There’s still time to go to the Scarborough Faire in
Waxahachie, TX. Themed weekends began on
April 4 and will continue through May 25. I went during the “Celtic weekend,” where
I encountered several fair goers dressed in kilts.
Plenty of other themed
weekends, e.g., “Flights of Fantasy” and “Legends of the High Seas,” are
available.
At the Scarborough Faire, there’s something for everyone--jousting,
live performances, crafting, and tarot reading. Fairgoers can rent costumes,
have their faces painted, or have their hair braided.
The tagline on the Scarborough website says, “Step Back in
Time,” but it’s really an immersion in a cosplaying fantasy world. I saw
someone dressed as the Goblin in Labyrinth. He had his hair styled like David
Bowie in the film and wore leather pants.
Someone
called out, “You’re not taking my baby brother.” He smiled and played along. “We’ll
see about that,” he said.
Everyone had their own vibe. Some came in suits of armor, Renaissance
gowns, and other typical costumes, but still others dressed however they wanted.
HubSpot for Beginners--Master the Basics by Thalita Milan is a great introductory course that can be found on Udemy.
In this course, Milan discusses how to create a free account and how to use basic features e.g. manage contacts, manage marketing strategies, and follow up on leads.
She briefly introduces Hubspot's Ai layer, Breeze. She also covers GDPR compliance settings.
Untapped focuses on Yearup.org, a program designed to help close the opportunity gap.
Young people from low-income backgrounds are given tools and the opportunity to intern for Fortune 500 companies.
Untapped endorses skills-based hiring because there is so much untapped talent and so many jobs going unfilled.
The documentary follows six young people who are trying to succeed in the Year Up United program. One of the participants, Lamia, is pictured above. Other participants are Zane, Brianna, Megan, Simge, Andres.
The documentary is peppered with advice from CEOs like Mary Barra of General Motors and Byron Auguste of Opportunity@Work.
The documentary is inspiring and motivational. Though these internships are highly competitive, there are some local alternatives if New York is too distant.
After watching Untapped, I did some research on the non-profit. Year Up United, partners with community colleges, like Dallas College in Dallas, Texas.
Hopefully, many more non-profit organizations like Year Up will give young workers a path towards success.
Not surprisingly, typewriters figure prominently in The Typing Lady: and other fictions.
In “The Typing Lady,” the lady collects typewriters. When she types, though, an uncanny thing happens.
The typewriters write stories of their own — emotional tales that she cannot control. The “typing lady” takes the typewriters apart, looking for the mechanism that accounts for the literary outpouring, but she cannot discover the source.
In “Leafblower” Mel uses a manual typewriter, a Remington Rand, to type poems, her real love, and a laptop to earn a paycheck as a technical writer. She also takes care of an elderly couple in exchange for a cheap room over their garage.
In one of the best stories, “Ships in the Night,” Cayenne, an aspiring romance writer, has a portable pink Olivetti. She wants to launch a career as a writer so her daughter can have a more stable life.
In “Feelings” two mean-spirited girls decide to engage in a school project. They are to write a report about an act of compassion they undertake in their community. Kai types a letter to a lonely classmate on a 1964 IBM Model C Executive.
Ozeki’s stories are filled with aspiring writers who try but fail to send deeply personal letters. In The Typing Lady characters write deeply personal missives that they can never send (“The Anthropologist’s Kid,” “Feelings,” and “One Art”).
More than that, though, Ozeki’s stories are filled with writers whose writing ambitions will never be satisfied. Cayenne, who wanders between lovers, keeps changing the plot of her novel. The daughter in “Ships in the Night,” knows her mother will never finish her romance novel.
The last two stories even more directly deal with how difficult it is to lead a creative life. The couple in “Where Ambition Goes to Die,” have a strained relationship because of the husband’s ambition to write fiction. In this story, his ambition becomes a black-haired girl filled with daring and impulsive ideas. The couple is calmer now that the black-haired girl is gone. After she disappears, they sleep “unhaunted.”
In “The Problem of the Body,” an author plans to fake her own death to avoid going on a book tour. She also appropriates her granddaughter’s dating app. She goes to cafes and chats with boys who think they are meeting her granddaughter. Though she knows its creepy, she does this until one of them recognizes her as “that writer.”
These stories are impressively complex and nuanced. Each story is in some way related to the art of writing, storytelling, and communicating in an increasingly confusing world. Much like Colm Toibin’s stories, they explore the drama of what is unsaid or the meeting that never happens.
I’ve always been drawn to typewriters. With typewriters,
words hit the page with a noticeable “thunk.” Words cannot easily disappear the
way they can with word processors. Typists have to backspace and type X’s or
use corrective tape which gives writers pause and time to revise. Typed words
have a permanence that cannot be found in today’s word processors, tablets, and
phones.
My mother had a Remington Standard typewriter from the 1960s
that she treasured. Even then in the 1970s and early 1980s it was a relic. The
typewriter weighed a ton so moving it from the desk to the table required
considerable effort.
The Remington had green, gray keys. The rubber carriage
moved along with the words. When it was fully extended, writers heard a small
ding telling them it was time to reposition that carriage. In a way, that
simple act was electrifying for me as a kid. Pushing that slight metal bar and
repositioning the carriage was like reloading a gun. Not that I had guns or
knew anything about them.
The physical motion of moving the carriage was empowering
because it meant I had accomplished something. I had expressed something
exciting and tangible on paper.
I must confess I had an unrealistic view of writing and was
often disappointed with my creative output. When I started a new story, I felt
like the writer in the Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman skit who could create
worlds as he clacked away. But just like the writer in that skit, I was rarely
happy with the results.
I didn’t become the writer that I dreamed of becoming, yet I’m still drawn to typewriters. Many fantastic works of fiction depict typewriters prominently.
One of these works is Suzanne Rindell’s The Other Typist. This novel features Rose who
becomes obsessed with fellow typist, Odalie's world. Both are typists for the New York
City Police department who type the criminals’ confessions in the 1920s. Told from Rose's unreliable perspective, this work is a fascinating psychological novel.
