Janelle Brown on HuffPost: Dearth of Paying Creative Jobs

In a great article that starts out with anecdotal evidence of creative talent fleeing Los Angeles (my city), Brown nails something that has been bothering many, many people lately. She talks about the writing opportunities on the Internet: "In a flooded marketplace of ideas, the price for creativity has been driven down by a glut of free supply."

Brown points out that over 30,000 writers/journalist have lost their jobs in the past two years, and fight over the pathetically small pay that sites like Demand Media offer. (I could add a few others, but Demand is who Brown singled out.) She gives some great examples, then moves on to other creative types: musicians, filmmakers, etc. She does get around to plugging her own book, This is Where We Live, only to mention that she's found bootlegged copies of it downloaded 9,500 times!

Enough of stealing her thunder: read the article. She ends with a scenario that reminds me of Atlas Shrugged.

Ebook Updating Capability

Here is something I didn't know: when an ebook is updated or revised or corrected, the seller can, technically, update, revise, or correct each copy of that ebook that sits on Kindles or Ipads everywhere. Read about it in the May 2010 issue of Wired but I can't find a link to the piece. Ironic, huh?

Now, just because a seller can reach out tentacles across the airwaves to manipulate text, doesn't mean that they do. As Wired points out, a year ago Amazon deleted a bunch of copies of 1984 from the reading devices of customers because the copies were bootlegged. (huh? I don't know how that happened but that's what Wired says.) Customers were very angry; Amazon apologized and will not update or change an ebook without a customer's permission.

It brings up possiblities, doesn't it? How many new textbooks are sold because the authors add a new chapter and up the rev. number so that students can't buy a used copy? If the texts can be automatically updated, students don't have to buy new books. But why would authors take the time to update such books if they're not compensated for their efforts?

What about translated works? When a new translation of The Conquest of Gaul becomes available, should everybody who has an older copy have the option of updating? And what about a map book? Now there's something you'd want to have updated, huh? But if there's no profit in such updates, who will bother?

I'm probably spinning my wheels. As I said, just because ebooks can be updated doesn't mean they will be.

Susan Isaacs Gets the Last Word (Deservedly So!)

A Wall Street Journal article about book signings in New York City makes clear what branding and positioning hath wrought. The big book stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble offer venues seating up to 1100 people. Each outlet has its own cachet--do you want liberals, the savvy and trendy, or warmish families with their kids in tow?

In a way, this sounds so much like an amped-up version of cheerleader tryouts in high school. I'm sure it's inevitable--bookselling is a business--but reading the story almost makes me glad I'm an unknown drudge. Almost.

(OK, truthfully, I wish I had that problem. I wish my publicist was going nuts arranging a slot for me.)

The piece finishes with a bit of spectacular wisdom from Susan Isaacs: "Say you sell 75 books. It's all to the good, but I don't know how much it matters in the scheme of things....You should be using that energy to write books."

Paying for Writing Space?

As in--the writer pays to write there.

I wouldn't have thought this a workable business model, even in non-recessionary times. But in Santa Monica, there are two such places. One has been around a few years; the other just opened.

The new one first: Writers Junction. You join and use the facilities whenever you like. There's a coffee-bar/kitchenette, a cozy lounge with cushy sofas and chairs, a small lending library, a couple of meeting and/or presentation rooms, printers & a copy machine, and--the main raison d'etre of the place--quiet, well-lit writing alcoves where you can plug in your laptop and just scrive in quiet privatude.

Is that worth $125 a month (with a year's commitment)? Writers Junction is a modern, uncluttered place (check out pictures here), and I suppose for folks who can't get peace and quiet any other way, it's very worth it.

The other place (for writers, anyway. This L.A. Times article mentions other facilities for creative types, including artists, designers, etc.) is The Office, which charges $150 part-time, and $250 full-time. Those are first month introductory rates, btw. Like Writers Junction, a full-time membership at The Office gets you access at ALL hours.

Here's a picture from their website at left--it's certainly more attractive to me, but I'm a sucker for big windows and sunlight. The Office has been around for six years, and even has an "It was written here" page of honor--heavy on screenplays.

Again, worth it? Well, if all those screenplays and novels on their "It was written here" page would not have existed but for The Office, then yeah. If you live in Santa Monica. Wonder if the concept has been tried elsewhere?

Radar maps Hyksos' capital

Remember the Hyksos? The foreign invaders who ruled Egypt for about 100 years? No one is sure who they were--a branch of Phoenician? Semites--Canaanites? Their ascendancy in Egypt took place 3500 years ago: 1664 to 1569 BC. In context, that's just before the dynasty that gave us Thutmose and Hatshepsut.

