Shoddy First Draft

THE SHODDINESS HAS MOVED!

2008-08-31T23:02:00.004-05:00

Shamble over HERE to see the new and improved novel procrastination!

Jollyship The Whiz-Bang

2008-06-07T13:08:00.004-05:00

Yet another reason I wish we lived in NYC: Jollyship the Whiz-Bang on stage now at Ars Nova, 511 W54th St.

Billed as a Pirate-Puppet-Rock Odyssey, the ship is sinking, the captain’s a drunk and the band is on the verge of mutiny. Braving treacherous seas and murderous waves on a quest for the wonders of Party Island, Captain Clamp and crew undertake a ribald and rum-soaked nautical journey.

CREATED BY NICK JONES WITH RAJA AZAR

DIRECTED BY SAM GOLD

The Band: Raja Azar, Steven Boyer, Keith Frederickson, Nick Jones, Daniel Kutcher, Julie Lake, Jesses Wallace.

Sets: Donyale Werle. Costumes: Emily Rebholz. Puppets: Paul Burn. Lights: Ben Stanton.

The New York Times calls it "loud and loose, but not sloppy" and hails its "demented brilliance."

Portable Snack

2008-04-27T14:19:00.000-05:00

New essay up at TNB.

" 'Charlie Rose' by Samuel Beckett"

2008-04-22T18:08:00.002-05:00

I first saw this on The Elegant Variation. Excruciatingly funny indeed.

Two thousand eight

2008-01-01T20:11:00.000-05:00

A sampling of this year’s to do list, replete with visual aids:

Wrap up plans for trip to
this spring.
Read more of these
than I do even now. Especially read more of Maggie O’Farrell
and Richard Russo.
But first, finish reading this
Do more of this
so I can finish the book that takes place here
and here
and here
Maybe even take some time off to visit the Coop for specific research.

Listen to more of this man
and his music.
Take Marly Youmans' advice (see The Palace at 2 a.m.)
that I sit my butt in chair, write when dratted bare, write in vestments rare . . . write a page a day.

Keep up with Alexander Maksik
and his amazing stories, which you can read at Pont des Arts, and buy him a drink when we get here
or wherever he recommends.

Trunk Monkey Compilation

2007-12-28T15:48:00.001-05:00

And then there were three

2007-11-27T19:05:00.000-05:00

Not my favorite Genesis album by far, and not my favorite time in the Art Dept. We're losing a valued member to the "corporate" parking world. Who's next?

So long, Mr. P'body.

Lost in the Woods 2007

2007-10-07T21:54:00.001-05:00

It wasn't pretty, but here's my scorecard from my first disc golf tournament. After a shaky start on hole 14, by the end of the day I finished 18th out of 22 in my division -- at least I didn't finish last.

And what does this have to do with a Shoddy First Draft and writing? Well, the player's pack program included a little story of mine I wrote exclusively for the tournament:

Mr. Bones Finds His Way
By Jim Simpson

When he walked among the living his name had been Weed, but he’d been dead for a long time now. He couldn’t remember his real name, just the nickname given to him as a child because he loved the outdoors and would play for hours in an overgrown field beside his house. He knew nothing of parents, brothers or sisters; didn’t even remember a dog. Being a skeleton had its good and bad points, a selective and spotty memory being one of the bad ones.

He did remember having money and a wife in ’29, then suddenly losing everything. After that he drifted around the country riding trains and finding work where he could. He did this for seven years, and then in the winter of ’36 came to this place — Rowell? Ruell? Roswell? — in the South. It was nice, but he’d hooked up with a bad crowd and they’d killed him. He couldn’t recall why, but the men buried him deep in the woods and no one had ever found him.

He’d lain in his subterranean bed for many boring years just twiddling his dwindling thumbs and slowly rotting. Without light, Time was shapeless. Eventually, it ceased to exist for him. That was one of the benefits of his skeleton-ness. Also, his senses were keener than in life and he could hear animals’ thoughts. Lately, though, he’d begun to hear voices. Human voices. They sounded happy, energetic.

He heard them tromping overhead, laughing, tossing things, walking, picking them up, an odd metallic ching!, and then the living would walk away. When it was quiet he began digging.

He crawled out, shook the soil from his bones and looked about. The moon cast a silvery light over trees, grass, mounds of wood chips. Though he had no nose, the night smelled wonderful. He strolled around the park, following a trail into and out of woods, up and down hills, and scattered about were metal baskets with dangling chains. Interesting.

Next to a sleek playground (no teeter-totters?) were two picnic tables. On the ground beneath one of them a bright yellow disc caught his eye, or more precisely the memory of his eye, since he no longer had eyes. He didn’t question these things, just accepted them. He’d always loved magic; saw Houdini once, so maybe believing in something made you receptive to it. Who knew? Worms had long since consumed his brain.

The disc felt good in his hands. He walked to the head of a trail, set himself and held the thing as he’d seen athletes do at the Olympics. It didn’t feel right, so he held it like a dinner plate, turned and whipped it out and away. The disc flew off into the moonlight, disappearing down the trail. He clapped his bony hands together, clack clack! What fun! he shouted, a silent puff of dust shooting from his jaws. He turned to celebrate with someone, anyone. Sadly, he was alone. He longed for the company of the happy living ones who also threw these things.

He spent the entire evening tossing and retrieving the marvelous yellow disc, laughing his silent, dusty laugh at the satisfying ching!

His nocturnal round of disc golf (somehow he knew that’s what this was called — again, the magic of his skeleton-ness) upset the animals. Squirrels said quiet Mr. Bones, sleeping here! Need sleep! Foraging tomorrow! Owls said don’t scare that mouse Mr. Bones, tread lightly. Snakes hissed, bite you if you scare that rat, hungry so hungry, swallow him whole.

