When we started this blog, we knew that it was a project with an end date in sight, even if we didn't know exactly when that day would come. That day has come now, a little over a year after our first post. After tomorrow, we will no longer be updating the blog or the Facebook page attached to it. Nothing will be deleted, naturally, but no new things will be added.
It was not a decision made easily, but we think it's time. Given time, drive and other RL considerations, we feel that this project is, if not completed (can you ever run out of GWTW subjects?), at least well rounded and ready to be finished.
Blogging about Gone with the Wind has been one of the most gratifying things we ever did. It much exceeded our expectations, however high those were when we started. We met a lot of great people, whom we would have never met otherwise, we were part of a very active, very dedicated community and we learned many things, both from researching stuff and from the discussions here and on Facebook. We thank you all for your contributions and support. You were really the best part of blogging and we will miss you!
Do you guys remember Erin Blakemore, whose book The Heroine's Bookshelf came out a few months ago? Her book in general and her chapter on Scarlett in particular made quite an impression on us back then, and now Erin is back with an awesome event at her blog! Through the first weeks of February, she's celebrating Heroine Love by inviting bloggers to write about heroines they love. Head out there to check out our post today, the suit of great contributions so far and the prizes you can win! Oh, and alternatively, keep in touch with the event and The Heroine's Bookshelf road to bestsellersdom here, on Erin's Facebook page.
Happy New Year, everyone! We've had tons of fun working on the blog thus far, thanks to your enthusiasm and comments. We're lucky to have readers like you, and we're looking forward to bringing you plenty more in 2011!
As those of you who keep in touch with us through Facebook know already, next week we're hosting a contest for funniest and most succinct summary of Gone with the Wind. This is the prize - a GWTW calendar for 2011:
and - now that we have your attention - these are the details:
When:Monday, Dec. 13 at 9 am CST through Tuesday, Dec. 14, 9 am CST
Why: because we want to give you a GWTW calendar for Christmas, that's why.
What do you have to do: Write a witty summary of GWTWunder 100 words. Submit it in the thread that will be opened for this purpose on our wall on Facebook. Wait for the results. Funniest entry gets the calendar. The rest of the contenders get the chance to badmouth Bugsie & iso's crappy sense of humor.
A long time ago, you might remember, we threatened you all with a new sidebar page, containing the list of Gone with the Wind references we shared on Facebook. Well, it's finally here, at least the first part of it, the one we relied on as our Facebook supply so far. We covered the years from 1937-1967 and we'll cover the rest as we go. If you're not on Facebook, feel free to add any GWTW reference you stumble upon in the comments of that page.
If you're on Facebook, however, we'd like to invite you to:
Like Kendra's page: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier for its sheer awesomeness and for the chance to win a Vivien Leigh postcard (only through Sunday! more details on the page's wall).
Spread the love of the aforementioned pages.
We should also apologize for how slow things have been around here lately. Life's been a little busy for both of us, but we promise to do better next week!
Ladies and gentlemen, we need your help and patience. Since the comments in Blogger were getting hard to follow, with the lack of a threaded comments option and all, we have switched to Disqus. However, this means that all the old comments have temporarily disappeared. They are being imported into Disqus as we speak and it might take a while for them to be back (the worst case scenario: a couple of days).
In the meantime, please try the new commenting system and tell us what you think.
Are the comments easier to follow this way?
Are you okay with the new login options (i.e. email required)?
Have you encountered any problems trying to comment (page loading slowly/not responding etc)?
We can switch back to the old system anytime if people are not okay with Disqus/if the old comments never do show up *knock on wood*, so this is your chance to let us know what you think.
See that shiny new badge in our sidebar? Yes, that's right, we've gotten ourselves a Facebook page... and a new project to go with it.
Besides being the official Facebook page of our blog, that page will be a home for all the Gone with the Wind references we can find. We know it's been done before, but the project fascinated us. We're always excited when we stumble across an allusion to Gone with the Wind in a movie or book, and so we wanted to create a comprehensive database, including the relevant quotes and when necessary/possible the Youtube videos to accompany them.
We already covered the period between 1937 and 1967 with movies, plays, books, songs etc. and with your help, we hope to cover the rest. We will be sharing what we have so far twice a day on Facebook and, once we posted enough references on that page, we will create a page in our sidebar for the database.
So whether you want to share a reference you've recently found, see what we or other people shared so far, or simply stay in touch with our blog, become our fans on Facebook!
Aww, we got a Sweet Friends blog award from Kendra at Days in Mayfair. And it has cupcakes too! (Doing our best not to go aww again and/or break into a rendition of Julie Andrews singing "My Favorite Things," after reading Kendra's title. Failing of course.) Thanks, Kendra, we heart you!
The rules:
1. Post who gave you this award.
2. State ten things you like.
3. Give this award to 10 other bloggers and notify them with a comment.
Now, we would be happy to give this award to 10 bloggers but the thing is, we're new around here and only had time to discover a handful of blogs. They're all very cool blogs, though, and we'll tag them at the end.
