Matchbook Story

Here is a very cool idea from a friend and former coworker, Kyle Petersen. If you check out Matchbook Story you'll pretty much figure it out, but I just thought I would vouch for the enterprise and also say that I'm pretty excited about someone I know getting into the publishing game. From small seeds grow...well you get the idea.

Sneezing at the Sun

I happened on an interesting article about sneezing over at the Care2 website today. Although this post may seem like a lazy way to keep the blog updated--which, in fact, it is--in truth, there are one or two things that have puzzled me about sneezing for a long time. Although I understand about sneezing with colds and allegies, there are a couple of things that make me sneeze which puzzle me. One is chocolate--okay, that might be an allergy, but there is no other effect, and given that, I'd prefer to remain in denial if I can. The other, though, is that if I happen to look up towards the sun, I sneeze. It's actually one of my earliest childhood memories.

Thanks to Care2, I now know that there is something called "photic sneezing", or "autosomal dominant compelling helio-ophthamalic outburst". Which, not quite convincingly, is turned into the acronym ACHOO. What it means is that bright light causes you to sneeze. The only bright light that has ever caused me to do this is the sun, as far as I know. One in three people do it and it's hereditary.

At least according to Wikipedia, sneezing is governed by the trigeminal nerve, and it appears that in some people the optic nerve and this one are very connected, so that when the first is overstimulated, the second causes you to sneeze. In fact, there's some evidence that the overstimulation of any nerve near the trigeminal nerve can create this effect--suddenly breathing cold air, or eating very strongly flavored food.

Interestingly, no one in my family ever seemed to know what I was talking about when I mentioned this experience. It would be a shame if, after all these years, this was the way I found out I was adopted.

The Two Year Novel Writing course at Forward Motion

I just realized that this was the perfect place to post a link to Forward Motion for Writers, and in particular the two year novel writing course that is due to begin again in 2010. It's free, it's highly structured, and this may be the last year it is available to everyone for free. I've done it once before, petered out a bit before it was all done, but still have material I want to work on from it. I'm planning to start 2010 off with a bang, and this looks like a good way to do it. The Two Year Novel course is here. Check it out.

But don't wait too long to decide, because January is upon us.

Fifty Best Lit Blogs

Emerging Writers Network, one of the blogs I watch (though not in as thorough a way as I'd like), posted a link to this "best of blogs" sort of list. EWN made that list. There's a lot here for the literarily minded. I post it now mainly because it makes it easy for me to return to it once I have an hour or two.

Of course, most of my favorite blogs aren't on it...

Jamal Place

Although this blog was not originally started as a site of humanitarian postings, lately it's become such. Here's one more thing you probably have missed, and it's one that has a special place in my heart. Take a look at the website for Jamal Place, a home for at risk boys on the South Side of Chicago.

What's a Californian's connection to the South Side of Chicago, you ask? Good question. The short answer is that this is my Illinois cousin Ann Deuel's brain child--and in many ways, her heart child. After stints as both teacher and principal in various educational settings, she had a vision of building a place in one of the most challenged parts of the city, and making this house a home in a true sense to a small number of boys out of some of the most troubled family situations that any kid is asked to face.

It's hard for me to believe that Jamal Place opened its doors in 1995. The years do go by pretty fast. If you read her current director's letter, you will see that the organization has endured its share of challenges. But you will also see the amount of good and the difference it has made in some young lives.

One of the things I like most about Jamal Place is its philosophy of being involved with and giving back to the hard-pressed community it stands in. It has never viewed itself as something apart from the place which it stands, and the kids are often asked to do volunteer outreach themselves.

Of course for any readers who don't know me from Adam, my endorsement of this program doesn't mean much. But if you are looking for somewhere truly valuable to make those end of year donations, I will vouch for Jamal Place.

Although no one who knows Ann Deuel would question her convictions, her capacity for hard work, and her fundamental honesty and concern, one mystery does remain:

After growing up in a farmhouse with five brothers and no sisters--and suffice to say, she was neither a tomboy or agriculturely inclined--and then having four boy cousins as her closest and really only neighbors, what made her find her vocation challenging boys with few options to be their very best selves?

Hmm. "Challenging". I think I just answered my own question.

Amnesty International Global Write-a-Thon, Dec. 5-13

The weekend is almost upon us, but there is just time to put in a quick plug for Amnesty International's annual Global Write-a-thon, which is starting up this weekend.

Although I kind of miss the past focus of sending greetings to individuals and not so much notifying the powers that be of their situation, it's still a very cool thing to do at this time of year and kind of reminds you of the season's real priorities, whatever your faith--or lack thereof.


Here's the AI website.

Write one letter. What can it hurt?

Yoani Sanchez

Although, I follow the blog of Yoani Sanchez on a regular basis, and anyone who happens to read my Confessions of Ignorance blog has been able to see new updates from it for quite some time, I must admit that I hadn't kept up to speed recently, so it was through Adrian McKinty's post that I learned of her recent abduction by Cuba's secret police, which I then read her own first person account of here . I have also just tonight added her blog to my blog roll here, on the off chance that that will gain her a few more readers.

For any of us in the blogosphere who post our thoughts as freely and perhaps frivolously as I do, it is good to sometimes be reminded that not everyone using this medium uses it lightly or without forethought, and that there are people who speak their truths, just as you or I would, yet face the constant fear that not only their speech may be summarily blocked, but their actual liberty to walk around unimpeded on the earth may be curtailed. Abruptly.

If you enjoy your own free speech, you might want to consider visiting these two blogs,and then if you are persuaded that Yoani's own right to dissent is being blocked, send an email to the Cuban Embassy in London at embacuba@cubaldn.com.

edited to add: as this first email didn't seem to bear much fruit, I have also tried cuba@un.int, where Amnesty International has frequently requested people send their responses. Good luck.

Thank you.