TheHotSpring.net :: Borders Books and Music was a place of pilgrimage for book lovers, music lovers and people who loved to sit with coffee and read, chat or peruse magazines they might or might not buy. It has played a vital role in the distribution of books of both wide and narrow market interest, and has driven the cathedral-warehouse paradigm of big bookstore chains. Its failure, however, opens the field for more innovative, more reader-friendly experiments in book selling.
Some have argued that Barnes and Noble was changed by its competition with Borders. Barnes and Noble has long been a leader in the big bookstore sector. But Borders, in many places, went bigger. It stocked everything that might fit into the mainstream book, magazine and music market, and was aggressive in putting full-size cafes in its bookstores, where patrons could sit and read books, whether they bought them or not.
Cafe Sentido has gone through various incarnations—first ContourNews, then Sentido.tv, including two supplements: CafeSentido.com, an art and exhibits forum, and The Global Intercept, a headline-linking and rapid-review forum—before taking on its current format as the broadsheet online magazine CafeSentido.com, which combines all of the prior incarnations in one forum. On Tuesday, July 19, we reached our 400,000th reader.
Cafe Sentido is still a small, independent publication, with a vision to grow, over time, and establish a new kind of online news source, integrating culture, commentary, science, economics, political analysis and straight news reporting. We look forward to continued growth and thank our readers for their participation, their interest and their attention, respect for which we hold as a sacred commitment. We believe a free and vigorous press is the frame on which a democracy is built.
IndependentsOfPrinciple :: We will not fall magically into a rising tide of job creation, just by depriving ourselves of services and privileges we have built into our way of life and on which our prosperity depends. And we will not create jobs by privileging those industries that are doing the least to innovate. Innovation is the American way; it is what the nation has always struggled to accomplish, and it must be the cornerstone of a new job-creation boom.
It may be that moments of grave economic pressure put grave strain on a culture’s ability to give voice to and to share a common understanding of core values. It may be that after the financial collapse that struck in 2007 and 2008, the US is facing a crisis of conscience and a struggle to regain its identity. We need to remember that we can take the reins of the 21st century economic landscape, and build the economy of tomorrow.
TheHotSpring.net :: The United States of America has been, since its birth 235 years ago, a world leader in promoting universal public education. It has also been a world leader in promoting universal access to higher education and to advanced degrees. That history has made the US a leader in technological innovation and advanced problem solving for two centuries. That legacy is under threat, and national educational aims demand immediate attention.
In the current budgetary and economic climate, cuts to public education, the rolling back of teachers’ salary opportunities, job security and benefits, and the underfunding of financial aid for higher education, are threatening to stunt the quality of education available to millions of Americans. But education is the key to strong, resilient democracy.
Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels. I am proud to be a member of the organization, and one who is inspired by the passion of its volunteers and fortunate to count so many good friends among its partners.
This past week, the organization took its campaign to Capitol Hill, bringing 85 volunteers to 140 office visits in the United States Congress —both houses, both parties— along with the State Department, the Department of Energy and the World Bank. The project is more than a response to fallout from excess atmospheric carbon dioxide; the CCL project involves connecting citizens with decision-makers on Capitol Hill, to take ideology out of the energy debate, and fashion policy more democratically.
What do we mean when we talk about sustainability? Do we mean forging, after thousands of years of civilization, at last, a truly sustainable relationship with nature? Do we mean “net-zero” resource impact (which, by the way does not necessarily equate to being rid of practices corrosive to natural systems)? Do we mean “living within our means”, according to the metabolic limitations of our natural environment?
At our roundtable discussion on “Utopia or Oblivion“, where we discussed a number of issues which demonstrate that only our best is good enough to solve the mounting global crisis involving climate pattern destabilization, resource depletion, food insecurity and chronic pervasive water scarcity, a graduate student asked why we don’t talk about what lies beyond sustainability, in a genuinely environmentally responsible future.
