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If you live in a place where there is an election today, please take a minute to go to your polling place and vote.
Science Boy and I went this morning. We walked in the freezing cold to the local grade school, cast our votes and trudged back home.
I am a woman. Science Boy is African-American. Even 100 years ago, we would have been denied any voice in an election. Women in this country didn't get the vote until 1920. African-Americans technically got the vote in 1870, but everyone knows that's not really what happened. It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make the right of African-Americans to cast votes (in a country they helped build) a reality.
So, it's been only 86 years that women in the US have been allowed to vote. African-Americans have been allowed to cast a vote only in the past 41 years. Knowing how hard our forebears fought for this right, knowing that people spoke out and rallied and sometimes died for our right to vote... How can we dishonor their sacrifices by not voting? And how can this country claim to fight for democracy overseas when we do not honor the rights we have here?
Please, if you have an election in your city today, VOTE!
21 March 2006
13 March 2006
Jealous much?
According to his blog, Scott Adams is not happy that Aaron McGruder is taking vacation.
According to one news story I read: Aaron McGruder, the cartoonist behind the strip syndicated in about 350 American newspapers, said Tuesday he would take about six months off beginning in March.
"‘Every well needs occasional refreshing," he wrote in a letter to be sent to editors of newspapers carrying the strip. "I hope that this fall you will agree that the time away from the demands of deadlines has served the strip, your readers and me."
Apparently Adams thinks that taking a vacation after doing the Boondocks strip for 6-7 years is not warranted. On his blog, he writes:
The creator, Aaron McGruder apparently doesn’t have enough time because he’s working on his animated TV show.
The interesting part is that he hasn’t drawn the strip himself for years. According to an interview I read, he considers himself more of a writer than an artist anyway.
I imagine Stephen King rolling over in his grave when he hears that McGruder doesn’t have time to write his four sentences per day for the strip. I realize Stephen King is still alive, but I assume he sleeps in a grave anyway.
Now, I don't know how y'all feel, but that just seems a little bitchy. From what i have read, McGruder didn't say he didn't have time to do both, but that he needs a vacation. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. McGruder says he hopes the strip will be stronger when he comes back from vacation. Why doesn't he deserve a break if he wants one?
Why Scott Adams even cares whether or not Aaron McGruder takes vacation is another question entirely.
Look. I know Scott Adams has had a strip *and* a tv show at the same time in the past, but... I dunno. Yay for him. Hooray for Scott Adam's intricate, painstaking, finely nuanced drawings each day. He's a harder worker than Aaron McGruder. He is superior because being snarky about his fellow comic strip creator makes him so.
Whatever.
I have never heard Aaron McGruder being anything but honest about having an artist draw the strips. If he has gotten to the point in his career where he can afford to hire someone to do the drawing while he outlines storylines (because many of his strips are part of a larger arch, not just one-offs) and writes for the show, good for him. Nothing wrong with considering yourself a writer when what you actually do is, um, WRITE.
For a writer, four sentences could take *way* longer than four pages might because you must distill the language and have every word just so. Unless, of course, you are so amazingly, unrelentingly talented that you scribble your strip in seconds each morning, effortlessly, as Mr. Adams would appear to.
I actually feel kinda sad now because I used to like Scott Adams. I still like his work and find his blog entertaining from time to time. But somehow, seeing that he needs to be nasty about his fellow comic strip creators just because they take vacation in order to feel better about himself has made me lose any respect I had for the man.
According to one news story I read: Aaron McGruder, the cartoonist behind the strip syndicated in about 350 American newspapers, said Tuesday he would take about six months off beginning in March.
"‘Every well needs occasional refreshing," he wrote in a letter to be sent to editors of newspapers carrying the strip. "I hope that this fall you will agree that the time away from the demands of deadlines has served the strip, your readers and me."
Apparently Adams thinks that taking a vacation after doing the Boondocks strip for 6-7 years is not warranted. On his blog, he writes:
The creator, Aaron McGruder apparently doesn’t have enough time because he’s working on his animated TV show.
The interesting part is that he hasn’t drawn the strip himself for years. According to an interview I read, he considers himself more of a writer than an artist anyway.
I imagine Stephen King rolling over in his grave when he hears that McGruder doesn’t have time to write his four sentences per day for the strip. I realize Stephen King is still alive, but I assume he sleeps in a grave anyway.
Now, I don't know how y'all feel, but that just seems a little bitchy. From what i have read, McGruder didn't say he didn't have time to do both, but that he needs a vacation. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. McGruder says he hopes the strip will be stronger when he comes back from vacation. Why doesn't he deserve a break if he wants one?
Why Scott Adams even cares whether or not Aaron McGruder takes vacation is another question entirely.
Look. I know Scott Adams has had a strip *and* a tv show at the same time in the past, but... I dunno. Yay for him. Hooray for Scott Adam's intricate, painstaking, finely nuanced drawings each day. He's a harder worker than Aaron McGruder. He is superior because being snarky about his fellow comic strip creator makes him so.
Whatever.
I have never heard Aaron McGruder being anything but honest about having an artist draw the strips. If he has gotten to the point in his career where he can afford to hire someone to do the drawing while he outlines storylines (because many of his strips are part of a larger arch, not just one-offs) and writes for the show, good for him. Nothing wrong with considering yourself a writer when what you actually do is, um, WRITE.
For a writer, four sentences could take *way* longer than four pages might because you must distill the language and have every word just so. Unless, of course, you are so amazingly, unrelentingly talented that you scribble your strip in seconds each morning, effortlessly, as Mr. Adams would appear to.
I actually feel kinda sad now because I used to like Scott Adams. I still like his work and find his blog entertaining from time to time. But somehow, seeing that he needs to be nasty about his fellow comic strip creators just because they take vacation in order to feel better about himself has made me lose any respect I had for the man.
Librarians Defeat Nuns!
Who would have thought that people as far away as Toronto would be interested in a spelling bee in Northern Kentucky?
That's what happens when three undefeated nuns takes on a trio of unbeaten librarians.
So begins the story in the Cincinnati Post last Friday.
A tough match-up, but the librarians prevailed:
The sisters bowed out when they couldn't spell "chimopelagic," a word that describes organisms that live deep in the sea and come up once in a while for light.
The Boone County librarians spelled that word correctly, then spelled one more word correctly for the win - "trinitrotoluene" - otherwise known as TNT.
Read the whole story.
That's what happens when three undefeated nuns takes on a trio of unbeaten librarians.
So begins the story in the Cincinnati Post last Friday.
A tough match-up, but the librarians prevailed:
The sisters bowed out when they couldn't spell "chimopelagic," a word that describes organisms that live deep in the sea and come up once in a while for light.
The Boone County librarians spelled that word correctly, then spelled one more word correctly for the win - "trinitrotoluene" - otherwise known as TNT.
Read the whole story.
03 March 2006
Springsteen does Seeger
Bruce Springsteen will release an album of cover songs for the first time in his career. The artist he is covering? PETE SEEGER.
Yup, you read that right> The Boss will cover songs by Pete Seeger, who I believe is one of our great national treasures. I hope the album does well, and maybe brings more people to Pete's music.
Thanks, Amy, for the heads-up! ;-)
Yup, you read that right> The Boss will cover songs by Pete Seeger, who I believe is one of our great national treasures. I hope the album does well, and maybe brings more people to Pete's music.
Thanks, Amy, for the heads-up! ;-)
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