Beth Kephart's Blog, page 153
November 27, 2012
My brother, Jeff Kephart, is named an IEEE Fellow
I dedicate this blog today to my genius brother—always and forever a genius brother—who graduated top of his class at Radnor High, soared at Princeton, got his graduate degree from Stanford, has worked at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center for nearly all his working life, and was yesterday named an IEEE Fellow, "for contributions and leadership in autonomic computing."
IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is "the world's largest professional association dedicated to
advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of
humanity. IEEE and its members inspire a global community through IEEE's
highly cited publications, conferences, technology standards, and
professional and educational activities."
I've always been proud of my brother. Today I'm truly happy for him. [image error]
November 26, 2012
My conversation with Dan Weiss, Publisher-at-Large at St. Martin's Press (in Publishing Perspectives)
Dan Weiss, publisher-at-large at St. Martin's Press, kindly answered my questions a few weeks ago for this story in Publishing Perspectives. With a career that began as a comic book editor, included leadership of both Scholastic's Teen Age Book Club and SparkNotes, and now focuses on books for the Gen Y crowd, Dan has stretched boundaries and redefined terms.
Our conversation can be found here.
Dan Weiss will be appearing at the YA: What's Next? conference, scheduled for this coming Wednesday in the Scholastic building in New York City. Tickets are still available. [image error]
November 25, 2012
Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA (keynote address for Publishing Perspectives Conference: YA: What's Next?)
I'm honored to be giving the keynote address at the upcoming Publishing Perspectives Conference, "YA: What's Next?," which will be held this coming Wednesday in the Scholastic Building in New York City.
My talk, "Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA," will feature illustrations by my husband-collaborator, William R. Sulit. These images have been modeled with 3-D software and amplified by small human interventions, including the lovely "real" hand shown here, which was donated to the cause by my niece, Miranda.
If any of you wish to attend this half-day event—which will feature Ellie Berger, Carl Kulo, David Levithan, Eliot Schrefer, Mara Anastas, Jennifer Brown, Andrew Losowsky, and many more—let me know. I might just have a discount coupon for you.
Opening words from my talk:
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colossal storm called Sandy, stories held us captive, terrifying aerial views,
the news that began to leak in from friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trash bags strapped on like shiny boots, brand-new adults walked
through rising fumes and fresh flotsam, looking for signs of ordinary
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heartbroken by saturated
eggplants and devastated garden fruits, they crouched to gather seeds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Asking<i> W</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hat can we do?,</i> they collected blankets, baked tins of lasagna,
emptied their personal libraries of books and took their spontaneous gifts into
darkened neighborhoods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile,
the 19-year-old Rutgers student who lost both her parents to a capsized tree
and will now raise three younger siblings on her own, was reaching into some
impossible well of suddenly-now-adultness to help others suffering the ravages
of weather.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com...' alt='' /></div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a>
</div>
Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA (keynote address for Publishing Perspectives Conference: YA: What's Next)
I'm honored to be giving the keynote address at the upcoming Publishing Perspectives Conference, "YA: What's Next," which will be held this coming Wednesday in the Scholastic Building in New York City.
My talk, "Lamp Lighters and Seed Sowers: Tomorrow's YA," will feature illustrations by my husband-collaborator, William R. Sulit. These images have been modeled with 3-D software and amplified by small human interventions, including the lovely "real" hand shown here, which was donated to the cause by my niece, Miranda.
If any of you wish to attend this half-day event—which will feature Ellie Berger, Carl Kulo, David Levithan, Eliot Schrefer, Mara Anastas, Jennifer Brown, Andrew Losowsky, and many more—let me know. I might just have a discount coupon for you.
