Progress!

I am almost finished printing the pictures for the She’s Out There! book launch/show, Wednesday, May 20, 2009.  A few years ago I would have shot chromes, had them processed, then taken them to another lab, had internegs made, then had prints blown up from those, all at great expense.  And unless I got custom prints made, they didn’t look too good.

Now, with digital technology, I can shoot it, process it, retouch it, archive it in multiple places, and when I am ready, output it in a variety of sizes on a variety of mediums for just the cost of materials (and of course a $3,000 printer) in an hour or so, any time of the day or night.

This also uses up all my free time, saving me the cost of many expensive hobbies like polo or hang gilding, or pricy vacations to exotic places, or the risk of paper cuts while reading actually books.  How did we survive before digital?

Building steam

We are starting to get some good press for SHE’S OUT THERE!...from Maine to New York to cyberspace, take a look at a few:

• Tribeca Trib, May 2009, page 37
  
• The Daily News, Sunday Now section, May 3, 2009, page 19
  
• Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel (online), May 3, 2009
  
• Franco-American News and Events blog, May 3, 2009
  
• Write On, Girl! Newsflash/Girls Write Now website May 2009- book mention
  

To be continued....

God is in the details (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)

At the offices of our publisher, Co-editor Heather Ogilvie looks over the SHE'S OUT THERE! proof pages with an eagles eye.  Can a finished product be right around the corner?  Yes!  We are in the home stretch.

Only a couple of weeks until our book signing at Barnes & Noble, Tribeca, on May 18, 2009.

Getting buzzed!

A nice mention on the Seventeen magazine blog ....

Houston, we have a cover!

We finally have the real book cover for SHE'S OUT THERE!

What's better than having your image on the cover of your book? Having 10 images I guess.

Eat your heart out Queens

Recently, I went on another of the great NY Transit Museum eating tours, led by the always informative and adventurous Todd Coleman, of Saveur magazine. Using the subway 7 line as our backbone, we went from Grand Central, stopping at local eateries, both the popular and the populist, from the humble tamale cart under the LIRR tracks, to the end of the line in Flushing. We went into places that ranged from hole in the wall storefronts I normally wouldn’t even notice, to the giant branch of the Patel Brothers grocery store chain, where you can buy 50 pound bags of basmati rice, ponder achar masala or just inhale in a wall of incense, while you discretely look at the colorful saris & turbans worn by some of your fellow shoppers.


I sampled tacos at the Scandinavian sounding Tacolandia, tried a selection of incredibly different India sweets & chat (my first time enjoying these popular Indian snack- which are like a mixture of desert, crispy noodles & spicy tofu- and all vegetarian), slurped a mango lassi, ate pork sate, nibbled on fresh baked fenugreek paratha, sipped hand made Colombian hot chocolate, and watched and sampled hand pulled and hand cut noodles in a mall restaurant in Flushing. Wow!


At one point, we all crowded into a local Filipino grocery store, where among the homemade stews, cans of soy squid and packaged shrimp chips I scored what looks to be the perfect snack, Crisp Porky! I haven’t opened it, instead putting it in a place of honor in my office, awaiting a sign form above to know when to open it....

It is worth becoming a member of the museum just to get advance notice of these tours, which sell out fast. For $40, I spent the afternoon touring the world from Columbia to India, the Philippines to China; this is a far more affordable alternative, with none of the jet lag.

…Move to the first five cars of the train

Last chance, kiddies. According to several sources, this weekend is the last time the Westside IRT (#1 line to you) South Ferry station will be open to the public, as come Monday morning, it will be permanently closed, and trains will finally use the new, straight station. The current station is a time capsule, dating back to 1905, which features a loop platform (like the closed original City Hall station), and a beautiful collection of mosaic signage, with a terracotta sailing ship motif. The new station cost a reported $530 million, and was plagued by problems like leaks (still) and platform gaps (fixed). Come Monday morning, you can see for yourself if it was money well spent.

Let’s just hope we don’t have a repeat of what happened there 104 years ago today.

Next up, the Second avenue subway, planned since 1929…..