Day four of Lost Gems of Yesteryear sees us add 5 writeups to the quest master list. The number of new authors is tricky to pin down, seeing as one nominee is Toaster, noded by a diverse group of users under the everyone account.
I expect we have most of the entries now, so if the submisions taper off you don't have to worry about seeing a day log from me every single day of August. I do hope to put up some interim stats before too much longer, maybe once per week of the quest.
Please do read and vote ... that part of the quest continues all month. I hope to hear some nominees on H's podcast ... I'm sure he'd love to have some of you read some of these writeups for us.
Writeups nominated on or about 4 August 2007:
One of my choices is The Great Figure by Lometa.
When I was young, my father was a fireman at an industrial park in small-town Ontario, Canada. I never got to see him actually ply his trade at a call, but we did get to hang around the fire hall a bit. Sometimes the firemen on duty would dress us kids in boots and a coat, and then for a good laugh put us into Scott air packs and leave us immobilized by the combined weight and bulk of the getup. But we also got to see and climb on the gleaming fire engines. We got to 'help' roll up hose and otherwise get underfoot in the fire hall.
Like may young boys, I wanted to be a fireman. When your dad is a fireman, the itch strikes you that much harder. It was heroic, it was physical, but most of all it involved a big, noisy, shiny truck that went places at high speed. We'd play fire hall all summer as kids. We mostly rode around on our bikes, imagining the trucks and making siren sounds. Getting there was all the fun.
In real life, it turned out that a fireman's life was not for me. Instead I spend my working days in a little yellow box of an office, with no windows, no special uniform, and no heroism. Deep down, I still want to be a fireman, to race to battle with a fiery beast and to save homes and cats and such. I always watch fire trucks rush by with a bit of wistfulness. Once I saw a pumper truck catch some air cresting a hill in San Francisco, racing to a call on the streets of San Francisco. The only thing cooler than a fire truck is a flying fire truck!
Anyway, reading The Great Figure when it was posted caused me to look for Demuth's "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold". When I saw the painting, I knew that someday I would want a print. I'm no judge of art. I cannot speak to technique or composition. It doesn't even make me think of a great emergency vehicle flashing by, particularly. But it's big and strong and bold. My wife got me a print last Christmas. We had it framed and it hangs over the mantle. You might be able to see it this month on my home node, if e2's image service cooperates.
Lometa is perhaps one of the site's best known and best loved authors. Her writeups are not only erudite and educational, but crisply laid out and elegantly formatted. Lometa manages to bend e2's limited text options to her will, mixing indentation and decoration to pleasing effect. I knew I wanted a Lometa for the quest. I picked this one for its personal appeal rather than to call it out as her 'best'. Frankly, almost all of her work is 'best'. A new writeup from Lometa is always a gift, and I hope she returns from her recent hiatus ready to share more with us.