The All-purpose Pronoun
August 3, 2009
If a writer wants to use a gender-neutral pronoun to write a sentence, what should he/she/they use? Despite its many virtues, the English language doesn’t have a good solution to this problem.
It’s complicated, but maybe it doesn’t need to be. The New York Times On Language column tackled this recently, and the story behind why we traditionally use he might surprise you…
Let’s say you’re writing a comic, and you want to indicate that your character is out of breath and speaking French from the other side of a closed door. How do you do it?
Nate Piekos knows. Although most of us never give it a second thought, comics have an elaborate, established visual language for speech balloons and their contents. Nate understands this language, and he’s put together a terrific guide to all the variations. It’s a great read, even if you have no interest in ever making a comic for yourself. I guarantee you’ll be surprised at how many of the conventions you already recognize and understand fluently.
The British newspaper, The Guardian, recently asked a number of well known authors a fairly simple simple question: do you enjoy writing? More than a few do not, but they keep doing it anyway.
I get this. Winston Churchill’s once said that “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Substitute writing for democracy and way to make a living for form of government and I think you’ll describe how most writers feel about their jobs.
Artist Lou Romano has a wonderful post on the work that went into designing the characters and settings for Pixar’s new film, UP. It’s fascinating to see the amount of preparation that goes into a production like this, from conceptual art to sculptures of the key characters. Really inspirational, and well worth a look, even if you haven’t seen the movie.
Blodget Elementary
June 2, 2009
Blodgett Elementary is certainly one of the smaller schools I’ve visited in a while. It’s a new school, formed in a hurry when a large charter school in Schenectady closed recently. As a consequence, everyone at the school is brand new, and it doesn’t even show up on my GPS.
I found it anyway (although the big cross on the side of the building, left over from its days as a parochial school, threw me for a moment). I’m glad I did. They’re clearly having a lot of fun at Blodgett. For example, check out this cool Uncle Frank’s Pit construction built around Frank, the custodian’s room.
Blodgett was filled with great artwork and writing projects, all capped off with something I have never, ever seen or heard before: A live performance of a Backbeard rap by members of the sixth grade class. Click the link below to check it out.
