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My name is Dan Gutman, and I love teachers and librarians!

Hey, the most amazing thing in the history of the world just happened.  But I’m not going to tell you what it is.   So nah nah nah boo boo on you.

Okay, okay, I’ll tell you.

I had to wait a million hundred years, but HarperCollins just started the My Weird Classroom Club!  It’s a club for classrooms, and it’s about My Weird School, so it has the perfect name.

My Weird Classroom Club is full of teaching guides, activity sheets, puzzles, games, comics, checklists, cards, Mad Libs, and other awesome stuff you can use in your classroom to get your kids excited about reading.*

“WOW!” (that’s “MOM” upside down)  This is the greatest day of my life.  If you ask me, HarperCollins should get the No Bell Prize.  That’s a prize they give out to people who don’t have bells.

The My Weird Classroom Club is cool.  So don’t be a dumbhead.  Go to www.myweirdclassroomclub.com today and  see it live and in person.

If you don’t, I’ll be so upset that I’ll have to go to Antarctica and live with the penguins.

*It’s gonna sell a lot of books too!  What a scam!

Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades. Earlier this week he sent me this blog along with the following introduction: Even though I study news rather than make it, last week I was invited to give a “newsmaker” luncheon talk at the National Press Club. The occasion was the club’s centennial, the video of that talk is online here. I thought the condensed version below would make a good blog.

Boy was he right!  Below Ritchie talks about the National Press Club and its place in history.

The National Press Club is celebrating its centennial, raising a question about why journalistic competitors feel compelled to band together. Founded in 1908, the club had many short-lived predecessors. The Washington Correspondents’ Club, for instance, held several dinners designed to reduce tensions between reporters and their political sources during the difficult days of Reconstruction. Such nineteenth-century press clubs failed because they let their members run up a tab at the bar (the National Press Club has never extended credit), and because they were either press clubs, founded by reporters for Washington, D.C., papers that excluded national correspondents, or correspondents’ clubs that barred the local press, indicating the animosity between them. The genius of the National Press Club was that it combined reporters for both the local and the national press.

But only men. The club left women and minorities outside the parameters of mainstream journalism. Not until 1955 did it hold a vote of its entire membership to admit Louis Lautier, a reporter for the National Negro Publishers Association. Radio news broadcasters were also treated as second-class citizens at first, being permitted to join the club only as non-voting members. Women reporters founded the Women’s National Press Club, but the separation prevented them from covering the National Press Club’s regular “newsmaker” luncheons.

In 1956, the men offered a compromise by inviting women to attend the luncheons, so long as they sat in the balcony and left as soon as the lunch was over. While the men dined below, the women shared the balcony with television cameras, hot lights, and coils of electrical wiring. Women reporters appealed to the famous guest speakers not to participate unless they could dine below with the men. Among the few to comply was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to publicize an American injustice. One who failed to offer solidarity was Martin Luther King, Jr., desperate to attract national press attention to the March on Washington. Dr. King spoke to an audience segregated by gender rather than race. Economic pressures on the club, whose membership declined during the 1960s, finally persuaded the men to admit women as members in 1971. Fittingly, the club’s centennial-year president is Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Regardless of race, gender, or media, Washington correspondents have historically been caught in a creative tension between the scoop and the pack–between professional rivalries and forces that pull the competitors together. They spend much time together outside the same closed doors, riding the same campaign trains, planes, and vans, being handed the same press releases, attending the same press conferences, cultivating the same high-placed sources. This pack journalism is counteracted by each reporter’s dream of the scoop, beating everyone else to the big story that makes a difference.

Somewhere between the scoop and the pack, the club has provided a welcome respite for the working press. Formed for reasons of camaraderie, the club has helped to shape the press corps and to define legitimate reporting. Unique among world governments, the U.S. allows reporters themselves to determine who deserves a press pass. Both the press galleries and the press clubs have guarded this prerogative jealously, and have labored diligently to decide whom to admit. Sometimes they have been too narrow in their definition and too slow to diversify. But ultimately the galleries and clubs have expanded to accommodate a more diffuse news business, one that continues to evolve with each startling technological breakthrough. The Internet will not be the last. A central institution in this transformation, the National Press Club has provided a common ground for newsmakers and news reporters. It would be hard to image the Washington press corps operating without it.

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Kirsty expertly handled link love last week so some of these links are a week old- but I think they are still relevant. So get busy procrastinating!

Web 2.0 isn’t exactly democratic but does it matter if it works?

Jeff Jarvis’s tribute to twitter.

A visual tour through 79 years of Best Picture awards. My favorite poster is GiGi. (more…)

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Happy Friday to all. Next week I will be at the Tools of Change Conference but have no fear, there will still be new posts on the blog. If you are at the conference please come introduce yourself to me! I’ll be the one with the laptop.

