"The produce in New York is really just produce, oranges
and cabbage, celery and beets, pomegranates
with their hundred seeds, carrots and honey,
walnuts and thirteen varieties of apples.
On Monday morning I will walk down
to the market with my heart inside me, mysterious,
something I will never get to hold
in my hands, something I will never understand.
Not like the apricots and potatoes, the albino
asparagus wrapped in damp paper towels, their tips
like the spark of a match, the bunches of daisies, almost more
a weed than a flower, the clementine,
the sausage links and chicken hung
in the window, facing the street where my heart is president
of the Association for Random Desire, a series
of complex yeas and nays,
where I pick up the plantation, the ginger root, the sprig
of cilantro that makes me human, makes me
a citizen with the right to vote, to bear arms, the right
to assemble and fall in love."
Matthew Dickman, American Poetry Review, Nov./Dec. 2008
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
View on a City
"Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white leaps...the city seen for the first time, in the first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
The Merry Month of September
There are twelve months throughout the year
From January to December -
And the primmest month of all the twelve
Is the merry month of September.
"Where, oh, where has the sunshine gone?" - ask the children when the summer is rainy and chilly, but when it comes to the last days of August, the weather usually changes. The rain stops.. Sometimes it rains at night, but keeps the sky clear all day...The sun shines like anything. The flowers show their brightest colors. Everything is rich and alive.
Orchards now are apple scented,
Mists across the meadow lie,
Sunlight's gleaming soft and golden,
Hazy blue the kindly sky.
Spiders' webs are diamond hung,
Swallows twitter in the heat;
Chestnut leaves begin to yellow,
Robin's tiny song is sweet.
Asters and chrysanthemums
Make the cottage gardens gay.
Loveliness is everywhere
On this warm September Day!
From January to December -
And the primmest month of all the twelve
Is the merry month of September.
"Where, oh, where has the sunshine gone?" - ask the children when the summer is rainy and chilly, but when it comes to the last days of August, the weather usually changes. The rain stops.. Sometimes it rains at night, but keeps the sky clear all day...The sun shines like anything. The flowers show their brightest colors. Everything is rich and alive.
Orchards now are apple scented,
Mists across the meadow lie,
Sunlight's gleaming soft and golden,
Hazy blue the kindly sky.
Spiders' webs are diamond hung,
Swallows twitter in the heat;
Chestnut leaves begin to yellow,
Robin's tiny song is sweet.
Asters and chrysanthemums
Make the cottage gardens gay.
Loveliness is everywhere
On this warm September Day!
Monday, September 5, 2011
Magazine Scene
The are people reading magazines everywhere; and there are no limit to the choices available. Of all the print media, they offer by far the broadest range of human expression in text and pictures. Unlike television, magazines have to be read, and reading is active.
There are untold number of magazines. Nobody knows for sure how many magazines exist.
Consumer magazines, business, and trade magazines are in one trade category. Science and technical periodicals are in the second category. Finally, professional publications are in the third category.
We live now in the Age of Information, and magazines continue to be the prime carries. No other country in the world can equal the United States for sheer numbers and variety of magazine publications. Where else, could there be seventy-six magazines on skiing and snowmobiling; forty-five devoted to brides; seventy-one astronomy publications.
So we left just with one important question about the "spirit of future?"
The answer is below:
"Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?"
(Henry IV, Part I)
Our cyberspace opened the door to technological revolution, transforming all three publishing fields -books, newsletters, and magazines alike. Text that survived for five centuries cannot disappear overnight, or perhaps at all. So far, every new technology, from computer to digital photography, has created new inducements to read.
There are untold number of magazines. Nobody knows for sure how many magazines exist.
Consumer magazines, business, and trade magazines are in one trade category. Science and technical periodicals are in the second category. Finally, professional publications are in the third category.
We live now in the Age of Information, and magazines continue to be the prime carries. No other country in the world can equal the United States for sheer numbers and variety of magazine publications. Where else, could there be seventy-six magazines on skiing and snowmobiling; forty-five devoted to brides; seventy-one astronomy publications.
