miller's crossing

Run, don't walk, to your nearest TV and watch Word Girl on PBS. Srsly, this show rocks. Superhero Word Girl's got a bountiful vocabulary and a sidekick monkey named Captain Huggy Face. How fabulous is that?

Babble.com recently spoke to the show's creator:

Babble.com: How did you come up with the idea for Word Girl?

Dorthea Gillim: I trace the origins back to my love of language, which started when I was in ninth grade and asked for a dictionary for Christmas. Not just any dictionary; it had to be the Random House Unabridged Dictionary. I was the kid who marked all the words I looked up. I've always aspired to be eloquent and articulate, because I come from a family of great orators and I never felt like I measured up. I thought it would be cool if eloquence was a super power. I knew I wanted to create a new character for kids. I wanted it to be a girl and I wanted her to be ethnically ambiguous so all kids could identify with her. She has all the powers of Superman, but then she's got eloquence too.

Perhaps all hope is not lost for the rhetorical capacity of the Twitter generation.

I watched some curling last night in Seattle. It's a rather comical combination of graceful gliding, manic sweeping and a good deal of standing around. It's a game a woman or man can play competitively well into her or his sunset years -- finesse and strategy being more important than strength and speed. It's also a sport that you can watch while drinking cocktails. ... Not a bad night out I'd say.

School's started and I’ve got lots of reading to do for classes. Fortunately, I spent my summer reading (mostly) pleasurable novels. Intentionally or not, two related themes surfaced in my choices: marriage problems and women’s coming of age.

So as I write this, the stock market is diving and the House just rejected the $700 billion bailout plan. Still pretty early to see who's saying what in political blogland, but this is what I've got to say: step back and practice some detachment. These are very interesting times with the potential to be quite scary. Uncertainty is difficult for most people ... as is change. We are witnessing a lot of change -- condensed, fast and unpredictable upheaval, revaluation and reset.

Paying attention? Detachment doesn't mean ignorant or uninterested. So, pay attention.

I don't watch much teevee. It's just who I am. Most of what I know about what's on teevee these days comes from flipping through the pages of Advertising Age. I've even been known to utter remarks about commercials that go something like this: "Oh yeah, I read about this one in Ad Age just the other day. You know, Bob Garfield gave it three-out-of-four stars."

Pathetic? Probably a little.

NYT: "A detail from a vivid Maya mural depicting scenes of the creation story and, at the center, the maize god, who crowns himself king. The 30-foot-long mural was uncovered at the San Bartolo site in Guatemala." (photo: Kenneth Garrett © National Geographic)

The New York Times has a story on an old Mayan mural recent discovered. Scientists have dated the painting at about 100 B.C. It is apparently much older than other examples of Mayan painting that have been discovered.