Mr. Bones? thought Weed. I like that. He turned the disc over and placed his white thumb against the rim as he’d heard the living do, a “thumber” they'd said. It flew left, then swept right, bounced and took off down the fairway. He hit the chains on this one — a sign said No. 8 — in three throws. He jumped up, bones clattering, stick white arms raised, laughing hard to no one, soundlessly. He desperately wanted to share this moment with someone. He hung his head and if he wasn't just a bunch of dried bones, he would have wept.

He slowly plucked the disc from the basket. He felt very tired now. He hadn’t had a night like this in, well, a long long time. He should get back, he thought. But where was his place? He didn’t recognize this section of the park. He just wanted to lie down, but he couldn’t find the trail. He stalked through the woods, brushing aside branches until a vine caught his foot and he fell in a clattering heap. He sat up and leaned back against a fallen tree. So. Here he was lost in the woods. Oh well, no matter. Things were different now.

A purple lizard skittered near him, but it said and thought nothing. A spider dangled from its web, wrapping a tiny moth in silk. In the moonlight he saw the loveliest little red mushrooms. He sat and gazed at them until the memory of his eyelids closed and he slept, the magic yellow disc clutched in his bony right hand.

Answering the PDGA call

2007-10-01T18:54:00.001-05:00

PDGA mini
Originally uploaded by JISimpson.

Now that I'm a card-carrying PDGA member, (what would Groucho say?) I guess I'll have to take my game more seriously! (If that makes sense; it's a game and it's supposed to be fun!)

My first tournament is here this Saturday.

Bobby Z and DPA McManus

2007-09-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

Why the sudden trip down Memory Lane?

Bob Dylan - 1998

2007-09-20T23:19:00.002-05:00

This was about the time Sue and I last saw Dylan at Georgia Tech. Joni Mitchell opened. It was her birthday and we all sang an impromptu Happy Birthday to her. Quite a memorable night.

All Bob said between songs was "Thank yew thank yew very much." But we weren't there to hear him talk anyway.

Radio Radio Redux

2007-09-20T22:44:00.002-05:00

Where was I when this aired? Must have been a few years ago. Anyway, I feel old(er) now because I remember the original "sorry ladies and gentlemen" back in '78.

...and the original

2007-09-20T22:36:00.002-05:00

I remember watching this in high school and being totally blown away. It took some balls for EC to do this on national tv. Actually, I thought he was a complete oddball -- Mick Jagger's retarded little brother or something. Still, I went out and bought the album the next day. Soon after that I realized he was neither an oddball nor retarded, just a musical genius.

THE LIMEY (1999). The best movie you never saw.

2007-08-12T12:50:00.002-05:00

Starring Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Peter Fonda. Directed by Steven Soderberg.

Mindless Simpsons fun

2007-07-22T17:11:00.001-05:00

My Simpsons avatar (with specs) from the Simpsons Movie website.

And one with my new (arghh!) contacts:

Thanks, Barry!

2007-06-01T19:52:00.000-05:00

Great. Just as we're about to head to Siesta Key (a barrier island off Sarasota, FL) for the week, along comes Tropical Storm Barry. Not a big deal, just a bit more rain to make the boring trip down 75 interesting.

I just hope this Barry is as cool and easygoing as Mr. P'body.

I Am But A (Corn) Pup of Letters

2007-03-13T22:36:00.000-05:00

Prolific and most generous poet and writer Marly Youmans interviews me in palatial style. Scamper to The Palace at 2 a.m. to see the scrim lifted.

The Chocolate Doughnut Principle

2007-03-04T19:26:00.001-05:00

Our neighborhood is changing; it has been for the past two or three years. Especially the kids.

Land is being rezoned all around us from residential to commercial. Modest ranch-style homes on multi-acre lots are being bought up and bulldozed, replaced with strip malls containing the ubiquitous nail salons, dollar stores, carnecerias and billiard halls. I have no problem with any of these establishments, but how many of them do we need in a five-mile radius?

Gwinnett County, GA, is bursting at the seams.

Family farms are selling off their land and in their place sprout cluster-home developments whose starting price is a quarter of a million per home. And they all look the same: aluminum siding crackerboxes 20 feet apart without a tree in sight.

We live in one of the few remaining older subdivisions with spacious lots full of hardwood trees. In a single season in our back yard we regularly see bluebirds, cardinals, finches, three species of woodpeckers, thrashers, grackles, barred owls, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks, rabbits, turtles, herons, and ducks.

Along with this paradise of nature we also hear the distant roar of highway 316 and police helicopters searching for the occasional criminal.

We also have gangs. And graffiti. And it's not creative or artistic. It's just plain ugly.

We also have neighborhood kids trying to imitate gang tagging, and it's even uglier. They've tagged our neighbor's old black oak:

And they recently tagged our carport:

At first I attributed this to the recent influx of Hispanic immigrants. How dare they bring their LA-style violence and lack of respect for the land to our quiet little county. But the Mexicans, Peruvians, Dominicans, and Columbians I've met in our neighborhood and at our girls' elementary school are hard-working people trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. They are intelligent and kind, and seem pleasantly surprised (if not a bit amused) when I resurrect and thrust my rusty college Spanish on them. Bless is heart, they might be saying in Spanish, or perhaps What an idiot.

Residents fed up with rampant development can attend zoning commission meetings and voice their concerns, but the land rezoning is still railroaded through. If people want out, they're free to sell their land to the highest bidder, and we're powerless to stop it. It is, after all, about the bottom line.

I've finally realized that all of this is my fault. It's me. Really. I'm responsible, at least for the vandalism and disrespect for property.

I attribute it to the Chocolate Doughnut Principle.

It begins this way: I grew up in sleepy St. Petersburg, Florida, in an older neighborhood much like the one I live in now (before the change began). My brother, sister and I were latch-key kids in a neighborhood of mostly retirees. We threw rocks at passing cars, we knocked on bedroom windows late at night -- we terrorized the old folks mercilessly. Especially our widowed next-door neighbor, Mrs. Davies.

She was a retired Presbyterian minister from Wales (we attended the local Presbyterian church but were still evil) and we did horrible things to the side of her house. The Reverend Elsie Davies was convinced my brother Greg and I were out to kill her.

