Hi Readers,
I have a new blog!
http://daverobbinsjournalism.blogspot.com
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Sunday, November 30, 2008
A Fairwell Address from the Worlds Least Read Blog
Hellllllloooooo!!!!
Well, my loyal readers - this has certainly been an interesting semester.
After my Spring of 2008 semester being composed of a 6 month trip through the UK and Europe, I've been really surprised how much this class has kept my attention. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot of new software that I either didn't know existed or never in a million years imagined learning how to use. (There's this damn thing called "WORD" where you push buttons and letters appear on your screen, it's witchcraft!)
Audacity has really impressed me. My roommate owns a copy of Adobe Audition (their version of Audacity which is more colorful, more expensive, and more confusing). I've played with both and for the purposes I'm using it for - Audacity can hold it's own. I give a tip of my hat to that software! (I've also played with it a lot... nothing sounds cooler than making spoken word poetry sound like it was read by Darth Vader... and no - you can't hear it.)
2008 as a whole has been a year of photography. I bought a semi-nice camera in June of 2007 in preparation for my Europe trip, and have been getting more and more into the art of photography each time I go out and shoot a few hundred pictures. The 8th Annual Migrant Memorial March was such a cool thing to get to photograph and report - it reinspired the part of me that wanted to get into journalism in the first place.
I've also had the chance to study under a professor who is truly psyched that I want to work in publishing. Dr. Jay Rochlin has put me in touch with multiple people, in different fields with different levels of expertise - all of whom have had a ton of great advice to give me. This has been an essential part of what made this semester awesome.
So where are things going from here? Well... I'm applying for jobs at the big three publishing companies in New York... and hopefully by July it'll be time to get down to business... it'll be business time!!!
Oh... hmm... maybe that's not quite the business I meant.
Well, my loyal readers - this has certainly been an interesting semester.
After my Spring of 2008 semester being composed of a 6 month trip through the UK and Europe, I've been really surprised how much this class has kept my attention. I've had the opportunity to learn a lot of new software that I either didn't know existed or never in a million years imagined learning how to use. (There's this damn thing called "WORD" where you push buttons and letters appear on your screen, it's witchcraft!)
Audacity has really impressed me. My roommate owns a copy of Adobe Audition (their version of Audacity which is more colorful, more expensive, and more confusing). I've played with both and for the purposes I'm using it for - Audacity can hold it's own. I give a tip of my hat to that software! (I've also played with it a lot... nothing sounds cooler than making spoken word poetry sound like it was read by Darth Vader... and no - you can't hear it.)
2008 as a whole has been a year of photography. I bought a semi-nice camera in June of 2007 in preparation for my Europe trip, and have been getting more and more into the art of photography each time I go out and shoot a few hundred pictures. The 8th Annual Migrant Memorial March was such a cool thing to get to photograph and report - it reinspired the part of me that wanted to get into journalism in the first place.
I've also had the chance to study under a professor who is truly psyched that I want to work in publishing. Dr. Jay Rochlin has put me in touch with multiple people, in different fields with different levels of expertise - all of whom have had a ton of great advice to give me. This has been an essential part of what made this semester awesome.
So where are things going from here? Well... I'm applying for jobs at the big three publishing companies in New York... and hopefully by July it'll be time to get down to business... it'll be business time!!!
Oh... hmm... maybe that's not quite the business I meant.
Sometime in the future I'm starting another blog. I was going to get talkingtostrangers.blogspot.com but it's owned by someone who never updates it... and talkingtostrangers.com is also owned... but - I'm sure you can get the gist of what it'll be about. Dave Robbins won't be gone from the blog scene for long!
So thank you all for reading. Thank you Jay for the support and learnings! And thank you Borderbeat staff for a fun semester.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thanksgiving in Mexico
First things first here, loyal readers. I know Mexico doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. (Officially, neither does England - though my former room mates in Norwich are celebrating it for the second year in a row. Go figure.)
So I thought MAYBE, just maybe because the US has such a... well... POWERFUL impact on the rest of the world that there would be a book titled "Thanksgiving in Mexico." Thus - there is not! But, thanks to the fact that Amazon never comes back empty - I have this book for this week. Mexico One Plate at a Time.
Not to be some smartass kid who wants a career in publishing - but I'm 99 percent sure there needs to be a colon, or SOME punctuation after the word Mexico in that title. Pish posh! Now I'm just nit picking.
So - I stumble across this book, having good faith that Amazon will have brought me something relevant. I run a text search on the word "Thanksgiving," to see where on the page that word appeared. It appeared twice. Both of which were referring to the fact that I had searched for such word, and that it hadn't found it. Fantastic.
In the spirit of my old British room mates who tried to cook a turkey in the microwave - even in the face of defeat! I will never give up!
So this book - which, apparently has nothing to do with the topic I'm searching for, is written by a guy who has made his entire career writing about Mexican food. He hosts a TV show on PBS by the same title as the book. Of the reveiws on Amazon, 32 people gave the book Five Stars, 5 people gave it Four Stars, 3 people gave it Three Stars, 1 gave Two Stars and 1 gave One Star. (Can 32 people be wrong!?)
