Say who?

I like The Who. However, I don't like rock concerts at halftime of football games. I like marching bands, that's how much of an old fart I am, and why I prefer college to pro football (and high school better than college). But the Super Bowl has become its own genre.


However this is not the best sporting event on TV today. The indoor Boston track meet was, rebroadcast from yesterday. The men's and women's 3000 and 5000 meter runs were the sporting highlights of the day for me. Galen Rupp came in 4th, significant because he ran his best time. He's going to be a bigger star than he already is.

I don't like the sprints, however, Give me the middle and long distance races. Strategy, stamina. I love it.

The Colts look to me like they're going to win, but I suppose anything could happen.

---

What a terrific game! Saints lead by 7 with less than six mins., Colts ball.

Results

My blackeyed peas are extraordinary! Let me see if I can remember what I did.

• I soaked the peas over night.
  
• In the morning I drained them, added 2 cans of chicken broth. Seasoned with Italian seasoning, paprika and a bit of chile powder. Started simmering.
  
• In a separate pot, began boiling the hell out of a ham hock.
  
• To the simmering peas added chopped onions, chopped green pepper. Added two sliced precooked cajun sausages.
  
• Added a can of diced tomatoes.
  
• After several hours, took the hamhock and cut the meat and some fat off, chopped, added to peas, along with some broth from its pot.
  
• Let it all simmer to reduce the liquid.
  
• Dug in. Incredible!
  

A remarkable memoir!

TIME TRAVELER: A SCIENTIST'S PERSONAL MISSION TO MAKE TIME TRAVEL A REALITY
Dr. Ronald L. Mallett
Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006, 215 pages

As a kid, Mallett read and loved science-fiction -- so when his beloved father died when he was just 11 (if I recall), he vowed to learn how to build a time machine so he could go back and see him and also change the health conditions that killed him.

What is extraordinary is that this motivation drove a black kid in the projects to overcome all odds and become a theoretical physicist. Today, in science, time travel is not the joke it was through most of Mallett's career -- it is taken seriously. Mallett kept his goal and his lifelong motivation close to the vest for decades but now, recently, the cat is out of the bag and he and his colleagues get closer to his goal. As I understand it, theory now says time travel is possible but creating the "machine" to do this is a great challenge.

Now think of this. A black kid in the projects loses his dad. He decides he'll learn how to build a time machine so he can see him again. He becomes a physicist at a time (beginning in the 50s) when black physicists were few and far between. He lets his research interests be directed by his goal, to travel back in time, so he concentrates on Einstein's theories of gravity, curved space, black holes, worm holes. He comes up with equations that his peers accept. He publishes papers on the subject after learning that others also are interested in time travel, it's nothing to be worried about any more (being called a "crackpot" could have ruined his career).

Mallett teaches at the Univ. of Connecticut and I emailed him today to inquire about the film rights. I assume Hollywood has picked up on this story, especially since many magazines around the world have and a documentary was even made about him. Somehow I missed all this. So I want to know where the movie stands. And if by chance, none is in the works, I'm going to see if I can cut a deal with the man and write the screenplay myself.

This is one of the more inspiring and incredible true stories I've heard in years.

Adaptation

Been watching this film, multitasking since I've seen it so many times. What a hoot of a movie! Maybe the funniest film about screenwriting ever made. Full of inside jokes.

Darwin's humanity

CREATION: THE TRUE STORY OF CHARLES DARWIN
Randal Keynes
Riverhead Books, 2001, 430 pages

This is a book that focuses not so much on Darwin's theory of evolution but on the personal price he paid for it. He well knew the controversy it would begin, which caused him to delay publication until forced to when other scientists independently formulated the natural selection process. Darwin also wrestled with personal conflicts about the strong Christian belief of his wife, whom he adored, against his own growing doubts; and the terrible loss of a daughter, which also made him question life's ultimate meaning. Darwin was anything but an enthusiastic salesman for evolution: he came to the theory because his studies and data, the evidence, brought him there, even though by temperament he would have preferred to lead to different conclusions.

This is a book that should be read by those who question evolution as scientific propaganda. Darwin paid a deep personal price for his scientific courage, to go where the facts took him, no matter what the belief system of the time had to say. This is a moving story about an important discovery.

Super Bowl Sunday

Blackeyed peas and hamhocks on the stove, simmering away. But H has previous meetings today, which tells you something about certain women and football ha ha, so will miss most of my Super Bowl party of one. Well, two, can't count sketch out, especially if I sneak food to him. Actually I think there are anti-Super Bowl festivities planned hither and yon.

My most memorable Super Bowl parties were at Nobby's in the 80s. After a season of predicting games, a big Thanksgiving-like feast on Super Bowl Sunday would wrap up the year. The winner of hundreds of dollars would be announced, often a woman to the chagrin of many of the guys, and the game was usually boring but the party strong. I never did so well in these game prediction affairs. But I was damn good at partying.

I don't know why they have the game so damn late. More time to hype, no doubt. It gets worse every year, and actually I myself have boycotted the game in recent years, not caring who won, but I'm a great fan of Manning and I love the Saints story, so this is a winner no matter what turns out.

And you can watch football and practice the banjo at the same time.

Fantasy politics

Palin's political strategy comes straight out of Orwell. Begin with a lie, and then correct it. Thus, something like, The President should quit insulting the troops. Not only has Obama never insulted the troops, more than any president in recent memory he has been visible in his support of the military and their families, meeting coffins, visiting cemeteries and families, fighting for VA rights. But Palin's lie, and her criticism, make some (many?) folks believe our president insults the military.


In her speech, she told the same tired story about Obama and his teleprompter, and this after he was incredibly impressive WITHOUT notes of any kind in the way he answered questions and returned fire with the GOP. It was a command performance by a man thinking on his feet with an incredible stock of data in his memory. The very opposite of Palin's insinuation (she who had her own notes scribbled on the palm of her hand for a lightweight Q&A after her speech!).

Tell the Big Lie and people will believe it, straight out of Orwell.

Encouraging feedback

The best thing about my "first clawhammer song" recorded below is not what's wrong with it but what's right with it. It sounds like a banjo! The clawhammer sound is there, as it is not quite there with the Seeger strum technique I learned decades ago when I first picked the instrument up. I'm making quick progress because my left hand is already there, more or less, so I just need to master the clawhammer strum. And this recording was done with a smaller fingernail than I'd prefer, having torn it. So my classes definitely are encouraging, I think I'll get this technique down.

Sullivan's fear -- and its justification

If you are one of those people who think this person cannot become president of the United States, think again.


Two lines stood out for me. The first is a sign that she believes and her followers believe that she has a divine destiny. She is Esther, with a touch of martyrdom:

"I will live, I will die for the people of America."

The second was the Dolchstoss attack on the duly elected president of the United States:

"We need a commander-in-chief not a professor of law."

More

I thought I was watching a scary political thriller like Manchurian Candidate when she said I will live, I will die for the people of America. This lady really has delusions of grandeur. This is what makes Sullivan right about her being dangerous.

