Members of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists (AWGS) met February 28-March 3 in Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss marketing strategies with wedding industry experts, tour the plant of Oakwood the Greener Cleaners owned by AWGS members Alan and Rhonda Wernick, and elect officers.
A highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the ninth annual Jack Barth Memorial Award of Excellence. Initiated by Linda Stokes-Barth in remembrance of her late husband and his achievements in the dry cleaning industry, the award recognizes a member of the Association of Wedding Gown Specialists for advancement, promotion, and development of industry standards for wedding gown care and for outstanding contributions and service to the Association and its members.
Oakwood, already a member of AWGS, Leading Cleaners International, and Methods for Management when Rhonda Wernick and her husband Alan took over in 2011, benefits from both Alan's expertise in business finance and software development and Rhonda's creative art profession. Rhonda's special talent as a professional artist is evident everywhere at Oakwood and walking into either of the two Oakwood locations is like walking into a living room complete with comfy chairs, her own beautiful artwork and a friendly, family-like atmosphere. Overall the Wernick's have not only maintained Oakwood's reputation for excellence but also taken it to an even higher level of couture cleaning and customer service.
Immediately drawn to the bridal side of the business, Rhonda has attended every AWGS meeting since 2011, served on the Board of Directors 2014-2017, and is quick to welcome new members via the AWGS discussion forum. On the forum she often shares inspiring photos of special projects such as turning a vintage wedding gown into a unique christening gown. She also shares ways to enhance the bride's experience at the counter. "We like to make a bride feel like she is the only one in the store," says Rhonda, and each bride also receives a special keepsake when she takes her gown home–Rhonda's hand-painted sketch of the gown.
In addition to managing Oakwood's bridal business, Rhonda operates both DancingArt.com and BuyArtByRhonda.com. She also gives back to her community with 9 years of service on the board of trustees of the Nashville Gordon Jewish Community Center and in many other ways including chairing and originating art events such as Nashville Temple Arts Festival and Art on the West Side. In 2017 she was the featured artist at Art on the West Side.
The minute she put it on, Stacy knew that this gown was going to be treasured forever. Her exquisite Justin Alexander beaded gown was just what she had dreamed of and now what she will use as a piece of art.
We asked Stacy a few questions that led to the framing of her gown.
How did you choose Oakwood Cleaners to clean your gown?
I used the knot and just google results. I then read a lot of reviews because I was a bit weary with handing my dress over to just anyone. I chose you all based on your reputation, cleaning process, and great customer service when I called with questions. I don't recall whom I spoke to but I felt assured that my dress would be safe and not be around harmful chemicals.
Why did you choose to frame your wedding gown?
When I look at it I think of my wedding day and how magical it was, but I also think about all of those times my mom would wander into the wedding section of a dress shop to fantasize which she would choose. It as always a lot of fun and one of those mother daughter memories I will always remember. The touching part of this story is when I went to get my wedding dress I had them pick out a dress for her to try on. She was nearly in tears … kind of funny that a dress can mean so much/ hold such symbolic meaning.
This is Stacy's gown as she brought it to us for cleaning.
We always suggest using our neighbors The Beveled Edge for projects such as this. They also frame needle point, printed fabric, you name it! Here is the process direct from The Beveled Edge in Nashville, TN.
Whether you need pressing before your wedding, cleaning and or preservation after your wedding or something special like framing, Oakwood Cleaners is here for you!
You have your date, you have your dress and now it needs some alterations! Here are some important tips to follow when preparing to have your wedding gown altered.
If possible allow 3 to 4 months from your wedding date for your alterations. It is normal to have 3 fittings, the third being the final to make sure your dress is a perfect fit.
Always bring the shoes you will be wearing at your wedding and the undergarments you will be wearing that day. Your seamstress cannot be expected to fit your dress to your specifications without these in hand at every fitting.
You must communicate. You are the only one that knows how you want your dress to fit. Never assume the seamtress can read your mind. Make sure that notes are taken so you are both on the same page.
Vintage dresses can be a challenge but special. Again, let your seamstress know what you are thinking and you might want to count on an extra fitting.
Wrong or no shoes, wrong under garments usually end up in a more costly bill at the end.
It was December of 1978. I was a bubbly 22 year old in what I thought back then was the most perfect wedding dress I could ever have! It is now September 2011 and WOW,wedding dresses have definately changed!
My husband Alan and I became the proud owners of this wonderful dry cleaners in April, 2011, almost 33 years later. We, Oakwood Cleaners, specialize in wedding gown alterations, cleaning and preservation. Like most brides, I had my gown preserved and never paid attention to it again. Well, I thought, since this is what I do now, I should open that huge box stored in my daughters closest. Oh my!!!!!


text:
About OHPI
Services and Consultancy
Verification of OHPI Content
Who does hate target?
Where Does Hate Appear?
Facebook Guides
Twitter Guides
YouTube Guides
Google+ Guides
OHPI in the Press
OHPI Newsletters
Dr Andre Oboler
Dr Andre Oboler is CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute. He also serves as co-chair of the Online Antisemitism working group of the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism and an expert to the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism. He is a Distinguished Visitor for the IEEE COmputer Society. He is the former Director of the Community Internet Engagement Project at the Zionist Federation of Australia. He has previously served as Chair of the Lancaster District Diversity Festival, National Secretary of the Union of Jewish Students (UK), a Deputy on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an invited observer on the board of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, and as a charity trustee for the Lancaster University Chaplaincy Centre and the National Postgraduate Committee. Dr Oboler holds a PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University and an LLM(JD) from Monash University.
Day to day management of OHPI rests with the CEO who is a Managing Director of the Institute.
Tweets by @onlinehate
Footer Widget Slot 1
Please configure this Widget in the Admin Panel under Appearance -> Widgets -> Footer Widget Slot 1
Contact OHPI
The Online Hate Prevention Institute is a Charitable Institute and Incorporated as an Australian Public Company. ABN: 65 155 287 657 • Copyright OHPI © 2012 •
Developed by SL Media Group

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Gulfstream's 'optimism' in doubt after China's sanctions threat - South China Morning Post
Philippines, US dialogue missed chance to address South China Sea 'grey zone' — analyst
Vietnam Morning News For July 19
China may be courting Japan to allay belt and road controversy - South China Morning Post
Asean morning news for July 19
Plebiscite on splitting Palawan into 3 provinces set for 2020
Palawan will not be a single province anymore, but only if the law dividing it into three is approved in a plebiscite. Republic Act No. 11259 divides the country's westernmost province into Palawan del Norte, Palawan Oriental and Palawan del Sur. President Rodrigo Duterte signed the law on April 5, but Malacañang made it public only on Saturday. The plebiscite is set for the second Monday of May 2020. The new provinces would be created if approved "by majority of the votes cast by the voters of the affected areas."…
Can the chemistry between Xi and Trump really ease China-US ties? – South China Morning Post
Can the chemistry between Xi and Trump really ease China-US ties? South China Morning Post There will be trouble ahead for the world's two biggest economies but it needn't be all bad news, White House adviser says. Source link
China 'Really Upset' Over Repeated Use Of 'Debt-Trap' Propaganda By The West
The Chinese government is reportedly upset by the Western propaganda of Beijing's debt-trap policy. A spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Lu Kang condemned the reported statement of the World Bank's President that the Chinese loans are a cause of concern for any country. Pakistan Immersed in a Whopping $10 billion Chinese Debt Trap Due To CPEC and Gwadar Port: US China's mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries under the Belt and Road, particularly in the context of Africa has nothing to do with the debt burden. The spokesperson said at a regular…
1,000 Filipinos protest against China 'invasion', SE Asia News & Top Stories
MANILA • Protesters descended on the Chinese embassy in Manila yesterday to oppose the Asian superpower's growing sway in the Philippines and as tensions rise over Beijing's presence in the disputed South China Sea. Filipino flag-waving marchers chanted "China out" and brandished a banner saying "Defend our sovereign rights", referring to Beijing's expansive claims to the resource-rich waterway. "The government headed by President (Rodrigo) Duterte is not responding. What China is doing is almost an invasion," marcher Alex Legaspi, a 53-year-old teacher, said. While Mr Duterte has largely set aside…
You think we'll just give in to China?
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13) — The governor of Palawan on Saturday shot down criticisms the province's impending split may favor China amid the long-standing dispute in the West Philippine Sea. "Anong akala mo – hindi kami gustong mamatay para sa sariling bayan natin? Bibigay lang namin sa China? Napakababaw naman noon," Palawan Governor Jose Alvarez told CNN Philippines in an interview. [Translation: "What are you thinking – that we are not willing to die for our country? That we'll just give in to China? That is just too…
US Amphibious Ship Tests New 'Carrier' Mode in Drills With Philippines – Report
The American military vessel was earlier spotted passing through the disputed waters of the South China Sea despite numerous demands from China, who has a significant military presence in the region, calling for the US to stop such "provocations". The US Marine Corps have been testing a concept of a so-called "Lightning Carrier" during joint drills with the Philippines military, Business Insider reported. The idea of this concept is to load an America-class amphibious assault ship, such as the USS Wasp currently participating in these drills, with 10 or even more F-35 Lightning II jets — twice the amount…
Will Locsin's tough talk vs China work?
FOREIGN Secretary Teddy Locsin Jr. is the solitary voice in the Cabinet publicly denouncing the neighborhood bully when it crosses the red line in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone. Are his blasts against China's intrusions with prior clearance of President Duterte? As Duterte balances his rhetoric between his Chinese benefactors and Filipinos wary of any hint of pro-China bias, Locsin's tough talk can help draw attention away from the President's lame reaction to the red dragon's gobbling up bits and pieces of Philippine maritime areas. In the homestretch of the…
China takes strong exception to allegation of debt burden
BEIJING: China has taken a strong exception to the repeated allegations by some quarters about China's role of putting debt burden on any country of the world. A spokesman of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Lu Kang denounced the reported statement of the World Bank's President that the Chinese loans are caused of concern for any country. China's mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries under the Belt and Road, particularly in context of Africa has nothing to do with debt burden. The spokesperson said at a regular news briefing, initiative, including that with African countries…
China rebuffs PH officials, maintains Spratly Islands is its territory » Manila Bulletin News
Published April 12, 2019, 5:21 PM By Roy Mabasa China has rebuffed statements earlier made by some Philippine officials regarding the situation in Spratly Islands (known as Nansha in Chinese), saying that the area is "within China's territory" and the rights of its fishermen "should not be challenged." Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang (Kim Kyung Hoon / Reuters / MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO) "We have taken note of those remarks made by the Philippine officials. The Nansha Islands are within China's territory, for which we have sufficient historical and…
First Chinese deep-sea well completed in South China Sea to supply LNG – South China Morning Post
First Chinese deep-sea well completed in South China Sea to supply LNG South China Morning Post Once it starts production, liquefied natural gas will be transported to CNOOC's terminal in Zhuhai to supply energy to the Greater Bay Area. Source link


