Jan 29 2008
AWP Bound:
I'm off to AWP this week. If blogging is light over the next 5 days, that is why.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
I'm off to AWP this week. If blogging is light over the next 5 days, that is why.
Today is the anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. On January 28, 1986, NASA's 25th space mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the crew of seven astronauts, 4 were women and minorities and for the first time, one, a New Hampshire school teacher named Christa McAuliffe, was to be the first civilian in space.
73 seconds after takeoff, the craft exploded over the Atlantic Ocean. There were no survivors.
That evening, President Reagan was to give the State of the Union Address. He instead went on television from the Oval Office and spoke of the tragedy.
There's a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, "He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it." Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake's, complete. The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." (full text)
Two years ago, on this day, I wrote this essay. It was a great honor to me that it was published a few days in the newspaper that had given me my first job, the Baltimore Sun.
It was 20 years ago this week that my generation, the Xers of slacking, hip-hop and dot com foolery stopped being children. Many of us, including myself, were in junior high, others still played in sandboxes on that freezing clear morning in January of 1986. But just as my parents had seen the promise of their generation “born in this century, tempered by war” cut down by gunfire in Dallas, my own had seen the hopes of President Kennedy’s “new frontier” extinguished in a horrific plume of flame off the coast of Florida .
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster served the first memory of national mourning for those of us born too late for Vietnam and Kent State, too young to remember President Nixon’s resignation. I wasn’t sent home from school early, as my mother was in November of 1963 but did spend that day, as she did, in front of the television with my family. Later at school and for weeks afterward, any discussion of the Challenger began with the same question: “When were you when you heard?”
We use that question not only find comfort in collective grief but to pinpoint a generation’s understanding of itself. “Where were you when” makes us both witnesses to history and characters in a chapter of its passing. It forces us to accept our own story as part of a larger national tale, where children raised on the space-bound dreams of Star Wars can see a real life launch go horribly wrong and where a school teacher, just like ours, can touch the sky with her whole community watching and never come home.
Looking back, Crista McAuliffe and her crewmates were a window into the social concerns of our future. Over half the Challenger crew were women and minorities, paving the way for our national dialogue on diversity. McAuliffe’s presence, a civilian representative on a government mission hinted at later struggles over what levels of participation and accountability citizens would expect in national affairs. Most of all, the destruction of the Challenger rang a symbolic death knell on the fundamentalism of the Cold War into which we had been born. It showed that even our nation's largest achievements could be undone by something as mundane as an “O-Ring” and that we, like the Soviets, like everyone, were both human and flawed.
It’s possible to accept that generational divides are both the invention of marketers and useful tools in distinguishing the disciples of Lil’ Jon from those of John Lennon. They also stave off our own feelings of irrelevancy as we become the adults mystified about "kids these days".
At their best, generation do the same work as maturity: To help us feel part of a history larger than our own.
It would be years before America would mourn collectively again, years before Oaklahoma City and the death of John Kennedy Jr, before Columbine and September 11. By then, my peers were in their 20s and 30s, ending school, starting careers and families. I remember where I was on each of those days, just as I remember the Space Shuttle Challenger and 7th grade Spanish period. Our teacher, well known around school for not speaking English during class, tried to explain what had happened, making imaginary plumes of flame with her hands, drawing a fireball on the chalkboard, hoping the barrier of language would lessen the impact. But when she broke down and told us, it was too late. We had grown up anyway.
A little light reading...
I love me some documentary films but often miss the best ones because I'd forget my last name if my friends didn't address me by it. So above is a wonderful video from my best friend David Dylan Thomas talking about the year in docs and what you shouldn't miss.
Dave and I don't always agree on movies (he has a weird Owen Wilson thing that I equate to eating rice pudding for a solid month) but our non-fiction tastes are as parallel as railroad tracks. As such, I'm gonna make a whole list from this little video.
As much as I'm all about living green, I can't say for sure that I understand "carbon offsets." So I was thrilled when I read on the Terra Pass blog about an NPR piece that explains it all.