An Austrian team of archaeologists led by Irene Mueller used radar to map out the boundaries of the Hyksos principal city, Avaris. There are tons of stories on all the news networks, all saying exactly the same thing. I'm linking to this one on Heritage Key because it links best to a map--the only picture accompanying all those news stories. But Heritage Key's version of the map lets you zoom in.

So, the 2.6 sq. km. they've mapped out with magnetometric and resistivity surveys contain streets, temples, cemeteries, houses, and a possible port area (has the Nile changed course in that area in 3500 years? Probably, huh?). The Heritage Key article says that the most amazing find so far has been frescoes in a Minoan style, showing bull-leaping--similar to the artistic themes of Knossos on Crete.

It's not clear to me whether those frescoes are from the Hyksos palace, or from later, 18th-Dynasty Egyptian palaces that were built on the site--the current locale of Tel el-Dabaa. Or Tell  el Daba'.  A 2008 version of the ubiquitous map--with labels and more detail--is here.

Ten Most Amazing Historical Objects...

...According to the Web Urbanist--and this link goes direct to the posted list, with all the pictures.

Number One is the Antikythera Mechanism, which I've blogged about before. But some of the objects are news to me--like Number Two, the Baigong Pipes, which may have been literally used for number two. (But probably not.) The picture and following link are from China Expat.

The Baigong Pipes of China sit on top of a mountain and go through caves. Not everyone agrees that these are pipes or the remnants of pipes, but they certainly are intriguing. Wikipedia describes them and compares them to some naturally occurring pipe features in Navajo country and Louisiana.

The list also includes the Phaistos Disk, the Shroud of Turin, the Baghdad Battery--which I just saw on TV. Here's a nice site explaining the battery, which could generate 1-2 volts of electricity...but for what purpose?

What else is on the list?

Roman Dodecahedra (left) which could be anything from dice to a calibration device. About a hundred of them have been found throughout Europe. The Stone Spheres of Costa Rica, the Coso Artefact, The Maine Penny,  the Voynich Mss--I was going to look up links for these, but go to the Web Urbanist list and read their descriptions.

World's Oldest Leather Shoe

Let's set the stage: In a dark, cold cave in Armenia, underneath layers of sheep dung that have settled like cement over the finds, archaeologists have discovered the following curiosities:

• 
  

  Three human heads preserved in ceramic jars

• 
  

  wine-making equipment, complete with grapes

• a laced up leather shoe stuffed with straw (or excelsior if you prefer)

Which item is grabbing the headlines?

After all, bottled heads are a dime a dozen. Unless one proves to belong to Joaquin, the California bandit who's preserved head went missing during the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, who cares?

But the shoe is 5,600 years old, which makes it older by three centuries than the previous world's-oldest-leather-shoe (found on an ice mummy), so that's the news.

For the record, the world's oldest shoes (leather or not) is claimed by North Armerica: a 6900-year-old sandal made with woven fibers and leather. And since this new find was found at the beginning of the current excavation, meaning that 98% of the cave is still to be dug into and searched, who knows what further boundaries may be broken?

Here are links to news stories about this:

• New York Times (though you have to wade through clever asides about Sarah Jessica Parker's shoe size (geez, leave the wisecracks to bloggers, for crying out loud!) (one of whom (Geekologie) came up with Air Methuselahs)

• the interactive, peer-reviewed science journal PlosOne, who broke the story

Gladiator Graves in York

Saw this on CNN and wondered, "How do they know the dead are gladiators?"

Several clues, notably ONE body with a bite mark from what could have been a lion, tiger, or bear. Other bodies had hammer blows to the head, or were even decapitated. Some sites say all the bodies were decapitated but it's not clear.

Eighty bodies so far, all seeming to be athletic, fit males, taller than average, many with strong right arms. They date to around 1600 to 1900 years ago--the time of Rome's control of Britain. Although the NPR story narrowed it down to the between the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Some of the graves had pottery or meat joints (from horses, sheep, and chicken) in them.

None of which proves that the graves are those of gladiators, but that's a reasonable guess. And something else worth mentioning--no cemetery of gladiators has ever been found before.

Scientists have been studying them for seven years, but keeping it secret. Sneaky scientists! (OK, actually, I applaud them.) And the lead archaeologist...I do not lie...is named Dr. Hunter-Mann. Now that is karmic.

