User:Mavarin



Hi. I'm Karen Funk Blocher. After watching Wikipedia from the sidelines for a year or so, I finally registered in April 2006 to take responsibility for a few edits to the Madeleine L'Engle entry. I doubted that I'd be a major contributor, but appreciated the opportunity to correct errors and fill in a few holes. Ha! 22 months later I've just passed the 5000 edit mark, and some individual edits took hours to write. I should have known that I'd be obsessive about it. My watchlist currently stands at 400 articles.

My interests include fantasy, science fiction, television and Tucson. I've primarily been writing about contributions to popular culture, circa 1955 to 1990, that Wikipedia has neglected and I know something about. I'm also reverting vandalism, trying to conform to citation and style standards for fictional subjects, and learning to do the preferred reference format correctly. I'm getting better, but I know I need to double back and fix up a number of articles with inline citations. Care to help? Please? I'm finding out that I can't spend hours every night on Wikipedia without pushing my sleep deprivation issue into the red zone. If you take a look at my edit count, you'll see that it started going down on a monthly basis in the new year. Then it went up again. Blame Doctor Who. (Fortunately, I'm able to cut back now that we're in the break between series.) Oh, and I'm trying to deal with "fair use" crises as they come up on my watchlist. If I added a fair use rationale to your image and you don't think it's good enough, feel free to fix it!

Articles Begun
Mostly I've been filling in some of the major gaps in the coverage of Madeleine L'Engle's young adult novels and characters, but occasionally I remedy other gaps as well.

L'Engle-related

 * An Acceptable Time - Madeleine L'Engle's most recent Polly O'Keefe novel (1989).
 * Dragons in the Waters - another Polly O'Keefe novel.
 * Adam Eddington - one of Madeleine L'Engle's major crossover characters, appearing in both the O'Keefe series and the Austin family series of books.
 * Zachary Gray - Madeleine L'Engle's bad boy character who dates both Vicky and Polly.
 * Ilsa - Madeleine L'Engle's rare second novel.
 * Major characters in the works of Madeleine L'Engle - spun off from L'Engle bio article, with characters and intro added.
 * The Moon by Night - the second Austin family novel.
 * Polly O'Keefe - L'Engle's second-generation O'Keefe heroine.
 * Canon Tallis - another of Madeleine L'Engle's major crossover characters, appearing in four books.
 * The Young Unicorns - the third Austin family novel.

Other

 * John Berton - a computer graphics supervisor with an impressive resume.
 * Kevin Corcoran - Kevin played Disney's "Moochie" character in numerous projects.
 * Principal Amanda Durst - a surprisingly complex, likeable character on Strange Days at Blake Holsey High. This article has since been combined with other pages into Characters of Strange Days at Blake Holsey High
 * Francie (Barbie doll) - I was amazed that this article about "Barbie's MODern cousin" did not exist. It does now - short, but at least it's there.
 * Landmark Theatre (Syracuse, New York) - Having mentioned it in the Harry Chapin article, I decided to put together at least a stub on this historic Oriental style "movie palace". I leave it to others to add photos and other details, since I haven't been there in over 30 years.
 * A Thurber Carnival - Thurber's 1960 Broadway review had a slew of links before the article even existed.

Articles Extended
Added significantly to and in some cases edited and organized the following:

Disney

 * "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes"
 * Henry Calvin
 * Tim Considine
 * The Famous Jett Jackson
 * Annette Funicello
 * Tommy Kirk
 * Mickey Mouse Club
 * Gene Sheldon
 * "The Spectrum Song"
 * Spin and Marty
 * "There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow"
 * Zorro (1957 TV series)

Film

 * Back to the Future
 * Charlotte's Web (2006 film)
 * A Christmas Story
 * Hill Valley
 * My Summer Story - but it's still very short.
 * Chris Wedge

L'Engle

 * Vicky Austin - L'Engle's other major heroine
 * The Arm of the Starfish
 * Echthroi - rescued from a redirect with much more info and sourcing
 * A House Like a Lotus
 * Kything
 * Madeleine L'Engle
 * Many Waters
 * Meet the Austins
 * Charles Wallace Murry
 * Meg Murry
 * Sandy and Dennys Murry
 * Calvin O'Keefe
 * Places in the works of Madeleine L'Engle
 * A Ring of Endless Light
 * A Severed Wasp - have barely started work on this brief stub
 * The Small Rain
 * A Swiftly Tilting Planet
 * A Wind in the Door
 * A Wrinkle in Time
 * A Wrinkle in Time (film)

Literary

 * Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
 * List of fictional books
 * Random House
 * "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (spun off 1947 film and beefed up story info)
 * Jean Shepherd
 * James Thurber - also did extensive work on his Wikiquote entry.
 * "The Unicorn in the Garden"
 * Walter Mitty - the character article still needs a lot of work

Music
(see also Disney)
 * Space age pop - someone started this stub and then just left it there. I'm no expert on the subject, but I was able to extend it a little bit.

Television

 * Peggy Cass
 * Daniel Boone (TV series)
 * Paul Frees
 * Alice Ghostley
 * Martin Milner
 * George Maharis
 * Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol‎
 * My World and Welcome to It
 * "Never mind"
 * Lucas Randall - like the one on Principal Durst, it is now part of a larger article.
 * Route 66 (TV series)
 * Ernie Sabella
 * Jack Scalia
 * So Weird
 * Tequila and Bonetti

Tucson and Baseball

 * Hi Corbett Field
 * Old Tucson Studios
 * Park Place (Tucson, Arizona) - if a mall needs an article at all, it should at least mention something notable about the place.
 * Tucson Sidewinders
 * Tucson, Arizona
 * Tucson Toros

Other

 * Gila Bend, Arizona
 * Fayetteville-Manlius High School - User:Sinisterminister has done amazing work to improve the article.
 * Snoopy

You now are a Nobel man/woman/otherworldly-creature
Thanks for keeping a cool head. I think you'd be a pretty good mediator. -- The Prophet Wizard of the Crayon Cake {{sup|{Prophesize)}} 21:21, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Photos
To date I've uploaded well over 50 images to Wikipedia, excluding the ones on this page. Most of these are related to either television, baseball or Madeleine L'Engle. My scanner broke down after the first 30 or so, but I've now replaced it.

If you like, you can see my Gallery of non fair-use images. Several are baseball-related, and most are Tucson-based, including a couple of photos of Old Tucson Studios, one of Park Place Mall and one of Hotel Congress during Dillinger Days. Also here: a close-up of a vintage aluminum Christmas tree, and a fun sign in Gila Bend, Arizona.