Cheryl Rainfrield’s blog is always filled with interesting information, but today I found something that I just had to share with my readers too! Cheryl has found this wonderful place called the Little Factory that creates wonderful items based on “observations of every day life.” Below are examples of these Little Factory scarves that are created with letters or numbers. A real conversation piece and a great gift idea for someone who has everything or anyone who loves words (or numbers for that matter).
YouTube of Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
Love Dairy Queen Blizzards? How about 365 of ‘em?! Free!!! Yep…one a day for a year…or heck, all at once or something in between.
Just go to Susan Gregg Gilmore’s website…you know, the best-selling author of the hot summer read Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen and write your best DQ memory. You can be 5 years old, you can be 95-years-old. The story can involve a dip cone and a smile or the hottest boy that ever served up cold soft-serve in your town. Whatever it is WRITE IT DOWN AND SUBMIT IT by July 1!!!
Oh, and don’t you dare let the summer slip by without making the acquaintance of Catherine Grace, her fancy neighbor that styles her hair with lightening bugs for special effect in the evenings and the whole rest of Ringgold, GA — they’re all in Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen
One of my favorite journalists, Tim Russert, passed away today. I am very sad. This year’s election process, I believe, will be affected:
WASHINGTON - Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after a sudden heart attack at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.
Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. He and his family had recently returned from Italy, where they celebrated the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.
No further details were immediately available.
Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.
But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights.
He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”
In 2008, Time Magazine named Russert him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 7, 1950. He was a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.
Senate staffer before entering journalism
After graduating from law school, Russert went into politics as a staff operative. In 1976, he worked on the Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and in 1982, he worked on Mario Cuomo’s campaign for governor of New York.
Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of NBC’s TODAY show from Rome, negotiating and arranging an appearance by Pope John Paul II, a first for American television. In 1986 and 1987, Russert led NBC News’ weeklong broadcasts from South America, Australia and China.
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Of his background as a Democratic political operative, Russert said, “My views are not important.”
“Lawrence Spivak, who founded ‘Meet the Press,’ told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest’s positions and take the other side,” he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. “And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that’s what I try to do every Sunday.”
Cuomo, Russert’s onetime boss, wrote of Russert: “Most candidates are not eager to present themselves for Tim’s incisive scrutiny, which is fed by his prodigious study and preparation. But they have little choice: appearing on ‘Meet the Press’ is today as vital to a serious candidate as being properly registered to vote.”
Russert wrote two books — “Big Russ and Me” in 2004 and “Wisdom of Our Fathers” in 2006 — both of which were New York Times best-sellers.
Emmy for Reagan funeral coverage
In 2005, Russert was awarded an Emmy for his role in the coverage of the funeral of President Ronald Reagan. His “Meet the Press” interviews with George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000 won the Radio and Television Correspondents’ highest honor, the Joan S. Barone Award, and the Annenberg Center’s Walter Cronkite Award.
Russert’s March 2000 interview of Sen. John McCain shared the 2001 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television Journalism. He was also the recipient of the John Peter Zenger Award, the American Legion Journalism Award, the Veterans of Foreign Wars News Media Award, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Journalism Award, the Allen H. Neuharth Award for Excellence in Journalism, the David Brinkley Award for Excellence in Communication and the Catholic Academy for Communication’s Gabriel Award. He was a member of the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame.
Russert was a trustee of the Freedom Forum’s Newseum and a member of the board of directors of the Greater Washington Boys and Girls Club, and America’s Promise — Alliance for Youth.
In 1995, the National Father’s Day Committee named him “Father of the Year,” Parents magazine honored him as “Dream Dad” in 1998, and in 2001 the National Fatherhood Initiative also recognized him as Father of the Year.
Irish America magazine named him one of the top 100 Irish Americans in the country, and he was selected as a Fellow of the Commission of European Communities.
Survivors include Russert’s wife, Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine, whom he met at the 1976 Democratic National Convention; and their son, Luke.
Great news according to this Shelf Awareness piece today:
April Bookstore Sales: Who’s Doing So Well?
Although most booksellers and publishers say this has been a soft spring–”down a little is the new up,” as one bookseller put it to us at BEA–the U.S. Census Bureau says otherwise. Bookstore sales in April rose 8% to $1 billion, according to preliminary estimates from the Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales have risen 5.4% to $5.5 billion.
By comparison, total retail sales in April rose 3.7% to $375.5 billion. For the year to date, total retail sales were up 3.8% to $1.450.1 billion.
Also, general retail sales in May rose 1%, double expectations, according to Commerce Department data. Most economists attributed the unexpected gain to stimulus checks from the federal government and higher prices, particularly of gasoline. Sales were 2.5% lower than in May 2007. The New York Times noted that “on an annual basis, sales have fallen for the last six months when adjusted for inflation.”
Note: under Census Bureau definitions, bookstore sales are of new books and do not include “electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale” or used book sales.
Virginia Boyd, author of One Fell Swoop, has a thoughtful, in-depth interview on The Book Report at Windows Bookshop. Virginia has a delightful sense of humor that comes through in this novel that explores many citizens of this little town dealing with a suicide/murder. She discusses what part of herself she puts in the book’s quirky, authentic characters.
Elisabeth Grant Gibson and Pat Grant are terrific interviewers and its a fun conversation to listen in:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
DeLaune’ Michel, the author of The Safety of Secrets was also a terrific guest today. Her book has recently come out in paperback. The theme of the program today was “secrets of small towns.”
