HSU IT Department

And I'm excited!!

I love making words on paper with a pen. I love the glide of the ink, the feel of the pen in my hand, the curves and lines, the way letters build words, words build sentences, sentences build messages. I love the way a letter in an envelope looks and feels when it's all addressed and stamped and waiting to be sent: the perfect size, the neat square corners, the heft and firmness of cardstock, the fun of choosing a stamp from among the many designs and images. I am agog at the fact that a bunch of total strangers will pass this small fragile thing along for me, hand to hand, all the way across the country or even around the world -- it's like magic!! I love thinking about my letter arriving in a mailbox, sitting there like a friendly little long-distance wave, and someone opening it, and having a nicer day because they got something in the mail that wasn't a bill. A letter touches another person in a way an email can't. As the Smithsonian Postal Museum says on their blog, letters are "physical manifestations of the senders. The loved ones’ hands wrote the words, folded the letter and sealed it into an envelope. Each letter still brings with it that gift, a physical connection that can’t be replicated through phones or tablets."

I have a huge stash of cards, notecards, stationery, etc. which I am always adding to, and I enjoy sorting through it looking for just the right one for a particular person or situation. I also have a stash of all kinds of different stamps; every time I go to the post office I ask the clerk to show me what new designs they have. At the moment I have stamps featuring Scooby Doo, Hot Wheels cars, the art of magic, ice cream sundaes, Disney villains, sharks, cactus flowers, and our National Parks. Alas, I missed out on the Mr. Rogers stamps -- they sold out in just a few days.

The challenge of National Letter-Writing Month is (duh) to see how many letters you can write. And I'd like to write to YOU. No, seriously, I really would :)

If you'd like to get a letter from me, just comment here and say so.* In order to make my letter of interest to you, and so I don't end up writing ten different versions of "what I did this week," please also tell me something you're interested in (horror movies, biodiversity, fantasy novels, politics, writing, cake decorating, collecting stuffed wombats) or ask me a question (what's the best bodice-ripper I ever read? do I think college should be free? what happens when we die? is Queen Elizabeth actually a shape-shifting reptile alien?). Anything goes!

Here's the catch, though: When you get my letter, you must write me back. Nothing fancy is required -- literally anything will suffice, even two lines on a postcard. Are you game? Of course you are!!

* No need to provide your address in the comment; if I don't already have it, I'll send you a PM asking for it. Also I am more than happy to write to people overseas, so if you're not in the U.S., don't let that stop you!

Thank you, Jon.

Prompting is open at mini_fest! Signups are still open at sshg_giftfest!! hp_goldenage is going to have an anonymous promptfest this fall!!!

So much fun, so little time...

Borrowed from toblass and savine_snape:

After all the recent terrible tragedies that have and are happening it's time for some positivity and kindness to happen.

So, I'm going to grab the pay-it-forward idea and put a little twist on it. The first twelve people to comment will get a surprise from me at some random point during the next twelve months.

All I ask is that in your comment, you share something with me about yourself that I may not know otherwise. This might be a good opportunity for me to get to know my friends better as well.

Ooh, I can't wait to see what I learn ::rubs hands in anticipation::

Smart people drink more.

That is all.

Yep. Really. Specifically, Dr Karen Norberg, of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spent a year knitting an anatomically correct replica of the human brain. Why, you ask? I don't care, I just think it's awesome.

I just found out about this really unusual post-apoc book and wondered if anyone else has heard about it. (NB: No, I have no connection with the book or the author, so this isn't a veiled sales pitch!) It's called Ora et Labora et Zombies.

Dr. Thomas Schutten's wife, Ava, is out of town when the zombie apocalypse strikes, so the doctor and his young son flee to a nearby Benedictine abbey -- his and his wife's agreed-on meeting place in case of catastrophe. (Bonus points for planning ahead, Dr. Tom!). While waiting for Ava, hoping against hope that she'll make it, Tom writes her letters. The book consists of these letters.

