theblogbitme

I saw this article on NPR Biking the Trail of the Underground Railroad by Allison Keyes and found it to be really fascinating. I live in San Francisco - a very bike friendly city, but it was not until recently that I started reflecting what it really means to see the world from a bicycle. I have a co-worker who cycles regularly and brings a small digital camera with him on his rides. It is amazing to hear about his weekend rides to places that I whiz by on the freeway and then see his photos of what he found along the way - sights much more beautiful then the Shell signs and fast food billboards lining the freeway. This article on NPR.org discusses a bicycle trip from Mobile, Alabama to Ontario, Canada that follows the route of the Underground Railroad. These riders are amazing, both physically (I would not make it out of Mobile’s city limits) and emotionally for taking a journal that far too many took before.

Today I was taking a break from work and found a wonderful surprise - the Indigo Girls on NPR. The Indigo Girls were on Talk of the Nation to speak about how their music is influenced by political activism and vice versa. The callers were mostly into the love fest of the Indigo Girls on NPR. However, there were a few thoughtful questions that I can remember. One question via email noted that some songs change meaning with time for the listener/fan and she wondered how that impacted how the Indigo Girls see their music. Well…..I can’t tell you what the Indigo Girls replied - you must listen for yourself! Also, there was 1-2 sentences where the Indigo Girls spoke about how art should move into action and that is how they see their music. The best part of this little find on NPR was not the interview, but rather the music. It changed my work day to listen to some live songs. It definitely made my Excel worksheet more exciting! You can check out more of the Indigo Girls on their website to hear more music and to find tour dates.

Tonight’s internet surfing led to a few minor changes here at The Blog Bit Me. It all started when I followed a link to the This American Life page on Showtime. I am a big fan of the radio broadcast of This American Life and have joined the ranks of the weekly listeners who tune into the program. I am very intrigued by this new version of the show for television. Recently, I listened to a podcast of Terry Gross interviewing Ira Glass on Fresh Air, another favorite NPR program, about the new television series of This American Life. It was a thoughtful and clever interview with Ira sharing how certain story bits from the radio program would not translate to the television broadcast and vice versa. It is fascinating to think about taking the exact same story and producing it in two mediums - for a purely audio audience and then for a visual and audio audience. Even though I do not have a television, I will find a way to see at least one of the episodes of This American Life on television.

And….because I am such a big fan of This American Life, I found the blogger badge on the promotional page within Showtime and thought, hey, well, that’s an idea. But, how to implement? My resident expert was not available for consultation, so I bravely went where I had only rarely been before - the internal pages of code within Wordpress. Much to my surprise I found where to insert the code and remembered how to center the image so that it fit under my calendar plugin.

Then my eyes went to the calendar plugin itself. The rendering of the plugin had bothered me for a long time, so I did go to my resident expert for some assistance. What I found out was by finding the ID for my calendar, I could change the font size and width of the columns within the calendar quite easily without messing with the stylesheet for the rest of the blog. It changed my life. I understand how using IDs in your code can also be beneficial for a small segment of the bigger project more than I did before as well. Take a look at the before and after of the calendar below.

While it still is not “perfect”, it is a big improvement. I get a lot of pleasure from these little steps forward and it gives me more confidence to experiment more with my Wordpress code instead of relying on the templates provided. I look forward to more learning and experimenting! And I look forward to checking out This American Life. I hope you do too - let me know what you think of the new show.

China has been the focus of many discussions on globalization and how it will affect this nation that is developing at an astonishing pace. NPR has been doing a series on old Shanghai. I found this piece today, A Cinematic Ode to Shanghai’s Vanishing World. This story is about the old traditional houses, narrow alleys and tight knit communities that existed in Shanghai, a city of almost 18 million people. Shu Haolun is a filmmaker who grew up in one of these old neighborhoods. His documentary, Nostaglia, will be about this old neighborhood and will be a kind of historical piece to preserve the sense of place and community that existed before the ideas such as “development” and “globalization” challenged this old way of life. From Louisa Lim’s piece:

Shu has produced an ode to this vanishing world. He starts his documentary, Nostalgia, with his reasons for making it: Soon, I’ll only be able to see our alleyway in old photos, and in this film, he says.

Walking around his old neighborhood is like stepping into his documentary. Neighbors exchange greetings and chat as they wash clothes in concrete basins in the alleyway. Imposing, carved-stone pillars and arches frame the tall, wood doorways of the gray, three-story buildings. The buildings are shabby, their facades patched and stained by the passage of history.

And soon, this tight-knit community will be dispersed. In April, residents of this neighborhood, known as Dazhongli, received notice that their houses will be demolished. No one knows when, but everyone realizes it will be soon.

Lim writing allows the reader to imagine a bit of what the film maker’s home used to look like and also gives the reader a sense of what attributes held this neighborhood together for so long. I think the sadness in this piece is that a large part of the residents are elderly. The psychological shift of this change of life so late in life is tragic.

This video is courtesy of Weekly Links of the Week and shows the cost of the swift economic development in China. The video is an underground journalist piece by Sky News, a British news network, that interviews people who have been forced out of their homes, shows footage of village protests, and demolition crews who are making way for the new and improved China. Now this is something that you will not find in the Economist.

Keep an eye out for Nostalgia - I may even see you at the film.

What are you doing with your time in the month of November? I read an article today at NPR.org that was fascinating. It is entitled Novel Ideas: How Writers Create Their Fiction. From the article:

November isn’t just the month of hanging chads and overstuffed turkeys. It’s National Novel Writing Month. For the eighth year in a row, the web sponsors of this occasion are inviting aspiring fictioneers to compose a 50,000 word novel (that’s 175 pages) in 30 days. Finish the word count, and you’re declared a winner.

Each day this week NPR will publish a new blurb about a novelist and their process of writing - and best of all, one of their favorite sentences. Check back all week for a new treat everyday. And, if you are good under pressure, start writing yourself