You have not yet ordered any floral arrangements.
An arrangement of white carnations & decorative foliage in a natural-textured basket.
Disclosure: The florist will make every reasonable effort to match the floral arrangement you have selected. If certain flowers are not available, the florist will substitute accordingly while maintaining the value selected.


Fun level design, high-quality production values and a unique style.
Story is a bit incoherent, lacks the magic and appealing characters of the first game.
Snark Busters 2: All Revved Up is an enjoyable steampunk romp.
The original Snark Busters: Welcome to the Club was a fantastic game, so it was with high hopes that I went into Snark Busters 2: All Revved Up, the second chapter in Alawar's Snark-hunting game series. And it does not disappoint; Snark Busters 2 falls just a wee bit short of the very high standard set by the first game but it is still a very enjoyable romp through a bright, bizarre steampunk world.
You are Jack Blair, world famous auto racer, following in the footsteps of your grandfather Robert, whose prowess surpassed even your own. The greatest race driver the world had ever seen, Robert disappeared at the height of his fame under circumstances most mysterious: he drove into a tunnel while running his last race but never came out the other end. No trace of him was ever found. Perhaps one day your legend will outshine even his, but for now you've left the racing world behind in pursuit of other, even more exciting and exotic adventures as a Snark Buster!
Snark Busters 2 relies on fragmented objects rather than conventional hidden object searches to drive the action forward. Veteran HOGgers should be feel at home, while new players will find the introductory tutorial easy to follow yet very thorough. The game is broken up into six different levels, each of which must be passed before you – that is, Jack – can gain admittance to the Snark Busters club and the hot new race car they want you to drive.
Each area begins with several fragmented objects that must be assembled and then put to use in various ways, with the ultimate goal of retrieving a special medallion that will open the portal to the next level. There are a few puzzles to solve along the way, including one or two particularly good brain-teasers, and some of the fragmented object searches can be quite challenging, but the game has a comprehensive help function that will keep things moving along at a good pace and that recharges pretty quickly, too.
The gameplay in Snark Busters 2 is quite good but the game's real strength comes from the unique and very interesting world in which it's set. Nodnol is a weird place, to put it mildly. Everything runs on steam, so pipes, valve and assorted bits of unusual plumbing are everywhere, yet the technology is still very advanced. Your travels will take you to an elaborate tree house, a great, luxurious airship, a strange amusement park and more, as well as through the "backward worlds" the Snark hides in on the other side of mirrors. Your pursuit of the mythical creature, meanwhile, is echoed in the pursuit of you by Jessica Marrey, the persistent television news host who chronicled the hijinks of Kira Robertson and her father in the first game and is now determined to break the story of Jack Blair.
Kira actually gets a mention in Snark Busters 2, which is a nice touch but also highlights the game's one failing: it's just not quite as wonderfully charming as its predecessor. Where Kira was a sly, lovable rogue in the first game, Jack Blair comes across as vacuous and arrogant in this one, and even worse isn't nearly as interesting a character. It's all played for laughs, but it lacks the self-deprecating appeal that made Kira so much fun. The absence of a sub-plot like the one involving her overprotective father is surprisingly noticeable, and the fact that we don't come a single step closer to the Snark than we were at the start of Welcome to the Club is actually a bit disappointing.
On the other hand, it's a very lively game, with plenty of animations, sound effects and other such goings-on to keep things engaging. It's bright, exaggerated graphical style is visually striking and although the jaunty music can become a little overbearing at times, it's an ideal soundtrack for the pseudo-Victorian setting. And it'll keep you busy for a good while, too, with at least three hours of good, solid gameplay.
And to be honest, if Snark Busters 2 doesn't quite live up to the standard of its predecessor, that's at least in part because the original game set the mark so very, very high. But it's challenging, amusing and an awful lot of fun, and that's really the point, isn't it? The Snark Busters club is a very exclusive one, with membership reserved for only the best and the brightest, and Snark Busters 2: All Revved Up is definitely a worthy addition to the roster.


text:
'Laxmii' review: Akshay Kumar's version of 'Kanchana' is a faithful remake minus punch
Remakes are legitimate creative pursuits, but what are we gaining or losing in the process?
Flix Review Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 10:24
Nadika N Follow @NadjaNadika
Let's get some of the hygiene things out of the way, shall we? Laxmii, starring Akshay Kumar, Kiara Advani, Sharad Kelkar and a bunch of others, is a comedy-horror film, written and directed by Raghava Lawrence. It's a (fairly faithful) remake of Raghava's Tamil film Kanchana and has released on Disney+Hotstar.
By now, we've had five iterations of Raghava Lawrence's Muni/Kanchana franchise. In Tamil, that is. So no major plot lines need be discussed, but for the Hindi audience who may have strayed absentmindedly south, a quick recap.
A young man is possessed by the ghosts of a trans woman, a Muslim man, and a young man with an intellectual disability. The spirits perform a few scares and stunts, then reveal the reason for possession: revenge. They have been wronged by a powerful and evil man who not only usurped their property, but killed them and buried them too. And so, here's payback time.
In between, benevolent spirit guides and exorcists are called and the hero has a moment of faith, and a moment of justice, and finally, redemption, revenge, and a fairly happily ever after. But not before we set the stage for a sequel.
I ask myself a question. Why did Kanchana have to become Laxmii? Yes, remakes are legitimate creative pursuits, and if you can accommodate changed language and cultural contexts and perhaps a larger audience base, sure. But what are we gaining or losing in the process?
When Jon Favreau's Chef was remade, with Saif Ali Khan, the film lost a whole ton of nuance and flavour. When Hum was remade as Baasha, we lost perhaps some of cohesion of the Hindi original, but we gained a Superstar, and a generation of us gained punch dialogues and power moments. When the fantastic and moving, the absolute zingat of a film like Sairat was remade as the pink cotton candy that is Dhadak, I felt a personal betrayal. We lost everything: substance, style, commentary, politics. And gained two starlets who, let's face it, didn't really need any launch vehicle.
Does Laxmii gain anything? I may perhaps not be the right person to answer, given that my familiarity with the Hindi audience is at best skindeep. But has Laxmii lost anything? Yes. A lot. For one, an actor who could actually pull this off. Raghava Lawrence (and I am a fan) looks and feels right. In the entire film, he is never shown as anything other than a regular guy, so when the spirits take over and he becomes that avenging angel, we can see that transition, that transformation. Raghava isn't the macho man who performs the masculine. He's a scaredy cat. What's more, there are no extended tropes to show how manly-man he is.
Akshay Kumar, well. As Asif, he performs the hero from the get go. We see him right at the start as a ghost-denier. As a rational person. Fantastic. Then he says - "If there is a ghost, I will wear bangles." Fantastic. Not even half an hour into the film, we've equated bangles and femininity with fear and meekness.
Secondly, for comedy-horror to actually be comic and horrific, you need actors who can bring out the funny-hahaha. Raghava Lawrence, himself with great comic timing, had that stellar Kovai Sarala, and the tested and true Devadarshini and Sriman. And so when the thrills and the hauntings come on, the contrast drives home the horror. The scenes are repeated almost frame-by-frame in the Hindi, but - the laughs just didn't come. And that climatic song and action block. Pity.
Where Kanchana scored was that it gave us, (some of us outside active queer politics) a manifesto. That scene where the young woman is felicitated by her school, and is sent on a scholarship to study medicine: it felt like there was some value to fighting against, and fighting for society after all. Kanchana, in the Tamil, spoke about the extremely important thing that a progressive government made: gave the trans community a respectable name to call ourselves. That moment: it held me.
I've written about this before: the many names trans women in TN were called, and how those sharp blades cut deep, and why I, in fear of those very labels, held back from truly understanding my gender. In that moment, Kanchana became less of a film for me, and more a political statement. It moved me. And I suspect, a lot more people.
Further, I believe (and know to be largely true) it validated life choices many trans women and trans persons in TN made. It showed that for trans women in Tamil Nadu, education could mean the difference between performing "traditional" (begging, sex work) work and being a larger part of mainstream society. Among many transgender communities in India, Tamil trans women are employed in higher numbers in what's considered non traditional work. And so, it felt right for Geetha, Kanchana's daughter, to aspire to be a doctor. There are success stories and there are Living examples of trans women inspirations.
In the Laxmii version of this scene, there was something missing. For one, the young woman - Geetha again - has fewer lines to speak, and further we don't see her personal ambitions or growth. She goes on straight to being a political activist. She's apparently in a party (did I see the logo right, was that almost a Congress party symbol?) The Laxmi of Laxmii (is this a nod to Laxmi Narayan Tripathi?) says more or less the same things that Kanchana said. When Laxmi called out society for calling her names, I cried, I admit. It moved me.
Afterwards, I asked myself, why didn't I also feel better afterwards. Why didn't I feel like things could improve? It can't only be the language can it? I went back to that scene, this time with the subtitles on. Perhaps I missed a nuance in the language? The English subtitles rendered Kinnar as "transgender". Not transgender persons or transgender women. But that ugly, empty, personhood-less term transgender. That to me seemed like everything that was the remake. You take something with a bit of soul, and in the process of remaking it, strip it of that very soul. Of that which made it personal.
And it was not just this scene. When Raghava of the Kanchana film goes over what has happened to Kanchana, he wrestles with the right and the wrong. The good and the bad. The personal and the larger social. Here was a man who, from the beginning we see as afraid, sets aside his personal fears and dislikes to serve justice. To right a wrong. In Laxmii, that conflict, that interiority of the character is never shown or told about. We go from exorcism to the return of the ghosts in almost no time and then bang, climax.
Where is the ghost denier? Where is the rational person who does not believe in god and devil? What are you losing to gain justice? What are we, in this remake, gaining to justify the loss of the nuance? Where is the punch?
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.