We threw rocks and water balloons onto her roof, eggs at her house,

and I once smashed a chocolate doughnut onto the side of her yellow house. My brother, a talented cartoonist, even drew a cartoon about the incident. Funny, funny stuff, we thought. I see all too clearly now how the chocolate doughnut represents the karmic circle. What goes around comes around.

My bad childhood behavior has come home to roost.

The kids who cut through my yard and paint graffiti on my house are unwittingly paying me back for my childhood indiscretions.

Then again, maybe these kids and I share similar childhoods. My brother and I were often left at home alone (our divorced mother worked full-time and couldn't afford after-school care, like there was such a thing back then), we didn't have lots of money, and we were bored most days.

Still, I think the doughnut had something to do with it.

Someone stole our recycling bin (huh?!) a few weeks ago.

It was more a kidnapping than a theft -- the bin was missing for four days. I found it one rainy afternoon in the woods behind our house, the plastic and glass contents strewn about in the ivy, bobbing in the creek. Oddly, the emptied bin was refilled with heaps of new and used orange extension cords. I thought I was having a bizarre dream standing there in the rainy woods, pawing through the lime green industrial-strength plastic bin full of orange snakes.

The recycling bin now lives in the garage until trash day.

I find discarded bicycles in my yard that lie there motionless for days. When I was a kid, I'd be devastated if my bike was missing for even one night.

I take the abandoned bikes now and offer them to the first kid who comes along.

So now I just paint over the graffiti, smile at my neighbors, tell myself I'll try to attend the next neighborhood watch meeting if I'm not working late.

I consider myself a very liberal guy, open to all cultures, curious about many customs, but in mid-life I've realized I am an age discriminator: What is wrong with young people today? I say, at the same time recalling my grandfather ranting about "longhairs" in the '60s who were ruining this country with their rebellious ways.

We're doomed, at least in my little neighborhood, and it's all because of that ancient chocolate doughnut incident. With my decision to take that confectionery delight and, instead of popping it into my mouth and enjoying it, smearing it onto that yellow stucco wall, I've become the guy I used to torment on my childhood streets. I'm now the old fart in the Buick tooling down the road who sees the kid on the corner with something in his hand who at the last second chucks the object at the Buick.

I'm the guy in that car who slams on his brakes and thinks, What's wrong with kids these days? and then yells out the window "Hey you! Come back here!" as the kid sprints away laughing, rounding the corner and disappearing down the alley.

I'm also destined to be the homeowner chasing kids away from the side of his house.

I just hope these kids have nothing more potent than a chocolate doughnut for me and my house. A tres leche cake, perhaps . . .

I'm walkin', yes indeed I'm talkin' ...

2007-03-01T23:08:00.001-05:00

Went to J's talent show dress rehearsal this evening (it went really well!) then to our favorite Thai place for dinner. (Okay, the girls -- timid tastebuds that they have -- had Wendy's instead.) Low key tonight was fine with me now that my life is half over -- I mean, half begun(?). The wild party is next Friday when Sue and I celebrate in tandem with the Combined Pisces Pandemonium Show.

Ah, yes . . . the NOVEL. [See Family Guy excerpt in previous post.] I've been working on a middle chapter that will probably be either seven or eight, definitely after the snowy holiday party chapter, and after W. learns the true story of his uncle's death.

In this chapter, which I hope to finish (at least the shoddy first draft) for Saturday's critique group meeting, L. is walking to C'town in search of the past. I mean, he's literally trying to walk back in time. It doesn't start out this way, though; it starts with his aunt's death, his failed attempt to reach the neighbors by phone, a strengthening snow storm and his decision to walk to his childhood home 26 miles away.

Walking into the past begins to play a more significant part in L's delusions the closer he gets to C'town. An old Vonnegut reference conjures up a skating fantasy for him, and Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin'" keeps looping around in his head. The lyrics provide the perfect set-up for the final scene on the lake. The creative process baffles me sometimes -- who knows where this stuff comes from? I'm truly embarassed that I used the phrase "creative process" , too. Sheesh.

Anyway, all this walking talk is leading to another of those odd coincidences. Just when I need it, along comes today's Daily Dose email from Powell's Bookstore:

"Wanderlust: A History of Walking"

by Rebecca Solnit



***************************************************

Recommended by: Andrew in Brooklyn. ANDREW'S COMMENTS

"Solnit's book is a masterpiece in sustained mediatation on a

single, seemingly inconsequential topic: walking. Beginning with

recent discussions among primatologists and anthropologists that

the bipedal walking is not only typical of, but fundamental to

what it means to be human, Solnit launches into a cultural and

political history of walking....This book was unfairly lost in

the crowd of micro-microhistories that flooded shelves a few years

ago -- of salt, of cod, etc. -- but it stands above the rest as

Solnit blends personal account, literary history, and political

passion into a fascinating and compelling homage and plea for

ambulatory culture and ethics. Read this book as the precursor

to her more recent 'A Field Guide to Getting Lost.'"

****************************************************



PUBLISHER COMMENTS

Drawing together many histories -- of anatomical evolution and

city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and

sexual mores -- Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait

of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that

the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as

for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on

the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture,

from philosophers to poets to mountaineers. She profiles some

of the most significant walkers in history and fiction -- from

Wordsworth to Gary Snyder, from Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet

to Andre Breton's Nadja -- finding a profound relationship between

walking and thinking and walking and culture. Solnit argues for

the necessity of preserving the time and space in which to walk

in our ever more car-dependent and accelerated world. 



REVIEWS

"Delightful...Solnit covers all kinds of ground in her inspiring

book on walking."

-- The Seattle Times



"Solnit presents an absolutely fascinating look at how the act

of walking itself has influenced our history, our science, our

literature, and the very way that we see ourselves as human beings."

