an important kinder note.
i’ll be writing back.
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“words are but pictures of our thoughts.”
-john dryden
Mar5
Tag Archives: writer
Mar4
page numbers.
an update of my progress on my book.
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“i’m writing a book.
i’ve got the page numbers done.”
-steven wright
Feb7
writing out loud.
(not me, but we could easily pass as sisters)
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for some reason
after almost 8 years of blogging
and never questioning it
I only recently discovered
what the word ‘blog’ actually means.
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Blog is another word for weblog.
A weblog is a website that is like a diary or journal. …
Bloggers often write about their opinions and thoughts.
A blog containing video material is called a video blog or video log,
usually shortened to vlog.
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“Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.” For most of human history, all published writing had been carefully inspected, edited, and approved. In the last decade, blogging has turned the publishing world on its head. A blog allows you to write and publish anything, from anywhere, and have it be immediately available to billions of people all around the world.” -Andrew Sullivan, the Atlantic
. I, for one, am happy to embrace the chaos and vitality.
Feb3
rebuttal on february 3rd.
I’ve been keeping a diary for thirty-three years and write in it every morning.
Most of it’s just whining,
but every so often there’ll be something I can use later:
a joke, a description, a quote.
It’s an invaluable aid when it comes to winning arguments.
‘That’s not what you said on February 3, 1996,’ I’ll say to someone.
-david sedaris
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image credit: connecticut public radio
Jan30
art imitating life.
“what we write should surprise us, the way life surprises us.”
-marty rubin
Jan2
sci-fi or reality tv?
Rod Serling – working at home in Connecticut, 1956
anti-war and social justice activist, tv-writer, producer, narrator
and one of my idols.
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*In 1955, the miscarriage of justice in the Emmett Till case proved a galvanizing point in the Civil Rights Movement. Rod Serling, a 30-year-old rising star in a golden age of dramatic television, watched the events play out in the news. He believed firmly in the burgeoning medium’s power for social justice. “The writer’s role is to be a menacer of the public’s conscience,” Serling later said. “He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus the issues of his time.”
Soon after the trial concluded, Serling, riding off the success of his most well-received teleplay to date, felt compelled write a teleplay around the racism that led to Till’s murder. But the censorship that followed by advertisers and networks, fearful of blowback from white, Southern audiences, forced Serling to rethink his approach. His response, ultimately, was “The Twilight Zone,” the iconic sci-fi anthology series that spoke truth to the era’s social ills and tackled themes of prejudice, bigotry, nuclear fears, war, among so many others. At this point in history, the censors didn’t know what to make of this genre and he was free to deliver his message in a new way.
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in honor of Rod Serling on national science fiction day,
who understood the power of the arts
as a way to communicate important messages.
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“there are weapons that are simply thoughts.
for the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.”
-rod serling
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credits: Getty Images, *Smithsonian Magazine
Apr1
april one.
“the exact day I became a poet was april 1, 1965,
the day I bought my first typewriter.”
-august wilson
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in honor of poetry month.
mine was the day I learned to hold a pencil
and found a scrap of paper to scribble on.
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image credit: daskeyboard
Jul31
gates.
Mexican journalist freed by ICE, joins University of Michigan as fellow
After being detained at an immigrant detention center for nearly eight months, Mexican journalist Emilio Gutierrez Soto will join the 2018-19 Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists class at the University of Michigan. Gutierrez, who will be a Senior Press Freedom Fellow at Wallace House, and his son, Oscar, were freed July 26 from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Texas.
“With so many challenges to press freedom, and in the midst of a crisis around immigration policy, it is easy to feel powerless,” said Knight-Wallace Fellowship director Lynette Clemetson, who met with Gutierrez in April at the El Paso, Texas detention facility to invite him to join the program. “Emilio’s release, due to the efforts of many, is a reminder that we all can do something to effect change.”
Gutierrez and his son were released a day before a federal judge’s deadline for U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials to produce documents explaining why the journalist was detained. Though Gutierrez was released by ICE, he has not been granted asylum, National Press Club Freedom Fellow Kathy Kiely said.
“We’re extremely happy, but there was no settlement agreement reached,” Kiely said. “We have been talking to the government about settling the case and discussing the terms of the settlement, but they never responded to that. In the end, they didn’t agree to anything, they just released him. On July 10, the judge issued an order citing constitutional protections of free speech and press freedom in raising concerns about immigration officials’ treatment of Gutierrez.
In 2017, an immigration judge in El Paso denied Gutierrez’s asylum request and he was scheduled for deportation. The deportation was halted after protests from numerous journalism organizations including The National Press Club, Reporters Without Borders and the American Society of News Editors.