So you're thinking, "Meh, it's an epistolary novel, big deal," right? But here's the kicker: you actually get the letters in the mail, as in via the US Postal Service. You get one letter a week; each one is 4-6 pages and there will be 72 of them overall. The author/publisher says this about it:

Ora et Labora et Zombies is comprised of seventy-two handwritten Letters of between 4-6 pages, reproduced on specially watermarked stationery with a hand-printed serigraph cover sheet. Each Letter will be published individually, as a weekly serial, and distributed to readers through the mail. This idiosyncratic method of publication aims to celebrate and prolong the disappearing experience of receiving letters in the mailbox, and also to create in the reader a sense of anticipation, of waiting as the dramatis personae must wait to discover what is happening.

Is this not a really original and fascinating combination of book art/art book/letterpress skill/zombie apocalypse/serial novel?? And these are a few of my favorite things, so I'm utterly intrigued. I've subscribed to the first two bundles and cannot wait to get the first ones!!

A woman hasn’t run a presidential debate in twenty years.

This boggles my mind. With all the women in business, journalism, politics, etc., NOT ONE has been named to moderate a presidential debate??? Other adjectives I can think of besides "surprising" include annoying, vexing, inappropriate, strange, or even (if I were of the paranoid persuasion) Highly Suspicious.

Well, three teenage girls from New Jersey apparently agree. Rather than spending their summer listening to Justin Bieber or hanging out at the pool, they amassed an astonishing 170,000 signatures on a petition to have one of the upcoming 2012 debates moderated by a woman. They then took their packet of signatures to the office of the Commission on Presidential Debates (the Commission will be selecting the moderators in the next couple of weeks)...

...and they were turned away, and told that they would not be permitted to leave the packages of signatures in case they contained dangerous substances.

WTF? Epic governmental fail.

Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis were interviewed about their experience on NPR today, where they spoke like mature, thoughtful, engaged young citizens about their disappointment with the way they were treated. (I applaud their self-control; I believe I might have thrown something large and heavy...)

Rather than give up, however, (quoting from themarysue.com): "[w]orking with Change.org, the girls have put together two petitions asking for female moderators–one targeted at the commission, and one targeting the Obama and Romney campaigns, who can also have a sizable influence over who is chosen to moderate the political showdowns. The former has 116,000 signatures, the latter 53,000."

These girls rock. If you agree, you can sign their petition and add your support. You go, girls!!!

Wow, how much fun is this?? http://www.dolldivine.com/deluxe-pin-up-maker.php
Thank you, droxy (I think -- although if I waste another hour playing with it the word "thank" may mutate into something else LOL!)

Now if I could just find where to buy all the pieces:

Tired of paging through multiple chapters of a long fic? Wishing there was an easier way to put a long fic together other than copy-paste-copy-paste (repeat ad nauseum)? Or maybe you just prefer to hold a tiny lightweight Kindle instead of hunching over a laptop? FRET NO MORE!! I give you the fabulous fanfic compilation tool FLAG (Fanfic Lightweight Automatic Grabber).

Enter the URL of any chapter of the story you want, from any one of 24 popular websites (soon to be 30 or more; sycophanthex is upcoming, I know because I emailed and asked!), choose your format (epub, mobi, PDF, HTML), click Download, and poof! You get a lovely file with all chapters in order, complete with copyright statement and TOC. You can even have them emailed straight to your Kindle! How geek-cool is that?

Go. Try. Give some love to the creator, who does it all for the geeky fun of it (but also appreciates paypal donations). And enormous thanks to madeleone for alerting me to it.

That would be "science, technology, engineering and mathematics," fields in which (as we all know) there aren't enough women -- but Etsy's doing its bit to change that. They're hosting the summer 2012 session of Hacker School at Etsy headquarters, AND they’re providing ten Etsy Hacker Grants of $5,000 each — a total of $50,000 — to women who want to go but need financial support to do so.

How fantabulous is that?? (Thanks to spacefem who initially posted on it.)