-- Booklist 



"Meandering through human bipedalism, urban policy, garden design,

nature treks, pilgrimages, and the joys of urban roving, Solnit's

beautifully written chronicle visits several continents but ends

with an inspired promenade down a new pedestrian paradise: the

Vegas strip."

-- Entertainment Weekly 



"Solnit is an elegant essayist...as a guide, she knows the path

well; she is tireless and sure-footed."

-- The New York

Thanks to Barry A. for the PFF suggestion. I now have another excuse to do something besides writing THE NOVEL.

The Novel

2007-02-14T17:43:00.002-05:00

This cracks me up every time I see it.

"Working on that for quite some time, hmmm? Big stack of papers, hmmm? Nice little narrative: beginning, middle, and end, hmmm? Compelling protagonist with obstacles to overcome, hmmm?"

I have to finish this thing!

2007 Conference on Southern Literature

2007-01-17T22:47:00.000-05:00

I was surprised to find the brochure for the fourteenth biennial Conference on Southern Literature in the mail today; it doesn't seem like two years have passed since the last conference. Sue and I had a blast then, staying at the Chattanoogan, mixing and mingling with great writers.

You can see us in this photo (from the 2005 conference) that appears in the brochure's inside cover: I'm wearing an asparagus green shirt, upper middle left, near the signing table -- okay, just look for the guy with the bald spot (Sue's sidling up next to me) waiting in line for Jill McCorkle to sign my book.

It looks like the same line-up as last time, minus a few writers (Jill M., Daniel Wallace and Reynolds Price), and I'd like to meet Louis Rubin and attend the panel discussion featuring Richard Bausch, Madison Smartt Bell, Kaye Gibbons, Lee Smith and Allen Wier. Other than that, eh... not much else interests me this time.

Chattanooga's a wonderful town, though.

The Art and Poetry of Toast

2007-01-16T17:37:00.000-05:00

In an update to an earlier toast post, N. brought this home from school the other day. Now, there is no doubt; it's not just me: the world loves toast, even the little children. Yes, as the rhyme goes, warm and dry ... toast is sure to satisfy.

Indeed, T is for toast. And is it a coincidence that the word 'art' ends with a T? I think not. After reading this glad tiding, I see the world as somehow less chaotic, appearing now to have an intrinsic, divine order to it.

Today (another T word!) is a good day.

Cheers.

(No, I'm still not obsessed with toast, just a bit afflicted with cabin fever, as our oldest monkey was home from school with what we hope is just a 24-hour touch of the flu.)

I AM gonna work on Maggie's Farm

2007-01-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

We visited the farm on a recent drizzly Saturday morning. We really didn't expect to see so many dedicated volunteers slogging through the muck and mud, many of whom show up every Saturday to take care of the horses. Dozens of horses were munching hay in the pasture, and a dozen more were in the stable with the vet who was "floating" their teeth. This is an annual treatment where the vet literally files the horse's teeth, grinding away any sharp enamel growths.

It's amazing to know that there are so many people out there willing to part with hard-earned dollars and spend a huge chunk of their weekend taking care of these animals. The farm's oldest horse, Cricket, is now 42 years old. Her owners didn't chose to keep her after years of service to the family, and she's been at the farm for six years. Cricket is fed several small meals of a grain made for horses with Cushing's Syndrome (small benign tumours in the pituitary gland). She had very coarse, kinky hair, which is one symptom of the disease. Folks tell us her feed is expensive, but worth every penny. A group of us were talking outside the stable when Cricket (ancient thing that she was) shuffled over to us, let us pet her, neighed, and then wandered away.
We also saw a Sicilian donkey, two dwarf ponies that I can only describe as charmingly freaky, many very old horses, some of them quite sway-backed.
We didn't get to meet Sonny, who was on a farm a few miles away, but we'll meet him in a couple of weeks when we attend the volunteer orientation class. However, N. got quite attached to a gentle horse named Bitsy and was thrilled to feed her some flaxseed cookies. All in all a good day.

Vital NYC

2007-01-02T13:04:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS - The cast members take a bow after the show. (c.2006 NYTimes)

I picked up a copy of the New York Times the other day and I was reminded how vital that city is. Where else can you have a play performed in your apartment? This small theater troupe is performing "The Sublet Experiment", a story about an unusual sublet agreement involving (what else) sex? The players perform the play for four nights, and the hosts -- the apartment owners -- get free tickets for one night, but must make themselves scarce for the other three nights. A "stage manager" makes sure nothing shady happens to the apartment or its contents during the performance.

The group avoids the high rent of a theater space, saving a ton of money this way, and the audience enjoys free beer! How odd it would be to have actors in your house, well ... acting, inches away from you on your couch, in the kitchen, in the bathroom. I wonder about bedroom scenes: 'Please, not on the new comforter!'

GREENWICH VILLAGE - An audience watches as Marshall Sharer and Erin Maya Darke perform “The Sublet Experiment”in a Perry Street apartment. (c.2006 NYTimes)

The Weekend section featured a story about local skating rinks and how they stacked up against each other in the categories of size, popularity, setting, music, etc.

The Pond at Bryant Park plays jazz and classical music. (c.2006, Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

Bryant Park seemed to be one of the best, and the Rockefeller Plaza rink, although most well known, was rather small and crowded. The few times I've been there it was always more fun to watch the skaters from on high, a hot cappuccino in hand.

The Wollman Rink in Central Park, with its weeping willows, rocky cliff and skyscrapers, is the prettiest place to skate in New York. (c.2006, Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

Although Atlanta has a very vibrant theater culture, I just can't imagine roving plays staged in Buckhead homes. Maybe I'm wrong; like we go to the theater all that much anyway. I don't usually make new year's resolutions, but maybe that'd be a good one: enjoy more live entertainment beyond shows at Chastain.

Back to the Times, though. Amid all the feel-good stories about arts and culture, I couldn't help notice the full-page cell phone ads that appeared opposite the international news pages which featured stories on rising death tolls in Iraq (military and civilian), and elsewhere in the world -- you name it, death death and more death. A photo of some guy pondering his cell phone plan choices seemed pretty silly next to stories about stuff that really matters.

