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Arzi Rachman, Intern

Michael L. Gillette is the current executive director of Humanities Texas, the state humanities council. Before serving as the executive director, he directed the LBJ Library’s Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991, and then became the director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives for twelve years after. His new book, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History, pieces together oral history interviews with former president Lyndon B. Johnson and his team of advisers as they undertook the Great Society’s greatest challenge.

This excerpt is taken from an interview with Robert J. Lampman, a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1962 to 1963 who worked in the Kennedy Administration along with Walter Heller, chairman of the CEA. The Saturday Group, called so because of their Saturday “brown bag” lunches, would meet informally (at first) to discuss how they could approach the problem of poverty and solutions that could be brought about with assistance from the government. Their luncheons were the beginnings of a social movement that would become pivotal in giving assistance where it was needed. Their work is still seen today, in the forms of public assistance that we once never had an option of choosing when survival was the only thing that was of importance.

THE SATURDAY GROUP
LAMPMAN: In that period, May to June [1963], somewhere along in there, Heller asked me to take part in writing up the possible meaning of an attack on poverty- lots of different phrases were used-and to meet with a group of people around Washington at the assistant secretary level and pick brains and get suggestions and criticisms of the idea. We dealt with people from the Bureau of the Budget; from HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare Department] (Wilbur Cohen was an assistant secretary, as I recall, at the time); from labor (Pat Moynihan [Daniel Patrick Moynihan] was the assistant secretary [of Labor]); from Agriculture; from Department of Justice.

There were just a few meetings, as I recall. We’d meet for an afternoon once every couple of weeks or something like that. It was all very tentative and very low-key, at least to start with. People were just speaking their minds. It was almost an academic sort of seminar. Indeed, it was interesting how many people there were Ph.D.s or were backed up by a scholar who was associated with the work. And we had represented people from different disciplines. There were people like Moynihan, who was a political scientists; and Cohen, who was an old hand in the income maintenance field but who was especially interested in this as an issue. There were statisticians, and then there were lawyers. People had very different approaches to the whole question.

We would get into discussion about the definition of poverty. What kind of a concept and what kind of a numbers frame would you have in mind? Some people would say poverty obviously means lack of money income. That had the great merit of being something we had some numbers on. We could say how many people there were above and below some line and where they were and so on. But other people said that’s really not what poverty means; poverty is more or sometimes even less than money. It’s a spiritual concept; or it’s a participation-in-government concept; or it’s a lack of some kind of self-esteem, sort of a psychological or im

Mark V. Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is the author of fifteen books, most recently Out Of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns. Out Of Range is an honest guide to both sides of the 2nd amendment debate and an insightful analysis of how our view of the 2nd amendment reflects our sense of ourselves as a people. Part of Oxford’s Inalienable Rights Series, Tushnet’s book challenges our views of one of our most controversial freedoms, the right to bear arms. In the article below Tushnet helps us understand this week’s oral arguments in the District of Columbia v. Heller case.

What should interested observers look for in this week’s oral argument in District of Columbia v. Heller? The issue in the case is whether the District’s complete ban on private ownership of handguns – coupled with a requirement that long guns (rifles and shotguns) in private homes have trigger-guards – violates the Second Amendment. The Amendment reads, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (more…)

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Have you ever wondered how many words are in a published YA or children’s book? I have. Children’s and YA writers, especially, may want to know this, to compare their own manuscripts to those of other writers, especially in particular genres. Book reviewers may also be interested to see whether the book they’re reading falls in the same general length as similar books, or if it’s very different. Or maybe you’re just curious. Curious is good.

There are some easy ways to find the word count for a published book–online bookstores. There are at least two that provide word count.

One is the online bookstore Renaissance Learning. It is, I think, the easiest to use to quickly find the word count of a book.

The other is Amazon.com(not Amazon.ca)–but it only works with books that have the “Search Inside” feature.

To find the word count at Amazon.com for a particular book, search the book’s title, and click on it. Then scroll down to “Inside this book”, then “New!” then “Text Stats”. Easy pe

I found that great tip at Miss Snark, in the comments section. I hope you find it as useful as I do!

by Anne Emerick

First, I created little of this advice, but I’m afraid I heard it long enough ago that I can’t remember the originator to give him/her credit.

Of all the writing advice, the following nuggets have helped me the most:

1. Listen to children’s audiobooks. By hearing how the best authors capture the readers’ (listeners’) interest and entertain, you’ll improve your own language skills and enjoy yourself at the same time. I listen on my long commute to work, but you can listen to audiobooks while walking (if protected from traffic), while cooking or cleaning, or simply while going to sleep. Free audiobooks are available from the library. Cheap audiobooks are available on Ebay or used on Amazon.com.

2. Join SCBWI - Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. You’ll get a helpful newsletter. More importantly, you’ll learn about informative and inspirational conferences across the United States. The conferences will improve your writing and motivation, and often provide submission opportunities that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

3. When you are ready to submit your work to publishers, there is an advantage to having more than one story or article that you are submitting. I am talking about submitting two different stories to two different editors or sets of editors. Often authors start with one story, their baby, and they send it out and then wait for answers, all answers. Then, when the rejections arrive, they have to fight off depression and despair. BUT, if you have at least two stories “out there” at all times, when all the NO’s come back on one story, all you have to do is convince yourself that the other story SURELY will find a home. And, while you are waiting to hear the news from that second story, send out the first story again, hoping that this time your recipient(s) will seize the golden opportunity to publish it.

4. Don’t give up. Well don’t give up if you really want to be a published children’s author and you are willing to work hard. If you had some vague idea about a story that you think would make a good children’s book and that’s where your interest stops, then forget it. Writing well, whether for kids or adults, is hard work. Achieving some commercial success by getting published and making sales takes a lot of drive and determination. Just don’t quit when you hit your first major setback, or your second or …. Just don’t quit.

5. Make writing friends. Whether you do this through SCBWI or by joining an online writing forum or a critique group, find other people who write for kids. They don’t need to be published, they just need to love children’s literature and have a strong interest in the craft of creating books. There are two reasons for doing this. First you can get a fresh perspective on what you’ve written, from someone who knows something about kids’ books (not your mother). Secondly, you are going to need some morale support in order to achieve number 4.

So why didn’t I tell you to create a great first sentence and funny characters? If you take the advice above, you’ll learn all that and more.

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About the Author:

Anne Emerick is a children’s author turned publisher. As Aboon Books, she has published her first title, Poster Girl, a chapter book about two girls competing to make the best science poster and the discovery one makes about the other. Anne is also the author of an ebook, Could You, Should You Self-Publish a Picture Book? Both titles are available at http://www.aboonbooks.com. Poster Girl can be purchased from Amazon.com as well.