We provide a wide range of services in the field of laser cosmetology. Use the services of an experienced master cosmetologists at the best prices in Kiev — the laser clinic Dr. Dudikova. We have the best experts of Ukraine. Call and sign up.


Good to see...um, talk..to you again :) How has your week been? Mine is lovely and I have a bit of a treat this week! There are major Kindle steals to present as well as a few hardcover beauties in this edition of Stacking the Shelves. There are a couple library loans, some freebies and other eBooks I just had to buy. Remember to comment below on which spoil has you the most giddy, and don't be shy sharing your finds this week ;) So without further adieu, I bring you my little indulgence, and in my defence, I really didn't spend that much. Just a bit.Jokes.
My Rambles: I'm really excited for all three of them because they each have a lot of promise. Night School was on sale at the BookDepository and The Calling had been on my wishlist for a while now, ever since I read and loved The Gathering, I knew the sequel was a must-have. A month ago while shopping in my local Superstore, I chanced on the Inside Out Omnibus, but didn't think to buy it at the time. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Unfortunately, when my senses returned, the book was no longer available! I mourned the loss, but not for long since they finally put it back on the shelves :D This little baby is a steal at $10 for both books in the series compiled to one, I am very pleased to have it.
A Reflection: I don't know if I'll get around to reading Harbinger, it's creeping me out a little now, to be honest ^_^ However, I'm not giving up without trying first, so stay tuned for that! Both The Vicious Deep and Of Poseidon have been touted as pretty great YA mermaid novels and I'm pretty excited for both, a little bit more for The Vicious Deep, but still, I can't wait. Soulbound looks phenomenal and I'm racing through my other books just to get to it :) Nothing beats the classics with Sense and Sensibility, the graphics in this Marvel adaptation are cute and well-done. Since this will be my first reading of the classic I have high expectations.
**The ones marked with the double asterix were freebies at the time, not sure if they still are, but I was blessed enough to snag them then! I told you that the load was hefty, you believe me? There are just so many good books here! I'm certain that I probably won't get to all before school beckons me back, but I'll enjoy every moment of trying. Those without the stars, Dead Radiance, Dante's Girl, Destiny's Fire, Easy, Demons at Deadnight, Sixty Acres and a Bride, The Assassin and the Pirate Lord, The Assassin and the Underworld, and The Assassin and the Desert were purchases that came out of my own pocket, buys that I am very pleased with.
Very nice haul of YA books. Seems like you got some titles I've never heard of.
Enjoy all the fantastic reads & thanks for stopping by!
That is one huge haul!! Where will you get the time to read them all??
I loved Destiny's Fire so hard, Trisha is such a sweetie and an amazing author. Hope you love it.
Wow. Many, many books. Happy reading!
Thanks for stopping by our post! Sorry it's taken so long to return the visit ~ Becky & I both started our grad classes again this week so it's been crazy!


July 2012 in Vienna was for me inspiring and creative.
I worked to develop new branches of my two projects: SKILIFT and Geometry Strikes Back.
I developed new installation visuals and designed interactivity for them, which I will be implementing in January 2013.
I worked with paper, which is one of my favorite materials, and it was an excellent environment for such a work. I had enough space to be able to install parts of my work and to understand how they work in the space and what would be the best interaction between different parts of the installation.
developing each of them as separate individuals.
This "character" part of the installation Geometry Strikes Back is dealing with identity and/or uniformity: how small differences are really small. I wanted to show it inside one character, and that one character is/might become many characters, and ends up as one the same character again.
The process was intriguing and full of surprises, what is for me one of the most important and exciting elements in my artistic work.
During the Artist-in-Residence program at quartier21 in Vienna I concentrated on the personal dimension of the SKILIFT project, analyzed different visual elements, and developed a basic plan for the later expositions of the work.
The idea for the visual presentation of the future exposition emerged as well. I drew the basic plan of arrangements for the next exposition in 2013.


