The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: links

  • Missing Links (and a Bots Update)

    At the end of the movie version of “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy learns from the good witch Glinda that she can get back home simply by clicking together the heels of her ruby slippers. What if the link is broken? She must also express the wish to get back home. The link from Dorothy’s line, “There’s no place like home,” to its source, may for some viewers be broken. It was for this writer. It’s an old sentiment, no doubt linked even further away than this:

    “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
    Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home
    A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
    Which seek thro’ the world, is ne’er met elsewhere
    Home! Home!
    Sweet, sweet home!
    There’s no place like home
    There’s no place like home!

    John Howard Payne, 1823, “Home, Sweet Home”

    Blog links over time get broken, but you don’t know the link is broken until you click on it, resulting in reader frustration. Sources linked to get deleted, moved, paywalled – mysteriously disintegrate into the unfortunate 404 message, that what you’re looking for is not, down this passage, to be found. I don’t mind seeing links, and, in fact, often snap at them like a foraging fish, though links can be distracting, even if, maybe especially if, links go missing, and following links, one into another, one often wonders if one will ever get back home. I use fewer links than I once did. I’ve noticed readers don’t usually click my links anyway, assuming the stats catch such nibbles.

    Speaking of stats, I would be remiss, as the rhetorical phrase goes, were I not to mention that the bots recently flooding the blog stats have disappeared. For the past six days running, the tidal wave of views has dropped, the tide receding to beachcombing depths. The statistical tinnitus, the buzzing and hissing of the bots, the grunion runs in high tides, has gone silent. Many thanks to what WordPress Happiness Wrangler figured out a solution.

    There are also, of course, regarding missing links, connections that never actually existed, the friend, for example, that proves to be a missing link in one’s social chain-link fence. But who wants to be part of a chain-link fence? Or maybe that old friend simply drifted down river and out to sea. Those days you fell asleep in Grammar, and now you can’t recite, define, and give examples of the parts of speech, missing links in your learning. But in any case, the parts of speech have changed, the interjection now a missing link, while the comma can signal a missing link or itself be a missing link. A parenthesis unenclosed, dangling fore or aft; the shortstop who dropped the double play ball; the letters Salty wrote Penina – all missing links. Or the letter returned

    “to sender, address unknown, no such number, no such zone.”

    (from the Elvis song “Return to Sender,” Scott and Blackwell, 1962)

    At the beginning of Faulkner’s novel “The Sound and the Fury,” Benjy watches the golfers “through the curling flower spaces.” The golf course was built on Benjy’s pasture, sold to afford a year at Harvard for his brother Quentin, and when Benjy hears the golfers call “Caddie!” it reminds him of his sister Caddy. The curling flower spaces are the twists and loops of steel wire, the links, repeating zigzag shapes, of the chain-link fence now bordering the remaining, diminished land and the golf course. Benjy’s non-linear memory is full of sensory, associative links. When a link is lost, as Caddy has been lost, he’s confused and disoriented, as we all are when what links us together and makes us whole is lost or broken.

    Missing Links

  • Old Haunts

    Old Haunts, all with current links, focused on core subjects: art, technology, music, science, and literature, but first, a brief explanation:

    Moving continuously toward more minimalist formats (which if not stopped could result in disappearance altogether), blogs may risk losing some appeal, particularly to readers who enjoy liking, commenting, and linking or sharing – in short, conversing – as well as indulging in pingbacks and reblogging, and who enjoy perusing sidebars, widgets, clicks and plays, slide shows, and sharing up and down the crowded street of social media sites and apps. An example of such minimalist drift, here at the The Coming of the Toads, might be the removal, some time ago now, of listings and links of followed blogs and favorite sites, what I called in the sidebar heading over the list of links: “Back Roads to Far Places,” the title from Ferlinghetti’s book.

    I use the WordPress Reader to subscribe to sites, and currently I’m subscribed to 146 – but not many of which post frequently or are still active at all, which sparks the idea behind this post, which might have been subtitled: and Other Broken Links. While I don’t currently post a widget of followed blogs or sites, I do manage my subscribed sites in the WordPress Reader, and I also maintain the “Links” feature in the WordPress Dashboard for my own use. There are currently 33 links. But links don’t always stay current or active, while others click to surprise, a site grown or morphed into other projects or disappeared (Page Not Found), and still others remain useful resources or pleasant places to visit, like old friends. Or the link simply breaks and you get sent who knows where and who knows what’s happened. Sites often change over time, and it can be hard and takes time keeping up with the changes.

    Anyway, I thought I’d share an update of just a few of the sites that do continue to work well and that I try to follow and that offer pleasant visits and are creative and resourceful:

    Marginalia and Gracia and Louise I first discovered in “High Up in the Trees,” a blog by the Australian artist Gracia Haby. It’s now called “Marginalia.” I like everything about it – font work, photography, text content, collage and other art work, the work Gracia and Louise do with animals. And there’s another site they maintain, called Gracia and Louise, full of things to see and wonder at. The sites probably work best on desktop, but the creativity in doing more with the drop-down necessities of on-line viewing is unparalleled (of that, here is a specific example, called Reel).

    McLuhan Galaxy always produces a profoundly puzzling experience in that there seems no end to his ideas and the ramifications of effects of media on society and culture – and yet here we go, linking and following, but where? The Blogroll will keep you occupied for hours of intellectual fun.

    I don’t have John Cage ears, but I’ve always enjoyed his writing, and much of his music I do enjoy. Kuhn’s Blog is not often updated, but the site resources remain available and loads of fun, with several interactive features (try Indeterminacy, for example). The John Cage Personal Library is itself a phenomenal work.

    The Buckminster Fuller Institute shares hope for the world from a worldwide perspective. The site may provide a new awareness for what’s going on worldwide to improve conditions, predicaments, problems – near and far. If your not familiar with Bucky, here’s a good place to start: Big Ideas.

    Words Without Borders features world wide writing in a variety of formats. Browse by country, theme, or genre.

    Old Haunts, all with current links, focused on core subjects: art, technology, music, science, and literature.