Comments (8,598) The National Center For Family Literacy is promoting National Family Literacy Day on November 1st. Across the nation, roughly 10,000 literacy and reading programs will celebrate Literacy Day with a variety of family friendly events.
Many Literacy Programs give away free children’s books. It’s a great way to start a home library for a young reader.
Moments ago, the US Copyright office released its review of copyright law and added 6 exemptions. The law affects the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA was originally designed to protect digital media, but its restrictions were harsh.
So What does this new law mean?
copyright law exemptions
Now you can legally buy a CD, upload it to your iTunes file and keep the original near a DVD player. You are still not allowed to sell or distribute it.
More importantly, if you buy a digital book for a media-reader, you can also legally read it to a blind audience.
You may also copy DVDs you own and use portions of them in short, educational, documentary, or non-commercial videos.
And that phone that only allows certain apps? This is a get-out-of-jail-free card for your phone. You can unlock your phone and use it on a different network, or add apps of your choosing.
You are now exempt from infringement of copyright law if you do any of the following:
1 Defeating a lawfully obtained DVD’s encryption for the sole purpose of short, fair use in an educational setting or for criticism
2 Computer programs that allow you to run lawfully obtained software on your phone that you otherwise would not be able to run aka Jailbreaking to use Google Voice on your iPhone
3 Computer programs that allow you to use your phone on a different network aka Jailbreaking to use your iPhone on T-Mobile
4 Circumventing video game encryption (DRM) for the purposes of legitimate security testing or investigation
5 Cracking computer programs protected by dongles when the dongles become obsolete or are no longer being manufactured
6 Having an ebook be read aloud (ie for the blind) even if that book has controls built into it to prevent that sort of thing.
A great free site that offers fun and education for families is Bitstrips.com. The site is designed so you can make your own comic strips. You can type text into speech bubbles with several font options. There’s plenty here for beginning writers to explore.
Bitstrips is simple to navigate. Children can become familiar with the click-tools in 10 minutes or less. Adults can let kids use the site on their own, and ask the youngsters for a tutorial later.
Whether you’re a teacher, a home schooling parent, a tutor, or even a babysitter, you can integrate bitstrips into a literacy lesson that lets everyone publish a final result.
Betty Auchard is the author of Dancing in my Nightgown, The Rhythms of Widowhood, 2005. Her book is a memoir of short stories that chronicle her growing autonomy in the aftermath of her husband’s death from cancer.
Her newest book, The Home for the Friendless, Finding hope, Love, and Family, is due out this fall.
Betty shares her insights on widowhood in this interview.
LitCraft: Why did you start writing?
“I have no idea. I had to figure it out. And I was obsessed with writing. I wrote on junk. It would be an envelope. I felt like I was talking to paper. Grievers have to talk, because it’s the only way you can wrap yourself around what has happened. Writing was very personal. It was just for me. It validated that I was here.”
Every little thing, nothing seemed the same – even loading the dishwasher. Sometimes my street looked different. Only someone who has lost a life partner would know. I felt like an alien.
LitCraft: When did your writing become public?
“August 30, 1998, about seven and a half weeks after Denny died. The night I made apple butter.”
Apple Butter for Denny is one of the short stories in Dancing in my Nightgown.
“ The next morning, I started editing it. I had to get notebook paper. That was the beginning. Three months later I wrote, “Never Stop Moving.” I learned to use the computer and get email. Then I learned how to send attachments. And I sent the stories to people, and eventually to publications. When the first one was published, I was beside myself. It was mid 1999 when the publishing bug bit me.”
“A year and a half after Denny died, Betty says she began to feel like a new person. She developed a greater sense of autonomy. She says, “ I realized I was moving on.” She laughs, “I started wearing makeup again. That was when I met the carpet man. “
The Carpet Man is one of the stories in Dancing in my Nightgown.
LitCraft: How has your life changed since the book came out?
“I went on to discover what I could do on my own. It became really important to me.”
“My path was crossing with women who read the book and were grateful for it. What we all have in common is that we’re responsible – our social lives are up to us. People don’t know what to say to you when you’re a widow, for a lot of reasons. I think I’ve only been invited twice to socialize with couples. No fault of friends; we’re in an odd category.