Finally, opposite a story about the muck in the Middle East was a full-page ad for Exxon Mobil and their continuing strides in technology. Yes, it's all about oil isn't it?

Woah Nellie. Dismounting from my high horse now.

Our New Horse!

2006-12-14T23:01:00.000-05:00

We just sponsored a horse named Sonny. He lives on a farm in Cumming, GA, and is a resident horse with the Horse Rescue, Relief and Retirement program. Our sponsorship will help pay for Sonny's food, and N. will be able to visit Sonny to help groom him, clean his stall, walk him, give him yummy carrots and simply be his buddy. This is one of N's Christmas gifts -- we can't wait for the two of them to meet. (Of course we'll all be Sonny's buddy, not just N.)

Sonny is a 19 year old Palomino Tennessee Walking horse. He came from coastal Georgia where he was allergic to the region's Bermuda grasses and needed daily medication to keep his allergies under control. Since Sonny has been at the HRRRF farm, he's never been medicated. He eats alfalfa/orchard hay and enjoys fescue in the pastures; so far he's had no allergies. Sonny was once on HRRRF's adoption list, but they needed another horse for their children's therapy program and decided to give him a try. They were very glad they did. He's a calm and good natured horse who loves children.

To sponsor a horse, or if you have enough land and can adopt one, go to Save the Horses.org and see these beautiful animals for yourself.

A Toast to Toast!

2006-12-12T23:09:00.000-05:00

I've been a casual toast consumer since I was a kid: Wonder Bread and Sunbeam were magical words in that long-ago kitchen. Not that I worship toast or anything, but after all these years of toast consumption I realize how oblivious I've been (albeit blissfully) to its rich history and the hard-working professional scholars out there unearthing the truth about the toaster, without which bread would just be bread.

There seems to be some debate within the Historical Toaster Community as to which was the first commercial toaster: the Hotpoint El Tosto (no joke) or the General Electric D-12. (Wasn't that Dylan's first guitar? Or was it a D-21....) New information among toaster enthusiasts has been uncovered regarding an early 1908 model "flatbed" toaster pre-dating the more well-known "upright" El Tosto. Egads! Although the GE D-12 is considered the first successful commercial toaster, a 1917 Hotpoint advertisement claimed:

"The First Electrical Bread Toaster a Hotpoint. Perhaps you didn't know that the very first toaster made was a Hotpoint. That was 12 years ago [1905]."

But wait! A recently discovered product catalog from 1904 briefly mentions a toaster produced by the SIMPLEX Electric Heating Co. One can only imagine the crude device. The Hotpoint people seem to have made the greatest strides in toaster-based kitchen devices, since they eventually made more than a dozen of the "El" appliances including (in addition to the El Tosto) the El Perco coffee percolator, the El Comfo aluminum hot-pad, the El Bako table-top oven, the El Eggo egg cooking machine, y mucho mas. A possible reason for the "El" moniker? Hotpoint's headquarters at the time were in California and company executives were said to have made frequent "business trips" to Tijuana; legend has it that donkey shows were also involved.

* * *

When I was in my early 20s I wrote a poem about toast, called "The Toast Family." Strangely enough, this poem predated a move to my first apartment, where I subsisted for nearly a week on little more than toast and powdered instant iced tea. That incident aside, I always thought the poem was funny and original, but I could never seem to place it anywhere. A few years later I set it to music in my friend Harv Myers' studio in the late 80s (we caught the proverbial buzz, so the demo just kinda rambled on, but it was fun). Anyway, I've been carrying this poem around with me in my head for lo these many years, and now it's somehow made it into my novel-in-progress. And it seems to work perfectly within the story. Hmmph.

I don't eat much toast these days, but when I do I'm drawn toward lightly browned seeded rye that must be buttered and eaten immediately, but not so fast as to hamper enjoyment. Multi-grain is also fine, but I have to be in the mood for it, and as long as it features the seed assortment stuck pell-mell on the crust. Really, I'm not obsessed with toast. Honest. But if you are, you can check out fun facts, photos, and the chance to purchase your very own 2007 vintage toaster calendar ("Check out the coils on Miss May!"), visit the Toaster Museum Foundation. Information in this post was gleaned from that site.]

Dump the Pumpkin

2006-11-18T18:56:00.000-05:00

Sure it's been fun, but judging by Jack O's collapsed condition, it's time to perform the ritual Dumping of the Pumpkin. Crank up the old dirge, spark up the funeral pyre.

Jack Riggs reads at Atlanta Writers Club

2006-11-18T17:05:00.000-05:00

Local author Jack Riggs read from his novel-in-progress at today's meeting of the Atlanta Writers Club in Sandy Springs. It was standing room only and I was a bit late (so I stood, of course) but caught most of his reading.

His writing is at turns tough, poetic, brutally real, funny, heartbreakingly sad. He also spoke about the "crap" that goes on in the NY publishing industry, his frustrations with the revolving door of editors at Ballantine, the success of his first novel -- When the Finch Rises -- and the sheer joy at finding the time to simply write and not worry about the business of writing and publishing. That's what it's all about anyway, just writing for that one perfect reader, writing that one perfect sentence that cuts through the posing, the attitudes, and gets to the plain truth of the writing.

His words were encouraging, but when he spoke about the downside of working on a second novel (which turns out to be his third) I was humbly reminded that even if I finish my own novel, if an editor ever looks at it, if it's miraculously published, the attention paid to a new author is so fleeting -- one moment you're a teriffic new voice, the next moment everyone's looking elsewhere for the next new thing, and on and on. I've always known that publishing a book won't change my life (or will it? Jack, what do you say?); still, I keep plugging away, page after page.

