Okay, so I don't have much familiarity with this particularly seamy aspect of "publishing", but do these writers and editors always write as poorly as poor Danna?
"Danna wrote her first freelance story at age 16. It was crafted in poetic form. This story was picked up by the Capitol Courier."
I wrote like this in the 4th grade, in short, simple declarative sentences. However, at that time I did not claim to have "lectured on the college circuit and helped to craft young adults into aspiring* writers" nor did I have "a career as a freelance editor making her services available to individual writers giving them the advantage of a polished manuscript."
I am comforted to know, though, that "She continues to write her own work today..." I'd surely hate to think she'd paid someone else to do it.
* A case of truthishness? She didn't say "successful" or "polished" or "skilled", after all.
Oh, it's going to be glorious. Morten Lauridsen himself is downstairs rehearsing the Men's Glee Club in his Ave dulcissima maria. Tonight's concert opens with the Tomas Luis da Victoria O Magnum Mysterium and ends with Lauridsen's.
Google Maps driving directions from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Limerick, Ireland. Step 24: "Swim across the Atlantic Ocean, 5,572 km"
Oh, yeah, rutabegas! I chopped up a couple (no mean feat -- they're big and surly) and threw them into a crock pot with onions, carrots, potatoes, cabbage and a slab of corned beef. Gonna do it again, since corned beef briskets are on sale now.
DaveL #639:
...the low-key tone, and the smooth voice mask an incredible degree of anger.
This is a man who's face is made for radio, not because he's unattractive, but because all you have to do is look at him to see that the incredible anger isn't masked very well at all. In person he's scarier than in photos, and an alarming number of these photos are his official publicity photos. Creepy.
You see "All hail Prince Rupert" and you immediately think of ...
Immediately? Walking in a clockwise circle, but soon thereafter marching into the wall. Or, if I'm feeling especially silly, holding my left hand next to my ear and looking sharply to the left ... Stone cold sober, too.
Fragano #205 -- Unfortunately I still hear "Eärendil was a mariner" to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern major general," which is something we used to do at that same college Xopher and Rich attended. We were a weird lot.
Susan 193. Or quite possibly Graticula, the cheesey vampire.
I, too, have been working too hard on my Kalamazoo paper, and I'm getting ... nay, I have gotten ... slightly loopy. Or loopier.
Greg #587: Or outside a pit, with a rock in a sock.
Susan #555: I care, too, I truly do. I can't do it right now (my left knee being frozen up), but I care.
Plenty of medieval and renaissance sword combat manuals (or pieces of manuals) survive, though some of them are pretty cryptic. It would come as a surprise to me that there ever was anything comparable from Roman times. Organized training, yes, but not manuals. The audience for written material and swordplay instruction for the individual combatant (vs military strategy and tactics) overlapped by the late middle ages, but it didn't in Roman times. Besides, this sort of thing, like dance, is best learned from a person, rather than a book.
Marilee #178 -- PlumSmart is not actually prune juice, as it's made from fresh plums (and probably some other juices, as it's described as "100% juice", not "100% plum juice". If it's made from dried plums, the FDA says it still must be labeled "prune juice".
Five years ago the California Dried Plum Board (formerly known as the California Prune Board) won a years-long struggle with the FDA to be allowed to label dried plums as dried plums instead of (or in addition to) prunes, although dried plum juice must still be labeled prune juice.
And in related news, California Governor Schwarzenegger has proclaimed January 2007 as California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month. Really.
Suggest a story idea to NPR using this form. I'd do it, but there's something screwy about my e-mail that won't let me use forms like this.
Looking for a picture of one of those old evaported milk can openers, the ones that made a spout in the old round-edged cans, I found instead a company that sells post-WWI reproduction military rations for re-enactors and historical displays. Apparently, they contain real edible food. The WWII instant coffee ration contains about 1 ounce, which they claim is "enough to keep caffeined up for an entire weekend." Don't know about that. I think one ounce of instant makes about 5 cups, which is not enough for me on a weekend.
Still haven't found the spout-making can opener (though I could go home and find mine), but I found a number of other styles on e-bay.
Now I think I'll open my fresh can of Jittery Joe's coffee (sundown blend, ground Friday) and inhale. Ahhhhh... It's off to the coffee pot.
Harriet #52: Indeed yes, Syd and Sid were different people, though they overlap chronologically. But Syd's similar name was enough to remind me of the tune, about which I previously knew only that is a traditional Northumberland tune -- nothing about its namesake. And this is, after all, an open thread. What I found amusing was the idea of getting naval history from a site about traditional music.
For Christmas, I usually give my father books on military history and my mother books on food. This year they're getting (jointly) Feeding Nelson's Navy. Mom is also getting an orb (she got the tiara a few years back) because at Thanksgiving she complained that she didn't have an orb. Or a sceptre either, but I couldn't find one I liked.
Did I mention that my parents are just a little bit strange? (In a good way, of course.) What can you expect -- they both started reading science fiction in childhood, my mother when she got a copy of A Princess of Mars for her 7th birthday in 1922. These are people who built a second weekend house in the mountains with library because they ran out of book space in their weekday house, and are now building an addition to the library.
Then there's Sir Sidney Smith's March from John Chambers' massive ABC Tunefinder site. If you're looking for a traditional European tune (tune, not song), particularly Celtic or British, start here.
It makes a surprisingly good harp tune, perhaps because of the Carolan-like phrases and irregularity.
According to the excellent site The Fiddler's Companion:
SIR SYDNEY SMITH'S MARCH. AKA – “Handel’s Gavotte.†English, March. G Major. Standard. AABB. Sir William Sidney Smith (1764-1840) was a British admiral and naval hero during the Napoleonic Wars, especially remembered for his defence of Acre against Napoleon in 1799. Smith apparently liked to think of himself as a second (Horatio) Nelson, and in fact he was instrumental along with that more famous admiral in ending Bonaparte’s dreams of eastern conquest. It is unfortunate that while Nelson became a national hero of immense proportions, Smith remains all but forgotten. There was a rivalry between the two, as well as friendship, and Smith hoped to snatch Nelson’s laurels by destroying the combined French and Spanish fleets with newly invented rockets and torpedoes before Nelson fought them decisively at sea off Cape Trafalgar in 1806.
Sir Sidney led a colorful life. An adventurer as was as strategist and naval expert, he had been imprisoned as a spy in Paris, with the threat of execution, until he made a daring escape. He was a diplomat with a flair for the theatrical, and returned to London from the Middle East wearing Arab robes, presaging Lawrence of Arabia a century later. It may be no surprise that Smith lived in Paris, the capital of his former enemy, for the last twenty-five years of his life.
This just in: Flora, a virgin komodo dragon, is expecting baby dragons around Christmastime.
I got the Fruitcake Map e-mail too. Weird. And I was so-o-o-o tempted to click on the interactive fruitcake map.
Under applicable Federal laws, this tape may be duplicated only with advance written permission from the publisher.
PJ, you can.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 13 |
| 2006 | 55 |
| 2005 | 12 |
Total: 80 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Tracie:
Show all comments by Tracie.