Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
March 24, 2009 • Tuesday
England's The Guardian newspaper has run an interesting article about the Native American tribes of the U.S. trying to salvage their languages, which are very close to being lost. Even the Comanche tribe, which dominated much of the U.S. territories just over one century ago, are estimated to have fewer than 100 members who can still understand their language.
The tribes' elders are generally the only people who still speak the native tongues, and they're campaigning their descendants to start saving the languages. Efforts include offering language instruction via college courses and community classes, and the production of audio recordings of vocabulary.
See "Native Americans find their voice."
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March 09, 2009 • Monday
William Shakespeare is showing up in two pieces of news.
First, he's rearing his face in Great Britain. A painting of the Shakespearean-era writer (ha!) has turned up in Ireland as part of a private collection. Why is this big news? Because it's the only accurate portrait of Shakespeare known to exist. See CNN.com's article "Unique portrait from Shakespeare's life unveiled."
(One aspect of this subject that piques my interest is its relation to Bill Bryson's 2007 book Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Part of Bryson's work explores the fact that none of the few Shakespeare likenesses in the world are accurate. Now that's no longer so. How must it feel to base your writing on research covering four centuries of material only to have your reporting obsolete within two years? Sheesh.)
The other news is that the theatre thought to have premiered Romeo and Juliet has been discovered buried on the outskirts of London. See the BBC article "Shakespeare's first theatre found."
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March 06, 2009 • Friday
This is a shout out to a website co-run by a friend of mine who also happens to be a writer I worked with in my Tennis magazine days.
The site, "Spin Serum," challenges media coverage of today's biggest issues, pointing out incomplete stories, hidden motives, and so on. It's not a negative slam on the media — just a call for journalism to return to the indubitable integrity it used to be so proud of.
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