City of Asylum

City of Asylum

Amazing.

How Prohibition backfired and gave America an era of gangsters and speakeasies | Film | The Observer

How Prohibition backfired and gave America an era of gangsters and speakeasies | Film | The Observer:

Why self-publishing is no longer a vanity project | Books | The Observer

Why self-publishing is no longer a vanity project | Books | The Observer:

The biggest change in publishing in my lifetime. Interestingly enough, no one ever called a rock band making their own record or CD in a garage "a vanity project."

Lance Armstrong: the whistleblowers | Sport | The Observer

Lance Armstrong: the whistleblowers | Sport | The Observer:

""I wrote four books about the guy. All the evidence was out there since 2004 and people will still say there is no evidence. To me there was a wilful conspiracy on the part of sporting officials, journalists, broadcasters, everybody. Now we see the fruits of it: high-level cycling has been destroyed by corruption."

Comfort breakfast

Milk toast, scrapple, eggs.

(Excuse the plate, which I used to flour the scrapple before frying. I was expecting to eat this privately, not showcase it.)

How we grow out of our creativity

How we grow out of our creativity

Sounds like the book my friend Mark is writing.

Power - CNN.com

Power - CNN.com

A digital art gallery.

RNC Official: NM Governor ‘Dishonored’ Gen. Custer By Meeting With American Indians | TPMMuckraker

RNC Official: NM Governor ‘Dishonored’ Gen. Custer By Meeting With American Indians | TPMMuckraker:

This should amaze me but, alas, I believe anything can happen in politics these days. What a season for moments like this.

Maybe this is a public service. Some Republicans, in their stupidity, remind us what a racist, sexist nation we still can be.

Exploring the Yakima Valley

What with H's international travels and my pacemaker, the summer hasn't allowed much time for a vacation together. We hope to get away for a few days before school starts and decided on Yakima and area. I used to go to Yakima when I had friends living there and love the area. There's much new activity going on, including a small town in the area that sounds very intriguing. With a population under 1000, the average age is under 30 and the town is being developed with enthusiasm and energy by young artisans. Definitely want to check it out. There's another small town in the area where the "tourist attraction" are its dozens and dozens of murals. So we won't be bored -- and the landscape is gorgeous. So I hope this little trip doesn't fall through.

Poets and Money by Charles Simic | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

Poets and Money by Charles Simic | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

"Even Robert Frost, who was immensely popular and widely read during his lifetime, had to get a teaching job to support himself. As for the rest of our great poets, going back to Whitman and Dickinson, their combined income from poetry, if it were known, would make them even more incomprehensible in the eyes of many Americans than they already are."

Round Bend Press: Another View

Round Bend Press: Another View:

TS puts me in my place re college football.

Remembering Steve Van Buren, Hall of Famer for Eagles - NYTimes.com

Remembering Steve Van Buren, Hall of Famer for Eagles - NYTimes.com:

When we moved to Pasadena in 1948, Van Buren was in his prime, leading the Philadelphia Eagers, my dad's favorite team at the time, to several championships. So he was a big sports hero in my early memory. I treasured his bubblegum card. He passed away yesterday.

Early mornings

Usually my favorite times of the day are the first several hours after I awake. I'm regularly up at 5 -- if I'm not up on my own Sketch gets me up because he wants his breakfast then. I feed the dog and turn on Kindle, where the LA Times has already been downloaded. I read the paper. By the time I'm done, The Guardian has been downloaded (at 530). After I read The Guardian (by which I mean, look at the headlines and read stories of interest), I look at the several blogs to which I subscribe: 2 science blogs, a publishing industry blog, a Mariners baseball blog. By then it's 7 or 8 and I usually think about breakfast. H will rise around 9.

The mornings are so quiet. During the week, traffic sounds start around 7 but there's longer quiet on weekends.  The peace and quiet of early mornings, of course, become something else in time, and the day can go forward in many ways. But the early mornings are pretty consistently what they are: quiet, reflective, peaceful.

Julian Barnes: a tribute to Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford | Books | The Guardian

Julian Barnes: a tribute to Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford | Books | The Guardian:

"Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, adapted for the BBC by Tom Stoppard, is a masterpiece saturated with sex and features 'the most possessed evil character' in 20th-century fiction"

Why George Orwell is as relevant today as ever | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | | The Guardian

Why George Orwell is as relevant today as ever | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | Comment is free | The Guardian:

Howard Jacobson attacks the dearth of 'good readers' | Books | guardian.co.uk

Howard Jacobson attacks the dearth of 'good readers' | Books | guardian.co.uk:

"The novel is in danger, according to Howard Jacobson, the Man Booker prize-winning author of The Finkler Question. But, he said, the fault lies not with novelists, but with the lack of good readers."

Sun dog

Round Bend Press: A Fan's Notes

Round Bend Press: A Fan's Notes:

TS on his passion for college football. I used to share it. Big time. But over recent years, a number of things happened to cool my enthusiasm:

• Nike hijacking the University of Oregon, creating a virtual Nike U. I don't like Nike, heightened by an interview I did with Phil Knight when I was writing for Oregon Business magazine. I'll leave it at that.
• The general increase of corruption in the game.
• The general increase of hype in the game, the players participating. Try to imagine Hugh McElhenny doing a dance in the end zone. Or Alan Ameche. Tank Younger.
• The increasing tendency to prefer talented thugs over players with character.
• The increasing joke at major schools of the concept of the "student athlete."
• My increasing appreciation of "real" football, world football, what we call soccer, which I now find to be a more exciting game to watch and certainly a more demanding game to play.

