In the middle of a cul de sac in the town where we used to live is a little island of grass and a single, nondescript street lamp that holds the stature of myth in our family. I speak of The Green Light. The Green Light, so named and mythologized by my daughter at two years of age, cast a peculiar green shade from its vantage point at the end of our street. I’m sure that with a little while of dedicated Googling I could determine the reason this light cast such a verdant hue, though as you’ll see I’m…
Mike Morrow | selected works
From Observations
My Future Author Award
What you’re looking at here is one of the most important artifacts of my life. I have had it with me as long as I’ve lived on my own, and even while it languished in a box in my parents’ basement it was never forgotten. It’s a classic scenario, probably as common today as it was thirtyish years ago—at the end of the school year the teacher handed out awards to every student. Mrs. G gave out the usual awards—class clown, best smile, most helpful—but she also made some bold predictions. And in mine, she changed my life. I received…
Media predictions for 2009
We don’t really need experts to tell us that the media landscape is changing, do we? Just the same, I found these two articles interesting, both as a participant in the media industry and as an observer of how the interwebs are reformatting notions of normalcy. Clay Shirky, author of one of my favorite non-fiction books from last year (Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations) on the media landscape in 2009 And a story by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic about the very real possibility of the end of the New York Times by May
The map rather than the destination (or, “What’s all this, then?”)
I tend to be more interested in the process of making meaning than in meanings themselves, but let’s start with a few definitions, since I think they’ll make it pretty obvious what I’m attempting here. The following are from the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, originally looked up on my iPhone () and linked for you here to Bartleby.com. Cartography n. The art or technique of making maps or charts. Commponplace adj. Having no remarkable features, characteristics, or traits; ordinary. n. A trite or obvious remark; a platitude n. A passage marked for reference or entered into a…