Christmas morning, 2007: wearing new cozy slippers from Andy,
tiny red origami crane earrings from Lucille Willis,
and opening my brand new camera from Joel!December 25
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! And enjoy a rest to those who don't.
I'm on a fifteen minute break in the middel of cooking (well, we had a long morning break doing gifts and a short one to watch some Fawlty Towers) before showering and doing final preparations for Christmas dinner, for which we have my mother, Andy and me, Joel and Sarah, and Alice, Howard, and Molly coming. Last evening, we had Charlene and Tyrone and Xavier and Madysen with Charlene's cheese steaks and my chili and Tyrone brought wine and he (he's from Georgia!) knew about callilng someone a "long drink of water"! Which I had always assumed was a West Virginia phrase, but my mother denied it, so Joel and Andy teased me that I'd made it up, and I said No no and Tyrone saved me. Maybe I learned the phrase when I was in VISTA? Not sure.
Cardinal in the backyard, photo by Andrew B. Weinberger
December 23
Drippy day gray rain
White blots of wretched old snow
Indoors: family warmth.
December 22
Actually, the back yard doesn't look like this today-the snow is mostly gone, and the weather has been gray and grungy. But Joel and Sarah are here, we had pesto for dinner from the summer garden, there is a manufactured log roasting in the fireplace, and the oven broke today, just as my mom and I were popping in some muffins--but Christie Harrington let me bake them at her house, and I'm sleepy and alls going swimmingly for now.
December 19
My mom has arrived, skinny and tiny and deaf as a doorpost but also full of such enthusiasm that it just blows me away-- I hope she doesn't break anything on the ice and continues in this bright state of being able to enjoy for a long time. She wants to wrap packages, decorate the tree, eat good food, take walks, read books, and play with the parakeet, who went right to her, ate off her plate and out of her mouth. She did her email on my laptop. She asked Andy to tell her she didn't need a second opinion about her glaucoma (her doctor isn't an M.D.) and he said firmly and loud enough to hear, "No, she ought to get a second opinion!" Which caused much laughter.
She had a good visit with her nephew, my Cousin Harley, (with her in photo below) and enjoyed his grand kids and all the activity at their house.
December 18
SPOILER ALERT! DISCUSSION OF Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! Well, they certainly do get darker. In this one, good old Hermione persists in her research, and Harry is absolutely-adolescent-certain of who the good and the bad are. Dumbledore dies (but what about that phoenix on his funeral pyre? And his knowledge of Horcruxes?), and Snapes is demonstrably a Death Eater (but remember—Dumbledore died believing in him!)Harry's youthful determination to go for a soldier as it were is insightful-- after all, it is the human tradition for the young men, physically strong and most disposable, to go do battle for the Race. You can, if necessary, get a new generation with a few surviving men.
This book, though, I really felt Harry's destitution: he suffered through his childhood, a veritable Dickensian childhood. The loss of whoever loves him—so far Ron and Hermione have made it through alive-- but the rest are getting picked off. Was he, then, bred as a fighting-against-evil machine?
Rowling has done something interesting here. I keep thinking of my friend who is a senior at Columbia High School. I asked her if she likes the Harry Potter books, and she says she loves them-- except for the final book! This bodes ill for Harry's future.
December 14
Rosy platinum
Edges of low clouds:
December's foreshortened days.
December 13
It turns out I really love shoes, or at least my shoes . Yesterday I wore my new cloggy-dressy Merrell’s to my last Advanced Novel class. They have a name, Plaza Strap T. It has a big rubbery sole so it looks like a clog, but a little T Strap and suede so from some angles it looks dressy, and when I walked fast across Washington Square and up Fifth Avenue, they just lifted me up and pushed me off and felt great. Felt like I could go running in them. Clunky but stylish? Comfortable? It was such fun to wear. A few weeks back I also bought a pair of little Dollhouse Mary Janes with a one inch heel that you can actually dance in and your feet don’t hurt afterward. I walk enough that my shoes matter, and I am vain enough that how they look matters too!.
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December 12, 2007
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I had the kind of day yesterday I’d been yearning for– almost no phone calls, just me looking out at a gray sky, some writing, some computer business, a stack of papers for my last Advanced Novel Class tonight, books. I took a long walk, went to the dump with cardboard, finished Howard’s End for the umpteenth time, but probably not in ten years. Better enjoy the quiet, as soon my mom will be here, and then Joel and Sarah for a whirlwind of activity. Christmas tree, cards to send out, a Christmas letter. Christmas dinner.
Here's this week's...
Books for Readers
Newsletter # 102
December 9. 2007
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I write often about how many good books are going unpublished, unpublicized and thus s and unread. I probably don’t always praise highly enough the books that are getting published. My most recent discovery– hardly much of a discovery, since the Portuguese author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the late 90's– is BLINDNESS by José Saramago. I’ve read a couple of Saramago’s books in the past, and am particularly bond of BALTAZAR AND BLIMUNDA. This novel falls in the general category of speculative fiction, which means that it’s a novel set more or less in this world we live in, but some premise is put forth that is not actually happening, as far as we know. Generally, speculative fiction is less full of magic and myth than, say Magical Realism, but on a continuum would be tucked in near Magical Realism. I wrote recently about NEVER LET ME GO, also probably speculative fiction as well as high literature. In BLINDNESS the premise is that a mysterious disease is suddenly, catastrophically, making the entire population of a city go blind. There is apparently one exception.
As the disease strikes rapidly but not simultaneously, the early cases are quarantined in a deserted mental hospital, where blind thugs take over the food distribution and everyone defecates wherever they feel like it– after all, no one can see. The prominence of feces in this novel is particularly striking: wherever people walk, it is underfoot, and the smell assaults everyone all the time. There are some ugly rapes, but they actually lead to a solidarity among the women, whereas the defecation calls up no unity.
It’s a remarkable novel, in a wonderful way a kind of old man’s novel. This is not to suggest that young people wouldn’t get anything out of it, and certainly not to suggest it lacks any vigor or invention. Rather, I mean that where novels by young people often rage between flares of hope and depths of despair, this one moves forward focused sparely on survival, which demands co-operation. The spareness includes not using proper names, for example, and a dry practical conviction about what is likely to happen to people when they don’t have their ususal props and rules. Even the emphasis on the scatological is oddly moving: an elder’s recognition that bodily functions are not to be taken for granted in any way.
I’m still not sure after three books what Saramago gets out his quirky punctuation, which is half page paragraphs with nothing but commas for separation. Speakers run from one into the next in a polyphony that is remarkable among other things for how quickly you get used to it. Saramago is famously a leftist, of course, and this is a group novel. The one person who can see has a great deal of strength and kindness, but it is clear that she is no different from the others, except that she can see. There is no hero of supreme egotism and daring. There is enormous individuation and plenty of human dignity, and even some heroic actions , but it is all shared among many, which is, when you think about it, how the real world is.
So I recommend this book highly, in spite of how intimidating the pages look. You find yourself loving the girl with sunglasses; the first blind man; the little boy with a squint; the doctor, the doctor’s wife, and rooting for their tiny, hard won victories. I’m so glad Saramago is still writing, and that there are more of his books I haven’t read yet.
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SUPPLEMENT: A WEST VIRGINIA WRITER DIES
Many of us are still struggling in and on the fringes of the New York commercial book scene. There are many other literary worlds, however, some regional, some based on regions, ethnic groups, and other affinities. These smaller circles are essential to the richness of literature, to the self-exploration of individuals and groups– plus they produce lots of wonderful things to read that are often never seen by wider audiences. One such circle I know a little is the northern West Virginia writing community that centers around Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University. I’m not speaking here, however, of the Univeristy’s writing programs and internationally known literary artists, but rather the people who socialize, read, and sing in small groups or at local bars. Sometimes they work in groups, sometimes all alone. George Lies’s obituary of one of these writers, Joe Gratski, is at the bottom of this page.
