A love for the language

anthropology, writing View Comments
Jun 302008

When asked why they write, many authors and poets start talking about how they either hear voices in their head or how they love the language.

I can relate to the ones who hear voices in their head (and I’m so grateful to know I’m not the only one). Trying to capture the random bits of story that fly through my head sometimes can be tricky. As much as I’d love to have a way to record the idea electronically, I keep notebooks stashed around my room and go bag for quick capture. Even with those, characters often deliver bits of dialogue or introduce themselves when I’m not in a position to write it down, and then I have to repeat the information to myself over and over until I get to one of my notebooks.

While the ones who hear voices make sense to me, the ones who extemporize for hours on end about their love for words don’t. I’ve read interviews where authors go on about loving how words roll around in their mouth and being obsessed with language. Some of them talk about the texture or rhythm of language. For me, words are a tool. I don’t think much about them beyond trying to get my point across.

For a while, I thought I wasn’t a true writer because while I hear flashes of characters in my head, I don’t have this odd obsession with words. I don’t have a favorite word. I don’t compare words with wine or truffles. I started thinking I don’t care about words at all.

Except I do. I may not be fascinated by the feel, texture, rhythm of words, but I love learning about etymologies. I enjoy finding out where a word or phrase came from, and using that to help me down the road. I use these etymologies when I’m talking with international friends or teaching my students (more and more of whom are international) to help them better understand our idiomatic language.

I figure that’s close enough to an odd obsession with language to allow me to say I’m a “true writer”.

Posted by Rebecca at 8:03 am

Age Appropriate

reading, writing View Comments
Jun 092008

My mother has a reading log from when I was in kindergarten that clearly shows I read pages from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. As the story goes, I used what I read in the book to tell her what was wrong with Clash of the Titans, my favorite movie at the time.

Five years old and reading a college-level book. Is it any surprise I tested at college-level on many reading tests I took as a child?

I’m an extreme case. Through the course of my teaching, I’ve met middle schoolers who are working their way through early readers because that’s where their reading level is. In fact, today’s mainstream books are generally aimed at anywhere from a sixth- to eighth-grade level because that’s considered the average reading level of the nation’s adults.

Scary, huh?

I’m also an avid manga fan. There are actually now more manga than any other type of book on my shelves. Quite a few of my students also read manga, and it always terrifies me when one of my middle schoolers bounds up to me and tells me they loved Descendants of Darkness, one of my favorite titles. Manga has age ratings on them, and that particular one (like the majority of the titles I read) is labelled “Older Teen, 16+”. It’s not that the language is over my middle schoolers’ heads; it’s that the content is. Had they asked me first, I’d have steered them toward something better suited to their age.

There is a movement afoot to mark all children’s novels with age bands to show what group the story is targeting. Of course, some people are up in arms over this, but they feel the age labels will shut out potential readers in a society where a disappointing percentage of adults don’t read unless they have to. What I think is really going on here is that the books are being labeled for the content. The labels are just saying that the average child at that age will be able to digest what’s happening in the story.

Of course, you will always have the overly bright child who’s reading books far beyond their age, and the child who just needs a little more time to understand what they’re reading picking up a book below their age group. These bandings aren’t supposed to be used as a means to shun either of these groups; they’re just guidelines. Just like the movie and television ratings. Just like the age warnings on manga.

A college student enjoying a PG-13 movie isn’t stigmatized for watching something accessible to children, and I suspect the age bands won’t be quite the stigma some people think they will either.

Posted by Rebecca at 11:37 am

Creators and the Orphaned Works Act

creativity View Comments
Jun 062008

A couple of months ago, the Illustrators’ Partnership created a bit of a sensation in the art world when they released an interview between one of their members and the general counsel of the Copyright Office regarding a new version of the Orphaned Works Act that was set to recirculate through Congress in May. IPA (and others) interpreted this interview to say that Congress was legalizing a way for those wanting to use a piece of art to get that piece labeled an Orphaned Work (a work whose creator is not available to release the copyright) so they can use it for whatever means, regardless of whether or not the artwork in question was actually orphaned.

If you look through the IPA website, you find that they’ve had a long history with the Orphaned Works Act, often debating the Act’s merits and weaknesses when it appears in Congress. So they have quite a bit invested emotionally in this topic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Orphaned creations are a nightmare on so many levels because of the copyright issues.

However, it appears that while registering might become an encouraged option, it does appear Congress is working to make sure orphaned works remain accessible or viewable while at the same time being sensitive to the current copyright laws. Of course, not everyone is convinced. Those in the nonprofit sector (museums, libraries, and public television) are also concerned because they’re often the ones trying to deal with the curation of orphaned works. If a work is deemed “orphaned” and the original copyright holder turns up later, the institution is in trouble.

What can we do? Well, for starters, we can educate people about copyright, both from the creator’s point of view and the audience’s point of view. Doug Johnson offered a great two-part series on copyright not too long ago that’s probably one of the better places to start. Teaching young creators to get into the habit of signing their work, tagging their work with contact information, doing something to make sure interested parties can find them, will save them headaches down the road regardless of how this Act shakes out.

We can also watch our own behaviors. If you’re a creator, make sure you yourself have tagged your work with your contact information. Create an artist’s mark to mark your visual work if you need to. Be vain. Sign everything. If you want to offer your work to be used by others, use a Creative Commons license to make it clear which rights you’re willing to give up. If you’re a consumer, respect the rights of the creator. It’s one thing to appreciate someone’s work, to imitate their style while you work on developing your own; it’s another thing entirely to just steal or copy without attributing that work to the original artist.

With diligence and education, it’s possible to minimize the number of works caught in this Act.

Posted by Rebecca at 10:21 am

Brew Your Tea on the Go

designs I like View Comments
Jun 052008

I’m an avid tea drinker, so I really like the design behind I Love Obento’s Tea Tumbler.

Personally, I’ve never been afraid to throw tea bags into my spill-proof travel mug, but I also have a handful of loose teas that really don’t lend themselves well to being brewed in the mug. I could get one of those metal egg-shaped infusers, but it would just get in the way of trying to drink the tea and would become one extra thing to keep up with.

The built-in strainer solves that worry, though, making this a compact, useful travel mug for the tea drinker on the go.

Posted by Rebecca at 9:59 am

Sharing rights

creativity View Comments
Jun 022008

I’ve been trying to get back into the creative swing of things over the past couple of weeks. I’ve been more actively taking pictures (I’m even starting to wish I had a slimmer camera to carry around with me) and I started an online self-paced drawing program. Over the weekend, I made my very first video, a tutorial on absolute value.

Nearly every single day, I’m uploading something I’ve made, and I have to sit and think about how I’d want that material to be reused. Let’s face it- anything online is pretty much viewed as fair game, anyway, because we aren’t adequately educating people about rights. The war for copyright has become such a farce that no one’s really sure where to fall anymore.

My problem, and so many other creators’ problem, is that I’ve been inspired by other people’s work, and I want those who feel inspired by my work to be able to incorporate what inspired them. That’s why I love Creative Commons. I can maintain my ownership while at the same time allowing others to build off my work within parameters I set

Recently, assigning the right license has become a challenge. When I’m just showing off my class assignments, I can’t give away those rights because I’m following a set of instructions written by someone else. When I’m showing off my photography, I have a license in place to allow people to create derivative pictures under certain conditions. I think I bounce between a few different licenses for my jewelry.

How do you decide which rights to share with fellow creators? How do you decide what you want your works’ future to look like?

Posted by Rebecca at 2:33 pm
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