First off, a quick bit of vampire news to go along with tomorrow’s Dracula events. Those of you who followed the Lincoln project last year may recall the Seth Grahame-Smith mash-up novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I just found out that 21st-Century Fox has won the rights to the movie version, to be produced by Tim Burton. Supposedly it will arrive on a big 3D screen near you in 2012. I have to admit I’m intrigued.
Most of my week was spent editing text for the upcoming Civil War Begins exhibit, which although incredibly necessary (believe me!) does not make for good blog posts. So I thought I’d give you folks a few links to some projects I’ve heard about that I wish I had the time to do, if only there were more than 24 hours in a day.
1) Live in a museum for a month. A young woman named Kate McGroarty won a contest from the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago to actually live in the museum for a month (yes, she’ll sleep there too) and blog about her experience. The Museum 2.0 blog gives a great run-down of some of the best contest entries. Apparently a number of museum staffers submitted entries and I can understand why–if working in a museum is great (and it is), how awesome would it be to get to live there?
2) Transcribe the writings of Jeremy Bentham. The University College, London is in possession of 60,000 documents by the philosopher, thousands of which have not been transcribed. There’s a project afoot by the college to encourage regular folks to transcribe the papers over the Internet. You can find out all the details here. Also, in deference to the Halloween season, I would be remiss if I didn’t also point out that the college also has Bentham’s preserved body, which his will requested be displayed as a public memorial; but as far as I know there’s no need for any transcription of this item.
3) Improve my writing. The I Write Like site will analyze a sample of your writing and tell you which author you resemble. When I put in one of my blog posts, it came back as Dan Brown, which wasn’t exactly encouraging. Maybe with a little effort I could aspire to Danielle Steel? For anyone who struggles with motivation , rather than quality (I struggle with both), you might be interested to know that National Novel Writing Month is in November, so you still have a week and a half to gird your loins and prepare to write the Great American Novel.That’s it Rosen-friends until next week, when I hope to report on the work of the White Gloves Gang who will descend upon the Rosenbach–don’t you want to know what that’s about! Well tune in next week…