Things We Couldn't Help Noticing

• Our Favorite Headline of the Week. From the Chronicle of Higher Ed: Bonk if You Want to Take This Course.
• The First Cleveland Browns. A new entry in the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, an essential reference tool for any curious & educated Clevelander, notes that the second Cleveland Negro League baseball team was named the Cleveland Browns. Formed in 1924, it predates the football team of the same name by about two decades. Add that to the long list of things I never knew.
• Advice on Your Clunker. The new federal "cash for clunkers" law seeks to encourage Americans to trade in their faded jalopies for newer, more environmentally-friendly models. But how to know if your car qualifies? This nice tool on the car-centric Edmunds website will help you find out.
• The First Photo Ever Taken in Canada...A haunting image of Niagra Falls, taken 170 years ago.
• Guide to a Fun & Unusual Family Outing. Sandy Mitchell, the About.com Cleveland guide, points to this online directory of places throughout the region where you can pick your own fruits and veggies. Not a bad idea for the dog days of summer. Three years ago, I wrote about her and About.com here.
• A Chick Flick that Even Men Will (Okay, May) Like. I saw the new tear-jerker movie, My Sister's Keeper, over the weekend, and it's actually surprisingly good. Guys don't generally go in for this sort of thing (it's based on a book by Jodi Picoult, whose female-centric emotional yarns haven't exactly cried out to be read in my Darwinian book pile). The Washington Post recently got off a great line about her work, referring to it as "ovarian Gothic."
• And Finally...Is the economy leaving you bummed out? Not to worry. This piece from Mental Floss notes that even personal bankruptcy didn't stop seven high achievers. So why let slower cash flow keep you from enjoying the summer? Find some free or low-cost things to do, someone (or a few someones) you love to do them with, and get on with it. But do let us in on what those favorite things might be.

Getting to the
Nub Of It All

'Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone'
--Pablo Picasso. Thanks to the effervescent Coach Joelle for pointing us to this small gem. We've somehow never gotten around to offering up any of the wild Spaniard's thoughts until now.

Writing As a Kind of Destiny

'When I printed my first book, I didn't send it to the bookstores or to other writers--I just gave copies to my friends...in those days nobody thought in terms of failure or success in selling books. We thought of writing as a kind of destiny.'
--the immortal Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who died in 1986. His writing accomplishments were so vast that the mere fact that he was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature is often seen as an indictment of the prize itself.

A Voice of Experience Cuts Through Complexity

'I continue to be amazed at the number of advice books listed each week in the Book Review as best sellers. I have led a long, productive life based on only two pieces of advice, both of which I learned as a preschooler some 80 years ago. First, I try to play nicely with everybody; second, if I am crabby, I take a nap. What more does anyone need to know?'
--a letter to the editor of the New York Times Book Review, submitted by Eleanor Blumenberg of Santa Monica, California, and published in today's edition.

The Humblest Hour: Accounting to Oneself
For Having Fallen Short of Your Dreams

'The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.'
--the late Scottish author James M. Barrie, whose writing formed the basis for Peter Pan. The good news? You've got some time to bring those comparisons into a more favorable balance. So what are you waiting for?

It's All in the Arrangement

'I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged.'

--James Joyce. Earlier, we mentioned Dublin's finest here and here.

It's Video Day, Kids

We found this article and the accompanying video interview of director Spike Lee interesting, and thought you might too. Harvard's Henry Louis Gates can be a tad too fawning in his interviews, and we think Spike Lee sounds like a fool about half the times he opens his mouth (I'm especially recalling his idiotic debate with Clint Eastwood over racial diversity in movie casting, where he came out sounding really lame). But having said all that, his work does of course merit serious attention (my favorite is his epic take on father-son conflict, He Got Game). He'll just never live down that fateful decision to have Mookie throw the garbage can through the pizzeria window, evidently to his lasting frustration. Meanwhile, The Onion has only gotten better, funnier and sharper as it's moved its fake news franchise from written format to video clips. We found this one to be simply hilarious. But enough about us. We'd love to learn about a video or two that you've found noteworthy lately.

Cindy Sheehan's Swing Through Town

Peace activist and military mom Cindy Sheehan is in town today and tomorrow. She'll be at the Coventry Road library this afternoon, at the Akron main library this evening, and at St. Coleman's Church on the near west side tomorrow night. I plan on catching her at one of those places. Her final appearance is at an especially appropriate venue. St. Coleman's has long been a locus of anti-war activity and other progressive causes, and is also home to a prominent radical priest, Fr. Bob Begin. The incomparable Mike O'Malley, perhaps my favorite Plain Dealer writer, recently wrote this sparkling profile of him, highlighting his most recent accomplishment, fending off the unfathomable plan to close the parish.

We've taken note of Sheehan here a few times before. Almost four years ago, I joined my friend Bill and thousands of others, including Sheehan, for a march on Washington, opposing the Iraq war. It didn't have much effect, as you probably know by now (thought it did result in a rather less earth-shattering development, the first-ever photo we published here). We also took note of her mounting frustration with the American public's apathy over the war and her--well, arrogance--as she considered a run for Congress. It'll be interesting to see what she has to say now that this seemingly endless war continues to grind on, years after the public's attention has moved on to more crucial things, like the death of a child-molesting pop star.

Take a Moment to Relax, and Let
The Intuitive Mind Work Wonders

'During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.'
Fritjof Capra, from his classic book The Tao of Physics, published in 1975.

At Last: Answers To One of
Life's Enduring Mysteries...

...Why America is Addicted to the Olive Garden . I have a friend, a native of Italy, who winces when the restaurant's name comes up. She disdainfully refers to it as "frozen food." Not wanting to argue with her, I refrain from telling her that I actually don't mind the place so much. But then, I'm no foodie purist. To the contrary, I've often been accused of being more concerned about quantity than quality.

Instead, We Watch Television

'Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.'
--from a recent commencement address by entrepreneur, author and environmental activist Paul Hawken, at the University of Portland. You can read the entire address here. Thanks to our new acquaintance, Executive Happiness Coach Jim Smith, for pointing us to it. This gets our nod as the best commencement address of the '09 season. In 2005, the nod went to author David Foster Wallace, and in 2004 it was comedian Jon Stewart. We've also pointed in the past to an extraordinary commencement address William Zinsser gave at Wesleyan University in 1988. But enough about us. Does anyone have any favorite commencement addresses they'd like to point out? Or perhaps memories of their own graduation speaker? We'd love to hear about it.

Thomas Paine, Whose Inspirational Writing
Helped Catalyze Our March To Independence

'Paine’s story might have belonged solely to the 18th century were it not for the importance of his ideas, the captivating nature of his writing and its dramatic appeal. Paine’s skill at producing political tracts for specific purposes was aided by his ability to write quickly when the mood took him. He was also adept at creating memorable phrases that enlivened his major works, ensuring them a wide audience...Common Sense conveys a breathless energy and appetite for change. In its first few pages Paine urges the American people to form a government from scratch, a chance almost without precedent, which the colonists should grasp with both hands since it was likely this would be their best opportunity.'
--from The Gain From Thomas Paine, in a recent issue of History Today.

How Shame Can Lead

To Good Storytelling

"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, in Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western, an unfinished novel published after his death. We've referred to him only glancingly in the past (here and here), both times in reference to his infamous remark about how there are no second acts in American lives.