So I am curious to see how I react to college football when the games start next weekend. I have some curiosity: will UCLA become competitive again? Will Washington State with Leach as coach surprise some folks? We'll soon find out.

Recent reading

Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times by Susan Quinn

A gift from H from her recent trip east, this is a gripping and important history of the Federal Theatre Project and its director Hallie Flanagan.. I read it with awe and sadness: awe at the work artists can do when they are in circumstances to devote their energies to it; sadness at how many in this country consider such activity frivolous and, yes, dangerous, so that in the end controversies gather the forces of ignorance to the attack, usually successful in the short term, on such "dangerous" activity.

Quinn makes an important point. At bottom, much of the hostility against the Federal Theatre Project was racist.

When opponents of the project got up to speak in the House and in the Senate, they might start off by talking about incompetence, or boondoggling, or communism, or immorality, but they wound up talking about race.

These opponents are the ancestors of the present Tea Party, who in turn have ancestors: racism goes back to our cultural origins and remains in play today far more than is admitted. A white Obama would not be as hated a target. So this is more than the history of a theater project. It's a cultural history at an important time in our history, a time suggestive of our own.

The great flood of 1937, one of the most devastating in the nation’s history, drove a million residents of the cities and towns along the Ohio and its tributaries out of their homes. One hundred and thirty people died. But the death toll would have been much higher had it not been for the speedy intervention of the federal government: By the second day of flooding, eighteen thousand WPA workers were on the job, rescuing thousands and ferrying them to safety in rowboats.

Compare to Katrina!

 “It is the very essence of art,” she told a group gathered in Washington around this time, “that it exceed bounds, often including those of tradition, decorum, and that mysterious thing called taste. It is the essence of art that it shatter accepted patterns, advance into unknown territory, challenge the existing order. Art is highly explosive. To be worth its salt it must have in that salt a fair sprinkling of gunpowder.” 

After it was all over, Hallie Flanagan wrote in the New York Times that the congressmen who went after the Federal Theatre were “afraid of the Project—but not for the reasons they mentioned on the floor of the Congress. They were afraid of the Federal Theatre because it was educating the people of its vast new audience to know more about government and politics and such vital issues of the day as housing, power, agriculture and labor. They were afraid, and rightly so, of thinking people.”

On a much smaller scale, we had our own example of subsidized theater here in Portland in Fall, 1978, when director Peter Fornara received a CETA grant for his theater company The Production Company and presented a remarkable season of four plays in daily rotation. I've written about this at length in my essay Risk in Rep:

The four plays listed on the cover begin to tell the story: Cabaret, Marat/Sade, Joe Egg, American Buffalo. These four plays – a dark musical set in Nazis Germany, an even darker music drama set in an insane asylum, a disturbing family drama and a tough-edged story of street thugs – would make for a remarkable season at any time because they lack the variety typical of commercial theater selections. All these plays are serious. All have dark visions of human experience. Today a theater company might add one of them, even two, to its season – but four “heavy” plays in a row? Never! Then we turn over the program and look at the schedule. These plays are being performed not in succession but in rotation! 

I feel blessed to have witnessed this season because such an offering is so rare in our culture. But again it showed what artists can accomplish when they can devote their energies to their crafts. Such theater artists can make audiences think even as they entertain them. And as this book suggests, herein is the rub. In America today, thinking is a dangerous occupation.

Shaking the electron has strengthened quantum mechanics

Shaking the electron has strengthened quantum mechanics:

""Such a good agreement between theoretical predictions and experimental findings in such a simple (almost textbook) system is the first direct proof that the sudden approximation computational method utilized to solve quantum mechanics problems for almost a century is indeed correct," points out Professor Patyk."

Researchers investigate early language acquisition in robots

Researchers investigate early language acquisition in robots:

"...a robot analogous to a child between 6 and 14 months old has the ability to develop rudimentary linguistic skills. "

Round Bend Press: Bigelow on Zinn

Round Bend Press: Bigelow on Zinn:

On being an optimist

CJ, the protagonist in my latest and probably last novel, Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones, plays out a variation of the Candide theme: surrounded by evidence of a decaying culture, he wonders why people behave as if everything was fine. His doctor sends him to a shrink for his depression.

“You can't fix what was bothering me when Helen was still alive,” CJ told Dr. Peters. “It's larger than all of us. You couldn't fix it then and you can't fix it now. You can either ignore it, or fill your life with distractions from it, or accept the fact that we live in a culture based on lies and deceit and betrayal. But how do you deal with that? You know what I think? I think the smartest among us, the most sensitive among us, can't accept it at all and that's why they're locked up in the loony bins. Insanity may be the only true response to all this shit. We lock up our best people. We punish the truly sane people in the country, the ones who see through all the shit and can't stand it.”

