The March Hare

Another NaNoWrimo swept under the carpet (and how I “cheated”)

Yet another National Novel Writing Month finished – with more than sixty thousand words, not too bad. It has been the hardest (out of five,  completed three) as …

• We are in the midst of moving — not far this time,  to Santa Rosa de Calamuchita, ten miles South of this town (Villa General Belgrano). We are restoring Mrs. Q’s deceased parents place, more or less abandoned for twenty years.
• The internet “service”  here is truly hopeless. Most places are on the National telephone grid, which offers at least one megabyte connection. This town,  Villa General Belgrano, is fairly unique as it is a German Community * town and all services are run by local cooperatives:  with Teutonic efficiency but the Internet Service provider has to buy bandwidth from the National network:  less than one megabyte for the whole town … and shared by all users.  As it is also one of the most popular tourist attractions (the “Little Germany” factor). most of the time a thousand or more users may be online. though we pay for 250K, we actually get less than dialup speed (when it works at all) .  They have also expanded the service — every restaurant and beerstube offers WiFi access, and “cyber establishments” ” (joints with up to twenty computer booths) have cropped up like mushrooms  after a warm summer rain. And recently, they’ve extended heir service though wireless connections to other small towns, otherwise isolated. Very admirable. Except they have done nothing to increase the number of servers, or purchase more bandwidth.
• Our next town – Santa Rosa – is on the National grid. There is also a service that offers a powerful wireless connection, with dedicated one megabyte: that is, not shared. So things will improve. A lot.
• Through rather peculiar circumstances, I was able to get a Lenovo laptop with automatic wireless – so for this year’s NaNo I’d take it to Santa Rosa (after composing in the Word of Gates) … or from here, get up at three AM, when there would be fewer users online — but not often!

And how I “cheated”:  First, I didn’t write a novel: I set up fifteen short stories, vaguely related, about 3500 words each centered around a fictional town called Chestamovarado as a common point. Second, in October I set up fifteen separate Word pages and wrote a hundred word outline for each story.  It worked — when it became time to start I would know exactly where I was going.  Even so, some of these “chapters”  are pretty bad, so I’ll have to do a lot of editing — once we’ve moved. I think it should turn out well, in the end.

*The name “Villa General Belgrano”:  most would associate it with an Argentine battleship, sunk by the British submarine (“Conqueror”) during the Falklands fracas: in 1982 . It’s much older than that. General Belgrano, Manuel Belgrano, was a lawyer turned general during Argentina’s  war for independence from Spain, beginning in 1810. He had a quandary, during one of his more successful battles: both sides had the same flag. Most confusing. So he devised a new one, light blue, white and light blue in broad horizontal bands. So his biggest claim to fame was as the Argentine flag’s creator.

This town was called “Los Sauces” . It had a substantial German, Swiss and Austrian community even before World War Two but after 1945 a new wave of immigrants came from Germany.  Sometime in the ‘fifties a few youths, presumably after a “fine party”, burnt an Argentine flag.  A judge decided that not only the kids, but the town, had to be punished: so the government of the time ordered the town renamed — in an unusual fit of poetic justice, to the name of General Belgrano, the flag’s  creator. As if,  after burning an American flag in the US, the town would be renamed “Betsy Ross”.

That should   do for tonight. The connection is burbling again (and I can’t load images)

Q