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| Candelit STANDWOOD STATION GA Chronicles What we could have done with NANOWRIMO if we'd known about Standwood Station?! | | by: | This item requires reviews with ratings.
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Created: 4:18pm on 11-03-2007
Modified: 8:31am on 02-09-2010 | |
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From NaNoWriMo novels in South Alabama and Standwood Station, GA-to the Phantom Northern Woods-to exploring Social Justice-we deal out horror, Supernatural, Historical, fantasy, mystery, and more. Find it here.
We write it. We read it. We hold strong opinions. We orate.
Meanwhile, whether we're writing or just reading, we love to rave about books and authors right here!
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Yes, Gentle Reader. I hear you. Some of you are expectant, waiting for pearls of wisdom to spill from my lips.  Others are groaning in dismay: "AGAIN?" Yes, AGAIN.
I call it as I see it, and today the Universe provided me with not one, but two, news accounts about Haiti that strike me as pertinent and amazing. Haiti as a country has fascinated me since earliest childhood, both its history and its Spirituality.I've perused the Madison Smartt Bell trilogy, the Haitian Revolutionary Series, and it is an eye-opener. Mr. Bell's breadth of scholarship is amazing, and he couples it with a writing quality that reads smoothly and captivatingly.
Today's news is good, in one event. Just as a survivor was discovered among the rubble a full two weeks following the quake, so too has yet one more survivor appeared, alive-an ENTIRE 4 WEEKS after the first quake! Now that to me is an an amazing miracle of Providence--when one considers how the poor fellow must have suffered, but what a joy of reunion for his ecstatic and delighted family! Especially good news, since the Haitian government ended search-and-rescue on Jan. 23, 17 days ago.
Truly it boggles the mind.
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/americas/Man-Pulled-Alive-From-Haiti-Earthq...
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/survivor-pulled-from-haiti-quake-rubble/193...
Let us remember, however, that these are only a few-upwards of 200.000 died-there was one major quake on Jan. 12, and aftershocks on Jan. 15 and 22. Millions are homeless (in a nation where home residency involves much less than what Americans and Western Europeans consider the right of every citizen-sometimes it's not even shelter). Research-Haiti was not poor only when a slave state; that poverty erodes dignity of life right through the present day.
Please stay tuned for the next entry, in which we will orate on the American presence in Haiti: historical and contemporary.
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Actor James Dean was born 79 years ago, Feb. 8, 1931. No, he wasn't an author, but he did star in the film adaptation of an important John Steinbeck novel, East of Eden, he had a fabulously meteoric career, and like so many-he died young, on Sept. 30, 1955, crashing his Porsche near Pasa Robles, California. Richard Thomas made a film about that event: September 30, 1955 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078231/
Dean also starred on Broadway in an adaptation of Andre Gide's The Immortalist.
We miss you, James. RIP.
http://www.biography.com/articles/James-Dean-9268866?HPF_rid=38205211&HPF_m...
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Today's Issue:
Junk Mail and the Environment
I remember "junk mail" being around since at least the 1960's. That was three decades of junk snail mail before e-mail became possible and then popular, and "spam" was invented online. So now in Feb. 2010, I'm thinking of 5 decades of "junk," which by its very terminology indicates useless, time-wasting, environmentally-destructive, material.
Do YOU know what "Junk" Mail does to the Environment? (Speaking of paper, at the moment):
Check out this data, Gentle Readers:
100 Million Trees cut down each year!! 100 Million! ONLY FOR JUNK!
This doesn't include the trees eradicated for personal, business, and commerical mail.
8 months of the average citizen's life SPENT READING AND SORTING JUNK MAIL
800 junk mail items per year, per household! 41 pounds!!
1/3 of snail mail received on average per year is JUNK!
44% of junk mail annually ends up opened in Landfills, where 50 years later the text is still legible!
12 billion pounds of paper annually spent on junk mail, 10 million of it ending in landfills
Junk Mail is the equivalent of 9,377,000 passenger cars' emissions
http://www.thegreenestdollar.com/2010/01/the-ultimate-list-for-stopping-your-jun...
PAPER is the Number One deposit in Landfills; not (nonbiodegrable) plastic!
Gentle Readers, go peruse these links for yourself-don't ever take my word for it! Read it and Weep!
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/stop-junk-mail.html
http://www.thegreenestdollar.com/2010/01/the-ultimate-list-for-stopping-your-jun...
http://precycle.tonic.com/
http://www.mnn.com/technology/research-innovations/stories/welcome-plentymagcom-...
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/isnt-it-time-to-junk-your-junk-mail-2.html
http://www.41pounds.org/
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I've made a decision this morning. From this point on, there will be daily blogging performed in this space, and we will devote this blog to Writing-Reading-Social Justice.
Yes, folks, you read that a-right: Social Justice-human rights, Saving the Planet, and so forth.
I'm really noticiing lately too, how I'm coming down on the side of Science-in terms of railing at the lack of logical thinking, of rationality, of denial, or sheer miseducation-diseducation-dumbing down of civilization. Please-we are subject to an information surplus, and yet we have folks who deny such obvious processes as Global Climate Change, Polar Magnetic Shifts, and the stunning loss of life in natural disasters such as Haiti? {"Oh, well," says such, "they don't count-they're not Americans." Yes, I've heard exactly that. Save America first-but where were they over the past 4 decades when American citizens so needed help-for homelessness, starving children, child and adult abuse, crime victimization, ad infinitum?)
So, beware and be prepared:
Not only shall we discourse on the fantastic quality of fiction (and non-fiction) as we discover such, we shall discourse on Writing-the great endeavour of Life-and on Social / Cultural/ Environmental Issues.
{No need to worry, we do not expect to be specifically political-so no bashing of one party or the other-however, when public figures act in stupidity, we may well point to that.)
 ![2009 NaNoWriMo Project Sig [#1617720]
Designed by me for NaNo 2009](http://imgsx.writing.com/main/images/action/display/item_id/1617720.jpg)
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Howard Zinn, the historian who authored A People's History of the United States, is dead at his home at age 87. Mr. Zinn did not just research and recount history; he lived it. I recommend reading some of the news articles on him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/us/28zinn.html?em
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At age 91, reclusive for the past 50 years, seminal author J. D. Salinger is dead. Author of the book that encapsulated a generation in the 1950's, Catcher in the Rye, and of ̶0;Franny and Zooey," “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” and "Nine Stories," Salinger changed a generation's literature, then virtually "disappeared from sight," eschewing fame.
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-salinger29-2010jan29,0,578438.story
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/books/29salinger.html?ref=todayspaper
Photo Credits:
Evening Standard/Getty Images/NYTimes
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Author Robert B. Parker, of the prolific Spenser detective series and many other novels, is deceased, on Edgar Allan Poe's birthdate. Mr. Parker was born in 1932.
Another writer on the Night Shift. RIP Robert B. Parker.
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