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Editor's note: This article was originally published on November 28, 2011.
For those of us preparing to graduate in the next several months, it's time. Time to get ready to job search. Or, as I'm known to do, it's time to prepare to get ready to job search because, hey, you can't be overly prepared, right? This piece isn't about applying for jobs themselves–for that, turn to Heidi's post from earlier this year– but the few weeks or months of preparation before you start: the "holy crap where do I even begin to look or know what I'm looking for?" stage, if you will.
I am by no means a job-seeking expert, but I do have a running joke with my family that I collect part-time jobs, so I've been friendly with my resume and cover letters for a while. Spending time tweaking and polishing your official application materials is important but I've found that the job search preparation process is just as important. What am I talking about? Here's a few tips to make your search a little more organized.
1) Face the facts
For the last semester, I've subscribed to just abaout every relevant job-seeking listserv out there. Among my favorites are I Need a Library Job because you can sort by state, Lib Gig Jobs because I don't have to sort through dozens of non-relevent job openings, ALA Job List because even though they have a lot of intermediate and upper-level jobs I get a sense of where my career could be headed, and ILI-L, ALA's Information Literacy and Instruction listserv because that's the type of job I'm looking for.
The benefit of subscribing to listservs is 2-fold: first, you can get a sense of what's out there now. Do you really want to move back home to Ohio but in 4 days you only ever see 1 job opening? You might want to consider another location, at least temporarily. Do you have your heart set on cataloging in a special library? In a few days, you'll see how many positions are out there. It's a good reality check. And don't forget: ain't nothing wrong with part-time (for now)! Second, you can see where your skill sets are useful and what needs to be improved on. For me, after reading dozens and dozens of job descriptions, I have a pretty clear understanding where my shortcomings are and because I still have several months until I graduate, I can start working on them now.
Be warned: subscribe to the digest version if you can! Because the last thing I want to do is get distracted by potential jobs during finals, I have a list-serv folder in Gmail, subdivided into the specific list-serv, and I have all the emails directly routed to the folder. That way I can look at them when I'm ready. Check out Lauren's post on special libraries and Annie's post about art libraries for resources.
2) Get the word out
If you're going to ask people to be your professional references, which, by the way, you should always ask, give them plenty of notice. Some people want to be notified of every job you're applying to so they can be prepared to be specific, others just want a sense of the types of positions you're looking for, and others still might want to write you a stock letter of recommendation. The point is, now's the time to figure out who will be your references for what kinds of positions and to give those people a heads up. Many academic positions want letters from your references and the more time you can give them to write it, the better the letter will be and the more your reference will like you (no one wants a 1 week deadline). It'll also open the conversation for your professional mentors to talk to you about their job search, what skill sets they see in you, and any tips they might have.
3) Organize
I have a Google Calendar to keep track of deadlines, required application materials, and an estimation of how long the whole application will take me to put together (overkill? That's my middle name). Point is, figure out what works for you to keep up with deadlines and whatnot. Now's the time to nail down an organizational structure. For example, I have a "job search" folder on my hard drive, and within that folder, I have folders for every position I apply for that includes the job description, any research I might have done on the organization, my resume, cover letter, references, and any supplemental materials they require. I like to group them by type: academic, public, instruction, outreach, etc., but that's just me. Again: what works for you?
What strategies do you use for the job-search preparation process?
Categories: Job Searching


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Minnetrista, MN Physical Therapy Services
Physical Therapy provides interventions to maintain, restore, and improve movement, health and activity. Our preventative, wellness and rehabilitative physical therapy services in Minnetrista, MN help you improve in whatever capacity you seek.
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Our Registered Dietitian Nutritionist is a nutritional specialist that guides and counsels individuals in Minnetrista, MN on healthy eating habits and proper nutrition in order to lead a healthier lifestyle. The dietitian promotes dietary changes to prevent and manage chronic diseases such as pre-diabetes/diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, heart disease and weight management.
Live Your LifeTM also provides home safety assessments, corporate wellness and Medicare home care services in Minnetrista, MN. Whether you are recovering from a recent illness, hospitalization or surgery, our clinicians will help you improve your level of health from the comfort of your home.
01.27.23 - Patient- and Family-Centered Care: Why YOU are the Most Important Part of the Healthcare System
What is Patient- and Family-Centered Care? Patient- and Family-centered care (PFCC) can be defined in numerous ways depending on the source. In general, PFCC is a model for how healthcare services are delivered. The patient and their family, and the healthcare provider are partners as they…view full article
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Have you been visiting One-Minute Book Reviews since it was running around in Pampers just over a year ago? Consider yourself a visionary.
Janice Harayda, editor-in-chief of One-Minute Book Reviews, has been named one of 25 "Women Bloggers to Watch in 2008" by the site Virtual Woman's Day, which aims "to bring together women from around the world to network together, learn together and grow together" virtualwomansday.blogspot.com/2008/01/women-bloggers-to-watch-in-2008.html. Heidi Richards, creator of VWD, also publishes We, a quarterly magazine about women.
One-Minute Book Reviews has had a policy since its launch in late 2006 of devoting at least 50 percent of its posts to books by female authors.
(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.


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Classic Espadrille Sandals Platform Buckle Strap Sandals
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Returns Policy
You may return most new, unopened items within 15 days of delivery for a full refund.
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The wait is finally over. The 2013 Red Bull Illume Overall Winner, Top 10 category winners and Top 50 finalists were unveiled at a spectacular ceremony held in Hong Kong on August 29th. German photographer Lorenz Holder was crowned Overall Winner for his remarkable shot of a snowboarder next to a giant satellite dish. As Overall Winner, Holder received a Leica S camera, a broncolor Move Outdoor kit and Sun-Sniper gear — a prize worth over €30,000 in total. He also won the Experimental category.
"The quality of the images in the Top 50 was amazing, so for me it is a great honour to be voted number one. It's so unreal. It will take a few days for the news to sink in," said Lorenz Holder, the Overall Winner of the 2013 Red Bull Illume.
"There are talented photographers and then there are gifted photographers," said Jym Wilson, senior photo editor at USA Today and one of 50 Red Bull Illume judges. "I saw a lot of talent but also saw some truly gifted photographers. These are not just action photographers but people with great technical and artistic skills."
Other category winners included Scott Serfas (Illumination), Daniel Vojt?ch (New Creativity), Romina Amato (Energy), Chris Burkard (Spirit), Morgan Maassen (Lifestyle by Leica), Jeroen Nieuwhuis (Close Up), Zakary Noyle (Sequence) and Samo Vidic (Wings). All category winners walked away with a Leica X2, a broncolor Para 88 P Kit and an assortment of Sun-Sniper gear. The Athletes' choice, as voted by Red Bull athletes, went to Morgan Maassen for his underwater shot of surfers chatting in-between sets of waves.
The Winner Award Ceremony was a true celebration of action and adventure sports photography with hundreds of leading photographers and editors attending. Highlights from the evening included performances by BMX flatland athletes Viki Gomez and Matthias Dandois and an illuminated dragon dance.
Afterwards the 50 images were unveiled on 2m x 2m life-size lightboxes along Hong Kong's famous Avenue of Stars, where they will remain for the next three weeks as a free public exhibtion. Appropriately for a city known for its awesome noctunal lights, the illuminated exhibition will open at night time only, from 8pm to 11pm from August 30th to September 15th. Red Bull Illume will then go to the US before traveling around the world's capitals and cultural hubs for the next two years as a unique night-time exhibition.
The Top 50 Red Bull Illume Winners:
Overall Winner: Lorenz Holder (GER), Playground
Athletes' Choice: Morgan Maassen (USA), Lifestyle by Leica
Category winners are in bold below.
(AUS) Stuart Gibson
(IRE) George Karbus
(NED) Jeroen Nieuwhuis
(SUI) Claudio Casanova
(USA) Morgan Maassen
(ARG) Juan Cruz Rabaglia
(CAN) Jussi Grznar
(CZE) Daniel Vojt?ch
(EST) Jaanus Ree
(GER) Lorenz Holder
(CAN) Sterling Lorence
(FIN) Rami Hanafi
(SUI) Romina Amato
(SUI) David Carlier
(USA) Christian Pondella
(CAN) Jussi Grznar
(ESP) Ismael Ibañez Ruiz
(USA) Morgan Maassen
(USA) Theodore Van Orman
(USA) Jimmy Wilson
(CAN) Scott Serfas
(CAN) Jody MacDonald
(SUI) Nicolas Jutzi
(USA) Clark Fyans
(USA) Ryan Taylor
(AUS) Stuart Gibson
(IRE) George Karbus
(POL) Rafal Meszka
(USA) Dave Lehl
(USA) Chris Burkard
(AUS) Martin Lugger
(CAN) Paul Bride
(GER) Lorenz Holder
(ITA) Olaf Pignataro
(USA) Scott Dickerson
(AUT) Rainer Eder
(CAN) Ray Demski
(GER) Florian Breitenberger
(GER) Lorenz Holder
(SWE) Elias Kunosson
(CAN) Scott Serfas
(FRA) Vince Perraud
(GBR) Dan Carr
(USA) Blotto Gray
(USA) Zakary Noyle
(AUS) Krystle Wright
(GRE) Dimitrios Kontizas
(SLO) Samo Vidic
(USA) Lucas Gilman
(USA) Benjamin Ginsberg
Check out the 2013 Top 50 gallery right here.


