Dear Media: Have I Got A Story For You!

Here is a copy of an email I sent to KCRA, our local news station, promoting More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets.  I think this needs to get some NATIONAL attention.  This is huge, huge, HUGE.  Modesto has an amazing cultural community that desperate needs to be recognized.  Please read this, and also read the selected poems available on the Amazon preview.  And SPREAD THE WORD.  Send your own email, alerting the media to this accomplishment, to outlets like The Today Show, The Ellen Show, KCRA, Conan, Letterman, The Times, etc.  This accomplishment is major and needs to be known.
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This morning, at midnight, the online "launch" for a new poetry anthology occurred.  That anthology is entitled: "More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets."  Edited by Sam Pierstorff, Gillian Wegener, Stella Beratlis, and Ed Bearden, this anthology has SKYROCKETED to become the #1 Amazon Poetry Best-Seller*, the #2 Amazon Mover & Shaker**, and is in the top 100 Amazon Best-Sellers*** all in under 18 hours since its launch.

Modesto has long been tainted by negative press, in no small part thanks to its rank as one of the top-ten worst U.S. cities to live in due to its unemployment rates, illegal drug production/sales rates, crime rates, gang violence, etc.  What those reports can't account for is the pulsating "underground" cultural community that has existed in Modesto for years and has experienced a rebirth in the past two decades.  There is a real and vibrant arts scene in Modesto, created in part as a response to the negative image Modesto portrays to society at large.  The familiar complaint of "there's nothing to DO here" has been taken to task by a determined and passionate group of artists, writers, thespians, gourmands, and visionaries.

The astonishing and amazing response that the online launch of the Modesto Poets' publication is proof--concrete and unavoidable proof that Modesto can no longer be defined by its poverty rate, its unemployment rate, its disproportionate cost of living, and its continued problems with drugs and violence.  If this achievement goes unnoticed, it will be at the potential cost of encouraging continued cultural growth.  The very social factors that this arts movement is in response to are also the factors that threaten it: dissatisfaction, neglect, and apathy.

Please, get in contact with Sam Pierstorff at pierstorffs@mjc.edu.  You can also find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/sampierstorff  His insight and vision was one of the driving forces behind this book's publication and success.  This is a truly inspiring and motivating local story that deserves attention on both a local and national level.

Thank you,

Laura Dickinson-Turner

*Amazon Poetry Best-Sellers: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Poetry/zgbs/books/10248/ref=zg_bs_nav_b_2_17

**Amazon Movers & Shakers list: http://www.amazon.com/gp/movers-and-shakers/books/ref=zg_bs_tab

***Amazon Best-Sellers list (#95 as of this mailing): http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/ref=zg_bsms_tab#5

You guys are so awesome!

UPDATE:  

THE FUNDS HAVE BEEN RAISED.

YOU HUMANS ARE AMAZING.

I AM BEYOND THANKFUL.

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Yell Talkers.

I don't understand yell talking.  I just don't.  How many people are you talking to, exactly?  Just those two folks sitting next to you, right?  Right.  So why the fuck are you essentially yelling everything you say?  WE CAN ALL HEAR YOU AS THOUGH YOU WERE SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO US.  SHUT UP.

“Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.” — Vladimir Nabokov

Oh, Nabokov.

"...a series of footnotes..."

I rather like that.  We are just gathering copy, collecting data, weighing the connections between one discovery and the one made in our research a while back.  Say, oh, last year.  We make the footnotes, we write upon our existence and we write upon each other.  All this language, once written, can be rewritten: scratched out, demolished, and begun anew.

There are some footnotes you write in bold ink, and then highlight.

On This Day In 2006

Here is my blog entry of October 9th, 2006.  It is always so awesome to look back at particular moments in my struggle with depression, which began in about 1993 and peaked in the years 2000-2003, after which I entered the gradual process of shedding/overcoming/releasing my depression.  This process gained momentum when I moved to NYC.  That move and my time in that wonderful city was a four-year chrysalis from which I emerged, strong and certain of my forward momentum.  I no longer identify with depression.  Sure, I have the occasional grey day, or pockets of mood, but those are just individual moments.  Now I identify with "yes" and positive expression.  It's pretty fucking awesome.  There have been loads of wonderful people who impacted my journey out of depression, and I am tremendously grateful for their presence on this planet and in my life.  So here ya go, a little trip backwards in time to 5 years ago today.
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OCTOBER 9th, 2006


The definition of "Depress," as it reads in the American Heritage Dictionary:

de·press (d-prs) tr.v. de·pressed, de·press·ing, de·press·es
1. To lower in spirits; deject.
2. i. To cause to drop or sink; lower: The drought depressed the water level in the reservoirs. ii. To press down: Depress the space bar on a typewriter.
3. To lessen the activity or force of; weaken: feared that rising inflation would further depress the economy. 
4. To lower prices in (a financial market).
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When I am depressed, it feels like I am being "pressed down," like an unseen force is pressing down upon me, sapping me of strength and causing me to be unable to rise up--to not be "pressed down." I am far more antisocial and much less talkative and more irritable during these times, because I can only ultimately name the source of the depression as being within, and then I feel MORE helpless because I do not know how to fight myself.

Thankfully, Andrew and I had a nice long talk about this on Sunday---which began as me thinking I might break up with him and ended with us still being together---that helped me snap some things into perspective. A little tough love does me good. Not to mention (and this isn't inspired by any suggestions of Andrew's, this is actually something I worked out on my own) that maybe it's time to get a little psychotherapy and perhaps look into a mild anti-depressant/anxiety reliever.

