standard Bible (loaded in anticipation of a dinner with Very Christian friends and found to be quite handy); Latin vocabulary. (Then there’s weather, the ocean-sound maker; police radio, ESPN scores and a running grocery list. A girl’s gotta take a break from thinking now and then.)

I’m holding out against vooks for now, but I suppose they’ll get me in the end.

Posted in Books, Tech | 1 Comment

Art for the weekend.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 16, 2010

Photomontage by Friderike Heuer

See her website, here.

Posted in Art | Leave a comment

Harvey Pekar dies. Doesn’t that just figure.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 13, 2010

Harvey Pekar, best known for his autobiographical “American Splendor” graphic-novel series and the 2003 movie “The Quitter,” that dramatized his dejected world view, saw every glass as half empty. A half-empty glass leaving a ring on the table. He is dead at age 70, which just proves, as he always knew, that shit happens and then you die.

In a gesture as perfect as it was unintentional, the news of Pekar’s death was posted on the Los Angeles Times site, right under a handy pull-down menu labeled “Foreclosures.”  Harvey would have approved.

Harvey Pekar ("pee-kar") would not be surprised that people are posting his stuff without his permission.

Posted in Art, Death | Leave a comment

Inherit the (Type Like The) Wind.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 11, 2010

It’s a haunting question:

When your time is up, and you move on to whatever comes after this life…who will cancel your Facebook page?

Fortunately, the folks at Legacy Locker are on the job. This company offers a way for your designated beneficiary (and I’m using that word loosely) to access all your online services, pages and auto-payments…in order to protect or remove them.

I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, wouldn’t it be nice to know that Type Like The Wind would live on forever, its name renewed year after year? But, on the other hand, do my heirs really need to go through those 9,678 archived Gmail messages? It seems like a lot to ask.

Posted in Business, Death | 1 Comment

77 Words: “Twilight at the World of Tomorrow” by James Mauro

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 10, 2010


Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World’s Fair on the Brink of War by James Mauro. (Random House, 2010)

Expecting dry and serviceable, I got lively, amusing, informing.  Mauro’s magazine-writing roots serve him well: strong researching with an eye for the absurd.  He captures a particular sort of visionary—that egomaniacal guy pushing big, distracting and inspiring stuff…who is more than a little crazy. Such as a hugely expensive enclosed city atop a garbage dump, as was the case here. Throw in dastardly criminals, looming war and Billy Rose’s naked dancers—and you’ve got a good tale.

For more “77 Words: Tiny Book Reviews,” click here.

Posted in 77 Words, Authors, Books, Business | Leave a comment

Uh oh, the rich are bailing on mortgages too.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 9, 2010

Proof that this foreclosure tsunami is real:

“The housing bust that began among the working class in remote subdivisions and quickly progressed to the suburban middle class is striking the upper class in privileged enclaves…” writes David Streitfeld in The New York Times. (The other quotes are from the same piece.)

A hint that that Congress may figure this out soon:

“Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment, the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.”

Indication that this is beyond the reach of Congressional fixing:

“In a recent column on Freddie Mac’s Web site, the company’s executive vice president, Don Bisenius, acknowledged that walking away “might well be a good decision for certain borrowers” but argues that those who do it are trashing their communities.”

First thing to worry about as soon as you find a new place to live and unpack your sleeping bag:

A whole lot of people are going to grow up with the belief that “trashing their communities” is okay.

Additional gloomy whining:

I live in a city with a citizens committee for just about everything. Maybe we need to suspend those for a time and form the All-City Housing Cooperative that works on ways to hold back this wave. (That way we’d be sure to have an actual neighborhood in which to debate the merits of roses versus rhodies on the intersection traffic circles.)

And as long as we’re moving closer to real panic, let’s start substituting the words “and condominiums” every time we read aloud a sentence describing an increase in the number of houses foreclosed.

That shiny new high-rise downtown is going to have a whole new feel when the penthouse owners decamp.

Posted in Business, Economy, Ethics, Human nature | Leave a comment

Sad news: AP jargon gets the shove.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 2, 2010

As a former daily-newspaper journalist (and for a short time about 100 years ago, a proud writer for The Associated Press) I am heartsick to hear of the death of some longtime terms of the trade.  Who would opt for “keyword” instead of “slug” or “correct” instead of “cq” or “instead of” rather than the time-honored “sted.” And it gets worse…)

New York (AP) – Subs Lede, the veteran overseer of Associated Press wire-service jargon, died last night in New York City after plunging from an office building at 450 West 33rd St.  He was 90.

