I caught up on a LOT of reading during the past week or so, mostly because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I spent the better part of two days reading every single magazine that I had missed during this very busy month and it was great. Anyway, just a warning that some of the below is kind of old…
– I loved this piece on the Grateful Dead and their legacy that was in The New Yorker last week SO SO much. (However, I assume that if you were never into them, this article probably won’t seem quite as wonderful as I’m telling you it is?)
– Also enjoyable, from the same issue of The New Yorker, is this thing on the work of Ryan Murphy. It really made me want to re-watch season 1 of Popular, but not season 2.(Also, HAHA “Queer Eyes, Full Hearts”.)
– OMG, also! If you still have the November 19th issue of TNY…please read Roger Angell’s heartbreaking (and relatively short) piece on what the dead don’t know. And the Kid Rock profile.
– Everyone should drink a ton of coffee, apparently. (The Atlantic)
– And here are the 10 Best Books of 2012, according The New York Times. (I have only read one, Bring Up the Bodies, and it was incredible and deserves all of the praise that’s been heaped on it.)
– On the heels of reading like 47 reviews of Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree, I read this NYT Magazine article on ‘The Autism Advantage’.
– Jenny Slate was on the Yo, Is This Racist? podcast this week so you should listen to it. Yay!
– This is fun: Susan Rice, Condi Rice…How Can Important People Have the Same Last Name? (The Awl)
– And finally, this important question was posed in laaaast week’s NYT Magazine: What Brand is Your Therapist? (Mine is NOT a digital-media navigator because if she were, I would be much better at blogging.)
OK, I’m done. Have a great weekend everyone!
Emphatic Hands 
600Hi all. What an interesting dicisssuon and one I came to by way of a search on Google for low prices on Etsy because I have noticed more and more of that.My main product is handmade glass beads and the market for them has dropped in average price over the last 6-7 years dramatically. This was due to Ebay and heavy competition which lead to lower and lower prices for handmade glass beads. I resisted lowering my prices because my overhead costs have been high and I try very hard to make a quality product which takes me more time that some other beadmakers.I then attempted Artfire as an alternative for more web exposure. So far, no sales there however I’m hopeful. I have done better on my own personal web store which I’ve had since 2000.So I guess the bottom line here is this: people want cheap. Creators want to sell their product and if they don’t rely on it as a business income they will continue to drop prices in order to capture a larger part of the market. I believe this is a sad thing for Handmade from anywhere in the world. I just hope enough people try doing handmade so they will understand the time and effort it takes. I will continue to attempt to educate more people but it is hard at times to make people understand.Thanks for this extrememly interesting dicisssuon. Sylvia