Posts Tagged ‘Random’

This & That

23rd March

2012

written by hilleshiemj

A few random thoughts of the week:

The Hunger Games movie comes out this week. Who’s attending a midnight showing? I’m anxious to see it, but I think I can wait until the frenzy settles a bit. I’m betting it will actually be tamer than the books – I wonder if people realize how gory the books actually are. Don’t get me wrong — I love the books, but promotions I’ve seen have it geared towards families which I find a bit strange. The premise, after all, is a televised fight-to-the-death.
After 244 years, the Encyclopedia Britannica is ceasing its print edition. Like seemingly everything else, they’re going digital. To me, this is depressing news. Sure, the internet has made it easier and faster to find most information, but there is just something comforting and appealing about a set of encyclopedias, and all that knowledge at your fingertips. (I’ll expound further on the “demise of the book” in a future post…….)
Yesterday I attended part of the “Midwestern Literary Project” on campus. It was an author/editor panel discussion to showcase contemporary Midwestern writing, editing, and publishing. Participants in the author/editor panel discussion included: Timothy Fay, editor, publisher, and printer of the Iowa-based literary journal, The Wapsipinicon Almanac, with Dr. Doug McReynolds, UIU Bissell professor of English, who authored a suite of personal essays on the seasons that was published in the Wapsipinicon Almanac); Jim O’Loughlin, editor and publisher of Final Thursday Press (FTP); and Kimberly Groninga, author of a volume of poetry, Other Things that Grow, published by FTP. (from http://www.uiu.edu/ocm/news/2012/mar/literary-project.html)

The entire talk was interesting, but especially impressive is the fact that Fay HAND-PRODUCES the Wapsipinicon Almanac using labor-intensive linotype setting, a craft using letter press equipment mostly considered obsolete in today’s publishing realm. For more information on linotype and the Almanac, check out these pages: http://wapsialmanac.com/history and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine

Although it’s too late to attend this fascinating discussion, I encourage those on campus to take part in future talks/panels such as these. How lucky we are to have opportunities such as these for gaining new knowledge!