But surely the media make much more of this than it really is, right? I mean, the majority of Americans aren't this stupid, are they? Let's have a head count and find out. I hope she runs for president. And if she doesn't, if she's stubborn and individualistic, maybe she'll hurt the Republicans -- or force them to move toward the center to distance themselves from her (fat chance).

Live blogging

Andrew Sullivan's live blogging of Palin's speech was more interesting than the speech itself. Sullivan, a former conservative whose hero is Reagan, gay, Catholic, bright, is an interesting commentator. He also has become one of the most vocal critics of Palin and is, in fact, terrified of her potential to harm this country. In a way, I hope she is the Republican nominee in 2012 so we can get this show down over with. Then I might still be around to see the results. But it's astonishing to see all this only one year after such an historic election -- although "all this" well may be grossly exaggerated by the media. Yes, let's have a show down, let the right fringe put up or shut up.

Highlights from Sullivan:

9.30 pm. The first mention of the debt after half an hour. This is a brutal, take-no-prisoner attack on Obama. She's running for president.

9.33 pm. Again, she's reprising fantasies of her alleged record in Alaska as fiscally conservative and reformist. "Get government out of the way." On healthcare, she favors meaningful "market reforms." The same old "across state lines purchases" and tort reform. That's it. Nothing else.

9.42 pm. Now the resentment. "Considering a candidate's children fair game." She's railing against the "elitists". Her invocation of Ronald Reagan is, to me, sickening.And in the peroration, the key proof of her being a genuine person: her son, Trig, and people with special needs. That has gotten the biggest applause of the night. It will be code for banning abortion. And she will be its talisman.

9.46 pm. There is no question in my mind that Palin is the leader of the opposition in this country. And there is no question in my mind that she is the leader of the Tea Party movement. Listening to her completely content-free rehash of every Fox News truism, underlined with the classic claim that Obama is on the side of the terrorists and is incapable of being commander-in-chief. Cheneyism is behind her.

Q&A

9.51 pm. She says that the key to the future is to seek "divine intervention." Reliance on the Creator. Maybe God can balance the budget.

9.56 pm. Her plan: support those who understand the foundation of our country. Free market principles, hard work, and then in national security: "We win. They lose." By they, she means, I think, Islamism. But how do we win? Does she think we "won" under Bush and Cheney? Again, there's nothing here but slogans and cliches - no specifics, no proposed cuts, no actual strategic arguments in foreign policy. Just fight our enemies and win.

My favorite summary after the speech: a cogent speech for a policy that was incomprehensible.

Four lessons

Faster, cleaner, we'll have something. But so far, I'm pleased.

Aging

Although the first symptoms of my aging have been physical (everything aches), the adjustment is largely mental, psychological. I've always been a prolific, obsessive, hard working writer. Now I just don't have the energy for it. I'm good for a few hours in the morning, then I need a nap or rest. I still am able to psyche myself up for my afternoon classes but when class is over, I feel ready to crash, which is to say, teaching takes more out of me than it used to. (At the same time, I enjoy it more, perhaps because there is less competition as my writing energy declines.)

I am, to summarize, a mere shadow of what I was only a few years ago. An old story.

So I seem to have the perfect projects for this decreased energy level because both are less obsessive to me than writing, i.e. the opera score and banjo practice. And I'm reading more because I have the time to and enjoying the hell out of it.

For every thing there is a season etc etc etc. There's nothing new under the sun etc etc etc. Nature wins etc etc etc. Cliches are cliches because they are true.

Just ask

I have an invisible stat counter that, among other things, tells me how folks get to this blog. One of the more interesting searches to get here happened this morning. In Jakarta, someone searched for "interpretation 'The Stiff' by Charles Deemer."

I'm fascinated by this. First, it's a one-act farce that's pretty much been ignored since I wrote it some 40 years ago but I still think highly enough of it to include it in my reader. So I'm thrilled when anyone notices it. Second, I don't understand what's so hard to understand. It's a farce about politics. You laugh or you don't. Third, anyone who can find the script online should be able to find my email address. They should just ask.

But this was the most interesting search trajectory since "bars in Baumholder."

You can read The Stiff here.

Geezer blogs

Just read an article about a study that reports blogging is very uncool among the young. Only demographic where blogging is on the rise is among "geezers", who are defined as "over 30." Now there's a statement about the youth culture for you! What does that make bloggers over 70 like myself? Invisible? Irrelevant? Dead?

Actually the best blogs, manned by folks over 30 I'm sure, are a new form of journalism, sites like Art Scatter and The Daily Dish. Cyberspace lets good journalists/observers/critics, like Bob Hicks and Andrew Sullivan who host the sites above, spread their wings in a way limited print space never did. This is the sense in which social and political commentary has improved since the Internet. Of course, given how easy it is for anyone to comment, there's also many, many tons of crap available, the junk mail of cyberspace. But great stuff is there to be found.

Let the kids twitter and let geezers use the blogs in a serious manner. Said the dinosaur.

Missed mornings

I miss my closest male friends, all of whom I've outlived, most on Saturday mornings because that's when I'd often have an early breakfast with one of them. These affairs could last several hours, full of good talk and sharing and a lot of laughter.

My Saturday mornings are not the same since their passing.

---

Still worried about an encroaching illness. Being guarded, careful. Yesterday I ended up making some progress on the banjo, so the day ended better than it started.

---

I'll start cooking for the Super Bowl this afternoon, I think. Some prep work. Otherwise trying to have a quiet day, guarding my health.

Disappointing day

Lost my energy, feeling like an illness is coming on, and so all I got done today was a bit of banjo practice and some shopping for Super Bowl goodies. But mainly dragging, just dragging, my slow ass through the day.

Mind in the morning

I've always had a cooperative dream life. That is, instead of weird dreams begging for interpretation, the dreams I recall are always scenes from whatever story I'm working on -- so that I wake eager to write them down, going to my work desk feeling more like a secretary than a writer.

Even on non-writing projects, my dreams plug into my life. Waking this morning, for example, "I ache, therefore I am," I saw vivid visualizations of banjo exercises I've been working on, learning single note brushes. I'll actually do these exercises later in the day and I have no idea if seeing them in my mind helps me learn them, but that's what I awoke to. Soon, however, my mind had slipped into my musical score, and I began working out the structure of the next 16 bars of an old man, ghost of wife, duet I've been working on. The next writing I'll do on the score, hopefully today.

So my dreams continue to cooperate. Maybe there are hidden horrors that haven't risen to consciousness but this is what I remember when I wake up.

I later gave some thought to the Super Bowl. It will be a great game because either team winning will be a great thing, either a celebration of Manning's extraordinary mental and physical gifts as a quarterback, or the poetic justice of the Saints completing the feel good sports story of the year. As long as it is a clean, hard-fought game with nothing weird, this should be a Super Bowl to remember.

I decided to make special blackeyed peas for the day, something a little fancier than what I typically do. I look forward to Sunday. Until then, I have two good days to get a lot of work done on the banjo and the score.

As long as I keep Voltaire front and center, tending my own garden, life is good. It's in the broader perspective that garbage enters the picture. Just as V has it in Candide. Because "it's the worst of all possible worlds" is as much a satire as the other.

