Thursday
Wednesday
Saturday
The Kobre Guide: Art at the Speed of Life
(left, Professor Kobre)
Are you spending too much time surfing channels or cruising YouTube for quality documentary film?
Absent my NetFlix picks, I'd be wailing 600 channels and there's NOTHING to see!
Now there's KobreGuide with its own ARTS CHANNEL here.
The Guide takes its name from its publisher and editor Ken Kobré whose textbook (right) has been widest-selling text on photojournalism in the world for nearly thirty years.
I'd be excited about this new way to find quality moving journalism on the 'net whether or not my good friend journalist-mediator Jerry Lazar wasn't serving as Editorial Director -- a guy with some of the best instincts for quality journalism in the country. Here's how the Kobre Guide describes itself:
Absent my NetFlix picks, I'd be wailing 600 channels and there's NOTHING to see!
Now there's KobreGuide with its own ARTS CHANNEL here.
The Guide takes its name from its publisher and editor Ken Kobré whose textbook (right) has been widest-selling text on photojournalism in the world for nearly thirty years.
I'd be excited about this new way to find quality moving journalism on the 'net whether or not my good friend journalist-mediator Jerry Lazar wasn't serving as Editorial Director -- a guy with some of the best instincts for quality journalism in the country. Here's how the Kobre Guide describes itself:
This project is an antidote to comprehensive Web video portals, such as YouTube and MetaCafe... We're focusing instead on handpicked, high-quality documentary-style journalism that is being produced primarily by major media outlets -- and frustratingly difficult for consumers to find...
We're a "curated" site (to use the latest buzzword, now that "edited" seems to have lost favor), which means that we're relying on discerning eyes and ears of people like YOU (and not search engines or web bots) to help alert and point us to the creme de la creme ...
We've already located scores of prizeworthy multimedia gems to showcase at launch, and now we're soliciting input from smart folks like you, who are in a position to know about and share the good stuff out there...
Criteria? ... Think "60 Minutes" TV newsmagazine-style journalism (NOT daily news or event coverage) -- but geared for the Web... Mainly video, but also compelling audio-slideshows, or a hybrid thereof...
In short: True (nonfiction) journalism Web multimedia stories of the highest professional quality...
And if you're interested in a stellar guide to multi-media journalism, see Professor Kobre's blog here!
Tuesday
Blawg Review #171 and The Virginity Project
If you're a lawyer . . . or a virgin . . . two conditions that generally do not overlap, be sure to check out this week's Carnival of Law Blogs -- Blawg Review # 171 -- or The Virginity Project -- whichever fits your persuasion. Cartoon by the brilliant Charles Fincher at LawComix.com.
Saving the Planet . . . . REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YES WE CAN!!! Pre-order here! To read the review, click in the upper right hand corner and then on "view full screen" on the drop-down menu.
Book Review of Conflict Revolution; Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism: How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet by Kenneth Cloke reviewed by Victoria Pynchon - Get more free documents
Book Review of Conflict Revolution; Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism: How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet by Kenneth Cloke reviewed by Victoria Pynchon - Get more free documents
Saturday
More Kick #$@% Poems
Wednesday
The Poetry Cure for Short Term Attention Span Disorder ("SASD")
When I turned forty I was self-diagnosed with Short-Attention-Span Disorder, a condition that persisted for one full year. I have never seen anything written in the medical or psychiatric literature on SASD (including the research on ADHD. with which SASD is not associated).
The neglect of the disorder -- which we are certain to see expressed much more fully in Generation "M" -- makes it an "orphan disease." Its sufferers must thus pursue the treatment and cure of SASD alone.
It is for them that I write this article.
The Etiology, Onset and Duration of SASD
Although there were a number of environmental conditions that contributed to my own lengthy struggle with SASD, it is clear that I possessed a familial and genetic pre-disposition to to it --including, most prominently, all of the natural character traits and weaknesses of the Irish.
The environmental conditions triggering the onset of my own bout of SASD included career stress followed by job loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and the break-up of my last relationship with the type of artist to which a substantial percentage of SASD victims are attracted -- the painter, sculptor, poet, photographer and writer with Creative-Block Syndrome.
(CBS is another "orphan" disorder, ignored by medical science because its sufferers are largely unable to make a living that effects the Consumer Price Index in any way. But that discussion is for another time and place).
It is quite possible that I suffered from SASD for slightly more than a single year. Those who would study my case can estimate its duration by making a timeline of the following events, all of which I missed due to my inability to focus on television broadcasts of any duration -- George Senior's Iraq War, the one preceding the more recent Iraq invasion and post-war occupation; the destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people of East and West Germany; and, the lone student facing down Chinese tanks in Tienanmen Square.
The Poetry that Saved My Life
All conventional treatments failed, including those suggested by friends and family, including but not limited to getting more exercise; eating better; cutting down a little on the drinking; joining a bowling league ("thanks for the advice, Mom"); chanting nam yo ren-ge kyo; acupuncture; homeopathy; and, psychoanalysis, to name just a few.
I was about to despair of ever concentrating on anything other than the blade of grass I'd been twirling in my fingers for many months when my friend the writer Richard Wirick, mailed me the Collected Poems of Robert Creeley.
