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Hand Jive: American Sign Language for Real Life

I am pleased to announce my book with Janna M. Sweenie, Hand Jive: American Sign Langue for Real Life is a done deal. This will be a funky and fantastic look at ASL and how you can learn to communicate with the Deaf in a fast and furious way.

Barnes and Noble logo

Our book will be published by Barnes and Noble Publishing, Inc., (yes, they publish books as well as sell them!) and the book will be distributed by Sterling.

Hand Jive: American Sign Langue for Real Life will be available for purchase in the Fall of 2006 and for more information on this book and other exciting ongoing and future projects, be sure to visit us online at http://BolesBooks.com.

Be sure to check out the book cover art.

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En Français, Si Vous Plâit…

There has been a lot of bashing of France and the French people, much more so in the last year or so than in recent years. While I disagree with their stance on the war in Iraq entirely and I am, understandably, distraught over the large amount of anti-Semitism that is taking place in the country, I do not feel it is right to simply dismiss the entire country and its culture.

Disclaimer
I am extraordinarily fond of being American. I write this because many times, articles which are at all in favor of any other country are somehow misread to mean that the person does not love his own country and is told, “If you love that country so much, why don’t you go and live there?” Well, I don’t want to live in any other country because I do love living in the United States.

I would also like to cite a line from the great documentary, The Sorrow and the Pity, on the subject of France and political involvement. The documentary is amazing (perhaps why it was mentioned in the classic film Annie Hall), being about the French Resistance – or, more accurately, how little resistance there was. One man who was interviewed, being of French nationality, said (I will paraphrase as I don’t recall the translation perfectly), “Generally speaking, the French are a politically apathetic people. Once in awhile, we’ll storm the Bastille, but that’s about it.”

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Verbal Crimes

by María L. Trigos-Gilbert

When we think about a verbal crime, we reject the thought because indeed it doesn’t seem a bit realistic. It is as when you look at a person with eyes like bullets. If looks could kill, the world’s amount of people would be near to the number zero. Yet the question is still pending: What’s a verbal crime? It’s when one uses the wrong word to describe or to define someone or something. Of course, I’m not talking about those times when we forget the exact word that our mind searches. I’m talking about when we intentionally ill-use adjectives, nouns, and even verbs to approach any given subject, person, or situation.

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Cultural Idiom Adventures

by María L. Trigos-Gilbert

Hi, I don’t if you know me a bit or at all, at least as a writer. I will give you an opportunity to know something about me. What I will write in here, is the substance of my life. This substance is my father, Benito Trigos Fernandez. Since I live far away from my parents, siblings, and relatives, it is very difficult to send gifts or even to be present at family events. So I decided that father’s day is EVERY DAY as well as mother’s day.

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The Culture of Dude

by Diane Buccheri

Through the years I’ve come to know more and more dudes. Even been called dude. When I corrected the dudes that I was no dude, I was politely called Dudette.

New Yorker to Californian
It all began when I went, white as a ghost from dancing my days away inside New York City ballet studios, to the golden state of California. Attending college there, in the southern half of the state, lots of strange looking “dudes” lived in the dormitory.

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