findingDulcinea

Introducing encontrandoDulcinea, a Cultural News Source for the Hispanic Reader

encontrandoDulcinea, findingDulcinea’s sister site in Spanish, has been live on the Web for about six months, steadily growing in the wealth and variety of its content and expanding its reach with a host of relevant and educational news and features.

Adding to our selection of more than 60 research guides, encontrandoDulcinea now includes profiles, interviews and an educational series.

The material featured in encontrandoDulcinea is intended for bilingual readers who prefer to have Web content delivered to them in Spanish but who understand English well enough to make use of the original recommended sites. The site covers topics and materials that are educational and particularly relevant for the Spanish-speaking community of the United States.

Given the exponential growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S., as evidenced in this recent article by the Associated Press, bridging the language barrier online is more important than ever.

The content provided by encontrandoDulcinea helps to reach out to those who aren’t entirely fluent or highly proficient in English. By creating a bridge over the language barrier, encontrandoDulcinea makes educational and enriching material available to readers who feel more comfortable approaching it in Spanish.

Anita Gutierrez-Folch
Senior Writer
encontrandoDulcinea

Keep up to date with encontrandoDulcinea by following us on Twitter!

List Love

It’s hard to say why, but as a culture, we adore lists. They’re easy, natural and fun to make. You can make lists of places you want to go, lists of people to invite to a party, lists of things you need to do before the end of the week (OK, maybe that’s not so much fun … but still.) At findingDulcinea, we’re kicking off our own series of lists to keep you in touch with Web resources. To get you in the mood, we’ve found a few unique lists from around the Web.

1)    The Village of Joy Blog lists “50 Strange Buildings of The World.” Maybe strange isn’t the right word: these buildings are universally architecturally awesome. A variety of shapes, styles and colors make each one of these buildings, new and old, entirely distinct.

2)    Each year, Time magazine collects the 50 Best Inventions. Some of them are probably as structurally magnificent as the buildings, and many of them have great potential to alter culture as we know it. (The iPhone was once on this list.)

3)    7summits  is a shorter list, but the seven items on it are of far greater magnitude: the highest mountains on Earth. Look at pictures, read stories and legends, or even consider making a trip to visit one—the site can help you figure out how much training you’ll need to make the climb.

Whether you’re inspired to go climb a mountain, or complete the equally arduous journey of heading home for the holidays, check out our own top 5 list, 5 Sites for Last-Minute Travel.

Rachel Balik
Senior Writer

Video of the Day: The Secrets of Microcelebrity

In this video from Current TV, Aaron Krane, former host of the Web TV show “Buzz!” introduces viewers to his groupies and entourage, and sheds light on the ins and outs of being a microcelebrity, someone famous only to a few.

Visit findingDulcinea's Must-See Video section for more videos of the day.

Interviewing Neil Chethik, Expert on Men's Issues

FindingDulcinea’s weekly Friday feature offers interviews with intriguing people on the cutting edge of business, the arts, technology and journalism. Each week, we'll give you a preview before the interview is published, with thoughts from the fD interviewer and additional info that didn't make it into the final article.

When I first sat down to talk to Neil Chethik, expert on men’s issues, I had no idea what to expect. “What is an expert on men’s issues?” I wondered. “What exactly are men’s issues? And what could possibly inspire someone to become an expert on them?”

Well, after 30 minutes on the phone with Chethik, I understood. 

Neil Chethik grew up the son of a psychologist with a passion for the pen and current events. After graduating from Northwestern University in 1979, Chethik became a journalist for several daily papers. But it wasn’t until he made friends with a group of his wife’s guy friends in grad school that he began to see the value of men’s psychology, realizing that he “wasn’t an oddball for having some kind of inner life.”

Chethik, who calls himself, “a bit on the entrepreneurial side,” eventually tired of answering to a boss: “I found it very difficult to work for newspapers. Just having to answer to other people, that was a struggle,” he remarks on his years as a journalist.
“Once I got to the place where I was writing the same things over and over again, I decided that, ‘If I’m going to be a writer, I need to start writing the things that I’m passionate about.’”

So, Chethik turned to a column he wrote occasionally on the topic of men’s issues. After researching the available content on the Web, he discovered that very little material was out there to help those struggling with uniquely male issues. Inspired by a newfound ability to connect with his readers via the Web, Chethik used his audience, which spanned 35 U.S. cities, to create a platform of information where men could find advice on fatherhood, grieving, sex, marriage and more.

Chethik currently spends most of his time working as a motivational speaker. After publishing several books, including “VoiceMale: What Husbands Really Think About Their Marriages, Their Wives, Sex, Housework and Commitment” and “FatherLoss: How Sons of All Ages Come To Terms With the Deaths of Their Dads,” Chethik has become a frequently requested keynote speaker at conferences and conventions.

Chethik has been happily married for 21 years and offers free advice on how to keep a marriage successful on his Web site. Have a look at his most recent column of advice, “How to Create Love For the Long Run,”
which offers some clever tips for both men and women on how to strengthen a partnership. 

Isabel Cowles
Writer

Poem for Your Pocket

For many individuals, poetry seems to lack the pop and pizzazz of other forms of artistic expression and entertainment. While this may be superficially true, I have come to realize that the energy and drive of a poem (at least the good ones) become apparent only from multiple readings and intense interpretation. To extract the soul of a poem, the reader must first be willing to bare his own. Unlike modern Western theater and the contemporary cinematic experience (where the viewer is rather passive, a recipient of expression), the poem requires an active participant.

While I would love to write for hours on Keats, or Yeats, or Blake, I haven’t the time. However, because it is National Poem in Your Pocket Day (see today’s impressive Netcetera feature), I feel compelled to share a bit of Auden: "Musée des Beaux-Arts." While the poem covers a lot of philosophical and aesthetic territory, I have always valued the continual relevance of its subject matter: our ability as humans to continue our daily routines, our work, and our entertainment (or poetry reading) with the knowledge that tragedy and suffering are occurring simultaneously.

Of course, not all poetry is this somber (see Mark Doty’s "Golden Retrievals").

Anyway, for your reading pleasure:

Musée des Beaux-Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Devin Felter
Web Production

findingDulcinea and National Library Week

The folks at findingDulcinea, the Librarian of the Internet, are searching the Internet all day long to find the most amazing quality sites to recommend to you. On our blog, we'd like to share our discoveries, tips for searching the Web, thoughts about the content we are featuring on fD, and ideas about the Web community.

Being the Librarian of the Internet, it is only appropriate that we mention that this week is National Library Week (April 13-19).  The  American Library Association is celebrating with the theme, "Join the circle of knowledge @ your library” (http://www.ala.org/ala/pio/campaign/campaignamericas.cfm). According to the ALA, “The first National Library Week was observed in 1958 with the theme ‘Wake Up and Read!’” I don’t know what it is, but I feel immediately at peace as soon as I enter a library.  Maybe it’s the quiet, maybe it’s the potential of an afternoon of uninterrupted reading or maybe it’s how ordered the library is. 

Whatever it is, I could spend an entire day at a library and come out feeling like I couldn’t have spent it better (well, only better if you can take that book out on a sunny day).  In college, I spent countless hours studying in various cubbies on the second floor of my library.  No matter how I felt going in- anxious about exams, stressed about papers or just simply disorganized, I always felt peaceful and organized coming out.  So, if you get a chance this week, take a moment to visit your local library and take a moment of peace and quiet (and possible organization) for yourself.

Kate Davey
Partnership Development