"We will rebuild"

A close friend of mine is an artist from Gulf Port, Mississippi. Like most people in the area she wakes up everyday to a demolished wasteland she once knew as her home. When I found this article I knew it would become a part of my blog. I won't give the article away but my heart grew butterflies after reading this spectacular piece. A local artist, Robert Vicknair, founded a program that transforms run down houses (demolished by Katrina) and turns them into art galleries for a night. It made me think of "Cinderella" meets "This Old House." I think it's awesome despite the havoc and horror Katrina caused New Orleans (and the surrounding areas like Gulf Port, MI) that people find goodness and beauty in situations like this one.

Call to action!

Last week we had to bring "a call to action" to class for show and tell. I picked this ad I found in Good magazine. The call to action is telling people to sign up for "i'm." Every time you IM someone "i'm" will donate money to some of the world's most effective charities including: Unicef, American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs and many more. What I liked most about this ad was it was all done with text. I really like typographic form. I think there is so much emphasis put on images-- which are very important-- but I like when there is one component to an ad and the message can remain powerful.

We are all one

Today, while I was reading for next Saturday's class I came across a sentence that said, "Today writers must think like designers and designers must think like writers." This may sound stupid and obvious but I finally found the point of the pub design program. In this program one of the main questions between students is "are you a writer or a designer?" I always classify me as a writer--but by asking this question to our peers we are missing the entire point of publications design. Don't get me wrong, I am guilty of this question many times over but that is no excuse. Instead of classifying ourselves as one or the other maybe we should take a bold leap of faith the next time we are faced with this question and say "I am both." Ultimately, no matter what we started out as, we will become a writer and a designer.

describe it to me (part III)...

Although I thought the end of Brian Doyle's piece, Joyas Volardores was a little odd with strange transitions, I really liked the way he described the hummingbirds in his third paragraph.

"Hummingbirds, like all flying birds but more so, have incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms. To drive those metabolisms they have racecar hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate."

The first sentence is my favorite part. He uses these amazingly big adjectives to describe this tiny little bird. The words make the birds larger than life. Within this little bird is a metabolism that is larger than the bird itself. I also like how he doesn't separate the adjectives with commas--he just places them all together making the sentence read fast... like the little hummingbird.
In the second sentence I like his choice of words. Racecar, eat oxygen, eye-popping: again, very strong word choices make the hummingbird appear fierce as oppossed to fragile.

describe it to me (part II)...

Just a quick note: I wanted to break up all of these description posts because I thought it would be extremely too long to post them all.

I had a great connection with John Updike's An Oil on Canvas. I can't put my finger exactly on what it was about the piece that I found so wonderful...I think it was the way he described his mother and her need for expensive things despite being broke in the Depression.

"Her father had been affluent for a time, and to her last days she had a taste for "nice things," which would manifest itself as Christmas gifts of Steuben glass and cashmere sweaters when she was living on next to nothing."

I see a little bit of myself in his mother which is probably the reason why I like this.

describe it to me (part I)...

First, I would like to say that I am in love with the McQuade/McQuade book Seeing and Writing. After this class is over I know that I will go back and read everything I never got a chance to read as well as go back and re-read everything I've already read. This past week for show and tell we had to find examples of description. I found three that I really liked from three different readings. Here is one:

The Pencil by Henry Petrosky:

"Ink is the cosmetic that ideas will wear when they go out in public. Graphite is their dirty truth."

I like this description because it makes the pen and pencil human. By transforming it from an object into something organic really makes me think about all the possibilities that each one holds.

sexy

I love when I come across a great quote. There are many ways to say one thing, but sometimes, there is just one. I also like finding quotes that make me think differently than I normally do. Words are amazing in the sense that putting them together one way can be ordinary and all it takes is omitting a word or adding a comma that make the collection that much more inspirational or enlightening.

I found this quote in the Drafting section of the introduction in the McQuade McQuade book:

"Writing is a form of intellectual exhaling."

I love that! I really do picture my breath coming out of my mouth and writing words on the page. It paints a very nice, calm picture for me.

Here's another one by Russell Baker:
"...in writing, punctuation plays the role of body language."

I had never thought of punctuation as sexy until I read this. Both of these quotes changed the way that I look at writing. I used to see it as something I had to do; after reading both of these I find myself wanting to write.