MORE ON ISHIGURO
Rebecca Kavaler writes, “Thanks for reminding me of Ishiguro's wonderful novel, NEVER LET ME GO. Every review at the time, whether misjudging this as science fiction or understanding it as a metaphor for the human condition, used the adjective "disturbing." And disturbing it is to think of how "completion" is inevitably our fate, how we lose one by one our faculties, how we are reduced to hoping for immortality in art (Madame and the Gallery, and yet this does not fully explain the emotional impact of this novel. It is impossible (for me, at least) to weep for the human race--but only for Kathy and Tommy and Ruth, and, attesting to the skill of this writer, weep I did. It was the hopelessness that was so sad. For even the pale satisfaction of surviving in our descendants is denied these childless clones. And how clever of Ishiguro to refuse to explain the workings of this world--making it clear this is not science fiction, merely fiction--of the highest kind.”
MORE RECENT READING
MY LOVE, MY LOVE: OR, THE PEASANT GIRL by Rosa Guy is a tale that charmed me in the end. They made a musical out of it a long time ago. It has voudoun gods and class barriers and a tragic ending, but is also somehow light and delightful: broad emotional storkes, but precise details of landscape, conflcts, fruit.
Noah Lukeman’s A DASH OF STYLE: THE ART AND MASTERY OF PUNCTUATION has some interesting and very quotable passages, but in the end it is a monograph padded into being a book. Each chapter ends with a sort of “Your Personality As Shown Through Your Writing Style.” I don’t recommend paying full price for it, but it’s not a bad work to have around for reference.
Kent Haruf’s justly praised PLAINSONG is big popular book from a couple of years ago that I had meant to read and finally did. It is Midwestern laconic and very touching, managing to be a gripping story without a lot of pyrotechnics. Haruf has a quirk of not using quotation marks and also very few tags or descriptors of how things are said. This seems to work, especially for his particular characters. It also creates a sameness in the voices so that you have a feeling of a large silence even when the people talk. The pattern is landscape and events with his sad but sympathetic characters, and then there will be a few unadorned lines of dialogue. It had a flat quality that was totally inappropriate, but occasionally annoying. There is a lot of white space in the novel anyhow, so there are a couple of scenes that felt like they had too much to me, especially a scene in which two old brothers decide to take a pregnant girl in to live with them. I believe they would do it, but this is one of those cases where I prefer mystery or elision rather than a dramatized scebe. He leaves the mother’s leathing a mystery, so why not also a mystery about this thing? Mostly, though, it’s just a solid, moving story.
I also read ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY by Orhan Pamuk. I wanted to like this more than I did. I adored the black and white photos that Pamuk loves too, and a lot of the thoughts and considerations about the sadness of a post empire-city. The book has a powerful ending and a fair amount of humor, but for some reason, I didn’t really like Orhan the little kid much. This is unusual, as I’m ordinarily a sucker for little kids. But there is some tone in this book that I think is meant to feel hard nosed and unsentimental toward his little self from the past, but it ends up by creating (again, to my taste) an unpleasant little kid. I liked the teenage parts best and the adult mullings. Pamuks’ family didn’t seem very attractive. I don’t know whether the effort to be honest did away with affection or what. But oh those pictures and stories about Istanbul!
GOOD NEWS
Rochelle Ratner has a new book out, SPEAKING IN TONGUES: A STUDY OF PERSONA IN AMERICAN, CANADIAN, AND BRITISH POETRY . This was written back in 1984, a critical study never before published. Now “Galatea Resurrects” will be publishing selected chapters: It examines the work of Bill Knott, Andrei Codrescu, Armand Schwerner, and Jack Spicer as well as the writings of HD, Diane DiPrima, and Margaret Atwood.
Cat Pleska has an interesting online article on West Virginia woodworking in the magazine WONDERFUL WEST VIRGINIA. It is featured on their website, so you can click on the link. At the top, you'll see a photo of a man working on cradles, and the title is "Hearts and Hands at Work." Click on that and it'll take you to the article. Her husband, Dan, is a member of this group and one of the toymakers. See www.wonderfulwv.com .
Chris Grabenstein has a new holiday thriller: HELL FOR THE HOLIDAYS, which PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY says “has a spectacular finish...sure to please his fans." Chris offers autographed bookplates to personalize your gift– Just e-mail Chris at Author@ChrisGrabenstein.com and he'll mail as many as you need back to you!
Roberta Allen has stories coming up in THE BROOKLYN RAIL; THE SAINT ANN’S REVIEW; THE VESTAL REVIEW; KGB Bar Lit Online; the anthology UP IS UP BUT SO IS DOWN; RIVERINE: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers; CREATIVE WRITING IN FOUR GENRES; and GARGOYLE MAGAZINE.
Barbara Crooker has new poems up .
BOOKS RECEIVED
(Some of these I’ll be reviewing in future issues, but you may want to think about them for holiday gifts now!)
FROM MAY TO DECEMBER by Pat MacEnulty
KING OF SWORDS by Miguel Antonio Ortiz– website at
http://www.intervalepress.com/http://www.intervalepress.com/OHIO RIVER DIALOGUES A novel by William Zink See http://www.sugarloafpress.blogspot.com/
THINKING OF MILLER PLACE A MEMOIR OF SUMMER COMFORT by Ethel Lee-Miller has just been published.
READ IT ONLINE
Two good articles about the future of the book, e-readers, etc.: at newsweek
at joho.
Writing advice, inspiration, conversation, a community of writers -- you'll find all this and more at TRUEVOICE, THE BLOG by Bill Henderson. Take a look!
http://www.truevoice-blog.com/
http://www.williammccranorhenderson.com/
Book Critics Circle has a nice blog with book thoughts:
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/
Here is the latest issue of WORDRIOT at http://www.wordriot.org
In this month's issue: Fiction by Chuck Augello, Randall Brown, Lawrence Buentello, Andrew Coburn, Maria Deira, David Gianatasio, Drew Lackovic, Mathias Nelson, John Nyman, Mitch Omar, Nick Ostdick, Philip Oyok, Sean Ruane and Corey Zeller plus poetry and more.
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SUPPLEMENT
WEST VIRGINIA LOST ANOTHER WRITER.
By George Lies
Poet Joe Gatski, a mountain wanderer, ginseng and mushroom hunter, a man with a bow and arrow, and more - a minstrel, and songwriter-singer.He passed away in his apartment last night. He was born on April 5, 1956 in Fairmont. West Virginia.
He had just visited me this past Sunday, coming in through the backyard, asking, *Am I welcome? I*ll just take the coffee black and a little sugar. Can you get me some copies of *Promontory** that you published. I need a sample or two for the road. I thank you much.*
He left. He was wearing two different gloves, two different boots, a back pack (his Bowie knife likely inside) - most of his friends would recognize him like that . . . and knew that he could strum a tune and narrate poetry, filled with lore and history and guts. He knew the mountains, the patches of ginseng and where to hide his cache.
We met many years ago, in a place called, Flo*s Diner, in Morgantown, which served pancakes. We drank Detroit wide-mouth beers. He seemed odd at that time. He had picked me, I thought. We lasted in spite of rough spots for a long time. He left me a bamboo flute that he had carved, and a backyard patch of bamboo, and one painting, which I call, *Almost Spring.*
On that last day, he said he had venison and that he*d come over next week, and cook again at the house for Lucia and me. I laughed, since I*m still waiting for smoke to clear from the last time he cooked in our kitchen. But I know I*ll always wake up when I hear a quiet
tap, tap, tap . . . knocking at my back door. . . Am I welcome . . . ?