CJ, a retired historian who believes JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy, has a parting shot in this one and only visit with the psychiatrist:

 “Why the hell aren't you upset? Why the hell isn't everyone upset? They overthrew your government, for God's sake! How can you live your life as if nothing had happened?”

CJ's challenge is to find a way to live with integrity in a world collapsing all around him. I don't think he's alone.

This comes to mind because  last night I met an articulate optimist, which I haven't encountered in years. We were over to dinner at an artist friend of H's home. Her husband, an anthropologist, spoke of the future as if it were utopia. With two delightful daughters, both of whom appear to be addicted to reading books, I can see a reason for exuding good energy. What fascinated me, however, was his reasons for optimism: technology. In a few years, he said, there will be pre-fab houses that can go up in a matter of days. There were other examples in a spiel that reminded me of TV ads in the 50s about the wonders coming in the modern kitchen. What brave new world, to have such gadgets in it.

I was tempted to bring up global warming, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the rise of right wing extremists, the instability in the world at large. But I didn't. My only comment was to note that with Curiosity on Mars, maybe technology was paving the way for planetary exodus if his optimistic vision doesn't pan out.

So I open the L.A. Times on my Kindle this morning and the first story is about Mexico and how crimes against women are virtually ignored there. And the next story ... well, you get the picture. In my novel, I use news excerpts, ala Dos Passos, to establish the world CJ is living in. Interestingly enough, after I published the novel my first worry was that I hadn't painted grim enough a picture.

CJ learns to live in the world by dropping out. He's inspired by the end of a poem by Lew Welch:

You can't fix it. You can't make it go away. I don't know what you're going to do about it, But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just going to walk away from it. Maybe A small part of it will die if I'm not around feeding it anymore.

I often marvel at the challenge and difficulty of being a parent today, especially of young children. I suppose there are worse ways to go than being an optimist. Thornton Wilder believed that we always manage to get out of our human messes "by the skin of our teeth" but, as readers of this blog may remember, I parted ways from Wilder, and sadly so, a few years ago.

As I've said in many contexts recently, I'm just glad I'm not younger than I am.

How hip-hop fell out of love with Obama | Music | The Guardian

How hip-hop fell out of love with Obama | Music | The Guardian:

"Barack Obama was once hailed as America's first hip-hop president. Why have so many rappers now given up on 'B-rock'?"

Pussy Riot is the tip of the iceberg – 'there's a lot of intimidation going on' | World news | guardian.co.uk

Pussy Riot is the tip of the iceberg – 'there's a lot of intimidation going on' | World news | guardian.co.uk:

"Maria Baronova has had her flat raided, her laptops taken, and now faces two years in jail – all for being an anti-Putin activist"

The New Vanity Publishing: Traditional Publishing

The New Vanity Publishing: Traditional Publishing

A prominent literary agent recently told me that unless an author receives a hefty advance of $100,000 or more most publishers will do virtually no promotion, leaving it to authors to create and exploit their own platforms via social media and networking connections, workshops and webcasts. So when you go the traditional-publishing route, you may well find yourself self-publishing without the benefits of self-publishing.

A daily ritual

With the weather dry, Sketch and I make it to the park on a daily basis. We go to the nearby school if we're lazy or in a hurry but drive to West Lynn to our favorite dog park if we have time to spare or just need a drive.

Interestingly enough, Sketch gets more exercise at the school, with no dogs around, than at the dog park. He used to get into chases with dogs when he was younger. Now he ignores them and they seem to cramp his style for running on his own.

Quotation of the day

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have too little." --FDR, 2nd Inaugural Address

How far away, those inspiring words ...

Shameless Self-Promotion vs. Shameful Self-Promotion

Shameless Self-Promotion vs. Shameful Self-Promotion

Frankly I find all self-promotion shameful. I grew up with a generation of writers, naive and misguided perhaps, who believed the work spoke for itself. A literary book was not a commodity in the marketplace and its audience was small (elite!) by definition. We wanted respect and admiration not fortune and fame.

But the literary world like the world at large has changed. In today's environment I'm not sure how I would fit in.  Certainly not as a writer, defined today almost exclusively as outside-in work. Maybe as ... ???

A Message To Weathermen: Where's The Climate Coverage? | ThinkProgress

A Message To Weathermen: Where's The Climate Coverage? | ThinkProgress:

"How many heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and megastorms must we have before weathercasters start to forecast the facts?"

Recent reading

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

The future of everything we have accomplished since our intelligence evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years. Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes. 

 The last tree. The last mammoth. The last dodo. And soon perhaps the last fish and the last gorilla. On the basis of what police call "form," we are serial killers beyond reason.

 "A culture," said W. H. Auden, "is no better than its woods." Civilizations have developed many techniques for making the earth produce more food - some sustainable, others not. The lesson I read in the past is this: that the health of land and water - and of woods, which are the keepers of water - can be the only lasting basis for any civilization's survival and success. 

 Civilization is an experiment, a very recent way of life in the human career, and it has a habit of walking into what I am calling progress traps. A small village on good land beside a river is a good idea; but when the village grows into a city and paves over the good land, it becomes a bad idea.