In Recognition of Upcoming Fourth,
We Bring You Summer Loving Pix

We wish you all a good holiday weekend. To help put you in the mood, we thought these "summer lovin' " photos from Slate might help. Our favorite, by far, is #14, the remarkable shot of the Brazilian couple making goo-goo eyes right next to the ancient cannon. A reminder of how love can sometimes be explosive. We'd love to hear which ones were your favorites, what stories these pictures might have reminded you of, or just what you're doing for the Fourth. Leave us a comment, will you?

Glimpsing Our Vocation

'To glimpse our vocation, we must learn how to be sought out and found by a work as much as we strive to identify it ourselves. We must make ourselves findable by being seen; to do that we must hazard ourselves and make ourselves available to the world we want to enter. Finding and being found is like a mutual falling in love. To have a possibility of happiness we must at the beginning fall in love at least a little with our work.'
--from The Three Marriages--Reimagining Work, Self & Relationships.

Just Three Things

'Happiness is somebody to love
Something to do
And something to hope for.
--Chinese proverb

A Couple of WWW Must-Reads

The newly shrunk New York Times Magazine takes a close look at how the shrinking U.S. auto industry is affecting the black American middle class. And our pal Mike Roberts, former editor of Boston Magazine and Cleveland Magazine recalls his early days in public housing. Mike has written some emotionally powerful stuff over the years, but this just might be his best ever. We'd love to hear your reactions to either or both pieces.

How Small Things

Really Do Matter

'If you think small things don't matter, try spending the night in a room with a mosquito.'

--Tenzin Gyatso, a.k.a. the Dalai Lama. You can learn more about him at his official website. And you can review our earlier mentions of him here and here.

Using a Blog to Reinvent Yourself

A career columnist for the Wall Street Journal asks: is blogging a good way to professionally reinvent yourself? Her answer: "I think blogging forces reinventers to clarify their ideas, build a body of knowledge in a new area and carefully consider their long-term career goals. It's also a valuable way to measure success." Not a bad way to go, we'd say. And god knows, with this economy, there are plenty of people trying to reinvent themselves. We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Help Dick Cheney Begin His Book, Or
From Leading the Cheers to the Jeers

The Washington Post, which once sadly helped lead the cheers for the Dick Cheney administration's disastrous Iraq war, now wants to lead the jeers about his memoirs. It asks readers to propose an opening paragraph, and plans to publish the best. We liked the Post better when it was less focused on such fluff and more focused on traditional stuff, like keeping governments honest. So what would your paragraph be?

Keep At It

'There is no such thing as failure. There is only giving up too soon.'
--the late Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine. You can learn more about him here.

Self Curriculum

'It is not so much their subjects the great teachers teach as it is themselves.'
--Frederick Buechner, from Listening to Your Life. If this thought makes you think of your favorite teacher, someone who really inspired you in a lasting way, we'd sure love to hear about it. Later in the week, we'll let you know why we think this is an especially timely quote, with the publication of a splendid new book by our favorite teacher.

With All Due Respect

To the Common Folk

And to Garbo, We'd

Always Choose Food

Greta Garbo: "Bring me something simple. I never think about food."

Waiter: "What do you think about?"

Garbo: "The future of the common people."

--a particularly memorable bit of dialogue from the classic 1939 film Ninotchka. We must admit that this whole notion of never thinking about food seems utterly foreign to us.

A Few Things We Couldn't Help Noticing

The Today Show's Ann Curry is at it Again. A couple years ago we noted that the Today Show's Ann Curry was improbably rallying people to be warriors for truth. Now, she's supposedly "pissed off" about how hard it is to get her network or the American public to care about serious foreign news. We have a suggestion, Ann: if you want to be known as a serious news person, work in a real news environment, not the televised equivalent of a perfume counter.

These Animal Activists Have Officially Lost Their Minds. The world economy is nearing a melt-down, if global warming doesn't literally beat it to the punch. But the boneheads at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, are all bent out of shape about how Obama killed a mosquito rather than trapping it and releasing it to the wilds. We suggest you get a life, folks.

And Speaking of the Huffington Post...Washington D.C.'s alternative weekly, City Paper, recently produced a pretty good spoof of the online pub.

We Couldn't Make This Up if We Tried. The New York Daily News looks at what the stars of a memorable movie, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, have been up to since. It turns out that Ferris' arch-nemesis, the creepy principal, is now a registered sex offender.

Web-Friendly TV. Wired Magazine takes a look at how the new Jimmy Fallon show is among TV's most web-friendly programs.

Finally, We rather liked the name of this new blog, Peace Through Fiction (the companion website is here). It doesn't hurt that we know this Cleveland-based writer, Nicole Hunter, a little. Good luck with it, and with your MFA studies, Nicole.

Happy Father's Day, Dads

May you all rest in peace for hours out on the back hammock today. And if you don't happen to have a hammock, may you get one soon. Nothing better than a few hours of weekend reading on a hammock. In keeping with the day's celebration, here's a column I wrote about my own old man a few years ago. You'll find the rest of those "Dad About Town" columns archived here.
UPDATE: My friend and occasional lunch partner Mansfield Frazier reprises his annual tribute to his remarkable father. Five years ago, I had this to say about Mansfield.

Best Lead of the Month

'Death is the great equalizer. Even multi-millionaires have to participate.'
--from Roldo Bartimole's recent piece about the death of developer and former Cleveland Indians owner Dick Jacobs. Our runner-up this month is the lead paragraph from a Washington Post report about sleep research: "Sleeping used to be one of my favorite activities--until I got lousy at it.' These two stirringly concise openings serve as a reminder that less is often more. They both wonderfully accomplish the crucial work of any first paragraph, no matter its length: to make it nearly impossible to stop reading. You can review earlier best leads here.

His Unique Wisdom Still Echoes Through the Ages

'I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.'
--Abraham Lincoln. A tip of the cap for this from my friend Diane Ferri, the moving force behind the sublime Coexist blog.

Anita Hill on the New Supreme Court Nominee

Anita Hill will be forever linked to the Supreme Court because of her courageous truth-telling 17 years ago during the three-ring circus that was the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings. The Senate, to its lasting shame, confirmed him anyway, and the country has been paying for it ever since. Now, Hill tells Essence Magazine that Sonia Sotomayor, who was a year ahead of her at Yale Law School, is a good choice for the court. About her own unique place in history, she had this to say: "People ask, 'Does it bother you that your name will always be associated with sexual harassment?' It will only bother me if my name isn't associated with bringing it to an end, or moving the end forward."

The Vicarious Travel Journal, Part 3:
Cindy's Field Notes on Italian Men

'Men: Until a taller single female member of our group pointed it out to me, I hadn’t noticed that they were on the shorter side. What I did notice is that they were clean-shaven. Perhaps it is because it is hot in the summer. Whatever the reason, I liked it. Enough already with the little beard and mustache look in the States. And they had nice haircuts. One of the older Aussie gents got a haircut in Florence and he indeed looked more handsome. At least I thought so and I suspect his lovely wife did too. The men were thin. In fact, only the tourists were at all overweight. If you aren’t fit, you can’t do all of the walking required in this sort of travel. The men wore clothing that fit. In other words they didn’t wear baggy clothes or horrible, long, wrinkled shorts, basketball, football or baseball jerseys. The only men in shorts were bicyclists in tight bike shorts. And the men looked at the women in a very appreciative way. Another woman on the tour commented that “they look right through you.” Whatever they were doing, I liked it. They were polite, friendly, helpful, sometimes flirtatious (the waiters were, for sure) and they treated women like women. They talked to you while looking straight at your face, not at your breasts or any other part of your anatomy. Not that they didn’t notice. They did, but it wasn’t in an obvious way. An older man helped me off the gondola and didn’t call me “ma’am.” He called me “amore mio.” Yeah. I liked that.'
--From my friend Cindy P's notes about her recent trip to Italy. You can read more of her impressions here. You can also review earlier vicarious travel journal entries here.

