Paperback

The economy is weak and people don’t have a lot of money.  There are a lot of writers around, but they are finding a hostile market where it is hard to get paid a decent wage.  Some of them have started writing in a more experimental if hard way in part to get noticed.  Eventually, a new technology will create new markets for their work and a “Golden Age” of writing in a new style will be born.

Sound unlikely?  It happened once before, in the Great Depression.  The new technology was the paperback, and the writers that came out of this difficult time include Faulkner, Buck, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck.

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Rockstar

The study of word origins, or etymology, is often fascinating. Words come to our language from many different places and many different needs. The most interesting words, however, often have very obvious origins but mysteriously deep cultural meanings. One such “super-cliché” is the word “Rockstar”.

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Cooking

The pan is hot.  A thin film of oil pours out of the bottle and rolls in the heat.  A thin whiff of burning rolls up just in time to meet the cold chicken, dropped in with an angry splash of hot oil and a deafening roar of violence.  A quick stir and it all settles in, gradually turning white as the chopped garlic starts to shove its pointed edges between the slices of meat.

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