Kirsten Mortensen's blog

The Susquehannah is still above flood stage in Binghamton.

I’m IMing my dad right now. He’s passing along the news. The worst, he says, is the gas leaks. A couple of homes have blown up.

It’s a mess. This is only just starting to sink in for me.

Here are some bloggers who are in the middle of it: FreeWillBlog is in Endicott, I gather. Lots of details on what’s happening. Robblogs reports that a couple of truckers died when they plunged off a bridge washed out on Route 88 near Sydney. Webblog-ed has a link up to a Flickr photo stream with lots of pics of the Delaware River.

I’m heading out that way this weekend, will try to get some pics, also.

Technorati Tags: flood, chenango county

I have access to a couple different website traffic statistics services through my hosting plan, and every once in awhile I scan the list of search phrases people have used to find this blog.

Some of them match up pretty well with topics I blog on a lot. I’ve had a lot of hits lately about novel length, for instance. Any time I blog about some news item, I get hits afterward for people who want either information about it, or, I suppose, to read someone else’s comments.

Then there are the phrases that . . . well, here’s a sample from June:

true identity miss snark

I get that one, or a variation on it, at least once a month. But sorry, folks, I’m as in the dark on that one as you are. Also, I kind of like not knowing, but that’s a subject for a whole ‘nother post.

skunks in my garage

Is someone checking my blog to see if he’s got skunks in his garage? If so, he’s taking the Information Age waaaaaaaaay too seriously.

opposite of advance

Uh, that would be “retreat.” Glad to help.

smelly viburnum bush pest

Possibly related to the skunks in your garage?

bottled butter

No, thanks.

how to kill ducks in your yard

Try getting them in a row, first.

polar plunge pic rochester

Not here, sorry, but if you find one send me a link and I’ll post it!

Technorati Tags: funny keyword search

The weather system that dumped all that water on the Mid-Atlantic states didn’t make it to Rochester. I got an inch of rain here the day before yesterday, and that’s about the extent of it.

The Southern Tier, where I grew up, did get hit, however.

My dad says he’s has over 11 inches of rain this month.

He also just told me that the Chenango River reached the steps of the old bank in Downtown Oxford. That’s higher than it got during Hurricane Agnes in 1972–considered the major flooding event, in Upstate New York, in recent memory.

Until now.

(Scroll down here to see a photo of the bank.)

Technorati Tags: Chenango County, flooding

Not if you’ve given your account information to Paypal.

If you’ve given your account information to Paypal, your account now belongs to Paypal, too.

Some time ago, I signed up for a newsletter that was paid for through Paypal via recurring debit. This week, I tried to cancel the subscription. The fellow I bought the subscription from didn’t respond for more than 48 hours. In the meantime, I notified Paypal that I’d canceled the subscription, and requested that they stop the payment from posting.

I got a form response directing me to their online dispute tutorial. Big help — not.

When I took the documentation of my attempts to cancel the subscription to my bank, they told me there was nothing whatsoever they could do.

I realize that banking transactions are handled by a massive, computer-driven virtual machine with cogs that grind on despite the protestations of mere customers.

But this isn’t right. I should have the ability to control who takes what from my account. I shouldn’t have to jump through arcane hoops to stop transactions. The burden should be on Paypal, and on my bank, to prove that the withdrawal is legit. Not on me.

I will never, ever authorize Paypal to make a recurring debit from one of my bank accounts again.

Technorati Tags: Paypal, automatic debits

I have a draft of my new novel done, I’ve started querying, and I’ve gotten my first nibble: request for partial came in late yesterday, emailed it out today.

Nothing in the world is more fun than this. Even though I know what a long shot it is . . . how hard it is to fall short. It’s still about the most fun of anything I can imagine.

Technorati Tags: writing

You know that, nowadays, anything is art. So this story was probably inevitable:

Artist David Hensel submitted a sculpture to London’s Royal Academy of Arts for consideration for its upcoming “Exhibit 1201″ exhibit. But at some point in transit the sculpture, “a finely wrought laughing head in jesmonite,” got separated from its plinth.

You can probably guess what happened next: the Academy blithely selected the plinth for inclusion in the exhibit.

Total number of applicants: 9000.

One wonders what these artists will choose to submit next year. This one’s going to be hard to top.

Actually, the funniest thing about the story is that the Academy has refused to reconsider its selection:

[T]he Royal Academy denies having made an error, for the plinth and hastily carved wooden support were, according to an official statement, “thought to have merit.”

(Ah, the passive voice, last refuge for rogues, thieves, and reality-challenged connoisseurs of art.)

Technorati Tags: modern art

Diana Peterfreund is a blogger and debut novelist who is a member of several Yahoo forums I’m also on. I’ve been impressed many times by her generosity and the incisiveness of her comments. She’s a smart cookie who takes the time to pass along what she knows to other writers.

Now she’s set up a website for her novel, Secret Society Girl, which is coming out July 18. Here’s the link. More great stuff. She’s doing this right. No surprise there, lol

Technorati Tags: writing, Secret Society Girl

Wylie-Merrick. Great stuff.

Technorati Tags: writing, literary agents

One of the most fabulous gifts my parents ever gave me was piano lessons. I started them in second grade. Once a week, after school, I’d walk across town from the Oxford elementary school, where my mom was a fourth grade teacher — across the bridge that spans the Chenango River — and make my way to my piano teacher’s house. Her last name was Scarlet and she was a Miss. Miss Scarlet. I didn’t know about the other Miss Scarlet yet. My Miss Scarlet lived with her sister, also elderly, also unmarried, in a house that was very still and full of lace and furniture that I didn’t dare touch, barely dared to look at, and her piano was weighted down by the white ceramic busts of composers that, to me, all looked alike, unconnected with anything except their own glossy anonymous whiteness.