One reviewer wrote, "Rick Bayless's cookbooks are among the best because he is not content to supply recipes and instructions: he authentically cares what appears on your table and provides thoughtful conversation regarding each preparation."
Below is a video of Bayless teaching you how to cook! (Complete with a 1970's porn-music intro.)
Monday, November 17, 2008
Noam Chomsky
Today’s installment of “Literature of the Border” features Failed States: The Abuse of Power and Assault on Democracy by Noam Chomsky.
I stumbled across this book by
searching Amazon’s catalog for the term “Mexican Democracy.” A bunch of books by that exact title came up - but they were all textbooks. I for one do not find text books pleasant to read, so – to spare you, my faithful reader base of 3 people, I’m not writing about a text book.
According to Neil Clark, author of “The Greatest Thinkers of our Time,” Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, and the father of modern linguistics.
The book talks about how the US has become a continuously more aggressive nation since the end of the cold war, antagonizing allies and foreign countries alike, including relations between the US and Iran, and the US and Mexico.
One Amazon.com reviewer wrote, “most people who see the danger and evil of the course that the United States has taken under Bush II imagine that it is an anomaly in United States history. With brutal efficiency and undeniable facts and logic, Chomsky's latest book destroys that illusion”
Not only is Chomsky a prolific writer who is as respected as most DEAD philosophers, he’s also been mentioned in a song by NOFX, an American punk band.
Below is a clip of Noam Chomsky giving a lecture on American Politics.
I stumbled across this book by
searching Amazon’s catalog for the term “Mexican Democracy.” A bunch of books by that exact title came up - but they were all textbooks. I for one do not find text books pleasant to read, so – to spare you, my faithful reader base of 3 people, I’m not writing about a text book.
According to Neil Clark, author of “The Greatest Thinkers of our Time,” Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, political activist, and the father of modern linguistics.
The book talks about how the US has become a continuously more aggressive nation since the end of the cold war, antagonizing allies and foreign countries alike, including relations between the US and Iran, and the US and Mexico.
One Amazon.com reviewer wrote, “most people who see the danger and evil of the course that the United States has taken under Bush II imagine that it is an anomaly in United States history. With brutal efficiency and undeniable facts and logic, Chomsky's latest book destroys that illusion”
Not only is Chomsky a prolific writer who is as respected as most DEAD philosophers, he’s also been mentioned in a song by NOFX, an American punk band.
Below is a clip of Noam Chomsky giving a lecture on American Politics.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Election Week Special!
This week’s edition of Literature of the Border is an Election Week Special!
So – it’s a little off topic – but I justify my offtopificiation by saying that quite frankly - this election will affect everything: including borders and literature. I hope you – my loyal reader base (you know who you are… Jay, Paloma, and that one person who commented during week 6) will understand.
The main thing I’d like to talk about is this video… two radio DJ’s prank called Sarah Palin pretending to be the President of France. They were able to keep her on the line for close to 8 minutes.
How these two Canadian radio DJ’s got Sarah Palin on the phone at all is such an astounding feat that they should be given a Pulitzer Prize for uhh… deceitful and dishonest reporting.
Really though – earlier this semester I attempted to put in a media request to get a 5 minute phone interview with Palin. I couldn’t even find where to ASK to talk to her. (It seems that the media request option was pulled from the Alaska Governor’s site shortly after she was announced as the VP candidate.)
How does the vice president have an impact on border issues? The Vice President of the US acts as the president of the Senate. They get the tie-breaking vote on all ties – border issues and all!
After a bit of research – I found this book which I can recommend. At the President’s Side: The Vice Presidency in the Twentieth Century. Written by the director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the book is a history of “how and why (vice presidents) were picked, what their accomplishments were, and usually what they did after the Vice Presidency,” wrote a reviewer on Amazon.com
That’s all I have for this week. Thank you for reading, and come back next Monday for another installment.
In the mean time? For the love of God – vote!!
So – it’s a little off topic – but I justify my offtopificiation by saying that quite frankly - this election will affect everything: including borders and literature. I hope you – my loyal reader base (you know who you are… Jay, Paloma, and that one person who commented during week 6) will understand.
The main thing I’d like to talk about is this video… two radio DJ’s prank called Sarah Palin pretending to be the President of France. They were able to keep her on the line for close to 8 minutes.
How these two Canadian radio DJ’s got Sarah Palin on the phone at all is such an astounding feat that they should be given a Pulitzer Prize for uhh… deceitful and dishonest reporting.
Really though – earlier this semester I attempted to put in a media request to get a 5 minute phone interview with Palin. I couldn’t even find where to ASK to talk to her. (It seems that the media request option was pulled from the Alaska Governor’s site shortly after she was announced as the VP candidate.)
How does the vice president have an impact on border issues? The Vice President of the US acts as the president of the Senate. They get the tie-breaking vote on all ties – border issues and all!