The York Archaeological Trust will launch a website about the cemetery June 14--the same day that a documentary on the find will be released in Britain. Hope it'll be shown here soon too.

New Free Pictures

This may be of interest to other bloggers: PicApp now has Reuters photos available.

If I didn't have a chihuahua in my lap that would have been much easier to type.

Anyway, here's an example of a Reuters News Photo... Steve Nash right after breaking his nose in the May 23 game against the Lakers. Like I couldn't have copied that from a million other places, right? But I suppose that knowing I'm not stealing it from some starving photographer means something.

Anyone want to take bets on what facial feature of Nash's will get dinged up tonight?

Clearly, my mind is not on my work! But a post is a post is a post.

For the record, I have sent out over 170 queries in the last two years for my wonderful historical novel. Discounting the last dozen who haven't had time to reply yet, that means 158 agents will be beating themselves up soon over missing the opportunity to handle this bestseller. Man!

Not Applying for This Job!

Craigslist ad:

Research/Writing Partner (city omitted)
Freelance writer seeks research partner for article on "Planned Kidnapping" a new fad that's moved from New York to Los Angeles. The article is for a relationships/love tips-type online magazine, and I'm looking for a partner that will help me research and field-test this new fad. It will be a fun, unique and interesting case-study!!!!


When the article is published, we'll split the money evenly.


Please send pictures and resume if interested.

•it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
•Compensation: no pay

I suppose this could have been written by an incredibly naive person who thinks he/she has a great idea, although if that's true, he/she just gave it away. I don't read into this that the writer is on assignment, do you?

But the less benevolent side of me suspects there is no magazine and no story, only someone seeking an incredibly naive partner or two who can be urged into playing kidnap games, with all that that entails.

"Please send pictures and resume if interested." As Mr. T says, "I pity the fool."

A Productive Week or Two

Yes, indeedy

I polished off an article that should earn up to $500, and did my first restaurant review (for $75). Both have been accepted, so let's hope the checks are in the mail--or at least on the way to Paypal.

I also submitted a last-minute piece for $40--but the editor has not yet acknoweledged receipt. Grr! Bad editor, bad!

I put the last coat of paint on 1/3 of my bathroom (no one's gonna pay me for that, but I sure feel good about having it done.)

I heard a wonderful, inspiring speaker at a monthly meeting of the Independent Writers of Southern California. I've gotten both hopeful news and a rejection from two different agents. I've kept ahead of the bills, attended two family birthday parties and had fun (not too hard!)

I watched the Phoenix Suns move to the next level of the play-offs with a bit of blood, sweat & tears, got a paycheck, and have lots of work for the week ahead.

Other than the fact that I haven't had time to blog (this will have to do), does life get any better?

Keeping Up With Technology...or not

Who remembers the "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock?"

I grow old, I grow old

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

I feel that old and silly, after reading what should have been an interesting article about digital magazines and how they're marketed. Oh goody, this will no doubt give me another reason to buy an ipad--I can have Newsweek electronically delivered!

So I thought, but the focus of the piece ("The Digital Newsstand: How Magazines Will Be Sold in the Tablet Age") was about existing media storefronts--which I didn't know existed--or more complicated stuff. Like creating apps for the magazines and positioning them on clients' websites.

I'm at the age where discovering a whole new world is more often exhausting instead of exciting. A fuddy duddy, iow. Bah! New apps? Something with small print, no doubt, and I forgot where I put my glasses.

Don't younger folks also get tired of having to master new technologies every five weeks?

Am I really a fuddy duddy? Wait! No!

That is not what I meant at all.

That is not it, at all."

New pubs for 2010!

Yay for me! Two new books out from Gale Group's Greenhaven Press. I'm the third editor, which means I wrote some of the intros, found articles, cut them--even learned to do some paste-up stuff.

Of course, all this was done last summer, so having copies of the finished books delivered to me was a Very Nice Surprise. But also--none of the work looks familiar. Did I really write any of this? Skimming through, I found one phrase (in the Middle Class book) that stuck: Love Jones Cohort.

Professor Kris Marsh at UNC coined the term to refer to "a new kind of middle-class black: young, never-married, urban professionals living alone."

Love Jones Cohort. OK, now I remember! My immediate reaction had been "Love Jones? Was that some Pam Grier movie?" Hey, I'm a boomer--that's my cultural reference point!

But Love Jones was a 1997 movie about a Chicago poet...a young (in 97) Chicago poet. A yuppie in the 2000s, then, and Marsh's symbol for a new stereotype.