Why Mr. Right Can’t Find You by J. M. Kearns is the most entertaining “self-help” book I’ve ever read. Honest from a man’s perspective (that’s what male reviewers say anyway), single women can come away knowing that their Mr. Right is somewhere and trying to find them — they just have to notice and maybe provide a little encouragement. Funny and fun, I’ve given it to some single friends that haven’t been able to put it down. It’s not a wonder that Why Mr. RIght Can’t Find You is a best-seller in Canada and flying off the shelves in the UK. It’s been featured on Oprah and Friends and in Glamour Magazine. Publishers Weekly said this:
Practical, encouraging…regular guy Kearns is convinced that “the world is full of lonely winners,” but that the hunt for Mr. Right is often unsuccessful because women are taught, consciously and otherwise, not to make themselves available, and thus “don’t give themselves enough of a choice.” Kearns directs the lovelorn to embrace every opportunity to meet people, no matter how trivial the occasion, and not just when you’re “ready for a Vogue(Jan.) cover shot.” As women’s own barriers to meeting people are the first that must come down, Kearns gently undermines the conventions and insecurities that keep them from actively and effectively seeking a mate, including self-defeating myths (“Serious relationships never begin in bars”) and media-inspired body-image issues. Part one takes apart the myriad rituals of courtship, including chapters on “How Women Choose Men” and vice-versa, “The Perfect Place to Meet” and “Going Out Alone.” He then tackles the “True and False Signs of Compatibility” across a number of axes (sense of humor, sex, goals), and devotes part three to destigmatizing and demystifying the online dating scene with a detailed step-by-step primer. Personal anecdotes round out this thorough, thoughtful and entirely upbeat dating guide.
WARNING: You won’t want to put this book down and you’ll wish you had a stack to hand out to friends when you tell them about it.
Love it or hate it — that Amazon.com electronic device to make reading oh so much more 21st century appears to be catching on in popularity. OK, you give up the feel and smell of a real book — pretty much the soul of the book, but hey you can download a book to this handy-dandy little computer thing in a matter of minutes without ever having to leave your house to browse a real bookstore and find what you’re craving to read next…heck, you don’t even have to wait until Fed Ex shows up a few days later with the box of books you ordered…you just get it on a little computer screen. I read the query of an independent book store owner asking how to order Kindles for customers — nope, only Jeff Bezo’s company sells them. It’s not for me, but I guess we live in the times of George Jetson and nothing is going to take us back.
Here’s what Paul Krugman has to say about in The New York Times.
Paper, Pen & Imagination Day Camp is a week-long odysee in Nashville, TN at Harpeth Hall School for rising 4th through 7th grade boys and girls who truly love creative writing. In it’s 3rd year, the Paper, Pen & Imagination Day Camp is attracting campers from as far away as Atlanta and Dallas. The reason? It’s very unique in that the camp instructors must be award-winning published writers in order to teach the kids (see below for their credentials):
I founded the camp three years ago with Emily Masters, who also founded Creativity Camps of Nashville this year, to address the need to have a stimulating environment for kids who love to write. It’s a week of discovery. Many of the campers are, for the first time in their lives, surrounded by other kids who love crafting stories and poetry. There are many exercises to inspire the campers’ creativity. But it’s all about writing! To get more information visit the Paper, Pen & Imagination Day Camp website or email PPIDayCamp@gmail.com.
The instructors are exceptionally accomplished:
Kirkus Review (a stellar literary publication) hails instructor and YA author Helen Hemphill as “a strong new
voice in Children’s literature”. Ms. Hemphill has two awarding winning young adult novels, Long Gone Daddy (2006, Boyds Mills Press), which won the 2007 Teddy Award for Young Adult Fiction from the Writers’ League of Texas and was named to the New York Public Library’s Books for the Teen Age. Her 2007 novel Runaround (Boyds Mills Press) was named in the Top Ten Youth Romance by the venerable Booklist.
Her newest novel, historical fiction inspired by the African-American Nat Love who was a real cowboy who hailed from Tennessee, is titled The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones (Boyds Mills Press) will be released November 1, 2008. But students will get a sneak peak at this piece of literature that is garnering stellar reviews six months before its release.
Blas Falconer, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at Austin Peay State University who has published to rave reviews. His writing has a basis in his Latin-American heritage. This past year he was honored to be invited to present his poetry in Chicago as part of a collaboration among the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Art Institute of Chicago and Poetry Foundation titled American Perspectives.
Swingtown, the much-hyped CBS soap opera, is finally premiering tonight. The trailers for it look fun and decadent (and the hairstyles!) — amusing to see 21st century cinematic style mixed with the visuals of the 1970s. And the Swingtown trailers sure bring back memories from my girlhood and the nutty neighborhood in which I grew up (flower children, a cross-dressing librarian and more affairs between the neighborhood parents than even seems plausible today!).
One Fell Swoop, Virginia Boyd’s breakout novel, brings back that crazy time in vivid detail. I recently read the book and couldn’t put it down! The premise is that a woman in town finds out her husband has had an affair and she kills him and then herself. Plenty of folks in town have their own perspective on that little newsmaker and some men go out of their way to make sure their betrothed doesn’t decide to do the same to them!
If you’re not one to watch tv in the summer but you want that juicy 1970s drama, pick up One Fell Swoop and read it in the sun. You’ll be glad you did!
The New York Post had an entertaining article about book blurbs on jacket covers. Do they work? Do they help or hurt the author who writes them? Check it out.
RIGHT BLURB CAN MAKE BOOK SALES SUPERB
By MANDY STADTMILLER