Yet Another Graphics Change

I like to tinker with stuff, in case you haven't figured this out. This month I have been tinkering in particular with The Gimp, which is comparable to Paintshop Pro but free. Therefore we have a more personalized header at the top of my blog tonight. The old one was a modified version of the image that came with the template... which I liked. But I felt that it was a picture that was close to what I'd ideally want. This one nailed it.

I am bad with templates. Or am I good with templates? I peruse them because I have a lot of vague ideas in my head of things I might like, but then when I implement them I end up making so many changes that when I'm finished, it doesn't look much like the original. I still credit those who created the templates, of course, because they have done the important things like the sizing and the layout... in other words stuff that would take me a long time of tinkering to do myself. I should mention I am perfectly capable of writing my own HTML. I am kind of lazy in that respect, being more interested in the aesthetic than in how many pixels across things should be. I am in the middle of redesigning my site, which has looked the same since I got it two years ago. This time I am doing it all myself... the only problem is I'm such a Gemini I've made two templates already and will probably make a couple more before I decide. There is also the guilt because I'm supposed to be editing my novel, but let's skip that for the moment.

Anyway. I think the image is perfect. Then I let it sit for two or three days while I lamented that my old quote didn't fit in the space I wanted it to. I listened to about 30 songs and read some poetry (Masefield, Tennyson), trying to find an appropriate new quote. Then tonight I thought, "Space be damned, I want that one. I picked it and I want it." It's from a song called "Northwest Passage" by Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers. This is a song I heard all the time as a child, on the folk show on public radio (I had a public radio childhood-- to this day I wake up on Sundays and feel weird if there is no classical music on). My musical taste is still quite folky. I have always loved reading about explorers, and the idea of going somewhere new. It's hard today, of course, to be an explorer, since people have tracked all over the earth by now. I think that's what he was getting at in this song: the idea that the only quests we have left now are figurative or personal ones. The great irony is that the search for the Northwest Passage was, when you get down to it, a search for a shortcut back to where you came from.

I've experienced a similar circular route in the past couple of years. Therefore, this is my quote and I'm sticking with it. Explore away, my hearties!

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Tags: graphics, blogging