Jewish Book Carnival: Part Deux

The second monthly Jewish Book Carnival, organized by the Association of Jewish Libraries, is now online. (My Machberet is a proud participant.) Please check out all the terrific news and reviews of Jewish books, and help spread the word.

My Machberet Receives A Beautiful Blogger Award

Our friends at the Jewish Book Council recently nominated us for a Beautiful Blogger Award (thank you, again!). To claim this prize, we need to share seven little-known facts about My Machberet...and pass the award on to seven other bloggers.

So here are some things you may not know about My Machberet and the blogger behind it.

1. The Hebrew name of My Machberet's author is Yocheved. I am named for my maternal grandmother's mother ("Yettie"), who was born in Galicia in 1891 and died in Brooklyn in 1931.

2. One of my earliest and favorite childhood reads was a beat-up, falling-apart storybook that was kept at the home of my paternal grandparents (I think it was my dad's when he was a child--our copy, which I now possess, is from the second printing in 1948). Its title: Habibi and Yow: A Little Boy and His Dog. It is through this book that I first learned about many Jewish holidays, blessings, and traditions. I can still hear my grandmother's voice reading it to me....

3. I've attended Hebrew School/religious instruction in Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform settings.

4. Since the summer of 1978, I have been a proud Reform Jew.

5. The first published writing to earn me a paycheck was a poem that appeared in Young Judaean magazine (I was 15 when I wrote it).

6. I resigned from the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) in 2006 when the then-president of the organization refused to stop using the NBCC blog as a bully pulpit for his own anti-Israel preachings (and harassed me personally when I objected to the practice). Now that he has moved on to other projects, I occasionally consider rejoining. But the experience left me with a lot of bad feelings.

7. My soon-to-be-unveiled new website will feature a resource section tailored to Jewish writing/writers.

And now, please allow me to introduce another seven "beautiful bloggers":

The Arty Semite
The Boston Bibliophile
Brave New Words
Jeffrey Goldberg (if you're a regular reader of My Machberet, you knew that that one was coming!)
Jew Wishes
Jewish Muse
What Would Phoebe Do

I hope that you find all of these blogs as interesting, informative, and inspiring as I do!

Notes from Around the Web

A big todah rabah to the Jewish Book Council for tapping My Machberet for a "Beautiful Blogger Award" (now, it seems I need to script a post to "claim" the award proper).

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Other news from the JBC: The group's next Twitter Book Club will take place on Wednesday, September 15. The chosen title: Mitchell J. Kaplan's By Fire, By Water.

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"Hans Keilson is not entirely unknown in America," writes Adam Kirsch for Tablet. But before I read Kirsch's article, Keilson was unknown to me. I am glad that Kirsch (and, in the Boston Globe, Linda K. Wertheimer) have enlightened me, and I plan to read both Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key asap.

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Meantime, of course (and as per usual), Josh Lambert, also writing for Tablet, also adds to my tbr list.

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So, too, does the Jewish Book Council reliably provide tbr titles. In this case, fall fiction from Israel (in translation).

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Wise words from Allegra Goodman.

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Thanks to Jewish Ideas Daily for pointing me to this very interesting review of Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France.

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The latest Jewish Reader book-group guide from the National Yiddish Book Center focuses on Joan Leegant's new novel, Wherever You Go.

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And if you're looking for a new calendar to mark the quickly-approaching Jewish New Year, consider the latest offering from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute's calendar project, which features "Jewish Women Writers: The Cities Behind the Stories."

Recent Reads: The J-Word, by Andrew Sanger

As a Jewish-American, I'm very interested in the experiences of Jews in other countries, past or present, factual or fictional. Andrew Sanger's debut novel, The J-Word, presents one such glimpse into 21st-century Jewish life--in England--by focusing on octogenarian Jack Silver and his family. (If Sanger's name is familiar, that may be because you've seen him guest-blog right here on My Machberet.)