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Due to the serious nature of allegations against Sam Ovens, Defrauders.com has temporarily removed the article and has asked the user to re-submit a more detailed report, backed with more substantial evidence(s).
We understand that the user has initiated a collaboration campaign to investigate, research, interview, gather evidence, and compile a comprehensive dossier on Sam Ovens. We will keep this page online until 30th September 2021.
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Reason Being has not received any gifts yet
Welcome to the Think Atheist community! Join us in the chat on the bottom right of the screen and feel free to ask questions and get involved as much or as little as you want! If you would like to, add me as a friend and I'm also on twitter as RSAnative if you care to follow. Welcome again and make yourself at home!


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SYR and I are both confirmed, hopeless, chocoholics. Yes, we love chocolate in almost any shape or form. Here is a recipe she adapted (to make it pareve) from Jacqueline Bellefontaine's What's Cooking Chocolate:
Viennese Chocolate Fingers
Makes about 18
- 1/2 cup sweet margarine
- 6 tbsp confectioner's sugar
- 1 1/2 cups self – rising flour, sifted
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
- 7 ounces dark chocolate
- Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets. Beat the sweet margarine and sugar together in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat the flour and cornstarch into the mixture.
- Melt 2 1/4 oz of the dark chocolate and beat into the cookie dough.
- Place in a pastry bag fitted with a large star tip and pipe fingers bout 2 inches long on the prepared cookie sheets, slightly spaced apart to allow for spreading during cooking.
- Bake in a prepared oven at 375 F for 12-15 minutes. Cool slightly on the cookie sheets, then carefully transfer with a spatula to a wire rack and let cool completely.
- Melt the remaining, dark chocolate and dip one end of each cookie in the chocolate, allowing the excess to drip back into the bowl.
- Place the cookies on a sheet of baking parchment and allow to completely set before serving.
Not only do these cookies practically "melt in your mouth," but the taste is almost unequaled by anything else I can remember. They went so fast, I never got a chance to shoot my own picture and had to use the photo above, a detail from the one appearing in the book!
Enjoy, gentle reader, enjoy!


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If you're in need to outfit your Rolls-Royce with new tires, the place to go is Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Austin near Austin, TX. We offer regular tire maintenance, including tire rotation, so you can avoid experiencing a blowout or a flat. Our selection long-lasting new tires for sale are the most popular and top-rated brands and are sold at a price that won't break the bank. We even boast a variety of tire promotions for our customers on a budget.
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Salomon™ is a premiere running brand. The shoes are made with the highest-quality materials and are designed to provide customers with features to improve running performance and increase durability. Salomon is also committed to preserving the environment you love to run in.
Salomon takes responsibility for the impact of its company. The brand is committed to understanding its environmental impact, reduce CO2 emissions, reduce reliance on non-renewable resources, eliminate toxicity, and develop products and processes which are environmentally friendly throughout their life cycle.
Mountains are a state of mind. Running is a state of mind. Salomon brings those states of mind together.


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On Friday November 17th, and Saturday November 18th I will join hundreds of other individuals who will ride their bicycles or crew from Miami to Key West 165-miles. Our journey will be one filled with hope, filled with pride, and filled with the dream of a future free of AIDS.
This year will mark the 14th year of The SMART Ride journey, I have set an ambitious goal to help raise more than the required $1250 because I believe what we do makes a difference (and because 100% of the money you donate will go back to the community).
The event guarantees that every penny that I raise (with your help) will be given to AIDS Service Organizations and directed to prevention, education and direct services.
Together we can make a real difference, we can change the world, and help free future generations of living with HIV, while helping those already affected, infected or at risk today stay healthy.
We can share the words of Margaret Mead "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has".
Please Support


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Decorative Tile
Infuse your home with personality and make a statement with decorative tile. Curated with your project in mind, we've compiled an extensive selection of decorative tiles and decorative tile trim. Each tile is uniquely selected to beautify and protect your kitchen, bathroom, entryway, and more. Explore our wide variety of tile colors, finishes, patterns, and shapes to elevate the look and feel of your living space today.Remy 8" × 8" Cement Tile in Sophia
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Manhattan Wall Mosaic in Mint
Manhattan Wall Mosaic in Cashmere
More on Decorative Tiles
Decorative tiles are known mostly for their ability to elevate and enhance a space. Often, they are widely available in different colors, finishes, patterns, and shapes that can be customized in a variety of ways. This unique ability to easily customize a home and infuse a unique personality to a single space is why they're a favorite among interior designers and homeowners. Besides being beautiful, decorative tiles are also known for their long-lasting qualities. Often, decorative tile or tile trim is made of extra strong stone materials like ceramic, porcelain, limestone, or marble.
Made to stand the test of time, these materials have protective qualities that are fantastic for the home. The naturally smooth texture and nonporous surfaces of ceramic and porcelain make them perfect for the home because they can withstand moisture and are easy to clean. Ceramic or porcelain tiles are also widely available in textures and finishes that can mimic stone or wood, making them ideal for decorative tile borders in the bathroom or decorative tile backsplashes in the kitchen. Limestone or marble also have a naturally smooth texture that is protective and easy to clean. However, unlike ceramic or porcelain, decorative tile slabs like limestone and marble have unique variations on their surfaces that can help give the look of luxury to your kitchen or bathroom.
Check out our selection of decorative tiles.


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Are Tarot Reading Apps Accurate
Whether you are considering a tarot reading for a personal problem or you are just curious to learn more about tarot, you've come to the right place. Tarot can be a powerful tool to help you with your life's challenges. Tarot cards can represent different situations in your life such as the present, future, and past. The querent will ask the reader questions that will help him interpret the cards.
Professional tarot readers use Tarot cards as a tool to guide and grow their spirituality. Many people believe that reading the cards can help them navigate their own spiritual paths. This is especially true for beginners to tarot. The tarot can help you understand your situation, even though it can be confusing. Here are some tips to get the most from tarot readings.
The tarot deck contains a variety of cards in the Rider-Waite deck. Some systems use numerology and astrology while others draw from Kabbalah. There are several popular decks and each has its own interpretation. However, the most popular and widely used decks are the Rider-Waite deck. They are easy to find and are full of vivid illustrations.
The Court cards represent the people in the spreads and embody the characteristics of the archetypes. The court cards represent events and people in your life. They represent emotions, intuition, and relationships. The spreads show the story arcs for each card. The Court cards can be used in many situations, but they are commonly referred to as ""face card"".
The tarot deck has 78 cards. Major and minor arcana are the trump cards, while the Minor Arcana are the remaining 57 cards. The Major Arcana consists of 22 cards that represent karmic lessons. The Minor Arcana has 56 cards. There is also a king, queen, jack, and eight sex cards. The majority of tarot decks contain 78 cards.
The tarot was originally a game of cards similar to modern bridge. It first appeared in Europe in the 15th century, and the most famous decks were sold to wealthy families in Italy. The original tarot deck was probably brought by Islamic soldiers when they traveled to various parts of Europe. This was the time when divination became popular in Europe. Tarot cards were popularized as a result. So, who is behind the game of tarot?
The purpose of a Tarot reading is to tap into your intuition. This process can reveal truths about your past, present, and future. While it can't tell you your fortune, it can give you more awareness of your innermost truths. It's worth trying, as long as you don't use it to predict your future. Tarot has many benefits. Tarot can help you make better decisions, and improve your quality life.


text: Represent your favorite stars on the hardwood without breaking the bank when you choose Philadelphia 76ers replica jerseys from www.sixersshop.com! Here you'll find Philadelphia 76ers home and away replica jerseys for the whole family, all equipped with the traditional fit and pristine graphics you've come to expect. Pick up your new Philadelphia 76ers replica jersey today and let your dedication serve as a beacon to your fellow fans.