* *Promontory* was his collection of poetry, which I helped him with, but he had other chapbooks, like *Annie*s Stick* which other writers, like Greg Leatherman and Candace Jordan, helped produce. He also had a CD with some 20 songs. I*ve given copies of his poetry to scores of international visitors I have welcomed to WV over the years, and *Promontory* is now in place at various locations in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, Canada, Italy, Mali, Japan, China, and other places in between..
I pasted two of his poems below from *The Highlands Voice*, Feb. 5, 2005, published by the WV Highlands Conservancy. His words almost seem to suggest that he*s on another road now, ready and packing for the end of the trail . . .
Hearthstone
By Joe Gatski
Though o*er
a many rough wilderness
I may travel
I know that somewhere,
at the end of the trail,
there are folks who will welcome me with kindness and grace.
Wine is on the table
and the parlor is filled with song.In the kitchen the women are eagerly preparing
to serve up warm helpings of love.
Snowbird
By Joe Gatski
Up the valley
through the rain shadow
climbing reaching sky
features finely cut
in white stone of medina sand
with all but one of seven suitors left
far below,
see now, how proudly she stands
for tonight the stars are her crown
Joe Gatski, a West Virginia Highlands Conservancy member wrote this comment, upon submission of his poetry - “I am a firm believer in your cause. Here is a poem I have written that I hope you may enjoy. Hearthstone is about the Allegheny Mountains, the land and its people. Snowbird is about the legend of princess snowbird and her famous climb up Seneca rocks.”
Joe Gatski attended High School in Grafton, WV. He was an avid outdoorsman and spent a lot of time in the Appalachian Mountains. His activities were hunting, fishing, canoeing, horseback riding, gathering and growing wild herbs, edible plants and mushrooms. He was also an artist, singer-songwriter, and musician.
- George Lies
George.Lies@mail.wvu.edu
There is a wonderful video of Joe Gatski on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgFQDLRFXiY
Also, Norman Julian’s weekly column in the Dominion Post (www.dominionpost.com) for December 3, 2007. Is about Joe Gatski.
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December 2, 2007
It's been a kind of pell-mell Sunday, that leaves me feeling energized in my lungs, although tired now at going-on ten o'clock. I started with papers, which I've been doing all day off and on and yesterday too, then worked on an op-ed piece for the News-Record for the Social Action Committee,then walked through snow early to Ethical to greet, everything running slow there, and they needed a presider, and I did it, and Boe spoke, and we had a short Social Action Committee after, I walked home, feeling my cheeks pink, gray sky and more snow. Hastily did my soc action notes, redid the ethical website for next week's platform, a few other things, another paper, ate lunch, played with parakeet, did all the things for dinner, to make sure it would go fast: marinated chops for the George Foreman Grill, sliced broccoli and chopped garlic for a crispy broc stir fry, etc. Then off at 4:00 to the Executive Committee meeting for the Coalition, lots going on for two hours as usual, came home, cooked dinner, and since have been reading the book about America before Columbus, 1491 . Supertired now, but cheerful from all the activity, breathing deeply.
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November 29, 2007
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I’m getting lots of requests for help with applications, letters of recommendation, etc., these days, and it makes me feel old! There's nothing terrible about doing them-- they're usually even fun, and I love interacting with the young and lovely, and this is what is expected of teachers and mentors and such people, but it also feels like I've crossed over some hump-- I used to be the up-and-coming one with everything before me, and now, any way you slice it, there's less than half of my life ahead. And lots of assumptions about how my role now is to help the next cohort move on up. I’m just p.o.'d that I've discovered that I went from being young to old when I wasn't paying attention. I think it happened while Joel was growing up– I always said that having a child late made me not notice turning forty, nor did I really take much note of turning fifty. But now! Now my job is to be nice and help out the young 'uns!
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November 24
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Thanksgiving 2007!
We had a great Thanksgiving feast and fun at Ellen's, this year a strictly Weinberger Cavanagh family group, including Greg, who is about to go to Japan for a week of Zen sittings, Jon and Bethany and Dombey Dog, David, Ann, Leah and her boyfriend Leighton, and Nathan, who whips out his driver's licenses whenever things get slow and says, “I have my license!” So much laughing! Also me and Andy and Joel and Sarah. Turkey and 2 cranberry sauces and gravy and candied sweets and mashed whites and Ellen's inimitable carrot soufflé and caramelized brussels sprouts and green beans and two stuffings and well, it was traditional and traditionally Ellen's and delish and the Rachel Ray person on t.v. Would say (her face all over Dunkin Donuts now-- trying to do it all before she's 40?). Lots of laughter, lots of wit. Photos by David Weinberger.
Foreground, left to right: Ellen, Nathan, Joel, Greg, MSW.
Joel and his cousin and age-mat Leah Weinberger.
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November 21
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Joel and Sarah flying tonight, then we'll drive to Ellen's in Clinton, CT for family, food and cetera. I've still got vacuuming to do, but no cooking! Andy and I had lunch at the Chinese place next to his office, then went to look at a potential new office. My mom is in Cleveland with Harley and Faye, and if everyone weren't travelling (the neighbors in the middle of an eleven hour drive to Indiana!) it would all feel good and safe.
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November 17
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A part of the Arts Catalyst project at the Newark Museum that was supposed to happen today has been rescheduled, and I couldn't be more pleased to have a day with no work out of the house. There's plenty to do here, of course, particularly the finishing up of a manuscript consultation, and I just did a lot of desk work, invoices, NJ Writers Project acceptances of future work, email of course, the endless emails. I only have one NYU class next week, so fewer papers than usual.
Meanwhile, it's a bright but gray November sky, and the trees only now coloring up, very late, and people are whispering about global warming. In the paper today, the U.N. group making more strong statements about what has to be done to stave off global catastrophe.
But it's hard for me to feel it on a cozy Saturday morning when Andy makes pancakes and his strong coffee, and I'm still in my hot pink flannel nightgown (but building up to a walk and some physical work!).
Joel and Sarah are coming next week, and while I'm not allowing myself to look forward to it ecstatically, I am not obsessing about airplanes yet either. My mom goes to Cleveland Monday, getting picked up by Harley and Faye by car, so her winter migrations are commencing.
And the psychological weather here isn't bad.
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November 11
Armistice Day
Here is WIlfred Owen's famous poem.
Owen died in a World War I battle a few days
before the Armistice was signed.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred OwenBent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori..
(The Latin dulce et decorum et pro patria mori means "It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland." )
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November 9
Jody Nancy Maddie me but not Evelyn last night at North Square in NYC. In the link image, it looks larger than it feels--part of what's nice about it is the intimacy. I had California Sunfish with chipotle sauce over risotto and spinach with a side of mashed potatoes with chives (I didn't know the risotto was part of the dish!). We had our usual sharing about our lives and our kids--this is my group that had a baby play group in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in the late eighties, and the big kids are all now college graduates. The others had at least one more, but not me. It is always a deep time, full of the intense feelings of motherhood. I was so glad to see them, just to talk-- no need for action, work, papers to go over! Food wine bronze glow of North Square the young people serving. Great pleasure.
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November 4
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Tomorrow is my late father's birthday: we use his name for a password on my mother's email, and I sometimes type it in in order to see what's going on with her email (it's my way of finding out if she's off line again). It always feels like keeping him alive-- to type his name. A death of someone who you don't live with doesn't leave the same hole in you life as someone you do live with. There are a lot of people in my life who I don't see regularly or even very often, and they come and go in my imagination. So suddenly, when I type his name or note that it's his birthday coming up, he's there in a different way--as if he were still sitting in his recliner in Shinnston reading and watching t.v. And yet know there is no change, nothing to do with that image but hold it: his absence means there can be no new memories. New imaginings, new information, but no new memories.
