LIPSTiCK TrACeZ

There are so many great book choices these days for kids.    Museums all carry books and Amazon has pretty much anything. Chronicle Books  Here is one of my favorites that parents can enjoy as well.   Still as timely today and when it was published over 3o years ago.

Sparkle and Spin   
by Ann and Paul Rand

Sparkle and Spin -- Through harmony and rhythm, resonance and pitch, Ann Rand inspires readers to listen to the tuneful play of her text as it sings off each page. Illustrated with graphic designer Paul Rand's colorful, witty artwork, Sparkle and Spin is a children's classic (now happily available again through Chronicle Books) that reveals to young readers the power and music in the words they use every day.

"Paul Rand did not set out to create classic children's books, he simply wanted to make pictures that were playful. Like the alchemist of old, he transformed unlikely abstract forms into icons that inspired children and adults--and laid the foundation for two books that have indeed become children's classics."
--Steven Heller, author of Paul Rand

Ann Rand wrote five children's books, four of which were illustrated by her husband.

In addition to the four children's books he illustrated, Paul Rand wrote and co-wrote several others, and designed some of the best-known corporate icons of his time, including the logos for ABC, IBM, and UPS>

Enough about Sarah Palin already.    The soccer Mom just got a passport in 2007 and thinks the dinosaurs roamed the earth 5000 years ago.    Please.     Now Michelle Obama.   There's confidence, intelligence and grace.     Any woman in politics that can wear an edgy brand like Tom Binns is fabulous.
  Michelle speaks to the everyday woman and is the first potential first lady to wear mass market brands like Gap and H&M in a public forum, and look amazing in them.     Michelle is a Harvard educated lawyer, well travelled and accomplished in her own right. You can believe her daughters will never be having a teen pregnancy.  image source: People magazine

La contemporary show this weekend. Not to be missed.

I will always enjoy the pleasure of curling up to a good book.    In this day and age, will my children?      Living in a technological revolution is an exciting thing.    Computers, pda's, and now e books.   Enjoy the convenience of downloading itunes to your ipod, imagine downloading Charles Dickens to your Kindle.

Reviews of the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader: (CNET editor John Falcone and David Carnoy)

First off, while the Kindle may not be a whole new class of device (electronic-book readers have been around for a number of years), it joins the Sony Reader in making the e-book reader category a whole lot sexier and buzzworthy. While the Sony PRS-505 ($300) is the sleeker of the two devices, the Kindle is the more revolutionary in that it has a free built-in wireless connection that allows you to tap into Amazon's vast online bookstore from just about anywhere you can access Sprint's EVDO cellular data network.

In many ways, the Kindle is similar to the Sony Reader. At 10.3 ounces, the Kindle weighs about an ounce more and is slightly bigger, measuring 7.5 inches high by 5.3 inches wide by 0.7 inch deep. But both devices have 4.9-by-3.6-inch (6-inch diagonal), 600 x 800-pixel screens that use E Ink technology, which serves to make the letters and words on the screen look more printlike in their appearance--it's quite impressive if you haven't seen the technology in action before. Technically, it's an electrophoretic display, which Wikipedia describes as "an information display that forms visible images by rearranging charged pigment particles using an applied electric field." The Kindle's screen has 4 scales of gray and 167 pixels per inch, while the Sony's has 8 scales of gray and 170 pixels per inch, which means the Sony offers a little more in the way of contrast and is slightly easier to read. * Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.

SPECS:
* Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle--whether you're in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
* Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
* More than 88,000 books available, including 100 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.
* New York Times® Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise.
* Free book samples. Download and read first chapters for free before you decide to buy.
* Top U.S. newspapers including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post; top magazines including TIME, Atlantic Monthly, and Forbes--all auto-delivered wirelessly.
* Top international newspapers from France, Germany, and Ireland; Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, and The Irish Times--all auto-delivered wirelessly.
* More than 250 top blogs from the worlds of business, technology, sports, entertainment, and politics, including BoingBoing, Slashdot, TechCrunch, ESPN's Bill Simmons, The Onion, Michelle Malkin, and The Huffington Post--all updated wirelessly throughout the day.
* Lighter and thinner than a typical paperback; weighs only 10.3 ounces.
* Holds over 200 titles.
* Long battery life. Leave wireless on and recharge approximately every other day. Turn wireless off and read for a week or more before recharging. Fully recharges in 2 hours.
* Unlike WiFi, Kindle utilizes the same high-speed data network (EVDO) as advanced cell phones--so you never have to locate a hotspot.
* No monthly wireless bills, service plans, or commitments--we take care of the wireless delivery so you can simply click, buy, and read.
* Includes free wireless access to the planet's most exhaustive and up-to-date encyclopedia--Wikipedia.org.
* Email your Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) to Kindle for easy on-the-go viewing.