It All Depends on How You Look At It

'I think all great innovations are built on rejections.'
--the late abstract expressionist, Louise Nevelson

Should We Be Promoting Bookaholism?

The Guardian asks the question. What's your answer?

Are You a Good Husband?

A popular columnist in the Twin Cities, Jim Lileks, unearths a questionnaire from 1933. Is it still relevant today? Wives, girlfriends and boyfriends: by all means, go ahead and take the quiz too.

We Hereby Approve This Upcoming Event

Fifth Annual Daniel Thompsonathon

What: Fifth Annual Daniel Thompsonathon

When: Tuesday, June 16th Potluck at 5:30 p.m. Poetry at 6:30 p.m.

Where: Horseshoe Lake Park Pavilion in Shaker Heights, on Park Drive east of Lee Rd. between South Park and North Park Blvds.

Why: To celebrate the work of the late, great Cuyahoga County poet laureate Daniel Thompson Featured poets: Katie Daley, Chris Franke, Jim Lang, Peter Leon, Ray McNiece, Maj Ragain, Brian Taylor, Barry Zucker, Kathy Ireland Smith, Steven B. Smith.

If You Seek to Persuade, First You Must
Understand the Heart of Your Subject(s)

'The secret of effective persuasion comes in knowing the heart of the person you wish to persuade and ordering your words to fit.'
--Han Fei Tzu, a Chinese philosopher from the 3rd century BC.

A Poet Who Seemed to Speak Directly to Her Every Reader

'Emily Dickinson’s legendary silence has produced a discordant chorus of speculation and mythmaking. As Alfred Habegger, her best biographer, has written, Dickinson’s “reclusiveness, originality of mind, and unwillingness to print her work [have] left just the sort of informational gaps that legend thrives on.” Readers and scholars alike have endlessly revised this legend, struck by the conviction that Dickinson speaks directly to them.'
--from a recent item in Book Forum. We think every good piece of writing in any genre has this same sublime and mysterious quality: the magic of one mind talking directly to another. We were startled to find that we've never before mentioned this uniquely wonderful poet. Here's hoping the immortal Emily will somehow forgive us.

The Biographer's (and friend's) Challenge

'To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.'
--Author Salman Rushdie

Three Guesses Why This Essay of Mine Keeps
Coming Back to My Mind in Wake Of Cavs Loss

Hometown’s Gravitational Pull
By John Ettorre

Hometowns are tricky things.

They begin as warm, nurturing environments, familiar places you proudly call home. Eventually, that very familiarity can feel stifling, driving you away at a certain stage of life, in search of some mythical better place where you’re certain you’ll be happier. And yet, for most people, one’s hometown exercises a kind of silent gravitational pull whose force one can’t always resist. Like quicksand, it tugs on you harder the harder you resist.

What’s true for civilians is doubly true for writers.

If we’re any good, our writing—poetry or prose—is steeped in a sense of place. The more tied you are to an area’s history, people and landscape (both physical and psychic), the easier it becomes to weave that place through the fabric of your language. Not long ago, novelist Phillip Roth observed that his native Newark, New Jersey has been one of the chief recurring characters in his fiction.

On the other hand, there’s a long tradition of writers noisily dissing their places of origin. In his thinly veiled Winesburg, Ohio, the novelist Sherwood Anderson mocked his native Clyde, Ohio as a provincial backwater. Harper’s editor Willie Morris, like many Southern writers, was similarly embarrassed by the gothic backwardness of his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi, and thus headed to Manhattan, where he wrote a memorable coming-of-age novel, North Toward Home.

Perhaps most famously of all, James Joyce hated what he called the “center of paralysis,” his native Dublin. “How sick, sick, sick I am of Dublin!” he once exclaimed in a letter. “It is the city of failure, of rancor and of unhappiness. I long to be out of it.” He was good to his word: he never set foot in the city after 1912, living in self-imposed exile until his death in 1941. And yet, the city never left his imagination. His masterpiece, Ulysses, lovingly recreates Dublin in all its early 20th century sights, sounds, smells and texture. Some fans of the book think he renders it more precisely than an actual visit ever could. The late Willie Morris, meanwhile, spent his later years back in Yazoo City, happier the second time around.

Like many writers, I tried to escape my hometown, moving away from Cleveland in my 20s for larger, flashier places, cities which I thought would be far better venues in which to practice my craft. For a time, they were.

But then the steady drone of that gravitational pull set in, and I found myself back where I started. I was ambivalent about it for years, feeling as Joyce did that I was in a geography marked by failure, and worried that it might somehow rub off on me. Eventually, with maturity, you come to understand that what you sought to escape is not so much an actual place, but the straightjacket of earlier expectations you’ve come to associate with that place. Grasping that, you can change those expectations. All it takes is some revisions.

Now, I see this place with writerly eyes, as a place gorgeously haunted by its once-sequined past, bent over from the accumulated weight of its might-have-beens and almost-wases. But it also has great sedimentary layers of depth and beauty, the kind that can come only from epic pain and loss. It’s a place that rewards emotional and civic archaeology.

And so I keep digging.

--(published last year in Muse magazine, which is not online).

The Testing Point of Virtue

'Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.'
--C.S. Lewis. You can review earlier mentions of the late & much-loved British master writer here.

She Wasn't the Only One

Who Wondered About This

'Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.'

--Katherine Hepburn

Can Writing Be Taught? Part 2

In this week's New Yorker double issue, the veteran writer Louis Menand (who also teaches at Harvard) makes a valuable addition to the endless debate about whether writing can be taught. Given that this is the fiction issue, he focuses his inquiry on "creative writing," which is generally another way of saying fiction, short stories and poetry. While he and the book he's discussing make several nuanced arguments, Menand's piece generally comes down on the side of what we would consider to be sensible territory: the idea that while no one can really teach the inspirational side of writing, the craft of writing certainly can be taught. Anyway, we'd love to hear what you think about this subject and/or this article. Meanwhile, you can review Part 1 of this subject, which we brought you last year, here.

Freedom From the Effects
Of Communal Persuasion

'The Buddhist scripture tells us, 'look within; thou art the Buddha.' The Christian tradition says, 'the kingdom of heaven is within you.' The only thing we really need, to get in touch with the mystery, is ourselves. For the writer, this type of profound self-reliance and self-trust are indispensible. But we can only achieve them when we are away from the opinion of friends, teachers and editors, the manipulation of advertising and shop windows, the influence of conversational wisdom. The only way we can get away from those things is through solitude. Freedom from the effects of communal persuasion is only found when we remove ourselves from community. But even when we are alone, the attitudes and expectations of others shadow us. It takes work to shed the years of relying on other people to validate us.'
--from Writing as a Sacred Path--A Practical Guide to Writing With Passion and Purpose.