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Super Supra Footwear UK
Make a statement with the boldest footwear on the streets.
Supra footwear has only been around since 2006, but it's becoming so popular you wouldn't know it. Iconic figures in the urban music scene have been spotted wearing the bold shoes, including Jay-Z and Lil Wayne. The brand has become seriously desirable because of this. If you want to get the same look as these superstars, then grab yourself a pair.
It's not surprising that Supra is so popular when you take a look at their footwear. The brand is now known for offering a spectacular range of brightly coloured trainers that make other footwear look dull in comparison. The shoes make a real statement about your personality, and are real head-turners. Their chunky appearance makes them really stand out too.
Just some of the awesome colours available include:
- Neon pink
- Mint green
- Bright orange
While you can buy trainers that are completely covered in bright red, Supra like to mix things up, which is why you'll also find footwear made with several bold colours together. The brand isn't afraid to put together colours that you'd never think to combine, and this is part of their success.
You can match Supra trainers with brightly coloured clothes for a truly bold style, or you can wear them with monochrome colours to let the shoes speak for themselves.
It's not all about looks though; there's a reason many skaters also choose to wear Supra footwear. These are high-quality, high-performance trainers that are built to last. Whether you're running or skating, you can count on Supra to deliver what you need.
The popularity of Supra Footwear UK wide is becoming clear, so don't miss out on one of the most revolutionary footwear brands in years.
Buy Supra footwear UK
If you're looking for Supra footwear UK, there's no better way to buy than online. Footasylum have a great range of Supra trainers for men and women, so you can be confident that they'll have something to suit your look. For those that want something a little more low-key, you can have all of Supra's expert design in white, grey or black.


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Spilstead Farm Airfield Photos
Do you have any photos taken at or near Spilstead Farm?
Why not share them with other UKGA users?
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Registered users received the following benefits:
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- ... and more!
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Jason and Tiffany Mertlich decided to participate in a growing trend and have a "gender reveal" party for their fourth child.
Recently, many parents have learned the gender of their baby by doing something such as opening a box of either pink or blue balloons, hitting a piñata that releases pink or blue confetti, or cutting into a cake with the color pink or blue inside.
But instead of asking friends and family to help surprise them in one of these ways, the Mertlichs planned a reveal party for their three children.
Gunner, Paisley and Harper are all shown in the family's YouTube video, gathered around the table as they prepare to find out the gender of their new sibling-to-be. They are asked what they believe the gender will be: Gunner guesses a boy, Paisley a girl and Harper simply guesses it will be a baby.
A cake is then set in front of them. Gunner cuts it open and, to his dismay, finds a pink slice of cake inside. Gunner reacts with obvious disappointment, questioning if it really is true. Once his dad confirms that he will indeed have a little sister, the tears begin to flow.
"It's OK, Gun. It's all right," Jason Mertlich says in the video.
But as Gunner continues to cry, Jason Mertlich admits that he had a similar reaction when he found out. Gunner continues to cry as he refuses to eat the "girl" cake.
"It has jelly in it," his sister pipes in. But nothing seems to help.
"I knew it was a girl," Gunner cries. "I hate girls. Every time it's girl, girl, girl, girl. It's always going to be girls. ... It's too much."
The video continues on as Mertlich tries to console his son. Since the video was posted to YouTube video six days ago, it has received almost 100,000 views.
Earlier this week, the Mertlich family also did an interview with Right This Minute regarding the popular video. When asked how he's doing now, Gunner admits that he's going to be OK.
"I told him that now he gets to spend all the dad and son time with me and doesn't have to share with anybody," Jason Mertlich said.
But when asked how he's going to explain to his daughter why he wasn't as happy with finding out it was a girl, Jason Mertlich admitted that he should have kept quiet.
"Well, sometimes I guess we should have bit our tongue," Mertlich said on Right This Minute.
Many viewers have commented about the statement and their concern for the new child, but the Mertlich family explained they just needed time to adjust to the news.
Online commenters also sympathized with the Mertlichs, having experienced the same situation in their own families.
"Aww Gunner! I felt the same way when I found out that my mom was having a boy after having twin boys," Jasmin Ann wrote online.
"You'll be thankful when you're older. Being the only boy/girl among your siblings is a blessing. You don't have to share clothes, toys and you get spoiled most of the time. Cheer up, Gunner!"
Others pointed out how Gunner may change his feelings about having sisters in the future.
"He says this now but as the older brother no one is going to be more protective of his younger sister than he is. The irony!" Peter Kim wrote.
The Mertlich family is not alone when it comes to kids having an emotional reaction to the gender of their new sibling. Lance Andrews posted a video last year of his daughters Maisy and Finley finding out they were going to have a little brother.
Although Finley was not initially excited for a brother, Andrews posted an update noting that things have worked out just fine. "Finley quickly got over her initial reaction and loves her little brother."
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com | Twitter: @Sarah_DNews


text:
Media Moves
Covering Latinos in the Media Industry
February 8, 2012 by Veronica Villafañe Leave a Comment
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text:
From the idea to the campaign
Global cooperation.
CLAAS tractors have been part of our product portfolio for more than 10 years. We invest a great deal of time and effort in ensuring that our tractors are continually evolving and developing so that they provide excellent work – and this is the feedback we have received from our customers. Their comments are supported by positive test results from a number of independent, highly regarded testing institutes and specialist agricultural magazines. Over 1,500 employees work tirelessly in our factories and in Research & Development, creating and developing better solutions for our tractors, and today we have more than 50 models available. Over 15,000 sales and customer service staff, members of dealer sales teams and service technicians bring our tractors to the customers, old, new and prospective, and ensure that they run reliably. Over 120,000 CLAAS tractors are currently doing excellent work worldwide. This is the message we want to communicate.
How will we do this?
By showcasing the people who work with our machines and giving them a voice. Our customers.
What makes us stand out?
We start by thinking about the work itself. What jobs do farmers and contractors do with our machines? What features do users want to see in a machine? How can we help make the customer's work easier? We develop our machines – in every model range – to meet these requirements. CLAAS produces machines which enable the user to do excellent work. The concept behind the campaign was born: Excellent work. Tractors from CLAAS.
What is the most important thing for a farmer?
The soil. This is every farmer's biggest asset. Good soil safeguards the future of the farm and the production of high-quality food and nutrients. This concept will be reflected in the images we use: we will show the farmer doing excellent work. From above. Looking down at the soil.
What is the underlying concept?
Every strand of the campaign will tell a true story. Real fields will be photographed in graphically exciting ways. Real work, carried out by the customer with efficiency and precision, will be presented. We will feature real farmers and contractors with highly varying farm or business sizes. We will tell real stories. These will be highly individual stories about the challenges of day-to-day work. Stories about excellent work performed by customers with CLAAS tractors, symbolising the high quality expected of – and delivered by – CLAAS machines.
Discover the whole story.
The content of the webspecial is fascinating: the film clip, making-of pictures, the report on the farm, and much more. We will feature a new customer and their story at regular intervals.
Take a look. It's worth it! tractor.claas.com