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I went Friday night into New York and met George and Connie Brosi and their son Eagle who has a play called America Perseveres off off Broadway through a New York/Kentucky exchange. It turned out that the theater is underneath the famous funky KGBG bar! We met at the venerable (but somewhat remodeled) Strand bookstore (George and Connie run a major Appalachian book business-- travel all over with their books), had a bite a Veselka, and then went to the play, which was about George and Martha Washington and Chief Pontiac and the Original American sin of violence and racism. Which does not capture how funny the play was. That was a treat-- to see friends, to see Eagle's play.
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October 26
I've not been very good about writing in my blog/journal this month. We were in San Francisco, then catching up, then there has been major teaching! And Coalition events! And the social action committee is giving the platform at Ethical Culture!
I'm teaching Beginning Your Novels on Mondays at the Norman Thomas High school on East 33rd Street, part of NYU's extended empire, then Advanced Novel at the big library on WAshington Square on Mondays. I'm also working on scheduling school visits starting in January. I'm out at Playwright's Theatre teaching an adult Prose Narrative class on Thursdays, and most Thursdays either have Writers Group in New York in the evening or the Coalition's monthly Trustee meeting. Many nights there are executive committee meetings or other events (this Tuesday we have a Parent Advocacy Workshop). I'm not going to the demonstration in the city tomorrow because I have to prepare my part in a panel on health care issues and the presidential candidates on Sunday. Meanwhile, my garden needs fall cleanup and is still producing greens, and I've got a one day class next week end called Jump Start your novel plus a fancy celebration Saturday night for the Coalition-- and on Friday, Eagle Brosi's play.
I shouldn't have started listing. It makes me tired, and yet I'm having fun, and working on Safe Houses most mornings. I've chosen almost all of these things I do.
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October 20
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Earlier today Andy was about to go out on a bike ride, and he was all dressed in his biking clothes with a helmet and a fanny pack (the little waist pack you strap on and slide around behind you). We were in the kitchen and Taxicab was at liberty. I suddenly realized I couldn't see the bird anywhere, and Andy couldn't either. We heard him-- it sounded like he was out in the hall or maybe had fallen behind the microwave-- but he didn't sound alarmed, just chirping cheerfully. It was totally weird--we looked behind the cookbooks and on the floor, and finally Andy turned toward the cabinets-- and I saw the bird.
He was on Andy's fanny pack happily singing to the zipper and kissing it. We laughed a long time about that.
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October 11
Back in shaggy-treed New Jersey, which is what I’m mostly noticing when I'm out: the untidy ground and street, the variety of trees, dense down very low. Of course we were in a city in California, so there was generally more pavement than vegetation, but even out in the country, there was less grass, and the trees mostly evergreen. The shaggy here comes from deciduousness, too, and while we are still mostly green, leaves are beginning to drift down, brown and yellow and burnt oranges, a slight crunchiness underfoot.
Back to putting up lawn signs for the Coalition’s Report to the Community. Back to getting the DSL back online, which took a long time and a lot of crawling under the table while talking to some lady in India.
Some pictures of us in San Francisco on the snapshot page.
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October 10
Back in New Jersey-- flew fairly uneventfully (some turbulence getting up and out of CA), arriving at @ 7:00 a.m. East Coast time. We tumbled into bed, and it's now noon, and Andy is still asleep. I woke forty-five minutes ago starving, full of energy-- but with a kind of dullness on the left side of my brain, or so it feels. Wanting to get organized, to see how my big shabby house and shaggy deciduous treed East Coast look after brilliant San Francisco city life. Most struck by the different smell of the air and vegetation-- the vegetation, especially: that shaggy end-of-season look of pin oak, maple, beech, and the rest just before they turn color. A fullness to the landscape.
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October 9
We’re still in the hotel room, but will pack and leave soon– Golden Gate park in the plans today, checked out, plane tonight. Yesterday Andy and I walked up up up to the Cable Car Museum and then up up some really steep hills to Coit Tower, which I liked for the Depression era works administration socialist realism murals– quite good ones, really, and the woman who gave the money for the tower had been a little girl in 1906 and cheered the fire fighters and was named their mascot.
From there, with the usual wash of brilliant light and lovely if slightly smoggy views, we took a bus down to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was super touristy with people selling tours and boats coming in and out and long lines for the ladies’ room. But we got Boudin sourdought bread bowls of good chowder, clam for Andy, crab and corn fo me, and then went to the submarine you can visit. I was only going along for Andy, but it was actually a very worthwhile even moving half hour– the audio tour had voices of guys who had been on this ship or others, old world war II American guy voices, those slightly thin Midwestern to movie tough guy from the west or Brooklyn voices, touching, especially the story of how they rescued a lot of British and Australian prisoners of war floating in the ocean after they had blown up the Japanese ship the prisoners were being transported on. As for the gray paint and compressed quarters– a claustrophobe’s nightmare. I kept imagining I smelled the eighty plus men with rare showers and too much heat with too little air.
From there, we made our way very slowly by cable car and muni subway over to Joel’s office on Mission and First Street, saw the office, which I had pictured, seven or eight guys with big computers, but also a “machine room” full of enormous computing power and air conditioners, and then a whole other office suite where they play “fish pong,” their own team sport based on ping pong, competitiveness, and group esprit..
Back to the hotel for a swim (me) and a shower, Joel joined us, we joined Sarah on the BART for a ride to La Taqueria in the Mission District, followed by a lot more walking in that rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, tons of restaurants and bars, more attractive bookstores, one with wonderful pages taped to the window of Memorials of people in the arts and politics by an artist that I really liked (see her page at http://www.veronicadejesus.com) . Many murals, which I liked a lot, especially on the Women Building that Sarah took us to. The next time I come out, I’m going to get a mural tour of the city, or maybe just the one a nonprofit called Precita Eyes gives of local Mission District stuff. Then back to the hotel, exhausted and sad again over Joel growing up and leaving. He’s a great host, but he doesn’t live with us anymore.
And now we've got a lot day ahead with a visit to Golden Gate park, museum, airplane.
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October 7, 2007
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It's Andy's birthday and we're in San Francisco visiting with Joel and Sarah. They are being just super with giving us time and attention. If anything, Joel seems disappointed when we want to take a break-- right now it's five thirty p.m. here, and we went out this morning and rented bikes and biked along the Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge which we biked over! A perfectly doable bike ride, not really challenging enough for Joel and Andy, but I had a great time, got tired, was stunned by the beauty of the bay, the sailboats, the birds. The bridge itself is such a familiar image
that I was struck, as we rode along the bay, by how in the near distance was a flat grassy field, part of the park, and then on the other side the red hills with gray greenscrub--as if at that moment the bridge had nothing to do with water at all. We also had cable car adventures and lunch in Sausalito, ferry back to San Francisco-- and it was Fleet Week! The crazy Blue Devils or is it Angels doing tricks in the sky making us cover our ears while we rode the ferry, waited for the cable car.
Yesterday it was Mission Dolores, South Bay! Pacific Ocean! I waded in the ocean with some squealing little girls in bathing suits at a big golf resort with fancy condos where they permit the public access to the beach by law no doubt not the kindness of the capitalist heart. I loved the Mission, began to read a little about strange California History. Sarah and Joel so loving and fine.
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October 6, 2007
Handerly Hotel
San FranciscoIt’s seven o’clock a.m., and Andy went out for a run, of all things. I’ve decided to wait till the next period to pay for internet access as I took an emergency look at email yesterday at Joel’s. I’m alive and a little disorganized after yesterday’s extremely long day, which proved to be less impossible than I expected. I had a couple of moments when I thought I was going to pass out into sleep, notably once in the Museum of Modern Art, after a nice lunch at Kuletos, a place Andy had stumbled on a few years back when he was here for a conference.
