Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/04/01

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Subject: Re: [Leica] (Re: the fling is over/my search has ended ) now Kodachrome processing
From: Adam Bridge <abridge@idea-processing.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 15:21:32 -0800

Connie Willis, a writer of some rather wonderful humor, wrote of just such
an exchange in her novel "Bellwether".

I think I'm inside fair-use to excerpt this portion:

- ----------------

The clerk was trying to make change for the man in front of me

"It's eighteen seventy-eight," she said.

"I KNOW," the man said. "I gave you a twenty-dollar bill and then after you
ran it up as eighteen seventy-eight, I gave you three cents. You owe me a
dollar and a quarter."

She flipped her hair back, irritably, revelaing an "i".

Give up, I thought. It's no use.

"The register says one twenty-two," she said.

"I KNOW," he said. "That's why I gave you the three cetns. Twenty-two plus
three makes a quarter."

"A quarter of WHAT?"

...

"All RIGHT, find," the man said. "Give me back the three cents and give me
one twenty-one."

...at this point there's an exchange between the narrator and the same
clerk...

I carefully counted out the excact change and left. One the way out, I
stepped on something and looked down. It was a penny. Father on there were
two more. They looked like they had been flung down with some force.


- ----------------

I can highly recommend Connie's work. Her short story "At the Rialto" is a
classic that combines quantum physics and Hollywood in a way that, well,
when it's all will give you a whole new picture of what it takes to check
into a hotel. The short story is collected in several places including a
collection of her work "Impossible Things."

Other work in a similiar vein would be "To Say Nothing of the Dog."

She has a much more serious side. Her first novel "Lincoln's Dreams" and
the later "Doomsday Book" (about the black plague) are worth your
attention.

To put this on topic: I took her photograph but not with a Leica.

Adam
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