Open on July 4th?

Is it just me, or are more stores declaring that they're going to be open this Independence Day (U.S.) than ever before?

I seem to recall that almost all retail establishments have tended to be closed for the Fourth. In fact, Nomi and I made a special call to our local supermarket, Stop & Shop, to ask if they would be open on Friday so we could plan accordingly, and it turns out they will be.

And it's not just them. Our local Trader Joe's has a big sign up saying they will be open. The New England Comics chain, where I purchase my weekly comics, is going to be open and is having a sale on the Fourth. And I just passed the Borders in Copley Square, and they too have a sign saying they will be open on the Fourth.

It costs money to keep a store open on the Fourth. Even if your employees are salaried, to make them work on the Fourth usually involves paying some kind of overtime, doesn't it? So the only reason I can see for these stores to stay open on the Fourth is if sales are down so much this summer that they're desperately hoping to recoup their losses on a day when most Americans are free to go shopping.

I wonder if this is just another harbinger of the economy.

Going to the Dogs! Of Course!

Many of us who grew up in New York City remember Leona Helmsley, the real estate magnate who appeared in advertisements for her hotel chain and was eventually found guilty of income tax evasion. The testimony from a former employee during her trial that she had once said, "Only the little people pay taxes" earned her the enmity of many New Yorkers. She also earned a nickname that referred to her alleged meanness.

When she died last year, it was reported that she left a large amount of her estate to her dog. Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that she also left her entire charitable trust, possibly $8 billion, to be used for the care and welfare of dogs (cf. Helmsley Left Dogs Billions in Her Will). This of course leads to the question of how best to use the money to help dogs.

I was amused to see in today's Times that reporter Ralph Blumenthal had decided to ask the ones most affected by this news to comment – the dogs themselves (cf. Legacy of $8 Billion? For Us? Dogs Take the News in Stride). He got some very good quotes, too:

“I’d have a lovely green field and a fountain and a big place for me to sit and watch,” Froggy said of Ms. Helmsley’s largess....

Also, “more no-kill shelters would be nice,” Billy told her owner, Laura Hughes, a casting director....

Johnny hadn’t read the Helmsley article in The New York Times — “He’s kind of a Daily News kind of dog,” Mr. Rand said.

But he said Johnny would know just what to do with the Helmsley billions.

“He’d keep about $500,000 for medical care and give away the rest,” Mr. Rand said. “He’s that kind of dog.”

Go read the article. You'll be particularly amused by Oliver, the dog who used to work for Hans Blix.

The Willa's Hat Project

I don't know how many crafty people read my LiveJournal; craftworks are more gnomi's department. But I wanted to alert people who are into craftwork of a good cause.

My friend saxikath has started The Willa's Hats Projects, in honor of three-year-old Willa Fischer, who died of cancer on June 25. She was the daughter of a friend of saxikath's mom, and saxikath had originally considered giving Willa a hat last Christmas. (As happens with many cancer patients, the treatments caused Willa's hair to fall out.) But Willa already had been given lots of hats by her classmates in a show of support, so she didn't really need another hat.

And that's when saxikath came up with the idea of donating hats to the hospital for all the other children who are being treated for cancer. And thus, the Willa's Hat Project was born.

So that's the story. If you feel like contributing to a good cause, make a hat, and send it to the address in the above link. Or contribute materials for others to use in making hats. saxikath will send all the hats along to the Colorado Children's Hospital cancer unit, and with luck, your hats will bring smiles to the faces of children who are fighting for their lives.

(I'm very proud to know saxikath.)

Robert's Rules of Writing #72: Graph It

[Rule quoted from Robert's Rules of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know by Robert Masello (Writer's Digest Books, 2005). See my original post for the rules of this discussion.]

It turns out that I'm very glad I waited this long to discuss Robert's Rule #72, simply because I now have a better understanding of grids and the geometry of a page.

With this rule, Masello discusses the look of prose on a page. He points out that if you are trying to read a long block of prose, such a paragraph that doesn't seem to come to an end, you're more likely to have trouble absorbing everything in the paragraph. (All right, he doesn't say that exactly, but it's what I infer from what he does say.) Masello suggests looking at your longer paragraphs and breaking them up into more digestible chunks.

I have to say, nowhere do I find this piece of advice more relevant or useful than for those of us who write prose intended for the Internet. Even though a long chunk of unbroken prose in a book might make me pause, I still find myself eventually able to get through it all. But that's usually because by the time I encounter that chunk of prose, I've already made a commitment to read the book and I'm already through quite a bit of it.

On the Internet, I find that I'm inundated with articles and blog posts, and that far too many of them include longish paragraphs that force me to evaluate how much I'm actually inclined (or able) to read the whole thing. I'm far more likely to read something if it's either short or broken up into smaller pieces. Not only is it less intimidating at first glance, but it usually implies that the writer has thought through the piece before composing it, and has done their best to make it easier to read.

Which brings me to the geometry of a page. Even though I've been reading my whole life (or at least since I was two), and I've been working in publishing for a while, I still had difficulty grasping how vital the look of a page is for the reading experience. Now that I've taken the course Publication Design and Print Production Strategies, I have a much better understanding of how to design a grid to make a page look welcoming. And, of course, the more welcoming the page, the more likely someone will choose to read the text contained therein.

I only wish I had had more time to do that here.

Copyright © Michael A. Burstein

Hearing the Declaration

As Nomi has already pointed out, tomorrow she and I plan to continue our tradition of going to the Old State House in Boston to hear the Declaration of Independence read from the balcony.

If anyone wishes to join us, let me know, either here or by email or phone.