At the Museum we saw the Joseph Cornell exhibit– really large, and he much better known and studied than I had realized. I still adore the boxes, the shadow boxes and displays, but was not so impressed with his collages, that seemed too much like the work of other artists– in other words, in his little house in Flushing, Cornell was fully a part of the art world. And he had a thing for starlets (a whole hommage to Lauren Bacall, for example).
We also saw a big installation of work by someone named Olafur Eliasson from Iceland (born 1967–so now they’re taking over the art world!) who does huge room sized constructions of light, wall sized collections of photographs– light hearted in some way and certainly a delight to experience. You step on a crooked board and waves shimmer– you “make waves, ” walk through a tunnel of light, etc.
Joel and Sarah’s apartment is really nifty, totally lovely, views, clean everything sparkling marble entry way, built ins.
Andy came back with Starbucks coffee, a muffin and fruit, and I washed my hair, got water in my ear!! But Andy suggested the old suction maneuver, so it’s out, and it looks pleasant and sunny in San Francisco– isn’t that the rule here?
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Saturday we drove to South Bay, which was beautiful, after the visit to Tartine Bakery and Dolores Mission. Dinner at Memphis Minnie on Haight Street (but Lower Haight, not the old Haight Ashbury of hippy days fame--we drove by there later, and the scandalously yuppie gap is no longer on the corner but the shops are pretty upscale). The barbeque at MM’s was excellent, especially a brisket, their specialty. The owner is from Brooklyn, Jewish, but his mom was Minnie from Memphis, and his joke is that his mother’s idea of kosher was not using the bacon pan when the rabbi came for dinner...
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September 28, 2007
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Well, it didn't feel like fighting racism. Andy drove me around South Orange and Maplewood after we went to Jersey City to the accountant to do our taxes, and I dropped flyers at the elementary schools to publicize a schools committee workshop on Parent Advocacy. I like doing it, pretty well, the survey of the schools, how they smell, the kids looking cute for the most part, the sense of how each of them is a bustling little world of its own, but it feels like being a PTA parent more than a political struggle. I know the connection of course, that we're working to empower parents, narrow the achievement gap, and thus make integration work and in the long run destroy racism-- but golly making flyers and distributing them feels far away.
What would feel more like it to me? Direct action, of course, marching,yelling. Singing is good.
But for ten years my largest single political action has been through the Coalition, and it works for me in a lot of ways-- I've made friends, I've had to deal with people in a different way, and people I would never have dealt with probably otherwise, but it isn't always easy to keep the long view--
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September 25, 2007
Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the first day the Little Rock teenagers actually got to stay in their high school--with U.S. troops protecing them. Here's an interesting reflection on the anniversary from commentator Juan Williams.
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September 21, 2007
Andy and I went to the lake today just long enough to take out the Bronze Monkey or Goldie (I haven't fixed on a name for the thing yet) and deliver it to the Twin Lakes boat guy in Connecticut. It was an okay day, considering that I had to drive the boat for the first time. I drove it across the lake while Andy brought the car and trailer.
Then we had to float the boat onto the trailer, crank it up into position, strap it down, and drive it away.
Then we drove back down, at dusk, the trees on the hills close and velvety dark green, but a touch of pink on everything. The hills and trees like something you could snuggle into. For a while, a slice of pendulous salmon pink sun between clouds going down.
The sun was so drowsy making on the lake, and the trees up there are at that moment just before they change color, when it could almost be just a few yellow tips, or even something in the angle of the light that makes them look a little yellow. In a few weeks, though, flares of color.
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September 18, 2007
I slept an hour later than usual today, totally wiped out after yesterday, which included Leny, finishing two stories to send off. Then I did a really quick nordic walk, cleaned myself up, went to the Newark Museum for a gallery walk-through to prepare for my teacher training job there– that was fun! They have a new contemporary India exhibit opening tomorrow that promises to be really exciting– photos and installations mostly.
Then hurried back to prepare remarks for the forum last night, then to a lovely small dinner with the speaker and a few others at Les Saisons, Art and Libby Christensen’s bed-and-breakfast on Elmwood Avenue.
Then the forum, which I moderated. I had a sensation of channelling Carol and Audrey and others as they asked me to introduce people who'd just come in, etc. An interesting feeling, but I wasn’t listening to the words said as much as surveying the crowd and making things happen. Even if I didn’t attend as closely as I could to what was said, it felt like a good forum-- the Coalition's first big one since 2005-- more than 150 people, and this with no high school students required to come. They ususally add another forty or fifty to the crowd. We had the News-Record and the Star-Ledger there, mayor of East Orange and South Orange, also an Essex County freeholder. Good representation of political people, then, even though there was a school board meeting in process and some other meetings-- the youth task force maybe. So this was a grown-up but very attentive and interested good audience, including people I hadn't seen in years, lots of very quick conversations, some who’ve been around a long time but hadn’t really participated with the Coalition.
Professor john a. powell was inspiring, speaking about the spiritual value of integration– which I’m not sure I held onto, but at the moment was totally inspired by. Maybe inspiration is what we needed at this moment, though, with lots of bad news, as from Tuscaloosa. Professor powell insists that the spring Supreme Court decision has a silver lining, and perhaps another silver lining is that people may be realizing integration is under attack.
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September 11, 2007
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I didn't really want to go out to nigh to the South Orange Library's annual 9-11 remembrance. This was the second time I'd gone, representing the Coalition with Carol, but as the day progressed I kept hearing commentary on what was going on at Ground Zero etc, and was finally glad to be doing something to observe. Here are notes for what I finally said without using notes:
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I came to South Orange dreading what I imagined the suburbs would be like, and a lot of the suburbs we visited did put me off– But then, in this community, I saw all the pretty houses and trees, but also 3 boys, white, black, and Asian, and and I thought–that’s the community for me.
Oddly, one of the times when I felt that community most intensely was in the weeks and months immediately after 9-11– discussions, parties, a sense of valuing each other. These intense moments can’t last, not in their full intensity.
But in the wars and misunderstandings that have followed, it has seemed clearer than ever to me that the work of the Coalition explicitly, and the culture of integration and inclusion that most of the people in this community profess– are indeed a way of fighting the attitudes that led to the terrorist attacks.
9-11 art by Mahasin Pomarico
It is the inability of people to imagine that the Other is also Human that leads to terrorist attacks as well as to the kind of ugly anti-Muslim attacks that have too often followed, and to war as well. The idea that some human beings are disposable , including themselves, that allowed those men to crash those planes into those buildings– that inability to imagine the other as human– that is the thing that I want to work to end.
In the United States, that failure of imagination, that inability to imagine that those who are different are truly human led to near-genocide of the indigenous native Americans and also to the horror of chattel slavery and to the hundred and fifty years of racism that have followed.
In some ways, the work of the Coalition seems at a great distance from fighting racism: we run tours, we have neighborhood associations, we give a pre school open house–next Monday we’re running a forum called Integration Matters!– these things are, in my mind, part of a broad, complex response to the dehumanization that allows us to think those who are different from us are not human.
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There was an interesting article on the front page of the Times today about Hillary Clinton in 1968– I doubt it would have the same resonance for people of other generations than mine. She arrived at Wellesley a Goldwater Republican, did a senior thesis on Saul Alinsky, who she thought was one of the few radicals who was actually effective, worked on both democratic presidential campaign and for a republican in Washington (Melvin Laird, future defense secretary). This latter was as an intern (I wonder if Mel ever made a pass at her...).
But she realized pretty quickly that she wasn't a Republican. She visited from home the Demo convention in Chicago and smelled the tear gas. Was Wellesley student body president, organized a strike and attended some protests, but definitely wanted to work within the system.
She has been quoted saying various things about working within the system, about making change from within, compromise, etc. that remind me of my friend David Hardesty, outgoing president of West Virginia University-- but also of someone much younger, Joel’s Sarah, who is looking to do good concretely in the field of health care policy.