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WxHaskell/Quick start
A quick start with wxHaskell
This document is written to get you started quickly with writing wxHaskell applications. Further documentation can be found on the documentation page.
Note from the author: I have written this page to be in close correspondence with the yahu getting started page – first of all to make my job easier by reusing Koen Claessen's excellent example, but also since it makes an interesting comparison: we reuse many concepts of yahu, most notably properties and attributes, but as yahu is based on Tcl/TK, the applications are also typed and structured in a fundamentally different way.
Daan Leijen
Hello world in wxHaskell
Start your favorite editor and write the following program (that will show a frame with a single button that closes the frame when pressed).
module Main where import Graphics.UI.WX main :: IO () main = start hello hello :: IO () hello = do f <- frame [text := "Hello!"] quit <- button f [text := "Quit", on command := close f] set f [layout := widget quit]
Now start GHCi and run the program:
> ghci -package wx Hello.hs [snip] Loading package wx ... linking ... done. Compiling Main ( Hello.hs, interpreted ) Ok, modules loaded: Main. *Main> main
Note: On MacOS X, you can only use the interpreter with special scripts, as you need to build MacOS X applications. Normally, the following commands will do the job:
> ghc -package wx -o hello Hello.hs > /usr/local/wxhaskell/bin/macosx-app -v hello > ./hello
You can read the MacOS X notes for more information on using wxHaskell on MacOS X, and how to use it from an interpreter prompt.
A typical wxHaskell program imports the Graphics.UI.WX library. If you need to access specific wxWidgets functionality, you would also import the lower level Graphics.UI.WXCore library. The main function uses start to start our GUI. The function start initializes the GUI framework with the provided argument and starts the window event loop until the application quits or when all top-level windows are closed. The GUI itself is described with the following functions:
frame :: [Prop (Frame ())] -> IO (Frame ()) button :: Window a -> [Prop (Button ())] -> IO (Button ()) text :: Attr (Window a) String layout :: Attr (Frame a) Layout (:=) :: Attr w a -> a -> Prop w set :: w -> [Prop w] -> IO () command:: Event (Control a) (IO ()) on :: Event w a -> Attr w a widget :: Window a -> Layout
Actually, some of these functions have (even) more general types – you can use the :t command in GHCi to see them.
The types Frame () and Button () denote graphical objects. These objects can have properties. When an object is created we can supply an initial list of properties but we can also set them later using set. The type of properties for frames are Prop (Frame ()) and for buttons Prop (Button ()).
Properties are created by combining attributes with values. Examples of attributes are text and layout. An attribute of type Attr w a applies to objects of type w and values of type a. Values can be assigned to attributes using the (:=) operator. You can find out more about attributes in the haddock documentation for the modules WX.Attributes and WX.Classes.
Somewhat special attributes are events. An event of type Event w a can be transformed into an attribute Attr w a using on. The value of an event attribute is normally an IO action that is executed when the event happens. Find out more about events in the haddock documentation for WX.Events and the lower level WXCore.Events
Since wxHaskell is based on an object-oriented framework, we also encode inheritance. The extra type parameter of objects encodes the inheritance relationship. When the parameter of an object is unit (), it denotes an object of that exact class. When the parameter is a type variable a, it denotes any object that is instance of that class. For example, both the frame and button functions return precisely a frame or button and use a () type parameter. However, the text attribute applies to any kind of window, including frames and buttons, and has a Window a as its argument. We can now use the text attribute for example for both frames and buttons. In wxHaskell, this works since a Frame () is actually a type synonym for Window (CFrame ()) and can thus be passed where a Window a is expected. The same hold for a Button () that is a synonym for Control (CButton ()) that is again a synonym for Window (CControl (CButton ())).
The layout of a window is specified through the layout attribute. The layout of the current program is rather terse and we will spice it up by letting the button float in the center when the window is resized. This is also a good opportunity to add a small margin around the button.
set f [layout := margin 10 (floatCentre (widget quit))]
We can also add a text label above the button that is also centered. The argument of column specifies the amount of space between the items.
set f [layout := margin 10 (column 5 [floatCentre (label "Hello") ,floatCentre (widget quit) ] )]
You can find out more about layout in the documentation for the WXCore.Layout module.
Bouncing balls
It is time for a more fun program that our Hello sample. We will write a program that lets us bounce balls on the screen!
Note that the bouncing balls window is not resizeable, with the maximize box greyed out on windows. First we look at the main function in our program – ballsFrame:
module Main where import Graphics.UI.WX -- constants: radius of the ball, and the maximal x and y coordinates radius, maxX, maxY :: Int maxY = 300 maxX = 300 radius = 10 -- the max. height is at most max. y minus the radius of a ball. maxH :: Int maxH = maxY - radius --the main function main = start ballsFrame ballsFrame = do -- a list of balls, where each ball is represented -- by a list of all future positions. vballs <- varCreate [] -- create a non-user-resizable top-level (orphan) frame. f <- frameFixed [text := "Bouncing balls"] -- create a panel to draw in. p <- panel f [on paint := paintBalls vballs] -- create a timer that updates the ball positions t <- timer f [interval := 20, on command := nextBalls vballs p] -- react on user input set p [on click := dropBall vballs p -- drop ball ,on clickRight := (\pt -> ballsFrame) -- new window ,on (charKey 'p') := set t [enabled :~ not] -- pause ,on (charKey '-') := set t [interval :~ \i -> i*2] -- increase interval ,on (charKey '+') := set t [interval :~ \i -> max 1 (i `div` 2)] ] -- put the panel in the frame, with a minimal size set f [layout := minsize (sz maxX maxY) $ widget p] where ...
Unlike more functional GUI libraries, wxHaskell does not provide a model for state management and uses simple mutable variables to communicate state across different event handlers. (Note: this is a concious design decision – as functional GUI interfaces are still very much a research area, we want to provide a full fledged GUI library using simple IO first, than try to build good functional interfaces on top of that). The state of the bouncing balls demo is a list of balls. Each ball is represented as a list of all its future heights. At the start of the program the list is empty (varCreate []).
Next, we use fixedFrame to create a non-resizeable window frame. A panel is created to paint the balls on and its paint handler paints the current balls in the panel. (Note: a panel has nothing to do with a Java panel: it is a widget that is normally used to place controls in as it manages control navigation keys like tab).
To animate the balls, we install a timer that advances all the balls on each timer tick and causes the panel to repaint the balls. We also install event handlers that react on the user: a mouse click causes a new ball to drop, a right click opens another frame (!), a p-key pauses the balls, and +/- increase/decrease the speed of the balls. Note how the operator (:~) applies a function to an attribute value instead of assigning one. Thus, the expression (set t [enabled :~ not]) flips the enabled state of the timer.
Finally, we specify the layout of the frame, using minsize to specifiy the minimal size of the panel and thus the size of the frame as it is not resizeable.
Let us look at the paint event handler of the panel:
-- paint the balls paintBalls :: Var [[Point]] -> DC a -> Rect -> IO () paintBalls vballs dc viewArea = do balls <- varGet vballs set dc [brushColor := red, brushKind := BrushSolid] mapM_ (drawBall dc) [p | (p:ps) <- balls] drawBall dc pt = circle dc pt radius []
A paint event handler gets two arguments: a device context (DC) to draw on and a rectangle that specifies the coordinates of the viewing area. We have supplied the first argument ourselves when setting the event handler, namely the mutable variable that holds the list of all balls.
As said, a single ball is represented as a list of all its future positions. When painting the current balls, we simple extract the head positions of all balls and draw them using drawBall. Drawing combinators like circle draw using the current pen, brush, and font of the device context. By default, a brush is transparent so we set it to a solid red brush before drawing the circles. Note that this is an optimization, we could have achieved the same effect by setting it for each circle individually: circle dc pt radius [brushKind := BrushSolid, brushColor := red]. You can read more about drawing in the documentation of the WX.Draw module.
The timer event handler uses nextBalls to advance all the balls to their next postion.
-- advance all the balls to their next position nextBalls :: Var [[Point]] -> Panel () -> IO () nextBalls vballs p = do varUpdate vballs (filter (not.null) . map (drop 1)) repaint p
Updating the positions simply consists of dropping all initial positions and filtering out all empty lists. The function repaint is used to invoke the paint event handler of the panel.
When a users clicks on the panel, a new ball is created in dropBall.
-- drop a new ball, gets mouse position as last argument dropBall :: Var [[Point]] -> Panel () -> Point -> IO () dropBall vballs p pt = do varUpdate vballs (bouncing pt:) repaint p -- calculate all future positions bouncing (Point x y) = map (\h -> Point x (maxH-h)) (bounce (maxH-y) 0) -- calculate all future heights bounce h v | h <= 0 && v == 0 = replicate 20 0 -- keep still for 20 frames | h <= 0 && v < 0 = bounce 0 ((-v)-2) | otherwise = h : bounce (h+v) (v-1)
We prepend a new list of ball positions to the existing list using the varUpdate function and we repaint the panel. The new list of positions is calculated with the bouncing function that takes the position of the mouse pointer as its argument. This function uses the bounce function to calculate all future heights given an initial height and speed. Each time the ball touches the ground, it loses 2 units of speed.
Hopefully this sample inspires you to write more interesting GUI's. Don't forget to look at the samples provided with the wxHaskell documentation.


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At this time of year people often speak of the "Christmas portion" of Handel's Messiah as opposed to the "Easter portion." But are those terms accurate? A few comments from Robert J. Summer, a professor of choral studies at the University of South Florida and founding conductor of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay, in his Choral Masterworks From Bach to Britten: Reflections of a Conductor (Scarecrow, 2007):
"Part I is more than just the Christmas portion since it encompasses also the prophecy and Christ's sojourn on earth. Part II focuses on Christ's suffering and death, but also includes movements for the resurrection and ascension as well as the spreading of the gospel."
Summer writes of the pieces that directly follow the Overture (#1) in Messiah:
"The internal structure of most Baroque oratorios, including Messiah, is organized into sequences of recitative, aria, and chorus. The function of the recitative is to relate the story or action; the aria reflects on the action or becomes a state of mind; and the chorus completes the thought, summarizes the situation, or participates in the action (the turba chorus). An example this relationship can be observed in the first three vocal pieces of the work. The recitative, 'Comfort ye' (#2), ends with instructions on how to prepare for the coming of Christ – 'make straight in the desert a highway for our God.' The aria, 'Every valley' (#3), describes what needs to be done in order to carry out these instructions – [Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight and the rough places plain]. And if all this is accomplished, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed as sung by the chorus in 'And the Glory of the Lord' (#4)."
Listen to tenor Paul Elliott singing "Comfort Ye" and "Every Valley" from Messiah, conducted by Christopher Hogwood ,at www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhy2SRHqpuQ. Listen to the choir of King's College, Cambridge, singing "And the Glory of the Lord" from Messiah at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZorcMYb3fPo&feature=related/.
© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.