What I found here--apart from certain figures of speech, a pronounced recurrence of teatime, and a greater focus on "football" (soccer) than we tend to find in American literature--were many similarities with threads of Jewish experience in the United States. To be sure, Jack's long-sustained quest to become truly "English" and fully assimilated is a situation quite familiar to readers of Jewish-American literature. The incorporation of prayer snippets and Yiddishims is another link (anyone needing refreshers or translations will find them in footnotes and a glossary). But the book also reflects newer aspects of Jewish contemporary experience that cannot fail to resonate in an American reader just as they might in an English one.

Take, for instance, these musings from Jack, shortly after he is attacked by a gang in what is clearly an anti-Semitic hate crime:

Maybe the answer is education. An intelligent, aware population. That, he realised, was an impossibility. Some of the best educated people hate Jews. So a liberal, tolerant society? He grimaced at the thought. In his mind he saw ranks of pale, thin-lipped English men and women saying 'we're not antisemitic,' the readers and writers of the Guardian and the Independent, sympathising with suicide attackers, calling for boycotts and spreading hatred of Israel. He laughed bitterly. 'Oh no, it's only Israel and its supporters we hate,' he said, 'not Jews.' The Guardian and the Independent and the BBC are leading us to the next Holocaust. Then they will be able to report on it with horrified condemnations. What about the Jews who take that side, too - Harold Pinter and the rest? Fools!

Now, I happen to be a reader who appreciates a good dose of politics in fiction, and I also happen to be someone who discerns with increasing frustration in some American media outlets much of the same content/opinion that Jack highlights here on the English side. In other words, I am sympathetic to Jack's particular political views. I admire Sanger's writing here very much. It takes bravery to write like this. It also takes skill. Whatever Sanger's personal views might be, these few lines convey at least as much power and conviction as might a full-fledged op-ed. But undoubtedly, some readers may not share my enthusiasm on these points.

I haven't done justice here to this novel, which merits a much more detailed examination, so I will send you to some other sources. Meantime, I'm quite glad that I've had the opportunity to read The J-Word, and (disclosure!) I'm grateful to the publisher for the review copy.

Further Resources:

• Andrew Sanger, "America Starts to Discover The J-Word"
• Joy Sable (for The Jewish Chronicle), Review of The J-Word
• OyVaGoy (Chas Newkey-Burden), Brief review and interview with Andrew Sanger
• Scribblers on the Roof, Interview with Andrew Sanger

Recent Reads: Grace Schulman's First Loves and Other Adventures

Now that I've joined Goodreads, I've been chronicling most of my "recent reads" over there. Hence, today's My Machberet post is actually a cross-posting of the write-up I gave earlier this month to Grace Schulman's First Loves and Other Adventures, a recent release from the University of Michigan Press's Poets on Poetry series.

Grace Schulman has to be one of the most generous writers out there. I had the privilege of meeting her for a profile I wrote not too long after I began working at The City University of New York, where she is a Distinguished Professor at Baruch College. I left our first meeting with an armful of books, and when we met again a few months back, she asked if she might send me her latest: First Loves and Other Adventures.

I probably can't be completely unbiased, but having had the opportunity to get to know this author a bit, I find the opening and closing essays in this collection most striking. They are also, arguably, the most personal.

In the first, "Helen," Schulman describes family history, the experience of growing up Jewish in New York while the Holocaust unfolded across the ocean, and the connections she sensed from an early age with her father's sister, Helena ("my parents Anglicized it"), who died in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. The closing piece, "An Uncommon Friend," recounts the relationship Schulman and her husband had with author Richard Yates. I was in the room at the 2008 conference in New York where Schulman presented this text on a panel honoring Yates's life and work; I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to revisit it.

In the introduction to this volume, Schulman describes the essays within as being "of two kinds: first, about becoming a writer; second, about some of the books I love." The book encompasses reflections on May Swenson, Marianne Moore, Octavio Paz, and others. And anything Schulman writes is worth reading. Still, the first and last essays are the ones I'll remember the longest.