But the point for me is that the discussion is my generation's discussion--I've even had it with David-- doe we work from within, or work from outside? These ten years of effort I've put in with the South Orange Maplewood Community Coalition on Race have been as close as I’ve ever been to working as an insider. I've never made the transition fully, though, always envying the ones who still put great effort into mass protests, still belong to small left wing revolutionary parties that view everything as best they can through the lens of the oppressed.
It is of interest to me that the people who engaged in the conversation about where to work but assume that working for change is the real thing, those people really are in power now, although we’re beginning to retire.
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I talked with Carol, the Chair of the SO/Ma CCR last night after our Schools Committee meeting about a piece we've been working on for the local paper, and she commented on how it’s gotten easier to write these pieces representing the ideas of the group, and it occurred to me how much satisfaction I’ve taken from drafting them. It is a special privilege and pleasure to write things that express (and of course influence) the thinking of more than just me. This is definitely not the recommended stance for a Romantic Artist. We're supposed to suffer in loneliness and then become famous.
But what if these pieces I've written for the Coalition about integration in the 21st century turn out to be the most powerful things I ever write? That makes me uncomfortable at best, but of course I won't really know in my lifetime. And I never really bought into the myth of the Romantic Artist. It is a narrative that has come to the end of its usefulness, and probably never applied to women even in the 19th century. What I do believe, most deeply, is that my friend Shelley's full time revolutionary partner Teresa and probably even Hillary are in some way on the same side. I know Teresa wouldn't stand that for a moment, and probably not Hillary either. But my deepest world view, when it isn't simply dark and despairing, has none of us knowing the truth, and all of us slogging through the mire with many missteps, but more of us that you might think slogging in a progressive direction.
That sounds incredibly fuzzy headed, vague, and optimistic if not mystical, but that's because I tried to say it directly instead of slant...
September 2
Back from the Berkshires again...Well, I went up for 24 hours, and Ellen and I divided up the summer's left over cans and bottles and cleaned the kitchen (she did most of the cleaning, I carried things up to the cars). It was a beautiful week-end, and Andy was home, on, and Ann broke her foot, and we all ate too much pasta and came home.
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August 26
Back from the Berkshires
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My throat’s as long as a great white pine:
I breathe in gulps of mountain air.
A hill floats blue above the lake,
Hemlocks, birches, white and spare,Waves of goldenrod and Joe Pye weed
Plus good Queen Anne’s exquisite lace.
Above– those white pines’ majesty,
Their simple lesson: lift your face–Take the long view, stand always firm
But if you have to, lightly sway,
And thunderhead and meteor shower,
Will all soon fade and pass away.
August 25
Last night was damp and warm and I woke repeatedly sweating. This morning was damp and warm and while I wasn't sweating, I felt yucky and logy. The first five nights were cold, and I slept very well, Andy’s body in the small bed cozy and warm. But this is what I remember bad about summer nights up here– unpleasant, buggy, sticky.
The big excitement yesterday was that Greg came for an overnight! We put together a big dinner– corn from the Whooooah place down the road from Taft farms, takeout ribs from the new Shaky Jake’s, pasta with the remaining tomatoes, cupcakes and a mesclun salad from Taft farms, bakery bread of course. I loved the ribs. I get so hungry for red meat, and never even know it. I don’t know if those ribs, Jamaican style, are especially good, but I was especially hungry for them.
So today Ellen came, and Greg left, and we all spent some time in the lake, and then Andy and I went to see Rough Crossing at Shakespeare & Co. by Tom Stoppard, with Jonathan Croy, Jason Asprey, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, and Malcolm Ingram, hung around a while and saw the actors coming out, Andy talked to Croy, told him about Joel still remembering his Bottom (“I die! I die!”– which Joel at the age of 4 ran around acting out for months), Tina Packer strolling around. We stayed for the second half of Scapin. It’s such a wonderful wholeness, feeling like we know the company, comparing this Dream with Nigel Gore as Bottom to that one with Jonathan Croy, wondering why Jonathan Epstein has moved over to the Berkshire Theatre Festival, discussing with Ann what has been gained and lost with the move from the Mount (out of doors and hard to hear but child friendly and will there ever be kids like Joel and Nathan and Leah and Jennie who got to play around and enjoy what they could of Shakespeare at the Mount?). An important part of our time up here: we skip Tanglewood and go to as many of the Shakespeare shows as we can.
More of my comments of Shakespeare & Company's productions here and here.
I'm really missing access (easy access) to the Internet-- I've begun mentally rehearsing settlng in at home, running a wash, etc. But mostly my Internet activities.
August 23
David and Ann and Nathan left yesterday, and today, Thursday, Andy and I went to Williamstown to the redoubtable Clark Museum where we saw The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings. It was very interesting to read on the walls about his determination to be known as an open air Impressionist, painting out of doors, all color and light, but in fact turns out to have been a careful draftsman, maybe not as involved in his lines and hatching as, say, Rembrandt, but very serious about it. And his pastels apparently important in his development, the connection between color and line. There were several small pastels of horizontal landscapes that he made in his early twenties that were just spectacular, barely representational, showing sunset over water and three of the same same clump of trees to the right with field and sky central and left under different atmospheric conditions: just spectacular.
Also at the Clark, their new bequest of Constables, Turners, and Gainsboroughs-- who all turn out to be forerunners of the impressionists, Constable in particular with lovely splashes of color and sky. Saw one School of Rembrandt, beautiful face and hand, deep in shadows.
We hung out then in Williamstown a while, saw a student walking backwards in flip flops giving a tour to eager potential students and parents. I wasn't hungry (big breakfast at Uncommon Grounds) but Andy ate an Indian buffet lunch while I went down to a coffee shop called Tunnel City and got a cappuccino and a scone and used the wifi. Then we drove back down Route 8 via the touchingly turn of the twentieth century mill towns North Adams, Adams, and Cheshire. We got back, he biked, I nordic-walked and swam, and he's out taking a twilight turn on the lake with his motorboat to pick up a big chunk of floating styrofoam while I type this on the screened eating porch. It is all green this evening, the first day that hasn't been chilly, pleasant temperature, gray sky, green across the lake, green lake. Deep relaxation.
August 22, 2007
It seems that the Geller Weinbergers and the Willis Weinbergers went to entirely different performances of Antony and Cleopatra at Shakespeare & Company last night. David gave it a C minus (see his blog) and really didn’t like Tina Packer as Cleopatra; Nathan was disappointed, especially by the slo mo dance battles, which I, on the other hand, found moving. Nathan gave it a C. Ann gave it a B minus and Andy refused to grade, but said he liked it. I agreed it was talky and static, (and for that reason it seemed appropriate that the battles were dance battles in slow motion), and I think it truly is in large part Shakespeare’s fault. I also agreed I suppose that Tina was too old, especially in the beginning when she’s kittenish, and maybe the white robes were a mistake, but then she moves into teasing and rather the style of an aging diva, but finally she convinced me, both of the performance it would require to be a queen (think of Eliz. I!) , but also of how this particular woman is determined to be a legend, and how she becomes one. The love affair seems almost beside the point, and the history is assumed. What I took from this production is that even though we are all petty, sexual, ambitious, demanding, sometimes cowardly and sometimes brave people, there is a different thing, which is to be Great. Both Cleopatra and Antony try to achieve that. Neither of them ((not to mention Octavius) is really likable, but the play seems to me to be about transcending situation and psychology to create your own immortality.
The most interesting question to me is why the five of us reacted so strongly differently: David and Ann and Nathan had just been to see Midsummer Night’s Dream with a lot of the same players taking different parts, and they adored Dream, and I have to wonder that the fact Andy and I saw it weeks ago allowed us to be more open to A&C. We were not remembering the various actors from that– the mechanical who played Thisbe, for example, was brave warlike young Pompey here.