A statement released to media outlets this morning by the New York City Police Department’s Tradition Protective Unit (TPU) said that the fall appears to have been the result of a deliberate push by an editor or group of editors working in the building.  No suspects have been named, but one source close to the investigation said that TPU is “looking for a gang of youthful offenders.”

Mr. Lede was well known for his years in the front lines, where he fought alongside his stalwart partner, Recasts Hed, who at this writing is also near death from an accident last week. Police will not comment on whether the incidents are related.

Mr. Lede took countless newcomers under his wings in the field and the newsroom, training such crucial figures as Previous Cycle and the controversial Note Contents.

In 1978, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News with colleagues Fixes Typos and Will B. Led. The trio covered the tragic collision between a Misplaced Simile and a Clumsy Metaphor in airspace over the city. Following the crash, commas and semicolons rained down for a 48-hour period. The prize-winning stories resulted in parentheses being added to unclear phrases throughout the United States.

Mr. Lede was preceded in death by his wife of 50 years, New Throughout; a sister, Adds Graphic-Slug; and a nephew, Adds Byline.

At. Mr. Lede’s request, no funeral service will be held. Donations may be made to Updates with Color.

(Staff report moved on wire 20:38 2 July 2010. This obituary written by Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett was sent by the service late on July 2, 2010.)

Posted in Death, The Press | 2 Comments

Something I made up that sounds smart.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 1, 2010

“…Writing biography is a sort of reverse magic trick. The audience is baffled and thrilled by sleight-of-hand. Later the writer comes across a stray rabbit, and goes back in time looking for a top-hat, a cape, a wand. She consults old letters to see if abracadabra! was actually uttered on stage. So when she recreates the scene, it is done with details and in a sequence that the audience could not have known that first night.”

Posted in Writing & Words | 1 Comment

Goodbye Senator Byrd. Be glad you missed the news today.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: July 1, 2010

One of the faceless commentators talking during the solemn carrying of Senator Robert Byrd’s coffin this morning observed that the most significant thing about the late Senator’s tenure is the enormous social change on his long watch.

Byrd himself exemplified that change, moving from membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young West Virginian to a supporter of civil rights measures as a seasoned statesman.

The comment no doubt gave a lot of other people pause as it did me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I would have thought longer and deeper about the thesis had the footage of Byrd not been followed by a live studio shot about the oil spill.  On the set was one of the new news-hotties stretching her long legs from a tall chair facing the camera, chatting with Phillipe Cousteau Jr, grandson of the revered Jacques Cousteau.

Yes, Senator Byrd lived a long life. Long enough to die on a day when “news” comes from a nitwit in snakeskin high heels schmoozing a low-wattage, high-ancestry bullshitter about one of the worst environmental disasters on record.

Posted in Death, Government, Ruminations, TV & Radio, The Press | Leave a comment

AA in the news: Powerless, grateful and other useful feelings.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 30, 2010

There’s an essay in Wired by Brendan I. Koerner, titled “Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How it Works.” It is burning up the email channels and New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about it. As the headline makes clear, the piece is largely about the fact that the success rate of Alcoholics Anonymous can’t be measured. We can clasify addiction as disease, but unlike diabetes, we can’t say how many people get better through treatment…in this case, by working the 12 steps.

I feel safe in predicting that a lot of people will start reading it and quit about a third of the way into the piece. Not because it isn’t well-written enough, but for one of two other reasons:

(1) Squirm factor: They’re alcoholics/addicts and not ready or able to deal with the “cunning, baffling” affliction; or

(2) Gratitude factor: They’re in the program, it works, and they do not care why.

I read the whole piece, but I was skimming it by page 3.

I fall in category 2-A:  It works, I don’t care why. But yeah, okay, tell me why.

For more than 20 years I’ve thought of Alcoholics Anonymous as the equivalent of a concerned relative who took me in, made up a bed on the couch and said: You’re not doing so great. Stay here until you feel up to leaving.