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How And Why The Hollywood Star Machine Made 'Gods Like Us'
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Because my guest, Ty Burr, is a film critic for the Boston Globe, he's met a lot of movie stars and is often asked what they're really like. He says his new book, "Gods Like Us," on movie stardom and fame, isn't so much about what movie stars are really like, it's more about why we ask the question in the first place.
The book is a history of movie stardom and considers how the creation of stars has changed, how their place in our culture has changed, and how the technology that creates celebrity gradually changed the kinds of stars audiences wanted. Before joining the Boston Globe, Ty Burr wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly.
Ty Burr, welcome to FRESH AIR. Since we're talking about movie stardom and modern fame, I want to start by saying your name sounds like the kind of name a movie studio might give to an actor with a name that sounded too ethnic, like - say like Tevye Bernstein might be Ty Burr, or, you know, something like that. So is that your birth name, Ty Burr?
TY BURR: Oh, you had to ask that. No, I have actually a long first, very WASPy first name that actually at one point was a last name because that's what WASPs do to torture their children, they give them all last names. I'm not going to share it with you. It's a number of syllables. But yeah, I've been called Ty since I was a kid, and you're right, it does sound like something they might have cooked up in the early '50s, and not that they would put me out there for beefcake, but you know, Ty - oh, who's the actor I'm thinking of, not Ty Hardin. Is it Ty Hardin?
GROSS: Ty Hardin, yeah. He was on one of those - like "Bronco" or something. I don't know.
BURR: He was a star who was manufactured and marketed in that time period. And yeah, Tyrone Power. It's not an uncommon name.
GROSS: Right, so do you feel a connection with stars who have changed their names or had their names changed for them by the studio?
BURR: I do sort of wonder what the identity politics of it is when a studio hands you a new name and says this is who you are. Roy Scherer, you are now Rock Hudson. You know, Marion Morrison, you are now John Wayne. Lucille LeSueur actually had her new name picked in a fan contest and Joan Crawford won out.
And you know, what does that do to you to take on that new name and the new, you know, persona that might go with it?
GROSS: What do you think that does to you? Because it is one of the questions you're trying to get at in your book.
BURR: Right, you know, one of the things that sort of obsessed me and got me to write this book is why we respond to these people who we think are larger life that are, especially in the classic days, you know, manufactured and all their irregularities sanded off and presented to us as some kind of perfection. And we think that if we can, you know, watch them enough, emulate them enough, write fan letters to them enough, we might become like them, or we might get something like they have.
And I think part of that goes into the naming of them. You know, Frances Gumm, maybe you're not going to go see a movie starring Frances Gumm, but when MGM renames her Judy Garland - a garland, it's a lovely thing. It's a necklace of flowers. You know, it gilds the lily, as it were, of this new creation and almost puts the factory stamp on it.
And, you know, it's interesting to see, in later years, especially when you got into the '60s, and today, there's almost a sort of pride in not changing your name. You know, if Mia Wasikowska had worked for MGM in the early '30s, she would not be Mia Wasikowska.
GROSS: Do you think that this has created a disconnect because we might want to become more like the stars, but the stars might feel like they're not like the person who they've been presented as being either?
BURR: Oh I think that definitely - especially in the factory years, I think there had to have been some confusion on the part of these young stars. Think about it, you know, you're Clark Gable, you're Joan Crawford, you're in your early '20s, you haven't really sort of figured out who you are. You know, in Clark Gable's case, he'd sort of been bumming around the country doing acting jobs and physical labor jobs.
And then he hits the movies and he's in 12 movies in his first year, and everybody's just going crazy over him. And he may not have known really who he was, and he actually befriended, made very good friends with the head of MGM publicity. His job was to create this person that we thought Clark Gable should be.
And he would send him out on photo shoots, hunting and fishing and doing all sorts of manly things. And Clark Gable didn't do those things. But he started picking them up. He started - he started reverse engineering his own personality from the persona that the studios gave him.
GROSS: That must be very confusing. I want you to tell the story of kind of meeting Robin Williams.
BURR: Yeah, it's a story I tell in the introduction to the book. And it's a small story, but it resonates for me because it did put me in the shoes of somebody who was famous and make me think quite a bit about what it's like to go through every day just doing your stuff with people looking at you. And I was living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan at the time, and I came out one morning to go for a jog in the park.
And I'm doing my stretches, and a guy comes out of a building next door, and he's doing his stretches. And I look up at him and give him a nod, and he nods back. And, you know, as I say in the book, a bunch of things happened very quickly and invisibly. I realized he was Robin Williams. He realized I realized he was Robin Williams. And his face just shut down. His eyes went dead. I've never seen anything like it.
And it wasn't like I, you know, started jumping up and down and saying you're Robin Williams. Like any good New Yorker, I didn't say anything and let him go about his business. But I just felt that for a moment we'd had this actual human moment when I hadn't recognized who he was, and as soon as I recognized who he was, his persona got in the way and almost cut off any, you know, potential for any sort of interaction.
GROSS: And what did that say to you?
BURR: What it said to me is that these people who we have ennobled and enriched and who we celebrate and who we go, you know, to see do their thing, they carry around with them this other person, and that is the person we pay to see. And the real person, you know, the real human being, the life-size human being who's outside his apartment building stretching to go for a jog, is smaller and more real and may not have a lot to do with that person that looks out at us from magazine covers and that we see on the big screen.
And in fact the more I researched this, when I was writing the book, the more I began to sort of realize that a lot of the personas had very little to do with the people actually behind them. You know, obviously a famous case is Rock Hudson. But you know, somebody like Jimmy Cagney, who played, you know, rat bastards onscreen, he was one of the nicest guys in Hollywood.
Everybody loved him. He was just a really decent, decent man. But of course everywhere he went, people would come up to him saying, you know, say, you dirty rat, you killed my brother. And I, you know, I do feel a certain amount of sympathy. I mean imagine what it's like to go through your day and literally 20 times an hour people saying something to you, people reacting to the persona rather than the person.
GROSS: Now, you write about how in the very early days of movies, and I mean very early days when movies were, like, really short, short little things, there weren't stars. How far back are we going here?
BURR: Well, I mean if you consider that the movies were invented by a bunch of different people in the late 1880s, stars were not billed by name until about 1910. So you've got about 15 years there where the medium is really coming - taking its first baby steps but then becoming a commercial medium where people would go to nickelodeons and sit down and watch, you know, one-reelers or two-reelers, generally, you know, 10-minute or 20-minute films, 10 minutes in the early days.
And what you would see when you went to see these movies, you'd get the title of the film, and you'd the company that made it - Biograph, Edison, Kalem, whatever - and you would not get anything about the people in them.
GROSS: Why not?
BURR: There was - there's a variety of reasons and theories about it. One thing is that movie acting and movie actors were considered low class compared to stage acting, and if you were a stage actor, who maybe you needed to pick up some extra cash, you didn't really brag about going to work for the movies.
The studio heads, the men who ran the early studios, didn't want to make people into stars because they would ask for more money. But I think the more important thing was that in the early days, people really didn't understand what actors did in movies. There needed to be a paradigm shift.
When you read early movie reviews or articles about what was going on in these early silent films, the verbs they use are not - and they don't talk about acting. They talk about shamming, posing, presenting. There needed to be sort of almost a brain shift here to understand what these people were doing was performative, was - an in fact a different kind of acting, that because the camera gives every viewer the best seat in the house, brought you closer to the actors an in a more intimate way.
And the better actors understood that and dialed down their techniques so that they - you know, the best actors almost just had to think, and it would be magnified on their face and magnified by the camera. So the studios and the men who ran them did not promote the stars, didn't think they had to, but the audience started getting obsessed with these people because they were closer to them, and the people seemed more life-sized and more real than those faraway stage actors.
So they started writing letters to the studios and to this, you know, to the Biograph girl: Please, tell me your name. What's your name? I'll keep it a secret. You can tell me and I won't tell anybody else. That was the first big secret in the movies: What's your name?
GROSS: My guest is film critic Ty Burr, author of the new book "Gods Like Us," on movie stardom and modern fame. More after a break; this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Ty Burr, a film critic for the Boston Globe and author of the new book "Gods Like Us" on movie stardom and modern fame. You credit Carl Laemmle, who founded Universal Studio, with creating the first movie star and with creating her before founding Universal Studio. She was such an enduring star that I've never heard of her.
GROSS: Her name is Florence Lawrence. Tell us something about her and how she became a star.
BURR: She's the first star. She's not the first great star.
GROSS: I like that distinction.