Antony and Cleopatra , much studied and not so much played, is a tough play. I was uplifted by Cleopatra’s rise out of spoiled (in many senses) sex kitten to brave embrace of an appropriate death.
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August 20
I’m on the porch again, everyone is in town, still cool, and grayer today. Dial-up internet access is poor at best, but I got messages from Joel and Chrissie and gave up on some others. I took the canoe out and since the wind was going what we call th "wrong" way, I canoed against the wind to beyond To-ho-ne Shores and coming back took a nice long drift with the wind and almost back saw a terrific great blue heron just standing in front of an empty house, moving just like Taxicab only a hundred times taller with the long neck and long beak, but the same silence in the face of danger, the intense stare. Beautiful animal.
August 19
At the lake, on the porch, the parakeet through the glass in the living room on my left, Andy on the beach in the sun, cool but not windy, glassy lake. David is out for a run, Ann and Nathan asleep or reading upstairs. Crows slip by on the other side of the point, silently aware of us as they go about their business. I’m pretty happy this morning, reading Ed's fantasy manuscript, although so far it has blessedly little magic/fantasy. Last night David made vegetarian Chinese with various things including my chard, Nathan and Ann celebrating shabbos. We had happy hour with some good wine and a discussion about drinking among teens and college students.
Now I've done my nordic walking and been out canoeing. Everything slows down for me, the pleasure of thinking over what I might do next. Drifting in the canoe, sun on my bare legs and forearms.
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Tomato Season...the smoothness...the smell!
August 18, 2007
We're getting ready to go to the lake this morning-- cool weather, bird perched on computer screen and generally causing trouble, and I'm going to go to town to do a couple of errands before we take off. Dinner Thursday night with Sciainos, last night out at the second Ethiopian in South Orange! I love eating with that sour crepelike bread.
August 13
Andy and I finally watched Saving Private Ryan. This is primarily interesting because we got the DVD from Netflix about eleven months ago and has been sitting around the house all this time. So we have a long history with the movie, starting with Andy bidding on an enormous framed poster of it, with autographs, and, when no one else bid, getting the darn thing, which hangs portentously in the stairwell.
We knew we wanted to see it, but couldn’t get ourselves to sit down for a three hour war movie. People kept saying it’s the best war movie ever, that the opening sequence on Omaha Beach is a masterpiece, and if you can get through that the rest is easy, etc. etc.
You certainly see why it got the Oscar, and you certainly admire the acting. Tom Hanks is a real American master, and Spielberg too: the emphasis is on the American, though because in the end, it really is maybe the best ever but still a war movie like the ones I used to watch with Daddy in black and white late at night on t.v. This one was more realistic in any number of ways– the core group included a Jew and a hillbilly but no black soldier. It had lots of blood and gore and the suddenness of death, but at its heart it is (is Spielberg's work always?) that all-American combination of shocking violence and sentimentality.
There is one truly cheesy part too: the German that the intellectuals, Hanks and The Kid, let go (rather than allowing the working class G.I.’s to just shoot him like a normal redblooded American would want to do) shows up at the final sequence kills the people who said if they let him go he’d just go on to fight some more plus plenty of others. Then the weepy wimpy Kid kills him, but is still left with the full horror of how his “weakness” has destroyed his friends.
I’m not saying you should be kind to people who are trying to shoot you– if you’re in a shooting war, you have to shoot, and if your nearest and dearest are in imminent danger and you have the means of offing the attackers, who wouldn't do it?
But the fact that this German is brought back neatly at the end as a monster is what I consider prime Hollywood cheese. Andy said he didn’t think it was the same German (he liked the movie better than I did), but we went back and looked, and it was.
Spielberg, I'd guess, identifies with the intellectual Kid who doesn’t fight very well and ends up with much guilt.
Well, it was entertaining (which is also what makes it Hollywood) and fantastically realistic (more Hollywood) and the Omaha Beach sequence had me holding onto the arms of my chair to keep me from running away. All Hail Hollywood.
August 8
The keys on the computer are sticky this morning. We had thunderstorms in the wee hours, sickly sun now, the fan on me, heat misery ahoy.
But I had a satisfying dream, not quite a free flying dream, but a nice one: a lot of people around, big trestle tables with food, some people at a labor demonstration, bright light.
And suddenly I was driving a tall motor boat, ocean-going style, around a lake. Rationally, it was the wrong location for this big boat, but it was easy to steer even in shallow water, and when I misjudged a turn and ended up on a grassy slope, I just sort of hopped out and pushed it back into the water as if pumping a scooter.
There was no motor sound, just voices of pleasant crowds of people. I was up so high in the bright air.
August 7, 2007
I had an easy trip on Sunday, listening to the Coal music and to some lectures on literature and the law. Now I've got a lot to catch up on before we go away. I cleaned dead leaves and dust off the porches yesterday, but had a Coalition meeting and didn't do anything in the garden but pick cukes and tomatoes and basil and beans. I cooked the beans my mother's way-- well, not quite. I put a little butter in the bottom of the pan and sauteed them for a minute, then added hot water to cover and cooked for a while. They were good. Andy got corn at a farmer's market, and I made a salad of cukes in yogurt and garlic sauce. Also grilled turkey cutlets on the George Foreman. Anyhow, except for the heat, it's always good to be back in your own space.
Joel has signed a lease on an apartment in San Francisco. He was so happy and said, "Now I can sleep in on week-ends and I don't have to go apartment hunting!" It's in a former Catholic hospital: actually, his apartment is in the convent section!
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August 6, 2007
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Today in 1945: The nuclear weapon "Little Boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, followed on August 9, 1945 by the detonation of the "Fat Man" nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. They are the only instances todate of the use of nuclear weapons in warfare, in this case, against a large civilian populations.
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Bridge over Troublesome Creek, Hindman Settlement School, Hindman, Kentucky: Beloved of Appalachian Writers, web spinning
spiders, and many others.
August 3, 2007
I'm in West Virginia after one of the magical Appalachian Writers workshops at the Hindman Settlement School. I realized when I stopped at a rest top on I-64, somewhere between Huntington and Charleston, that I was expecting the people smoking and buying drinks from the vending machines to nod and smile. I felt deprived of the warmth and welcome and general caring that underlie the serious work in poetry and prose that goes on there everything year.
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July 25, 2007
Well, I'm heading for West Virginia tomorrow followed by the Appalachian Writers Workshop in Hindman, Kentucky. I'm teaching nonfiction, which I discovered I have more credentials in that I realized. I'm also working on a couple of Appalachian set stories, and my first villanelle maybe ever! Sort of a fun form, especially with the computer so it's easy to make small changes in the repeating lines.
This perfect crystal day with every perfect leaf
Cries, “I am here, I’ve always been–
Live forever now, no fear no grief.”Sometimes the dim moist days continue in a sheaf
Until, replacing greasy orange and murky green–
This perfect crystal day with every perfect leaf!But then I stop and think, It is so brief–
To which the brillant day says, so serene:
“Live forever now no fear no grief.”The world-denying preacher’s firm belief
Dismisses my pagan day and her grand sheen,
My perfect crystal day with every perfect leaf.Well, someone has to be a lying thief:
Preacher or the seductive day he must demean:
“Live forever, now no fear no grief.”When we dwell on End of Days, there’s no relief
We’ll never own this white and green
This perfect crystal day with every perfect leaf.
Live forever now, no fear no grief.
Hot weather--bird took a bath.
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July 19, 2007
This is my sister Chrissie's son Alex's 22nd birthday.
I'm working mostly at home today, and found this beginning-of-an essay:
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It is largely blank, or at best some misleading pages, the story of the years ahead of which we have no previous example. The blank at the end of life, usually conceived of vaguely, as dark, the dark that falls, the eyelids that close. Fearful or velvety.