Miss Scarlet was the organist of my church and had advocated that our school district teach Latin, so she would tell me what pieces she was going to play at next week’s service and was very pleased when I began taking Latin in high school.

I took piano lessons from her until probably about my junior year, and then I took lessons again in college when I found out I could take them as part of my courseload and actually earn credits for it.

Then, for many years I lived without a piano. Pianos are not suited for an itinerate lifestyle — for living quarters split among students, for moves that seem to come along every six months or so, moves you manage with your own car or maybe the help of a friend with a truck.

Now I have a home in the suburbs — a spot where I’ll be staying for awhile.

It wasn’t easy to pick out a piano, from among the used pianos at the store. I had no idea how to choose. I knew I needed something small, and inexpensive. But it had been so long, at that point, since I’d played (15 years?) that I felt funny even trying them.

But a black Wurlitzer console caught my eye. It was reasonably priced, and the right size.

I played a few keys. I liked its sound. It sounded, to me, like a bigger piano.

Nobody else likes it. The man who tunes it volunteered that he likes a piano with a softer tone. My mother’s console sounds downright muffled in comparison — she doesn’t much care for my piano’s sound, either.

But I love it.

I didn’t play much even after I got the piano, maybe six years ago — I was busy with a preschooler, it was hard to make the time. Then last year I started again a bit more seriously. It was a bit disheartening. I felt I’d lost whatever ease I once had. Then I contracted a frozen shoulder, left side, and between the pain and the loss of mobility I had to give it up.

At long last, now, I am back at it again. And for some reason I’m at a loss to explain, all the old stuff has suddenly come back. I’ll sit down to try a piece I haven’t touched since my early 20s and my hands remember it. They get ahead of me sometimes, I’ll realize I’m playing and with the realization I’ll suddenly lose my place and sit there laughing at myself.

And the piano’s sound: yes, it’s loud. It’s a ringing tone, it’s loud, it’s brash, brassy. But I love it. I love what I can do with the dynamic range. I love that I can ham it up. I was playing Gonoud’s Funeral March of a Marionette tonight, and it’s like I never connected with the piece before — I can remember that it used to bore me, I’d play it part way, then get bored. But not with this piano. This piano is somehow letting me find what this piece is about, the peculiar, precise hard drama of it.

I’m not a performer — I’ve never liked playing for people. But what I do love is to work up my own emotional response, and my little piano lets me do it.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

I love my piano.

(Btw, this is interesting: an abstract of a study that compares the auditory response to “pure tones” vs. piano tones. Piano tones elicit the stronger response . . .)

Technorati Tags: piano

Some years ago, a Corgi rescue organization asked permission to reprint a post I wrote for a Yahoo forum on their website.

They folded my post into an article they published for people who wonder if Corgis are a good breed for families with children.

Every once in awhile I get emails from people who have read the article. Unfortunately, most of them come from people who have realized, too late, that they have a heart-breaking problem on their hands.

I got one of those this weekend. Woman’s Corgi bit her three-year-old daughter on the face. The plastic surgeon is hopeful that the scars won’t be too bad.

These emails share something else in common: between the lines, what people want is for me to show them how to make it better.

Unfortunately, there is no way to make it better.

Once a dog has snapped at someone, let alone bitten, your options are very limited. If you’ve purchased the dog from a “reputable breeder,” you can probably ship the dog back. You’ll be out whatever you paid for the dog, but at least the problem is no longer yours.

If you got the dog from a “backyard breeder” (someone you found in the classifieds, for example) or a pet shop, or a neighbor whose dog had puppies, things are much more grim.

You can try to find a behaviorist who can help you learn to modify the behavior. Unfortunately, that’s no panacea. If you happen to choose a lousy behaviorist, you may end up with a dog that is more aggressive and less predictable than before.

Behaviorists cost money.

Behaviorists also don’t actually “fix” a dog. They help you learn how to modify a dog’s behavior. You are going to have to do a lot of work. It’s going to take time, consistency, and focus.

And no matter how much work you do, you can’t erase the fact that your dog has bitten. You can’t ever leave your dog unsupervised around children, for example.

So you’ll end up sinking money and time into a situation that, at best, is somewhat manageable.

Oh, and by the way, you may be in for another expensive surprise when it’s time for you to renew your homeowner’s insurance policy.

Hopefully you’ve got the cash on hand to self-insure.

Your only other option, sadly, is to have the dog put to sleep. Rescue organizations won’t take dogs that have bitten (they are glutted with dogs that haven’t bitten — and taking a dog that has bitten opens them to liabilities, should the dog bite again).

Unfortunately, people really really don’t want to hear this. When I wrote to the woman who last emailed me, I got an angry email back, accusing me of being cruel.

Cruel?

Give me a break. Cruel would have been to tell her she’s an idiot for not getting her dog neutered, for failing to train the dog properly in the first place, for allowing a dog that had begun to snap anywhere near her children.

Cruel would be asking her what kind of a mother would keep a dog in her home after it had bitten her daughter’s face.

Cruel, yeah, I could have been cruel. But I wasn’t.

Here’s how she closed her email to me:

I would hate to hear your response to someone you knew and really cared for.

Now, that is cruel.

Technorati Tags: dogs, dog training, dog bite