text:
Who Says Memoir Has to Be Nonfiction? The Millions Interviews Tyrese Coleman
Melody Schreiber May 9, 2019 | 6 books mentioned 1 9 min read
Tyrese Coleman's debut, How to Sit, defies easy categorization. It's a slim book—about 120 pages—that blends essay and fiction. A finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, How to Sit is an unforgettable meditation on family and home—how our families both damage us and make us who we are; how we form our own families and how we find our place in the world.
Coleman and I recently discussed the book's unusual blend of fact and fiction, as well as the process of publishing with a very small press.
The Millions: From the beginning, this collection plays with the line between memoir and fiction. Often memoirists will include a caveat that their memories are fallible, but they strive to present events as accurately as possible. In your opening author's note and throughout the book, you actively embrace and explore the blurry line between what happened, how you remember it, and how you'd prefer to remember it. Why did that structure work so well for telling these stories? Do you think more writers should try playing in that space?
Tyrese Coleman: There was something freeing about being able to lean into the way my memories presented themselves in my head rather than shading them with research or other factual evidence. There is a poetry in memory and emotion that I did not want to lose. So, it would've been dishonest for me to make a claim that everything was as accurate as it could be. But I will say that it depends on the piece. Not every piece was drafted with the intent to blur lines; it was more to create a particular voice. So, there are definitely essays in this collection that are factual, yet because they incorporate some memory or emotion, the language is going to be more fluid.
I can't say what other writers should and should not do, but I do think they should consider eschewing the concept that memoir has to be nonfiction. This is the kind of statement someone could read and say, "That's bullshit." But often, when someone makes up a part of their memoir, they're afraid to admit it's been fictionalized or to explore why they feel like they need to make shit up. Instead, they should admit that it's not-quite-fiction or not-quite-nonfiction but that the emotion you feel coming from the page is completely true.
TM: The idea that memoir doesn't always have to be 100 percent true (to the best of the writer's ability) and that's okay—whew! That's a little hard for me to process. But you're not saying that we should all be like James Frey. Quite the contrary, you're careful to label your work at that intersection of truth and fiction, rather than calling it a memoir when it's not quite a memoir. Would you say it's all right, even encouraged, to explore that space—but to call it what it is?
TC: No, I'm saying memoir doesn't have to be nonfiction and that you can call it whatever you want. I think the best example of this is Wendy Ortiz's dreamoir Bruja, which is a memoir that includes incantations and dreams interspersed with events and her personal narrative. Is a dream nonfiction? I would say a dream is on par with a memory, in some respects. Does the fact that they both occur in your head, your subconsciousness, mean that they aren't true? That memory and that dream are true for me and true for Wendy. Does that then mean that we aren't sharing a part of our life story?
But this isn't only about memoir. I am currently reading The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. It is a novel-in-poems. So where do we put this book? On the young adult fiction shelf? On the poetry shelf? What makes it one thing over the other? The fact that her publisher has put the words "a novel" on the book jacket because novels sell more than poetry? All of these labels feel arbitrary to me. The book is amazing, regardless of its genre.
The thing that connects all of these examples, though, is that, from the jump, you know what it's about. James Frey put forth fiction and lied and said it was 100 percent true. Ultimately, you should let the reader know, "Hey, some of this is true and some of this isn't, but all of it is based on my life and the way I interpret my memories." If you want to call it memoir or fiction after that declaration or not, that's on you.
TM: Did fictionalizing some parts make it easier to write about events that may have been traumatic to recall? Did it help protect some identities?
TC: No. It helped with plot, with creating a better story. Writing about traumatic events or hurtful things from my past is not an issue for me. Those things happened and I cannot avoid them. Identities… well, I didn't do a whole lot of not revealing identities. In the pieces that are not-quite-nonfiction, it is parts of the plot or aspects of the story that I made up. In some instances, it's just a short story. In other instances, it's a small line here and there.
TM: I'd read several of these stories when they were published previously. But all together, they create a powerful narrative—the sum is greater than its parts. How did you choose the stories for this collection? What was the revision process like?
TC: At some point, I realized I was writing the same story, or writing about the same thing but in different (or even not-so-different) ways. I kept returning to aspects of my childhood, even when I was writing about a situation as an adult. So, I put them together and, like you, realized that they were even more powerful when put together. When I revised, I had to find a way to make everything feel more than tangentially linked. That meant changing any made-up names, removing redundancies, and coming up with a structure that demonstrated growth.
Get the best of The Millions in your inbox each week! Subscribe for free.
TM: You manage to build an entire world in one slim book, and it's almost like poetry; some sections left me breathless with how you wasted not a single word. I know that flash (fiction and memoir) is your wheelhouse. Why do you like it for telling stories like these?
TC: Flash is the stepchild of the literary world and it breaks my heart. People assume it's easy to do because the stories are short. Most people really have no idea what it is exactly. Is it a scene, a character sketch? Is it a poem? (It is definitely none of those things, by the way.) The proliferation of terrible online flash fiction has not helped opinions of it. Even when flash does get some recognition, it's disappointing. For example, when The New Yorker decided to highlight flash fiction, they chose writers who don't write flash fiction instead of people who have made careers of it. The majority of my book is flash writing from a flash writer who works for a prominent flash journal. That's what I love so much about my book being nominated for a PEN award, despite the fact that it was published with small indie press. I really hope that helps legitimize the form in some way.
Okay, now I've gotten that off my chest.
I love flash because when I was learning how to write, and to write what I felt was from my unique voice, I was reading black writers from back in the day who were doing amazing things with as few words as possible. I was reading Cane by Jean Toomer, I was reading Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks. I was reading short stories like "The Flowers" by Alice Walker and "Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid. I was reading Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, and I was learning the art of concluding every paragraph as if it is the end of a chapter and forming mini-chapters within paragraphs, within sentences, as if a whole story could be its own book. And though her stories are notoriously long, I was reading Alice Munro and learning how to make every single word work, as if building a railroad with a sledgehammer.
When I sat down to write those short pieces, I never said, "This is going to be flash." Rather, I wrote until I was done. Sometimes that meant it was short and sometimes it was much longer. But those short pieces mean much more in terms of technical editing and precision than my longer pieces. My biggest pet peeve with flash is when people think it's as simple as letting everything pour onto a blank piece of paper, and they don't take the time to edit it or to learn that flash is not just a scene from something longer. Flash isn't poetry, but I think it requires the same level of attention to language. I love that.
TM: One section in particular spoke to me: the premature birth of your boys. I'd read an earlier version of this story back when we were in grad school together. But now, after my own son was born early, the piece has taken on new meaning for me. You write so well about the guilt that all preemie parents, I think, feel—that sense of failing to stay pregnant. And you feel particularly guilty about putting your own pleasure above the possibility of going into early labor—which ended up happening. What was it like to put such an intimate moment out in the world?
TC: It is scary yet freeing in some ways. I always felt like an imposter or that I didn't deserve the sympathy others had for us and our situation. And yes, the boys deserved their prayers and my husband was not to blame, but I felt convinced that it was my fault. I needed to get this off my chest.
But, you know, motherhood is a series of events resulting in guilt, it feels like. There is nothing you can do right all of the time. Like, right now, I feel some kind of way because my son is in our bed sleeping in the shirt he wore to school. We should've put him in his pajamas before he fell asleep and now no one wants to risk waking him up to change his clothes. It doesn't stop me from thinking, "Oh, he's going to get so hot when he sleeps," and "Oh, his bed sheets are going to get dirty." It's guilt on a smaller level, but it's still guilt, and I'm really just waiting for the day these feelings go away. I need some wise and mature mama out there to tell me that one day, the guilt will go away (please).
TM: From one guilty mama to another, I hope it does. Stories like yours help us process events like these, though. It reminded me that my son's premature birth wasn't because of something I'd done. And even if it were, that's still okay. It's okay to be less than perfect.
I loved how many of the stories in your collection aren't tied up neatly. Like life, nothing really has a happy or at least resolved ending. But there are some really beautiful moments you pull from, like the character T walking home from prom in an imagined fairyland. How much of writing this book was an attempt to find, or in some cases create, closure? (I'm also thinking of that powerful final essay, where T narrates the time after her grandmother's death as it is happening.)
TC: Sometimes things have to be resolved; there has to be a change by the end. I am a proponent of the happy ending. I'm not talking about trite, sentimental endings that almost mean nothing. I mean endings where the character is in a better place than where she started, and I think that there are many instances of that in my book. The two pieces you mention and also "Sacrifice." I believe not all things Literature have to be sad even if they are about topics that are sad. And I also think that a character can change for the good and that a good story or essay doesn't have to end with some esoteric and nebulous statement about the emptiness of the human existence. Fuck that. I want to be happy.
"How to Mourn" was indeed a way for me to find closure. I needed to examine my feelings about my grandmother, about her death, but also about myself and why I had to write about her death. But the other pieces? I don't know if they were an exercise in finding closure. I think they represent the way I left the situation or the way I felt my character left the situation.
TM: Switching gears a little bit: Why did you want to work with an indie press, and what was that process like?
TC: I knew this was not the kind of book a big publisher would take. Its sole purpose is to question "the shelf."
TM: By its very nature, it defies categorization.
TC: That's why I knew large publishers would not be into it. I knew that I could do more with a small press. The people who run small presses, or at least the guys who run Mason Jar, are writers themselves and they are more interested in the art of writing and creating beautiful books—not whether or not the book is going to be sold in Barnes & Noble. Not to say that we don't want to make money, but that's not the main thing for them. The main thing is putting out art and interesting stories and beautiful poetry and enriching this world with books that push boundaries and that do not subscribe to any rules. I liked that.
TM: Did becoming a PEN award finalist change anything?
TC: I feel honored and, honestly, I think of this as a win for small presses and the flash community, as I mentioned above. It didn't change my relationship with my press. At this point, they are learning along with me, I think. Initially, I got some emails from a few agents, but that's about it. I am still unrepresented. Which is what it is.
TM: What's next for you? Will you continue to play in this space between fiction and memoir, or would you rather commit (at least for the time being) to one or the other?
TC: Right now, I am about halfway through the shitty first draft of a novel that may or may not be a romance novel, but there is a love story and lots of sex. Actually, I'm probably less than halfway done, since I plan to rewrite the shitty first draft into (hopefully) a less shitty second draft. I am over writing about myself for the time being. I am not blending genres or blurring lines. I am writing straight up fiction and loving it. I need an escape and I love these characters. I can't wait to finish so that I can start rewriting and then editing and then… I'm obsessed with this book!
TM: That's when you know a project has promise—when you get excited for revisions!
Melody Schreiber is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C. She is at work on an anthology of essays about premature birth. Follow her on Twitter @m_scribe.
Is Copyright a Guardian Angel or a Killer of Creativity? A Conversation with Alfred Steiner
Bill Morris March 23, 2011 | 6 books mentioned 5 9 min read
There Is No Moral Symmetry in Real Life: The Millions Interviews Leela Corman
Edie Meidav August 3, 2012 | 6 books mentioned 6 min read
Apply Aesthetic Pressure to the Language: An Interview with Paul Harding
Jianan Qian June 18, 2018 | 6 books mentioned 18 min read
I certainly worried, wondering whether I could pull it off. But I either had to write a second book or disappear. Much better, I thought, to get on with it.
Jianan Qian | 6 books mentioned 18 min read
The Millions Interview: Karen Russell
Brian Gresko April 7, 2011 | 6 books mentioned 7 6 min read
Karen Russell was just out of Columbia's MFA program and entering her mid-twenties when her short story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves debuted. Replete with ancient images such as a Minotaur, Yeti, and numerous ghosts, each tale speaks of the heartbreak of adolescence in language beautiful and true. She sets many of them in her native South Florida, on small keys, surrounded by the seemingly endless Everglades.
Russell returns to the Everglades – and to characters from one of her short stories, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator" – for her first novel, Swamplandia! The book tells the story of the Bigtree family, who run a theme park – the titular Swamplandia – on one of Florida's keys. Their star attraction is the family matriarch, Hilola Bigtree, who dives nightly into a pool of alligators until her untimely death from ovarian cancer.
With the park left destitute, Hilola's eldest son, Kiwi, takes a job at a rival theme park with dreams of saving the family by one day going to college. Part of the novel follows Kiwi, but the lion's (or should I say alligator's?) share of the story is given to Ava, the youngest daughter. Left alone on the island, surrounded by swamp, Ava and her older sister Ossie become enmeshed in a world of séances and ghosts.
I had the opportunity to talk with Russell recently by phone, and I asked about the influences on her work.
The Millions: You've received a lot of attention because your sentences are highly literary, musical constructions, but the content of the stories is often genre based, pulling on fantasy and science-fiction. And the emotional lives of the characters feel very real though the specifics of the dilemmas are fantastical. Where does the impulse to mash disparate elements together in your fiction come from?
Karen Russell: The people I loved reading the best in college were total mash-up artists. Like Junot Diaz, who has this voice-driven, wisecracking, going-to-curse-at-you prose and then he has these lyrical, gorgeous descriptions. Or George Saunders – I owe him a great debt because he showed me you can have really moral, moving stories that are partly a function of how insane and absurd the setting is. That was always what got me most powerfully as a reader: these incongruous pairings.
It's also just fun! I had a lot of fun writing Swamplandia! because it felt like I could juggle different kinds of worlds. And I feel like in life we're all sort of operating in different registers all the time.
TM: How so?
KR: I find myself always writing from this young adolescent point of view because that's the threshold where you really are straddling worlds. That was my experience of it anyway. Ava, the protagonist of Swamplandia!, was a good, fun age to write from, because she's a very innocent thirteen and so still has access to the private, child world of fantasy and comic books, but she's also alive to grittier, more adult realities. She's tying to figure out the death of her mom and the insolvency of the park – a lot of childhood myths are crumbling around her. As an adolescent you move registers, you switch lenses. You have a sorceress's magical lens but are also beginning to see the world through adult eyes.
But just in the course of a day I think everyone shuffles a bit. And what happens in my stories is just an expanded vocabulary to talk about a way that everybody feels. To paraphrase Etgar Keret: if I have some guy levitate out of his chair then maybe he's in love and inside feels like he's flying.
