An outfit known as "Mysterious Letters" is making a gallant attempt to reinvigorate the lost art of letter writing.Their plan: to send a hand-written letter to everyone in the entire world. They started in Ireland. Look:
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People Who Inspire Us
The fomer book review editor for the L.A. Times David Ulin has a 15 year old son, Noah, who assures his father that literature is dead and that reading is 'over'.
We who relish words bristle at the thought.
Today on KQED's Forum program, host Michael Krasny interviewed Mr. Ulin on his thoughts about the ongoing relevance of literature in an age of digital distraction. Listen here: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201010191000
To David Ulin his son's statements were like a knife thrust in the heart. The former book review editor of the Los Angeles Times: “almost asked for a towel to clean up the blood.”
The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time (Sasquatch, Nov.) is not another screed against the information age. Rather, it is Ulin’s honest attempt to come to terms with Noah and with his own sense of “How do things stick to us in a culture where information and ideas flare up so quickly that we have no time to assess one before another takes its place? How does reading maintain its hold on our imagination, or is the question even worth asking anymore?” - taken from Publisher's Weekly Blog at http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/?p=2387
A topic worth pondering.
Young authors area writing up a storm all over the world!
To hear some of them who've been featured in Stone Soup. Listen to some of them reading a story he or she wrote. You will need the program RealPlayer, which you can download for free if you don't already have it.
Did you know that October is National Arts and Humanities Month? It's coordinated by Americans for the Arts (www.americansforthearts.org). NAHM is the largest annual celebration of the arts and humanities in the nation. From arts center open houses to mayoral proclamations to banners and media coverage, communities across the United States join together to recognize the importance of arts and culture in our daily lives.
And speaking of the arts, we found a video we wanted you to see that poses the very important question, "Why Arts Matter?" and features a video contest asking that very question to whomever wanted to answer it with an original video.
To us at "Take My Word For It!" the literary arts are a vital important part of education and of cultural life. Where would we be without the creative art of writing?
Why do the arts matter to you?
It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But in thishour of Radiolab, they try to do just that.
The producres speak to a woman who taught a 27-year-old man the first words of his life, and they hear a firsthand account of what it feels like to have the language center of your brain wiped out by a stroke.
Watch this surprising and delightful visual play on words made by Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante for WNYC's radio program, Radiolab.