 The great advantage we have, our best chance for avoiding the fate of past societies, is that we know about those past societies. We can see how and why they went wrong. Homo sapiens has the information to know itself for what it is: an Ice Age hunter only half-evolved towards intelligence; clever but seldom wise. 

 Now is our last chance to get the future right. 

 Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

 What I suggest here as a solution is what Aldous Huxley suggested, as well. And I can do no better than he. He believed with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.

They're town criers in the age of Twitter - latimes.com

They're town criers in the age of Twitter - latimes.com:

"A growing group of L.A.-area residents share a passion for listening to police scanners and spreading that news online, in real time, via Twitter. 'It's like theater,' one says."

Fascinating story. Probably happening all around the country. Great premise for a novel (but not written by me).

How to Die in Oregon

How to Die in Oregon:

This is an excellent documentary that needs wide viewing. However, it provides merely a small first step to the real discussion we should be having about "quality of death" issues.

As presently conceived, "death with dignity" laws are presented as a humane alternative to suffering. This is legitimate but not enough. "Death with dignity" also should be available to those who want to celebrate a long, good life.

Say a man or woman is "old" (70? 80? 90? average life expectancy + 3?) and has lived a full life and simply is ready to pass. Where's our humane concern to such an attitude, which is perfectly rational? We force this person to sneak off on his own and do the deed as best s/he can. Shame on us! This person should have available the same prescribed drugs given to the elderly person with a terminal disease.

Here's an idea (not original with me). Let's define life itself as a terminal disease, how about that? After so many years of "living," you qualify to end your life for whatever reason you have. If you lived 90 years, who is anyone to tell you you need to hang around because death is ... what? wrong? an irrational option?

Until we broaden our humane concerns and include "quality of death" definitions that embrace individual responsible decisions, we are not a humane culture. Why can't death with dignity be a celebration of life and not, as now, only an escape from suffering?

So we've barely begun this discussion. I doubt if we'll actually have it soon. Not in my lifetime (which I define, not my doctor or anyone else!).

The Wall Street Journal Does It Again: Another Whopper Of A Lie On Climate Science | ThinkProgress

The Wall Street Journal Does It Again: Another Whopper Of A Lie On Climate Science | ThinkProgress:

"Suffice it to say that CHL do not have a great deal of credibility on climate science issues, which is perhaps why they continue to publish their opinions in the conservative mainstream media rather than subjecting their arguments to the scientific peer-review process."

Arctic Ice Melting At Startlingly Rapid Rate | Common Dreams

Arctic Ice Melting At Startlingly Rapid Rate | Common Dreams:

"The Arctic ice cap is melting at a startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level within weeks -- and then keep on melting."

The Five Most Under-Reported Stories of the Summer | Common Dreams

The Five Most Under-Reported Stories of the Summer | Common Dreams:

Samuel Beckett the sportsman – from cricket to Krapp's Last Tape | Stage | The Guardian

Samuel Beckett the sportsman – from cricket to Krapp's Last Tape | Stage | The Guardian:

"Samuel Beckett was first a cricketer, and then a writer."

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking | Simon Jenkins | | The Guardian

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking | Simon Jenkins | Comment is free | The Guardian:

Glencore food chief says US drought is 'good for business' | Business | The Guardian

Glencore food chief says US drought is 'good for business' | Business | The Guardian:

And mass graves enrich the soil with nutrients.

China Miéville: Writers should welcome a future where readers remix our books | Books | The Guardian

China Miéville: Writers should welcome a future where readers remix our books | Books | The Guardian

Logical extension of the democratization, anti-elitism thinking so widespread today. Moving to the lowest common denominator.

In The American West, The Hottest Year On Record Forces Us To See Things As They Are | ThinkProgress

In The American West, The Hottest Year On Record Forces Us To See Things As They Are | ThinkProgress:

"I pointed out that the land was scarred, as if someone had taken a knife to a beautiful person’s face.
“They used to say that the vegetation would eventually re-claim the sites,” said Steve Bloch, the energy program director for the wilderness alliance, through the headphones. “But scientists no longer think so. Not enough water.”"

On losing a watch

DL sent this:

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) says we shouldn’t become upset about losing stuff.

Here’s why:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

          (from “One Art”)

Battery charge

Stopped by the university briefly to check mail, my office, visited with a few folks -- and got a battery charge for the fall term ahead. But first, the rest of summer!

Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer is pure protest poetry | Books | guardian.co.uk

Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer is pure protest poetry | Books | guardian.co.uk:

 "Punk Prayer, English version by Carol Rumens

(Chorus)

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin,

Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish him, we pray thee!

Congregations genuflect,

Black robes brag gilt epaulettes,

Freedom's phantom's gone to heaven,

Gay Pride's chained and in detention.

KGB's chief saint descends

To guide the punks to prison vans."

'via Blog this'

Ebooks Follow The Trail Blazed By Paperback

Ebooks Follow The Trail Blazed By Paperback

A great perspective.

Renewal

Yesterday's funk has vanished. In good spirits this morning. Need to clean house for The Return and I should go to the U to check my mail box. Actually last night I made brooding progress on Walden project ... more personal, the better. Not academic. Personal.