Gutierrez entered the country 10 years ago seeking asylum after his reporting on corruption in his home country made him the target of death threats. He and his son had been held in an ICE detention facility near El Paso, Texas since December. He was previously denied asylum and is still in the process of scheduling an appeal.
“He did everything that the immigration officials say refugees should do,” Kiely said. “He came in through a port of entry, he declared himself, asked for asylum, he’s gone to every immigration check-in. Why are they spending so much of our taxpayer resources if he’s not a bad guy?” While Gutierrez’s asylum status remains unclear, plans are moving forward for him to be a part of the fellowship at UM in the fall, Kiely said.
“Wallace House, the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor community are eager to receive Gutierrez and his son as the family works to resume their life in the U.S. and Gutierrez has the opportunity to reconnect with journalism,” Clemetson said.
The Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists is one of several organizations that signed amicus briefs organized by The National Press Club in support of Gutierrez’s case. While at UM, Gutierrez will study issues related to global press freedom and safety.
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“it is useless to close the gates against ideas: they overlap them.”
-klemens von metternich
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credits: martin slagder, ann arbor news, m-live, reporters without borders
Jul26
journos.
“ann arbor news reporter stan bradshaw
leaves building front door for assignment, september 1948″.
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this old news image reflects the one we often had of intrepid reporters, hot on an assignment, giving us the latest news of pinnacle events in the life of ann arbor. there was a certain quality and reliability to the news and its staff, bringing us the best stories and photographs available. the photos still resonate with the innocence and spontaneity of life and those living it here.
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“journalism keeps you planted in the earth.”
-ray bradbury
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to all the journos out there, still finding a way to tell the story.
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image credits: oldnews.aadl.org, ann arbor townies
Jun18
magical fathering.
children’s book author roald dahl and his daughter, lucy
What If Willy Wonka Was Your Dad?
Roald Dahl’s Magical Parenting With Food
“food was a huge part of our upbringing,” lucy dahl says. her father delighted his children with fanciful “midnight feasts” in the woods and often used mealtime to test out new characters from stories he was working on.
three-course dinner chewing gum.
fizzy lifting drinks.
everlasting gobstoppers.
these, of course, are the creations of willy wonka, who himself is the creation of author roald dahl. food is a huge part of his work, and as it turns out, dahl’s creative and sometimes twisted approach to food wasn’t confined to his books.
“food was a huge part of our upbringing,” says dahl’s daughter lucy.
tn this week’s episode of the sporkful podcast, ahead of father’s day, lucy shares stories of the witch’s potions that accompanied bedtime, the cabbage her father said came straight from the queen’s garden, and being woken up in the middle of the night to eat chocolate.
“everything about our childhood was eccentric,” she says, “although we didn’t realize it at the time because it was just normal to us.” lucy dahl is 51 now, but she still bursts with childlike glee when she recalls her father’s “midnight feasts.”
he’d wake the kids up in the middle of the night and pile them into the car – which was full of hot chocolate and cookies – and drive them up the road in the english countryside where they lived.
then they’d walk in to the woods in their pajamas to look for badgers.
“you couldn’t talk, and he’d say, ‘nobody move! and if you’ve got an itch, blow on it. try and hold your breath, try not to breathe!’ ” lucy recalls. “and sure enough, mr. badger would come prowling out and walk right past us. it was incredibly exciting.”only once they had seen an animal could they tuck in to their sweet feast.”and then,” lucy says, “we’d all go home, back to bed, delighted.”
roald dahl kept his kids entertained during normal eating hours, too. he often used mealtime to test out new characters from stories he was working on.”the minpins lived in the woods beyond our house,” lucy remembers, referring to one of her father’s last books, about a tiny people who live inside trees. “the BFG – the big friendly giant – lived underneath our orchard. it all coincided with what we ate. for breakfast were minpins’ eggs and fried bread. but what they actually were were quail eggs.”
just as roald dahl used stories to bring food to life at home, he used food to bring characters to life in his books. willy wonka’s fizzy lifting drinks aren’t just a fun idea – they also tell us something about who he is. in fantastic mr. fox, the three mean farmers who are out to get mr. fox are described only by their body shapes and their diets.
so this father’s day, wake your kids up in the middle of the night, take them into the woods in their pajamas to look for badgers, load them full of chocolate, then put them back to bed.
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“even though you’re growing up,
you should never stop having fun. “
– nina dobrev
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credits: npr, the spoon, the sporkful, dan pashman, m.haircloth
I didn't have my glasses on.... 