Jennifer Howard

A report on my personal and so far successful campaign to get organized. If you’re of a certain age or you’ve studied the Reagan era, the name Fawn Hall will mean something to you. As Oliver North’s secretary, she shredded documents related to the Iran-contra affair. She also had memorable hair and was fined for eating a banana in DC’s Metro, but that’s neither here not there. Fawn Hall has been on my mind lately as I’ve held a shredding party of my own. I consulted some of the excellent Lifehacker’s tips on how to tame the filing beast. I… Read more...

The comments feature on the blog isn’t working properly at the moment, so apologies if you’ve been trying to post and haven’t been able to get through. Ah, technology. We’re working on it…. Read more...

Well, kids, the Chronicle launched its new website last week, and the old links to my Chron stories don’t work any more. I have asked our tech folks whether the problem is likely to go away (ha!)—whether, in other words, those old URLs will eventually redirect readers to archived stories on the new site. I may have to go through and change the links by hand, though. If you’re looking for a story of mine in the meantime, please drop me a line and I will send you a working URL. [Insert platitude about technology making life harder.] UPDATE 7/31/09:… Read more...

It has been busy around here: a podcast about Google Book Search to record, two AAUP conferences to cover (profs and presses—the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American University Presses), two feature stories and a Hot Type column to wrap up, and a guest-blogging stint for Bookslut (this week—come visit). I’ve also got a couple of extra-curricular writing projects in different stages of development, plus the family, cats, house, and garden to tend to. The usual delightful madness. If somebody would go ahead and invent self-folding laundry, it would really help me out. If you follow… Read more...