Baskets Bound for Who-Knows-Where

2006-09-26T22:53:00.000-05:00

I haven't played disc golf lately because I've been frustrated by my lack of improvement and general inconsistency in the game, so I thought I'd give it another go tomorrow at East Roswell with Andrew and Eric. On the way home this evening, I ended up behind a beat-up old flatbed truck hauling fifteen shiny new Innova Discatcher Pro disc golf baskets -- woah. Was that some sort of sign or what? ("Yes, Jim, come back and play ... you missed us, didn't you ... throw the discs ... throw the discs ...") The truck had no license plate, and the baskets were (for lack of a better word) secured with old rope and twine. They were heading east down 316 toward Athens and I followed them (or was I led?) two exits past my usual exit. Wherever they were going, I hope they made it safely.

Ching.

Memory

2006-09-24T14:04:00.000-05:00

My own novel progresses slowly -- I wrote very little over the summer -- but I now have three solid chapters and a prologue, and I'm working on a critical scene that will appear midway through the story.

I continue to stumble across new books and writers I've never heard of, yet they seem to parallel where I am in my life and in the life of my book. For instance, today's AJC book section featured a review of Kim Edwards' latest novel, and when I researched the author I found this interview on the Penguin USA website. What is it they say about coincidences?

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a powerful combination of a tragic and poignant family story as well as riveting page-turner, due primarily to the fact that it centers on such a shocking act by one individual that affects everyone he cares about. How did the idea for this novel come to you?

A few months after my story collection, The Secrets of a Fire King was published, one of the pastors of the Presbyterian church I’d recently joined said she had a story to give me. I was pleased that she’d thought of me, if a bit surprised—I was back in church after a 20-some year absence, and still quite skeptical of it all. Yet even to my critical eye it was clear that good things were happening: the congregation was vibrant and progressive and engaged; the co-pastors, a married couple who had both once been university professors, gave sermons that were beautifully crafted and thought-provoking, both intellectual and heartfelt. I’d already come to admire them very much. Still, it happens fairly often that people want to give me stories, and invariably those stories are not mine to tell. So I thanked my pastor, but didn’t think much more about her offer.

The next week she stopped me again. I really have to tell you this story, she said, and she did. It was just a few sentences, about a man who’d discovered, late in life, that his brother had been born with Down’s Syndrome, placed in an institution at birth, and kept a secret from his family, even from his own mother, all his life. He’d died in that institution, unknown. I remember being struck by the story even as she told it, and thinking right away that it really would make a good novel. It was the secret at the center of the family that intrigued me. Still, in the very next heartbeat, I thought: of course, I’ll never write that book.

And I didn’t, not for years. The idea stayed with me, however, as the necessary stories do. Eventually, in an unrelated moment, I was invited to do a writing workshop for adults with mental challenges through a Lexington group called Minds Wide Open. I was nervous about doing this, I have to confess. I didn’t have much experience with people who have mental challenges, and I didn’t have any idea of what to expect. As it turned out, we had a wonderful morning, full of expression and surprises and some very fine poetry. At the end of the class, several of the participants hugged me as they left.

This encounter made a deep impression on me, and I found myself thinking of this novel idea again, with a greater sense of urgency and interest. Still, it was another year before I started to write it. Then the first chapter came swiftly, almost fully formed, that initial seed having grown tall while I wasn’t really paying attention. In her Paris Review interview, Katherine Anne Porter talks about the event of a story being like a stone thrown in water—she says it’s not the event itself that’s interesting, but rather the ripples the event creates in the lives of characters. I found this to be true. Once I’d written the first chapter, I wanted to find out more about who these people were and what happened to them as a consequence of David’s decision; I couldn’t stop until I knew.

Human motivation, the simple question of why we do what we do, is often very complex, as it is here with David and his fateful decision. As his creator, were you able to sympathize in any way with his motives?

Oh, yes, certainly. Even thought none of us may never experience a moment this dramatic, nonetheless we all have similar experiences, times when we react powerfully to an event in ways we may not completely understand until much later, if at all.

I knew from the beginning that David wasn’t an evil person. He makes absolutely the wrong decision in that first chapter, but even so he acts out of what he believes are good intentions—the desire to protect Norah from grief, and even the desire to do what the medical community in that time and place had deemed best for a child with Down’s Syndrome.

There’s much more to this, of course. David’s own grief at the loss of his sister is something he’s never confronted, never resolved. I don’t think this was unusual in that era. Grief counselors, after all, are relatively new. I remember stories, growing up, of adults in my town who had suffered terrible losses. There was a kind of silence around such people. Everyone knew their history, and the imprint of the loss was visible in the unfolding of their lives, but no one ever mentioned the person who had died.

So it was with David. His way of coping with the loss of his sister, and with the greater loss of his family that resulted, was to try to move on; to take control of his life and to push forward; to become a success in the eyes of the world. Yet even so, his grief was never far below the surface, and when Phoebe was born with Down’s Syndrome, an event he could not anticipate or control, his old grief welled up. David’s response in that moment is as much to the past as to the present, but it takes him decades, and a trip back to the place where he grew up, to understand this.

The novel begins in 1964. Do you think our attitudes toward people with disabilities have changed since then? Are we more enlightened or accepting now?

Yes, things have changed for the better over the past decades, but I’d say also that it’s an ongoing process, with much more progress yet to be made.

Certainly, writing this novel was a process of enlightenment for me. When I began this book, I didn’t know how to imagine Phoebe. I was compelled by the secret and its impact on the family, but I wasn’t very knowledgeable about Down’s Syndrome. To create a convincing character, one who was herself and not a stereotype, without being either sentimental or patronizing, seemed a daunting task.

I started reading and researching. Also, tentatively, I started having conversations. The first couple I spoke with has a daughter whom they’d raised during the time period of this book. They were a terrific help, candid and straightforward and wise. When I showed them the opening chapter, their immediate response was that I’d gotten the doctor exactly right: the attitudes David has about Down’s Syndrome may seem outrageous to us now, but there was a time, not all that long ago, when these ideas were widely held.