Our 2nd Favorite Take on Conan's Debut

'When Conan O’Brien takes the Tonight Show stage this month, he will be only the fifth host of the NBC staple. But for the clownish six-feet-four redhead, the move from Late Night means more than trading coasts. O’Brien’s Ivy League-meets-lowbrow humor—fueled by years in the Simpsons writers’ room and a hefty dose of self-deprecation—is a drastic switch from that of Leno and Carson (you’d never catch Carnac the Magnificent doing the “String Dance”). How will a foulmouthed pup or a masturbating bear fly in the late-night time slot? Well, a younger generation loyal to O’Brien has been choosing South Park over Leno for a decade. Now you don’t need cable for a good poop joke before midnight.'
--from L.A. Magazine. But we liked the Washington Post's resident grumpy aesthete Tom Shales's viewpoint even a tad better. "By now "The Tonight Show" is like the White House; it belongs not to its occupant of the moment but to the American people. So it was not encouraging to see Conan O'Brien devoting the entire first half of his first "Tonight Show" on Monday to himself," he wrote the morning after the debut.

Touching Souls Is What It's All About

'Give people a fact or an idea and you enlighten their minds; tell them a story and you touch their souls.'
--Hasidic proverb. Thanks to a new friend, uber-coach Diane Helbig, for bringing this lovely thought to my attention.

Working With Words: Now Out In Paperback

We were charmed to learn recently that a newly published comprehensive guidebook to Cleveland mentioned this blog as a valuable resource of information about the town. We knew the guidebook's author, veteran Cleveland writer Douglas Trattner, only by his familiar byline, which has appeared over a wide assortment of fine articles around town for a number of years. Thus, we were doubly charmed to stumble over his brief description of WWW: "This sharply written blog by Cleveland-based journalist John Ettorre casts a wide, humorous net around topics as varied as local politics, business, fiction, sports and current events." We also liked the company we found ourselves in: the other two Cleveland-centric blogs he mentioned, Brewedfreshdaily and Writes Like She Talks, are operated by longtime friends of this establishment, George Nemeth and Jill Miller Zimon. In a bit of exquisite timing, given the Cavs' collapse this weekend, the book includes a brief section on "Cleveland Sports: Hope, Heartache, and Wait Till Next Year." Anyway, for those who are interested, the new book is available on Amazon.com. I happened to find a copy in the local Border's.

Giving Luck a Helping Hand

'What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind...and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.'
--Charles Victor Cherbuliez, a 19th century French author

Writing is Difficult, and Short Cuts Are Few

'During the early days of my life as a writer, I devoured all sorts of how-to books, from the aforementioned classics to the more absurd. The latter were my porno, my bad TV; they offered nothing of any value, really. I forgot everything shortly after I read it. The titles always included some type of promise like Dare To Be Great, Write to Sell, Write To Break Out or Write To Live. Even if I could remember anything, I couldn't apply what I had learned. My writing brain lived in a faraway land; I could not find any direct route to this learning. The same thing happened in graduate school. The knowledge gained from reading, reading, reading, talking, talking, talking and workshop, workshop, workshop sat in one impervious mound of dirt inside my head only to be doled out over time by an invisible (and stingy) hand. I suppose there are those who find prescriptive advice about writing helpful, writers who can look at a project, identify a structure, use an outline, and get to writing. One, two, three...poof! But I cannot imagine a world where this is true, a world where one creates great characters in five steps, a world in which one pops books out like laying eggs. In my world, writing is difficult, and short cuts are few. The only real way to learn how to do it is to read the work of authors who write well and to, well, write--a lot. Along the way, of course, it is always helpful--and interesting--to talk or listen to writers discuss their process and the work of other writers.'
--from Lee Montgomery's introduction to The Writer's Notebook--Craft Essays from Tin House.

Best Lead of the Month

'If you arrived late for “Terminator Salvation” and missed the name of the director, at what moment would you realize that you were not watching a Mike Leigh film? I would nominate the scene in which a rusty tow truck, armed with a wrecking ball, is pursued by a riderless robot motorbike, armed with automatic machine guns. A wrecked car falls into the bike’s path, at which point we are given privileged access to the display screen inside the robot’s brain. We get a blood-red projection of the obstacle ahead, and with it, for a second or two, the words “Analyzing alternatives.” Slide under the wreck, crash through it, or skirt around the side? I felt sorry for this anxious bike, which may have been having trouble at home, and it certainly delivers a more measured performance than some of the leading actors. Nonetheless, that brief digital readout gives the game away. The business of the film is not to tell a cogent story or earn the devotion of our sympathies but to analyze alternatives, and, when in doubt, pick whichever is louder.'
--From a movie review in the current New Yorker by Anthony Lane, who we enthused about six years ago here. Our runner-up this month is this pithy little gem from the Washington Post: "The whole world is on Twitter. Yawn." As we noted in our initial best lead of the month item three years ago, if a piece of writing doesn't begin well, it might just as well not have been written. Anyway, you can review earlier best leads of the month here.

On Being Unencumbered
By Your Former Nonsense

'Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.'
--Ralph Waldo Emerson. You can review earlier mentions of him here.

Finding a Fresh Way to Make One's Point

"I once responded to a girlfriend’s love poem by critiquing its imagery. That relationship didn’t last long." Besides that classic opening line, we found this rumination on love poems interesting in other ways. We especially liked how one unusual formulation startled us just a little: the idea that a young poet's main handicap springs from being "an inexperienced feeler." A nice reminder that saying something in a fresh, interesting and possibly unexpected way is what good writing is really all about.
UPDATE: The newly installed Poet Laureate of Great Britain says all poems are love poems.

Here's a Writing Market We Never Considered

The L.A Times, in a piece that will no doubt prompt a flood of new material being offered over the transom, notes that despite union rules to the contrary, the David Letterman show regularly uses jokes supplied by freelance comedy writers. So we ask you: waddayagot that's good enough for prime time comedy? We welcome your jokes, good, bad and in between. Meanwhile, you can review earlier Letterman-related items here.

A Few Things We Couldn't Help Noticing

• Iron Teen. The teenage equivalent of Cal Ripken.
• Grin 'N Bear It. Frisky Swiss farmers.
• Baloney. The never-ending media search for the "new" form of anti-Semitism.
• No More Trump. We'd have preferred the guy himself to leave the scene, but it was only his silly magazine that closed. Earlier, we noted said silly mag here.
• Ten Things...You didn't know about the Eiffel Tower.
• And Finally...We missed making this list yet again! But then, if you think these guys really constitute style, we think you're badly in need of exposure to several Cary Grant movies.

The Power of Praise

'I can live for two months on a good compliment.'
--Mark Twain. You can review earlier mentions of our favorite snowy haired bard here.

Stronger at the Broken Places

'The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.'
--Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms. To review a particularly resonant line from another of his books, A Moveable Feast, you can go here.

How Writing is a Long Apprenticeship

'Teaching yourself to write is simply a matter of practice, generating words and words and words until you figure out how they really fit together. I don't believe the ability to write is a gift. I believe that anyone can write if they are willing to put in the work, and I believe those who have tried to write but have failed have failed only in their ability to sit down long enough and produce enough apprentice words.'
--from a recent entry on Michael Ruhlman's blog. We invite you to read the entire post, and also to dip into at least one of his many fine books. You can review an earlier mention of Mike here.