Notes from Around the Web

The always-sagacious Josh Lambert rounds up a group of "beach reads" for Tablet.
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The New York Times follows up on the brouhaha surrounding a new play, Imagining Madoff.
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Benjamin Ivry writes about Frédéric Chouraki's new novel, La Guerre de Kippour (the subject matter isn't quite what you may guess from the title).
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The Poetry Foundation takes note of a collection of Yiddish poetry (translated by Dr. Sarah Traister Moskovitz) originally written by Jews who were trapped in the Warsaw ghetto.
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Sarah Seltzer reflects on being the only Jew in her MFA program's incoming cohort. Brought back quite a few memories of my own similar experience. (via @JewishMuse)
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Paid internship opportunities at Tablet magazine.
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And still more from Tablet: Rachel Shukert (whose work I've mentioned here in the past) has a new book out, and Tablet is co-hosting a celebration next Tuesday.

Shabbat shalom!

Notes from Around the Web

Israel, Orthodoxy, and much more appear in Sarah/Sara, Jacob Paul's debut novel--and in my review for the Fiction Writers Review website.
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Speaking of the above review, I'm proud that it's part of the first installment of the Jewish Book Carnival, organized this month by the Association of Jewish Libraries. Please do check out this month's collection of carnival contributions.
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One of the links in the aforementioned carnival will take you to this review of Natasha Solomons's Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, which I began reading this week (also for a review, so I won't say too much else until the review is done and published).
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As To Kill A Mockingbird celebrates its 50th birthday, Eric Herschthal asks "Did Harper Lee Whitewash the Jewish Past?"
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The summer issue of the Jewish Review of Books is out, and some of the content is available online.
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It was Bastille Day this week, in case you forgot. Which makes this a good time to mention that Benjamin Ivry's Arty Semite posts routinely provide insights into French-Jewish literary culture. And the What Would Phoebe Do blog is a good source for "Francophilic Zionism."

Shabbat shalom!

Notes from Around the Web

Direct from the Association of Jewish Libraries convention: book reviewing resources.
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The Boston Bibliophile interviews Carla Jablonski, author of a graphic novel, Resistance: Book 1, "which focuses on the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II and in particular about the efforts of a French family to save French Jews."
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Tablet tells us about 10 novels in a "Jewish fall fiction preview."
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You may have noticed a new addition to the blogroll: Jew Wishes, a superb site that features "book reviews on Jewish-related books and films, news on Jewish community, Judaism and such." (Thanks to Nina Badzin for leading me to it!)
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And, as a follow-up to Wednesday's post, you can learn more about JewishFiction.net in this "Arty Semite" interview with editor Nora Gold.
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Finally, although you can't read it online, I am THRILLED to announce that the July-August issue of Moment magazine includes my poem, "Pünktlichkeit" (see p. 32).

Shabbat Shalom!

Introducing JewishFiction.net

When I first heard about the establishment of JewishFiction.net, two aspects of the new online venue for English-language fiction on Jewish themes caught my attention.

First, I was impressed to learn that Toronto-based Dr. Nora Gold was the editorial brain behind the venture. I discovered Gold's story collection, Marrow, several years ago, thanks to a presentation at a conference of the Society for Jewish American and Holocaust Literature. And I thought the book was terrific.

I was less impressed, however, when I found out that the journal was going to charge $15 as a submission fee. I can be antsy about submission fees even for contests that promise cash prizes. I become very nervous when a journal charges a submission fee without even the chance of earning some pay for the work.

Happily, the editor informed me earlier this week that the submission fee requirement has been removed. If you're interested in submitting, or simply want to learn more about the project, please click here.

Online Edition of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

As much as I talk (and have written) about my paternal grandparents, who were both born in Germany, I do have an entire maternal ancestry! And this background represents another strand of Jewish history: Eastern European.

For as long as she lived, my maternal grandmother claimed to have been born "in Vienna." She came to this country at the age of seven, shortly after World War I.

To the extent that genealogical research (undertaken by me and by one of my mother's cousins) has revealed anything, it has suggested that she was not born in Vienna. Rather, the family came from a small town in that territory known as Galicia.

Which is an area I can now learn much more about, thanks to the online edition of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

I'm sure I'll be turning to this wonderful new resource again and again. Meantime, if you, too, would like to know more about Galicia, just click here!