Office hours

I froze my ass off hobbling to campus from the bus stop, Wind chill is the killer. Nice to be in my warm office, and a quiet one at that. Read midterms in class today, a celebration of progress.

Energy to get lots of banjo practicing done over my weekend but also will return to the opera score. This new rhythm has been working out for me.

The reader's arrival goes into the whimper category, as expected. But it's the best thing I've done in a long time. Its effect feels very liberating.

Despite how much I enjoy teaching, I do rather wish I was living in a small town in a climate that was warm year round. Pipe dream. The Sun Man Cometh ha ha.

Not with a bang but a whimper

Eliot told us how the world ends but many other things end more quietly, more invisibly, than we might imagine. Careers can end this way. Marriages can end this way. Personal motivations and dreams can end this way.

Now and again, of course, something can end with a bang. The marriage that inspired my video Deconstructing Sally ended with a bang that still echoed decades later, which was the energy behind making the work.

All things considered, it's probably healthy that most things end with a whimper. Whimpers are more survivable than bangs.

Insurance companies

The largest homeowners insurer in Florida is canceling the policies of 125,000 of its most vulnerable customers beginning Aug. 1, halfway through the 2010 hurricane season.

The company, State Farm Florida, began sending out cancellation notices this week to nearly a fifth of its 714,000 customers, most of them in the state’s hurricane-prone coastal regions.

A spokesman for State Farm said the decision was the direct result of its failure to win a 47.1 percent rate increase from state regulators.

Source

In other words, you play my way or the highway.

I am mystified by folks who insist corporations like insurance companies have your best interests at heart. The right, much of it, strikes me as having the right emotions (frustration, anger) but the wrong enemy.

Banjo lessons

Only two of us in class last night, which makes me the only one who's been to every class. I wonder if this is generational. I'm the only old fart in class.

At any rate, it was cool because we got lots of individual attention. Two highlights: the teacher identified a subtle bad habit I'm developing and need to correct; and she taught us an advanced technique, which gives me plenty to work on this week. Plus I'm also going through the DVD/book I used the first time around, which is more helpful this time than before since I have a live teacher to whom to ask questions that clarify matters.

So all is going very well so far. Real progress. Alas, there will be no advanced class immediately following this one. She says she needs several beginning classes from which to draw enough advanced students, so it might be six months or a year before she offers another one. I'll be there if it's on a night I'm not teaching.

---

Five more midterms to read. Today in class we celebrate what they've learned rather than focusing on what they still need to learn. A midpoint party of sorts. Then back to the hard work.

Tomorrow I'm already calling banjo day. Lots of energy to practice and improve.

---

I thought about catching the last half of First Wednesday after class last night but just didn't have the energy to drive across town and do that, then not get home till almost ten. I was in bed by ten.

The new dance

There's a new dance of citiizenry, new steps in being an involved citizen. This is a major change from what it used to mean to be a citizen. The change, interestingly enough, is in the direction of greater visibility but less real power.

It works this way. It used to be that politics, like religion, was pretty private. The secret ballot was sacred. I can remember my parents trying to guess if new friends were Democrats or Republicans! It was bad form, bad manners, to ask. Folks who flaunted their politics with lawn signs were the exception, not the rule.

An advantage to this was that you could make friends easily with folks with whom you had political disagreements -- because the disagreements were never visible.

Today everyone is asked to have a public opinion about everything. It's a big deal on news shows to broadcast the views of citizens. The rub is, so what? In fact, we have less real power than ever before. Corporations rule most of our lives, and government comes in a distant second. What we buy, what products are offered to us, what choices we get in the marketplace, all the accouterments of our lives, are determined by corporate marketing departments. If we actually want something in numbers, like cars that get better mileage, it takes forever for the message to invoke change.

The way we take control over our lives is almost to drop out: to refuse to be a consumer in the mainstream.

And yet, we have our views broadcast to millions as if they actually meant more than a single powerless opinion.

I prefer the way my parents had it. People kept their political beliefs to themselves. Corporations had not taken control of our lives yet. Family restaurants outnumbered chain fast food joints, by many times over. Indeed, one of the real joys of traveling used to be to discover all the little family restaurants with regional cooking. You can still do some of that but main street now has the same fast food places offering the same menu in huge numbers. None of those existed half a century ago. They were all individual, personal family restaurants, not monolithic corporate restaurants.

Of course no one is boycotting these places.

"What the people expect, they get. What they get, they deserve. Always." --The Stiff, a play by Charles Deemer

Where are all the newscasters?

It's almost impossible today to find a newscaster who could carry the shoes of Brinkley, Cronkite and ilk. They are all too damn pretty and too damn phony trying to sound like your buddy. I'm sounding like Holden Caufield.

Damn

Tore my clowhammer fingernail. Was bound to happen. Make do as best I can.

Reading midterms. Take little breaks on the banjo. First Wednesday tonight but I'm not sure I'll have the energy to make the last half, after grading all day and banjo class. My energy level and stamina ain't what they used to be, that's for sure.

Buffalo Bill and the Indians

This Robert Altman film is "inspired by" Arthur Kopit's play Indians. I think it's a brilliant play but difficult to do and rarely done. I feel fortunate to have seen (and reviewed) a decent college production in Bend years ago. This dark comedy and political satire, bordering at times on farce. On stage, it's highly theatrical, using stick horses and other props that adds to the bitter surrealism of the evening.

This is harder to pull off on film, with real horses and the images of realism, and yet Altman goes over the top enough to stay true to the heart of the work. I prefer the stage play but this film is a sleeper and recommended.

Midterms

Midterms are usually exciting because it's when many, even most, of the students finally begin to understand how screenwriting is different from prose writing and therefore start writing pages that meet basic standards. They stop shooting themselves in the foot. After all, screenwriting is the only form of writing about which you can admonish, Don't let your writing get in the way of your story!

My long day

Student conferences all day, a very long day indeed. But no class. Tomorrow I read midterms all day. Then the term is halfway done. Remarkable.

Oscar nominations

Announced this morning. Check them out.

I'm rooting for Jeff Bridges in "Crazy Heart" for best actor. Otherwise, not passionate about anything.

Scrapple for breakfast!

I look forward to morning and a piece of my new batch of scrapple for breakfast! Has to be early because I go in at 8 for my full day of student meetings. A long day, so I need a good breakfast to start the day.

Alas, it never ends

The worst thing about McKinley's Dream -- this egotistical arrogant notion that one's faith justifies forcing beliefs and values on someone else because no less than Christ himself dictates your behavior -- is that it's still with us, in Haiti even as I write. Has anyone done more bad in the world than do-gooders?

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti's prime minister said Monday that 10 Americans who tried to take a busload of undocumented Haitian children out of the country knew that "what they were doing was wrong," and could be prosecuted in the United States.
Prime Minister Max Bellerive also told The Associated Press that his country is open to having the Americans face U.S. justice, since most government buildings — including Haiti's courts — were crippled by the monster earthquake.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents," Bellerive said. "And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong."

Full story

Lost generation

Scrapple

A new batch presently cooling. My major food addiction, my wonderful homemade Easy Scrapple.

