My wife and I went to see Amelia the other night, the feature film introducing big screen audiences to the Amelia Earhart story, starring Hillary Swank and Richard Gere. For modern audiences who do are not familiar with her life, it is a great introduction and will undoubtedly encourage young women to keep pushing the boundaries of whatever region their souls wish to fly.The film does an admirable job of showing how Earhart became a media darling, not only performing amazing feats but also wr... Read Full Story

A short while ago, while writing about the journals of Andre Gide, I mentioned that many critics considered Gide one of the three great luminaries of 20th century literature, the other two being James Joyce and, today's focus, Thomas Mann. These writers may have fallen out of the pop limelight, but their works continue to speak to those who revisit them.Mann's Death in Venice has always been on my short list of favorite novellas, so it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon a very cool ... Read Full Story

"The writer of any first person work must decide two obvious questions: what to put in and what to leave out." ~Annie DillardSomeone asked how I come up with something new to write about every day. Frankly, that is not the challenge. The real challenge is how to eliminate topics because there are so many competing for this space at any given time. It's like a rural man who arrives in the big city without a plan. He's not sure which direction to go because so many avenues beckon. If the city i... Read Full Story

Sean Baisden's 2008 Chevy 2500HD Duramax was a featured vehicle for ANSA Exhaust at last week’s SEMA Show. Blaisden, who goes by the nickname Pitbull, described his build this way.We started with a 2008 Chevy 2500HD Duramax Diesel, crew cab long bed 4X4, sandstone in color. The project got some height by lifting the truck 11 inches using a CST lift kit with Fox Shocks w/ res. and a Performance Accessory 3-inch Body Lift. The suspension kit along with the Gear Alloy 715c 22-inch wheels, custom... Read Full Story

The James Bond character has become an iconic part of Western culture. Invented by writer Ian Fleming in the heat of the Cold War, Bond was the quintessential British spy, fighting evil wherever it is found, using state-of-the-art gadgets created by the best technical minds in the service of good, doing it all with a flash and style that women swoon over and men strive to emulate. At least in the books his women swoon.In those Cold War days there was a lot of fear, and readers of the Bond boo... Read Full Story

Musicals are not only big box office draws, they are also big spectacles to assemble and fund. And the recession has made a decidedly noticeable impact so that a number of popular award-winning shows have had to shutter their doors, including Spamalot and Hairspray.I remember when my brother and his wife went to see Yul Brynner in his second last Broadway performance of The King and I. When all was said and done, it cost a pretty penny, but those second row seats (or was it front row?) were w... Read Full Story

In magazine or book publishing, a callout is a quote or fragment of text extracted from an article that has been set apart in a larger or contrasting font. It is often used as a design element to break up a page while also serving as a mechanism for hooking a reader more deeply into the story.What follows is a multiple choice quiz. See if you can match the callout to the magazine it was extracted from.1. “Publishers only want to save on printing costs and lock in a path from their hard disk t... Read Full Story

SHORT STORY MONDAY"All too often life is but a tragic mirror that disassembles our best intentions." ~A. SourbetA Moment's ReflectionHe woke that morning with the pain stronger, not sharp but throbbing dully the length of his lower jaw to where it meets the hinge. His head ached slightly from the pressure on his inner ear, the nerve hurting all the way up alongside his skull. He was aware also of the persistent ache in his lower back where he had pinched a nerve two summers before while movin... Read Full Story

If you're at all acquainted with the Twin Ports art scene you will no doubt be aware of the Red Mug, a gallery/coffee house in the basement of the old Superior City Hall. The operative word is cool, or maybe warm (the vibes), or chic. One patron here called it "an artsy little coffee house." And tonight, we've got a special event on tap... an art opening for John Heino's photography exhibition called Fleeting: Excerpts from Infinity.Heino is probably better known for three decades of keyboard... Read Full Story

"If a man is worth knowing at all, he is worth knowing well." ~Alexander SmithA book that has garnered a fair share of buzz this year is the six volume Vincent Van Gogh: The Letters, edited by Leo Jansen, Hans Luitjen and Nienke Bakker. It is a work into which a team of scholars invested fifteen years of their lives to produce.This is not the first attempt to translate the world's most famous impressionist's letters. An earlier English translation appeared in 1952. This one, however, includes... Read Full Story