Chris Nicholson's Writing Weblog
September 30, 2009 • Wednesday
Mary Schilpp, a photographer and friend of mine based in Florida, had an exhibit of her work open at the Sunrise Civic Center this month. And today, the region's Sun Sentinel newspaper published an article about the show.
See "Local artist's exhibit showcases 'The Beauty of Sport' " on the Sentinel's website.
Also, for more information on the show, including a few sample images, see The Beauty of Sport's Facebook page.
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August 24, 2009 • Monday
A photographer friend of mine, New York City's June Harrison, has been profiled by Kodak in their "Professional Photographers' Closeup" series.
See "June Harrison: Action Photography."
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August 13, 2009 • Thursday
An article I wrote appeared in the July/August 2009 issue of USTA Magazine, a supplement to Tennis magazine.
"A Quick Way In" examines the success of the USTA's QuickStart tennis program through the lens of a single event in Fairfield, Conn.
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July 21, 2009 • Tuesday
Most people are probably aware by now that author Frank McCourt passed away two days ago.
Time.com has run an excellent article about McCourt's life and his inspiration for the writing style behind his Pulitzer-winning memoir, Angela's Ashes.
See "Frank McCourt, Author of Angela's Ashes, Dies."
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June 19, 2009 • Friday
Today I read about a great piece of software: A typewriter program.
No, it's not a word processor. It doesn't allow you to delete, to copy, to paste. It doesn't allow you to do anything a classic typewriter couldn't do.
You can type. You can print. (The one modern feature is that you can save.) Your computer basically becomes a $1,000 typewriter.
The idea is that the restrictions typewriters impose force you to write more carefully, to think more linearly and logically while crafting text. Neat idea.
To read more about this freeware, see Typewriter: Minimal Text Editor.
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June 18, 2009 • Thursday
I've just posted a clip of a magazine feature I wrote last year. The article is approximately nine months old, but I just received the clip a couple weeks ago.
The piece, "Open Season," is a tournament profile of tennis' US Open. It appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Country Club Quarterly magazine.
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June 17, 2009 • Wednesday
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an excellent editorial about how the centuries-old concept of copyright is as important as ever in the digital age, despite new threats to its enforcement.
The idea of art-author ownership is counter to the new strategies of much of the corporate world, and the Internet has made the theft of intellectual property historically easy. Though many citizens may be unaware, these problems may tear open the very fabric of what makes our society strong.
Even the Wall Street Journal the money worlds news source recognizes that copyright protections need to be protected.
See Copyright Critics Rationalize Theft.
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June 16, 2009 • Tuesday
A photographer friend of mine, Mary Schilpp, indirectly alerted me to the website of the National Arts Education Public Awareness Campaign.
Created in 2002 by Americans for the Arts and the Ad Council, the campaign aims to educate parents about how exposure to the arts aids a child's development and to identify ways parents can work to secure more arts education in public schools.
For more information about this worthy cause, see the National Arts Education Public Awareness Campaign website.
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June 13, 2009 • Saturday
A Texas-based Internet company that tracks word usage throughout the media and the World Wide Web claimed this week that the English language was due to garner its 1 millionth word.
The group's criterion for a new word is that they must find it used 25,000 times. Suspected "winners" were "defriend," "noob" and "chiconomics."
Instead, our millionth word turned out to be "Web 2.0."
(Sounds a little gimmicky to me; I find it hard to believe that that term didn't find 25,000 usages before this week.)
See the Telegrath's article, "Millionth word in the English language - Web 2.0."
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June 12, 2009 • Friday
According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Anne Frank's famous diaries will be returned to the Amsterdam home she wrote them in during World War II, where they will remain on permanent display.
The Holocaust victim's writings have long been held in archives by the Netherlands government.
The pages' homecoming was announced to mark what would have been Frank's 80th birthday. She died at 15 years old in a concentration camp.
See "For 80th anniversary of Anne Frank's birth, museum will display her actual diaries."
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May 04, 2009 • Monday
As a follow-up to my post of January 31 ("An Apostrophes Demise"), I pass along an article sent to me by my step-father, Pat.
Martha Brockenbrough writes for MSNBC.com a column titled "Are You Killing the Apostrophe?" She discusses various efforts at misunderstanding the place of said punctuation mark in the English language.
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April 09, 2009 • Thursday
My favorite newspaper, The Onion, has published a great article satirizing ... oh, you see for yourself: "Scholars Discover 23 Blank Pages That May As Well Be Lost Samuel Beckett Play."
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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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February 26, 2009 • Thursday
The U.K.'s University of Reading reports that their research has uncovered the oldest words in the English language: among them are "I," "we," "two" and "three."
The research also claims to predict which modern-English words will disappear from our ever-evolving language first. ("squeeze," "guts" and "stick" are three.)
For more information, see the BBC article " 'Oldest English words' identified."
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February 20, 2009 • Friday
Finishing three books in three days may seem impressive until you consider that the second is an illustrated children's novel and the third is one that I'd previously left on my bed stand with just one unread chapter.
I began reading The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power by Travis Culley some two years ago. I was loving it, but got sidetracked half way through. I picked up the book later to subsequently get re-sidetracked with one chapter left to read. So today I finally finished.
Culley writes about his experiences as a bicycle messenger in Chicago. The descriptions of the challenges of his job are vivid; the details, impeccable; and the nuances he notices, introspective and interesting. It's a fascinating look into a largely ignored culture and profession.
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February 19, 2009 • Thursday
After finishing the Tony Horwitz book (see yesterday's blog entry), I decided my next read would be quick: The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein.
I'd never read this modern classic, but had wanted to for some time because it's my sister Ann's favorite book. It's also the favorite of my girlfriend. Due to my affection for both of them, the book finally made its way to the top of my reading list.
It's good, of course. I'm marveling a Silverstein's ability to have created so many layers of meaning into such short and simple prose.
The copy I bought is the 30th Anniversary edition of the book, which comes hard-bound in cloth in a matching case. It's a great keepsake for fans of this work.
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February 18, 2009 • Wednesday
I just finished reading Tony Horwitz' 2008 book, A Voyage Long and Strange.
The concept of the book is that when getting our grade-school education, we learn that Columbus came to America in 1492, and the Pilgrims landed about one century later but few of us know what happened on these shores in between. And it as it turns out, a lot happened. The author researched the European exploration of America and visited the sites to see what's happening there today.
This isn't Horwitz's best book (one of my favorite non-fictions by any author is Horwitz' Confederates in the Attic), but it's educational and mostly a decent read.
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January 31, 2009 • Saturday
According to AOL News, the city of Birmingham, England, has abolished apostrophes from its street signs, deeming them "confusing and old-fashioned."
(See "British City Gets Rid of Apostrophes.")
I'm unsure why some people consider a lack of education (or the lack of exercising that education) reason to alter expectations of knowledge. But, on the other hand, language is transient, and something must push the change.
Also, though as a society we have come to accept that language should be standardized, that truth wasn't always true. Until dictionaries began establishing order, spelling was haphazard and primarily phonetic.
Even today, some (even educated) people advocate not being so stringent with spelling. See Time magazine's article from last summer, "Making an Arguement for Misspelling."
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