I haven't listened to it yet, but it's exactly what I've been looking for to sort this stuff out.
"Passion will drive you crazy but really is there any other way to live?"
As if I'm not getting gray hair already keeping track of my conference friends comings and goings on SXSW Baby! and the rumors about which bands are playing at Done Waiting, I just got tipped off about the fresh-out-of-the-oven Ning SXSW social network which had feeds for party announcements, a blog and a forum with about 8 kajillion topics. Plus my friends put together a PB Wiki every year to see who wants to go to what both to trade information and so you can always have a wingman when attending something new.
SIgh. I know it would make me miserable but I have half a mind to show up in Austin in March having planned nothing but massages and lots of long dinners with friends.
Music and Lyrics (2007): "Has-beens are much more endearing that hot topics."
So this is Faygo, my cat. Rannie Turnigan came over a few months ago, shot some photos of me and one or two of my furry roommate. Last week he featured this one on his site.
Cariwyl insists that Faygo is more wolf than feline and has even gone as far as to call her "Wolf Cat." The proof is now on film. After Faygo lays out in a sunbeam this morning, she will avoid silver bullets and commune spiritually with Jack London.
"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."
--Edith Wharton (via The Writer's Almanac)
Calling itself "The YouTube of Ideas", Big Think is an online collection of interviews with academics scholars, writers and politicians on topical subjects. The Web 2.0 of it: You can create your own videos to answer to, say John McCain's opinions on immigration policy. If you're hot under the collar about such a thing.
I don't need to do that. I'd just like to hear what smart people have to say about issues I don't know anything about. But Big Think seems to be firmly aimed at pundits in training. I found buried in the help comments that Big Think has RSS feeds (as any browser post say 2005 does) and that other ways of consuming interviews are on the way.
I hope so. Big Think's only in private beta and who knows what could happen? I know its very un-2008 of me to say so but on something like this, I just wanna watch stuff. I'll do my making elsewhere.
So why not let me?
The Great Debaters (2007): "Opportunities are always available for those who know how to spot them."
Note: James Farmer Jr., a towering figure in America's struggle for equality for all its citizens, was 15 years old and a Wiley College freshman debater when the true story which inspired this movie took place.
This is the 19th Amendment. It was passed in on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote as full citizens of the republic.
The final passage of the Amendment was the result of much political jockeying between the National American Women's Sufferage Association, activists Alice Paul and Lucy Burns who had split from NAWSA over support for WWI and President Woodrow Wilson, up to his ears in the great war and eyeing re-election that fall.
An excellent dramatic retelling of the process is the film Iron Jawed Angels, which is available on DVD.
"Art is born not in the void but created in chaos"
"I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, and rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight,and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
Happy Birthday.
For some reason, I've determined I can't spiritually begin 2008 without deciding whether to adapt Todoist or Remember the Milk as my productivity tool of choice and perhaps, necessity.
This is somewhere South of Pathetic and West of Despicable. Meet you there when I wake up.
John Seabrook's January 14th article in the New Yorker about the scrap metal business was one of the best I've read in a long time. And not just because I'm fascinated by garbage and re-use and because one of my favorite books is "Garbage Land", a biography of a bag of trash. I loved it because it was as "I was there" as Gay Talese, as historically insightful as John McPhee and as free spirited as Susan Orlean. Since these are all heroes of ine, this is a good thing.
Seabrook isn't my favorite New Yorker contributor and I found his book "Nobrow" a missed opportunity. This piece gives me reason to think twice before passing over his work again.
Escape From Alcatraz (1979): "When a movie is as literal as its title, your interest can be gauged entirely on how compelling you find that title."
What are big data sets and why is there an entire community devoted to them (via Waxy.org)?
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
So at Macworld today, the big announcements were..