Journalism

I've published 100s of pieces of journalism over the years, from hard news to features to profiles to reviews. Some of the ones I remember most fondly are:

• A piece on James Baldwin for The Progressive magazine
• A piece on Andres Dubus for The New Leader, one of the earlier appreciations of this short story master
• "Travels with Ruby" for Northwest Magazine, about a summer traveling across the country and back
• Also for NW, a long piece on the seminary at Mt. Angel, after spending a week on the hill
• A long in depth interview with Tom McCall for Oregon Business Magazine, one of the last before he died
• Another piece for the business magazine on Oregon fishermen selling bottom fish to Russian motherships
• A profile of the all-girl singing group Betty Romaine for Willamette Week
• Guest editing an issue of NW Magazine devoted to the film "Easy Rider"
• An interview with Ramblin' Jack Elliott for WW, after spending several days with him and setting up a concert at the Earth Tavern (ah, remember that one!?)
• and the list could go on and on.

There was a lot of grunt work, busy work, somewhat boring work in journalism but I also had some rare and great opportunities to meet great people and address important issues. But especially when I was freelancing, I found it to be the hardest work I can imagine. Working for magazines as staff was a breeze in comparison.

Quotation of the day

"There are no writers anymore, Just book-selling louts and big mouths." --J. D. Salinger

Quoted by Lillian Ross in her New Yorker tribute, Feb. 8th.

Old fogey

So I'm off on an errand, feeling blessed as I always do when out on an errand of pleasure, in this case to get bagels and shmears, listening to jazz on the radio, feeling great, when I have a memory flash from last night when I found the Grammy's while channel surfing and instantly felt like an old fogey. Pop music does that to me. I despise almost all of it. Indeed, the last "selling" musical artist to excite me were the Beatles! I don't hear much pop music, so maybe I short change it -- I listen to jazz and classical on the radio, period. I don't like hip-hop even though it's a derivative of talking blues, which I used to write and perform. 99% of the music I listen to was written before 1960, maybe even earlier, and that's just fine with me. But I admit it does make me something of an old fogey. I don't mind. After all, I'm writing a modern chamber opera ha ha. Ah, life is full of contradictions.

Smiling dog

Pressure's off

Not as much student work to look at as I remembered. Only two short scripts left to go.

Reserved at library Wheeler's book on Spacetime Physics. I would have understood this in high school but might not today. Curious -- because if I can, then I want to read about the new work being done with regard to time travel, work by "legitimate" scientists and not crackpots. But I don't want to tackle it as content so much as process, which means I need an elementary understanding of the mathematics behind it. Might be far too late for this, to catch up with what I knew what I thought I was a young hotshot mathematician.

To demonstrate how good my high school was, Pasadena High School, I was in my sophomore year at Cal Tech before I learned anything in math I hadn't already studied. Of course, a lot of this was independent study, encouraged by several excellent teachers. I loved high school. Very challenging and much support.

What a strange life: I loved high school, and I loved the Army -- each an incredible intellectual journey!

Tweet --> twit

On an interview on the news, someone clearly not used to using Twitter said he'd been "twitting," before being corrected. But somehow he sounded spot on. I think I'll say it this way from now on. Somehow strikes me as sounding more accurate that cyberspace has been overtaken with twits (not tweets).

Changing hats

Today belongs to students. I don't do anything until I'm caught up with a few late pages and my advanced students.

Our Town

A nice story on the Wilder masterpiece on Sunday Morning today. It's the most produced play in America, 4000 productions in last decade. I'd like to see it again ... been about 15 years. What is fascinating is that Wilder's dramatic style influenced European theater much more than at home, where the naturalistic style prevailed and still does. Durrenmatt, my favorite playwright, comes straight out of Wilder.

Yes, I definitely hope someone around here does Our Town soon -- or the Skin of Our Teeth, which is not done often at all.

Life is a nice place to visit

Really good work on the score this morning! Moving right along.

Need a breather. Maybe a movie, maybe read, maybe an adventure with Sketch.

Dominant team

Has sports ever seen domination like this year's Univ of Connecticut's women's basketball team? Look at recent victories. They beat #3 Notre Dame by 24 pts, then followed by beating #7 Duke by 33 pts. Their closest game has been a 12 pt victory, over a #2. They completely dominate everyone. It's incredible.

More about them here.

Free market

If it's true that folks advertise what other folks want or need or are perceived to need, then there's quite a demand for male PhD's with big dicks. At any rate, PhD's for the asking and magic pills to enlarge the penis are quite the rage in my spam mailbox. Who woulda thunk it?

Amazing films

Two old favs on cable tonight, Cradle Will Rock and Eyes Wide Shut, major work though not huge successes commercially, each a passionate project by its creator, Tim Robbins, Stanley Kubrick, which is the only way it got done.

Full circle

In the mid-50s, in high school, I listened a lot to Gerry Mulligan and played the banjo. Today I listen a lot to Gerry Mulligan and play the banjo, learning a new style, clawhammer. I was interested in music before I was interested in writing. And now I'm doing music after I call myself "retired" from writing.

---

Home town frenzy is fun to watch. Caught the end of USF upsetting Gonzaga, ending its 22 conf game win streak -- the game in San Francisco.

Expresso printers

There are five bookstores in the country with print-on-demand printers in them, and one is in Seattle. Order a book and it prints quickly while you have a cup of coffee.

Read the story.

(Thanks to B.H. for links.)

Great excitement about small things

Stumbled upon the fact that I sold 2 copies of the reader at Amazon yesterday. Amazing how something so insignificant can make me feel so good! The life of the marginal writer, sigh. At any rate, I assume the sales are to libraries to which I sent postcards last week. Hopefully a lot more will be forthcoming.

Here comes another Age of China

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

Read more

We could put so many to work if we became competitive in this area! But this requires the kind of government leadership that gets labeled "socialism" in our fear-mongering, historically ignorant political culture. But I'd call this the handwriting on the wall, the era of U.S. dominance is coming to an end. Maybe this is not a bad thing. We can learn other ways to be in the world.

Movel? Splay? Suggesting a new literary form

What would a new literary form, based on the screenplay, be called? A novie? movel? I rather like splay, the shorthand for screenplay, because I like the image of opening up, covering a lot with a little, which is exactly what this storytelling form does. It is our most efficient narrative form.

I think the format would have to be changed a bit. Less jargon without sacrificing the form's concise nature.

For example, instead of EXT. FIELD - DAY one might write, IN A FIELD. DAY.

INT. APARTMENT - BEDROOM - NIGHT becomes IN THE BEDROOM, ANNIE'S APARTMENT, NIGHT.

With such minor changes, the screenplay becomes easily intelligible to a general audience, most of whom have never seen a screenplay before.

I'd also change the format of dialogue, to match fiction. He says, or he said etc. But I definitely would keep the verticality of the form, the white space that keeps it from looking text dense and sets it off from prose.

The more I think about it, the more I think the time is right for this new, or almost new, literary form, "the splay," a screenplay adapted for a general reading public. I'd really run with this idea if I were in my 20s or 30s. I hope someone does. This is the perfect storytelling form for our impatient times and for electronic readers.

Somebody can get rich on this idea. Just send me a 10% consulting fee.