David Lehman’s playlist.

A co-worker sent me this poem and I can’t stop reading it again and again and again.

Cassady Day! (more…)

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As another year comes to a close I realize I have nothing overly profound to leave you with. I wish you luck in embracing your New Year’s resolutions. I hope your year is filled with good books, lots of laughter and a visit or two to the OUPblog (sorry I couldn’t help myself.) More importantly I’d like to leave you with my sincere wish that you and your loved ones have a happy and healthy 2008. Below is what I have been up to during this slow work week.

My favorite restaurant is opening in another spot!

A lawyer with an excellent sense of humor, Martin D. Ginsburg (husband of Justice Ginsburg).

Sooo cute! Type in commands you would say to a dog and leave “kiss” for last! [via The Shifted Librarian]

How well do you know your states? Test your knowledge here. (more…)

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Good Morning:

Well, I'm a day late with my Halloween entry, but as the title says: "Better Late Than Never".

We had an all around good Halloween season with lots of decorations and festivities. Here's a photo of the glittered pumpkins we made ~~



We took my daughter Ava and her friend Nicole to "Knott's Scary Farm". Fun was had by all...

Ava, "Goldie" and Nicole


Nicole and Ava at "Knott's Scary Farm" (Photo altered by Ava)


We decided to give Trick or Treating one more whirl this year. Most of the kids in our neighborhood are getting too old for it, but wanted to participate one more year. Gary (my husband) and I worked for days on Ava's costume. She was "Link" from the "Legend of Zelda" video game. I made the tunic and hat, and Ava and Gary made the shield and sword. For any of you that may know who Link is, I hope you agree that we did a fairly fine job!!

Ava as Link ~~


and...last but not least. My 80 year old mom, who is still on hospice, dressed as a "Hippie" for the Halloween party at her senior apartment.


I'm off today, in hopes that I can spend a little time in the garden and even more time in the studio.

I hope this finds you all well and enjoying the Autumn season.

Until Next Time:
Kim
Garden Painter Art

“Report.”

“Long-range sensors indicate an upcoming release for the Nintendo DS on October 1st. Preview trailer located and position verified. Zelda Universe and IGN have preview articles published, and Nintendo has the Official Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass site on-line.”

“Outstanding, Z-bot. Recommendation?”

“The Gamepowa Store should stock this game as a 5-star buy. Sales estimates are astronomical.”

“If you think you’re ready for the next chapter of the Legend of Zelda, try it today! Gamepowa out.”

Good Morning:

Wow, it's been a busy couple of weeks, with no time left for my morning blog. I have a fairly calm week planned, so I am hoping to have some extra time to catch up with all of my blog friends.

Here in the Southern California desert, we are wrapped in smoke from the many wildfires crackling out of control. The Santa Ana winds blew hard all weekend and have left the streets littered with debris. Once the winds have stopped, we will be in for quite a clean up. The back patio is covered in a thin film of grime and dry dust, and stray leaves have whirlwinded their way into each nook and cranny on our front porch.

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I finally managed to get a couple of Halloween articulated paper dolls finished and listed in My Etsy Shop. Normally, I list prints of my paper dolls, but I'm selling the originals this time. I might offer them in print form at a later date. Here they are:

Articulated Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Paper Doll




Articulated Halloween Humpty Dumpty Jack-O-Lantern Paper Doll



Both of these paper dolls will include a length of magnet that can be applied by the buyer if they choose.

As always, if you are interested in these paper dolls but don't have an Etsy account, just go to my blog profile and send me an email. I'm offering them with free shipping and a free ACEO print of your choice from my Etsy shop.

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Looks like I'm off for the day. Out to get material for my daughter's Halloween costume. She's going to be "Link" from the Zelda series of video games. Also, I'm almost finished with a collage ACEO and hope to get it listed on Etsy sometime tomorrow. It's another from my "Best Friends Forever" series.

Until Next Time:
Kim
Garden Painter Art

at Snapshot entitled Life is Beautiful.

Happy Friday all. For the few of you who are actually in the office here is some Friday procrastination!

This link recommended by Mr. Atlas himself, Ben Keene.

Do women talk too much?

What is the greatest American book of all time?

Great lit lists.

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I have been absent lately......Sorry.....
but I am posting my butt off and it is officially wednesday...
PYBOW.

P

Evan Schnittman (an OUPblogger) gets interviewed at BEA on NPR’s All Things Considered.

Have an itch for prank calls? Have Nancy Drew call your friends. (Yes, someone did have Nancy Drew call me. Was it you?) (more…)

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