Volcano Story

Hattie Rose dictated a story for Sarah today--her first ever original creation she wanted written down. It's sign she's following in her father's footsteps. It's also a sign of ... well ... here it is:

"A large volcano. Spread out and burned! This rocks! And the people was dead. And the bones. And the blood. And it's arms, and it's head. And it blowed down."

Ed. note: "This rocks!" refers to the actual rocks flying out of the volcano, as in "These are rocks!" or, in the children's colloquial, "This is rocks!"

'Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov'

Have you seen the new home of the White House on the Web? It's really slick.

In addition to the sorts of bells and whistles the average citizen would expect to find (bios of past presidents, a place to sign up for e-mail updates), there's a blog. Our government blogs. Unfortunately, the editor in me says, our government also makes typos.

Call me a nitpicker if you must, but I believe that clean copy speaks well of any organization. A shiny new Internet presence should be typo-free, especially considering that the new-and-improved WhiteHouse.gov is the online face of the U.S. Government in general, and the new President Barack Obama administration in particular.

The first gaffe that caught my eye is a small one in the new blog's introduction by Director of New Information for the White House Macon Phillips: "Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:"

Again, call me what you will, but that should either say "center on three priorities" or "circle around three priorities." It's a minor error that would only bother someone like me, but it wasn't the last one I spotted.

A description of the "Executive Office of the President" reads, in part: "To provide the President with the support the he or she needs ... " The he or she?

I found both of the mistakes in just a couple minutes of casual browsing.

Maybe I've set my hopes too high on what the new administration can accomplish. After all, a misapplied phrase here or proofreading hiccup there isn't the end of the Free World, and focusing attention on the recent happenings in, say, Gaza is certainly time best spent. But if there's a director whose whole job is to direct new media, I hope he hires a good copy editor.

(On a related note, check out my Book Typos blog. A recent Barnes and Noble purchase yielded a gold mine of errors.)

Yet Another Piece of My Time

I don't have loads of free time, but I do have a desire to be creative. And not just creative, but as productively creative as consistently as possible. Thus, Halfpenny Orchestra.

My friend Bret and I decided to record some music under that name a few years back when we began participating in the annual February Album Writing Month challenge. He registered the domain, but we never really found a use for it until now. We recently grabbed our friend James-- another guy who thinks enough like we do to be compatible, but different enough to make things exciting--and turned the website into a sort of public accountability circle for our endeavors.

The goal is for each of us to regularly post something original (a story or photo or essay or critique or what have you) each week. That's the goal. Realistically, at least for now, it may be each month. But hopefully as we're spurred on or spurned on or whatever, we'll increase our output.

We've each already written one post, but didn't feel like that was enough to announce to the world. Now, I've actually written a second post.

The cork is out of the bottle.