Hello! Where I am, summer has officially arrived, and for many people, that means travel. Today’s post comes to us from Marcela De Vivo, about current trends you might find if you’re headed out of town these days. Enjoy! Continue reading “Fashion Friday 5/31/13”
Month: May 2013
Banging the Drum for Common Sense
Literary agent Michelle Johnson’s blog pointed me toward this fantastic open letter from a mother to her sons. If you’re sick of hearing about rape culture, you may continue to hide from reality and hope you and the people you love are never personally affected by this societal scourge.
If you’re sick of rape culture, click here to read this wonderful letter and maybe share it.
For those of you in academia, good luck getting through finals. As soon as I’m done with them, I’ll be back to posting authorly treats. For those of you not in academia, count yourselves lucky this time of year, and be well.
Ciao!
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Click here to read my post in response to the media debacle surrounding the Steubenville trial.
Fashion Friday 5/24/13
This week’s Fashion Friday installment comes from guest blogger Margo, the Stay-at-Home Economist. Here’s the link to Margo’s post, which she put up on her own blog. It’s all about her nearly-two-year-old son and his fashion sense and pre-nostalgia. Really fun read.
Have a stylish weekend!
The Results Are In…
Thank you to everyone who voted in the Book Spine Poetry Contest Poll! The results are in.
The top three winners will win a t-shirt with a poetry joke on it. (Hope you enjoy.) Winners, please send me a private email so I can send you the details, get your sizes, etc.
Thanks again, everyone, for participating!
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1st place: “Combined and uneven apocalypse” by Maia Almeida-Amir
Living in the end times
Utopia
Our history is still being written
2nd place: “In other worlds” by Cindy Clayton
A thousand splendid suns.
The lake of dreams,
The summer tree—
Everyone is beautiful.
.
The rest of life:
Something rotten.
Crime and punishment,
Truth and consequences—
The places that scare you.
.
I am the messenger:
Good omens!
The wake of forgiveness.
3rd place: “Raising My Teen” by Laine Little
Lost
The last battle
Between parent and child
No more misbehavin’
Celebration of discipline
Fashion Friday 5/17/13
Okay, so it’s not a hat this time, but it is something delightful to wear on your head.
Or more specifically, in your hair.
The beads are green and a very pale amber-orange.
An ornament like this also looks very lovely with a full up-do for a daytime/work look. (Wearing it with one’s hair down is a bit more romantic.) Even a severe chignon can look very feminine with beads dripping from it.
What interesting things have you worn in your hair before?
Periodic Sappho’s Torque Best Commenter Awards
A little over a year ago, I earned a Best Commenter Award from the lovely SJ and Meg over at Snobbery. It was a delightful moment because I hadn’t been part of the blogosphere long but felt like I had, at least, done something useful enough to connect with other people. And without a doubt, connections with other people, especially writers and avid readers, has been one of the best parts about having a blog. I have loved that.
Anyway, I thought this concept was fun and paid the award forward, as I was supposed to do, and it occurred to me that I could continue having a Best Commenter Awards recognition on my own blog regularly. I don’t know how often it will be — annual? semi-annual? quarterly? — but I’ve come up with my own badge and my own set of interview questions (with SJ’s blessing, since the format, though not its content, is shamelessly stolen from Snobbery’s awards).
So here’s how this works: I will list the award recipients below along with the interview the recipients are asked answer. We at Sappho’s Torque love and appreciate all our commenters, and winning this most excellent honor is based, very simply, on how much one participates in this blog. All recipients should please answer the interview questions in the comments section of this post, then post the Best Commenter Awards on their blogs and choose their top 5 commenters to pass the honor and the interview along to, if they so choose, and thanks for playing. (If they do not so choose, well, boo. Frowny face.)
So without further ado, here they are!
Our top 5 commenters (and their blogs, because this time the top 5 are all bloggers as well) are…
* sj
* laine
Congratulations!
And here are the interview questions:
- What was the first food you ever learned how to make?
- What’s your favorite movie, and why?
- Do you own a melon baller?
- DC or Marvel or indie?
- If you had the time to be a novelist, would you want to be?
- What’s your favorite fashion accessory? Would you be interested in sharing it with us on a Fashion Friday post?
- What is the best book you’ve ever read that you really didn’t enjoy while you were reading it?
- What are you listening to today?
- Do you remember when and how you first discovered Sappho’s Torque? Will you please tell us the story?
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- What’s your preferred variety of Munchkin card?
- Complete this lyric: “If I had $1,000,000, I would buy you…”
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And that’s it! Have a good weekend.
May Rêveuses in Bloom
Here are today’s 13th-of-the-month pictures, taken (as always) on my phone, so you know the photo quality is awesome. (It occurs to me that I should perhaps carry around my actual camera on the 13th of every month, but then I wouldn’t have the excuse of a pitiful device to blame for my inept photography skills.)
