I have a confession – I read romance books. Ideally, it is a great way to unwind and decompress, and clear your mind in the same way that only a Madonna tune can unstick a song from the brain. In terms of the written Happily Ever After, I’m not alone as a fan of the romance genre. Combined with erotica, this is the top selling genre in bookstores, both physical and online, with over $1.4 billion in sales in 2013. Sadly, these sales aren’t all going toward books written by alums of the Iowa Writers Workshop, or by the likes of Jennifer Crusie (MFA and ABD on her PhD), Julie James (JD, who has worked in the US Court of Appeals) or Lauren Willig (ABD on PhD at Harvard, JD at Harvard.) Continue reading “Go Ahead, Posse, Come At Us”
Category: Media
Word Nerd
A wish for 2016 – free the noun ‘creatives’ from its misuse of being synonymous with ‘artists.’ Emails referencing creatives vs non-creatives, or even addressed to “To my friends & acquaintances who are non-creatives” – what huh? and I’ve received these from multiple people – have come across my desk fairly regularly in the last year.
To quote Indigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Continue reading “Word Nerd”
What we talk about when we talk about immigrants
Migrant to some Americans conjures up a mental image of Jacob Riis’ How The Other Half Lives and that 10th grade English teacher who was passionate about Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to a mental soundtrack of Woody Guthrie songs and a dry mouth in sympathy for the Dust Bowl. In the 1930s, economic and environmental conditions drove many farmers, tenant and independent, from the plains states to California in hopes that the arable land and mild climate there would provide work. Across the country at that time, unemployment hovered at 30 percent. Continue reading “What we talk about when we talk about immigrants”
Team.Riley.
The NBA finals start Thursday night. Which means King James, Stephen Curry and hopefully Riley Curry. Much has been made of two year old Riley’s post game appearances with her MVP father. At the beginning of Time.com’s video of her second post game press conference appearance, a female voice can be heard saying “Oh, we’re doing this again,” somewhat disdainfully. Please please do this again, as a matter of fact, it would be awesome if all press conferences came with a two year old, especially sports press conferences. Continue reading “Team.Riley.”
Does a Millennial Not Bruise?
The Salvation Army, South Africa, turned the furor over #TheDress, the one that might have been Gold/White or Black/Blue, into an amazing statement against Domestic Violence. Props to the SA South Africa not only for capturing a moment that had widespread public’s attention and powering it for a serious message, but finding the dress in retail.
You can see their campaign in this tweet:
Why is it so hard to see black and blue? One in 6 women are victims of abuse. #StopAbuseAgainstWomenpic.twitter.com/FgDdKdsMMb
— TheSalvationArmySA (@SalvationArmySA) March 6, 2015
Lots of media outlets picked up on it, including the super cool (in non-ironic way) Quartz. Only at Quartz, they decided that the cover photo to their article should not have as many bruises as the original PSA. However, deeper in the article, Quartz published the original photo, leg bruises and all. Queries to Quartz (c’mon, that’s fun to say) went unanswered as to why the bruise was removed for the cover photo; the bait that draws a reader into an article or book.
The Salvation Army was originally created in 1865, in the UK to work with those people who were outside of the realm of ‘good society,’ when a preacher left his church and took his vision of Christianity to the street. His intent, to reach those people that church-going Christians at the time wouldn’t welcome into their folds. Today, their mission reads: “Into the world of the hurting, broken, lonely, dispossessed, and lost, reaching them with love by all means, we will . . . stand for and serve the marginalized.”
Quartz, established in 2012, is a new media venture “built for business people in the new economy” who are digesting media digitally, specifically over tablets and mobile phones. Any comparison between its audience, and the people in churches in 1865 is purely coincidental.
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