TM: It sounds like you're very aware of the writers you admire and have learned from, but how does that work for you in concrete terms? Do you go back to any authors in particular when you're stuck to crib technique or pointers?
KR: You learn what a story is by reading. There are some stories and novels that leave a big stamp, that virally inhabit your consciousness.
When writing Swamplandia! I ended up teaching Geek Love, this amazing novel by Katherine Dunn that I picked up in high school. It's a dark carnival tale about a family of actual freaks – it's just nightmarish, I've never read anything like it. I'm positive that if I hadn't read that book, Kelly Link's short story collection (Pretty Monsters) and George Saunders, that I wouldn't feel free enough as I do to write weird. They expanded my idea that you can have a literary book, a book that's interested in sentences and the poetry of language, and it can also have Arty the Flipper Boy or a Civil War ghost.
When writing the Kiwi sections of Swamplandia!, if I ever felt like the tone was off I would read Saunders because he always makes me want to write. He reads like he's having such a good time and I love his humor so much. I think you write better if you're reading good people.
Swamplandia! also owes a big debt to Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I think that's one of the most beautiful books. For King it's pretty quiet, about this nine year old girl wandering around the woods in Appalachia. It's weird to me that King is as popular as he is, you know? Because of the places he goes. That's an acknowledgement of how weird we all must be, and how we love the dark. I feel like he's some organ, doing extrasensory processing for all of us!
TM: Do you see Swamplandia! as a coming of age story?
KR: I heard Antonya Nelson say that all stories are coming of age stories, which I really like, because people hear coming of age and think To Kill A Mockingbird or whatever we all read in seventh grade. But Nelson's idea was that coming of age means you're getting new information, there's a new challenge or event and you're going to have to expand as a character – at whatever age you're at – and you're going to become something new as you move through the experience.
The story that felt at the heart of Swamplandia! was Ava's story, and that is about this kid trying to wrestle with her grief. She does grow up over the course of the book, but the novel also tackles the whole family in grief, so it's kind of a collective coming of age.
TM: As Swamplandia! progresses, the history of Floridian ecology and land-use come to the fore. Was this material that you knew from your childhood, or did you do a lot of research?
KR: I did too much research. I wanted to know the real history of the state. I think the Bigtree story is a local version of the bigger story. I felt that the death of the mother that's the catalyzing event in Swamplandia! deeply resonated with how we diked up and drained the swamp. It used to cover the whole state, this floating prairie that extended down from Lake Okeechobee, and now it's cut off from its headwaters and it's fractured and really in crisis, a quarter of its original size.
While writing I would look at these aerial pictures, and you can see exactly over time the shrinking territory and how cut up it is. That felt true for this family too, the members of which end up being partitioned and cut off from one another.
TM: One thing that comes up frequently in MFA workshops is consistency – sticking with a point of view or tense or pattern. Yet in so many fantastic books there are surprising changes, elements that make a work really exciting. Like the first 65 pages of Swamplandia! are written in the first person from Ava's point of view, and then the narrative voice switches to third person, following Kiwi as he heads off on his own and gets a job at The World of Darkness, a rival theme-park. Were you worried this wouldn't work?
KR: I had the same fear, because you internalize the voice of the collective workshop saying, "You can't do that! We need to know where this narrative voice is coming from!"
But in a workshop at Columbia, novelist Ben Marcus once said something along the lines of "readers won't be distracted if it's written well."
You want these abrupt narrative changes to be deliberate, to have a rationale. Swamplandia! is not just Ava's story, it's the whole Bigtree family's. I envisioned Hilola Bigtree's death like a pool ball break, this traumatic event happens and they all spiral off into their own pocket. Ava's sister Ossie is on her own mystery tour, and Kiwi wanted to save the family in his own way, a more conventional get-a-job, go-to-college way.
TM: Ossie journeys into the swamp, following a spirit she's fallen in love with, the story of which is left largely to the reader's imagination. Were you ever tempted to follow her?
KR: No, I knew that for the gravities to work Ossie's story has to be the dark matter. So much of the power would be lost if we saw what really happened to her, I thought that was an important thing to leave to the reader.
And I wanted Kiwi and Ava to be on parallel tracks, each in their own hell. Kiwi's is a minimum wage theme-park hell, a mainstream USA kind of hell, while Ava is off in the swamp. In the original conception of this, I thought it looked so beautiful, like a helical DNA strand. Ava's story is fantastical and Kiwi's is more realistic, but in the end they both are pretty deranged.
Brian Gresko | 6 books mentioned 7 6 min read
Let's take our time, taste/chew/swallow this book.
Two Writers, One Marriage: The Millions Interviews Julie Buntin and Gabe Habash
Claire Cameron June 19, 2017 | 6 books mentioned 1 7 min read
Just watching someone work at something so hard, putting years into it and going through really challenging moments with it because it's a vital part of her life—it's impossible for me to feel jealousy or to feel threatened.
Claire Cameron | 6 books mentioned 1 7 min read
The Millions Interview: Matthew Vollmer and Nic Brown (Part I)
Edan Lepucki June 24, 2009 | 6 books mentioned 8 8 min read
Future Missionaries of America by Matthew Vollmer and Floodmarkers by Nic Brown are short story collections from debut writers with enormous gifts. Their work is beautiful, funny, and delightfully weird. Matthew and Nic were my classmates at Iowa, where they proved to be not only talented writers, but also sharp and passionate readers. Since they're pals, I thought it would be fun if Matthew and Nic interviewed each other about their books. It's a real thrill for me to see their stories in print, and to have them on The Millions.In this first installment, Matthew talks to Nic about his book. Floodmarkers is a collection of linked stories that take place in the fictional town of Lystra, North Carolina, on the day Hurricane Hugo hits in 1989. Daniel Wallace calls it "smart and funny and sexy," and Publisher's Weekly compared it to Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio but, "simultaneously pared down and amped up, read to the sound of a jangly Strat."Matthew Vollmer: My favorite thing about your book is that it's a total freak show. We've got a character who's in love with his cousin, another who makes out with his friend's wife, a veterinarian who's into child porn, a guy who makes his mohawk stiff using microwaved gelatin, a guy who keeps a dead dog in his deep freezer, a former bodybuilder who's feeling guilty about causing the death of a Vietnamese kid, and (my favorite) an aspiring actor who works in a hot dog factory and helps a fellow employee pop a zit on his back he can't reach.Nic Brown: Well, we're all freaks! These people, if I wrote about the least interesting aspects of their life, might seem totally normal. Might. But we all have secrets or oddities, and that's what I like to write about. I mean, we live in a weird world, but it seems like most people ignore the weird and claim that everything is normal. I am trying to do the opposite.MV: Where did the idea for this book originate? Did you have a collection of characters first, then realize, hey, it would be cool if I followed these guys during a freakish weather event, or was it the other way around? In other words, when exactly did your vision for this project begin (what, exactly, did you envision the first time you thought of the idea) and how did that vision change over time?NB: For a while I found myself writing stories set in the late '80s, many of which had extreme weather. This tic made me recall Hurricane Hugo, and I began to hang all of these disparate scenes onto that one event. I think I was drawn to the '80s not because of the decade specifically, but rather because I was 12 or so at the end of the '80s, and at that age everything is magical and very important. So it's a sweet spot in my memory. As for the weather, I don't know. Storms are exciting. Hugo was very memorable for me, more for the build-up than the actual event. In Greensboro, where I was living at the time, we thought we were all going to die. We ended up just having some moderate flooding. But for the most part, the stories arose from the characters, or from a particular scene that I wanted to have happen. The weather was always secondary, and more a structural device that gave all of these events a shared catalyst.MV: Once you knew that you wanted to write a series of stories set during Hugo, how did you proceed (apart from sitting down at your typewriter and pecking the keys with two fingers)?NB: I decided to break the day into four sections (before sunrise, morning, afternoon, and evening), and try to make each proportional to the others. With this structure, I'd find that I had a character or event I wanted to use, then I would look at what I had written thus far and pick what part of the day needed to be filled. Writing short stories is so hard, because with each one you often have to create a whole world – a new setting, a new voice, a new tempo. This shared setting and structural formality made the writing a lot easier for me, and ended up producing a book that is somewhere in between a novel and a short story collection. It's a novel about a town; it's a story collection about a group of individuals.MV: Were there other characters and/or stories and/or ideas you ended up not including? If so, talk about them and why you didn't use them.NB: I did cut stories. One involved a group of friends who drive to Randolph County to a dance hall called the Rand Ole Opry where, during a barn dance, a man gets on stage and plays "Auld Lang Syne" on the accordion. It was really beautiful, but… I don't know. I guess it didn't go anywhere. I wrote another one about a blind man who lives in a duplex and falls in love with the woman on the other side of the house, then goes over there during the storm because he thinks he can hear her pets in distress (due to sensory compensation, he has super-sensitive hearing). He gets locked in and ends up breaking a bunch of stuff, then the woman comes home and finds him in her side of the house. I don't remember what happens after that. It made readers very nervous.MV: Are any of your characters based on real people? Are you nervous about people recognizing themselves in the book?NB: Many of my characters are based on real people. The most obvious is Manny (the trampoline thief in the story "Trampoline"). I have a friend who is Manny. Different name, and he never stole a trampoline or actually did any of the things the fictional Manny does, but he is basically the most uninhibited person I know (and one of the most unique looking – he looks like Sandra Bernhard). I have spent so much time with him that I can envision the type of thing he would say or do in a situation, and I enjoy embodying that uninhibited voice for a while. It's a great character to write about. My new book features a version of the same character much more extensively.As for all the others based on real people, yes, I am nervous. And so I am going to say nothing more.MV: Did you ever get sick of Lystra? Did you ever feel, when writing the book, that you were boxed in? Like, man, I would love to write a story that's NOT taking place during a hurricane? Or was it like hey, in this next story I'm gonna write, I'm excited to explore this part of this little universe I'm creating.NB: I never got sick of Lystra – the structured format really helped my creative process – but I did long to write a story that involved different weather and took place over the course of more than one day. I think it is no coincidence that my new novel opens with a scene of extreme sunlight, told in first person.MV: How much research did you have to do for the book – and what kinds of primary sources did you consult?NB: I YouTubed weather reports from Hurricane Hugo. That was about it.MV: You are known for liking small things. You drive a small car – when you're not driving a moped, which is like a small motorcycle. I also know that you enjoy small burgers. And shots of something called "cacao." Now, your first book is a book of short stories. And, unlike some collections, many of these are truly "short." I haven't counted the pages of most of your stories here, but I remember in workshop you used to turn in 15 or 16 pages like clockwork. I think most of the stories here are about that length. What can you say about the (relatively) short length of your stories?NB: Hm. That is all true, and had gone basically undiagnosed until you pointed it out. It's an aesthetic preference I have across medium. When I play music, I prefer very stripped down arrangements. I work at an art museum, and when I have to discuss certain artworks, I usually lean towards the figurative and simple. And the same goes for my food, my modes of transport, and of course – my stories. I am not against extreme complexity or complicated structures or narratives, it's just that I respond more to something that I can grasp on all sides and feel like I have enough room to find every angle on it. For example, if I had a Ferrari, how would I ever explore all of the things it could do? And where would I park it? Whereas, with my moped, I know exactly how to maximize all of its engine capacity at every speed, I can work on its engine myself, and I can park it anywhere. To me, it's just as fascinating and fun. It's the same with my stories. If I can break them down enough where I feel like I've cut out everything unimportant and boring, then I can focus on a few simple aspects that I can get the most out of. If it works right, these smaller stories should be as complex as anything larger. And also less boring. I hope.MV: One thing I saw you do especially well in your collection was to give readers a sense of what's at stake immediately and save background information for later on down the road. In almost every story, you pull back at some point to deliver a tight, punchy paragraph of expository writing that provides context about the character. These paragraphs are usually only about half a page long, if that, but they become nice little windows for peeking into characters' histories. Was it important for you to limit background information and flashbacks? And if so, why?NB: I often write stories hoping to do without any backstory whatsoever. Backstory, flashback, exposition – I always feel like these are the areas that are most likely to lose a reader. That said, when I write a story without exposition or backstory, I usually find that I do need it, so I create these small condensed bits that give us what we need to know but don't ruin the tempo I'm trying to set.MV: You wrote a novel (which I read a draft of last year and found hugely entertaining) while your collection was shopped around. Can you discuss the writing process and how it differed from Floodmarkers? What might you say about the novel that would make someone want to read it?NB: The novel is called Doubles and is about a professional doubles tennis player who is trying to get back into the game after being in a temporary retirement. While writing it, I spent a lot of time with an actual professional doubles player (who let me accompany him to a bunch of tournaments, including the US Open – where he made it to the semifinals and I got to be on CBS sitting in the coach's box. Hilarious). In the process, I saw into the weird world of this ubiquitous yet obscure sport. The structure of a doubles team is like a marriage, of sorts, and I was fascinated with the personal relationships as well as the tennis side of things. I don't know. Mostly the book has nothing to do with tennis. It's about a complex love triangle, basically. But I am obsessed with tennis, so it was nice to work that in.MV: I'm gonna throw you some names: Cliff. Cotton. Gary Malbaff. Pat Doublehead. Scoville. Evelyn Graham. Leanne Vanstory. Welborne Ray. Bojangles. Casper. Payton Craven. Confetti. Kylie Crook. Hyun Dang. Matthew! Explain how you come up with your AMAZING names!NB: Well. Let's see. Matthew is named after you. Bojangles was the name of my old bloodhound. Scoville is the first name of one of my favorite tennis players. Other than that, I just I just made them up, or slightly adapted names of friends that I liked the sound of. I actually never thought of any of those listed as being that weird. Now I'm getting a complex. You always do this. You notice things that are obvious but that other people don't notice. That's why you do those impersonations that are so creepy. Like when I last saw you and you did my walk. Or my point. Neither of which I really knew I did until you did them. I thought the weirdest names were Janet and Dan Organtip. Those are pretty ridiculous.MV: Is/was Meats and Treats (a place mentioned in your book) an actual place? Explain!NB: Meats and Treats was indeed a real place. All I remember them having stocked was cigarettes, giblets, and turkey necks. It was located on Airport Road in Chapel Hill, and is now Fosters Market, a place run by one of Martha Stewart's homegirls.MV: What's your next book (after Doubles) gonna be about?NB: Come on now. One or two at a time. I'm not talking about number three just yet.Read part two in which Nic interviews Matthew.
Edan Lepucki | 6 books mentioned 8 8 min read
Getting to the Edge of Darkness: The Millions Interviews Douglas Light
Paul Cohen April 4, 2018 | 6 books mentioned 8 min read
Writing for me is an exploration of a question and an expression of the emotion that the question evokes.
Paul Cohen | 6 books mentioned 8 min read
Transcending the Political: The Millions Interviews Rachel Kushner
Geoff Mak June 20, 2013 | 6 books mentioned 1 6 min read