So we left just with one important question about the "spirit of future?"
The answer is below:
"Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?"
(Henry IV, Part I)
Our cyberspace opened the door to technological revolution, transforming all three publishing fields -books, newsletters, and magazines alike. Text that survived for five centuries cannot disappear overnight, or perhaps at all. So far, every new technology, from computer to digital photography, has created new inducements to read.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
What about Magazines? History Please!
Magazines today cover every aspect of life, and cater to a market of special interests - the days of the great general-subject magazines are over.
As for history of magazines, they appeared much later on the scene. Through the history, there may have been approaches to a magazine in antiquity, especially in China, the magazine as it now known began only after the invention of the printing press in the West. The word "magazine" comes to us from France, where one of the first world's magazines, called Journal des Scavans, was first published in Paris in 1655.
On February 16, 1741, came ti life the first American magazine, appropriately named American Magazine, or A Monthly View of the political State of the British Colonies, published by the Philadelphia printer Andrew Bradford. A few days later The General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for All the British plantations in America appeared, published by a fellow Philadelphia's and rival printer, Benjamin Franklin.
There was a good reason for a delay of the magazine. Magazines had to wait until the literary and practical arts had developed enough in America to create an audience large enough for its own periodicals. As for magazines, the golden age for magazines came in the quarter-century from 1825 to 1850. Before 1825 there were less than a hundred magazines in America; after 1850 there were more than six hundred.
Three magazines funded during this period of American history are still surviving: Scientific American, began in 1845; Harper's Magazine, founded in 1850 as Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Its rival was and remains the Atlantic Monthly, established in 1857.
Highlights of the 20th Century, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, and Life, include the rise and fall of such mass-circulation business. Success stories were written by the Reader's Digest, founded in October, 1921 by De Witt and Lila Bell Wallace; Time, started in 1923 by Henry Luce and his partner Briton Hadden; The New Yorker, the creation of editor Harold Ross in 1925.
As for history of magazines, they appeared much later on the scene. Through the history, there may have been approaches to a magazine in antiquity, especially in China, the magazine as it now known began only after the invention of the printing press in the West. The word "magazine" comes to us from France, where one of the first world's magazines, called Journal des Scavans, was first published in Paris in 1655.
On February 16, 1741, came ti life the first American magazine, appropriately named American Magazine, or A Monthly View of the political State of the British Colonies, published by the Philadelphia printer Andrew Bradford. A few days later The General Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, for All the British plantations in America appeared, published by a fellow Philadelphia's and rival printer, Benjamin Franklin.
There was a good reason for a delay of the magazine. Magazines had to wait until the literary and practical arts had developed enough in America to create an audience large enough for its own periodicals. As for magazines, the golden age for magazines came in the quarter-century from 1825 to 1850. Before 1825 there were less than a hundred magazines in America; after 1850 there were more than six hundred.
Three magazines funded during this period of American history are still surviving: Scientific American, began in 1845; Harper's Magazine, founded in 1850 as Harper's New Monthly Magazine. Its rival was and remains the Atlantic Monthly, established in 1857.
Highlights of the 20th Century, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Liberty, and Life, include the rise and fall of such mass-circulation business. Success stories were written by the Reader's Digest, founded in October, 1921 by De Witt and Lila Bell Wallace; Time, started in 1923 by Henry Luce and his partner Briton Hadden; The New Yorker, the creation of editor Harold Ross in 1925.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
History Facts on Newspapers
The idea of the newspaper is old as ancient Rome, where the events of each day were published in a scroll called the Acta Diurna, roughly "the acts of the day." Started around 59 B.C., it was the first newspaper of any kind.
The first newspaper in America appeared fifty years later, after the first book was published, with issuing of Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick in 1690, the work of a recently arrived English printer named Benjamin Harris.
Books and newspapers came first [before magazine] because they were necessities as the colonies established themselves.