Writing / Having written

Dorothy Parker is famous for saying that she hated writing but loved having written. I am the opposite. I love writing, from the brooding, chaotic energy of conceptual birth through the stages of increased coherence, liking most of all the rewriting process when craft tries to make the work as clear and energetic and dramatic as possible. But I am not so fond of "having written."

This latter varies with context. As a playwright and filmmaker, "having written" can be revealing because the finished product is a collaboration and actors especially can show you marvelous things you didn't consciously know you were doing.

Not so with non-collaborative fiction, poetry, prose. I like people to tell me they like something, of course, but I'm not wild about being trapped into discussion of my work because, after all, the work is an attempt at verbal communication and what I have to say is best said in the work itself -- or I have failed.

But what upsets me more than anything is when someone who says s/he likes a piece of work later shows a belief that I don't actually mean what I say, as when "real life" duplicates a dramatic situation in the work and the person doesn't connect the dots that my attitude about the situation is already expressed -- and is certainly not the opposite of what is in the work! This has happened on several occasions with women I've been involved with. In one extreme case, when I tried to explain this connection, she said, Yes but you just made the story up and THIS is really happening! My word.

The trouble with semi-retirement, or whatever phase of my life I'm in now, is that there's too little writing and too much having written.

Stan Kenton

Been listening to the CD Mark made for me and a long sequence of Kenton numbers is bringing me back to life today. Music can do that. Thanks, Mark.

My best film

It's probably the short, Deconstructing Sally. Here is a fair review of it by Bob Hicks. Hicks has followed my work since the 1980s and, while he hasn't liked everything, he's always been fair and often been generous.

Other reviews by Hicks:

• The 25th anniversary of Christmas at the Juniper Tavern
• My book of poems, In My Old Age
• My novel, Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones

Bad to worse

I lost my pocket watch. How in hell can you lose a pocket watch that's in your pocket?

Mid-convalescent funk

Cool weather has returned, which never improves my disposition, and I realize I still have three weeks of restricted activity in my convalescence, which together put me in a morning funk. Making scrapple to keep busy. Later grab the dog and go somewhere.

A normal summer?

H returns Tuesday. Maybe we can find a pattern of normalcy in what has felt to me like a chaotic summer. I'd like to have a summer before fall term starts, even though it'll only be a few weeks.

The War in the Shadows | Common Dreams

The War in the Shadows | Common Dreams:

"We have created a state within a state. A staggering 40 percent of the defense budget is secret, as is the budget of every intelligence agency. I tasted enough of this subterranean world to fear it. When you empower these kinds of people you snuff out the rule of law. You empower criminals and assassins." Chris Hedges.

Harry Belafonte and politics by other means | TLS

Harry Belafonte and politics by other means | TLS:

"For Harry Belafonte, entertainment has been a continuation of politics by other means. “I wasn’t an artist who’d become an activist”, he writes in his autobiography, My Song. “I was an activist who’d become an artist.”"

Tony Scott: more rock'n'roll than Ridley | Film | guardian.co.uk

Tony Scott: more rock'n'roll than Ridley | Film | guardian.co.uk:

"We shall probably never know what prompted the 68-year-old film-maker – a Hollywood titan, rich as Croesus and respected by his peers – to take his own life. But having made the decision, Scott was not the sort to equivocate. In films and in life, the man went at things headlong. He left the doubt and the navel-gazing to the arthouse crowd. He jumped without hesitation."

Django Reinhardt: music, mischief and magic | Music | The Guardian

Django Reinhardt: music, mischief and magic | Music | The Guardian:

Stonehenge: a new dawn | Travel | The Guardian

Stonehenge: a new dawn | Travel | The Guardian:

"Last month, after nearly 30 years of dead-end schemes, English Heritage finally began work on an attempt to bring Stonehenge back to its proper setting, starting with the construction of a new visitor centre – a graceful low-rise building hidden a mile and a half to the west at Airman's Corner – which promises to tell the story of the people who built the historic site."

Trotsky's murder remembered by grandson, 72 years on | World news | guardian.co.uk

Trotsky's murder remembered by grandson, 72 years on | World news | guardian.co.uk:

Little League World Series

Extraordinary game in the international bracket, two undefeated teams, Chinese Taipei v Japan, 0-0 after regulation six innings, great pitching and defense, extra innings ...finally, Japan wins with 2 run homer in 9th!
Man, the level of play was so high here, for both teams, I don't think an American team could beat either one.

Sketch finds a pillow

Round Bend Press: A Life

Round Bend Press: A Life:

Hopefully TS will do his editing magic and make me sound more intelligible than I probably was!

Inspiration: peanut butter spring rolls!

A great morning slowly turned into a hassle of an afternoon, culminating in a computer crash. To cheer myself up I cooked -- and thought, well, folks dip spring rolls into peanut sauce, how about a peanut butter spring roll? And it's great!

I still feel like shit ha ha.

A busy morning!

Hour and a half breakfast with Mark, always engaging and woven with laughter. He had a gift for me, "a CD 4 CD," some of his favorite jazz tunes, which I look forward to. Came home, grabbed the dog, off to the dog park. Now for a mellow afternoon. Watching League League series for starters.

