Recently read: Robert K. Tanenbaum’s Malice

I love this series about New York District Attorney Butch Karp and his hard-boiled wife Marlene Ciampi. I have read every one of the books—all are filled with believable characters, whether the adolescent angst-ridden daughter Lucy, an insane (or maybe not) religious leader who lives in the sewers of the city, a Vietnamese soldier, and the rest of the good guys. And if you think those sound intriguing, what till you meet the bad guys.

In this book, Karp and his family and friends fight City Hall (a frequent theme), terrorists, and attempted assassinations. They are aided in their struggle by Basque fugitives, the Mole People and their leader, and a Native American tracker. On the bad guy side of the ledger, we have dishonest officials, a corrupt national athletic association and evil in high places. This is a page-turner, even though it sounds like some grade B movie from 1950s. Tanenbaum is a lawyer who has held a variety of highly placed positions. Oh, and did I mention that he is an excellent writer?

Copyright series

Everyone now—not just a writer—needs to be aware of copyright restrictions and laws. The music industry has been in the news a lot recently about rights to songs. The Internet and bloggers, too, are testing, whether intentionally or not, the current laws. In education, students and teachers also need to know the limits and rules of using sources. I am still appalled at the news story recently about the University of Texas-San Antonio students who wrote an honor code blasting plagiarizing—and plagiarized from Brigham Young University’s code. Geesh! Brigham Young had used another source—and properly credited it.

I’ll be posting a regular series for a while now on some copyright basics. Because much of what students do involves writing, the information can also apply to them. If you write a church bulletin or design a greeting card using a poem to sell at a local crafts fair, you should be aware of the laws. One of my pet peeves is the common use of cartoons. Unless you have written permission from the estate of Charles Schulz or from Gary Larson himself, you cannot copy his hilarious cartoon into the school newsletter.

For this series, I’ll be using as my main source the web site of the Library of Congress on U.S. Copyright law at http://www.copyright.gov/

The sentence game

According to the sentence game web site, “The Sentence Game (sometimes known as Eat Poop You Cat) has often been described as a cross between the games Pictionary and Telephone. It could just as well be described as a cross between a Rorschach test and a graphic novel, although for some reason it never is.”

Visit the web site at http://thesentencegame.com/ This would be another way to pump up your creativity, as well as enhancing your skill with 6-word memoirs! What did we ever do before we had the web at our beck and call with all these fascinating games, sources, and ideas?

Recently read: Suzy Gershman’s C’est La Vie

This memoir by the author of the Born to Shop books is delightful. In it, Gershman recounts her first year after her husband’s unexpected death. I was not familiar with her other books (I’m not particularly born to shop), and was enchanted by her humor, frankness, and insight. The book recounts her adventures as she moves to Paris to start a new life.
This paragraph from the first chapter is brilliant in the way it succinctly gives her reasons for choosing France, and also showcases her wry style: “I knew I could never live in Florida. I have naturally curly hair. Besides, France is a smarter place to spend your golden years: it has socialized medicine and the prunes are soaked in cognac.”
I love it!

Earth Day

Celebrate the earth today and throughout the week. Turn the TV off. Walk instead of driving to work, if that’s at all feasible. Read an article about conservation. Plant a tree or even just pop a seed in a pot on your windowsill. Paint a picture with lots of green in it. Write a poem. Or do what I just did--find a poem someone else wrote. This snippet from Willaim Blake's poem "Songs of Experience" blends of trees and Holy Words, an apt image today:

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who present, past and future sees;
Whose ears have heard
The Holy Word
That walked among the ancient trees.

Haiku and Roger McGough

Haiku is form of 19th century Japanese poetry, and it also has many dedicated English-speaking (and writing) poets. I am not a big poetry fan, but I do like haiku. Haiku written in English have three lines: the first line usually has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has three. I just ran across this haiku by 20st century English poet Roger McGough. I thought his haiku was very amusing, and sums up many poets’ feelings about haiku:

The only problem
with haiku is that you just
get started and then

. . .

Passover

The Jewish festival of Passover starts at sundown and continues for seven day. It begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan (today), which is the first month in the Hebrew calendar. Passover includes various prayer services and foods that all have meaning, as Passover remembers the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. Despite being someone who was raised in no organized religion, I appreciate the importance of having rituals and ceremonies that go back in history, commemorate beliefs held by generations, and provide a framework for the past, present and future.