LitCraft: What would you say to new widows?
It’s hard work. You have to embrace the pain. It hurts. If it’s too painful, get out of the house. Re-invest your emotional energy. You should stay put for at least a year; don’t run away. Get involved in something new or something you love. I cried when I felt like it. Joining a health club helped me enormously.
LitCraft: How would you describe the following from your new perspective?
Cooking? Betty giggles. “I didn’t. I ate cookies and milk.”
Travel? “I did, with family. It was hard, but I did it anyway. At night I’d cry in my room.”
Technology? “I learned to put gas in my car.”
Sex? ”Sex? Sex? You mean s-e-x? I bought a vibrator. I wasn’t ready to give up orgasms. If you don’t use it you lose it. This thing about sex is way bigger. No one thins that older people desire sex. This is changing. People are more aware. It’s like a renaissance with older people coming out of the woodwork.”
Household maintenance? “It just went. All that mattered was writing. It was the most rewarding thing I’d ever done.”
Betty’s books are available at BettyAuchard.com. The Home for the Friendless is due out this fall. She is available for speaking engagements. Contact her at btauchard@aol.com.
Betty will attend California Writers Club’s fall retreat at Pema Osel Ling in the Santa Cruz mountains in California this fall. Openings are still available for writers. For information about the 2-day retreat, contact deking8@msn.com.
A break from the serious stuff. Life’s biggest question is…. (drumroll)
Should I get a dog,
or have children?
When it comes to English words without vowels, crwth is a clear contender. Crwth is an archaic Welsh instrument, and there’s no modern word. This gives crwth clear adoption rights as English, but the w takes the vowel spot, and crwth is out of the running.
Ditto for the other contender, rhythm. The y takes rhythm out of the game.
And that leaves nth, as the only English word without a vowel. Nth is an unspecified ordinal number, as in “… to the nth degree.”
Celebrities Read is the American Library Association’s poster campaign to promote reading. These posters are hot.
You can choose from several celebrity posters, and new ones become available as older ones go out of print. 
For teens who look up to celebrities, these posters are a great reminder that our actors, singers, and performers need the work of a writer to support their artwork.
Celebrities Read is a great campaign and you can enjoy the posters anywhere.
Adults enjoy wonder, and we often live vicariously through our young children’s responses to novelty.
The funny thing is, our young children often prefer the familiar over the novel. A four-year old child’s DVD selection is a perfect example of this. Young children want to watch the exact same purple dinosaur show up to 100 times. Why?
Because they know what’s going to happen next.
Young children’s lives are full of uncertainty. They don’t understand linear time very well, and they aren’t sure what’s going to happen next. In a household, the youngest child is usually least aware of what happens next.
A DVD that is familiar provides children with an event they are more comfortable with precisely because of it’s familiarity. Parents should get used to the repetition.
It won’t be long before the same child is asking for the car keys, and has a much more varied life.
Language students can experience language immersion with this fun exercise. Have your students to approach a stranger or acquaintance and ask the person to teach them a joke.
This can be done at a bus stop, in a grocery store or coffee shop, at a laundromat, or anywhere else people have downtime.
The students should ask for an explanation of the joke. They’ll be sharing it with their classmates later, so understanding the punch line is important.
This exercise creates a language immersion experience. That’s a situation in which a speaker of one language is fully immersed in communication in the new language. This is important for language learners, and it’s a difficult environment for all learners to find.
The jokes will provide a necessary learning platform with the added bonus of laughter.
When in comes to computer literacy and communication resources, there’s nothing like a new gadget to keep people entertained and in touch.
The latest addition to the small tablet sized computers is Microsoft’s “Courier.” It’s a booklet with dual screens. The photo says it all.
Once again, Gizmodo.com got the scoop. According to them, “The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers.”
The register reports that the device will not hit the market. Mocrosoft’s Corporate VP of Communications, Frank Shaw, said, “At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.”
The Courier is still in the prototype stage, but it has generated a lot of interest.
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