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As you know, a recent workshop with a client raised my interest in South African copyright law. So I was very happy to hear that the Professional Editors’ Group, Gauteng branch will be hosting a morning event on Copyright to be held in Parktown, Johannesburg on 21 April 2012. The presentations will start at 9:30 and end by 12:45. Their invitation says: As editors, we need to understand legal

Last night I attended the opening of my friend Alison McKay's exhibition called 365 South Africa, where she showcased the paintings that she created in 2011.  The 3-week exhibition is taking place at the Art Space gallery in Rosebank, Johannesburg. Essentially, Alison painted a painting a day from the 1st January to 31st December 2011. The paintings depicted an event covered in the news during

This month Cambridge University Press released a paperback of  Pamela's One Of A Kind, a children's book about DNA, in Australia. The book is part of the publisher's Rainbow Reading series,w hich was first published in 2009. It occured to me that you might be curious as to how Pam landed the assignment to write One Of A Kind and some of the other readers in the series, African Patterns, A Fancy

Flower girl by Alison McKay Weeks ago I mentioned I mentioned that my friend Alison McKay, who's an upcoming artist, had started a Painting A Day series. Alison is a single mother, has a fulltime job and is also working hard to establish herself as an artist. So, the wonderful news is that a very well-known Johannesburg gallery has agreed to exhibit her series in April 2012 (for four weeks).

Had dinner with my friend Alison McKay and we spent some time playing on her new blog, changing the template,adding pages and some nifty blog features. Alison is an artist and she has started a painting series she calls 365 South Africa. Basically, she plans to do a painting a day from the 1st January 2011 to the 31st December 2011. This means at the end of the year, she will have painted 365

Playwright and poet Efemena Agadama left this message on my Facebook page, after we connected: No matter how laudable our words might be No matter how evergreen our vegetation of words might seem There are some paths too noble to paint with words And there are people too amazing to honour with words ...you are one of such paths ...you are one of such people Thanks for being a literary light

My blogging friend Laura at Harassedmom is organising a Christmas Party for Kidz Clinics and you can help her make the party special for the children. The party is to be held in Pretoria ( details on Laura's blog) on the 3rd December. Laura says: "the party is held for all children currently receiving treatment at the clinics as well as a gift is provided for each child that has come through

The Mail &Gurdian says it has partnered with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) Southern Africa to create anual fellowship in social-justice reporting to honour the work of the late Eugene Saldanha, activist, civil society leader and policy adviser, and my former boss and mentor, whose life's work was fighting for social justice.According to the M&G, "The Eugene Saldanha Memorial Fund Fellowship

I didn't watch some of the games; mostly because I ended up being too invested in the process and would find myself screaming " Score! Score! Damnit, score!" when a player had what seemed to be an oportunity and wasn't using it.So I didn't see these goals enacted by Gogos For Mandela. But it looks like fun. And the commentary in the background gives the whole video a nice touch.So enjoy the

Can't say much today. Writing my heart out, but there's so much writing to do and so little time! A day should have 36 hours, I think.Anyhoo, I've just published a feature article on OneLove where online readers offer suggestions on how to deal with the problem of young people having sugar mummies and sugar daddies. Please throw your two-cents' worth.And on READ SA, we're chatting about books you

Earlier this month I set up a blog and online store for my friend Neo2. So yesterday she emailed me saying asking me to educate her on making her blog and online store financially viable.As you can imagine, there are no magic answers. Online businesses demand just as much hard work as brick and mortar businesses, and my setting up the blog for her was the easy part.The hard part is making sure

Many thanks to the people who blogged about this great initiative and/contacted me to let me know that they'd like do something but are hampered by distance.My sister, who lives in Durban, is coming up to Joburg some time this month, and she's happy to take the packages, whether they're handbags or items that can be put into the bags, down to Durban with her and drop them off. So please feel

