Technical Frustration, or, Why Me?
I've been trying to add my essay, "A New Wrinkle" to my articles page for two days, but let me stress, this is not Red Room's fault.It's Word. Bane of my life. Every time I try to open it, I get a message that the file may be in use or not a perfect Word document??? Anybody got any ideas? (BTW, I have Word for Mac.)...
Condom funding cut for Africa
As reported in the Guardian the US has cut funding for condoms in Marie Stopes' African clinics. In 2007 MSI provided 129 million male and female condoms. Since 2001 with the Mexico City Policy commonly known as " The Global Gag" The Bush administration has blocked birth control access at every turn. It has tried to redefine Contraception as Abortion.
Building bridges
I don't know why I thought that outsourcing would skip the world of ideas, but apparently American editorial services and reportage are about to go the way of the U.S. manufacturing and auto industries. Out the window. It's an open secret that U.S. publishers and newspapers have been between a rock and a hard place for some time, but now the bottom line has taken over completely. They would ...
"Sex and the City"? Please don't forget...
I’ve met a lot of wonderful people while touring to promote the paperback release of The House of Mondavi, but surely one of the most memorable was Helen Dufficy. Who knew such a dainty garden setting would occasion talk of "the two Ls"? Helen, a lively 91-year-old who lives in a retirement community called The Tamalpais, came to the annual fund-raising talk and ...
Some Good Writing News
Some good news after all the bad news: Ted Kooser selected one of my poems to publish on his website, http://www.americanlifeinpoetry.org/I found out the other day, right after I had positioned the Bay Alarm signs around my yard to ward off the robbers.I don't know when the poem will be on the website. Ted's secretary is mailing me the information.Anyway, it was the whistle of joy instead of ...
This Week's Self-Revealization Acceptance
I Accept the Power to Change the WorldI come to understand the simplicity of creating a life experience for myself that enables me to change the world for the benefit of all concerned with myself as the primary recipient of good. I accept the reality of the definitions for things that I want manifested in my life. The ability to do this is based on my evolving awareness of the power of ...
My Friends and Associates at Book Expo...
You can learn about a person by what that person does and what that person says. But you can also learn a lot about a journalist by the company he keeps. One of the great rewards in writing arts journalism, it seems, is to praise those who you admire with complimentary analysis. When the journalist has some kind of direct relationship with the subject, then it is obligatory to use the term, ...
A Name for Every Day of the...
Time to talk about names again!I mentioned a while back that my assistant was going through my books, creating a spreadsheet of all the names I've used so that I can exercise caution when naming new characters. She's finished, just in time for me to start naming a new crop of folks for my work-in-progress, and I'm so glad to have this list and not have to dig through my memory to avoid over-using ...
These Digital Mad Men can talk, but...
I love the way Don Draper and his band of merry Mad Men talk the talk. But, were they part of this current digital branding world, would their talk cut it? Probably not. One of the things I write about in BrandDigital is that talking the digital talk, being able to throw around digital terms with abandon, is no substitute for knowing exactly what makes a digital branding app work; why some apps ...
Finches II
In the spring they come calling to me on my balcony. A whole raft of finches scrapping, singing and just carousing on the balcony of my inner city apartment. They bring me such joy, watching their puffed up mating rituals. Sometimes, I see a finch that is so red and sings so well that I can see myself marrying and settling down with him.
