I've moved to Tumblr!

I will now be posting blog entries, photos, and links on Tumblr. Please find me there!

Artistic nuances

Last night in the car, my husband was listening to the new Megadeth album. He said, "I can tell when Dave Mustaine is playing the guitar solo and when Chris Broderick is playing the guitar solo." Well, goody for you, was my initial thought. My second thought was, what a nerd! To me, a guitar solo is a guitar solo--I would never be able to tell who was playing it. But then I thought more about distinguishing artistic nuances such as voice and style. If you put two pieces of writing side by side from authors I knew, and removed the names, I would be able to tell you who wrote it. My husband would not be able to tell the difference, and he thinks I'M a nerd for being able to do so. But I like the idea of style and voice making its imprint on so many artistic disciplines, and those of us who are ardent followers of art--music, visual, literary--get to know the style and voice of our favorite artists so well we can easily tell them apart when others cannot.

Happy Valentine's Day!

MN Book Award nominations

Look! One of my besties is in the same category as me for MN Book Award nominations.

Go, Becky, go! And you all--read Chasing Allie Cat. You must. It's brilliant.

We beg to differ

My pal, Karen Babine, wrote a thoughtful response to the Huffington Post "critic" Anis Shivani, who calls creative writing "therapy" and not literature, among other slights and insults. Read her excellent post here.

What can you do with 100,000 pushpins?

This image is from the documentary ART AND COPY. It's in an advertising agency office and was created with 100,000 clear pushpins. A good motto, no?

Research, revolutionized

I'm deep into research for my latest Capstone assignment about earthquakes. I continue to be amazed at how technology makes research easier and easier each year.

Today I'm researching information about the March 11, 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami. I like to use books as my primary sources for these Capstone assignments. I still view edited books as having the most reliable information, though I obviously use vetted government and education Web sites as well.

Up until a year or so ago, it would have been difficult to find books about events that happened only in the previous few months. But I went on Amazon.com today and found a couple of books about the Japan quake that have been published by traditional publishers. However, better than that, now there's a few Kindle books that were published after the quake. The quality of these may not all be fantastic, but I found a couple of first-person accounts that are promising. Before the advent of e-books, these authors could have put their thoughts and writings on the Web. But for me to find that information would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. On Amazon, these Kindle books show up with all the other books about the quake. And in about 10 seconds, I can have the book on my iPhone, whereas I had to submit an interlibrary loan request for the hard-copy books.

What do you like best about e-books?