The reason attitudes have changed, quite simply, is because the parents of children with Down’s Syndrome refused, as Caroline does in this novel, to accept imposed limitations for their children. The fight that Caroline fights during this book is emblematic of struggles that took place all over the country during this era to change prevailing attitudes and to open doors that had been slammed shut.

The changes did not and do not happen easily, or without personal costs for those who struggled—and struggle still—to make their children visible to the world. Time and again as I researched this book I heard stories of both heartbreak and great courage. Time and again, also, I was impressed with the expansive generosity of people with Down’s Syndrome and their families, who met with me, shared their life journeys and perceptions, their joys and struggles, and were eager to help me learn. Many of them have read the book and loved it, which for me is a profound measure of its success.

Your use of photography as a metaphor throughout the book is artfully done. Do you have a personal interest in photography, or did you educate yourself about it as part of the writing process?

I’m not a photographer, but for several years in college I was very good friends with people who were, some of whom, in fact, had darkrooms set up in their houses. Photography was woven into many of our conversations, and I sometimes went with my friends when they were seeking particular shots. I wasn’t at all interested in the mechanics—apertures and f-stops left me cold—but I was always fascinated by the photographs appearing in the developer, what was invisible coaxed into image by the chemical bath. It’s a slow emergence, a kind of birth, really; a moment of mystery. I was intrigued by the use of light, as well, the way too much light will erase an image on both film and paper.

I also remember being annoyed, more than once, when my friends’ need to get a photo right interfered with the moment the photo was meant to capture: at a family reunion, for instance, or a birthday party. How did the presence of the photographer change the nature of the moment? What was gained and what was lost by having the eye of the camera present?

During the very early stages of writing this novel, I read a New Yorker essay about the photographer Walker Evans that discussed many of these questions quite eloquently, reminding me of my photographer friends. Norah gave David a camera, and from there I started doing quite a lot of research. Amid many other explorations, I spent time at Eastman Kodak Museum in Rochester and read Susan Sontag’s fascinating and inspiring On Photography.

The city of Pittsburgh figures quite prominently in the story and is described in very affectionate terms. (“The city of Pittsburgh gleaming suddenly before her . . . so startling in its vastness and its beauty that she had gasped and slowed, afraid of losing control of the car” p. 91.) This is not a city that usually captures the imagination nor has it been a common setting for novels. Would you talk a bit about why you chose Pittsburgh and your personal connection, if any, to it?

I moved to Pittsburgh sight unseen—my husband and I were teaching in Cambodia when he was accepted into a Ph.D. program at The University of Pittsburgh. This was before e-mail; there were no telephones in Phnom Penh, and even electricity was often sporadic. With no clear image of Pittsburgh, we agreed to move there, visions of steel smoke and gritty industrialism hanging like a shadow when he sent in his acceptance.

Caroline’s experience crossing the Fort Pitt bridge is my own. It’s a spectacular moment: one emerges from the endless Fort Pitt tunnel onto a bridge spanning the Monogahela River, just before it merges with the Allegheny River and forms the Ohio River. Water gleams everywhere, and the buildings of the city narrow to the point between the rivers, and in the middle distance the greening hills rise up, studded with houses. The director of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh once confided to me how much he liked to drive visitors in from the airport, because they were invariably astonished by this view.

I spent four years in Pittsburgh and would have happily stayed there had circumstances allowed. It’s a fascinating city, rich with history and parks. It’s wonderful city for walking, too, with beautiful old neighborhoods and places where you find yourself suddenly standing on a bluff again, gazing out over the ever-changing rivers.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, while ultimately redemptive and hopeful, reveals much of the dark side of the human experience. Actors often talk about how working on a very painful role can affect their psyche; others speak of being able simply to let it go and not have the work affect their daily lives. As a writer, how does working on such a heart-wrenching story affect your own state of mind? When you stop writing, are you able to let it go?

Well, they all struggle, don’t they? They walk through a lot darkness. Yet I never found writing this book painful. In part, I think, I identified with all the characters in this book: the one who keeps a secret and the one from whom secrets have been kept; the parent who longs for a child and the child who longs for harmony and wholeness; the wanderer and the one who stays in place. I recognized their journeys of self-discovery, in any case. I was interested in them, and I wanted to know what happened to them, and who they were. The only way to discover all that was to write the book. Also, because the novel is told through four different points of view, moving from one character’s mind to another, I was able step back from one point of view and work on another whenever I was stuck. This was very liberating, and allowed me to attain a certain level of detachment from one character while working on another.

As an award-winning short story writer, you are best known for your critically acclaimed collection The Secrets of a Fire King. Would you talk a bit about how you came to write a novel, and the difference between working on a novel and a short story?

When my story collection was published, several reviewers remarked that each one contained the scope of a novel. That interested me, because the stories always felt like stories; I couldn’t imagine them being a word longer then they were. Likewise, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter was a novel from the moment I started writing. Yet despite the difference in complexity and length, writing a novel was very much like writing stories. There’s a bigger canvas in a novel, and thus more room to explore, but it’s still a process of discovery, a leap into the unknown, and an intuitive seeking of the next moment, and the next. For me, writing is never linear, though I do believe quite ardently in revision. I think of revision as a kind of archeology, a deep exploration of the text to discover what’s still hidden and bring it to the surface.

Who are some of your favorite authors, and what are you currently reading?

I read a great deal. Alice Munro and William Trevor are authors whose work I return to again and again. I have just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and I will read it again soon simply to savor the beauty of the language. New books by both Ursula Hegi and Sue Monk Kidd are on my desk, along with the poems of Pablo Neruda. During the writing of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter I returned to classic novels with secrets at their center, especially Dostoevsky’s extraordinary Crime and Punishment and Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I’m also midway through Thomas Mann’s quartet of novels based on the story of Joseph and his brothers; these archetypal stories are informing the next novel I plan to write, as well.

What are you working on now?