I sorta don't care. There's nothing here I feel like I'm missing out on or must have. I now Apple has set a ridiculously high standard for itself of wowing the world every January. But I also think its supporters are pretty forgiving. Solid tuneups to existing products are just fine. But none of these plays into the second half of what Apple does well: seeming at least to serve its customer's best interests in addition to making pretty things.
I'm with Forbes here. Steve Jobs has failed to wow me.
Guardian UK: "The World's Best Bookstores"
Only store #4 is in the United States.
4) Secret Headquarters comic bookstore in Los Angeles
Nestled in the creative cluster of Silver Lake, just east of Hollywood, this boutique store offers a sophisticated alternative to most of its rivals and has a reputation for being one of the neatest, friendliest comic stores anywhere. Canadian science fiction author Cory Doctorow rates it as the finest in the world.
I'll have to visit the next time I'm down south.
Palaver (noun): "A conference or discussion."
Spotted: In Greil Marcus's The Shape of Things to Come which I just finished reading.
Imagine the tv show 24 if it took place in the early Clinton years. Hilarious! (via Booboolina).
A banner that reads...
"I am. Therefore I run"
I love that.
Oh my. John Kerry will be endorsing Barack Obama. But John Edwards is not crying.
Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the third contender in the Democratic presidential race, was Kerry's vice presidential running mate in 2004. Despite their political alliance, the two men were not close personally and differed behind the scenes on campaign strategy in a race that President Bush won.
Edwards responded to word of the endorsement with a diplomatic statement: ''Our country and our party are stronger because of John's service, and I respect his decision. When we were running against each other and on the same ticket, John and I agreed on many issues.''
Still, this is getting very interesting.
Sony BMG has become the fourth and final label to sell their music without DRM restrictions on Amazon's Music Store. According to the NY Times, by the end of the month, most of the back catalogs of all four major labels will be available at Amazon for 89 cents a piece.
Apple ain't running scared but they better change something. I sent all my MP3 shopping to Amazon when they launched DRM-free a few months ago. And I'm not going back to Apple unless DRM is dead and buried forever.
Bloviating (verb): "pompously discussing at length"
Spotted: As uttered by my friend Kevin at dinner this evening.
Lest you think that you are a productive person, I direct your attention to this piece in the New York Review of Books on novelist Joyce Carol Oates, particularly the opening paragraphs.
Joyce Carol Oates still bothers people—in all kinds of ways. For more
than forty-five years she has been steadily producing novels, short
stories, poems, essays, plays. Between the beginning of 2000 and the
end of 2005 she published nineteen books. She has written over seven
hundred short stories, more than Maupassant, Kipling, and Chekhov
combined...
With her husband Raymond Smith, moreover, Oates has edited The Ontario Review
and, from time to time, published books under its imprint. She has
regularly contributed substantial essays and reviews to, among others, The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books.
Somehow, the seemingly tireless writer also keeps a journal, plays the
piano, jogs, gardens, draws, cooks, and reads as indefatigably as she
writes. (But she doesn't watch television: TV, Oates has said, is "for
people who are skimming along on the surface of life.") Her good friend
the scholar Elaine Showalter once remarked that you had but to mention
a book and "Joyce will have the novel read by next week."
I'm going back to bed.
This week's Story of America Card: "Early American Restaurants".
Restaurants were largely a creation of post-Civil War America, spurned by the growth of slaughterhouses and shipyards and well as mass-immigrant and former labor to Northern cities.
America's oldest restaurant, however predates this period by a full 4 decades. The Union Oyster House in Boston, has been open continuously since 1826 and has had exactly 3 owners in 182 years.
Did you know former Harper's Magazine editor Lewis Lapham has his own quarterly magazine? I did not. Called (duh) Lapham's Quarterly, each issue has a large theme (war, money, love) and looks at it through the lens of history (speeches, poems, orations, psalms etc.). It's motto...
"Finding the present in the past, the past in the present."
At 60$ per subscription, it's on the edge of my price range but perhaps reviewing it for Magazineer will net me an issue or two. (via Your Call Radio)
The Savages (2007): "Even two of our finest actors actually need a movie to in which to be to of our finest actors."