But isn't it funny how quickly we forget our work, once it's finished and we must move on to other articles/studies/books? Two months ago I finished a piece on important Supreme Court decisions. Do I remember any of the new facts I encountered while writing that? Beyond what I already knew--Miranda v. AZ, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education?

Nah. Maybe one thing: What Happened to Mr. Ernesto Miranda.

Miranda's case, Miranda v. AZ, established that a suspect must be read his/her rights before being questioned by police.

Miranda confessed to a rape without being told of his legal rights, so when the Supreme Court decided his case in his favor, Miranda won a new trial--and was convicted again! Turns out, the police didn't even need his confession because they found a witness to his crime. Yup, the whole reason for the famous Miranda case turned out to be moot for Mr. Miranda!

The hapless Miranda got killed in a bar fight a few years later, after serving his sentence for the rape. And--irony of ironies--while his killer escaped, the police picked up an accomplice and read the guy his Miranda rights while Miranda lay dying or dead.

Books Up and Down

The good news: Ebook sales shot up 176.6% in 2009, though they comprise only 1.3% of book sales. Better news: adult hardcover book sales were up nearly 7% over 2008 levels. Not so good news is that adult paperback sales went down 5.2%, and overall book sales were down 1.8% in 2009--all according to this New York Times story.

I'm part of the problem, I suppose. While I've bought books as gifts over the past month, my own reading material has come from the library. Right now it's Olive Kitteridge and the Orson Scott Card Homecoming series, which I guess is sci-fi (the first book is pictured at left; there's five in the series).

My very Catholic bff thinks that the Homecoming books tell how the Bible was written. I don't want to break the spell by pointing out that Card is Mormon and the main character is named after Nephi, who (Mormons believe) wrote the Book of Mormon on golden tablets. I suppose we all look at our books through the lenses (or seer stones) of our own beliefs, so does it matter?

Joshua Whatmough's Book

If you're going to write a novel set in Gaul the most wonderful collection of names can be found in a 1949 book by Professor Joshua Whatmough called Keltika, being prolegomena to a study of The dialects of ancient Gaul,.

Sometimes Keltica is part of the title; often not. Dunno why the "ancient" is necessary as there's no modern Gaul to confuse it with. Last bit of trivia--while the book was published in the 1940s, most copies seem to be dated 1970.

Need names? The Dialects has got you covered. I'm relatively certain that Professor Whatmough did not intend his scholarly work to be fodder for romances, but where else can you find such lists of Celtic names? Many come from pots, of all places, but potters signed their works using Greek or Roman letters to spell out their names--monikers that would otherwise have been lost. There's also place names and divine names--all sorted out by region.

Got a male character from West of the Rhine? Call him Maro or Firmus (now that's telling), Abbo for comic relief (well, Abbo sound funny to me), or even Voranus, if you're a fan of the HBO series Rome. Those are all legit names from the region.

As to what those names may mean in Gaulish--good luck! I've read that only 200 words of that language is known, but that may be an old figure. I'm not too sure what's known and what's guessed to be a word's meaning based on its similarity to Gaelic or Cornish, also Celtic languages.

I do have a Gaul-French dictionary, but a lot of words seem to be guesses. If someone wants to update me on the status of scholarly knowledge of the Gaulish language, I'd appreciate it.

As for Professor Whatmough, whose name I adore, I found this article on him and his work in 1963. Better, here's a charming portrait and anecdotes from a former student, along with a picture of the man. He wasn't just an expert in Gaulish, but in all Indo-European language families. He was fluent in 8-22 tongues, depending on how one defined "fluent." He died only a year after retiring.

Show on Anglo-Saxon treasure to air Sunday, April 18

The largest cache of Anglo-Saxon gold--not treasure exactly, but battle trophies--is ready for its close-up. The gold, buried in the 7th century, was found by lucky guy with a metal detector.

I blogged on the discovery a few months ago--September 2009 to be exact. Now the National Geographic Channel is ready to air its documentary on the hoard of gold, including 86 sword pommelcaps. The show will include battle re-enactments and views of the treasure.

National Geographic's online site has lots of extras--mostly about those battle scenes, but nifty pictures, words from the director, and links to production team blogs are there too.

Bronze Age Mummies

Recall the wonderful The Mummies of Urumchi in the 1990s? The book about the dessicated remains of tall, blue-eyed people who'd died thousands of years ago, and were buried wrapped in plaid-style blankets--not in Europe, but in China--presented archaeologists with a riddle: Did Europeans migrate to China during the Bronze Age?