As you know, ours is a collective blog, so instead of having two separate lists, we've decided to go for a list of things we like together and post it under The Old Guard account. Here goes:
1. Gone with the Wind
She needs kissing badly
This one is pretty obvious. After all, you're here reading a Gone with the Wind blog by us, aren't you? Besides, this obsession passion deserved to go first, simply because without it we would have never met, so naturally we wouldn't have had any common list of favorite things to share with you.
2. White wine
This row? Endless. Cheers!
Second on our list comes...booze? Naturally, considering the fact one of us voted to reduce the list to "books and booze" and be over with (name withheld to protect the guilty drunk). Common decency and our need to ramble on to ten topics won, so instead we're just giving white wine a nod. White wine is the stuff we both like and of which we could drink endlessly.
3. Old books
Photo from here.Starry eyes from Bugsie's AW collection.
And the taste of victory, Bugsie adds. You see, her enthusiasm for musty old books is only surpassed by her enthusiasm for finding bargains on musty old books. She has a small collection of 19th century books and devoutly hopes this potentially expensive hobby will never get out of control. Iso, on the other hand, started by being unimpressed, but was gradually won over by the beauty of old books (and the persistent nagging of her co-blogger), and nowadays she'll go "whee!" just as loudly at the sight of some scanned online treasure.
4. Chocolate
This pile? They said it was endless. We proved them wrong
Self-explanatory. How can you not like chocolate? [Bugsie understands if you just pick out the dark ones though. White chocolate is not real chocolate.]
5. Regina Spektor
We actually have pretty similar tastes in music in general, but Regina Spektor scores high on both our lists, so she was the obvious choice here. We love her voice. And her lyrics. And her sense of humor. And her playfulness. You might as well call us fangirls.
6. Procrastination
Well, Scarlett is our role model. After all, tomorrow is another day.... Oh, and by the way, this post? was due yesterday.
7. Cats
One of Bugsie's cats, now in white
If she doesn't end up living under a bridge after she sold her house to pay for old books (which let's face it, is likely to happen at some point), Bugsie will grow old to be your typical crazy cat lady. She started off young, given the fact she already owns three (fat lazy adorable) cats, two of which are black. Iso is a big cat fan too, though for the moment she's content with admiring her parents' cats from afar.
8. The Victorian Age
Fierce
We like history in general, but the Victorian age deserved a nod, since it's more or less the focus of our blog. We first discovered it in connection to Gone with the Wind, but the more we read about it, the more fascinating we find it in itself.
9. England
Keeps the sun out.
Bugsie: okay, we're down to two
iso: how about England then?
Bugsie: England?
iso: I lived there, you like it, you have the UK flag serving as a curtain [very long story, vaguely related to the World Cup.]
Bugsie: oh yeah, England it is then
iso: but wait...didn't we sort of cover it with the victorian age and all?
Bugsie: haven't been outside much in the last century, have you?
10. Words
No, not just words in general, because that would be just weird, wouldn't it? But if you read our blog, you know we love long sentences and lame jokes, and words are instrumental to both, so there you have it: we love words. And just so you know it, we very much prefer the term "word-lovers" to "wordy."
Hello and welcome to How We Do Run On, a joint project between longtime windies and recent bloggers iso and Bugsie. It started with our mutual love for Gone with the Wind and our increasingly long conversations about minor very interesting points in the book. In the process, we discovered the joys of researching said minor very interesting points, and stumbled across tidbits that made us laugh, think, change our opinions and, occasionally, just squeal with excitement. We thought we’d create a place to store and share all these things, and here it is: our virtual Gone with the Wind scrapbook. We had fun putting this together and we hope you’ll have fun reading it as well.
Some of the things you can expect to see around here:various historical tidbits, quotes from the book analyzed in their historical context, Victorian fashion, architecture and mores, book & movie discussions, pretty collages and a fair amount of rambling.
What is fair to assume you won’t find on this page: too much talk about any of the sequels/prequels as we like to pretend they don’t exist, any form of Civil War mythology/racism apologia (we can discuss it, but we can’t and won't defend it) and the snows of yesteryear. The last is the only one prone to change.
Our calling hours:Visit us each day at any time you'd like and we'll try to make sure there is something new for you to read.
In the interest of full disclosure, below you’ll find our vital GWTW stats; feel free to point and laugh leave your own GWTW coordinates in the comments here if so inclined. And of course, if you have any other comments, requests for things you'd like to see covered or simply want to say hi, we'd love to hear from you. Other than that, enjoy!
Our Vital Stats
iso:
Age first read the book:14, scientifically proven to be the ideal age to first read Gone with the Wind. (Just old enough to think you are very grown up and fully understand it, but young enough to swoon hopelessly over the romance.)
Number of movie viewings:Countless- I actually *wore out* my first VHS tape of the movie from repeated use.