Aside from their other problems, the McCain family suffers from a case of really bad taste and horrible design sense.   Hideous really.   Oh, and did I mention, maybe a backround check on Sarah Palin and her family situation.    Well it's only the republican ticket right?   McCain piece


Architectural Digest publishes this story of the McCain home, it's big, it's opulent and yes, it's tacky.  How many family photos fit on a baby grand.?   Kachina dolls, Native American figures mixed with shabby chic furniture.   Just goes to prove, money can't buy taste.  Photographs by: Robert Reck

I love to read and have tried to pass that pastime onto my children.   I love these fun quirky books by Japanese author and illustrator Yukiko Kido.   They are all available at Amazon.com   Great for kids 4-7 who are learning to read. 





























































































































These amazing books are published by Blue Apple Books Blue Apple books.  Blue Apple produce high end, beautifully illustrated books for children.   Their illustrators have won numerous awards and the quality is impeccable.

The distributor is Chronical.  Another amazing publisher.

Chronicle always has books that are edgy, cool and off the beaten path.    Their art direction and design are fantastic.

Chronicle books

I also like the site Jacketflap that is the most comprehensive children's book resource site.
Jacketflap site

US President George W. Bush is currently in Germany on his good-bye tour of Europe. And I think most Germans would like to bid him good riddance! Not only the German people, but also politicians across all parties have been quite critical of Bush. Most say the era under Bush made the world more unstable. And, if you read between the lines, most are happy that his days in the White House are numbered.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3400054,00.html

German chancellor Angela Merkel considers her relationship to Bush "friendly". She seems to have forgiven him for his slip in diplomatic etiquette back at the G8 summit in 2006, when he gave her a shoulder massage (the above sequence was one of the most popular videos on you tube at the time).

The government's coordinator for German-American cooperation Karsten Voigt told German media that he felt both presidential candidates Obama and McCain will make more of an effort to take multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, more seriously. Voigt said either as president would approach European partners to resolve international problems -- behavior President Bush did not adhere to.

As if George W. Bush wasn't bad enough. For the past seven years, I have had to face a storm of questions from Germans as to why this man is president of the United States. As an American living in Germany, and a journalist on top of it, I am regularly being asked to explain not only the phenomenon of the US electoral system, but also the country's relation to religion, why so many people are so fat or why your average pupil couldn't find Europe on a map even if you offered him a free meal at McD's for it.

And now? This could top it all.

The recent opening of a COS store on Cologne's Ehrenstrasse is just one more nail in this infamous shopping mile's coffin.


COS or Collection of Style is part of the H&M group. And of course, H&M also has a huge store on Ehrenstrasse -- just like Esprit, Zara, Body Shop, fcuk, Tommy Hilfiger, American Apparel, Adidas and don't forget the omnipresent Starbuck's -- just to name a few.


Ehrenstrasse used to be where you shopped in Cologne if you wanted something different and not the mainstream fashion you find in the city center.


It was the place to go for individualists with out-of-the-ordinary taste.


But you could also go to a real old-fashioned leather shop and buy a wallet, or have your suitcase's zipper repaired. Or there was a housewares shop "Haushaltswaren Rosie", where you could get a pepper mill with a 25-year guarantee. Studio 59 was the place to go for Brit fashion -- it closed its doors in March of this year. Crocs is taking over the space.


Ehrenstrasse has become interchangeable with any other major shopping area in any European city. The big problem is that major fashion groups have the necessary funds to pay exorbitant rents. And the landlords know this. Rents have skyrocketed. Local media report that the rents have reached 80 to 100 Euros per square meter. It is now the third most expensive retail street in Cologne.


So those small boutiques with the unusual wares have been forced out. The result: shopping boredom.


Now, the place to go if you want more unusual funky fashion is the Belgian Quarter. But more on that another time...

The annual international women's film festival is on this week in Cologne. The country focus this year is China, which should be interesting considering the current international debate about China's control of Tibet.


















































The Chinese film industry has developed rapidly, just like other sectors of China. But while censors have become relatively more tolerant, not all of the films made in China can be seen in China. Many of the women directors whose films have seen worldwide success have not been allowed to show their works in their home country.

"Lost in Beijing," for example, the most recent film by well-known Beijing director Li Yu, was a festival hit in Europe. It was then eventually screened in Chinese cinemas, but in a censored version. Now, media report that it has been banned again -- allegedly due to "pornographic" sequences which were excerpted from the film and used for advertising.

Katharina Schneider-Roos, an Austrian filmmaker who lives in Beijing and is one of the curators behind the China Country Focus, says Chinese women's films are about worlds colliding with one another.

"The rapid pace of transformation and the constant new beginnings are frequently highlighted in these highly expressive films," Schneider-Roos says. "Apart from showing the hypermodern fast-paced China in the midst of an economic boom, the films -- in a quiet and committed way -- often tell the story of ordinary people."

More info: http://www.frauenfilmfestival.eu/