Breakfast at Joe Brown's Cafe

Off to Vancouver soon to meet Mark for breakfast. Haven't done this for a while, always enjoy it. Mark is older than I am! Hasn't slowed down his mind, so it's always engaging talk.

I don't particularly like these new cool mornings.

Not sure what the rest of the day has in store. Little ambition.

H home Tuesday night. At last.

Baseball Video Highlights & Clips | TB@SEA: Felix hurls 23rd perfect game in MLB history - Video | MLB.com: Multimedia

Baseball Video Highlights & Clips | TB@SEA: Felix hurls 23rd perfect game in MLB history - Video | MLB.com: Multimedia:

All 27 outs in a 6 mn. video.

Hurting

Downtown this morning, working with TS on a video project, and I didn't do a lot of walking but too much for my knees. I've been paying the price. The doc says H is ready for knee replacement surgery and I suppose I'm behind her, and yet this bionic stuff can go too far. We spend too much concern on "quality of life" issues and not enough on a more important matter, "quality of death" issues.

Pussy riot trial: 'We are representatives of our generation' | World news | The Guardian

Pussy riot trial: 'We are representatives of our generation' | World news | The Guardian:

Imagine Dylan going to jail for singing "Masters of War" in the 60s. Maybe the Cold War ain't over after all.

Clean desks kill creativity

Clean desks kill creativity

"Empty desk, empty mind."

When I was Mgr Ed of Ore Biz mag I had a messy desk that my boss was always on my case about. We were visiting former gov Tom McCall at his home prior to my writing a profile of him. His home office desk was a disaster. Seeing my grin the gov said ... Empty desk empty mind. My boss left me alone after that.

Issues? What issues?

We're in the middle of a presidential campaign, yet no candidate talks about global warming or Afghanistan. Pathetic.

Cruising the city on a warm Friday evening

Sketch and I decided to check out city life tonight. Hadn't for a while. So we got in the car, rolled down the windows, turned on the Mariners game, and headed out. We cruised through downtown Portland and through NW Portland, my old neighborhood ("like Greenwich Village used to be," two NYers told me in the 1980s, just before gentrification).

Man, I bet we passed over 1000 outdoor diners! Outdoor tables were everywhere, especially along 23rd and 25th in northwest. Filled with twenty-somethings mostly. Grandkids! Oh how the city has changed. Oh how the culture has changed. Thank the gods I'm not younger than I am.

Seattle is still glowing in the light of Hernandez's perfect game.

Instapaper

This is a browser add-on I use all the time. (On Chrome. It's also available for Firefox and other browsers.) It provides a "read later" tab that saves web pages for later reading offline or online. With a right click, I can send it to my Kindle to read. I'm always using this. Go to Instapaper.

A compliment

"You made the right choice to become a writer." So wrote my high school friend Doug, a retired physicist. It's one of the nicest things ever said to me, especially since it's something I've thought about in my old age (after all, in my high school group we all thought we'd become physicists or mathematicians.). I hope it's true. I didn't seem to have much choice in the matter.

Wardrobe

A few days ago I thought maybe I should buy some new clothes for fall classes. Look sharp. First, though, I decided to clean out my closet, something I've been threatening to do for longer than I've been threatening to clean my basement office.

Well, so much for a new wardrobe. I found more clothes I didn't know I had, which I've never or seldom worn, that no new purchases are necessary. I got rid of a lot and now am ready to look sharp come fall.

---

Was thinking this morning of my long career and marveled that I survived. Writing inside-out takes far more out of you, especially psychically, than I realized. They don't tell you this or maybe you'd never start. But I made it through the serial marathons, a long story from whole cloth, and now I can look back with satisfaction at my (unrecognized) archive. It's a wonder I survived.

Publishing in 2002 vs 2012: Better, Worse or a Stalemate?

Publishing in 2002 vs 2012: Better, Worse or a Stalemate?

The Oregon Public House - OUR VISION

The Oregon Public House - OUR VISION:

A not-for-profit brew pub.

Paper Fort: Books Submitted So Far for the Oregon Book Awards

Paper Fort: Books Submitted So Far for the Oregon Book Awards:

I have two: a novel and a collection of plays. I've been a finalist 3 times but it is a crapshoot. It's all about the taste of the particular judge. I know, I've been one. All the same, getting lucky is always a nice way to go out.

War is show business

Rewatching Wag the Dog (1998) -- what a brilliant film! I think I'll use it in class. It is the best political satire since Dr. Strangelove. So much on the mark. Just brilliant.

Writing credits

Controversy surrounds the writing credits of the movie.^[7] Original drafter Hilary Henkin took the film's producers to court and threatened to quit the Writers Guild of Americaafter director Barry Levinson chose not to award her a screenwriting credit. Eventually, the WGA awarded Henkin credit, and Levinson himself threatened to quit the Guild, claiming that David Mamet wrote every line of dialogue, as well as creating the characters of Motss and Schumann, and originating most of the scenes set in Hollywood and all of the scenes set in Nashville. Levinson attributes any similarities between Henkin's version and the finished product to both working from the same novel.^{[ (Wikipedia)}

Ahead of the heat of the day

Already pushing 80 at 9 a.m. Gave Sketch his exercise early.