Coming Soon: First Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Book Fair

First Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Book Fair
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Noon-5 p.m.
Center for Jewish History

The book fair, hosted by the American Sephardi Federation, will bring together authors and book lovers that write about and enjoy books relating to the culture, history, philosophy, religion, languages and experiences of the Sephardic Jews, past and present. Hundreds of titles of Sephardic-oriented books, including many rare titles, will be available for sale by the Sephardic House bookstore, as well as by unique vendors that specialize in Sephardic Judaica.

Several visiting authors will discuss a wide range of topics including personal histories, Sephardic history, philosophy, culture and religion. The day's key author and speaker will be Dr. Marc D. Angel, founder of The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel, North America's oldest Jewish congregation.

Admission: Free

(Thanks to Barbara Krasner for letting me know about this event!)

Writing Jewish-themed Children's Books: A Conference Dispatch by Barbara Krasner

Writing Jewish-themed Children's Books: A Conference Dispatch
Guest Post by Barbara Krasner

For about two years, Kent Brown, head of the Highlights Foundation, and I had been discussing the possibility of bringing a workshop for writers of Jewish-themed books to the line-up of the Highlights Foundation workshops. We finally scheduled it for May 23-25, 2010.

Intended for ten participants only (okay, we let an extra person in for a total of 11), this three-day conference in an intimate workshop setting featured:

• Lisa Silverman, children’s book review editor of Jewish Book World and director of the Sinai Temple Blumenthal Library in Los Angeles
• Peninnah Schram, master storyteller and professor at Yeshiva University’s Stern College
• Jane Yolen, award-winning author of some 300 books
• Devorah Leah Rosenfeld, editor, Hachai Publishing
• Françoise Bui, executive editor, Delacorte (Random House)
• Rubin Pfeffer, agent, East/West Literary
• Mary Kole, agent, Andrea Brown Literary Agency
• Carolyn Yoder, editor, Calkins Creek Books
• Debra Hess, senior editor, Highlights for Children

Eleven participants gathered at the Poconos home of Highlights founders in Boyds Mills, PA. Among the participants, we had two author-illustrators and several accomplished authors.

After brief introductions, Lisa Silverman started us off with a comprehensive overview of Jewish children’s literature, starting with the 1930s Adventures of K’ton ton and moving through each decade to today’s contemporary YA. She then described the book review process at Jewish Book World and the author support services the Jewish Book Council offers.

Peninnah Schram talked about getting oral tradition down on paper. She told us a few stories and we could see why she’s a master storyteller. Several of us teared up at her stories, she told them so vividly.

After dinner, Lisa led us in a book discussion of three picture books and a chapter book.

Day Two began with an editors/agents panel, each one stating what he or she looks for. These talks will be available soon on my blog, The Whole Megillah, in video format. Each workshop participant had a scheduled time to meet with an editor or agent to discuss her work in depth. By late afternoon, we gathered as a group once more to hear about writing Jewish fiction from Jane Yolen.

Jane was joined by Highlights senior editor Debra Hess in providing critiques in an after-dinner group critique session. For many of the participants, this was the workshop’s proverbial icing on the cake.

On our final day, Boyds Mills art director Tim Gilner joined us for breakfast and met with our author-illustrators. We then devoted our remaining time together to a discussion of each individual’s challenges and goals for the next 12 months. After lunch, several participants took the tour of Highlights and Boyds Mills Press and spoke with some of the editors.

Whew. Will this become an annual event? If this year’s participants have anything to say about it, the answer is yes.

So, for those of you who write Jewish-themed children’s books, stay tuned. Also be sure to be on the lookout for more information about the one-day conference in New York City, now sponsored by the Jewish Book Council and scheduled for Sunday, November 21 at the Center for Jewish History. We’ve got a great agenda lined up for you!

Resources:

• Jewish Book World
• Jewish Book Council
• HighlightsFoundation workshops

Bio: Barbara Krasner is an award-winning author and speaker based in New Jersey. She blogs at The Whole Megillah The Writer’s Resource for Jewish-themed Children’s Books and has an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Notes from Around the Web

Author Allison Amend blogs for the JBC/MJL Author Blog series on Jews in odd places and on the real-life store that inspired a fictional one in her new novel, Stations West.
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Tablet Magazine is looking for a part-time (25 hrs/week) publicist/outreach coordinator.
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Assaf Gavron's Almost Dead (translated with James Lever by the author) is already on my tbr list, and I was pleased to see it reviewed favorably on the Three Percent website.
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Barbara Krasner gives a report on her recent research trip to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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Jordana Horn reviews a "puppet show about Auschwitz." Read the review--all the way to the end.
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Looking for more weekend reading material? This week, the American Jewish Press Association announced its latest Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. You can download/read winning journalism in nearly 20 categories.