Newspapers in the Colonial period were largely propaganda tools, spreading protest and eventual Independence from Britain on the one hand and the views of Tory sympathizers on the other.
The 18th Century, saw the growth and maturing of American newspaper industry, fed by the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press.
The first newspaper in America appeared fifty years later, after the first book was published, with issuing of Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick in 1690, the work of a recently arrived English printer named Benjamin Harris.
Books and newspapers came first [before magazine] because they were necessities as the colonies established themselves.
Newspapers in the Colonial period were largely propaganda tools, spreading protest and eventual Independence from Britain on the one hand and the views of Tory sympathizers on the other.
The 18th Century, saw the growth and maturing of American newspaper industry, fed by the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
"pub.lish" v.
Publish means to bring to the public attention; to announce. From Latin publicare, to make public," - according The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
Publishing is described in the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the activity that involves selection, preparation, and marketing of printed matter. It has grown from small and ancient beginnings into a vast and complex industry responsible for the dissemination of all kinds of cultural material, from the most elevated to the most trivial. Its impact upon civilization is impossible to calculate."
Books, in one form or another, have been around for 4,000 to 5,000 years. Papyrus rolls were used in Egypt as early as the year 3,000 B.C. The first modern form of the book was the Roman codex, in which sheets of papyrus were folded vertically to make leaves.
Before the invention of writing, information could only be exchanged by word of mouth, with all its limitations of time and space. Writing originally was confined to the recording of codes of law, genealogies, and religious formulations. Not until the monopoly of letters, usually held by a priestly caste, was broken could writing finally be used to disseminate information.
The Chinese are generally considered to have invented printing in the 6th Century A. D. in the form of wooden block printing. The 15th Century witnessed the two most important developments in the history of publishing: paper, which Chinese had invented in 105 A. D. and which the Arabs brought to Europe; and the invention to movable type, generally attributed to Jonhannes Gutenberg.
Book publishing, the senior member of the triumvirate, began in the United States in 1638, when the first printers, Stephen Daye and his two sons, went from Cambridge, England to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There they produced their first book, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, in 1640. It is known today as "The Bay Psalm Book" and is understandably rare.
Today, publishing assumed its characteristic blend of idealism and commerce. Also, Americans are not predominately book readers, and there is little public curiosity about the people who publish books. Individual authors become famous, but a few people can identify the publisher of the book they have just finished reading.
Publishing is described in the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the activity that involves selection, preparation, and marketing of printed matter. It has grown from small and ancient beginnings into a vast and complex industry responsible for the dissemination of all kinds of cultural material, from the most elevated to the most trivial. Its impact upon civilization is impossible to calculate."
Books, in one form or another, have been around for 4,000 to 5,000 years. Papyrus rolls were used in Egypt as early as the year 3,000 B.C. The first modern form of the book was the Roman codex, in which sheets of papyrus were folded vertically to make leaves.
Before the invention of writing, information could only be exchanged by word of mouth, with all its limitations of time and space. Writing originally was confined to the recording of codes of law, genealogies, and religious formulations. Not until the monopoly of letters, usually held by a priestly caste, was broken could writing finally be used to disseminate information.
The Chinese are generally considered to have invented printing in the 6th Century A. D. in the form of wooden block printing. The 15th Century witnessed the two most important developments in the history of publishing: paper, which Chinese had invented in 105 A. D. and which the Arabs brought to Europe; and the invention to movable type, generally attributed to Jonhannes Gutenberg.
Book publishing, the senior member of the triumvirate, began in the United States in 1638, when the first printers, Stephen Daye and his two sons, went from Cambridge, England to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There they produced their first book, The Whole Booke of Psalmes, in 1640. It is known today as "The Bay Psalm Book" and is understandably rare.
Today, publishing assumed its characteristic blend of idealism and commerce. Also, Americans are not predominately book readers, and there is little public curiosity about the people who publish books. Individual authors become famous, but a few people can identify the publisher of the book they have just finished reading.
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