Opening words from my talk:
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<span style="color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">In the days following the
colossal storm called Sandy, stories held us captive, terrifying aerial views,
the news that began to leak in from friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trash bags strapped on like shiny boots, brand-new adults walked
through rising fumes and fresh flotsam, looking for signs of ordinary
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heartbroken by saturated
eggplants and devastated garden fruits, they crouched to gather seeds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Asking<i> W</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hat can we do?,</i> they collected blankets, baked tins of lasagna,
emptied their personal libraries of books and took their spontaneous gifts into
darkened neighborhoods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile,
the 19-year-old Rutgers student who lost both her parents to a capsized tree
and will now raise three younger siblings on her own, was reaching into some
impossible well of suddenly-now-adultness to help others suffering the ravages
of weather.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com...' alt='' /></div><div class="feedflare">
<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK... src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BethK..." border="0"></img></a>
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The river runs through us: the Schuylkill in today's Inquirer
November 24, 2012
Loving my river (a Philadelphia Inquirer story)
I have loved the Schuylkill River ever since I was a student at Penn with a bad case of wanderlust—walking the campus, walking beyond it, leaving and returning. Several years ago I wrote one of my favorite books, Flow: The Life and Times of Philadelphia's Schuylkill River (Temple University Press), as both a prayer and a poem. I wrote it to honor the countless many who have come together in recent years to make the river more whole.
Among the river-loving friends I have made along the way is Karen Young. The story that appears in this weekend's Philadelphia Inquirer celebrates her achievements at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (FWWIC) and the future of Philadelphia, a city finally going green.
I'll post the link tomorrow when the story goes live on Philly.com. I share the first two paragraphs below. Great thanks to Avery Rome, the Inquirer Features editor who invited me and others (Karen Rile, Elizabeth Mosier, Lise Funderburg, Kelly McQuain) to think out loud in the Inquirer Currents section a few months ago. We have loved every second of working with Avery and cheer her forward as she now moves on to new realms and dreams.
Of the two rivers that carry
Philadelphia’s dreams toward the sea, it is the Schuylkill that has always
snagged a good chunk of my heart.
It feels personal to me—the Schuylkill’s roving through time, her baptisms
and floods, her primeval sheen, her helpless submission to toxins and sludge,
her muddy regrets and redemption.
The river rises and falls.
She floats us on her back and steeps. She comes at us from the hills and carries on beyond
us. We know her, and we need her, and
she is a mystery.
When
we ruin the Schuylkill we ruin ourselves.
We become, as we once were, a city with a stench, a city that festers. We forfeit all three faces of time—the
past, the present, the future.
November 22, 2012
in which Aunt Beth wins a game of Sorry
The fine young gent pictured here is very smart. He can put puzzles together with a snap of a hand, program computers in several languages, build the computers he programs, ace the essay part of the SAT tests, judge high school debate contests, and climb mountains with boulders on his back.
His sister, the beautiful blonde, studies physics at Yale, dances ballroom (yep, it apparently runs in the family), poses as a hand model for her uncle (we owe her), and knows the names of all stars and all planets in all universes.
Neither of them, however, could beat me at a game of Sorry.
I will never let them forget it.
Sharing Placido Domingo on this beautiful Thanksgiving morn
Placido Domingo shares his passion with four young opera singers in this YoungArts Master Class segment from HBO. "Everything is beautiful," he says.
November 21, 2012
Small Damages: the Dutch translation arrives
Callenbach has produced this beautiful Dutch translation of Small Damages.
I am ever-grateful to Tamra Tuller, Kiffin Steurer, and the Philomel team for taking such good care of this book.
And so grateful to Callenbach for having faith.
On winning the spider web war: Last Friday, a friend stopped by
... and I was on the phone, a conference call at the end of an historic week of work. Some sixty stories for one client. Magazine articles for another. A keynote to write. An interview to conduct with a pretty cool editor of Gen Y novels (look for the link later this week). All completed with the mumbling mouth of a recent gum graft refugee.
The point is, I hadn't cleaned. I had (is this still the term for it? does Urban Dictionary have something better?) let things go. I had left things to the endless arms of compulsive spiders who had decided to knit me a pair of curtains here, a nice little table covering here. It was all such loveliness in its own right, but it was even lovelier when the sun shined upon the spider's handiwork, illuminating all, adding a few spectral sunshiny reflective colors for fun.
And then, like I said, a friend stopped by.
I was h o r r i f i e d. Found out. Exposed. My poor friend could barely hide her surprise that her formerly compulsively clean neighbor had yielded her home to vicious animals. Beth Kephart has given up. That's what my once-neighbor almost said.
But I am here to report that I am making things right. I have gotten down on my knees. I have mopped, ragged, swiped. I have arranged flowers. I have dragged the vacuum cleaner from end to end of my tiny house. I have asserted myself. I have, until the spiders weave again, won.
Beth Kephart has not given up. Yet.