Shabbat Shalom!

Journal Editor to Speak at Museum of Jewish Heritage

Received from NYC's Museum of Jewish Heritage:

On Wednesday, July 14 at 7 p.m., as part of the popular Terrace Talks series, editor Joshua Ellison will discuss his groundbreaking, Habitus: A Diaspora Journal, which Library Journal praises for its “exemplary creative and journalistic work.” Habitus is an international journal of Diaspora literature and global Jewish culture that was first published in 2005. The conversation between Ellison and author André Aciman (Eight White Nights, 2010) will focus on whether New York City —especially Manhattan —is the new Jerusalem, or if the very question is sacrilegious. This fascinating conversation will take place at the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.

Each issue of Habitus focuses on a different city, penetrating deep into the emotional and political substance of the urban environment. Cities that have been featured in the magazine include New Orleans, Moscow, and Buenos Aires. As Ellison wrote in the introduction to the first issue: “Habitus is not just about cataloguing distinctions. It’s a way of using the whole world as raw material for creating a more complete picture of ourselves.”

Tickets are $5 and free for members. Tickets are available online at www.mjhnyc.org or by calling the Museum box office at 646.437.4202.

Terrace Talks feature authors presented in one of the Museum’s beautiful spaces with stunning views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty.

Translated Poetry by Avrom Sutzkever in Hayden's Ferry Review

The current issue of Hayden's Ferry Review, a literary journal from Arizona State University, features poetry by Avrom Sutzkever (1913-2010), introduced and translated by Miri Koral. And luckily for us, this material is available online.

As Koral writes:

"The Yiddish poet and writer Avrom Sutzkever is considered to be the greatest Yiddish poet of modern times, and the greatest post-War Jewish poet. He was born in the town of Smorgon, Lithuania in 1913, near the city of Vilnius (Vilna). Vilna, the venerable center of a great flowering of Jewish cultural and intellectual life, became his enduring spiritual and creative home. Already prior to WW II, he enjoyed a well-established reputation as a member of the literary group Yung Vilna (Young Vilna).

The body of work that he then produced under hellish circumstances in the Vilna Ghetto is both rigorous lyrical poetry as well as a magnificent artistic witnessing of the systematic destruction of Jewish Vilna. During this period, at risk of death, he was instrumental in rescuing many rare Jewish books and manuscripts that were otherwise destined for nefarious ends by the Nazis. In 1943 he escaped to the partisans and then to Moscow, subsequently serving as a witness at the Nuremberg trials.

In 1947, he emigrated to Israel, where he continued his efforts to safeguard what remained of Yiddish language and culture. He founded the literary group of Yiddish writers, Yung Yisroel (Young Israel), as well as Di Goldene Keyt (The Golden Chain), the leading Yiddish literary journal, which he edited from 1949 to 1995. Sutzkever was awarded the Israel Prize in 1985, the only Yiddish poet to have received this honor. His good friend Marc Chagall was also an illustrator of Sutzkever’s poetry.

In addition to undertaking to memorialize through his oeuvre both the glories and devastations of Jewish Vilna, his many published works address a wide array of themes, including life in Israel, metaphysical and artistic inquiries, and lyrical celebrations of the natural world.

Sutzkever’s poetry in general is a challenge to translate well because of its often extraordinary musicality (sounds and cadences) and multifaceted concepts dealing with spirituality, creativity, and the ephemerality of human experience. He also is known for enriching the language of his poems with words that he coined and with those no longer in use from Old Yiddish. In other words, much of this uniqueness inherent in the original cannot help but be lost in translation. In spite of these translating challenges, English translations of Sutzkever’s poetry can be found in numerous anthologies, collected works, and in The New Yorker.

