Hartford paper, done. Did the proper attributions to the images, attributed other stuff too. Long and winding road--but I learned quite a bit in the writing-- I took the approach that we all have opportunities that arise in our lives that sometimes we just don't see. But there are those that have these situations that arise and they see them and are changed either professionally, personally or otherwise by rising to the challenge, taking the risk, and hopefully reaping the rewards. I cited the Dillons, Walt Reed as two examples with a more granular look at Zina Saunders, illlustrator and individual extrordinaire. I tried to limit the run on sentences. I edited. I chopped sentences in pieces and knit them back together. I strung ideas together. I found pull quotes. i dug deep into Saunders' blog and actually could track the progression of an idea, of her political pieces. Interesting. To think that the blog is more than just an idea dumping ground. It is an actual historical, first hand piece of information that is dated and time stamped. Think of the world in 10 years, 25 years, 50 years with all this first hand information.
In the spirit of the web, I am diving a bit in Facebook and Twitter. I joined Facebook initially to see what my kids were experiencing (I joined MySpace for the same reason and really had a great deal of hesitation and distaste for that environment). I think that Facebook is fairly benign and less of a public urinal that MySpace is. It is a social site, where I have found old friends, met new ones...actually got a bite on a job. I have posted photos, illustrations and just generally made one or two little notes daily as it takes little to no time. There is an instant message feature which is nice--and their inside applications are great. I can port my blog over (not too successfully) and bring my 'tweets" over from Twitter. Now, Twitter I joined because i figured if Obama was using it during his election, there was something there. Twitter is essentially an open text message you post to a broad world that can be winnowed down to who is following your "tweets" or whose "tweets you are following. Starbucks posts on Twitter as does my favorite Twitterer, the CEO of Zappos who, last week, told us about how he was heating up cold pizza in a hotel room on his iron-- and today about someone who hurled a "size 10" at the President. Tony, the Zappos CEO is funny, and fun--its is great to travel with him and get his jokes, note his observations, and get inside the head of a fairly normal human being. Makes me love Zappos even more. Starbucks is a little harder to get my head wrapped around what they are about...but I have only been at it for 3 days. I think it is curious the way these communications vehicles all twine with each other (if you know how to do it)--I cannot even begin to imagine how to promote these synergistic elements...and when they are all done, to what end. I guess I just need to do this to figure it out.
Our brand new toilet in the upstairs new bathroom overflowed this p.m. with Alex coming into my studio asking me to come into the summer living room. " I couldn't understand why it was raining, inside" he said as we discovered what the rain actually was. It was a crummy moment, but with two teens and two grownups leaning into it...we got this thing under control quickly with lots of towels and dish cloths.
Gotta go.