A chilling story

And there are so many of them in human history.

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com The Mandelstams: Hope Against Hope On this day in 1891 the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam was born. While by no means the only writer driven to death by Stalin's Reign of Terror, Mandelstam has become, for many, the symbol of all those so destroyed. This is partly due to his poetry -- most rank him among the best Russian poets, some among the best of all 20th century poets -- and partly due to his wife. Nadezhda Mandelstam salvaged many of Mandelstam's banned poems by either memorizing them or collecting them in manuscript form; she also chillingly and movingly documented her husband's death and times in her memoir, Hope Against Hope. you regarded yourself as a widow or orphan from the moment of his arrest. When a woman was told in the Prosecutor's office that her husband had been given ten years, the official sometimes added: "You can remarry." Nobody ever raised the awkward question as to how this gracious "permission" to remarry could be squared with the official sentence....

Yet again

clipped from news.yahoo.com Dozens in Texas town report seeing UFO STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO. Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it. "People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."

Golden Globes

The awards were announced last night at a thirty-minute press conference. I belong to what I suppose is a small minority who found this refreshing! No spendy fashion show, no predictable and boring speeches, no hype. But no party either, which is what all the participants must miss.

A survivor

Indeed, Joyce was a remarkable survivor.

clipped from www.todayinliterature.com Joyce's Death and Wake Joyce's interest in ordinary living was always, as Ellmann puts it, "erratic and provisional." On this day in 1941 James Joyce died in Zurich at the age of fifty-eight, from peritonitis brought on by a perforated ulcer. Even without the dislocation of WWII, Joyce's last years were beset with difficulties -- the schizophrenia of his daughter, his son's floundering career and broken marriage, his own poor health, ongoing battles over Ulysses and new worries about Finnegans Wake. "Though not so blind as Homer, and not so exiled as Dante," writes biographer Richard Ellmann, "he had reached his life's nadir." Ellmann says also that the sometimes difficult and gloomy man must give way to his books, where he is "one of life's celebrants, in bad circumstances cracking good jokes, foisting upon ennuis and miseries his comic vision."

Living today, living tomorrow

A curious thing happens as I age. I have a stronger sense of "living for today" -- and yet, at the same time, many things that I do continue to place faith in being alive in the future, creating an interesting tension in behavior. Most of my "investment in the future" today is musical, that is, learning piano, bringing banjo back into my life, plans to compose a music drama, and so on. But practice, the foundation of learning music, is always in the present tense. I practice -- and make a leap of faith that I'll be around to reap its rewards.

But I've been living on "gravy" (Raymond Carver's term) for some time now. I can't escape this feeling, having outlived all my closest male friends, none of whom abused their body more than I did. This creates a sense that I might drop dead on the spot (as both my parents did) any time now -- hence the desire to take advantage of each day. This isn't morbid, as H claims, but realistic. My history and my genes suggest I don't have much time left. I don't make a big deal out of this -- I'm just very aware of it. But I also have years of activity I want to do and hope to be able to do it.

So it's the tension between present and future that I find interesting. Perhaps it's this: preparing for the future makes the present more interesting.

Slaughter in the snow

The best fish and chips place in town, the Corbett Fish House, is owned by a Green Bay fanatic. Packer memorabilia are everywhere. The place is a zoo when the Packers play on TV, so clearly this was the most raucous place to watch the game today. Seattle was simply terrible.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Grant carries Pack into NFC title game With Lambeau Field looking like a snow globe, Favre frolicked in the flurries, throwing three touchdown passes as the Packers beat Seattle 42-20 Saturday, the highest-scoring postseason game in Green Bay history. Ryan Grant made history, too, recovering from two fumbles that put the Packers down 14-0 after only four minutes. He set a team postseason record by running for 201 yards, and scored three times. After its early slips, Green Bay scored touchdowns on six straight possessions. It remains to be seen whether coach Mike Holmgren will return to the Seahawks next season. At 59, the coach who once guided Favre and the Packers to the Super Bowl title has recently dropped hints he might retire. If he does, his final game will have come just a block or two from Holmgren Way, the street the city named in his honor.

Adaptations

...are harder than original scripts. Good article.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Filmmakers face book-to-screen challenge LOS ANGELES - David Benioff was sitting on a plane, having a perfectly pleasant conversation with an elderly passenger about his job as a screenwriter, when he mentioned that he was working on an adaptation of "The Kite Runner." "She grabbed my arm and said, `That's my favorite novel. Don't change a word!'" Screenwriters like Benioff are acutely aware of the inevitable comparisons between book and movie, and face the daunting challenge of telling a cinematic story that will resonate with audiences while remaining somewhat true to the source material. "You've got to boil down 130,000 words to a screenplay containing 20,000 words," the author said in the "Atonement" production notes. In determining what to cut and what to keep, "Lust, Caution" co-writer James Schamus says the key is to remember always that you're making a movie.

Puttering, cooking, playing, cheering

A wonderful laid back Saturday. Making my all-day spaghetti sauce, playing a little piano, cheering UCLA over Washington State and later, hopefully, the Seahawks over the Packers, arranging my two banjo lessons, one next week. I love days like today. Very mellow.

