Research your ethnic names. If one of your characters is a Latvian or Montenegrin or whatever, it”s easy to add an authentic note to your work by picking a suitable name for him. A good encyclopedia comes in handy. If you want a Latvian character, look up Latvia and Latvian Language and Literature.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

While watching a film about The Free Burma Rangers, I came across this project to produce a feature length documentary about Burmese Freedom Fighter, U Han Lin and the struggles of his homeland. If you have skills and such a project interests you, drop an email to Jeffrey Hellman. He’s looking for you.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The Plain Dealer continues to bleed circulation both daily and on Sundays.

Unfortunately, the Cleveland paper dropped another 8.14 percent in daily newspaper circulation, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The figures are for the six month period ending March 31.

Sunday circulation dropped 7.87 percent, from 393,352 to 362,394.

The figures show a drop in circulation of 23,742 over the similar period in 2009 when circulation had dropped from over 300,000 to 291,630.

This steady drop in circulation damages the newspaper’s revenue Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Another “get this off my chest” before it hurts me too much.

The Cleveland schools are going to lay off, among others, 112 family liaison people from the system, we”re told. Why? Not enough money. Even though it appears they do a good job and fill an important need.

What a bunch of crap, to put it crassly.

There”s plenty of money for the schools. The only problem is that the city has given it away. By the bushel full. No, make that by the barrel full. No make that by the truck load.

Why are the school children and parents of Cleveland paying Continue Reading »

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Don”t twist the reader”s tongue. Even though your story or novel may not be designed to read aloud, and even though you are not aiming your fiction at an audience of lip-movers, you should avoid throwing a jawbreaker of a name at your reader. p. 229

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

Back down to 253 pounds this morning – who can figure the yo-yo of daily weight checks?

I doubled my intake of Grapenuts to 1/2 cup (the suggested portion size on the box) with my cup of yogurt. I put the yogurt and Grapenuts in the refrigerator before I practiced my morning meditation so that the cereal could soften a bit before I ate it. I also drank my six oz. of grapefruit juice.

I haven”t packed a lunch today because I”m going to Young and Broke at noon where lunch is included. I just picked up my box lunch of a roast beef sandwich w/cheese and lettuce, a one-oz. bag of Ruffles and two oatmeal raisin cookies. I bought a two-oz. bag of Cheez-Its from the vending machine earlier. (More on those later.) Dinner will be whatever Monday school provides for the teachers (I grabbed a pita pocket with tuna salad), although I think there may be a special program this evening (I was wrong about the program) which means there may be no food. That”s not a problem, fortunately since I”m also going to the month Tim Russo campaign meeting where Tim is bringing his mother”s awesome pasta and sauce.

I should have packed my lunch. Today has been an absolute disaster for me and I can”t recall when I last felt this bad. I ate my boxed lunch, plus the bag of Cheez-Its and then grabbed a second box lunch and an apple from the table outside as I walked to my car.

I wasn”t hungry, yet, I took the food because it was there. There has never been a time in my life when food was short. I never missed a meal as a child. I never left the table feeling hungry. Yet I grabbed that extra box of food, a second sandwich, two more cookies and another bag of chips as if I were some street urchin fearful about where my next meal might come from.

Three conversations later in the day cranked up my stress levels and by the time I got to the monthly Tim Russo for County Council District 7 meeting I was feeling jittery and sat down with a beer saying that this was the worst day I”d had in a very long time. Then it got worse. I parked where I shouldn”t have and my car was towed. It cost me $110 to get it out of the impound lot. Purely my own fault, but coming on the day I had already had, it was the final brick to the head.

I got home and did something I haven”t done in years, sat down to purposefully get smashed. Two hours and five very large Bourbons later I fell into bed.

Yesterday I wrote that spring and summer campaigns in ethnic states against the Karen, Wa and others seem poised to provide the very reason the State Peace and Development Council (Myanmar’s generals_ need shake their heads and walk away from their faux elections this fall. Clearly, I’m not alone in this view.

From The World Today:

The polls could still be cancelled, if Than Shwe and his inner grouping feel they are losing control of the process. In this scenario, the most likely pretext would be to fabricate some kind of national emergency, perhaps by provoking a resumption of conflict with armed ethnic groups, most of which have agreed ceasefires with the military government over the past twenty years.

Perhaps one reason for these groups to expect attacks is that they are playing the general’s game and fielding political parties and candidates that could put the lie to the government’s actions.

[P]robably the best prepared are Kachin nationalists, including a number of senior officials recently retired from the Kachin Independence Organisation – which agreed a ceasefire in 1994 – who are preparing to compete in the polls through a new vehicle, the Kachin State Progressive Party.

This group is likely to appeal to large numbers of the Kachin population in northern Burma. However, it may yet be denied the chance, if the military government insists on trying to bring the armed wings of the KIO and other ceasefire groups under the direct control of the Burmese army, before the election. Such a development might be designed to provide a resumption of armed conflict – not just in Kachin State, but in other restive border areas.

Another interesting set of alliances is emerging in the Karen ethnic community. Two Karen parties are likely to participate in the elections, one in Karen State, adjoining Thailand, and another in the old capital of Rangoon, and further to the west, in the Irrawaddy Delta, including areas affected by Cyclone Nargis two years ago. The latter party will attempt to appeal beyond a purely Karen constituency, to members of other ethnic groups, including Burmans, whose villages are often interspersed with those of the Karen.

Have the generals possibly uncorked a bottle?

