They are, shall we say, extremely available.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
They're gonna love me in Estonia...
I got an email yesterday from a publisher in Estonia, enquiring about the availability of Estonian language translation rights to The American Story.
They are, shall we say, extremely available.
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They are, shall we say, extremely available.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Columbia Tribune says "A book every family should own."
"The American Story: 100 True Tales From American History by Jennifer Armstrong is one of the best timelines of our history that I’ve come across," says their columnist.
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Jennifer, where have you been?
Okay, to begin with, I was supposed to be in Sarasota, Florida. I had a book signing lined up at Circle Books, and a visit to a school called Open Door Academy. In the time not spent signing books or talking about books, I was going to be playing at a duplicate bridge tournament. See, this article from the Sarasota Herald Tribune says so.
Then the blizzard happened. I was supposed to fly on Wednesday. HA! By 5:30 a.m. my 10:00 a.m. flight from Albany had already been cancelled. Forty minutes waiting on hold with the airline produced the information that there was no way -- and I mean no way -- to reschedule me on another flight before Saturday. And my return ticket was for Sunday. So I didn't go to Florida. Bridge partner James, scheduled to leave the next day, figured he wouldn't get out either, and why go anyway if I wasn't going to be there? And it snowed and snowed and snowed.
So on Wednesday afternoon, Valentine's Day, with the snow coming down at a rate of about 3 inches per hour, the Scrabble tournament convened at my house in front of the fire. There were interludes of shoveling, pushing cars, etc. More Scrabble. More snow.
Then on Thursday, James and I drove to Connecticut to play in a bridge tournament there. We figured we had planned on spending three days playing bridge, so why not just do it at another tournament? It wasn't quite like going to Florida, but when you're playing bridge in the stuffy ballroom of a convention center, it doesn't much matter what's happening outside.
With a break on Friday morning for me to be the guest speaker at an on-line conference, a webinar on Bringing History to Life, we played five matches, approximately 135 hands. Surprisingly there were a number of junior players and college aged players. Wow. A sign that the game is not dying out completely. For the first time James and I were not, at 45 years old, the youngest players in the room.
Saturday morning we watched me on C-SPAN 2, a horrifying experience. If you've never watched yourself on t.v. let me just say that if you have the opportunity to see yourself on t.v. don't take it.
Now I am back in front of the fire, regarding the snow piled up outside. Come on, spring. Come on.
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Then the blizzard happened. I was supposed to fly on Wednesday. HA! By 5:30 a.m. my 10:00 a.m. flight from Albany had already been cancelled. Forty minutes waiting on hold with the airline produced the information that there was no way -- and I mean no way -- to reschedule me on another flight before Saturday. And my return ticket was for Sunday. So I didn't go to Florida. Bridge partner James, scheduled to leave the next day, figured he wouldn't get out either, and why go anyway if I wasn't going to be there? And it snowed and snowed and snowed.
So on Wednesday afternoon, Valentine's Day, with the snow coming down at a rate of about 3 inches per hour, the Scrabble tournament convened at my house in front of the fire. There were interludes of shoveling, pushing cars, etc. More Scrabble. More snow.
Then on Thursday, James and I drove to Connecticut to play in a bridge tournament there. We figured we had planned on spending three days playing bridge, so why not just do it at another tournament? It wasn't quite like going to Florida, but when you're playing bridge in the stuffy ballroom of a convention center, it doesn't much matter what's happening outside.
With a break on Friday morning for me to be the guest speaker at an on-line conference, a webinar on Bringing History to Life, we played five matches, approximately 135 hands. Surprisingly there were a number of junior players and college aged players. Wow. A sign that the game is not dying out completely. For the first time James and I were not, at 45 years old, the youngest players in the room.
Saturday morning we watched me on C-SPAN 2, a horrifying experience. If you've never watched yourself on t.v. let me just say that if you have the opportunity to see yourself on t.v. don't take it.
Now I am back in front of the fire, regarding the snow piled up outside. Come on, spring. Come on.
Friday, February 09, 2007
2007 Scrabble Challenge
Some readers may recall my description of a literacy fund raising event last fall where I played team Scrabble with some friends. These same three friends, regulars at my weekly Game Night, have been my constant adversaries on the great board. 2006 was marked by trash talk and competing claims of Scrabble supremacy.