Is writing changing?

Our eager embrace of a brand new verb — to text — speaks volumes. We’re rapidly moving away from our old linear form of writing and reading, in which ideas and narratives wended their way across many pages, to a much more compressed, nonlinear form. What we’ve learned about digital media is that, even as they promote the transmission of writing, they shatter writing into little, utilitarian fragments. They turn stories into snippets. They transform prose and poetry into quick, scattered bursts of text.

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If this is true, if writing is becoming more compressed, then a written storytelling form already exists to meet this change: the screenplay! One of the first lessons I teach my students is that the screenplay is not a literary form, it's a blueprint for a movie. Which in the marketplace today is absolutely true. But what if the screenplay became a literary form?

Look at David Hare's screenplay The Hours, adapting the novel. It is, IMHO, not only a literary document, it is literature. Of course, in the spec screenplay market in which beginning screenwriters are forced, a script like this would never get read. Pro's get to write with more freedom because they are an investment, they get paid BEFORE they write! There is no competition except against, perhaps, some ideal script in the producer's mind. But Hare's script deserves to be read, not as a blueprint for a movie, but as a work for its own sake.

Screenplays could, in a rushed world preferring concise text to verbosity, become a primary READING form, a major storytelling form. No one reads screenplays now except screenwriters and wannabe screenwriters. But this could change.

SCENARIO, "the magazine of screenwriting art," tried to address this but made the mistake of over-producing the product, creating an expensive coffee table book, not a handy reading journal. I think the times are right for a new attempt, less glossy and more aimed at portability, a readers' experience. Maybe even an electronic journal to be read on Kindle and iphones.

Screenplays are a reading form as yet undiscovered by the masses. But the potential is huge because they are concise, they deliver big stories in little time, little reading investment.

If I were younger, much younger, this definitely is a project I'd look into, moving screenplays to the masses as a READING form. Maybe the format would have to be tweaked a bit, into something less rigorous than the formal screenplay format. But the concise language, the ability to tell big stories in few words, these appear to be part of the same thing happening in the culture.

Screenplays read by the masses. Somebody should run with this.

Wheeling and dealing

If you're interested in keeping up with the business of Hollywood, including what's bought and who gets fired, check out Deadline Hollywood, which gets updated several times a day. Presently there's a lot on what is selling at Sundance.

An outrageous trend

Just this week, a school district in California barred dictionaries from the classroom after a parent complained about a child reading the definition of "oral sex".

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Political correctness and censorship run rampant across the land. We are becoming an embarrassment in the civilized world -- or what's left of it.

Super Bowl ads

So they accept an anti-abortion ad but reject a gay dating service ad. Might not be the last word on this.

An unusual Friday

In the rhythm of my week, Friday typically is my day of rest, a transition from my teaching life to my writing life. I veg out on Friday, watch movies, read, spend time with Sketch. But yesterday I practiced banjo a lot and made real progress. I may be close to recording "my first clawhammer song."

More of the same today, I hope, with work on the score added.

The last series

"Musical and dramatic notes for a chamber opera." More and more, this describes where my creative energy is now. I have three projects that could fit under this banner, one of which I'm working on now. All would be incomplete because I don't have the skill set to finish them. At the same time, none are worth dismissing because they "possess" me in that special way projects lodge in the mind and demand release. I have no idea how many I'll do in the time left to me. This work goes far more slowly than writing for me, primarily because of my lack of skills. What I compose to score in an hour would take a "real composer" a fraction of the time. Thems the breaks. I do what I can do, and I'm thrilled that I've taught myself, with the help of some piano lessons in reason years, to do as much as I can.

I hope I have time to finish at least one and get it out there where a composer might find it and run with it. We'll see! Onward.

Dinty Moore Beef Stew

Wanting something quick, easy, tasty, heated up a can of this for my dinner tonight. I grew up on it. We camped as a family when I was a kid, in the late 40s before it was fashionable, usually just pulling off into a field and sleeping under the stars, and our usual dinner was this beef stew. We all loved it. I still love it.

Sometimes, having pulled into a farmer's field to spread out our tarps and unroll our sleeping bags, the farm family would notice us and bring out a treat, like pie or homemade bread. No one ever kicked us off. Those were kinder times.

Fond memories of camping as a kid and having canned stew for dinner -- and a surprise of incredible pie for dessert, brought out by a farmer and/or his wife.

Secret J.D. Salinger Documentary & Book, Now Revealed

Extraordinary news. Check it out in Deadline Hollywood.

Now we're cooking

An extraordinary 90 minutes today, the president answering questions from his opposition and winning most of the points. Republicans will never do this again, I bet. This is the Obama I like to see, taking the fight to the opposition instead of being passive.

Quotation of the day

From the Daily Dish.

If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory," - Howard Zinn, "The Optimism of Uncertainty," The Nation, 2004.

My favorite teacher

I was reminded of my favorite teacher this morning. He was J. Robert "Bob" Trevor.

After the Army, after a year of working in corporate America, I decided to return to college, to UCLA. But there was a problem. All my college credits were from Cal Tech, which was on the quarter system. UCLA was on the semester system. So in transfer I had 2 and a fraction units for several 3 unit classes, which meant UCLA required that I take them again. I decided to do this for less money at a community college and so enrolled in Pasadena City College in 1963. This is where I met Trevor.

At Cal Tech I had been a math major. At UCLA I anticipated being a Philosophy major. But I was curious about all the humanities for the first time. On a recommendation, I enrolled in Trevor's Modern Poetry class -- and in retrospect, it and he changed my life.


What made Trevor special was his manner. He was tall and lean, urbane, witty. He was Jeremy Irons in the classroom. His sensitivity to literature was in his body language. He began every class by reading a poem -- twice. We did not discuss it. He told us to listen carefully and to absorb it. A discussion, he said, an explanation, is always less than the work itself. Learn to appreciate the work more than the explanation.

I ended up taking every Trevor course I could before transferring to UCLA. Because I was an older student, we had hit it off and stayed in touch. Trevor moved on to become VP at a community college in St. Louis, which is where he was when I won a playwriting contest in grad school sponsored by the Univ of Missouri. So I stayed with him when I was flown out to receive the award (one of three). I was a big guy with a big beard then, who took my guitar everywhere and sang folk songs. Trevor said I reminded him of Walt Whitman.

Trevor retired to Honolulu. Every Xmas he sent me a case of macadamia nuts. I visited him in Honolulu, he showed me all the non-tourist spots, and I fell in love with the place, which wasn't even more expensive than Portland. And it was here that brought the memory this morning. Trevor had breakfast at the same restaurant every morning, sitting in the same booth, served by the same waitress. An old man's routine I understand myself very well today.

And so this morning, I stopped by for my usual iced coffee, joined a long rush hour line, and by the time I got to the register my order was already ready, "Saw you coming, Charles," said the barista, and this reminded me of Trevor getting breakfast. Routine seems like a small thing but it can be a big thing, a nice stability, a connection however minor, an example of the rhythm of one's life. This is a good thing. As a young person, I looked at it with less charity but I see now, I feel now, that this is a good thing. Trevor getting his breakfast, me getting my coffee, the rhythm of the day beginning. A good thing.

