July 25, 2006

Randomly...

Well, good is bound to win occasionally. This time good comes in the form of the the ACLU and a judge who ordered the Miami-Dade School Board to replace the disputed book Vamos a Cuba. Ole!

Meanwhile, in its quiet quest to take over the world, Amazon now sells...groceries. Okay. I'm not going to buy books from them anymore, but I might buy the occasional CD... but groceries?! Not so much. Incidentally, they plan to sell many organic products, trying to score that market share as well. Hm.

Sir Richard Branson of Virgin everything fame is playing that eccentric millionaire type again by getting into books. He's bankrolling, of all things, Virgin Comics -- comic books with Indian storylines. Joined by holistic author Deepak Chopra, his son, Gotham, Indian comic trailblazer Sharad Devarajan and others, this project looks to be really interesting. A South Asian professor introduced me during MFA days to Tibetan, Indian and Filipino folk and fairytales, and the vivid portrayals of dashing heroes, tricksters, lewd buffoons, gods, monsters, tragic heroines and hugely exaggerated villains seem to make comic books and Indian stories an obvious match. I'm intrigued!

Well, for those of you anxiously watching my mailbox with me, the editorial letter is still AOL. The heat wave and power outages in NY can't be helping... Meanwhile, we all just...Keep...Working...

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