BURR: I mean she was the first person billed by name and promoted by name. That's the key thing. Carl Laemmle was a member of a group of film producers that were outside of the official studios that were sort of anointed by Edison and his colleagues. Those guys were known as the Trust. The other guys were known as the Independents, and they included Carl Laemmle, who went on to found Universal; Adolph Zukor, who went on to found Paramount; all the immigrant entrepreneurs who would go on to found the studios we will live with.
And Carl Laemmle ran a studio called Independent Moving Pictures, IMP, and its logo was a devil with a pitchfork, presumably aimed at Edison, and he was a bit of a prankster, and he also - a lot of the independents were able to read the tea leaves, and because they owned the nickelodeons they saw the audience reaction. They understood that audiences were responding to these people in a new and different way.
And so Florence Lawrence was at the Biograph Studio, working with D.W. Griffith, among other directors, and she was known as the Biograph Girl, and she was very, very popular among audiences. But Biograph being one of the high-bound trust studios did not promote her by name.
Laemmle poached her. Actually she'd been let go by Biograph for asking for more money. And he snapped her up and started promoting her by name. And then he put out a fake news story that she'd been run over by a trolley car. And then after that he put out another fake news story saying no, no, she's alive, she's still there.
And that first news story was put out by my rivals, which makes no sense, and not only is she alive, you can come see her at the train station in St. Louis on such-and-such a day. And that was the first movie star mob scene, because, you know, more people showed up than anybody was prepared for, especially Florence Lawrence, and they started, you know, swarming her and grabbing at her and tearing buttons off her jacket.
And nobody understood what was going on here. Why were these people so crazed about a moving picture actress?
GROSS: Have you seen any of her work from the early 1900s, and do you think she has what you would consider to be star power?
BURR: I have seen Florence Lawrence in movies. As I said, she made a lot of movies with D.W. Griffith, short films, and those have survived. And she is more of a 19th century creation than a 20th century creation. She's statuesque. She's attractive. She's got that sort of Gibson Girl hair. She usually played mothers and daughters in various melodramatic situations.
She doesn't have the spark, the charisma, the sort of instant jumping off the screen that a natural movie star as we think of them has. But she does have a certain personality that's different from a lot of the more wildly gesticulating actors who were coming from the stage had. She seems really part of the movies and the stories they told rather than coming from outside.
I understand why she didn't really last. Other stars and actors and actresses sort of surpassed her, chief among them being Mary Pickford, who was the first great movie star of the silent era and the first movie star as we understand the term.
GROSS: How long did it take after Carl Laemmle's success in making Florence Lawrence a star, with a mob scene at her personal appearance, before movie studios realized, oh, we could sell movies that way, we could sell movies on star power, making actors stars is actually a profitable idea?
BURR: It's amazing that it took them that long to figure it out, you know, 15 years, that we go to movies to see the people in them. But by the time Laemmle was promoting Florence Lawrence, other producers were figuring it out, and they were starting to put out lobby cards listing their stock companies.
And so the years from 1910 to 1915, you see more and more and more stars being billed by name, promoted by name. And then in 1914, Mark Pickford had her first huge hit, which was "Tess of the Storm Country," and that was a just sensation. It was, you know, the "Titanic" of its day in terms of box office receipts. And people just fell in love with her.
And you also had the next year, 1915, Charlie Chaplin, the first eruption of Charlie Chaplain mania. So you had these two very, very, very powerful personages, personalities, one of them comic yet artistic, one of them sweet and girlish yet tough and very particular and specific. And people just really found in them something that they couldn't get from books, something they couldn't get from the stage.
And because these movies could be seen all over the world, we had global stars. And this was a completely new idea.
GROSS: So who was it, I mean who was it in the movie industry that decided you had to transform people into movie stars, you had to change their name, you had to dress up their biographies, lie a lot sometimes in order to really sell these people as stars? Like where does that begin?
BURR: I think of the early movie moguls, the most far-seeing was probably Adolph Zukor, who founded Paramount. He was the guy who recognized that Mary Pickford, who was sort of ping-ponging back and forth between the Broadway stage and one-reelers, that she could be somebody who had something special that he could promote and nuance and mold. And he was willing to pay her money for it, and a lot of money for it.
And one of the interesting things about Mary Pickford is that she was a great businesswoman. She was better at making contracts, almost, than making movies. If she was around today, she'd be running a movie studio. But really the first star factory that we - as we know it was MGM, which was actually late to the silent era.
It was a new studio founded toward the - in the early to mid-1920s. And Louis B. Mayer, the man running it, running the studio in California, he - under his aegis he created a classic vertical factory system. And one part of that system was the creation of a star machine in which they would hire and contract young actors, change their names, give them lessons in deportment, fix their noses if necessary, occasionally pay them to divorce their spouses.
That's what happened with Johnny Weissmuller when he became a sensation in "Tarzan." They paid off his wife to get a divorce.
GROSS: Why?
BURR: Because he had such a rabid female following. If you see those early Tarzan movies, you know, here's this Olympic swimmer running around in a very skimpy loincloth, and it was kind of a powerful fantasy figure, you know, this jungle king who was going to carry you off and do, you know, wonderful, terrible things to you in the jungle.
And so his following, Weissmuller's following, was very, very female, and MGM wanted to, you know, promote him as a single guy because for him to be married would have, you know, killed the fantasy. So I don't know whether there were issues in the marriage to begin with, but apparently they paid off Mrs. Weissmuller to go away.
GROSS: I hope they paid her a lot of money.
GROSS: So you know, it's interesting, you're talking about how studios start to change the names and the biographies of stars. And some of the studio heads did that with their own stories and their own names. Weren't there some of the studio heads who had, like, more Jewish-sounding names, and they made the names sound, like, less ethnic and didn't really publicly talk about the fact that they were Jewish?
BURR: Well, Louis B. Mayer, you know, was the best Catholic, you know, a Jew could possibly be. He had a picture of Cardinal Spellman on his desk.
BURR: I don't think anybody actually changed their names, but - you know, and there have been very good books and histories, cultural histories written about the way the - you know, how the Jews invented Hollywood and in the process, you know, tried to erase their ethnicity because they didn't want to get in trouble with the overarching culture, which was not Jewish.
So yes, a lot of the moguls tread very, very carefully to one degree or another. I think the Warner Brothers were all very proud of who they were. Louis B. Mayer kind of tried to reinvent himself as a Methodist or something else. It depended on the individual. You know, Adolph Zukor was a businessman. He was - his ethnic identity, I sense, didn't mean a heck of a lot to him.
But they didn't remake themselves wholesale the way they did to their stars. And the stars were their property. The stars were their chattel. If you look at those contracts which, and starting in the '30s a number of stars started taking them to court to break some of those contracts because they were onerous. They owned these people, and they remolded them as they saw fit.
GROSS: Ty Burr will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Gods Like Us" on movie stardom and modern fame. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Ty Burr, film critic for the Boston Globe and author of the new book "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame."
So in doing research for your book, who were some of the movie stars whose stardom you found especially interesting? And I'm talking about people from the past, from past decades. Interesting because either you thought their stardom was really enduring or because you couldn't quite comprehend what people saw in them.
BURR: One of the stars I ended up - to me he's almost the ultimate star, ultimate in the term of that he's been through so many changes in his career and he's never gone away, and he's been up, he's been down, he's been forgotten, he's been lauded, is Mickey Rooney. Mickey Rooney, he's like the secret mascot of my book. He was making movies by the time he was like three. He had his own film series, silent film series when he was a little kid, the Mickey McGuire movies. By the mid-1930s he was the most popular actor in America. He was number one on the box office list for about three or four years in the Andy Hardy movies, primarily, and the musicals he made with Judy Garland, and after World War II he couldn't get arrested, was totally washed up. And then he keeps coming back and going away, and he wins a Tony and he wins an Emmy and he has a religious conversion. I mean he's just, he's almost like a fractal history of American movie stardom in one guy, and he is still here. He's like in his mid-90s and he's still making movies, and I don't think he will ever die.
GROSS: Can I say, I've never really understood what made Mickey Rooney such a star.
BURR: I'll tell you what made Mickey Rooney such a star. He is uncontainable. If you see his early roles, he has a more extreme and more weird energy than anybody else in the room. He's almost got like this...
GROSS: You mean like the Andy Hardy movies?
BURR: Yeah. Even the Andy Hardy movies, which we think of as this wholesome American corn, you know, beloved by Louis B. Mayer, and they are. But within them Mickey Rooney is bouncing off the walls. I direct you to a Paramount release from the early '30s, the Paramount's Picture of version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a very, very young Olivia D. Havilland, a bunch of - Jimmy Cagney as Bottom, with the donkeys head, and Mickey Rooney as Puck, and he must've been about 11 years old, 10 years old, and he is the most baroque gonzo Puck you will ever see. He has an energy that's just when he lets it out is really remarkable to see.
GROSS: You know, you write about how stardom changed through the decades. And when you get to the '80s and '90s, you talk about how it was the agents that really drove the movie deals. What did that mean in terms of stardom and the value of stardom?
