New Year’s Memes

Filed under:Miscellaneous — posted by Anwyn on January 7, 2007 @ 9:21 am

The door has been opened and the memes are flooding in! Or rather, Patterico dangled links as a reward for ponying up to two more memes, Five Things You Don’t Know About Me and Things I Appreciate about Being a Lawyer Whatever it is I Do. It’d be more interesting if I said three false things and two true things and the commenters guessed which was which, like one of those annoying ice-breaking rituals at corporate meetings and religious convocations, but I’ll just play it straight.

Five Things You Don’t Know About Me:

1) I once shared the stage with Kenny Rogers. Yes, really. He has a Christmas tour every year for which he engages local choirs to back him up. I was in graduate school at the time, his show was approaching Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and our small classical/early music choir, made up of choral grad students and older members of the community, signed on to back him up with harmony vocals, oohs and aahs, and a few well timed step-touches during the big finale number. Yes, step-touches.

2) Speaking of Illinois and the Grad Chorale, though I now consider my profession to be editing, my degrees are in music education (B.M.) and choral music (M.M.). I taught choir in the public schools for three and a half years before finishing my graduate degree and making the switch to editing.

3) I was nearly a casualty of war–twice. During the Civil War, four brothers left home to fight for the Union. Only one returned–my paternal ancestor. On D-Day, my maternal grandfather was on a transport headed to a beach at Normandy. The transport malfunctioned and returned to the English coast.

4) I’ve taken flying lessons–not enough to deliberately solo yet, but enough so that if the pilot of a single-engine airplane I was on became disabled, I could handle the plane and, unlike Indiana Jones, land it, too. I stopped lessons when I became pregnant with my son–I’ll resume and get my license one of these years.

5) Speaking of my son, his birth was the easiest childbirth ever known to woman. I don’t talk about it much because of the dirty looks from the other moms, but I slept through a night of early labor, labored at home until the mid-morning, went to the hospital at 11 a.m. and had my son at 3:20 p.m. without drugs, painkillers, or anesthetic. May not be as interesting as a difficult, three-day labor and epidural story, but believe me I’m happy that this one is the story I have available to tell.

Things I Appreciate About Being an Editor:

Having gone from teaching to editing, I sincerely appreciate that editing doesn’t require much in the way of bending unruly teenagers to my will. Words I cross out stay crossed out. Most of the time.

I enjoy finding the balance between work I need to do and work that needs to be left alone–i.e. a good editor almost pays more attention to writing that shouldn’t be altered than to writing that should. Ignoring that feeling of “but I’m not doing any work at all” and not altering the author’s words when it’s not necessary makes a better editor.

I occasionally edit books meant for college classroom use, and I appreciate being able to strike or alter some of the more egregious political bias before the book reaches students. And yes, I do my best to eliminate bias from both ends of the spectrum. Just the facts, ma’am.

But what I like most of all is just what you’d expect–the knowledge that I am helping to bring books to the consumer. I have always loved books–all my spare time as a kid was devoted to reading, and now I have a job (albeit sporadic freelance at the moment) that pays me to read. Score!

***

Patterico didn’t specify the inclusion of the outdated and laughably simplistic political test, but since I took it I’ll mention that I scored 24, which makes me more liberal than both Patterico and Allah. Which I sincerely doubt. Like Pat and Xrlq, I skipped the dumber questions, like the one that made you choose between Joscelyn Elders and Pat Robertson. Unlike Xrlq, however, I didn’t take it again and answer all of them. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that answers like “federal government is too big” were scored on the liberal side. As if.

***

Your turn, commenters. Come on out of the woodwork, say hi, take up the memes yourself. Or just say hi.

Update: I should mention, the Elders/Robertson question did have an option for “neither,” but I really don’t remember if I picked “neither” or skipped it. I tried to take it again and answer each question, but I just couldn’t do it. “Melting pot” or “multiculturalism” with no other alternatives, “team owners” and “professional athletes” (query: why would I need to trust either? I’m not in the sports business), “stricter controls on the sale of guns” or “mandatory sentencing” or “both,” … if I knew how, I’d write my own test.

Query: Ever notice, regarding the framing of the melting/multi question, that anti-Christian liberals are constantly wishing Christians would become more “melting pot” and blur their Christian identities with secularism and/or other religions, while insisting that most other religions be allowed every possible (and beyond) allowance for maintaining their own uninfluenced system?

3 comments »

  1. Goodness that was a dumb political quiz. I scored 27 but I have no idea what that might mean given a “choice” between more gun regulation and mandatory prison sentences or between “build prisons” and “rebuild cities.” Implicit in all of those “choices” is that government needs to “do something” whenever there’s a “crisis.”

    Oh well, it gave me something to do on a lazy Sunday morning. ;-)

    Comment by Allen — January 7, 2007 @ 11:25 am

  2. I scored 28. Guess that shows how worthless this test is, since I’m definitely left of Anwyn IRL.

    Comment by Daddyman — January 7, 2007 @ 8:47 pm

  3. Your Kenny Rogers story is interesting… number 3 is a combination of fate and synchronicity. And your childbirth story would make a fantastic and reassuring short story, especially for future parents!

    Comment by Vermont Neighbor — July 21, 2007 @ 5:56 pm

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