text:
A Grim Fairy Tale of Cooking and Grief Is Called "The Bear"
Black Panther 2 Teaser: Long-Awaited Namor Is Introduced in Wakanda Forever
Disney+ will soon offer Hulu's The Orville for streaming
Jason Momoa Faces A Devastating Situation In The "See" Season 3 Trailer
Keke Palmer, the star of Nope, argues that drawing similarities between her and Zendaya is "an example of colorism."
Minions: The Rise of Gru 2022 Full Movie Free Online
Season 5 of "Mayans M.C." has been renewed by FX
Teases in Prey TV Ad First Earthly Hunt by the Predator
Watch Joe Pera on Seth Meyers Talk About Anime Conventions, James Bond, and More
Pioneer Scoop
The Horror Mystery Series 'The Midnight Club' Season 2 Got Cancelled By Netflix
Flourish in the Digital Age with Marketing Services
Reach Financial Stability with HDB Bank Loan
Why Invest in LumiShare?
Enterprise Risk Management: Know the Importance of ERM for your Company's Growth
The Importance of Effective Communication for Leaders
Say Goodbye to Acne with an Effective Acne Cleanser
Waste paper recycling saves forests
6 Ways To Support Energy
What You Should Be Doing Outside of the Gym to Your Optimize Workouts
How Can You Give Your Energy Levels a Boost?
The Time Traveler's Wife, a drama series created by Steven Moffat, has been canceled by HBO after one season
Tom Cruise celebrates his 60th birthday in style; Top Gun: Maverick actor attends British Grand Prix in 2022
In the first complete trailer for They/Them, Kevin Bacon's conversion camp is bloody
Distant Movie : Get ready to watch a Science- Fiction movie in 2022.
The Only Potato Dreams of America Guide You'll Ever Need.
Pros and Cons of Kotlin Programming Language for Android App Development
Power Relay Buying Tips You Should Know
What You Need To Know Before Buying A Tool Chest
How To Choose Elixir Web Developer for Custom Product?
Fintech Product Development and Regulation
Moon Knight Episode 6: Plot, Twist, Suspense, Action and everything you need to know.
Caleb's Turn in Westworld Brings Exciting New Possibilities to the Story
Genndy Tartakovsky on Season 2 of Primal, Adult Animated Stories, and the Current State of the Medium
Top 7 IPTV Services for FireStick
Bigger Season 2 :Is it Worth watching?
Netflix has cancelled The Midnight Club, the first season of which premiered on October 7th. This is a big loss for horror fans as this was one of the best pieces of horror on TV and there are only a handful that can be considered innovative. The show's cancellation was confirmed by Flanagan himself who tweeted, "Midnight Club season 2 got cancelled. Thank you to everyone who watched and supported the show. It is also important to note that Flanagan and writer Jeff Howard did an amazing job keeping the show, which was based on the Pike novel of the same name, more faithful than the 2002 film adaptation from Warner Brothers Pictures. The first season followed all eleven books in the series with several recurring characters showing up over all ten episodes. The Midnight Club isn't the only great horror series from Netflix. In fact, there are several that deserve your attention as well.
Who is in the cast?
Iman Benson shown as Ilonka
Igby Rigney shown as Kevin
Ruth Codd shown as Anya
Annarah Cymone shown as Sandra
Chris Sumpter shown as Spencer
Adia shown as Cheri
Aya Furukawa shown as Natsuki
Sauriyan Sapkota shown as Amesh
Matt Biedel shown as Tim
Samantha Sloyan shown as Shasta
Zach Gilford shown as Mark
Heather Langenkamp shown as Dr. Georgina Stanton
Emilija Baranac shown as Katherine
Daniel Diemer shown as Rhett
Katie Parker shown as Aceso
The series was released on 9th of October 2022.
What is the series about?
The Midnight Club is a horror mystery series from Netflix and Blumhouse Television. The series was created by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong and based on the book series written by Christopher Pike. It follows eight terminally ill patients who meet at a hospice at midnight every day to tell each other scary stories. They do this in order to fulfil a promise made to the first of them to die, so that he can contact them after his death. The Midnight Club is one of the best horror TV show releases in a long time. Its intelligent storytelling, great cast and interesting characters made it one of the most enjoyable shows to watch over the last few weeks.
Why 'The Midnight Club' Got Cancelled?
The Midnight Club is the first of Netflix's horror anthologies to get cancelled. There are no specific reasons given for the cancellation of The Midnight Club. However, there are several reasons that suggest why Netflix might have decided to cancel it. According to Cinema Blend, one of the main issues that could have led to the cancellation is that it didn't have high ratings or much buzz for many people who watched its first season. Flanagan has openly admitted this as well, telling Entertainment Weekly, "I think people were really surprised by how good the show was" and that they were pretty surprised by how well-received it was.
What makes the series exciting?
The Midnight Club is a great show for horror fans and those who enjoy thoughtful stories. It is a very different kind of horror series. Although it does have several scary moments, almost all of the ten are more suspenseful than outright scary. The show has an excellent cast and some great storytelling, in particular by Stefanie Estes who plays Lucy Franklyn. Mike Flanagan directed several episodes and did an excellent job with them all. If you like horror and shows with a lot of thought behind them then The Midnight Club is definitely worth watching.
Click on a Thumb to rate it!
'Top Gun: Maverick' The Sequel Of 'Top Gun' Is Coming Back To The Theaters For Two Weeks
The Horror Fantasy Series 'The Vampire Diaries' Getting Removed From Netflix This December
Pauline Phoenix from Paranormal Park Is a Terrifying Villain
Our favorite ghost train is back for another season of screaming and thrills. That is, of course, if you've got...
The release date for the Evil Dead Remake 4K Ultra HD Collector Edition has been announced
If you love horror and gore, you're probably excited for the upcoming release of the Evil Dead remake. The fourth...
The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 : Releasing soon on HBO!
The Righteous Gemstones Season 2 is a black comedy that follows the life of The Gemstone Family. The show stars...
Real Life Nightmare Season 3 : To be Released soon on HLN!!
Real Life Nightmare Season 3 is about to be released on HLN soon. The series represents dismal stories and personal...
Uncharted : Legacy of thieves review.
What is the plot of the story? The plot of the story is about Nathan Drake and his partner. Victor...
© 2022 Pioneer Scoop . All Rights Reserved.


