It’s 12 Degrees
And I still think this is among the best things I’ve ever decided to do.
(But I’m really, really, really busy and swamped, so posting will remain light. But I’ll try and photograph the snow.)
Do Something for Change
Colleen Mondor has created the Virtual March for New Orleans:
It’s simple – all you have to do is write one letter and address it to Gov Blanco, Congressmen Jim Oberstar and John Mica and Senators Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens. Send them the fax and let them know that as an American you support the Thursday March and you are frustrated with the continued tolerance for violence in New Orleans. It is our tax dollars that are not getting the job done down there – it is as much our problem as it is the people who live there. We are the ones who are responsible for making sure that money is spent in a proper and responsible manner in New Orleans and it is way past time that we let our leaders know that they are held accountable to us – all of us. Tell them that security is paramount, and so is aiding and assisting the legal system so once people are caught they can be tried in a timely and legal manner. Let them know that we must add grease to the wheels of justice. Also we must provide aid to NOLA schools – more teachers, more innovative learning environments and more effective recreational programs – we must help those kids before violence is only thing they have.
She has all the contact info.
Meanwhile, Jenny D remembers her friend, Helen Hill.
This is something we can all do.
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This Has Got to Be a Record
I’ve been here for less than an hour and have already set off the (extremely loud) burglar alarm. Score.
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P.S.
A life tip:
All those times you’ve brought along your flight confirmation/e-ticket numbers/hotel confirmations/relevant phone numbers and not needed them? You need them. Bring them. I had a cabbie ask me for the ADDRESS OF THE HOTEL.
I didn’t have my eticket confirmation and had to play the message from orbitz from my voicemail to get the airline rep to help me. And I always have this stuff with me; this time, I had enough other things to get ready, I figured no big to leave it behind, right?
Never again.
Hey, I’m in Vermont
Which is to say, maybe I’ll be posting regularly and maybe I won’t. You’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve not yet made it over to the campus, so much is dependent on the Wireless Situation and its acceptability. (However, props to the American Flatbread Co. joint in Burlington* for an excellent dinner. Welcome after a hellish experience that started with the airline having no record of my reservation, and involved shoving through a cattle-esque stampede of not-boarding-yet freaks at JFK.)
I read Cecil‘s Beige on the plane and found it BRILLIANT. Her best book yet, seriously, and I’ll have more to say later on about that. Next up is Sara Zarr’s Story of a Girl, which I’m very excited to finally get to read. (Now, if only I can find a copy of Caitlin‘s latest up here, I’d be truly happy. Oh, and if a nice publicist sent me Ironside … puh-leeze?)
Some links I didn’t get to post before I left:
- Kelly talks to Ysabeau Wilce about her new YA novel Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), a House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog. Wisconites among you may remember our Pretty Magic Butlers of Roanoke reading a couple of Wiscons ago: This is the butler!
- Tightrope Girl on difficult characters.
- Hannah being wise on the subject of rejections.
- Education makes you live longer. Maybe.
- James Hynes in the Boston Review on why John Crowley isn’t hailed as the literary genius of our times that he clearly is. Mostly, I like this piece, but it has some odd moments that lapse into "indulging in what it is critical of" in terms of justifying the appeciation of genre that I find bizarre given the overall point. (Via Maud.)
- A lukewarm review for Joe Hill’s first novel Heart-Shaped Box (which I also wouldn’t mind an ARC of…), but it actually makes me want to read it more. Based on his short stories, I can’t imagine lack of ambition being an issue.
- Fictional ruins from fictional worlds.
- The aforementioned John Crowley looking for recs of nonfiction books to recommend to his class in writing F&SF at Yale.
- Nicola Griffith interviewed on NPR. (Thanks, Kelley!)
- Jeff VanderMeer’s Twelve Overlooked Books of 2006 at Locus Online. (Yay, Fairy Tale Review!)
And now I must sleep. Please forgive if the next two weeks here are incoherent/poorly attributed/practically insane.
*A very Portland-y, Madison-y kind of town at first glance, but sprawlier.
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Two Things I Love
1. Brotherhood 2.0. So very, very funny. And you just don’t know how far it will escalate: today Sutter Home, tomorrow _____. That is one scary blank to fill!
2. Jason Sizemore has put Christopher’s story "The League of Last Girls" up as a zipped PDF. Go read it. (Some of the horror reviewers seem to be finding it confusing, but I actually think it’s one of his funnier, more straightforward — yet creeeeepy — stories. So, penny for your thoughts.)
Two True Things
1. Maud rips Malcolm Gladwell for his apparently quite idiotic Enron piece. (I’m not sure I can stomach it, from the excerpts. And I’m more than willing to take her word for it, based on some of the other stuff he’s peddled lately.) Brava, dah-link:
A friend points out that Gladwell’s piece is the inevitable result when a writer who has — literally — made a career out of hailing superficial first impressions and banal fads as the height of human endeavor tries to reckon with serious wrong-doing that has serious real-world consequences.
2. Callie on how much it sucks to go back to the grind after time for more writerly pursuits:
I am not alone, I suspect, in my loathing to leave this state behind and plunge back into the world of work and clients and deadlines and the required pacifism, patience and forced pleasantries that will ensue. After two weeks of reading & writing, I’ve developed a routine that I’m loathe to change. I’ve begun writing in a way that has inspired more writing. I’m not eager to fiddle with the state of things. But I’ve got no choice.
75 Books Update, The Last
Well, that was a stupid pledge to make. Let’s see how I did, behind the cut:
…
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Thursday Hangovers
- The ever-brilliant Pinky imagines what would happen if Pynchon’s Against the Day was considered by a typical MFA workshop. Hilarity ensues.
- As you’ve probably seen all over the place, the Cybils nominations are out (children and YA bloggers’ choice awards), and this seems remarkably organized for the first year of such a massive effort. There’s even a podcast at Just One More Book about the process and the nods. (Via Fusenumber8.)
- Theresa Duncan welcomes the new year with one of my favorite Octavio Paz poems.
- Those without HBO can watch The Wire on BET starting next week.
- Darby’s unread books list.
- Terri Windling profiles a gorgeous-looking retelling of Beauty and the Beast written by Max Eilenberg with illustrations by Angela Barrett.
- Man dies while giving a radio broadcast. (Via Andy Duncan.)
- Scott profiles Mike Davis’s new book Planet of Slums over at Beatrice.
- I only promised C I wouldn’t steal the discarded Tevis tombstone photo before he posted it, so in case you missed it:
And I’m curious enough to call the tombstone company it’s sitting behind at some point and ask if the birth date was off by a year. Wikipedia lists it as 1928 rather than the 1927 shown here. -
And, an aside, my Lush package arrived a couple of days ago: I may never go back to regular shampoo, because solid shampoo kicks a-s-s.
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Our Science Fictional Neighborhood
Christopher and Emma took a walk yesterday and found … a discarded tombstone for Walter Tevis (and a disturbingly-named pet groomer). Go see. (Clicky the photos to enlarge.)
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