The Hawaii Book and Music Festival is one of the best events in Honolulu each year!

Our success will be due in large part to the generous assistance of volunteers who welcome attendees, host the information booth, assist with registration, host presenters, staff author programs & panels, supervise book signings, hand out surveys and much more.

•     Volunteers will receive a free HBMF T-shirt.

•     Volunteers will receive preferred free parking, and lunch.

•     The majority of volunteer activities require being on your feet for most of your shift. Please wear comfortable shoes.

•     Although we take supervised high school groups, most volunteers must be 18 years of age or older. You cannot bring children under the age of 18 with you during your shift. You may join your families at the Festival before or after your shift(s).

As the volunteer coordinator, I need between 45 and 50 volunteers for each of two shifts on Saturday, May 5 and Sunday May 6th. Morning shift: 9:15-1:00 and Afternoon shift: 12:30-5:30

Visit www.hawaiibookandmusicfestival.org for more information

Forbes came out with its annual list of America's safest cities and, in spite of all the crime fought on Hawaii Five-O this past year, Honolulu is still #3 on the list. 

America’s Safest Cities 2011

• Plano, Texas
• Henderson, Nevada
• Honolulu, Hawaii
• Santa Ana, California
• Lincoln, Nebraska
• San Jose, California
• Mesa, Arizona
• Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Aurora, Colorado
• New York, New York

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethgreenfield/2011/12/15/americas-safest-cities/

Let's face it - English is a crazy language.

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

I received this in an email from a friend and rather than forward, I am pasting it here.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig..

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. - Why doesn't 'Buick' rhyme with 'quick' ?

I still don’t have a costume for Halloween and I just can’t decide what to be.

I thought about going as Gianni Agnelli (the founder of fiat) only because then I’d need a few of these as accessories to make the costume authentic.

The fiat 500 and fiat 500 c.

Aren’t they adorable?

Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to fly with the hubby.

So then I thought maybe I should go as Steve Jobs.

A well-timed and topical tribute costume to one of the greatest artists/inventors of our times. Someone who brought to light the belief that technology and liberal arts go hand in hand.

Plus there are plenty of his famous quotes flying around the internet (just a few keystrokes away) to spout out at the party. And, as a bonus, I already own a mock black turtleneck and jeans.

Plus the kids would sooooooooooooo love me!

To be authentic and do the great man justice, I would need to hustle on down to the Apple Store at Kahala Mall and buy a few new iPods, an iPad or two, a pair of iPhone 4s, a miniMac and a brand new Macbook pro and a couple dozen fun accessories.  

I submitted my piece to The New Yorker (Shouts and Murmurs) on 10/24/2011 at 8:06 pm Hawaii Time

They sent me a rejection on 10/26/2011 at 8:53 am Hawaii Time

Record rejection time of 36 hours and 47 minutes!!! Wow!

They could not wait to get rid of that piece. (of crap)

And for the record, it is the better brand of rejection, the “despite its evident merit” version!!

I am the proud owner of a pair of those, now!

Hey!

Don’t laugh. You don’t even have one!! You don't even have one rejection from them.

Here's my ninth...

From: Shouts, TNY [mailto:TNY_Shouts@advancemags.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 8:52 AM
To: tropicalparadise@hawaii.rr.com
Subject: Thanks For Your Submission

Dear Jacqui,

We’re sorry to say that your piece on Quickster wasn’t right for us, despite its evident merit. Thank you for allowing us to consider your work.

Best regards,
The Shouts Dept.

…………………..

They even spelled my name right!

I’ll post the actual piece soon. And you can reject it too, if you want.

I did some writing this weekend and submitted a humor piece to the New Yorker for consideration.

Yeah me!!!

Wait. The New Yorker?

Are you crazy?

Um, yes. Have you not been reading my posts?

Okay, but why?–why you ask did you submit to THE New Yorker?—They only publish famous, great authors like John Cheever, Roald Dahl, Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, Philip Roth, J.D. Salinger, Irwin Shaw, John Updike, Eudora Welty, and E. B. White.

Well, duh! I know that.

I’m not stupid. . . but I am a collector.

I collect stamps, books, Polynesian and Micronesian art, wrinkles (mostly on the forehead and neck areas), great stories, friends, great stories of friends and rejection notices from The New Yorker.

And the only way to keep adding to my collection of rejection notices from the New Yorker is by writing and submitting reasonably well-written pieces of fiction and humor.

Try it and watch your collection grow!!!

This one (the rejection for the piece I just sent in) will be my ninth (lucky #9-baby!!!) authentic rejection notice from The New Yorker. The last rejection they sent me was their “despite its evident merit” version, a real step up from their “you totally suck eggs” rejection notice.

I'll share the rejection notice with you when it comes and then I'll post the actually rejected piece on my blog so you can read and reject it also...if you want to :)

In the meantime, here's a post from funny writer Kate Heidel, a transplanted Minnesotan (did she take my place when I left?) and her take on the ubiquitous New Yorker Rejection letter from her website wearyourcape.com

http://www.wearyourcape.com/essays/newyorker.htm

The world of publishing is spinning. It’s like the big bang all over again and no one is exactly certain how the planets will realign once the dust settles.

Think music and think back many years.

Remember record* signings backstage in the afterglow of an awesome concert.

*Note for those too young to remember: records are actual physical vinyl discs. You could throw them, bend them, break them and play them on a turntable)

Then came CDs and signings by big names at the neighborhood music stores? You do remember neighborhood record stores, don’t you?

Tower Record. Sam Goodies. All the quirky local stores...see some great ones here:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/40-sad-portraits-of-closed-record-stores

Just how does one get an autograph from a famous singer these days when all your music is digital? What does said star sign? Your iPod?

One only has to realize how quickly music changed to get a feel for how things in the publishing world are moving.

In Hawaii alone:

17 Borders stores: Boarded up.

My favorite used book shoppe: Shuttered

The bookstore by the University of Hawaii that has been open for 40 years: Gone

A friend who has owned bookstores for more than 40 years and who recently closed the last of his three stores said to me, “How can a sure thing for 40 years just dissolve overnight?”

Along with bookstore owners and booksellers, it turns out the publishers are running scared.

I am sure there will be a lot of mistakes made and a lot of case studies for future generations to study in this new publishing climate.

One of them might be the case of Penguin (via Riverhead Books, a literary division of Penguin) verses Hawaii writer Kianna Davenport.

Ms. Davenport, an award-winning author, was recently dropped by Penguin when she self-published some older works that Penguin and other publishers had passed on.

It seems that some of the big publishers are so afraid of the capabilities of publishing through the internet (including self-publishing) that they are set to make examples out of their current authors in hopes of scaring others into behaving.

Although, all the publicity this has stirred, just might sell more books for Ms. Davenport.

Read more at:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/publishing-perils-in-the-digital-age/

http://blog.karenwoodward.org/2011/09/big-6-publisher-drops-author-kiana.html