Bon Muse is a holistic media agency specializing in branding and digital media marketing created for Brand Activation, Holistic Collaboration, & Design Inspiration. We are committed to creating meaningful work and thoughtfully design our products to actualize your vision.
We produce portfolios that include brand identity design, original content production, social media campaign development and promotion, event activation, and website development. Our passion is to curate brand culture and to design branding and marketing strategies that reach beyond the surface.
Your Vision is Our Muse.
COME FIND US IN SUNNY LONG BEACH.


This is going to be one of those posts where you should do as I say, not as I do. Or maybe I should say "as I did." It's been years since I've had a live poinsettia in my house, and for good reason. I was lucky to get the things to live until Christmas, let alone past it.
And now it's that time of year again, when you see them in the garden centers, the grocery stores, the big box stores, the gas stations, and anywhere they think they can get you to buy them. Everywhere you turn, there they are, enticing you with their leaves of all colors - red, white, pink, orange, purple, and god forbid, glitter.
Now if - just if - I were to want to attempt to bring a live poinsettia into this house this Christmas season, it would be red or pink or one of the shaded pink ones. As much as I like "different," I like my poinsettias realistic and traditional. To do otherwise is akin to having a skinny Santa Claus. It just ain't right.
So I went off into the great big world that is the internet, in search of advice for growing poinsettias. I found a great site that seems to have all the bases covered, and they make it look so easy. And after all, the poinsettia is really just a type of euphorbia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) and I grow those in my garden, both perennial and annual ones, with no problems.
When you buy a poinsettia, look for a plant that has little or no yellow pollen. This means it's a fresh plant.
Protect the plant from even brief encounters with cold temperatures or drafts. They hate that.
In your home, they like a temperature of 60-70 degrees, with nighttime temps around 55.
Make sure it's in soil that drains well and only water it when the soil is dry.
If you plan to keep it after the holidays, fertilize it monthly with a houseplant fertilizer. If you only want it for the holidays, don't worry about feeding it.
If you've made it this far with your poinsettia, good for you! You're ready for the second stage!
In February or early March, cut the plant back to about 4-6 inches in height.
Keep up with your watering as usual and monthly feeding.
Repot in late spring or early summer into a pot about two inches larger than the one it was in, making sure the soil is moist when you do it.
Keep it in a sunny window.
Wait until all danger of frost has passed, and the night temperatures are at least 60 degrees.
Put it in a shady area for a few days at first, to get it used to the bright sunlight gradually and it doesn't get sunburned.
You can sink the pot into the ground where you'd like it to be for the summer, once it has become acclimated.
Turn the pot weekly, to prevent roots from growing through the bottom of the pot, and to help with even sun exposure.
Before the night temperatures reach 55 degrees, bring the plant inside to a sunny location, and go back to fertilizing the plant just once a month.
Now, I would imagine if you're like me, and you've gone to all this trouble to keep your poinsettia, you want it to bloom during Christmas, don't you? Okay, then there's something special you need to do - put your plant in the closet. Don't keep it there, though.
In order for poinsettias to bloom, they need a prolonged period of darkness every night for 2-3 months. So in September or early October, put your poinsettia in a dark closet for at least 12 hours every night, but bring it out in the daytime and put it in the sunniest spot in the house.
Did you know that the belief that poinsettias are poisonous is just a myth? The milky sap contained in their stems can cause a reaction to those that are allergic to latex, just as it is with other Euphorbias, but the leaves are not poisonous. So go ahead and eat them if you want.
In the US, December 12th is officially National Poinsettia Day, so named by an act of Congress, to commemorate the death of Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American who first brought the plant to the US from its native Mexico in the early 1800s.
Want to send an e-card to someone on Poinsettia Day? Here's one! Don't like that one? There are more!
Information in this post pertaining to growing poinsettias is from eSSORTMENT and was written by S. Masters. I could never have come up with this on my own.
Hi, Kylee--Thanks for the tips on keeping poinsettias going. I love the things, get some every holiday. I've had weirdly mixed luck keeping them, however--one kept blooming until JUNE, no lie--another kicked it by New Years. Probably due to the facts that 1) I just grab them wherever I first see them, which means the quality is uneven and 2) I can be a bit erratic in my plant care. Still, it's nice to have your post as a resource when I make my annual (and never-achieved) resolution to be more organized!