The human condition

If you observe the world carefully, you come to accept any kind of surprise from anyone. The inner life of others remains a mystery. Good and serious writers, however, often make it their business to put their inner lives on the table, disguised as fiction. To a degree, this may decrease the explosive possibilities of their secrets.

clipped from news.yahoo.com Prep school president commits suicide ATLANTA - The popular president of one of Atlanta's most prestigious prep schools gave a rousing talk to the faculty about the new year. Hours later, he apparently jumped to his death from the eighth floor of a hotel. Harry C. Payne, 60, left behind short letters to his family and the board chairman of the Woodward Academy. But friends and colleagues were still baffled by the suicide of the highly accomplished and ordinarily upbeat man. Nancy McIntire, who was Payne's administrative assistant at Williams, said she never detected depression in him. "Absolutely mysterious," she said of his death. "He was a wonderful boss. I liked working with him a lot. He was very accessible. He had a wonderful sense of humor. And he was very, very smart."

More lessons: clawhammer banjo

I taught myself 5-string banjo in high school with Pete Seeger's book, never getting past the bumpditty basic stroke (upstroke with the index finger). I played a lot in the Army, then sold it and never played again until recently. This time I want to learn clawhammer or frailing style, which is a downstroke method.

There are instructional videos, good ones, on YouTube and DVD, lots of books on the subject. I can pick up much of it but I want to make sure I get the basic strum down correctly, so I'm signing up for a lesson each from two different teachers (always makes for a more interesting education) and after that, maybe I'll stick with one of them, or none and learn the rest from books and videos. But I want to start off with the right technique.

Pretty rusty in piano class today. Lots of practicing to do.

Music classes

Music classes began today, theory a moment ago, piano tomorrow. Nice thing about music classes, the more you progress, the more interesting it gets. I've also picked up the banjo after a while and think I'll get my chops in order and learn some new techniques. I have a feeling I'm going to do more music than writing this year but we'll see.

Hmm

news:ufo footage near san diego 1_1_2008
Uploaded by sizemen

Keep an eye on this

clipped from news.yahoo.com Former OLPC CTO aims to create $75 laptop San Francisco - A laptop under $100 could reach desks if a new venture formed by the former CTO of One Laptop Per Child, Mary Lou Jepsen, can deliver on its promises. A "spin-out" from OLPC, the company, Pixel Qi is looking to create a $75 laptop and trying to advance low-cost computers and power-efficient laptops, mobile phones, and other consumer electronics that are sunlight readable, Jepsen wrote on the company's Web site.

New rhythm?

My usual obsessive focus on whatever writing project is front burner has been missing lately. I think I'm going through changes in my mental life, part of aging I suppose, and slowing down in general. Also I seem to be less interested in text and more in music and video recently. This may be a year of transition. We'll see.

Great idea

clipped from sports.yahoo.com Georgia president proposes 8-team football playoff ATHENS, Ga. (AP) -- The president of the University of Georgia proposed an eight-team playoff system to determine the NCAA's national football champion. Michael Adams, chairman of the NCAA executive committee, has opposed a playoff for 20 years but said Tuesday the current BCS system is "undercutting the sportsmanship and integrity of the game." Adams wants the NCAA to seed eight teams into the four bowls. If one of the major bowls declines to participate, then another bowl could fill the void.

Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins

Doc Watson

This is "Travis style" picking, two-finger, named after Merle Travis. Doc named his son after Merle Travis (the son dying tragically far too early, but what a duet they made when Merle was a young man!). As a boy, Mom used to drop us off at an L.A. television station near Farmers Market (daycare!), where an afternoon country variety show featured Merle Travis, Joe Maphis and others. I used to sit on Merle Travis' lap!

I got to see Doc Watson close up when he visited my folklore class at UCLA and performed for 30 of us. (So did Lightnin' Hopkins, Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry, whoever was at the Ash Grove at the time. The prof knew everyone. What a class!)

Winter classes begin

A dusting of snow greets us this morning but it should be gone by the time I head out for the university this afternoon. With weather hell in so much of the country, not good form to complain about anything here.

I get a high tech room, which I didn't have last term, which makes my grunt work easier setting up films to show. Also, my classroom is in the same building as my office, which almost never happens. No hiking across campus. Of course, I can use the motion ha ha.

I'm actually glad to see school starting, getting back into a routine. It's been a fairly chaotic term break, during which I got little done that I had hoped to do. Lots of catch up work to do.

Interesting legal dilemma

clipped from www.npr.org Rights Battle Brews over Un-Edited Carver Stories All Things Considered, January 7, 2008 · In 1981, Knopf published a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The book was a critical success. Reviewers praised its minimalism and Carver's spare style. It was, perhaps, more spare than Carver intended. Carver's editor was Gordon Lish, and since the author's death in 1988 at the age of 50, scholars have discovered that Lish edited Carver's stories heavily — some would say drastically. Lish cut description. He changed story endings. And in some cases, he eliminated more than half of what Carver had written. Now Carver's widow wants his readers to see the original stories. She's pushing to have What We Talk About When We Talk About Love republished. New Yorker magazine has printed one of those stories in its annual fiction issue. Knopf says it owns the rights — but to what?