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Does viewing Chief Wahoo make one susceptible to accepting other damaging stereotypes? That is what”s suggested by new research.

An article on the website Miller-McCune, Smart Journalism, Real Solutions explains the transference of stereotypes. The article has a link to the study in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

If viewing Chief Wahoo could result not only in damaging stereotyping of Native Americans but of African-Americans, Chinese-Americans and Hispanics, too, the symbol of the Cleveland Indians baseball team is a triple play of discrimination.

I found it most interesting that the study chose to juxtapose Native Americans to Asian Americans, a group that generally has positive attributes. If the Native American image could negatively influence this group, how much more so does it affect groups that do not benefit from positive stereotypes?

Tim Russo writes:

Multiple sources are confirming that Lee Fisher”s wife, Peggy Zone Fisher, has been seen taking stacks of Jennifer Brunner literature from various events, even pretending to want to help distribute it, and making it disappear. This, of course, is a sign of confidence that Lee will win May 4.

In addition, Peggy Zone Fisher is reported to be stalking the Brunner campaign website for schedule info, then calling ahead to the hosts of Brunner events to harass the hosts along the lines of “how dare you”, “where”s Lee”s invite”, etc, including ministers at African American churches. This also, of course, means Lee Fisher will win the primary.

It also means that Peggy Zone Fisher has gone completely mad.

Hell is murky…

I post this not to blame our soldiers, not to blame our leaders, but to blame ourselves. As a nation we have chosen Everwar as a matter of economic, industrial and international policy. War is never neat and sanitary. War is horribly messy and more deeply destructive to those in the shit than anyone not there can ever begin to understand. But in the past we have known a way out, a final defeat of all that was evil. We could go home. That is no longer the case. Politicians talk a good game about exit strategies, but when the only significant industrial base left in the United States involves the manufacture of weapons of destruction, both discreet and massive, why should anyone believe them?

We now live in a world where indeed, our reality has become the same as it ever was…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog video excursion I present: From My Dad.

Don”t get too cute. If too many of your character names are too interesting, plausibility is sacrificed. p. 229

Found in my electronic chapbook.

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I”m at 255 pounds this morning. Breakfast is yogurt, small banana, Grapenuts and black coffee. I”m thinking I ought to up the Grapenuts to 1/2 cup from 1/4 cup because I”m feeling pretty empty by 9 a.m. (I eat breakfast at 5:30 a.m.).

Boy, did I have a horrible morning. Today was the final breakfast for the B”nai Mitzvah Club at the school where I teach 4th and 6th grades. Breakfast was bagels, lox, cream cheese, granola and orange juice. I had eaten two pretzel sticks around 9 a.m. (16 calories each) and managed to not eat any of the left over vanilla sandwich cookies that the 4th graders had as a snack, but when I walked into the breakfast at 11 a.m. I was out of control. I ate two-and-half bagel sandwiches – actually two full-sized and one miniature bagels with cream cheese and tomato plus two bowls of granola with milk and drank three, 12-oz cups of orange juice. More than four hours later I”m still feeling bloated.

I eat this way because I never do well standing around with nothing to do. It”s why I hover over the food table at political and social events. I”m just not a crowd person.

If it weren”t a school situation I”d just go work in my classroom or listen to a book on tape, but I”m paid to be there and have to look like I”m taking part in the event. I need to either find a better way to distract myself or a way to just excuse myself from the situation. I think I would have been better off upstairs in my classroom working on lesson plans for tomorrow.

Dinner this evening is very light: a hardboiled egg, a handful of carrot sticks, a lemon quartered to flavor my water and 20 corn chips with hot sauce. When the lemon water is gone I”ll switch to my Tension Tamer with honey.

Signs of civil war in the ethnic regions of Myanmar continue to rise with disputes growing and becoming increasingly violent between the State Peace and Development Council (aka, Myanmar’s military dictators) and the people in the Karen, Wa and other states. Could this be the excuse the generals need to cancel their faux election?

From The Irrawaddy:

The Karen Peace Council once again rejected the Burmese military government’s border guard force proposal.

Maj-Gen Htain Maung and the other leaders of the KPC sent a seven-page letter to the Burmese military chief of intelligence outlining why they rejected the proposal.

“We have not written this letter to attack the government,” Dr. Timothy, a KPC leader, told The Irrawaddy. “We want to raise a voice for the Karen people and tell the SPDC the effects these militia programs have on the people. We hope by sending them a letter they will understand our position-we are the first ethnic group to really open up to the SPDC.”

The letter stated that in an April 7 meeting in Moulmein, capital of Mon State, between Lt-Gen Ye Myint, the chief of Military Affairs Security, and the KPC executive committee members, pressure was put on the KPC to become a “Burma Army Militia Group,” the junta’s latest name for the ethnic cease-fire groups who join the BGF.

In response, the KPC said in its letter that whatever name the government gives to the BGF, they will still reject the proposal.

And from the Shan Herald:

Burmese military junta has begun to launch the military attacks on the United Wa State Army (UWSA), the 171st Military Region based along the Thai-Burma border in southern Shan State.

The first attack took place about 15 minutes long in the evening on 23 April, and the second attack occurred about 10 minutes, at yesterday”s morning at 10:00am.

Both of the attacks took place in Monghsat Township, Southeastern Shan State, opposite to Thai”s Mae Ai district, said a Wa leader who asked not to be named.

Elections in the midst of civil war are most difficult.