Here's How One Comment Can Change a Life;
Try Being Interested Rather Than Interesting

'During my first year on the Stanford faculty in 1988, I sought out Professor John Gardner for guidance on how I might become a better teacher. Gardner, former Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare, founder of Common Cause, and author of the classic text Self-Renewal, stung me with a comment that changed my life. "It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting," he said. "Why don't you invest more time being interested?"'
--from a slim new publication, Why Business Thinking is Not the Answer, by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. You can review earlier mentions of John Gardner here.

Turning Innovation Inward

'We've all become great innovators on behalf of our companies and our work environments. Now we need to turn that spirit of radical innovation to our own lives.'
--Candice Carpenter, founder of the women's web community iVillage.

Leaving Nothing to Chance

'Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.'
--Helen Keller. You can review an earlier mention of her here.

One of the Most Effective Book Covers

That We Can Recall Ever Having Seen

We were drawn in by its minimalism, an especially effective storytelling device in a world ever more full of noise and hype. Sometimes, whispering works better. Thoughts?

Our Favorite Book Title,
Part 17

The Geopolitics of Emotion--How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are Reshaping the World. With a title like this, it's hard to pass up. But we had a couple of strong runners-up this time. They include How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories--Evolutionary Enigmas, and The Story of Yiddish--How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews. You can review earlier favorite book titles here.

On Breaking the Inertia of Dead Ideas

'It's time to step back and consider the big picture. We all know in our own lives how powerful the inertia of a dead idea can be, though often it's only in retrospect that we appreciate how hard it was to recognize and break free of its grip. People spend years in therapy examining reflexes formed in childhood that control their behavior decades later. Companies are often pushed to the brink of extinction before admitting that 'the way we've always done things' no longer makes sense. the hunger for certainty and continuity in a changing world is part of being human. Even when it no longer serves our interests, we cling to what we think we know.'
--from The Tyranny of Dead Ideas--Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity, by Matt Miller.

We've Got it All Backwards

'We are not human beings trying to be spiritual, but spiritual beings trying to be human.'
--Jacquelyn Small, a "soul-based" psychologist and author.

Savoring Writing Good Enough to Eat

'Flavor, in Italian dishes, builds up from the bottom. It is not a cover, it is a base. In a pasta sauce, a risotto, a soup, a fricassee, a stew, or a dish of vegetables, a foundation of flavor supports, lifts, points up the principal ingredients. To grasp this architectural principle central to the structure of much Italian cooking, and to become familiar with the three key techniques that enable you to apply it, is to take a long step toward mastering Italian taste. The techniques are known as battuto, soffritto and insaporire.'
--from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, by Marcella Hazan. We admit to never having heard of her or her work until reading this recent profile of Marcella and her husband.

Surrendering All One's Secrets To The
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine

'A woman in an MRI tube has few secrets. The man at the control console knows the size of her heart and the contents of her womb. He knows if she's had her breasts enlarged or her stomach stapled. He can see into her bladder and knows whether she's wishing she'd stopped by the restroom before climbing onto the exam table.'
--from Bonk--the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. We've only grazed through the book, but found this passage to be especially compelling.

It Was Supposed to Be Updike

The famously cerebral and prolific writer Joan Didion appeared in Cleveland yesterday. But an even more famous and prolific writer (we'll leave it to others to decide the cerebral pecking order) was originally scheduled for that appearance: the late John Updike. We thought about him all day. As a form of tribute, we decided to select one of his books we've never read and add it to our reading list. We're taking suggestions from anyone who cares to offer them. Meanwhile, we plan to once more bug our friend Mike Gallagher (an accomplished writer himself) to dig out for our inspection that long-ago letter he received from Updike, an unfailingly polite response to Mike's invitation to come speak (he declined, citing the need to remain at his writing desk). I recall him reading it to me nearly 20 years ago, as I marveled over its faintly familiar, wholly alluring Updikean cadence.

Easier Said Than Done

'The goal of marriage is not to think alike but to think together.'
--Robert Dodds

Things You Learn By Reading

'Since 2000, the finance sector has funneled a total of $2.84 billion directly into the political system, $961 million in donations to candidates and political parties, $1.88 billion in publicly disclosed lobbying expenditures to influence Congress and the executive branch.'
--From former Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall's eye-opening new piece in the Huffingtonpost. The emphasis was ours. Look for future installments of TYLBR.

Fast Company Magazine Takes Note
Of Some Bold New Ohio Architecture

Not long ago, I got a sneak preview of the new additions to the Cleveland Museum of Art, from a friend who works there. When the new east wing is formally unveiled next month, it ought to draw some oohs and ahs, though there will no doubt also be some traditionalists who don't like messing with the classic original building, now close to a century old. I suppose a big part of me is in sympathy with that latter sentiment. Still, we do like to see some big, bold architecture now and again. Fast Company seemed almost shocked that dowdy old Ohio could be home to so many interesting new architectural accomplishments. I especially like that new glass pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art. Mental note to myself: make sure to visit Toledo sometime this summer.

Our Favorite Website of the Week...

Goes to this ad agency in Birmingham, Alabama, of all places. Their slogan seems to be "rethink everything." We rather like how their site broke through the clutter and demanded that we take a moment to look around the joint. Still, we realize you may well hate it. Love it or hate it, it certainly stands out. We'd welcome your thoughts, as well as your nominations for site of the week.

Giving of Yourself

'The only gift is a portion of thyself.'
--Ralph Waldo Emerson. You can review earlier mentions of him here.

Are You Spending Yourself Wisely?

'Life begets energy--energy creates energy. It is only by spending oneself wisely that one becomes rich in life.'
--Eleanor Roosevelt
UPDATE: This got us to thinking: what kinds of quotes & bromides from Michelle Obama might folks be repeating & admiring a half century from now? Thoughts, anyone?

Nothing Comes to He

Who Waits (or Floats)

'If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.'

--Comedian Jonathan Winters

Right Wing Dope Resurfacing Watch, Part 2

Last year, we brought you news of how a dismal dupe named Judith Miller went from being a senior New York Times reporter used as a willing tool by scheming, warmongering Bushies to a disgraced scribbler, trying to resurrect her career through articles in Reader's Digest and appearances on the FOX TV network (good luck with that strategy, Judith). This time, the resurfacing act is by former Karl Rove hatchet man Ken Tomlinson, whom the Bush Administration once installed as head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, evidently to try to undermine what it saw as pinko public media (the CPB oversees NPR and PBS). That effort failed in spectacular fashion, thanks to the way the quality media--including NPR itself--impressively rallied to the cause and smoked him out of his FOXhole. The CPB's inspector general later found Tomlinson guilty of a range of serious violations, leaving the dope thoroughly discredited. Anyway, this bumbling fool has lately begun showing up as a columnist for that egregious spewer of right-wing propaganda, the Weekly Standard. I love how the magazine simply omits that most recent chapter in his life, by referring to him in his bio tagline only as the former editor of Reader's Digest.

How Productivity Can Grow Out of Brokeness

'Despair and a sense of loss are not static conditions, but goads to our labor.'
--philosopher and Harvard professor Stanley Cavell

A Writing Syllabus for the Internet Age

'As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers. Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new "Lost Generation" of minimalists who would much rather watch Lost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences.'
--from a spoof in the online publication McSweeney's, which we found pretty entertaining.

