Saturday, February 19, 2011

5:15 a.m.


I shouldn't be awake now- it's Saturday, and I'm up an hour before I normally am. I think I heard the mouse, which means that I need to "deal with" it. The vintage postcard above is of a Ukrainian village in the early morning. The East Village isn't exactly a Ukrainian village anymore, but I suddenly have Veselka on the mind, so in honor of waking up in the neighborhood that can still promise me borscht in my future, I tip my hat to the Ukrainian dawn.

My New School classes have all had some lift off after a full month of classes. If groups are going to gel, it tends to have happened by now. Freelance Features is an enthusiastic, smart group who seem interested in each others work, and who like to read a lot, always a bonus. Digital Media is waking up from a one-month slumber of sorts. Annemarie Dooling, one of my old CosmoGirl interns and now an online superstar with an amazing travel/culture/fashion blog called Frill Seeker Diary, came to speak two weeks ago, and as always I learned so much about the lightening fast changes in the industry from her. The 8 p.m. slot always seems to bring with it exhausted students, but who can blame them after a full day of work? It still would be nice if more than one person contributed regularly, but we're collectively working on it. A gigantic Earl Grey with milk and one sugar seems to be my savior for the 8 p.m.; but don't buy it the French Roast because it will cost you $3.25 for a large tea to go. Instead, cross 6th Avenue to the Korean deli and pay $1.25 for the same large tea with the same dependable teabag, and no need to tip the bartender for pouring hot water because you did it yourself.

Don't get me wrong--I love the French Roast. I've been going there for years and years, harkening back to 1994, when I had a crush (one of many, I'm sure) on the brown haired Muffin Guy who knew exactly how much milk to pour into my coffee to turn it that lovely color of Cancun Sand (okay, that's a Benjamin Moore color, but whatever). If there's a coffee border between too much milk for coffee to be strong, and just the right amount for coffee to be milky and strong at the same time, this boy hit it each and every day. This Muffin Guy sold me my breakfast every single morning before I went to work at American Heritage, back when I could eat a muffin the size of a cat's head every morning.

My Parsons Fashion Publishing students have started turning in their blog posts for the 560 Parsons online magazine that we contribute to every Friday. This process always takes a few weeks to get off the ground, but Fashion Week and Social Media Week lent themselves nicely for sending journalism pups into the woods to forage for their first stories. So far we've covered two Social Media Week events and an Oscar de la Renta show. Up next will be a Parsons faculty Q&A.

As far as my own writing goes, it's taken a backseat to the beginning of Spring semester when I always move from two to three classes, always a surprisingly exponential difference in the work load. I have, however, finished co-writing my first grant proposal with my friend Kathleen Sweeney, who also teaches for the Media Studies department. She's dizzyingly talented and smart and you can check out her work here. More details about the grant to come when the time is right, but I believe it promises to pull together our diverse but complementary backgrounds in print and video, so fingers crossed. I'm also pulling together a feature for Publishing Perspectives about Twitter Parties, which I hope to turn in within the next day or two. My editor Ed Nawotka has been beyond patient about this slipping deadline. In my spare time I've taken on a bread and butter copy writing gig for theknot.com, a wedding website, which reminds me about why I'm glad I didn't go overboard on my own wedding. Keychains for your bridal party? Pet tuxedoes? Awesome. Oh, and then there's that thing called living with a super cute 7 year old that I forgot to mention...Ciao!

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