BURR: Well, what happens, you know, in the '50s and '60s and '70s is that the movie studios themselves start dying off and other aspects of the industry rushed to take their place, and in the '80s and '90s you did get the rise of powerful agencies - CAA, ICM, William Morris. They didn't make the movies. They didn't produce them. The studios still did that. But they packaged them and they enabled them and they made them possible. And they would go to a studio and say, look, I've got to Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise and a script and a director and they're all our clients, but here you are. It's a package. And yeah, if you end up with "Rain Man," great. It's a good movie. Often, more often than not, you ended up with a movie that, where the parts didn't really make sense but because they - all the people in it were clients of a particular agency, that's the deal that got done. And my feeling about a lot of the movies of the '80s and early '90s was that they were, they're deal movies where really the work of art that everybody was concentrating on was getting the deal done, and after that the movie itself was sort of secondary.
GROSS: How do you think stardom has changed from like the days the movie studios kind of manufacturing the image of the stars to now when it seems to me fewer people go to the movies, literally to the movie theaters. You know, a lot of people watch movies at home, whether it's on their computer screen or, you know, a small television or a really large screen. I'm sure a lot of people are watching on their, you know, iPads and other devices, which is an even smaller screen than their computer screen. And so the sense of, you know, like larger-than-life and these people living in these like movie palaces, that's really kind of long gone. Because even most movie screens - if you go to the movie theaters - a lot of the movie theaters I go to, the screens really aren't very large anymore.
BURR: Right. Movie stars, as we understand them, the classic movie stars are, in a way, on the wane. I don't think the mainstream film industry - the mainstream American film industry sells us stars the way they used to, and they don't sell movies with stars. They sell movies based on franchises, you know, popular book franchises like "Twilight" and "Harry Potter," on special effects, on comic book heroes. Those are what audiences pay to see. They don't necessarily go to see it because Tom Cruise is in it or because Ryan Gosling is in it.
I think there are stars who still have drawing power. You know, I think Will Smith can still bring people to a movie. Maybe not as reliably as he did 10 years ago. But I think the whole culture has changed in the sense that we almost don't need classic movie stars the way we used to because the Internet allows us to become - to manufacture our own personas in many, many different ways. We can be a different person on Twitter, on our Facebook page, in Second Life, on, you know, our Pinterest page. We can manufacture as many personas for ourselves as we want, which we used to really need movie stars to do. I mean back in the classic days, audiences - women would go to see Bette Davis movies to see what Bette Davis was going to get away with this time, and sort of see what maybe envelopes they could push in their own behavior. We don't need to do that anymore. We can sort of play around with that ourselves.
GROSS: So what happens to the classic movie star in this scenario? They become lesser in value and they become mocked. You know, the famous Tom Cruise-Oprah couch scene is still playing at a YouTube channel near you. I mean it will be there forever. Twenty years ago it would have been fodder for a week of late-night jokes and forgotten, but now it's proof that we have a certain power over these people that used to have power over us.
If you're just joining us, my guest is Ty Burr. He is a film critic for the Boston Globe and author of the new book "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame."
Let's take a short break. Then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: This Is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Ty Burr. He's a film critic for the Boston Globe and author of the new book "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame."
So something that confuses me about celebrity. You know, when I go to the supermarket and I'm seeing the tabloids at the checkout line, like Jennifer Aniston is still on the cover so much of the time. And like I have to say, I can't - I can't comprehend why. It's not like - how many years has it been since "Friends"? And how often is she in a hit movie? What is that fame, what is that interest still based on?
BURR: Don't you understand? That's her movie now. That's where her narrative is. You know, it almost helps to think of each star as a narrative, as an idea, and their movies are and their other entertainment is where they act that idea of who they are out. And we, you know, Jennifer Aniston built up a persona - consciously or not - on "Friends" and then after "Friends" in the gossip sphere with all of her various melodramas. And again, this has nothing to do with who Jennifer Aniston may actually be, but I'm talking about her public persona. And as she's made fewer and fewer movies, that narrative just hops over to the gossip sphere and the tabloid magazines and that's where the people who are fans of her - or fans of that narrative - that's where they follow that narrative, that's where that show is. That's where the Jennifer Aniston show is now. It's not on TV. It's not on the movie screen. It's over in this other form of entertainment that, again, probably doesn't have a lot to do with actual day to day reality.
GROSS: So you're a film critic and you've been a film critic since when?
BURR: Well, I've been working for the Globe covering first run films for - since 2002. I've been covering film and video and all sorts of media for 30 years.
GROSS: And you recently had to review "Lethal Weapon 4."
GROSS: And I thought what, was it like for you...
BURR: No. Not "Lethal Weapon 4." You're talking about "Die Hard 5"?
GROSS: Oh, I'm sorry. It's "Die Hard 5." What am I thinking?
BURR: Yes.
GROSS: No, it was "Die Hard 5." "A Good Way to Die Hard." Yes. Right. I'm sorry. I get my franchises confused. Yeah.
BURR: Oh - that was a bad day to go to the movies. Yeah.
BURR: We're just about ready for another "Lethal Weapon" - if anybody stand to watch Mel Gibson on a movie screen, which is a whole 'nother story.
GROSS: But you know, I skimmed your review. You didn't like the movie and it was like, you know, did you feel like what am I doing here? Like why this movie made? What am I doing here?
BURR: I actually did at one point think: What am I doing here? And I should have put this in the review, because I actually quickly realized that this movie was not made for American audiences.
GROSS: Oh really?
BURR: It's set in Russia. It's made for a global audience. And I actually think you're going to see more of that where, you know, I'm surprised that movie even got a theatrical release in America. Of course it would. It's part of a beloved franchise and its stars, you know, a star who still has some pull. But it's set in Russia. There's a scene in Chernobyl. Don't get me started.
It makes no sense. It's all about the action, as these movies are. But the "Die Hards" were always a little smarter and more clever than the usual run of these things. This one's not. I just realized at a certain point, and there were other critics who pointed this out as well, it's not made for us. It is made for a global action audience that really doesn't need any subtleties whatsoever. That would just sort of gunk up the show.
GROSS: Do you feel like movies are becoming less important in the lives of Americans?
BURR: I do think it's not a great time for movies. I do think we're in a period of transition for the movie, as we've known it, and maybe it's changing and disappearing. I'm not really sure. I think you're seeing a split in the kind of movies that are being made where the mainstream movies, the ones that come to the multiplexes, they're getting bigger and more bloated and more baroque and more, you know...
GROSS: More like video games.
BURR: More like video - well, they have to come with 3D, and now they're coming with faster frame rates, like "The Hobbit." And they've got to be pre-sold on action figures or popular books. And you know, I think it was Martin Scorsese who said that we're all going to be watching holograms in 20 years and he may be right. You know, they've got to do something to - the theater owners have to do something to bring people out of their living rooms, and so the movies are just getting bigger and noisier and bigger and noisier. Opposed to that, you still have a stream of independent filmmaking that's playing primarily in the art houses, but it's also spilling over into streaming and on-demand. And you also have - digital technology has enabled anybody to make a film now. It used to be the province of the studios 50 years ago. Now anybody who's got a video camera, anybody who's got a cell phone and a YouTube account can make a film and have it seen globally in an afternoon. And that, of course, expands the number of potential movies being made. It expands the number of bad potential movies being made. But it also expands the number of good and interesting and novel and challenging films being made. And are those going to pop up in the theaters? Some of them are. But they're also increasingly popping up in all the other delivery platforms. So I think what we're seeing is a fragmenting, a fragmenting of the classic movie experience. And I do worry that 20 years from now most people will think of a movie as the thing you go downtown and put on the holographic helmet on, and that's a movie. And that "Godfather" thing that was made 50 years ago, that's like looking at a book from the 19th century.
GROSS: What's the best film you've seen so far this year?
BURR: Whew. This is probably going to shock you, but it really - I really enjoyed it and I'm still thinking about it is this Harmony Korine movie called "Spring Breakers"...
GROSS: Haven't seen it.
BURR: Which looks like it's another party hearty movie like "Superbad," about idiot college students, you know, drinking themselves into a coma and isn't that fun? Ha. Ha. Ha. It's actually a very subversive take on that. And it stars a bunch of Disney TV queens like Ashley - Vanessa Hudgins and Selena Gomez doing things that their Disney keepers would be horrified to see them do. It feels like a - this is going to sound terribly pretentious - but it does seem like a Jean-Luc Godard movie set in St. Petersburg during spring break.
GROSS: And I just, not all of it works and it's going to, it's not a movie for everybody, but I found it fascinating because it just mixed so many things in it and put it out there for you to think about and chew on. And I certainly think that a teenager who goes to it thinking that it's going to be a "Superbad" kind of movie, they're going to come out with their head completely scrambled. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Ty Burr, thank you so much for talking with us.
BURR: Thank you for having me on.