In the interests of proving once and for all who is the best Scrabble player among us, Rumara proposed a tournament to last for one year. Rules would be official National Scrabble Association; scads of data would be recorded in a spreadsheet. Rumara actually joined the NAS in order to get the OFFICIAL world list (referred to as OWL). She prepared a binder for each of us with rules, strategies, useful word lists (the two-letter words, the three-letter words, the u-dumps, the i-dumps, etc.).
After a few weeks of play, usually on Sunday night but often at other times (for example, for five hours on Wednesday afternoon this week; what a good thing we're all self-employed) we have honed our techniques and policies.
1. In the interests of random seating and avoiding cries of "She always sets him up!" we take N,S, E, and W from the bag, lay them face down, and draw for seating at the start of each match. We then draw for who goes first, in the usual manner.
2. "Style points" are noted on the spreadsheet, although we don't have a way to quantify them yet. They may come in handy in the final accounting, perhaps as a tie-breaker, if necessary. Style points are awareded for any especially clever play on the board, such as forming a box, bridging two particularly problematic letters, making a long side-by-side word, etc. Style points are awarded by consensus.
3. Because there are a variety of ways to determing who is "winning," we've begun analyzing the spreadsheet to figure out the best measurement. Right now we are trying a sum of average score + number of wins + number of points (based on first, second, third and fourth place finishes) + number of bingos (7-letter words). By this method, I'm winning right now; however, if we use median score + number of wins + number of points + bingos, then Rumara is winning and Mike is in second place, with me in third. James is last right now, although last week he was first in scoring. Once we figure which method (average or median) gives us the truest picture of Scrabble mastery, we'll create a function for that calculation in the spreadsheet.
This week my bingos were: BESTING, SILLIER, LOUSIER, RECOUPED, and FALTERER. Michael had one bingo, COSTING, and Rumara tried to play RENAMERS and was forced to retract it after a successful challenge.
Stay tuned for further updates. There will be some breaks in the action -- James and I are going to Florida to play in a bridge tournament, Mike is going to Europe to play hockey, etc. -- but we try to squeeze our sanctioned matches in as often as possible as schedules allow.
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In the interests of proving once and for all who is the best Scrabble player among us, Rumara proposed a tournament to last for one year. Rules would be official National Scrabble Association; scads of data would be recorded in a spreadsheet. Rumara actually joined the NAS in order to get the OFFICIAL world list (referred to as OWL). She prepared a binder for each of us with rules, strategies, useful word lists (the two-letter words, the three-letter words, the u-dumps, the i-dumps, etc.).
After a few weeks of play, usually on Sunday night but often at other times (for example, for five hours on Wednesday afternoon this week; what a good thing we're all self-employed) we have honed our techniques and policies.
1. In the interests of random seating and avoiding cries of "She always sets him up!" we take N,S, E, and W from the bag, lay them face down, and draw for seating at the start of each match. We then draw for who goes first, in the usual manner.
2. "Style points" are noted on the spreadsheet, although we don't have a way to quantify them yet. They may come in handy in the final accounting, perhaps as a tie-breaker, if necessary. Style points are awareded for any especially clever play on the board, such as forming a box, bridging two particularly problematic letters, making a long side-by-side word, etc. Style points are awarded by consensus.
3. Because there are a variety of ways to determing who is "winning," we've begun analyzing the spreadsheet to figure out the best measurement. Right now we are trying a sum of average score + number of wins + number of points (based on first, second, third and fourth place finishes) + number of bingos (7-letter words). By this method, I'm winning right now; however, if we use median score + number of wins + number of points + bingos, then Rumara is winning and Mike is in second place, with me in third. James is last right now, although last week he was first in scoring. Once we figure which method (average or median) gives us the truest picture of Scrabble mastery, we'll create a function for that calculation in the spreadsheet.
This week my bingos were: BESTING, SILLIER, LOUSIER, RECOUPED, and FALTERER. Michael had one bingo, COSTING, and Rumara tried to play RENAMERS and was forced to retract it after a successful challenge.