Trevor died quite a while ago. A woman I didn't know let me know, contacting everyone in his address book. His ashes were dropped at sea. She said a school of dolphins swam around the boat as if in honor and celebration.

I can still hear Trevor reading a poem. Jeremy Irons in the classroom. All class.

I'm honored that several of my own past grad students feel toward me the way I felt toward Trevor. Carry it on.

Coffee

H has been fighting a cold, and I don't want to get it! She's still in bed, so I can't practice the banjo, which is what I want to do. So I'll head out for coffee and maybe she'll be up when I return.

I need to work on the score today as well. Looks like a productive day from this end. We'll find out.

Old age is not as I imagined it, in truth, but also it's something that isn't half bad. I just had a more romantic view of it from several perspectives. I find occasional traces of the fantasy now and again but for the most part old age is full of aches, invisibility, and self-reliance.

Anti-community

I've never been a joiner. I can trace "the loner" psychology to childhood, being raised by a mom with dad at sea, who devised any number of projects to keep me busy (alone) while she did what she had to do, getting me used to being self-sufficient.

This comes to mind because I was wondering if I'd have become a writer if born, say, twenty or thirty years ago, with the same temperament? Writing communities are much larger and more visible than during my day, when it was a bit off-center, eccentric, to want to "be a writer." In Portland, today, writers are everywhere. It's like screenwriters in L.A. Who is NOT a writer around here? If young, would I therefore rebel from this and do something else? Or not live here, go somewhere where writers are harder to find?

Theoretical, meaningless question. I have no idea. But I can't imagine being a young writer in Portland with my natural loner temperament. I'd move to Fossil or somewhere. I hung with a few writers in grad school but only because we were such a minority, surrounded by PhD types. I had as many blue collar friends.

This also may be related to my natural suspicion of art institutions. I have a hard time getting past the fact -- and it is a fact -- that the culture prefers its artists dead. The exception is the celebrity artist, but there are few of these by definition. The culture has never really supported LIVING artists as much as the archived work of dead artists. And it isn't all that sure what to do with this. To paraphrase the last line of my favorite short story, Art doesn't save anyone from anything. And this is precisely the rub. Because, in a saner culture, art WOULD save us from literal experience. Art would educate and inform the spirit in a way that changed social behavior. But it doesn't. Hitler was an artist.

Philip Glass has noted that everyone is an artist and all art should be anonymous. This is the vision of an idealist. How different the world would be if all art were anonymous! That is, if artists were not celebrities. This would only work in a culture in which art actually DID SOMETHING, it had a social function that improved the culture. If the social reality of art matched the way certain works of art can affect individuals. Many of us have encountered art that changed our lives. But art never stopped a war. Art hasn't made the culture less greedy.

I'm just damn glad I'm not 20 or 30 today. I'm damn glad I am exactly who I am.

TGIF

Music, music, music today! Practice the banjo, lots of energy to do so. Work on the score -- I'm a bit stuck where I am, so this will be harder. Presumably we'll get over the hump.

And some reading. I have a film to outline, too. Lots to do. Amazing how much there still is to do after you "retire" as a writer.

If we get a tad of sun today, I'll get Sketch out for a run. Forecast isn't encouraging, however. But forecasts are as often wrong as right.

Crashed very early, hence up again with a bit of energy. A radio show I want to hear, so back to bed with earplugs.

Rick Moody on Salinger

And the last part of Salinger's legacy is the author's silence. After 1965, we all know now, Salinger turned his back on publishing and on the fame that had come with it, and though it is widely thought that he worked regularly thereafter, the work no longer belonged to us, his eager audience. For some, this silence was an irritant, but for my money, the silence was part and parcel of the spirituality of his later work; it was reverent, it was aesthetically consistent and it was confident.

Were I to say that I, like every other contemporary American writer, came out from under Salinger's skirts, I feel I would be saying that I admire his silence, too, just as I admire the tremendous accomplishment of his published work. It's an even more perfect silence now that he is gone, one that is unvarying, but one that is consistent nonetheless with the complete output of this singular American genius.

Read it all

---

"In today's culture of pornographic celebrity, in which fame is the supreme currency, Salinger's pursuit of total anonymity remains an inspiration, a reminder of what matters, and a reminder of what disappears." --Andrew Sullivan

iPad

I think Apple's new iPad is going to be a bust in this first incarnation. You can't multi-task on it. And it has no USB ports. Who wants a computer device that doesn't allow multi-tasking? I've read a lot about it, saw much of the hype show yesterday, and I'm not impressed. But I think their commitment to "touch technology" may be on the right track for the younger generations.

R.I.P.: J. D. Salinger

Surely one of our more eccentric and important writers. I remember a Time mag photo decades ago of Salinger's foot disappearing around the corner of a house, the best a photographer could do with this reclusive writer. They had to use art on the cover (1961). He had reason to run: Hollywood turned his story "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" into "My Foolish Heart" with Susan Hayward. Any sane man would run and still be running!

NEW YORK — J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

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"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

Restless morning

Up early, restless, out for a pre-dawn breakfast, a bit of brooding & cruising, home and back to bed for a couple hours, up to read student work, just one to go, and I'm finally settling in for the day.

A very nice thank you from a former grad student of mine, who's become both a friend and fan, regarding the reader I mailed. All the necessary copies are out now, to the archive, the library, a handful of friends/fans. So if I get run over by a truck this morning, the essential distribution is taken care of ha ha. Things like that are important when you have no one covering your back. You have to do everything yourself.

But maybe somebody is covering my back and I don't know it. You never can tell.

Banjo is sure getting fun! The class is nicely organized in a way that makes us sounding damn good early on, even though what we're doing is easy. Good for the morale. But here's a surprise: only 4 of 10 in class last night! Has over half the class quit already? I mean, for a weekly class, and only eight of them, why miss one? Why pay the fee and then drop out? Online students used to do that on me all the time. Strange phenomenon.

So I have great stuff to practice this week! This is just what I need right now.

Started reading a history of screenwriting, which is misnamed I think ... starts off more like a book of stories and gossip, war stories, about screenwriters in Hollywood, a slightly different focus. But it's a fun read so far.

I finished the short history of the Cold War from an international perspective, which means more of our CIA atrocities are covered than in an American history, I suspect. Some pretty ugly stuff. We really have little right to take the moral high ground as we always do. Not since McKinley's dream. I blame it all on him ha ha. Hallucinating a visit from Christ. Just perfect for setting foreign policy. (If I now say Jesus, is that a pun?)

So Howard Zinn has passed. A fine man though he sometimes got too ideological for my tastes. His book is sure important.

Well, time to move on.

Banjo

What a great class tonight! It's a real high, this class.

R.I.P.: Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

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A People's History of the United States, his best known book, is an important and necessary read for anyone interested in our history.

Judging

I've just been asked to be a judge for the NW Best Short Film Awards, re best screenplay and best film. Why not? That's what happens to old farts, you get to be judges. Actually it will be a fun, something I haven't done for a couple years. (Interestingly enough, judges choose best splay not by reading a script but by seeing a movie, which says a lot about how the craft is viewed).