Today is the 75th anniversary of the beginning of construction on the Golden Gate Bridge. Happy birthday, you majestic orange wonder, you (via The Writer's Almanac).
Cupidity (noun): "Excessive desire, greed"
Spotted: About 87 different times in Silas Marner, the novel I'm reading right now, .
In The Land of Women (2007): "Throw away and start over any screenplay where your characters speak entirely in words that would have earned a red-inked 'be more descriptive' in a junior high English class."
Notes: Regretfully seen as the first movie of a New Year's Day Movie Marathon.
In case you were wondering, America's Most Literate Cities are...
1. Minneapolis, Minn.
2. Seattle, Wash.
3. St. Paul, Minn.
4. Denver, Colo.
5. Washington, D.C.
6. St. Louis, Mo.
7. San Francisco, Calif.
8. Atlanta, Ga.
9. Pittsburgh, Pa.
10. Boston, Mass.
And the cities with the most bookstores per capita are...
Bookstore Rankings:
1. Seattle, Wash.
2. San Francisco, Calif.
3. Minneapolis, Minn.*
3. Cincinnati, Ohio*
5. St. Louis, Mo.
6. Portland, Ore.
7. Pittsburgh, Pa.
8. St. Paul, Minn.
9. Cleveland, Ohio
10. Washington, D.C.*
10. Denver, Colo.*
via Readerville.
"Heaven is right here. If heaven is not here, it isn't anywhere. That is why we really have to make this place what it can be and what it really innately is. Instead of waiting until it's a big ball of ice like the other planets. We live in heaven. This is heaven. I know it every day. And I know it in my bones, in my heart and in my soul. I know that I live in paradise.
I feel so connected to the creator, to everything that is. You and the farthest star are one. It's just clear as day to me."
--Alice Walker (heard via the 92nd St. Y podcast).
My friend Baratunde had this great post about Obama's Iowa victory:
When the results were called, I threw my hands in the air and
screamed. It was a beautiful moment. I texted mad people, and I browsed
for as many stories as my little cell phone screen could show me. One
thing that really stood out: participation.
Democrats had a nearly EIGHTY PERCENT increase in participation (and 30 percent on the GOP side). This is a great sign for democracy, and I wanna thank the people of Iowa for rolling out and representing. I think this also validates Obama’s point about bringing more people into the process. I asked a friend in Iowa what it was like for her on the ground. I’ll leave you with her response.
It was amazing. In my particular location, there were 315 people. 121
of us were for Obama. There were people of all different genders,
races, ages, even political parties. I was talking to a family that
were Republicans, but they were changing parties to vote for Obama. At
one point, the person in charge asked who was caucusing for the first
time. A large majority of people raised there hands. A lot of them were
older, and they were caucusing because they wanted Obama to win.
What an amazing victory. I can't wait to see how this all plays out.
Title: "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World"
Author: Bill Clinton
Synopsis: Former president Bill Clinton looks at the revolution in philanthropy and how each of us can participate in it.
Assessment: Clinton speaks from the privileged position of a) being able to sell a million copies of a book of his grammar school doodlings and b) being friends with many of the world's richest philanthropists. Nonetheless his research is thorough and the availability of opportunities to do good in the world he outlines is staggering. While his tone might be a bit triumphal at times, the revolution he describes and the book embodies is plain. Philanthropy is no long the prerogative of the wealthy and the dead. We no longer hand over a blank check to an established institution but expect philanthropy to be park of an ongoing relationship. We no longer pity the unfortunate but empower them to help themselves. Volunteering counts too, as much as the large grants. And in the end, giving should be chocolate not cod liver oil.
Verdict: Uniquely inspiring. Makes me wanna volunteer my fool head off. Website has impressive list of resources too.
"Almost everyone-regardless of income, available time, age and skills-can do something useful for others and, in the process strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity"
--Bill Clinton
So this is John Hancock. You probably know him as an early founding father, the first governor of the state of Massachusetts and the first (and largest) signer of the Declaration of Independence.