I slept there around-the-clock for awhile. The couch is always made up and ready when I need it.

It’s an odd notion on the face of it, that the only way some alcoholics or addicts survive is by sitting in a room with a lot of other drunks, tweakers, pill-takers, glue-sniffers, junkies. It seems odd right up until it doesn’t. Funny how we humans can move the goalpost of “normal” up and back so many yards.

Yet, I do welcome new findings about the ways in which brain chemistry and environmental factors conspire to make an otherwise rational person ingest poison. I believe that the more mysteries we solve, the better off we’ll be.

In other words, I want the updated brain-operation manual and the couch. When I’m too weary to read the small print, I can lie down and rest.

Posted in Alcohol & Drugs, Faith | 1 Comment

West Virginia down to two friends.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 28, 2010

From the Los Angles Times obituary of Senator Robert C. Byrd by Johanna Neuman:

“On election night 2000, when Byrd, then 83, was reelected with his largest margin ever — a 78% majority, carrying all 55 counties and all but seven of the state’s 1,970 precincts — he remarked: ‘West Virginia has always had four friends: God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, and Robert C. Byrd.’ (He later dropped Sears from the list, complaining about inadequate service on a heater.)”

Posted in Death, Politics | Leave a comment

All the news that fits. And solves.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 27, 2010

I’ve only read some of the stories and ads in three sections in Sunday’s New York Times (Book Review, Business and Week in Review) and here’s what I’ve already learned:

Most new fiction is deeply flawed. A five-line letter from Ronald Reagan to his old actress friend Kitty Carlisle Hart is worth $6,100. Whales and dolphins are as smart as we are, and probably nicer. Congo is still the rape capital on earth. Congress still has absolutely no balls when it comes to regulating Wall Street. Our cellphones are built with materials that are obtained at human cost. Author Danielle Steele and legal pot growers in Colorado work harder than the rest of us. Camile Paglia says “female Viagra” pharmaceuticals will not cure the sexual malaise blanketing America.

It seems so clear:

Send sexually disappointed whiners to witness real problems in Congo.  Sell collections of witless Presidential missives as e-books in order to fund the increased cost of cruelty-free cellphone manufacturing. Deploy the hyper-prolific Ms. Steele to the pot-growing operations for one week. Swear in Ms. Paglia, stand her up in front of Congress, and let her spell it out for them: No balls, no glory.

If that last thing doesn’t work, vote for a whale or a dolphin next time.

Posted in Advertising, Animals, Authors, Business, Economy, Ethics, Gender Mysteries, Government, Health, Human nature, Politics, Publishing, Research, Science, The Press | Leave a comment

When the roll is called up yonder: il b thr

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 24, 2010

Photo by Tracy Tkach/Facebook

Posted in Faith, Real People, Writing & Words | Leave a comment

Death on our own terms: Don’t be squeamish, read this.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 21, 2010

This is the best-written newspaper or magazine piece I’ve read in a very long time.

The headline is “What Broke My Father’s Heart,” and writer Katy Butler rewinds her family story to describe what happens when technology–in this case a pacemaker–keeps someone alive beyond the capacity of the mind (and parts of the body) to live anything resembling a normal life.

Anyone who has had to make decisions about serious surgical options and other interventions knows, as Butler describes, how easy it is to just nod, gulp and do the first thing the doctor suggests. Anyone who has come up against the task of putting a loved one’s Health Care Directive or end-of-life preferences into play has brushed up against the experiences behind this New York Times Sunday Magazine piece.

It sounds simple enough on the sunny side of serious illness., then wham. The doctor, and maybe all your family and friends, say go for the chemo. The transplant. The pacemaker. The goal is almost always more time; more technology. Doctors aren’t gods (and most don’t want to be), but it takes a lot of gumption to face one down and demand to hear about other choices…or maybe even to be left alone. And it takes information, determination and an advocate (sometimes more than one) to push back against the health care establishment  (hospital, insurance, Medicare) and just say no to the protocol.

Oregonians, the beneficiaries of right-to-die law, tend to think a care directive is a solution, as do a lot of other people. Don’t want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures? Well, fine. Oops, what about the EMTs who must do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? What about the medical team that shocks your heart back into action? Then there’s hydration, food-in-a-tube, ventilators. Oy. And here most of us get antsy when a waiter gives us five salad-dressing choices.