Baseball's Bipolar Day - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast

Baseball's Bipolar Day - The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast:

"Yesterday was a dramatic one for professional baseball. On one hand, one of the finest pitchers in the game, the Mariners' Felix Hernandez, did the hardest thing a pitcher can do: he pitched a perfect game. On the other hand, it was announced that the MVP of this year's All-Star Game, Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera, had become the second (seemingly) elite player in less than a year to test positive for a performance-enhancing drug, automatically earning him a fifty-game suspension."

Lazy bones

I slept in until almost 7! I can't believe it. True, Sketch got me up at 5 to give him breakfast. Instead of staying up, I returned to bed and slept for 2 hours. Very unlike me.

My latest batch of scrapple tried something different and I may have stumbled upon  a winner. Indeed this morning over breakfast I was thinking, Wow, this may be the best scrapple I ever made. I've been experimenting since getting the grinder. Never found the right combination of traditional ingredients that satisfied me, tasted too gamey. This time I went to straight sausage but, on a whim, added a couple of ox tails, using the cooking liquid as well. Man! Sausage and ox tail scrapple is definitely something to try again, aiming for quality control. I'm serious, the taste is great, this may be the best scrapple I ever made.

News full of heat alert stuff. Sketch and I will be fine. We don't have AC but do have a very efficient and effective tall fan, if it comes to that.

I hope to do some work in the basement on my office this afternoon, in the hottest part of the day.

The book I'm reading, Amusing Ourselves to Death, really nails what is happening in our culture today. And Berman, in The Twilight of American Culture, offers individual, if not institutional, remedy, or at least its possibility.

You and I can lead the “monastic” life, and we can start to do it right now. And don’t worry about being marginalized; this is good. As Don DeLillo says, in a culture such as ours, the writer, for example, is likely to be more significant for being marginal. “In the end,” he suggests, “writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.” The same can be said of all monastic activities, and of the people who engage in them.

Well, I'm a marginal writer, that's for sure. Significant? Interesting idea.

Small pleasures

Just made my first iced coffee of the day and it sure tastes good. Final game of the little league softball world series tonight, tomorrow the boys' series starts with a local team in the field of 16.

Nice to get a bit of work done today. Makes me feel like I'm moving in the right direction. It's so much cooler in the basement, maybe tomorrow afternoon is a good time to make progress on the office.

Checked out my fall class and I'm set, high tech classroom in the Science Bldg, which I need because i use online resources a lot. So I'm set, about 5 weeks left of my summer. I'm already looking forward to it.

This iced coffee really does taste good. With my grinder and large French press, I probably make the best iced coffee in town.

What fun ...

A perfect game by Felix Hernandez

... to see Hernandez pitch a perfect game at home. I tuned in at the 5th, saw the last half. He was masterful. He often is. 20 thousand day game fans in Seattle. What a treat they got.

The final batter ...

Hernandez!

Eight perfect innings! 1-0 Mariners lead. Will blog ninth.

OK ... first batter for TBay ... Felix 3 outs away from perfect game ... ball ... swing strike ... called strike ... foul ... foul ... swing out

Everybody standing ... second batter ... ball ... called k .... swing k ... ground ss out

one out away ... ball ... ball ... swing k ... called k ... one k away ... called k PERFECT GAME!!!

4-day heat spell

Mid 90s today, over 100 Thurs and Fri, mid 90s again Sat, then back to normal 80s -- if the forecast is right. So what do I do on a hot afternoon? Work over a hot stove, of course, making scrapple!

Did some school prep this morning, slowly getting back into the groove.

Publishing Is Broken, We’re Drowning In Indie Books – And That’s A Good Thing

Publishing Is Broken, We’re Drowning In Indie Books – And That’s A Good Thing

Salmon spring roll with tzatziki sauce

CONFESSIONS OF AN OREGON PLAYWRIGHT

CONFESSIONS OF AN OREGON PLAYWRIGHT:

"I’ve never had a strong sense of place. Born more or less "rootless" into a Navy family for whom travel was frequent and "homes" like Virginia and Texas merely a temporary stop between tours of duty, for whom relatives in the Delaware Valley country of New Jersey and Pennsylvania were people one visited on occasional holidays--I grew up with a crazy mixed-up accent of speech and a sense of keeping my toothbrush ever at the ready. "

A Book Every Progressive Should Read | Common Dreams

A Book Every Progressive Should Read | Common Dreams:

 "Want to know why progressives keep losing elections even though the majority of Americans support progressive positions?

Read Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln and Lady Gaga, by Joseph Romm.  It is a fascinating study of the neglected art of rhetoric."

Global Problems for the New Gilded Age | Common Dreams

Global Problems for the New Gilded Age | Common Dreams:

 "“We are recreating the Gilded Age,” notes labor historian Erik Loomis. And Robert Reich, the former Democratic labor secretary under Bill Clinton, explains in the Nation that “we’ve entered a new Gilded Age, of which Mitt Romney is the perfect reflection.” Edward Luce of the Financial Times calls this a “new age of populism,” with Wall Street executives representing the Robber Barons of yore."