Leveraging the Web for PR Practitioners
Notes from a March 11th Presentation
To the Independent Practitioners Group

A Few Questions We'll Explore:

• What are your sustainable competitive advantages (in other words, how can you better distinguish yourself from the run of plain-vanilla PR providers)?
• How can you leverage the web to strengthen and broadcast those advantages?
• How can you slowly increase the pipeline of candidates ready to engage with you, and eventually (perhaps) do business with you?
• How can you intelligently integrate your relationships (a big company would call it CRM, or Customer Relationship Management) into your marketing efforts?
• How can you continue to add to the universe of possible clients (the saddest story I’ve heard in months was about a guy in advertising who complained all his clients got bought by other companies. How long did he go without adding to his client base—20 years?).
• How can you find the time to deliver more value to clients while searching for business less?
• How can you broaden and deepen your intelligence network to find more business? Or better yet, how can it better find you?

A Couple of Phrases We’ll Illuminate:

Inbound Marketing
Relationship Marketing

A Mantra We’ll Dissect:

People Tend to Buy from those they Know, Like & Trust

Seth Godin on PR:

"Most PR firms do publicity, not PR. Publicity is the act of getting ink. Publicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion. Sometimes publicity is helpful, and good publicity is always good for your ego. But it's not PR. PR is the strategic crafting of your story. It's the focused examination of your interactions and tactics and products and pricing that, when combined, determine what and how people talk about you."

A Few Sites Worth Studying Regularly

www.iwantmedia.com
Maintained by an NYU new media professor, it’s one of the best at keeping track of developments at the intersection of the business sides of PR and journalism.
www.micropersuasion.com
One of the earlier & better guides to how the web is changing PR. Its author now works in new media for PR giant Edelman in NY.
www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45
The infamous Romenesko, read several times a day by nearly every journalist in America.
www.marketingprofs.com/
One of the better how-to sites about good online marketing.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com
Godin is simply the best, freshest thinker about the philosophies behind marketing in the 21st century. The original guru of “permission marketing.”
www.copyblogger.com
The best site on the web about the ins & outs (and value) of online copywriting.
www.clickz.com
Not what it used to be, but still worthwhile sometimes.
www.chrisbrogan.com
A newer-age Seth Godin (Seth was actually his mentor). Pretty sharp.
http://searchenginewatch.com
Never hurts to understand a little about how search engines work.

Some Good Local Resources/Ideas/Smart People to Watch

http://askinsivia.com
A great online tool for answering web questions and making new connections, by the Cleveland web development shop Insivia. A great example of an inbound expert tool.
http://toughsledding.wordpress.com
Bill Sledzik, a PR prof at Kent State, offers fresh thinking about PR on his blog.
http://technomarketer.typepad.com
Matt Dickman, formerly w/Digiknow, is now the resident social network guru with the Cleveland office of Fleishman-Hillard, and is increasingly becoming a nationally recognized thinker on the topic.
http://www.pr2020.com/blog
A blog by Paul Roetzer, who runs perhaps Northeast Ohio’s only true inbound marketing/PR operation.

Leveraging Website Copy

Notes From A March 13th Presentation
To SCK's Ask The Experts Workshop Series

U.S. Households lost $11 TRILLION IN WEALTH IN LAST YEAR. That's worth keeping in mind. But if you’re in business, now’s not the time to retrench. If anything, you need to work smarter if not harder in biz development. During tough times, there’s a flight to quality, value, dependability, etc.

Entrepreneurial people aren’t as intimidated by chaos, because they find opportunities in change and see patterns that others may not. Use the web as your skunk works; experiment with it for building leads, contacts and conversations.

Full disclosure: I’m not really an expert about the web. Be skeptical of anyone who says they are. The web is too fluid and dynamic for anyone to ever really become expert, because just when you think you have the hang of it, things have moved on. The goal instead is to be a learning machine.

For the web to work at its best, you need to blend the various sub-disciplines (SEO, e-marketing, analytics, design, content, usability) into a seamless whole. Think of them as tactics blending into your larger web strategy.

The end goal of all of this is, or should be, inbound marketing. Business is a lot easier when some opportunities find you.

A Few Do’s & Don’ts On Web Copy

Don’t Bury Your Lead
Get the essence of your organization/product offering on the home page, not buried four clicks away, hoping visitors might find it. Just as every successful presidential campaign has a crisp, clear, coherent, credible narrative that states the case for voting for that candidate, your home page has to quickly and clearly communicate what you’re about, how you’re different, and why anyone should care. And it should be tailored to your audience & closely tied to your business objectives.

Don’t Get Carried Away by Baking Key Words Into Your Message
This can sometimes come at the cost of being unclear about your main offerings, real corporate culture and central differentiation points. Besides, you can always accomplish some of that via meta tags and title tags.

Don’t Panic About All This Social Media Stuff
Just do something, at least one thing well, and grow from there. These are merely tactics that shouldn’t cause you to lose sight of your larger strategic objectives. Do a couple things that help with inbound marketing. Consider an “ask the experts” micro site in which you invite visitors to ask questions. It’s a good way to demonstrate your knowledge.

Do Give Both Readers & Skimmers Something for Them
If you worked for Bill Clinton, you might best report on your progress by preparing a long report for him to read. If you worked for George W. Bush, you’d be better off crafting a short and compelling story to relate to him orally. Find a way to deliver your message to different kinds of audiences.

Writing for the Web

A Presentation to the 18th Annual

Spring Writers Conference
@ Lakeland Community College

March 28, 2009

(editor's note: we're long overdue to post these notes. Thanks to everyone who joined this engaging discussion. I found it uniquely energizing).

It wasn’t so long ago that most writers focused only on print, while a few others concentrated only on the Internet. But those two worlds are steadily merging into one seamless publishing platform (when you publish an article in print, the outlet generally has purchased the right to also publish it on their website, and that’s a plus for you in terms of visibility if not income). At the same time, with the steady erosion (sometimes bordering on implosion) of print outlets, the web is becoming an increasingly crucial platform. In truth, it’s all just writing, but it helps to understand the sometimes different protocols and market conditions of print and online.

Item: Blender, Tennis Week, PC Magazine and the century-old Christian Science Monitor are among dozens of publications that have recently converted to online only. Plenty more will follow.
Item: Just a few weeks ago, the Pulitzer Prize administrators announced that for the first time, web-only pubs would be eligible.
Item: Longtime NYT & Washingon Post writer Sharon Waxman recently launched www.thewrap.com. Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, recently began www.thedailybeast.com. Both are chasing after huffingtonpost.com, which just raised $25 million in funding.
Item: online-only Insidehighered.com taking on mighty Chronicle of Higher Ed. Former Clevelander who used to edit the latter is now editing the former.
Item: the New York Times recently launched a local blog network.
Item: Talkingpointsmemo.com (which might just win that first online Pulitzer) broke the story of the Bush White House sacking of U.S. attorneys for politics.
Closer to home, two former PD reporters have launched online-only www.medcitynews.com, and Coolcleveland.com, an e-letter, has something like 60,000 subscribers, while Northern Ohio Live magazine last year went from monthly to every other month, and two competing alternative weeklies (the Free Times and Scene, both near 100 pages most weeks) merged into one smaller paper.

