O`pus´cle (ô`pŭs´’l) n. 1. A small or petty work
Last week, APM’s Marketplace featured this report on new bike sharing projects.
Today, I came across this post on Worldchanging.com about Bixi coming to number of cities including Melbourne, several cities in North America, and London.
Fingers crossed that NYC will see something like this soon.
In his short film, Andrew Bouvé shows us what the Super Bowl would look like if Tarintino, Wes Anderson, or Werner Herzog directed it.
Occasionally a family member or a friend will ask if they can put a niece or a cousin in touch with me, because they’ve just graduated from college with an English degree or a BFA, and they need to find a job that will allow them to work on their writing. I guess most people think publishing is a good job for writers (it is and it isn’t). Since I was just asked that question again this weekend, I thought I’d post part of my reply:
- First off, if writing is what you want to do, then I would make it the priority and find a job that supports your work and the lifestyle you need to write. In other words, if you write best late at night until 4am and then sleep late, you should probably stay away from the office jobs. If you can write in two to three hour bursts, then you can probably make working a conventional 9 to 5 job possible.
- Secondly, I’m not sure if you write poetry, long-form fiction, creative non-fiction, or what, but you probably know how much of your energy and time gets taken up by writing. Be honest with yourself and decide if you can spread your concentration and energy between work and writing. If you can’t, do something like waiting tables to pay the bills while you write that novel. If you can juggle the creative demands of writing and a job that also requires imaginative energy, try and get a job in the marketing dept or publicity department for a company. Look for jobs where verbal skills are important. Spend a lot of time on that one page cover letter and make it shine. This a bad time to be job-hunting for everyone, but a young college grad will have a tough time unless she can show that she’ll bring something interesting to the job. Have you done any interesting internships or worked any jobs that would help you build an argument for hiring you?
- In addition, when it comes down to working as a writer, don’t underestimate the power of social networks. (I don’t mean Facebook.) Nothing replaces meeting people at parties, at dinners, and through friends-of-friends. Sorry to break out the sociology on you, but there is good research by a guy named Mark Granovetter that basically shows that most people meet their spouses and find their jobs through “weak ties” (essentially friends-of-friends). Some of those connections can happen virtually through online relationships, but proximity to other writers, editors, and publishers will make things happen faster. That’s the reason NYC remains a place where so many people in creative industries and the media live. You don’t have to live in NYC, though. Places like Austin, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia all have vibrant scenes that would give you lots of opportunities to do freelance writing, attend readings and workshops, and meet other writers, artists, and media gatekeepers.
There’s an excellent post on the NY Times Spokes blog about the crackdown on cyclists in Philadelphia. I completely agree w/ Wiley Norvell at Transportation Alternatives. The goal should be to encourage civil cycling through education and enforcement of existing traffic laws. Trying to ban fixies or inveighing against all cyclists is ridiculous. NYC is not perfect, but Philly really should follow some of the transportation policy changes that Bloomberg administration has implemented.
SOURCE: Treehugger
I could use one of these for my office. Especially during the winter. They’re actually designed for children in Afghanistan, since there is not reliable electricity there.
You can read more on Treehugger.
I’m looking forward to reading David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries, a new book of observations about biking around cities in different parts of the world. In the meantime, here’s a great interview of Byrne biking and talking about biking in NYC.
It’s self-serving for me to post a link to this essay, but I’m going to do it anyway. Ann Trubeck has posted another excellent essay in her series of posts about the future of publishing. This one focuses on the important role editors play in creating good writing. Ann writes:
Writing is too much with us right now. There are too many sites, too many small publications, too many comments upon comments. We did the growing of the web; now we need to do the pruning. The time has come to cull and to prioritize our sites, our publishing, our venues for smart writing. Dare I say our moment is one crying out for editing? To enter the Age of the Edit, we need, well, editors. Now more than ever.
SOURCE: Guardian/Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
(h/t Kottke.org). Came across this article in the Guardian about the 50 best foods to eat in the world and where to eat them. Happy to say that I’ve enjoyed a few of these and completely agree!
Sociologist Dave Horton has started a series of guest posts on Copenhagenize about the fear of cycling. In his first post, he writes:
Most people seem finally to have realised that cycling is ‘a good thing’, but many still don’t cycle. So what stops them getting on their bikes? Explanations typically focus on physical factors such as climate, hills and infrastructure. Emotional barriers to cycling are easily overlooked, but are also massively important. Chief among these emotional barriers is a fear of cycling. You probably already know this – certainly in the UK, talk to friends who don’t cycle and you quickly figure out that they actually feel a bit scared at the prospect of cycling.
Most obviously this fear relates to anxieties about being in close and unprotected proximity to speeding cars, it’s to do with a fear of crashes, injury and death. But fear of cycling is also more complex than this. People on bikes move through public space in a much more open, less mediated way than people in cars. That’s one of the pleasures of cycling, but it also potentially heightens feelings of existential vulnerability. Some people also undoubtedly fear looking inept on a bike, fear working their bodies in public, fear harassment or violence from strangers. Cities are full of fear, which is partly why and partly because people move in cars.
Future posts in the series will cover:
NG shared this essay, “Redactor Agonistes,” by Daniel Menaker from the Barnes & Noble Review. He lists a dozen observations about the state of commercial publishing today. Menaker is correct about many of the realities confronting the book industry, but I find myself in the same place as his friend: it’s still more fun than a lot of other jobs.