Because this Collection of Creeley poems was . . . . well . . . if not complete, pretty darn comprehensive, I was able to quickly locate the first few written communications I'd been capable of concentrating upon since the day of my 40th birthday (which went uncelebrated due to the curfew imposed upon Los Angeles residents by local authorities in response to "conditions" in the City, i.e., as I could see from my own balcony above Sunset Boulevard, it was burning down).
Why Creeley? Allow me to demonstrate.
Oh No
If you wander far enough
You will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit
for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.
Short, Direct, and, Best of All, Comforting; "Austere" the Critics Say
Creeley's collection was full of gems like this. I consumed them. Then I went searching for more. As time passed, I found myself able to read poems of three stanzas, then four or five.
Progression was slow, but sure. The poetry became more complex, layered, and referential. I began to write poetry, because you cannot read it obsessively without being caught in its spell, without beginning to take poetic "snap shots" of the vivid, continuous sensory dream that only the poets seem to know we are all, each of us, living.
I believe poetry began to cure my SASD because it s-lo-o-ww-s things down. It engages you. You engage it.
Below are just a few of the curative poems, listed in order of ease with which reading can be done. This is not, I repeat, not a reflection on quality.
Each link will take you to a single poem of each author so you can decide for yourself which poems are most likely to be useful to you as you commence your own SASD curative process.
Mary Oliver
Billy Collins
Jane Kenyon
Anne Sexton
Donald Hall
Stanley Kunitz
Galway Kinnell
Pablo Neruda
e.e. cummings
James Tate
Ted Berrigan
Thom Gunn
Elizabeth Bishop
Denise Levertov
Charles Wright
W.S. Merwin
Jorie Graham
The neglect of the disorder -- which we are certain to see expressed much more fully in Generation "M" -- makes it an "orphan disease." Its sufferers must thus pursue the treatment and cure of SASD alone.
It is for them that I write this article.
The Etiology, Onset and Duration of SASD
Although there were a number of environmental conditions that contributed to my own lengthy struggle with SASD, it is clear that I possessed a familial and genetic pre-disposition to to it --including, most prominently, all of the natural character traits and weaknesses of the Irish.
The environmental conditions triggering the onset of my own bout of SASD included career stress followed by job loss, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and the break-up of my last relationship with the type of artist to which a substantial percentage of SASD victims are attracted -- the painter, sculptor, poet, photographer and writer with Creative-Block Syndrome.
(CBS is another "orphan" disorder, ignored by medical science because its sufferers are largely unable to make a living that effects the Consumer Price Index in any way. But that discussion is for another time and place).
It is quite possible that I suffered from SASD for slightly more than a single year. Those who would study my case can estimate its duration by making a timeline of the following events, all of which I missed due to my inability to focus on television broadcasts of any duration -- George Senior's Iraq War, the one preceding the more recent Iraq invasion and post-war occupation; the destruction of the Berlin Wall by the people of East and West Germany; and, the lone student facing down Chinese tanks in Tienanmen Square.
The Poetry that Saved My Life
All conventional treatments failed, including those suggested by friends and family, including but not limited to getting more exercise; eating better; cutting down a little on the drinking; joining a bowling league ("thanks for the advice, Mom"); chanting nam yo ren-ge kyo; acupuncture; homeopathy; and, psychoanalysis, to name just a few.
I was about to despair of ever concentrating on anything other than the blade of grass I'd been twirling in my fingers for many months when my friend the writer Richard Wirick, mailed me the Collected Poems of Robert Creeley.
Because this Collection of Creeley poems was . . . . well . . . if not complete, pretty darn comprehensive, I was able to quickly locate the first few written communications I'd been capable of concentrating upon since the day of my 40th birthday (which went uncelebrated due to the curfew imposed upon Los Angeles residents by local authorities in response to "conditions" in the City, i.e., as I could see from my own balcony above Sunset Boulevard, it was burning down).
Why Creeley? Allow me to demonstrate.
Oh No
If you wander far enough
You will come to it
and when you get there
they will give you a place to sit
for yourself only, in a nice chair,
and all your friends will be there
with smiles on their faces
and they will likewise all have places.
Short, Direct, and, Best of All, Comforting; "Austere" the Critics Say
Creeley's collection was full of gems like this. I consumed them. Then I went searching for more. As time passed, I found myself able to read poems of three stanzas, then four or five.
Progression was slow, but sure. The poetry became more complex, layered, and referential. I began to write poetry, because you cannot read it obsessively without being caught in its spell, without beginning to take poetic "snap shots" of the vivid, continuous sensory dream that only the poets seem to know we are all, each of us, living.
I believe poetry began to cure my SASD because it s-lo-o-ww-s things down. It engages you. You engage it.
Below are just a few of the curative poems, listed in order of ease with which reading can be done. This is not, I repeat, not a reflection on quality.
Each link will take you to a single poem of each author so you can decide for yourself which poems are most likely to be useful to you as you commence your own SASD curative process.
Mary Oliver
Billy Collins
Jane Kenyon
Anne Sexton
Donald Hall
Stanley Kunitz
Galway Kinnell
Pablo Neruda
e.e. cummings
James Tate
Ted Berrigan
Thom Gunn
Elizabeth Bishop
Denise Levertov
Charles Wright
W.S. Merwin
Jorie Graham
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