Around the country, a number of great online-only publications are springing up to slowly fill part of the vacuum left by declining print newspapers (again, expect plenty more to follow):
www.newwest.net
www.voiceofsandiego.org
www.minnpost.com

Potential Online-Only Markets For You
Flakmag.com
CoolCleveland.com
Thesmartset.com
Examiner.com
The two granddaddies, each now well over a decade old:
Slate.com & Salon.com

Every writer, novice to master, should maintain some form of web presence, the more substantial the better. At the very least, that should include a page or two with your credits, background and contact information. It should provide a sense of your style and distinguish you from others who wield a pen or word processor. If it also includes a handful of examples of your best work--published or not, journalism or commercial/institutional copywriting--so much the better. I can promise you this: it will make you feel more serious about your own writing aspirations and invite others to do so as well. Through the power of search technologies such as Google and the web’s unique linking structure, you will also substantially increase your likelihood of serendipity. You’ll find that, done right, even a modest web strategy will help writing opportunities find you rather than you always having to search for them. Not a bad idea in any line of work, but especially helpful in writing.BlogsWeblogs, or blogs for short, are an excellent way to establish that web presence. These easily updatable online sites allow anyone to instantly publish to the web, and you needn’t have any Internet skills to do so. What do they do? Whatever you want them to do. You can use it as a way to stretch your muscles and try new things. Experiment with new topics, new voices or approaches. If you’re a fiction writer, you can take a stab at nonfiction, or vice versa. If you’re a journalist, you can try some poetry. You can choose to tell people it exists, or wait until you feel ready to unveil it. You can be more ambitious, treating it as your own online publication, written for an audience. Even if you’re an advanced writer with decades of experience, blogs are a way to steadily widen your audience, engage more people (including new editors) and show more of what you can do and have done. You can share links to new articles and other publications, maintain an archive of earlier work, announce and sell your books and inform folks about your workshop appearances. In short, it’s a great method for building a community around your work. Unlike a static writers’ website, it screams out for readers to return periodically to your site to read about what’s new.

Other Benefits That May Surprise You

If you want it to, having a blog will instantly connect you to a dense network of fellow writers, thinkers, readers, doers and seekers. This group of highly engaged people can become a community of practice for you and your writing that will sustain and support you in your efforts. That’s critical for every writer, from the greenest novice to the most experienced master wordsmith, because writing can be, but need not be, the loneliest calling/profession/hobby/pursuit (choose one or more that applies to you). Through blogging, you can, should you so choose, join a large ongoing discussion that will stimulate your curiosity and imagination, challenge your intellect and ultimately inform and nourish your writing. It will stretch your writing horizons and possibly erase geographic boundaries. It could bring you a few (or perhaps many) international readers, and might just even get you hired for a writing gig simply because someone liked what they read and wanted more.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

Okay: so let’s say for the sake of argument that I’ve convinced you to consider beginning your own blog. How do you do it? There are a number of online publishing platforms through which you can publish your blog. Wordpress (http://wordpress.com) is perhaps the most popular platform, because of its easy adaptability and many features. One of the best and easiest is Blogger (www.blogger.com). It’s owned by Google, is simple and reliable, and best of all, it’s completely free (though they’ll be happy to sell you upgrades with more bells and whistles). Actually, believe it or not, there’s something even better than the fact that it’s free: you don’t have to know a thing about web technology to set one up yourself and to maintain it. If you can figure out the Microsoft Word program, you can follow Blogger’s highly intuitive prompts and in about 10 minutes set up your own blog. You’ll just have to give yourself a password, decide the look you’d prefer by choosing from among several page templates, decide what to call your blog and if you’ll want to allow visitors to post comments. And bingo--you’ll be in business, ready to become your own publisher. If you need help, just ask. I’ll be happy to walk you through the process.

Some Worthwhile ResourcesFor writers, a static website and a blog shouldn’t be thought of as either-or propositions. Ideally, they complement each other. But if you’re going to introduce yourself at cocktail parties as a writer or identify yourself that way on your tax return, you’d better have at least one.
Here are a couple great examples of writer’s websites:
http://www.ruhlman.com/
http://www.kristinohlson.com/

List of websites maintained by journalists:
http://wiki.cyberjournalist.net/jblogs-personal

List of blogs by independent journalists:
http://wiki.cyberjournalist.net/jblogs-independent

Good Portal For Information About Freelancing:
http://freelancewrite.about.com/

Best Blog About Commercial Copywriting:
http://www.copyblogger.com

If you’re going to invest in a subscription to a writers magazine, I recommend one of these:
The Writer (www.writermag.com/wrt) more nonfiction oriented
Poets & Writers (www.pw.org) more poetry and fiction oriented
Over this:
Writer’s Digest (www.writersdigest.com) mostly bad advice & sales pitches, but sometimes okay

A Few Things That Caught Our Attention

• Read It & Weep. Five reasons house prices may never recover.
• Who Could Argue With This? You are what you read.
• Stop the Presses! Study finds some kids are addicted to video games.
• From the Archives, a Classic. Business Week wondered aloud back in 2000 if the "purity" of Google's business model would prevent it from making any money.
• The Sisterhood's Not Gonna Like This. We reserve all comment on this story.
• Could Mall's Demise Cause a Suburb's Death? Note Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones' comment on the potential backlash from the closing of Randall Park Mall.
• Finally...A site where you can download some classic books for free.

Our Favorite Headline & Subhead of the Week

It's also one of the more satisfying developments we've read about, this moaning from Wall Street. While you're at it, perhaps you're also in the mood to read about the privations of an anonymous spouse of a banker who feels he must get out of the crosshairs of public attention as a result of accepting the federal TARP bailout funds. Please, do include all these poor folks in your prayers, will you? But if all that focus on bad economic news leaves you in need of some comic relief, I recommend this video clip posted not long ago by my friend Erin O'Brien, wielder of a uniquely wicked pen. I watched it four times, and laughed each time.

Hunger Pains

'Hunger is not an emotion, not quite a mentality and certainly not a skill. What it is, though, is as vital as anything drawn up on a whiteboard or honed in a gymnasium. Coaches come up with syrupy speeches and perform wild pregame stunts in an effort to generate it, and moderately talented players -- "energy guys" -- earn millions for providing a form of it. It's unquantifiable and only vaguely identifiable, and that allows every baller to think he's hungrier than the man he's facing up. Only some of them, of course, have a case. "It's that old cliché: 'Don't talk about it, be about it,'" says Hornets coach Byron Scott, who won three rings with the Lakers. "A lot of teams talk about how hungry they are, how dedicated they are. But until you go out and show it, it's just talk."

--from a cover story in the current ESPN Magazine, which rates the Cavs franchise as well as its fans as among the NBA entities hungriest for a championship.

Are You Stuck in a Rut?

'Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.'

--Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the celebrated (rightly, we think) author and Harvard Business School professor, whose work centers on leadership and innovation. It doesn't hurt that she also happens to be a Cleveland-area native. You can read an interview with her here, and check out The Economist's brief overview on her here.

It's As Simple (Or As Hard) As That

'Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.'
--William Wordsworth. We tip our cap to the incomparable Jenny Rough for first noting this lovely quote.

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 16

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations. The web is devastating to the business of lots of middle men operations, from ticket brokers to travel agents and stock brokers. PR firms are trying their best not to join that list. You can review earlier favorite book titles here.