Auto mechanic

Took a break from student papers to work on the old van I drive, topping its various fluids, checking the old lady out. I used to work on my VW Bug all the time when I was a young man, which I did with pride because I am more cerebral than mechanical by nature. My dad was impressed, which felt good, too. But cars have gotten so complicated, you can't do much with just a few hand tools any more, and you don't see guys and gals working on their cars the way you did decades ago.

And the sun has come out, the chill taken out of the day, and it feels almost like spring, a dangerous tease. Nothing like leisurely working on a car with the sun out. All that was missing was a game on the radio. A lost piece of Americana, I think.

Then Sketch and I took a test drive, and I got a coffee to go. Large iced coffee, my ritual. Maybe I'll save the remaining papers till tomorrow. Maybe not. Already put in some banjo practice, so my day is in good shape. I have grunt work and score work I could do. We'll see.

I almost wish I was given x months to live so I could chuck everything and go have an actual end of my time vacation. Otherwise I think I'll keep working till the end. Die with my boots on. But if I knew I had three months to live, say, I think I'd go to Costa Rica or Mexico and just lie in the sun, among other things ha ha.

I need to buy some mailing envelopes. Should've done that while I was out. Well, good excuse to go out again. Sketch settled in, though, doubt if he wants to come.

I also need to get to the library. 2 chores, that does it. I'll be off again.

Saw a glimpse of Apple's new iPad, it looks pretty cool. But I don't know why I'd need one. This netbook does everything I need done. Smartest thing I saw re iPad was its deal with McGraw-Hill to deliver college text ebooks. Students really need a break on their book costs. The price of education today, compared to my day, is shameful.

I love the sunshine! I am still a SoCal boy at heart, trapped in gray Oregon for decades.

Today's agenda

Focus today is reading student pages and after this, practicing the banjo. Lesson this evening. So much for Wednesday.

Not sure how long student work will take. About to see what I have to do and guestimate it. Might have time to work on the score later, maybe not.

Next Tuesday my very long day of student conferences.

Quotation of the day

"Nobody ever lost money on a movie they didn't buy." Anonymous producer at Sundance, reported by Deadline Hollywood.

An opportunity

Obama is a masterful speaker, no doubt about it. And this gives him an opportunity with his State of the Union address tonight to inspire and lead the nation in an exciting and bold direction toward economic recovery. But his speech will need content as well as style, and that's the rub. The rumors of what is in it are not encouraging. So we'll see. Above all else, he must make it clear that he is the people's president, not just the president of Wall Street.

I'll be at my banjo lesson and miss it. Just as well. My notion is that he will depress the hell out of me. I can't remember being more disappointed in a politician.

It's not all bad news

From Monty Python's Flying Circus.

---

From point A to point B

I seem to hobble a little more every week. At what point do I need a cane? Or for that matter, jeez, a wheel chair? Well. not yet and I hope not soon. I know, I know, the best thing for me to do would be to lighten the load, i.e. lose a lot of weight. But since I get negligible exercise, that would mean a great reduction in calories. I can't give up breakfast. A life without scrapple is a life without joy. I think I could cut back on lunch and dinner, though. But thinking and doing are two different things (just look at our president ha ha).

So for the time being, I hobble along.

An endless discussion

It's amazing, really, that all these years later, readers still argue about the ending of Salinger's short story "Teddy." And I still hold a minority view.

But I'm right, of course. I'm right because the central issue is this: is the swimming pool full or empty? My assumption is that Salinger is a gifted writer. He knows what he is doing.

So why on earth is there reason to believe that the pool is empty? Because Teddy prefaces a story by saying, let's assume today is the day they clean the pool, i.e. it's not actually the day. Now if Salinger WANTED the pool to be empty, he'd just have Teddy say, Today's the day they clean the pool, and then he'd tell his story. But he doesn't say that. He says it isn't the day, but let's pretend it is.

And this means either the pool is full -- or some gods have intervened, like a deus ex machina, and suddenly changed the cleaning day. Salinger would never do something like this. He's too good to let this happen.

So whatever interpretation one has, it must include a FULL swimming pool. And, of course, the majority reading has the pool empty, which is impossible unless Salinger sucks as a craftsman.

The pool is full. Live with it and interpret the story accordingly.

My 1976 short story Teddy At the Pool gives my interpretation.

Caught up

Up to speed with my students, a temporary state since I pick up work today, which I'll read tomorrow and return Thursday.

Today in class we watch and study "Sea of Love," which I'm showing as a model of story economy.

Mailed off another small batch of readers. Only a few more to go.

Relief

A box of my readers arrived today for an initial mailing to my university archive and friends. Just seeing it made me feel "retired" in a way I haven't earlier, retired from what has been the center of my activity for nearly half a century. I'll get them mailed out this week.

Put in my banjo practice today. It's coming along well enough to be encouraging. Definitely so. I may yet become a clawhammer banjo player.

Luxuries of the retired class

Nothing like a noon movie on a weekday! Saw CRAZY HEART, absolutely loved it, top to bottom (well, maybe the ending a tad less), my kind of story, my kind of people, my kind of landscape. The wide open spaces in the west! What my buddy Dick used to call "the high lonesome." Country music, the old true kind before, like so much else, it became less interested in truth and more interested in sales and packaging and hype.

This is one fine movie and I hope Jeff Bridges, who already won a Golden Globe and SAG award, walks off with an Oscar. He well deserves it.

My version of this story is my early play COUNTRY NORTHWESTERN, my singer Buck Timber. A story with many variations, as long as there are crazy hearts, which must be forever.

Love this movie. Did I say that? Haven't raved about a film this much since, well, LIVES OF OTHERS. Love it.

Obama polarizing

A new Gallup poll has Obama the most polarizing president in the history of the poll. You love him or hate him (Democrat, Republican). So much for bringing everyone together.

Source

Favre, pro and con

I've never been a fan of Brett Favre, This dislike no doubt began when he was at Green Bay. Wisconsin is a Big 10 state and I, growing up in Southern Cal, grew up disliking any Big 10 team that came to play a California team (usually) in the Rose Bowl. Then when Favre retired and unretired and retired again, strutting in and out of the news like a prima donna, I really disliked him. So I wasn't excited about the possibility of Favre going to the Super Bowl.

And therefore it is fitting, in an unfortunate way, that Favre himself blew the Vikings chances to do this. A tie game, 7 seconds left, Favre rolling right with pasture ahead of him, all he had to do is run and slide and the Vikings could win the game on a field goal. But he didn't do the obvious thing. I once played QB, even I could have seen this. No, Favre tried to do something more heroic, he threw across his body, left, the worst kind of throw, and he was intercepted. The Saints went on to win in overtime. But the Vikings had a good shot at winning in regulation if Favre hadn't made a really, really stupid error. And he did the same thing two years ago. For all his glory, he has a propensity to make very dumb decisions when it counts. This is why he is not one of the really great QBs of all time, certainly not in the top five.

Now the melodrama returns, will he or will he not retire again, and un-retire again, and so on?

Despite my dislike of him, Favre, a 40 year old, had one hell of a season. He is one tough customer. And often a jerk.