Apparently so, because Chinese bulldozers, preparing the ground for Chinese engineering projects over the last few decades have been uncovering more European-in-appearance mummies. Now we have The Tarim Mummies, and they are touring! Today, the exhibit opened at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana--a mere stone's throw away (assuming you have the pitching arm of a titan).  Here's the Yahoo story.The centerpiece of the exhibit--this "Beauty of Xiaohe"--has a feather in her hat, flaming red hair, and eyelashes you could paint with.

This pictures has been reprinted at several blogs, so I'll join the crowd. Far from being an anomaly, the scholarly consensus seems to be that these mummies represent a migrating people who lived north of Tibet from 2000 BC to the 4th or 5th century AD.

Professor Victor H. Mair talked to The Los Angeles Times about the mummies. (He was quoted in the Yahoo story too.) Apparently a lot of testing has not been done on the mummies-Mair suggests an examination of their stomachs is in order. CT scans and other tests are also lacking.

It's good, IMHO, that the Chinese authorities have not rushed to rip open bodies to get at every possible microbiological clue about the mummies. Sure, we'd all like to know more, but invasive tests may not be the smartest course. Given the strides that science makes decade by decade, what's invasive and destructive today may be scannable tomorrow.

Cabbages and Celts

Let's see...I had corned beef and cabbage 3 nights ago, and corned beef sandwiches at a party last night, and corned beef and cabbage and potatoes this morning, and I'll probably have the same for dinner tonight. Too much of a good thing is actually pretty satisfying.

All hail the lowly cabbage! Hated them as a kid, but now I love 'em. The Celts did too.

Wild cabbage, back in the early days, probably resembled collard greens. That prolific plant, through selective planting and breeding, gave birth to today's cabbages, cauliflower, collards, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale and kohlrabi.

Brussel sprouts are basically the buds of the plant. Broccoli and cauliflower are the flowers of the plant, inbred to extremes.

When did all this cultivation and manipulation take place? I'm not sure, and so I can't say exactly what sort of cabbage the ancient Gauls enjoyed.

The Aggie-horticulture site points out that the Latin word for cabbage is based on the Celtic word for the plant, bresic, implying that the Celts introduced the Romans to it. The white, hard-headed cabbage grows better in colder climes, so that makes sense. Gaul, Britain, and Ireland were all a lot colder than most of Italy.

Celtic Myth Podshow

"Bringing the Tales and Stories of the Ancient Celts to Your Fireside," is what the banner reads. The blog is the Celtic Myth Podshow, which I just discovered and wish I'd found sooner. Because then I'd know more about Seahenge, pictured at left. (the picture, btw, appeared in The Guardian and was taken by Michael Walter/PA). More about Seahenge in a moment. Here's what Celtic Myth Podshow offers, very briefly:

• Over 30 podcasts from 2008-2009, each reciting tales from Irish, Breton, Welsh, and other Celtic sources. Some are holiday musical programs.

• Photo and art galleries from various contributors

• A cute little button to become a fan of their Facebook site, which triggered an unstoppable avalanche of facebook pages opening up, one after the other, until I had to reboot. Don't click on that.

• The Celtic news blog mentioned in the first paragraph.

The blog offered news about the rebuilding of "Seahenge". The Seahenge site was discovered in 1998 near Holme-Next-the-Sea, is about 4000 years old, and consisted of 55 timbers in a circle--with an upturned oak tree stump in the center. The timbers have been on display at the Lynn Museum, and now the exhibit will close for 4 months so that the stump can be added.  This picture is from the museum's website.

Mary Robert Rinehart's Writing Room

Try saying that ten times in a row...Mary Robert Rinehart's writing room, Mary Robert Rinehart's writng room, Mary Robert Rinehart's robin room...nope. Can't do it.

Anyhow, this was her room in 1926. In Washington DC. Thanks to Shorpy, a wonderful collection of ye olde photos, who displayed this today.

Rinehart, the "American Agatha Christie" according to Wikipedia, would have been about 50 that year. This is a home she shared with her husband, a doctor, from the early 20s till his death in 1932. The lady wrote mysteries, and is credited with the phrase "The butler did it." She didn't actually write those words, but she wrote a bestselling mystery in which the butler, dang him, actually did do it.

For 1926, this is a pretty cool room, doncha think? There's a fan that looks a lot like the fan I bought at Home Depot recently. As for that furniture--would it be out of place on any patio today? Ferns, an exquisite lamp, sheer curtains...the only thing that dates this room is the radio. Or was it called a wireless still?