Featuring Kelly :: A BQF Quilter!
Featuring Kelly :: A Blogger's Quilt Festival Quilter!
I actually made my first quilt about 15 years ago, and followed that up immediately with two more. These were just very simple patchwork quilts, and not what I would consider modern at all. After that, I took a break from quilting completely for about seven years while my family went through two cross-country moves, I got my Masters degree, and we welcomed our son. I jumped back into quilting when I found the modern quilting community online a little over four years ago and have never looked back!
Quilting is my stress reliever and my creative outlet. Playing with fabric and designing my own patterns keeps my mind occupied in a positive, productive way, and actually energizes my mind after a hard day. I also like to think that quilting serves as an example to my ten year-old son on how ideas can be dreamed up and willed into creation with hard work. He hasn't ever shown any interest in sewing, but I hope that the lessons still hold true for the creative endeavors close to his own heart.
People always ask me "How do you get so much accomplished?" Well, I have to say that my best quilting tip isn't really a quilting tip at all, but a time management one. I try to spend at least a few minutes each day working on a project- even if it's only 15-20 minutes. Those little minutes add up! A second tip I can offer is to quilt without fear. Easier said than done, I know, but try to remember that everyone makes mistakes, and nobody's quilts are perfect. I spent far too long on the sidelines of free motion quilting, worried that I would "ruin" my quilt. Finally taking the plunge was so freeing, and now I wonder why it took me so long. Whatever your particular fear is- just do it!
I have always loved rainbow quilts in every form. When I set out to make Shattered Rainbow, I really wanted to break away from laying the colors out in stripes, and because I had lots of gray scraps, I knew I wanted to find a way to incorporate gray into the mix. I feel like the gray patch in the quilt looks kind of like a hole in the rainbow, as though someone has thrown a baseball through a window, shattering the colors around it.
You know, my husband pokes fun at me because I make all of these quilts, but I can barely sew on a button. I have never sewn so much as a cute little zipper pouch, a tote bag, or an apron, and I honestly have no real desire to. I am a bit of a one-trick pony when it comes to sewing, but I'm good with it. I do what I like, and I like what I do.
Last summer, I started writing and selling my own patterns, and to my surprise, I enjoy the design part of the process just as much as creating the actual quilt. It it fulfilling in a different kind of way, but still very rewarding.
I'm of the same mindset on time management – every little bit of time that I can devote to a project adds up, and pretty quickly too!
lovely examples of Kelly's work.
Thank you Amy for featuring Kelly. I love her work and her outlook on quilting.
Love Kellys choice of color! Color is an addiction that I've had all of my life! LOL!
I've always loved Kelly's style. Thanks for featuring her.


6Upload your Notes, bookmark important Websites, store Research and Brainstorming, and upload your Works-In-Progress to Evernote or Dropbox. Your Final Work needs to be uploaded for assessment by me to Turnitin and your Completed&Graded Work should be archived in a folder on Livebinder (Use MLA fomat for all assignments... see bottom of page). We will go over this process in depth in class.
Each time you edit a work, simply change the date of the title and then you always have evidence of your "work." This is very useful if you ever need to explain your thinking or prove your effort.
Click the image above to learn what's new for MLA.


Listen to and read some examples of ivr, voicemail and switchboard messages produced by us.
You can write the text and choose in which languages you want your message to be recorded by the Telephone Vox voice talents.
It is called a "welcome message" or "courtesy message" as it is the first message that is heard at the beginning of the connection. This message usually includes only the name of the company called or a few details.
- When the user has chosen the extension to talk to and is waiting for the extension to take the call.
- When the call is being passed from one extension to another.
This is the only message for which a musical background is essential. And it is a message that lends itself very well to announcing special offers or providing business information.
This is the message that is heard when the offices are closed. It's a classic; a mandatory message that shows respect towards the caller.
If the switchboard used allows it, this message is used when calls are to be abandoned due to long waiting times, operators are not available, or for other reasons.
This is a classic message, one that should be activated by all companies before closing for holidays. It serves to inform callers about the reopening date and to avoid the sense of neglect that they feel when they contact a company that will be closed for the medium/long term.
This is the interactive message (ivr: interactive voice response) that you use to ask the user which extension they want to talk to. It is also called a "tree message" because there can be more than one of these messages, depending on how the company and its switchboard are structured, maybe one for each "branch".
This is the message that is used in personal physical answering machines and in the network answering machines offered by telephone operators.


This is a model I just bought of Mark Donohue's Shelby GT350, made by Revell-Monogram. It's probably around 4 years old, but it's a really high quality car. RM's cars are typically very smooth, and are some of the best looking 1/32s you'll find.
Monogram went authentic with the layout, with a front mounted motor and a driveshaft, which is a bit of a rare setup. You can mess around with them and make it kinda run with a Carrera (it'll be too quick) or a Scalextric (it'll be too slow), but there's no real tuning of this chassis.
Shapeways is like the Etsy of 3D printing. People upload their designs, Shapeways prints them and sells them. And some geniuses (I use that term unironically) have used that system to solve my GT350's problem.
What is it? To a slot car racer, it's the answer to to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything (50 LaLD points to the first person to get that). This is a chassis for my Monogram GT350 that allows me to install a Slot.it motor pod, and utilize all of the tried and true Slot.it tuning techniques and parts.
With the pod installed, I've got great spherical brass bushings for my rear axle, I can install suspension, I can adjust axle heights. This chassis lets me standardize the car's performance with basically any other make or model of slot car.
Granted, it still won't be as quick as a Slot.it Group C car, since they're a lot lower and wider, but I'll be able to get it to run with Scalextrics and some of the other quicker brands, which is the point.
There's already quite a few chassis available from Shapeways, and I'm very happy with the quality of the part. And $15 to take a car from unusable to race winner, that's a pretty good deal to me.


text:
Vice President Pence To Visit Lexington For Anti-Obamacare Event
By Ryland Barton
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
Vice President Mike Pence will be in Lexington Wednesday as part of the White House's campaign to roll back the Affordable Care Act.
According to a news release, Pence will participate in a listening session with business leaders who say they've been hurt by Obamacare and then hold an invite-only event at Bryant's Rent-All, an equipment rental company.
The event comes as Kentucky has once again become a key battleground in the fight over the health care law.
On Sunday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders held a rally in Covington in which he accused Republican politicians of working against poor Kentuckians' interests by trying to repeal Obamacare.
Kentucky's two senators are key players in the Republican debate over how to scale back the law.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell favors a method that would repeal or reduce some of Obamacare's provisions, including a phase-out of funding for state Medicaid expansions and scrapping taxes on the wealthy and insurance companies that help fund the program.
Meanwhile Sen. Rand Paul says McConnell's model doesn't go far enough, arguing that the Affordable Care Act should be totally repealed before lawmakers figure out a replacement plan.
Vice President Pence will be joined by Gov. Matt Bevin, 6th District Congressman Andy Barr and 2nd District Congressman Brett Guthrie at the Lexington event.
Around 500,000 Kentuckians have gotten health coverage through the Obamacare health exchange and expansion of the state's Medicaid program.
Bevin has asked the federal government for permission to change how Medicaid works in Kentucky by requiring most beneficiaries to pay monthly premiums costing between $1 and $15 per month.
The proposal also seeks to require most people on Medicaid to prove that they are working, seeking work or volunteering to keep their coverage.
Bevin said the changes would save the state $358 million by 2021 while shaving about 95,000 people from the state's Medicaid rolls.
News obamacareaffordable care acthealth caremedicaidMike Pence
Ryland Barton
Ryland Barton is the Managing Editor for Collaboratives. Email Ryland at rbarton@lpm.org.
See stories by Ryland Barton
Three health policy stories to watch in 2023
U.S. Will Protect Gay And Transgender People Against Discrimination In Health Care
Kentucky COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker
Kentucky Hospitals Will Receive New Medicaid Funding Amid Strain Of Pandemic