I have begun a new novel, called The Dream Master. It’s set in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York where I grew up, which is stunningly beautiful, and which remains in some real sense the landscape of my imagination. Like The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, this new novel turns on the idea of a secret—that seems to be my preoccupation as a writer—though in this case the event occurred in the past and is a secret from the reader as well as from the characters, so structurally, and in its thematic concerns, the next book is an entirely new discovery.

c.2006 Penguin Group (USA)

History Beneath the Surface

2005-12-20T21:44:00.000-05:00

Since starting THE NOVEL I've happened (stumbled?) across other authors' novels with similar themes or characters as those I've been living with since July. Without talking the thing to death, I'm sure the subjects I'm dealing with (family history, raising small children in a small town while running a small business, fear of lakes, children's book illustration) are pretty much universal, but for one reason or another I'm drawn to books with story lines very much like mine: Richard Russo's Empire Falls, Alan Zweibel's The Other Schulman, and to a lesser degree, Ingrid Hill's Ursula, Under. They're all really excellent books written by gifted writers, so it's no wonder I find them (or they find me); I know many writers and subscribe to at least a few bookish newsletters, but these kinds of books just seem to keep popping up. It's especially odd when (in the case of Russo and Zweibel) I encounter a character's behavior or mannerism, or a setting that is nearly identical to something I've already written -- I don't want to be derivative. Sure, I'm pleased that my writing runs parallel to these talented working writers (at least my subject matter -- style and craftsmanship couldn't touch theirs without vast amounts of blood- and tear-shedding), but sometimes these coincidences just floor me.

Anyway, I started reading Ursula, Under, (Algonquin doesn't publish crap) and who do I see on the Acknowledgments page? (Yes, I always read this page after the first chapter and I don't know why.) Marly Youmans. Jeez, you sure get around, M. (See her fantastical website, The Palace at 2 a.m., linked at the top of my page.)

And check out what Ingrid Hill says about parenting and writing:

"Parenting takes perseverance: so does writing. Parenting demands creativity: so does writing. Parenting pays back great emotional and spiritual rewards—and also gives us grief. So does writing. Both are manifestations of the great spirit of life itself." A mother of twelve should know. Check out her interview on Bookslut: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_07_005950.php

What I really mean is that I'm subconsciously trying to validate my writing by seeking out books with similar themes -- See, these novelists have written the same things I'm attempting, so I must be on the right track!

Here I am blogging (at which I suck) when I should be doing the novular thing.

Elizabeth Cox teaches Master Class in Fiction

2005-11-21T23:29:00.002-05:00

I attended this class put on by the Writers' Institute at GA Perimeter College. I've read Betsy's short story collection Bargains in the Real World and was struck by the haunting sadness of the stories and the way the characters seem just on the edge of collapse.

Anyway, she lectured mostly about the craft of writing, the creative process, most of the things I've heard before. She was soft spoken and very funny -- she even knew Jordan Rosenfeld from her time at Bennington. To end the class she had us write a brief scene featuring dialogue only. Mine sucked, others were good.

It appears my muse's name is Hobin

2005-11-21T08:01:00.000-05:00

When I tell people about a story I've published or that I'm writing a novel, there are the usual questions: How long have you been writing? In which magazines have you been published? How much money do you earn for a story? Then there are the comments on the therapeutic benefits of writing, and what a wonderful hobby it must be. I've always taken issue with the last two comments, especially the latter. (A hobby? Writing is grueling, difficult, painful work! Sure it can be rewarding, but it's tough! A mere hobby? Come on!)

Today's word made me realize my writing truly is a hobby -- at least for now. I try not to talk the novel to death, just write it and keep on writing it until it's finished and hopefully someone will find it interesting enough to publish.

Hobby (Noun)

Avocation; an activity to which a great deal of time and attention are devoted for pleasure rather than remuneration.

Usage 1: The plural of "hobby" is "hobbies." There is no evidence that today's word is in any way related to "hobbled," which would have resulted in "hobbly horse" at some point in its development. This did not occur.

Suggested usage: The basic concept associated with today's word is devotion of energy for pleasure rather than reward: "Dobbin has made it his hobby to irritate Robin since her quince upside-down cake was judged better than his peanut butter mousse torte at the county fair bake-out." Today, however, the word applies to a rich and diverse range of activities, "Collecting garbage can lids of the rich and famous started out as a hobby for Carlton but now he has opened a museum that is providing him with a tidy income."

Etymology: From "hobby-horse" in the sense of "favorite horse," the one you spend most of your time on. "Hobby" itself comes from Middle English hobi, hobyn "small horse, hobby horse." It probably comes from the nickname for Hobin, Hobby, a variant of Robin, Robbie. "Hobin" was a favorite name for horses in the 16th and 17th centuries as "Dobbin" was in the 18th and 19th. By the way, "Dobbin" probably comes from the same source. From "hobby-horse" in the sense of "favorite horse," the one you spend most of your time on. "Hobby" itself comes from Middle English hobi, hobyn "small horse, hobby horse." It probably comes from the nickname for Hobin, Hobby, a variant of Robin, Robbie. "Hobin" was a favorite name for horses in the 16th and 17th centuries as "Dobbin" was in the 18th and 19th. By the way, "Dobbin" probably comes from the same source.

(South African Christo Lombaard's hobby horse seems to be collecting intriguing words; we are most grateful for his sharing them with us.)

A favorite Carver quote

2005-10-04T21:03:00.000-05:00

"Writers write, and they write, and they go on writing long after wisdom and even common sense have told them to quit. There are always plenty of reasons--good, compelling reasons, too--for quitting, or for not writing very much or very seriously. (Writing is trouble, make no mistake, for everyone involved, and who needs trouble?) But once in a great while lightning strikes, and occasionally it strikes early in the writer's life. Sometimes it comes later, after years of work. And sometimes, most often of course, it never happens at all...it happens, lightning, or it doesn't happen. But it will never, never happen to those who don't work hard at it and who don't consider the act of writing as very nearly the most important thing in their lives, right up there next to breath, and food, and shelter, and love, and God."

-- Raymond Carver