But the real blank is not dying, which is in some ways highly imagined, far more familiar than how it feels to live inside our lives in the years before death. How to be old-- by which I do not mean ill or frail, but in that period of life that is not under girded with biological optimism: the intrinsically hopeful, forward-aimed fierceness of youth.
Novels, movies, and certainly the advertisers and other students of commercial demographics are intent on the experience of young adults with their spending power, their rich blood and resilience, and above all, their genetically programmed belief in the future. This deep body belief in the future is what fuels sex, and what makes sex useful in selling. Whatever else we have made of sex (and we’ve made plenty), it is always about getting individuals of the species to commit resources to making future generations. That’s the engine at the heart of youth – the genetic material demanding replication and continuation.
So when we continue on (the human female I'm told is unique in living many decades beyond her fertility) what is driving us? Partly the habits we learned early on, but also the wonderful generalizing ability; the drive (am I fooling myself here?) to do more for those future generations, one's own descendents, one's own species, perhaps one's own biosphere.
This is my old tune, long may be sing it: learn to make your natural survivalist selfishness include greater and greater circles of beings.
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See my brother-in-law's blog entry on getting older: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/older_than_lennon.html
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July 14, 2007
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Joel and Sarah spent a night with my sister and by all accounts (Joel on cell phone as Sarah drove north, Chrissie by email) it was a happy visit. Joel especially liked the plums that grow in the backyard in San Luis Obispo. They didn't get into Hearst Castle-- too late for reservations-- so maybe if and when Andy and I go out to visit we'll do that with them and see Chrissie and Goro and Alex too.
This is Saturday morning, and Andy is off to run the two town bike ride. I’m trying to get the desk in order, and particularly papers “graded.
I’m increasingly getting from people with personal requests, usually for free critiquing. My writing exercises are now first up if you Google for "writing exercises." I'm proud and astounded, but on the other hand, so far this has translated into no money and various requests for help. This interests me a lot. It is partly an entitled people (I have a lot of trouble with that word: half the time it has to be shaken loose from my head– I get “privileged” but not the one I want, “entitled.”) It’s also partly, of course, how easy and low-risk and email is, but also the intimcacy that the internet fosters. The person doign the writing exercises feels close to me, as if I were an aunt or the lady down the street.
So many things are made easier by email and the internet– getting speakers for Ethical Culture is smoothed out by email, many kinds of quick thank yous and responses, and the instant gratification of photos and sharing an article you read. The down side, pretty obvious, is how easy it is to toss off an angry or ill-considered response to something, to forward a clever comedy routine or ugly political attack to hundreds of people (the virus effect).
I’ve resumed relationships in a meaningful way through email with certain people, but then there are all the strangers asking for free responses, free critiquing, free friendships. It is going to be really interesting to see what shakes out in politics and publishing. Those are the arenas I see most in flux: people writing letters and calling each other on the phone is something we’re familiar with, although maybe I' m underestimating the importance of this part-- I don’t use MySpace (although an article in the Author’s Guild publication suggests maybe I should– some genre authors are really using it in a lucrative way). Maybe I’m missing the friendship web side of this.
One odd thing: I avoided having a color CRT and internet access on my computer for a long time for fear I would lose the magic of my computer as a place for writing alone.
I was right: it is suddenly a place where I teach, shop, interact from people, get political pleas, do all kinds of business. And it is indeed a problem to be so connected and less deeply private to follow my own internal tunnels and shady byways. And yet–and yet– I also feel those voices welcoming me, that I am part of something very real, all around.
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July 11, 2007
The heavy heavy heat is modified today by an overcast sky, which makes my office less of an oven, so I'm here today, having spent much of yesterday downstairs with my NYU papers. NYU is tonight, and I've also got a well-subscribed online class underway, followed by Hindman, so altogether it is not a relaxing, let-your-mind wander summer. I'm making a little money, working pretty hard also for the Coalition and the Social Action Committee at Ethical.
Yesterday I also cut grass and biked (slowly), but the extreme heat, up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit or so, doesn't seem to bother me when I'm active, just when I'm sitting at the computer.
There's a really interesting series in the Star-Ledger about the Newark Riots/Rebellion/Insurrection of 1967, just 40 years ago at which point I was finishing up my year in Norfolk as a VISTA volunteer.
I'm reading Orhan Pamuk's Snow, and it is an admirable book, but I'm getting a sense of it's going on too long. Or is it me with my lack of patience for books (see the article in todays New York Times about how Harry Potter fever has not translated into children reading other books). The whole changeover from books as the major form of entertainment is tough going for those of us with marginal careers in literature. On the one hand, if the publishers were making the right connections to small reading publics, we'd probably be doing as well as we were ten or twenty years ago, or forty, but they're not--they're still after the block busters. I'm going to do an issue of my newsletter on this.
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At Lake Buel
It looks like a hot day, a scorcher maybe, coming at us today. The others have gone to town or perhaps biking, not sure, but it’s me and the parakeet this morning. Andy and I went to Shakespeare & Co.’s latest Midsummer’s Night Dream, rather unhearalded and with a no name cast, except for their new star guy Nigel Gore who did Claudius in their Hamlet last year. They all seemed good enough but somehow uninspired to me in the first half-- how could they keep doing this play, especially without the magic of the white pine woods behind Edith Wharton’s house? With how many times they’ve done this? But even in the first half, I was aware that I was hearing the lines. I’ve been getting better and better at hearing Shakespeare, but last night, it all kind of opened for me, as if an undistinguished but competent production had somehow cracked the code for me and opened the language.
I’ve been seeing more and more Shakespeare and I listened to the cd’s too, with a lot of focus on lines of course, but last night I heard it, Andy did too, said he heard the rhymes.
And the second half, after having half a coffee and some trail mix, I began really to like the production too. The Helena and Hermia were excellent and their boys athletic and silly, Nigel Gore was an inspired Bottom, the coarse and randy Puck had a good time and so did we. Anyhow, it was a happy experience, nose bleed seats and all.
Calm lake, and I have the homesick feeling, wanting to get back to work. Sometime yesterday it hit me that the solution to my problem of too much to do is simply to suck it up: I'm teaching for the next two days, and doing Coalition stuff. Period. Won’t write, because I’m working. Be glad I don’t have to get up early in a panic and work. At least these will be at home. In the heat. But if I have to, I’ll work in the bedroom with a.c.
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July 5, 2007
Ah the wonders of technology! Andy and I are sitting at a table in a food court at the Prime Outlets in Lee, Massachusetts with a diet pepsi and free wifi. We had brunch at Norm and Nancy's in Otis, rather more of an adventure that we expected because as we drove the mile and a half from the paved highway we came across a dead tree fallen over the road, suspended on telephone wires! We called them by cell, climbed over the tree and started walking, and I simultaneously got a phone call from the Coalition and we began to be chased by two large black labs-- well, I exaggerate. They were actually just friendly barkers. THen Norm picked us up and we had delicious Challah french toast, enjoyed their house in the woods, and now we're here, buying walking shoes and doing email!
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July 3, 2007
Well, with the wonders of cell phones, Joel has been in touch through West Virgini a and Tennessee (they stayed in Memphis and went to Graceland this morning-- even liked the banana flavored Reese's cups ). Tonight they plan to stay in Oklahoma someplace, then make a run through Texas to Flagstaff and go to the Grand Canyon and Sedona. It sounds like a great trip, and eveyrone is cheerful. The crying seems to be over for the moment, and I do have to say that cell phones are helping. Andy and I are heading north tomorrow for the lake, taking the parakeet. That should be interesting.
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June 30, 2007
Tomorrow's the day-- Joel and Sarah drive off into the sunset, road trip to California, Grand Canyon, Sedona, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco. I've already cried once. Why is this so much harder than him going to college or camp? Because it's all the way over there.
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