When that ludicrous scare campaign threatening “death squads” was being waged against health care reform, I wondered how many of the yammerers  were currently caring for someone who, like Butler’s father, had gone from a vibrant, intelligent and happy individual to a confused, sick and pain-plagued prisoner. His wife became a prisoner too, something he would have clearly done anything in his power to prevent, had he been offered that choice.

This couple had the stuff that’s supposed to help: a strong relationship with a good, sensitive primary care doc and plenty of dough. This is bad, bad news for all who get medical care only from the Emergency Room and who pay it off for years or slap it on the already overloaded Visa card.

I think there’s an excellent chance that Butler’s article might help change things for the better.  We boomers are living longer. It’s up to us how to define what that means, and that requires a lot of thought and clear instructions to each other ahead of time.

Posted in Ethics, Health | Leave a comment

Our bodies, our worse-off selves.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 17, 2010

I have occasion to regularly visit a wonderful vintage jewelry/resale clothing business in town. The owners defy small-business odds: thriving as a family-owned venture, they’re now serving the second- and third-generations of regulars.

Most of the customers are women, and they feel so at home that personal conversation flows easily. There’s a bit of that airplane-travel phenomenon, in which seatmates trade stories about intimate stuff  precisely because they are strangers. Not surprisingly, a lot of the chatting centers on the trials of aging.

As it turns out, this is a sort of competitive sport for middle-aged women.

I can just about guarantee that if four women are within hearing distance of each other, and one mentions her hot flashes, at least one of the remaining three will describe waking up more often, with soggier nightwear and a less sympathetic husband.

If you need reading glasses, someone else can’t even find hers, she’s so blind.

Bras suddenly too tight? She can hardly breathe.

Feet wider? Her shoes look like flippers.

Don’t even get started on haircuts.

Men this age take the opposite approach. I bet if you eavesdrop on a group of 50ish men in a locker room and if one of them happens to blurt out some age-related failing, the others will maintain a respectful silence. Or change the subject.

Much is written about the ways men and women communicate with each other, but I’m still waiting for the book titled  “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. And, Girlfriend, My Flight to Venus was Bumpier than Yours.”

Yes, I know. You’d read it if you could find your damn glasses.

Posted in Gender Mysteries | 2 Comments

True.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 16, 2010

How BP would handle a coffee spill.

Posted in Business, Ethics, Government, Health, Science | Leave a comment

77 Words: “The Love Letter” by Cathleen Schine and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Stieg Larsson

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 13, 2010

“The Love Letter” by Cathleen Schine (Penguin; Signet 1995) –

Before I get Schine’s latest rave-receiving novel, I figured I’d try this older work. Verdict: Excellent and smart summer escapism. A middle-aged bookseller has an affair with a much-younger man, motivated by a mysterious love letter… oh, yeah, and lust too. Schine nimbly chronicles the flowing thoughts of characters; stream-of-consciousness, but always with a point. Her heroine, Helen, is a force of nature. This is not a book for those intimidated by the unquestioned superiority of women.

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s another 77 Words review:

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, 2010) -

I bought two hardcover copies… so we didn’t have to share. I had to check on journalist Mikael Blomkvist, and of course, learn the fate of the bewitching Lisbeth Salander. It’s hard to incite envy for a heroine who survives horrible abuse, but Larsson manages. Start with the first book; fall in love with this hacker, martial-arts fighter, steel-cored murderer. Third book is overloaded with Swedish-government-detail. It’s OK to flip through for good parts. Really.

For more “77 Words: Tiny Book Reviews,” click here.

Posted in 77 Words, Authors, Books | Leave a comment

A comforting nugget of wisdom.

By Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett | Published: June 3, 2010

From the New York Times obit for Chris Haney, co-creator of Trivial Pursuit:

“Mr. Haney fought and won a 13-year legal battle against a man who said he had given him the idea for Trivial Pursuit when Mr. Haney picked him up hitchhiking. He won another suit against an author who claimed that Mr. Haney had taken questions from his books, something Mr. Haney readily acknowledged.

The judge’s reasoning: “You can’t steal trivia.”

Posted in Death, Ruminations | Leave a comment