I ache, therefore I am

I like Descartes. Cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am, always made sense to me. When I wake in the morning, my mind lets me know that the gods have granted me yet another day on the planet. Cool. In recent months, however, a variation of Descartes has entered my waking moments. Before my mind awakes, before I think, I am aware of something else. My left ankle hurts. My right knee hurts. These are my first sensations in the morning now. I ache, therefore I am.

Quotation of the day

From the Daily Dish.

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself," - Thomas Merton, "Letter To A Young Activist"

This applies to artists as well as to activists. But then artists are activists of a sort, activists of the interior life.

Saints win in overtime

In a game played so badly by both teams, you'd think neither wanted to win. A terrible game to watch.

Colts win

When the Colts were trailing by 11 pts in the first half, I was worried for a bit but Manning came back and in the 2nd half just picked the Jets apart. The Colts defense was superb. A convincing win, and the Jets, a young team, are impressive.

I'd like to see the Saints win big. Really big.

What happened to serious fiction?

A literary editor wonders.

By the 1950s, young writers could apply to a dozen creative writing programs; the Beats could publish in Chicago Review, experimental writers in Black Mountain Review, internationalist writers in TriQuarterly, young Southern writers in Georgia Review and Shenandoah. All on the university dime. By the early '70s—and with the development of inexpensive offset printing—every school seemed to have its own quarterly. Before long, the combined forces of identity politics and cheap desktop publishing gave rise to African American journals, Asian American journals, gay and lesbian journals. Graduates of creative writing programs were multiplying like tribbles. Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies. In short, no one is reading all this newly produced literature—not even the writers themselves. And with that in mind, writers have become less and less interested in reaching out to readers—and less and less encouraged by their teachers to try.

Little wonder then that the last decade has seen ever-dwindling commercial venues for literary writers. Just 17 years ago, you could find fiction in the pages of national magazines like The Atlantic, Elle, Esquire, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, GQ, McCall's, Mother Jones, Ms., Playboy, Redbook, and Seventeen, and in city magazines and Sunday editions like the Boston Globe Magazine, Chicago, and the Voice Literary Supplement. Not one of these venues (those that still exist) still publishes fiction on a regular basis. Oh, sure, The Atlantic still has an annual fiction issue (sold on newsstands but not sent to subscribers), and Esquire runs fiction online if it's less than 4,000 words. But only Harper's and The New Yorker have remained committed to the short story.

One would think that the rapid eviction of literature from the pages of commercial magazines would have come as a tremendous boon to lit mags, especially at the schools that have become safe harbors for (and de facto patrons of) writers whose works don't sell enough to generate an income. You would expect that the loyal readers of established writers would have provided a boost in circulation to these little magazines and that universities would have seen themselves in a new light—not just promoting the enjoyment of literature but promulgating a new era of socially conscious writing in the postcommercial age. But the less commercially viable fiction became, the less it seemed to concern itself with its audience, which in turn made it less commercial, until, like a dying star, it seems on the verge of implosion. Indeed, most American writers seem to have forgotten how to write about big issues—as if giving two shits about the world has gotten crushed under the boot sole of postmodernism.

Read more.

There's never been a large market for literary fiction, But two things have happened simultaneously that changes the literary landscape: publishing houses being bought by huge corporations; and the explosion of MFA programs, producing more writers than the culture knows what to do with and largely writers whose primary adult experience is literature itself. Self-perpetuating elitism. No wonder my most exciting students are usually older students coming back to school after jobs, failed marriages, the military. They have life experiences to write about.

But I am optimistic. I think there is hidden literary wealth on the net. There also is more literary crap than ever seen in the history of the world. What is needed more than writers now are critics, literary entrepreneurs with high standards who find the great stuff and assemble it onto an online resource. The standards are the key. Too much modern literature is masturbatory, elitists jacking off for elitists. There are probabky more talented writers in the country than ever before but they can't find their audiences. At this time and place, we need fewer writers and more champions of literature, the kind that speaks widely to the human condition. We need the champions of literature, critics, to show us where the good stuff is hiding. And I don't mean "reviewers," I mean critics who have a literary theory upon which to base their choices. We need to find the high brow writers who appeal to everyone.

Hype in music

No song gets screwed more when sung than our National Anthem. A pop singer is almost guaranteed to screw it up, using the song as an excuse to show off with vocal histrionics. So today at the first playoff game. Indeed, the only source on which one can depend on a sane interpretation is a military chorus. Otherwise it's probably show off time. Well, the good news is, it only lasts a few minutes.

Reading

One of the disadvantages of having a writing career as obsessively focused as mine, which translates into a workaholic's rhythm of multi-tasking, always working on several writing projects at once, is that I've had less time for reading than I would prefer. This is the period of my life to correct this. And rather than read randomly, my obsessive habits of behavior lead me toward a reading program. Thus I am thinking of an assault on the classics. I've always loved the classics -- I even studied classical Greek at UCLA (the one and only reason I got into Phi Beta Kappa: the president at the time was my Greek teacher, who pulled strings to get me in a year after graduation, a fascinating story I've told before here). I'm doing a little research to see what particular focus this might take.

Meanwhile I'm reading two excellent books: a short history of the Cold War and a short bio of Darwin, emphasizing the development of his ideas.

Just for fun

I seldom make picks but here goes.

Colts 28
Jets 6

Saints 38
Vikings 21

Day of rest

All I hope to accomplish today is a little banjo practice, what with two playoff games that interest me, though before they start I might work a bit on the score.

Interesting morning. Woke up with a dream, or visualization, or dress rehearsal, or something, of my death. Vivid and also very peaceful. May I be so lucky. I don't second guess things like this unlike a few folks I know who spend much of their waking hours doing so. Clearly my days are numbered, which is as it should be. I don't think our culture values Death enough.

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I have several potential electronic pen pals but they don't write often enough to make the deal work. Too bad. I answer email the day I receive it.

Super Saturday

A very productive day. Edited video and updated the journal. Practiced the banjo a lot. Read. Mailed off more postcards announcing the reader to libraries. I still need to outline a film I have saved on the TiVo, for personal (not classroom) use.

Sunday, two playoff games. I hope for two big wins, unlikely, putting the Colts and Saints in the Super Bowl.

I'm reading a fascinating bio of Darwin, about which more later. Spends a lot of time on his thinking, and anxieties, following evidence to places that were unpopular and even scary at the time. A movie coming out based on this book.

And I found the Obama photo below, showing him mad as hell, and it made my day. Once he starts showing he's pissed, I think he can move forward.

This is the face I like to see!

Food for thought

The best thing that could happen to poetry is to drive it out of the universities with burning pitch forks. Starve the lavish grants. Strangle them all in a barrel of water. Cast them out. The current culture, in which poetry is written for and supported by poets has created a kind of state-sanctioned poetry that resists innovation. When and if poetry is ever made to answer to the broader public, then we may begin to see some great poetry again – the greatness that is the collaboration between audience and artist.

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And this from a poet. Perhaps the most radical suggestion since my own that athletic scholarships be canceled outright, which would force professional sports to create their own minor leagues and stop using the universities as such.