Stay tuned for further updates. There will be some breaks in the action -- James and I are going to Florida to play in a bridge tournament, Mike is going to Europe to play hockey, etc. -- but we try to squeeze our sanctioned matches in as often as possible as schedules allow.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Houston Chronicle
This story is about the writer-in-residence program I was doing at Annunciation Orthodox School in Houston last week. It was an interesting program, where I helped students take research on a historical subject or person and turn it into fiction. Some kids were really receptive and wrote like maniacs, and some were extremely reluctant to make logical inferences about the facts they had discovered. It was a long week, but a good one.
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Saturday, February 03, 2007
Well whaddaya know...
Today's mail brought a large, stiff envelope with the return address reading The White House. Huh? says I, inspecting it. I opened it up, hardly knowing what to expect.
Turns out to be an autographed picture of Laura Bush, with a letter thanking me for the signed copy of The American Story which someone passed along to her. I know I signed at least two copies of the book for her -- various people with access offered to pass the book along -- and evidently at least one of them has finally made its way to her attention. "I appreciate your generosity and look forward to reading your book. With best wishes, Laura Bush" is how the letter concludes.
This reminds me of a funny period of my sleep life from six or seven years ago, the period I refer to as "my dreams about Laura Bush." In the early days of the first term I had naive hopes that with a librarian in the White House we might see some really serious attention paid to children's literacy issues. On several occasions I dreamed that I ran into the First Lady at some conference -- a librarian convention, perhaps -- and would begin a conversation something along the lines of, "Hey, it's great to see you, do you think we could get together for a cup of coffee and discuss some things?" She was like many librarians I have met at conventions over the years -- a friendly acquaintance with mutual professional interests.
After a while I stopped having those dreams.
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Turns out to be an autographed picture of Laura Bush, with a letter thanking me for the signed copy of The American Story which someone passed along to her. I know I signed at least two copies of the book for her -- various people with access offered to pass the book along -- and evidently at least one of them has finally made its way to her attention. "I appreciate your generosity and look forward to reading your book. With best wishes, Laura Bush" is how the letter concludes.
This reminds me of a funny period of my sleep life from six or seven years ago, the period I refer to as "my dreams about Laura Bush." In the early days of the first term I had naive hopes that with a librarian in the White House we might see some really serious attention paid to children's literacy issues. On several occasions I dreamed that I ran into the First Lady at some conference -- a librarian convention, perhaps -- and would begin a conversation something along the lines of, "Hey, it's great to see you, do you think we could get together for a cup of coffee and discuss some things?" She was like many librarians I have met at conventions over the years -- a friendly acquaintance with mutual professional interests.
After a while I stopped having those dreams.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Columbia, Missouri, says Banana should have been a Caldecott winner
Well, but it wasn't. It was on the Notables list, but it didn't make the Caldecott red carpet, sadly. But thanks, Columbia, Missouri, for the vote of confidence.
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Okay, Jen, but how was Houston?
Houston, which was a school visit trip, turned into a media blitz -- all on one day. I spent four days at Annunciation Orthodox School doing a really cool writer-in-residence project (more on that in another post) and Monday started with an interview with a Houston Chronicle reporter; then my trusty publicist at Random House called to say that a radio station in Beaumont, Texas, wanted to do a live interview with me that afternoon, before my booksigning; and when my hostess and I got to the bookstore at 3 the C-SPAN crew was already there, filling the little store (Blue Willow) with their gear. We did a bunch of lighting tests, sound checks -- to my chagrin they told me what I was wearing wouldn't look right so could I just wear my green cardigan and not the fancy tapestry coat (and I chose it special for t.v.); I went off to a quiet spot to the the radio interview, and when I returned to the store for the 5 o'clock taping we had a full house. I actually gave my full American Story speech, even the part about the -- you know -- atheist anti-war pro-choice vegetarian blue state liberal bit and I wasn't sure if I was imagining the look of horror intensifying with each label. Potentially, it was "vegetarian" that cut the deepest with some of those Houston folks; actually, afterward a bunch of them came up during the signing and joked about it "that's not not not not not us" but book folk are book folk, after all. Lots of people bought books, and even several members of the t.v. crew, who say that in spite of doing bookstore events all the time they NEVER actually buy the book. So I guess I won them over. In spite of the -- you know -- vegetarianism...
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South Florida Sun Sentinel
This piece looks familiar -- I think they picked up the story the Washington Post ran a few weeks ago on The American Story.
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