OOPS! (A correction…)
On the post I just sent out, I inadvertently put the wrong date on the end of the polling for the Book Spine Poetry Contest. I’ve updated it on the post to the correct end-date for voting (May 20th), but if you subscribe to this blog, you’ll have gotten an email with the incorrect date. Sorry.
Blogging on sleep deprivation: not always the best course…
Have a good one!
Book Spine Poetry Contest Update (and Poll)
We had a lot of great entries in the Book Spine Poetry Contest. First, I want to thank everyone who participated! I hope you enjoyed playing as much as I enjoyed seeing your poems. Second, as promised, here are all the entries (listed in no particular order) so you can all enjoy them, too. I’ve transcribed the lines of the poems in the captions in case you have difficulty reading some of the spines in the photos.
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Three from Lauren Nagel:
Know your own mind
Thesaurus
The elements of grammar
Me talk pretty one day
Get lucky
Can’t wait to get to heaven
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from Paula Billups:
Goatwalking
Pathways to bliss
Beyond good and evil
My world and welcome to it
****
from Maia Almeida-Amir:
Living in the end times
Utopia
Our history is still being written
****
from Cindy Clayton (who also provided with her entry a text version with her intended punctuation, so I’ll use that for the caption):
A thousand splendid suns.
The lake of dreams,
The summer tree—
Everyone is beautiful.
.
The rest of life:
Something rotten.
Crime and punishment,
Truth and consequences—
The places that scare you.
.
I am the messenger:
Good omens!
The wake of forgiveness.
****
from Laine Little (entitled “Raising My Teen”):
Lost
The last battle
Between parent and child
No more misbehavin’
Celebration of discipline
****
There you have it! If you sent me an entry and don’t see it here, I apologize. Please email me right away so we can sort it out.
Now, part of the reason it took me so long to get this post done has to do with my being out of town for a few days during an unusually busy time at school and having to play catch-up all week. But part of it is that, frankly, I can’t really decide who has won! So many of these poems are just fantastic.
So I’m putting the fate of this contest in your hands, dear readers. Below is a poll in which YOU decide which are the best entries! The poems are listed by their first lines. Polling will be open until the evening of Monday, May 20th. I’m going to try and set this up so you can vote each day, if you want to, to make this sort of like approval voting. First, second, and third place entries will win a prize! Winners will be announced the week polling ends.
Thank you for voting! Please spread the word to others to do so.
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Fashion Friday 5/10/13
This week’s Fashion Friday post comes to us from guest blog contributor Dana. Thank you, Dana!
I’ll be posting more content myself next week — as well as more on the Book Spine Poetry Contest — as soon as I finish catching up from DFWCon, the writers’ conference I went to a week ago. (Oh yeah, and as soon as I get a handle on this insane stack of papers to grade. Ah, the end of the semester is upon us… Or, if you’re a Game of Thrones fan, SUMMER IS COMING. Thank you, dear readers, for your patience during this trying time each year.)
Another reminder: Monday is the 13th of the month, so all you rêveurs and rêveuses, reveal yourselves!
Now on to Dana’s wonderful post…
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Hi, everybody. When Angélique asked if I would do a Fashion Friday guest post, I thought, Sure, I can do that. I’ve been pondering what to write, and it’s changed several times. What I’ve finally settled on is this: I love fashion and I love girly stuff, especially jewelry. I always check all of the red carpet photo galleries and rarely miss a “What Were They Thinking?” fashion post. But for me, on a day-to-day basis, being a girl is more fun in theory than in practice.
The subject came up regarding Angélique’s fashionable and fabulous hats. When she mentioned the first hat making party, it brought back some fun memories. I still have the hat I made at that party. I still think it’s rather lovely.
I’ve also never worn it. Partially because it’s too big and partially because, well, it’s a lot of work to get dressed up fancy enough for it. (And I’ve yet to go to Tea in a season for which it’s appropriate.) I think it’s a lovely hat but when it comes down to it, it’s just a little too frou-frou for me now. At the time, probably not so much. Back then I wore make-up regularly and bought more stylish clothes and worked hard to keep up a certain appearance.
These days comfort is more important. This was true even before my darling daughter was born.
On a day-to-day basis, I’d rather wear Birkenstocks than Blahniks, jeans or shorts instead of fancy skirts or trousers, and cotton over linen and silk. And you know what? That’s totally okay. At 41 I can admit that I love fashion and fancy, girly stuff but feel no need to wear it. I’m finally comfortable enough in my own skin to wear what feels good and not worry what people think.
And I think confidence is the best accessory of all.
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Would you like to be a guest blogger for Fashion Fridays? Check out the main FF page; guidelines for how to submit are listed there.
Sappho's Torque 