Welcome to New York?

Asshole referrer spam assholes.

So, with Blogger, you can track your pageviews, which is all well and good.  There's even a handy feature which lets you know which referrer sites are generating pageviews (sites which link to your posts).  For instance, my posts mostly autofeed to my Tumblr, so when someone clicks through from Tumblr, my tumblr page shows up as a referrer.  Well, I keep noticing strange referrers, and the most recent one is pu.gg -- I thought I'd just do a quick Google search: "What is 'pu.gg'?"  Sure enough, it's spam.  Here's some helpful info from the Blogger help forum about these referrer spams:

Posted by Dirtycowgirl: 

"Hi, it's referrer spam.

I've seen this site in mine too.

"Designed to appear in your stats so that you then go and visit their site.

It does your blog no harm, just gives you a pageview - ignore it and wait for googles spam bots to pick it up. They always do.

"FYI if you see a site you don't recognise or trust in your stats best advice is don't click it, although it does at least mean that the search engines have crawled and indexed your blog."

To Mike and Kevin

To my own MK (47).

I miss you guys.

TONS.

I miss you guys tons.

I miss the work and the rehearsals and the performances, sure—sure I miss those parts of our friendship.  But what I really miss is just being around you guys.

Fucking Facebook.  Today it linked me to one of the pictures from that awesome Labor Day in Jersey (I think it was Labor Day?  The day with the volleyball tournament.)

Well, that day was honestly one of my favorite days out of any friendship I’ve ever had—it is equal to the day after Mona’s wedding (that Haas and I went to) where I tagged along with you two to Jersey to watch you play tennis and then to get food-coma-ed on China Buffett.

I want you guys to come out here to Cali so badly.  I want to show you my cool house that I rent, and my high school, and my college, and I want you guys to see me in a play.  And I really, really, really want to do a play with you guys.  I think about that a lot.  I just think that we play off of each other's strengths so well, and there’s lots of scripts that would suit our dynamic.  That’s something on my personal “bucket list.”  DO A PLAY WITH MIKE AND KEVIN.

I can’t believe you and Marianne already have two gorgeous little girls, Mike.  Even more so, I can’t believe I haven’t met Gianna.  I feel like I know her, from Facebook and Mary’s blog and from pictures, but I’ve never even heard her laugh or cry.  And Lina is getting so big.  She’s a whole person now and it makes me sad that I wasn’t in NYC to be around to watch her grow up.  (And Kevin and Meaghan have that awesome lil’ dog, whom I’m also excited to meet.)

Yep.  I miss you guys.  I’ll be out there again, briefly, from Jan 28 – Feb 2.  I’m going to be auditioning for graduate programs in Acting.  Honestly, I hope I get into an East Coast school.  I miss that side of the world, the people in it, and the culture surrounding it.

Love you guys – love you guys so so so so much!

Pass the love on to your little families and the like.

Butterbeer Latte Kind of Night.

If you haven't seen the awesome butterbeer latte recipe that's been making the rounds (or even if you have), let me direct you to the post that started it all, Molly Hayden Rogers' very own recipe.  (I hope this link works...blogging via mobile can be tricky.)

I bought butter (ok, not "butter," it's Heart Smart Light Spread w/ flax) for the 1st time in months just so I could try it.

And it.

Is.

SCRUMPTULESCENT.

Today's Groupon...

...is $40 for a $100 colonic treatment.  Yesterday's was a dinner for two offer for a Thai restaurant.

I don't think that bodes well for the restaurant.

Seeing Beirut in just a coupla' hours!

These two lovebirds are going to see Beirut live at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles tonight.  Our first concert together--and our favorite band, to boot?  WONDERFUL!  Thank you D, for the tickets (and for being the love of my life).

Storytelling.

Telling a story--orally recounting events which have a beginning, middle, and end--often proves difficult to me.  I tend to digress, to veer, to start to make other connections.  What once was a straight line from point A to point B becomes as elaborate a mental topography as those Family Circus panels, where we'd follow the weaving, zigzagged dashed lines of Billy's journey to the store.  I begin at point A and wander away, crossing back only to find I'm spinning the opposite way before finally regaining the initial trajectory and finding myself at point B.

Sometimes, I never do get back on track to point B.  And so it remains out there in the ether of lost thoughts.  Waiting.

Process over product.  This is something I keep finding myself aiming at in the past two assignments written for my "History and Research Methods in Rhetoric and Composition" course.  The notion of process--HOW we write, how we compose text (whether it is written or spoken text)--versus the notion of product--the text itself, the work of literature or the speech.  I find process to be infinitely more intriguing that product.  This is true for me in virtually all fields, not just rhet/comp. 

I think this preference given to process is what gets me lost on my way to point B so often. 

Ancient History.

If, for any reason, you want a glimpse into the inner-workings of my public psyche pre-2007, feel free to check out THIS OLD BLOG RIGHT HERE.  I think I'll occasionally revisit it myself and post some "on this day in 200X" posts.  Just for funsies.

I agree, Mr. X.

This is a small fraction of the reason of why I don't read newspapers.  I so often distrust them, regardless of the particular newspaper, or author's political situation.  THEY'RE ALL TRYING TO MAKE US FIGHT ONE ANOTHER SO WE WILL BUY THEIR STUFF INSTEAD OF SOMEONE ELSE'S.

EVERYONE.

ALL OF THEM.

.....even you...

Happy Anniversary to these two.

Happy 19th Anniversary to the President and the First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama.  You guys do this whole "being in love" thing right.