There's a lot of coverage in the media about cheating partners today. President Jacob Zuma's second wife is alleged to have had an affair with her bodyguard, and Springbok rugby player Andries Bekker is also alleged to be cheating on his wife of two years. And why do I care? Because stuff like that is grist for the mill for my OneLove campaign blogging.Currently, I'm asking my readers on several

Feeling a bit more energetic today. Started the day early, updating web sites and initiating discussions on forums. Reader responses to my question on whether you would want to know if your partner was cheating on you was very interesting, in that, most people on the forums where I posted the question, including FB, foscussed on the potential for disillusionment and pain. It was only later that

For the past couple of days, Baby has been reciting some very bad poetry for me. What she does is she latches on onto a word, and creates sentences around it. The one rule is that the sentences have to rhyme. And in case you're wondering, she knows it's bad. The worse it sounds, the better she likes it. She's even talking about uploading Dak Skroef as a ringtone on her cellphone, just so she

A very warm welcome to Gaynor Paynter, a writer and transcriptionist living in Johannesburg, South Africa. Gaynor is one of the very good friends that I made online.We "met" on a forum women who work at home in 2000, I think. Met once in person around 2002/3, and by some twist of fate, recently ended up living near each other.More than being a friend, Gaynor has a thorough understanding of the

The day evolved into a long moment full of poetry. I expected the Eisteddford thing. The event was held at St Benedict's Catholic School For Boys. Baby's school did very well thanks.They earned their diploma, I thought. But then I'm biased.Through the event Baby discovered Kenn Nesbitt's poetry, and she's in love. So she spent most of the evening yesterday reading a selection of his poems for me

If dead people had email addresses, wouldn't it be intruiging to receive an email from [email protected] when you expected it to come from [email protected], asks Gakwi Mashego on his blog, Kasikulture!Writer, poet, blogger and somewhat controversial, Gakwi's work is very different from what I usually read. BUT, it's very interesting. On a personal level, Gakwi never fails to make me laugh, or

So the interesting news re Kwanda is that the producers of the TV series are going to launch Kwanda Klothing, at the South African Sanlam Fashion Week, which starts on Wednesday ( 16 -19 September 2009) at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg.Kwanda Klothing is a chic urban sportswear collection for both men and women was developed during the making of Kwanda, the community TV makeover

One of the things I like about Rebecca Emrich's blog, Living The Life Of Writing, is that she makes you think very hard about issues related to the writing life.The two article series that really made me keep going back to her site were the one on money(how important is money to you as a writer? If you're not making money from your writing, can you still consider yourself a writer?) and on

We're getting ready for another blog party on the OneLove web site. The links will go up on Monday 9th August, so you have the rest of the week and weekend to write something on your blog and email the link to me.Posts talking about the evolution of women's sexuality, the challenges that they face today, and indivdual stories of women who have overcome them would be most welcome.Check out the

I first met American poet and blogger, Janet Grace Riehl, when we took part in the Lieurance King Article Challenge back in 2007.We found out that we had a common interest in storytelling. And Janet had lived in Botswana and Ghana for many years and had fallen in love with the African continent, which gave us lots to talk about and debate.And thus, our friendship grew, with the two of us

The client I was uneasy about approved the blog framework, with only minor changes. So I’m very happy that that project is almost completed. I’m also happy with the response the post I have on Female2Female is getting today. We’re chatting about how women feel about carrying condoms in their purses. Please feel free to join the discussion.And finally, last call for people who expressed interest

Working in my home office is very different from working in the living room of my house. I didn't realise how much noise I automatically ignored while I was working in the house, until I moved into this very quiet space, where the only noise is the tip-tap of my keyboard, the laptop's fan ( yup, suddenly I hear it!) and the occassional music when I choose to play it. This is sooo nice!The only

This performance was at the first ever Urban Soul Poetry Slam held at the Ster Kinekor, Maponya Mall in Soweto.No I wasn't there!And doing a poetry session just about intimidates me speechless. But I can appreciate an interesting session when I see one.This is also a shout-out to my friend Ramon Thomas. Last we spoke, you mentioned wanting to check out urban poetry slams?For more information