The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins by Christopher Carroll | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

The Singular Sound of Sonny Rollins by Christopher Carroll | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

World's Most Livable City Is..

World's Most Livable City Is..:

In top 10, 4 from Australia, 3 from Canada ... no U.S. city.

As powerful as ever

Montgomery Clift as Pruitt

How many times, several dozen, have I watched From Here To Eternity? Add one for tonight. Still a powerful film, not a wasted scene in it, just beautifully put together, one of those rare films that's better than the novel on which it's based. I used to sing Reenlistment Blues a lot in the Army. The guys loved it.

Merle Travis plays "Reenlistment Blues"

Ceviche

Ceviche

I have all this pacemaker-generated energy but limited physical activity. So I cook! This afternoon, preparing ceviche and poaching salmon to chill for tomorrow in spring rolls.

Tuesdays with Sketch

Some work this morning, then Sketch and I went to a dog park in West Linn. Very nice there today, after the weekend zoo when we went only to discover 100s there for an arts festival. After the park a stop at the local Starbucks, a table in the shade, where Sketch sat on my lap instead of being his usual antsy self, and this even with other dogs around. He's getting mellow in his old age. Like his buddy.

Shrimp Spring Rolls for lunch. Spring rolls are my new thing. Fun to make, infinite variety of contents. Want to experiment with various fish spring rolls.

100s forecast for tomorrow and the next day. Mid 80s today.

My office awaits attention. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

What I'm reading

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

 Wars, crimes, crashes, fires, floods—much of it the social and political equivalent of Adelaide’s whooping cough—became the content of what people called “the news of the day.”

 Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. That is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago.

 In watching American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s remark on his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read.

 The single most important fact about television is that people watch it, which is why it is called “television. ”And what they watch, and like to watch, are moving pictures—millions of them, of short duration and dynamic variety. It is in the nature of the medium that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the requirements of visual interest; that is to say, to accommodate the values of show business.

This is an extraordinary book that I missed when it first came out. This explains the change in "voice" of newscasters that I recently mentioned. And many other things I've been thinking about. He also admires Thoreau, which validates to me my new project. (Which I must get started on in earnest!)

Ewan Morrison Strikes Fan Fiction Down!

Ewan Morrison Strikes Fan Fiction Down!

“Fanfic is seen as the lowest point we’ve reached in the history of culture – it’s crass, sycophantic, celebrity-obsessed, naive, badly written, derivative, consumerist, unoriginal – anti-original. From this perspective it’s a disaster when a work of fanfic becomes the world’s number one bestseller and kickstarts a global trend.”

Dinner

My technique improves.

How to avoid work

Grab the dog and take a drive!

On the rarity of good news

I surprise myself by the delight I feel in learning that two H.S. friends have connected in old age and go sailing into the sunset. Just something right about this in a world overrun with the opposite. Maybe I can get to Florida next summer and visit.

In the meantime much to do but lacking ambition ... energy alone not enough. Rather go sailing ha ha.

Doing it right

Canal in Punta Gorda, FL

A second email from my HS friend. He lives in Florida, retired. His back door is a dock on a canal, the water leading him to the local harbor. He is doing it right.

Moreover, after losing his wife a few years back, his high school sweetheart (whom I knew, of course), he connected with M, one of the few girls in all our math/science classes, and now they go sailing together. He is doing it right.

Sounds to me like his life has had the clear trajectory that all of us expected to have after high school. But not all of us became physicists or mathematicians, and I may have had the most convoluted trajectory of them all.  I can trace these changes and influences:

• leaving Cal Tech. There were 2 reasons. (The suicide of my high school buddy who went to CIT with me is not one of them, interestingly enough.) I was still living at home. But if I'd have gone to MIT, I think the rest still would have happened because of 2. I located my place in the mathematical community, which wasn't as elevated as I'd been led to believe. Even though I published in a math journal as a Cal Tech sophomore, I clearly saw my limitations. I think I wanted a freer horizon, a more unlimited future of possibilities. I didn't want to become an engineer or math teacher, the two likely spots for me if I continued. I had no desire to become a writer at this point. Also at this transition, Linus Pauling was very supportive. I left Cal Tech, and my mother nearly had a nervous breakdown.
• At Berkeley I went a little nuts. Away from home for the first time. Really got into playing folk music. More real interest in the humanities. Dropped out of Berkeley, broke, had choice of borrowing money from parents or joining Army, chose the later. And the Army changed my life because I ended up in the Army Security Agency with guys who typically had an M.A. in the humanities from an Ivy League college, joined before being drafted, and all these "big brothers" and fellow Russian linguists (after the language school) whetted my appetite for "becoming a writer."
• After the Army, back to school. A literature major now -- but not yet a writer. Went to UCLA and initially to grad school at U of Oregon as PhD type, Amer Lit emphasis, Melville emphasis. In grad school I learned somebody beat me to my thesis. Typical. But I didn't take it too well. Dropped out again, this time with a woman who heard and encouraged my dreams to "become a writer" ... and readers of this blog know the rest. If you don't, it's all in my memoir, Dress Rehearsals. Also in my short film, Deconstructing Sally.

A little different from going to college, getting a degree, getting a job, and living happily ever after.