[Entrevista de Joseph Robertson, por Katiuska Rodríguez-Lesur]
“Hay mucha gente a la que le gusta decir que lo que quiere de Obama no son palabras, sino cifras. Si quisiéramos cifras y no palabras, no eligiríamos a ningún gobernante ni a ningún abogado, sino a un contable o un jefe de empresa incapaz de imaginar un valor que no fuera aritmético” — afirma Robertson.
Joseph Robertson podría presentarse como la pluma encantada de la poesía, sin embargo, su perfil no acepta el trazo único de esa virtud. El retrato de este intelectual americano brilla con sus propias luces en el mundo de las letras y de la politica. Sus revistas Casavaria y CafeSentido.com, son dos creaciones literarias que navegan en la era digital, como tribuna de foros, como una propuesta de arte, como una actitud filosófica y como el demócrata de pura cepa que es él. En 2004, cuando millones de norteamericanos se dieron cita en la Conferencia Nacional Democratica, Robertson descubrió que un político casi desconocido, Barack Obama, era el hombre sincero e intelectualmente dinámico que necesitaba su país. Cuando sus contemporáneos, tanto en Europa como en Estados Unidos, le decían que era imposible que ganara un hombre como él, el poeta insistía en que por tantos fallos que tuviera el ser humano, y de hecho la cultura de su país, el pueblo estaba listo para dar el paso. Ese viaje intelectual y espiritual por la severidad de la duda ajena, le valió el aprendizaje de no depender del escepticismo y de fortalecer lo que ya nadie tiene, la fe en el potencial de una política justa.
Cristina Sánchez-Conejero
1ª edición: 21 diciembre 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9826491-1-4
Testimonio. Diario. Fábula. Memorias. Pensamiento. Una niña postfranquista es un texto repleto de observaciones íntimas y relevantes, que ayudan a comprender una época, un mundo nuevo, el nacimiento de una cultura que antes no tenía la libertad de vivirse y expresarse del todo. Ilumina un mundo que tantas veces se ha contado o como inmerso en el pasado o totalmente desconexo, pero que aquí vive y respira como el ambiente humano que es de veras.
Cristina Sánchez-Conejero presta a este volumen elegante el ojo del cineasta, el corazón y el arte del poeta, la inteligencia insistente de la profesora universitaria. Aprender de su narración no es sólo aprender de su vida; es aprender de la nuestra.
Cristina Sánchez-Conejero es profesora asociada de narrativa y cine español de los siglos XX y XXI en la University of North Texas. Recibió su doctorado de la University of California, Santa Barbara (2003) y su Masters de Villanova University (2000). Es autora de los libros académicos ¿Identidades españolas? Literatura y cine de la globalización (1980-2000) (2006), Spanishness in the Spanish Novel and Cinema of the 20th-21st Century (2007), y Novela y cine de ciencia ficción española contemporánea (2009), además de más de una docena de artículos publicados en revistas como Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Revista Hispánica Moderna, Hispanófila, Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature y Crítica Hispánica. Es directora de la película Hispanosophy (2010), que también escribió y produjo.
Una niña postfranquista es su primera novela. [Leer más...]
Víctor Martín Iglesias (Plasencia, España, 1985) comenzó a escribir, como dice uno de sus poemas, “a la misma edad que todos”, y eso es exactamente lo que siguió y sigue haciendo hoy en día. Este, su primer poemario, es el resultado de sus años de universidad y de viajes, de formación literaria y vital, que llega a ser casi lo mismo. Crónica e invención se entremezclan para intentar explicar Cómo hemos llegado a esto.
Siempre preocupado por la exactitud del lenguaje, envuelve sus poemas en un contexto sugerente pero a la vez humano y palpable. Su manera de acercarse al verso demuestra una gran comprensión del sutil y aplastante dilema con el que se enfrenta todo escritor: el que plantea la decisión entre la palabra resplandeciente y la palabra precisa sin adorno. Como dice en uno de sus poemas, la poesía es “vocación de alquimia”, aunque el poeta no pueda evitar verse en ocasiones como un simple funcionario “buscando cuerpos entre los escombros”. Sugiere al lector que para crear no hay sólo que (re)inventar el lenguaje sino además un terreno que lo haga comprensible y así, nos muestra que en lo cotidiano habita también lo trascendente.