Here's How Writing & Farming Are Alike

'We like that a sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.'
--Henry David Thoreau. To review several earlier mentions of HDT, you can begin here. Simply follow the links.

If It's Springtime, We're Engrossed
In the Delicious NBA Playoff Drama

We all have our favorite sporting traditions. Millions of folks annually overdose on the near frenzy of March Madness, the college hoops tournament (which I wrote about some time ago in this book review). And during a recent breakfast conversation, my friend Terry was sharing his visceral love for the NHL hockey playoff season also now underway. He has one of those wonderfully expressive faces that masks little of what he's feeling, and his passion for hockey came through loud and clear. But for me, the sporting sun rises and sets on the NBA playoffs, which have just begun. Ah, nirvana.

I would enjoy it this year as I do every other no matter what, but when your favorite team is considered among the favorites to win it all (certainly the first time for that), it takes the experience from merely wonderful to a state of near rapture. It helps, in an odd way, when your city has a famously tortured history with its major league sports teams, as mine does (I wrote all about that here three years ago).

The NBA season is way too long, and there's sometimes far too little drama during the regular season, when most of these pampered millionaires seem to be playing on auto pilot. But when the playoffs begin, you quickly find out which individuals and teams are just hanging around for the paychecks--or have one foot in the game and the other in the Bahamas, as one TV commentator so pungently put it tonight--and which ones have deeper sources of inspiration and pride upon which to draw. It's the clash of those giants (whose success is built at least as much upon their character and work ethic as it is on their athletic skills, the latter of which is a given) that makes playoff basketball such a treat. There's so much ballet, brute force and athletic improvisation blended into the final product that it's a joy to watch. So for the next six weeks or so, you'll have to excuse my divided attention.

Robert Frost on the True Value of Higher Learning

'We go to college to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven't learned in high school. Once we have learned to read, the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us.'
--the late and immortal poet, Mr. Frost. You can review earlier mentions of the Sublime One here, here & here.

Dear Commenters: We're Always Telling
You How Much We Love You, But This
Blogger Took Things One Step Further

'Consider the erotic potential between blogger and commenters,' this recent eye-opening article began. It tells the amazing story of a slow dance between a blogger and one of her commenters, eventually resulting in the couple's marriage. We got a serious kick out of it. Heck, we've always felt that kind of bond with our commenters around here. But please don't take it personally if we just keep it at the friendly level, as we're already spoken for in the marital department. We'd love to hear your thoughts about it, though.

How Design is at the Core of Everything

'Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones...Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training.'
--Nobel laureate Herbert Simon

Piercing Insights Such as This
Converted Many Into Jungians

'Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.'
Carl Jung. you can review earlier items about the late intellectual giant (considered the founder of analytical psychology) here.

Best Lead of the Month

'It wasn’t hard to bribe your way into Madison Square Garden in the 1970s. You set out from Brooklyn, ran the toll at the tunnel and quickly inhaled a couple of bottles of under-age courage at the Penn Bar. Then, with a squarely folded $5 in the center of your right palm, you made your way to the ticket taker at Tower D and executed your Class C misdemeanor like a politician working a rope line: feigned ease, little eye contact and an efficient, soulless handshake during which your $5 became his.'
--from a New York Times article on an upcoming HBO documentary about the famous Thrilla in Manila heavyweight championship fight between Muhammed Ali and George Frazier. You can review earlier best leads here.

Authenticity Above All Else

'Be a first-rate version of yourself, not a second-rate version of someone else.'
--Judy Garland

A Few Of Our Favorite (and Least Favorite) Things

• The best magazine subscription come-on of the week, month and year, from The Nation: "We're like Fox News. Only Smart. And not crazy. And we don't lie. Click here for 4 free issues."
• The silliest academic mumbo jumbo we've seen in quite awhile: Womanist Theology.
• Glad to see we're not the only ones who hate those infernal traffic cameras the City of Cleveland uses to nab scofflaws. To us, they merely provide one more reason not to head downtown.
• Some recent Seth Godin wisdom, on the need to occasionally push yourself by sprinting.

Words Matter

'The person who first hurled a word founded civilization.'
--Sigmund Freud. It's good to be back. I've missed y'all. A special thanks to all of those who left comments and sent all those lovely emails...

Stopping & Paying Attention
Is What Finally Awakens Us

''Silence,' wrote Herman Melville, 'is the one and only voice of god.' What is it trying to tell us? In order to follow inner wisdom, we have to first know it. In order to know it, we have to hear it; to hear it, we have to be still. Habits are so deeply ingrained that in spite of the best intentions, we fall back into mindless behavior. It is stopping and paying attention that awakens us. I still have on my desk the conch shell I picked up at the beach on my second day of silence. Listen, it continues to remind me. Listen to what you can hear when you are being still.'
--from Listening Below the Noise--A Meditation on the Practice of Silence, by Anne LeClaire.

Things We Couldn't Help Noticing Lately

• Our friend Marybeth Matthews' teacherly reaction to the call for a longer school year.
• Stuff that's been banned on eBay.
• Stuff that makes us wince, grimmace and silently say 'ouch.'
• A new wine bar on Shaker Square, which can never rival the sentimental value that accrued to its former occupant, our friend Mary Brown's defunct though immortal fashion shop, Ohio Signatures.
• This unbelievably heartwarming video tale of a reunion between a fireman and someone whose life he saved 40 years ago, served up by the Boston Globe, but reposted by Cleveland realtor Carole Cohen.

A Pretty Good Recipe for Happiness,
Especially in the Current Economy

'Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs.'
--H. Stein

Sounds Right To Us On Both Counts

The Washington Post's Michael Wilbon says that as we head into the home stretch of the NBA season, it's really down to four elite teams vying for the title: the Lakers, Celtics, Cavs and Spurs. Meanwhile, his colleague Al Kamen notes a recent C-Span poll of historians that rates the outgoing president George W. Bush as the seventh-worst in history. We think that's a good start, and a temporary resting place from which he should only slowly fall even lower as the enormity of his serial disasters continue to be digested and assessed.
UPDATE: Bush, who famously told author Robert Draper that in his post-presidency he would give some speeches "just to replenish the ol' coffers," is about to embark on a series of speeches. Meanwhile, a columnist for Britain's Guardian newspaper has some fun imagining various jobs Bush might explore.

We May Have Reached a New High Water Mark
In Comments About How Bad the Meltdown Is

Like me, you may be tired of hearing how the current financial problems are the worst since the Great Depression, since it's been uttered a few millions times. Earlier this week, we were troubled to learn from this New York Times story that the nation's banking system is basically insolvent. A day later, PBS's Frontline series added yet another bracing bit of context with its excellent documentary recounting recent economic events, Inside the Meltdown (which I urge you to watch online if you missed it on TV). But after reading this brief Reuter's story, I couldn't help thinking we'd crossed yet another perilous threshold. A highly credible financial figure, a man of towering reputation, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker says "I don't remember any time, maybe even in the Great Depression, when things went down quite so fast, quite so uniformly around the world."

Gulp.

Try, Try Again

'Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.'
--the late author James Michener. You can review a brief (and unflattering) earlier mention of him here.

Being Toughest
On Yourself

'The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.'
--the late author James Baldwin. We mentioned him earlier here.