After a bit of research – I found this book which I can recommend. At the President’s Side: The Vice Presidency in the Twentieth Century. Written by the director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, the book is a history of “how and why (vice presidents) were picked, what their accomplishments were, and usually what they did after the Vice Presidency,” wrote a reviewer on Amazon.com
That’s all I have for this week. Thank you for reading, and come back next Monday for another installment.
In the mean time? For the love of God – vote!!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tom Miller Part II
Tom Miller Part II:
This week’s installment of Literature of the Border expands upon my interview with author – Tom Miller. The story is available at the borderbeat.net website. This blog post – essentially – will consist of good quotes from the interview that for one reason or another - couldn't be fit into my story.
"Trading With the Enemy came out in 1992. I was worried if I wrote another book about another Latin American country - it would sound like the previous books just with a different name."
"To this day I can teach my wife something about Cuba – and she’s Cuban – I met her during that time period actually. If you ask her if she’s Cuban she’ll say “No, I’m from Havanna.” There’s a big difference. It has to do with the psychology of being Cuban."
"Andres Oppenheimer had a book that came out called Castro’s Final Hour. It’s actually a good book - though that hour has now lasted 16 years."
"Whenever you have a book out – no matter how obscure the book – and this was not an obscure book – you pretty much become the authority on the subject unless there are 50 other books out on the same subject."
"You either write well – or you photograph well – but you can’t do both well. I don’t even own a camera."
"'The Restaurant Guide to the Southwest' was a book I had no right taking part in."
"It’s primarily the economy that precipitates the xenophobia. When there are fewer jobs, you notice that people at the low end… if the economy was just booming they’d be looking for workers from everywhere. When the economy is shrinking – as it is – you start to squeeze and you end up with people like Sheriff Joe in phoenix."
"The structure of journalism is something you can teach somebody in a few weeks. I just insist that people who are coming up learn a second language – and I don’t mean a spoken language necessarily but chemistry, or medicine, or Mexican history or being an expert on the Serb Croatian war."
This week’s installment of Literature of the Border expands upon my interview with author – Tom Miller. The story is available at the borderbeat.net website. This blog post – essentially – will consist of good quotes from the interview that for one reason or another - couldn't be fit into my story.
"Trading With the Enemy came out in 1992. I was worried if I wrote another book about another Latin American country - it would sound like the previous books just with a different name."
"To this day I can teach my wife something about Cuba – and she’s Cuban – I met her during that time period actually. If you ask her if she’s Cuban she’ll say “No, I’m from Havanna.” There’s a big difference. It has to do with the psychology of being Cuban."
"Andres Oppenheimer had a book that came out called Castro’s Final Hour. It’s actually a good book - though that hour has now lasted 16 years."
"Whenever you have a book out – no matter how obscure the book – and this was not an obscure book – you pretty much become the authority on the subject unless there are 50 other books out on the same subject."
"You either write well – or you photograph well – but you can’t do both well. I don’t even own a camera."
"'The Restaurant Guide to the Southwest' was a book I had no right taking part in."
"It’s primarily the economy that precipitates the xenophobia. When there are fewer jobs, you notice that people at the low end… if the economy was just booming they’d be looking for workers from everywhere. When the economy is shrinking – as it is – you start to squeeze and you end up with people like Sheriff Joe in phoenix."
"The structure of journalism is something you can teach somebody in a few weeks. I just insist that people who are coming up learn a second language – and I don’t mean a spoken language necessarily but chemistry, or medicine, or Mexican history or being an expert on the Serb Croatian war."
Monday, October 20, 2008
Tom Miller
I mentioned last week the possibility of having a REAL LIVE author interview as my post for this week. Well - not quite. I have conducted a real live interview with a real live author - however, it was this morning and despite my affluency in super powers, I could not transcribe it and get it online in under two hours.
So in the meantime, this week's edition will feature a few of the books by author Tom Miller - whom I spoke with this morning.
The first one - and the one that intrigued me the most is Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castro's Cuba. Miller spent 7 months traveling around Cuba to learn the lay of the land, and learn what it is that makes up day to day life in Cuba.
A reviewer wrote the book is, "a great panoramic view to the reader of what life is actually like in Cuba through his travels around Cuba and select stratas of Cuban society such as a Cuban TV cook, a Cuban baseball team, Cuban Jews, government employees, street huslers for American dollars, hitchhikers, drinking companions met along the way,and women in lines at 5:00 am awaiting to buy goods."
The second is titled On The Border. As Miller described it in our interview, On The Border is about the culture of the border as a country - rather than as a boundary between two countries.
Reviewer John Gabree writes, "In one revealing (and often amusing) tale after another, he brings alive the campesinos, politicians, political activists, border police, businessmen, parrot smugglers, Klansmen and whores who make the region as lively and interesting as any other part of the country. He not only captures the border as it is, but delves into its past, a history not only of wars and treaties, but of cultural landmarks such as Rosa's Cantina, the locale of Marty Robbins' classic country and western hit "El Paso."
Be sure to check out borderbeat.net for the full story and interview! Thank you for reading, and thank you for commenting!
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