The two Sutzkever poems translated here were written in the Vilna Ghetto and have the challenge less of complex language than of keeping some of the rhythm and rhyme of the original while adhering as much as possible to the poems’ exact wording and compact power in depicting acts of spiritual resistance in inhumane situations."

To read the two poems, "A Little Flower" and "Scorched Pearls," please click here.

Notes from Around the Web

We could all use a laugh these days, right? So thank you to Jeffrey Goldberg, for sharing "words that the New York Times will not print."
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Thank you also to New Vilna Review, for publishing my Israel- and family-inspired poem, "Sisters, or Double Chai."
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And thank you to Janice Weizman, for telling me about Ilanot, a creative-writing journal "produced, designed and edited by former participants in the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University," and pointing me in particular to an interview with author Allen Hoffman.

Shabbat shalom!

TBR: The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman

One of the summer releases I'm most looking forward to is Allegra Goodman's new novel, The Cookbook Collector.

For the past couple of months, I've been following Allegra's blog and enjoying her pre-publication updates. She has also been describing her current writing, and, this week, looking back at her 1999 experience as one of the New Yorker's "20 Under 40" (this last bit has been prompted by the current buzz around the magazine's newly released list).

Allegra has impressed me as an immensely talented--not to mention uncommonly modest and generous--writer since my freshman year in college. During my first semester, I auditioned for and won a small part in play she had written and was producing with her sister (I played an anti-Semite). And I've been following Allegra's literary career with interest and admiration ever since (although I can't believe it took me so long to discover her blog!).

I thought Intuition, in particular, was an exceptionally good novel, but it looks as though The Cookbook Collector is giving it some competition: The new book has already received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus. And I've pre-ordered my copy.

Mazel tov to Allegra on a(nother) well-deserved success.

Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club Convenes TODAY

Today's the day! If you're free at 12:30 p.m. (U.S. Eastern), join the fine folks from the Jewish Book Council as they host author Jennifer Gilmore for the latest "Twitter Twunch and Talk" book club. Up for discussion: Gilmore's new novel, Something Red. You'll find all the details here. (And unless there's some last-minute crisis going on at work, I'll be joining in from my desk, too.)

Lit Event Next Week in Brooklyn

To be held Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 7 p.m., at Greenlight Bookstore.

"As part of the Beatrice.com author/blogger pairings hosted by the Greenlight Bookstore, please join us as Jacob Paul speaks about his debut novel, Sarah/Sara with Sara Ivry of Tablet Magazine.

An engrossing meditation on the meaning of faith, Sarah/Sara is the story of a young Orthodox Jewish woman who undertakes a solo kayaking journey across the Arctic Ocean after her parents are killed and she is disfigured by a terrorist bomb in a Jerusalem café. Haunted by her parents' death, and in particular by memories of her father, a 9/11 survivor whose dream was to kayak through the Arctic, Sarah embarks on her expedition unprepared for the strenuous physical and emotional trial that lies ahead. What begins as a series of diary entries on her struggle with faith ends in a fight for survival, as Sarah slowly comes to realize that she is lost in the Arctic wilderness with the ice closing in around her.

Jacob Paul teaches at the University of Utah, where he earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. A 9/11 World Trade Center survivor, he won the 2008 Utah Writers' Contest, and the 2007 Richard Scowcroft Prize."

As Seen on Twitter

Twitter is a great place to get find literary news and links, especially of the Jewish variety:

@sarahw Toby Press looks to be in some serious trouble. Damn. http://is.gd/bYxU7 (via @MAOrthofer)

@nytimesbooks Jerusalem Journal: Israelis and Palestinians Hail Writers and the Word, Just Not With One Another http://nyti.ms/c7u0uS

@PublishersWkly A new PW feature: Reviews Pick of the Day. We're starting with Gary Shteyngart's upcoming SUPER SAD TRUE LOVE STORY. http://bit.ly/cYIGWY

I may have to rethink the "Notes from Around the Web" label, and/or start a regular column featuring Twitter finds. What do you think?

Oh, and you can find and follow me on Twitter, too!