Spinners on a Geo. Yes - no lie. I wish I had pulled out my phone and taken a picture, so I could post the proof here.
Life at a Start-Up
I love my job. It's not perfect and everyone works hard, but everyone is nice, and extraordinarily intelligent, and it's a place where I fit in - a rare experience for me! (Or maybe I am getting more normal.) I was stunned past speaking a few weeks ago when, after shooting my supervisor an email asking if I could use vacation time to leave early and ride my horse a few times a week, he came and loomed threateningly over my desk. "Deborah," he snarled, (Pushed it!! I thought in terror) - "You can leave WHENEVER YOU WANT. You're a SALARIED EMPLOYEE. As long as your work is getting done, you can set your own schedule!!"
At my previous job, the CEO would call me 5 minutes before closing to make sure I was still there. The job before that, my supervisor would not even acknowledge me when I left on vacation - vacations made him angry. I would walk out and say, "Hey, see you in a week!" and he would not look up or say a word... even though I counted up my overtime the last year I was there, and it came to over 100 hours and I had left on time TWICE that year (no raise). In yet another previous corporate job, the marketing executives would report anyone who was not 10 minutes early to HR... even though the entire marketing team almost never left sooner than 2 hours after the day was oficially over.
So I get to ride my horse. It's awesome.
But, start-ups being what they are, the signs of our probable demise are beginning to make themselves apparent. Google has stopped our crucial search engine traffic by blocking us from their index (we compete with one of their lamer products. Think of Google's lamest product, and you will be very close to guessing what we do). Though what our site does is amazing, better (I think) than anything else out there, we're probably not going to make it. We have hardly any users and, without Google, hardly any way to get them.
Does Google have too much power? Graph courtesy of Alexa.com.
Two people were laid off today. At lunch, the talk (in hushed tones) was whether or not our investors will yank our funding after the New Year. I'm still paying for moving expenses from Texas on my credit card, and if I save hard I can just manage to get together enough to make it a month if they do.
There is a feeling of "It's still fun!" - but it's already got a sort of nostalgic tinge. There's also a feeling of, "This is a shame." What we've built is awesome. But it's probably going to vanish. My own reactions are, I'm sure, mild compared to the people who've been there from the beginning, who really are the owners of what's been created. For them it must be like watching the slow death of a living creation. For more than one it was the hope of securing a good future for their small children, by making enough to put by for sending them to college later on.
I'm worried again about the future. California is so expensive. Will I be able to get another job here with the economy doing what it's doing? Will I have to sell my beautiful horse? Where can I go? I've kind of already been everywhere. Texas would be the obvious choice for the development of similar technology, but I was there before. It would hurt a lot, in more ways than one, to go back and I don't think I can really consider it. Maybe Wisconsin or Ohio. Maybe I should think about being a waitress in some medium-sized, semi-rural place.
Really, the world is wide open.
But freedom is more fun shared, and more fun chosen. These are choices I am worn out from being compelled to make.
Lyrics for "Espirits Divins" (1572)
I've looked on the web many times for these and never found them. Maybe I'm the first person to post them online! This is from the Boston Camerata CD, "A Renaissance Christmas", and the hymn, from 16th-century France, is beautiful and stirring. The translation is a true one, not made to rhyme, and it is also very moving.
Espirits divins, chantons de la nuit sainte
O holy spirits, let us sing of the holy night
C'est cette nuit que la pucelle enciente
On that night the virgin with child
Nous a produit le Verbe precieux
Delivered for us the precious Word
C'est cette nuit que l'on a vu les cieux
on that night the heavens were seen
Tout decouverts, et bien cinq cent mille anges
all opened, and half a million angels
Chanter a Dieu d'eternelles louanges.
were heard singing eternal praise to God.
C'est donc a nuit, la nuit la plus heureuse
That night is the happiest of all nights
La nuit qui donne a toute ame amoureuse
the night that gives every loving soul
Cet heur de voir parfois son Createur
the joy to see sometimes its Creator
La nuit qui donne a l'oeil du corps cet heur
the night that gives the eye the joy
Voir et toucher son Dieu en ce bas-monde
to see and to touch its God in this base world
Ne de la Vierge a nulle autre seconde.
born of the Virgin and none other.
Heureuse nuit, devant le jour premiere
O happy night, first night before the day
Nuit non pas nuit, mais parfaite lumiere
night that is no night but perfect radiance
Qui toujours luit et toujours reluira
night that still shines and shall forever shine.
Oh! Malheureusement celui qui te dira
Oh! Unhappy are those who shall call you
Dorenavant obscure, noire et sombre
henceforth dark, black, dim
Quand ton beau clair se fait maitre de l'ombre.
when your clear beauty masters the shadow.
"Happy" and "unhappy" had a much fuller meaning centuries ago than it does today. Happy meant fortunate, blessed, good, fulfilling, rich with good things. Unhappy meant, destroying, painfully turned away from all goodness, self- and other- destructive (think of the quote about Sir Modred, in Morte d'Arthur, where Arthur is warned to avoid Modred because he is "unhappy"; everything around him becomes ruined and destroyed. Arthur keeps his encounter with Modred and is killed by him, and this completes the destruction of Camelot. To be happy or unhappy was not seen as being the fault of any person, but a quality of how each person was shaped from birth, like how we see personality today. Unhappy people, though they were wisely to be avoided, invited pity and compassion, not hatred or blame.)
Piano Sheet Music
I'm finding that piano sheet music online, even if you are charged to download it, is often extremely poor. Either it is dumbed down for very new beginners, or else it has been hacked together in five minutes to copy the harmony of a well-known song with no thought for beauty, expression, emphasis or arrangement. I was especially frustrated recently while looking for a version of "The Drummer Boy", the Christmas song that is so moving, that wasn't a one-note wonder. I've heard it played so beautifully it stopped my heart and brought tears to my eyes, but what you pay for online is oversimplified, hollow and unsatisfying. Finally I found the Really Beautiful version for free at this site: http://www.theperfectscores.com/ . And I'm posting it here in case anyone else is searching for it.
Two poems
...brief but profound, that I discovered (strangely!) in a book of "Light Verse":
"Snowfall"
(anonymous)
Wires strung with diamonds,
Shanties decked in white,
Our shabby little village
Turned lovely over night.
If I were dressed in satin,
With diamonds in my hair,
Do you think, perhaps, that some one
Would say that I was fair?
"The Golf Links"
Sarah N. Cleghorn
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
deborah64554
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