GROSS: Ty Burr is a film critic for the Boston Globe and author of the new book "Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame." You can read an excerpt on our website, freshair.npr.org.
We were sorry to read that the pianist Bebo Valdes, one of the greatest Cuban musicians of his generation, died Friday at the age of 94. Several of us at FRESH AIR are big fans of his music, including me. We often play his recordings on our show. Valdes died in Stockholm, where he lived since leaving Cuba in 1960. His story helped inspired the recent animated film "Chico and Rita," which featured his music. Valdes' son, Chucho Valdes, is also a well-known pianist. Here's Bebo Valdez, recorded in 2003.
GROSS: That's Bebo Valdes. Coming up, we listen back to a 1988 interview with the influential Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. He died last week at the age of 82. This is FRESH AIR.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
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The physical part of work—where and how it's done—is shifting in big ways. We all recognize the signs: you'll schedule a meeting and you're the only person sitting in the conference room, with 20 people on the phone. You'll hear dogs barking in the background, babies crying. Yet all of these people have, in their heads, what they need for the meeting.
It seems as if it was just a few years ago that we were taking people out of offices and putting them into cubicles. From there, the trend went to open work spaces, then hoteling (similar to offering "hot desks"), and then shared hoteling "cubes"—all driven by the need to keep real-estate costs low in a very acquisitions-oriented industry that's always streamlining. Now, more and more of our employees are working remotely.
In many ways, that's a good thing. It gives people a lot more flexibility and freedom, and makes them happier about the job because they're able to put their lives together in ways that matter to them. This is true for men and women both. I think the additional flexibility makes Symantec more attractive to all employees and helps us get better people. I remember having discussions, eight or nine years ago, with my boss at the time about somebody who was just the perfect candidate but didn't want to move to our headquarters, in Mountain View, California. The answer was, "Nope, we need him here." That is much less likely to happen today.
But today's more virtual workplace also raises interesting psychological questions. I think it makes all of us less able to compartmentalize and separate the different elements of our lives as we used to. It's less linear—much more of a jumble—because we're always multitasking, we're always on. The technology enables that by taking away the limitations of time and space. I have seen people who stay up all night working with Europe, Australia, and India and then work the whole day in the United States. They burn themselves out because they're always available. It's a huge worry.
The new workplace also creates a very different ethos. Those 20 people in your phone meeting aren't sitting around a table together seeing the same presentation in front of them. The communal-experience piece of it—the camaraderie—is lost. These are concerns for us. How do we ensure that people have the same kind of experience they used to get sitting in a room when they're no longer even in the same hemisphere? We've got virtual teams all over the world, and I'm willing to bet there are many in which no team member has ever even met another team member. It's really easy to turn everybody into a voice on the phone and a line on a screen, and we don't want to do that.
Similarly, how do we make sure people learn from one another in a virtualized workplace? How do we make sure we're maintaining our company culture and values?
A new way
These are the kinds of questions we've grappled with as we implemented a home-based work program called Ways 2 Work, which we initially launched in parts of the United States and are now rolling out more broadly. The program's goal is to focus on employees' contributions and results rather than when—or where—work is done. There's a big technological component, of course: things like VoIP phones, social-networking tools, and other technologies can help people work efficiently from wherever they happen to be. But the program also relies heavily on the ability of managers to make sure their colleagues stay connected to work in a human way. A good example of success is our sales support unit in Shannon, Ireland, where our managers and employees are significantly changing how they work.
The 50 or so employees of Symantec's sales support group in Shannon, recently became the first of the company's international teams to "go virtual" as part of the Ways 2 Work program. By allowing employees to work from home, the unit supported the desire many of them had to strike a more satisfying balance between their work and personal lives. The company benefits too: in recent interviews with the local executives and managers responsible for the change, we learned that the group's productivity increased by 6% last year, with no employee attrition. A recent company survey found that 84% of the affected employees were happier working from home. What's more, the experience has prompted Symantec to develop a broader global strategy to consolidate its real estate and reduce the number of its physical offices. The company has even begun investigating more flexible work programs in functions such as product design.
Ensuring that technology was fully in place, on day one of the program, to support the changes was a key factor cited by managers explaining the program's success thus far. Another was acquiring a local executive suite where teammates can meet live once a week, which helps combat social isolation. "Managers need to make an extra effort to ensure that their employees feel connected and informed so that the team dynamic doesn't suffer," said Lloyd Nolan, senior director of support renewals. Finally, employees are advised to take frequent breaks, including exercise breaks, and to go out to lunch with coworkers whenever possible. And managers encourage their teams to disconnect completely when work is finished. "It's important," said Nolan, "that they walk away from their keyboard at day's end."
Here in the United States, an important aspect of the program involves moving away from paid time off. We started about a year and a half ago at the top of the company and have been working our way down, expanding the change to more and more groups. It's a big jump. Basically, we're saying, you don't have a set amount of time off. Take your time off when you can—we're not going to record it but you need to get the job done.
The program is certainly a positive for the company because it takes a lot of money off the balance sheet, but it's had a really interesting effect on how people think of work time as well. I think it causes most people to look at time in the same way they did when they were students. Nobody cared if you studied five minutes or 10 hours for the quiz. All they cared about was that you did well on it. The new policy has been a challenge for some employees, and we obviously have to beware of the extremes—say, people watching soap operas all afternoon, at one end, and completely burning themselves out with overwork, at the other. But it's been very successful overall, and I think our people appreciate the move. Our employee satisfaction scores did go up after the change, though I'm always leery of confusing correlation with causation when it comes to any single measure.
What the program means for managers
Ultimately, our managers have a lot of discretion in how they implement home-based work programs and define how work gets done in their own units. This is by necessity. Our products are so differentiated, and the types of work that our people do is so differentiated—and dispersed—that there can't be a "one size fits all" solution. We can tell our people what we want and what the outcome has to be, but the businesses need to have the autonomy to get that result in their own way.
This approach puts a lot of responsibility on our managers because it's really up to them to help their people determine the right balance. We spend a lot of time working with our managers on "remote management": training them in a whole gamut of skills and techniques to help bring together people from different cultures as a team. Those skills cover everything from the tactical, like clear and concise communication and follow-up skills, to those more in the realm of management philosophy, like the ability to base the evaluation of an employee on the fulfillment of a set of measurable deliverables, as opposed to putting in a certain number of hours a week. Remote management is now a core skill for managers—one reflected in our performance-management processes.
Yet even as these newer management skills grow in importance, I think it's more challenging than ever to ensure that our people have the general-management skills they need. In today's more specialized work environment, you have to know a whole lot more about a whole lot less to do a good job. This is certainly true at Symantec, where, for example, in recent years we've disaggregated all the various human-resources activities into specialist and generalist roles. Similarly, recruiting used to be handled by one or two people; now there might be 10 people contributing, but each of them handles specific tasks. I think that nearly all jobs are amenable to this trend, given the right talent and management skills.
Developing solid general-management skills requires helping people to think hard about what they want the map of their careers to look like. We also rotate people to give them more varied management opportunities. This is important because in a specialized world, people aren't as likely to get general-management skills the way they used to: by having responsibility for a whole bunch of things at once.
A more virtual and disaggregated workplace puts a lot of pressure on our senior leadership to connect the dots. The act of redefining jobs in a global company, for example, tends to highlight some of the age-old frictions about regional versus corporate-level control—and what you think about these issues often depends on where you sit. If you're in the corporate office, the push is always for more consistency, but if you're the head of Asia–Pacific, you're saying, "Wait a minute, what about India? We can't do it that way or we'll lose people." Talk of redefining jobs has sparked some big debates and serves as a great reminder to us that we have to be able to see multiple points of view simultaneously.
At the most basic level, working through these kinds of challenges comes down to building and strengthening trust. Ironically, perhaps, the act of building this kind of trust among senior managers is something I don't think we could have done virtually. There's a limit to virtualization in that respect. At some point, you have to get people together and sit around those tables and have those discussions. The meetings' content is important, but just as important is physically connecting in one place now and then, so you can work things out with each other. At the end of the day, we're still human beings.