What you might not know is that the image above of John Hancock is from a Story of America Card, sets of picture cards sold from 1979-1980 in packets of 24 via commercials on television. A total 2,256 cards in 94 decks were released in a short period, each featuring a different person, icon, trend or event in the American experience. The cards have been out of print since.
On August 4, 1980, 3 days before my 7th birthday, I received my first deck of Story of America Cards in mail. An avid card collector of all kinds back then, I had asked for them as a birthday present six weeks earlier and remember getting home from day camp, sitting on the front steps in the balmy Michigan sun and singing to no one in particular "My Story of America Cards Cay-aaame!"
I hadn't thought of Story of America Cards until a curious google search last month showed me that a largely complete set was available for a very reasonable price. I'm now the proud owner of that set and upon some consideration and a lot of fondling, I now believe these cards were the beginning of my love affair with all things American.
What that search also reveals is almost no public record of the cards, a bit of background, no Wikipedia page no directory of their total holdings. While many of them are dated and a bit politically incorrect (the section of cards on race relations is called "The Black Man"), as a child I found them an invaluable teaching aid and a fun, easy way to learn a lot about this country without feeling like I'd swallowed a handful of brussel sprouts.
So here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to scan my entire collection a little at a time and upload them all to a Flickr Photoset. Each card will include a description and links to the card's subject. I'll also be posting about them here every now and them when I upload more.
Tag and note them at will. They've brought me such wisdom and joy in just a short time. I can't wait to share them with you.
Word Wars (2004): "Competitive gaming brings out the best in a certain kind of very odd male, even if the game is something as congenial as Scrabble."
Notes: Thrilling documentary seen on New Year's Day about competitive Scrabble. In a similar league with Word Play but more about personality and less about cultural significance. Highly recommended, especially if you loved Word Play.
Wowee. I was at the movies so am listening to the replay coverage on NPR and consulting the Reuters primaries calendar. New Hampshire is next Tuesday then South Carolina on the 19th and everything goes ape-gazingy on Feb 5 with 20 states have their primaries.
This just got very interesting.
"Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things": In which architect William McDonough argues that we can transform human industry through ecologically intelligent design and printed the book on recyclable zero-waste polymer resins to prove his point. Heard about on Stanford Social Innovation Conversation series in a speech only slightly less inspiring than the annual Bruce Sterling annual SXSW Rant.
If you like Mr. Sterling, this one's for you.
Once in a great while, the internets smile and offer up a resource that seems designed just for you. I'm sure it happened all the time when the web was new and largely undiscovered but now that it's been up and running nearly 15 years, I figure I've found everything I'm gonna need.
Until this week. This week, not one but two blogs swam into my field of view that have a fresh take on a subject I love but had never quite identified as such.
I'm subscribed to both.
"I wonder...Did Einstein think everyone else was a dumb shit?"
--Maya Rudolf in Idiocracy
Idiocracy (2006): "Luke Wilson playing an average nobody who becomes the world's smartest man is one inspired (if obvious) bit of casting."
Notes: My buddy Dave tells me that this movie was hardly marketed and barely released by its studio 20th Century Fox. Rumor has it that the use of actual corporate logos in a less than flattering light (i.e. splattered on everything 500 years in the future when the entire human race has been turned into a legion of drooling imbeciles) had something to do with that decision.
So my company, BookTour.com, has been mentioned in the Silicon Valley Gossip Publication of Record (SVGPR), Valleywag.
"...one of those why-didn't-I-think-of-that sites. It scratches a specific itch to bring together touring book authors and the people who go to see them. Bespectacled novelist groupies are spared from the non-bookish mob at Upcoming -- and vice versa. A billion-dollar idea? Of course not. But a required, um, bookmark among the New York literati by March? Yeah, I'll bet a buck on that."
Awful nice of them.
"Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man."
--Ben Franklin (via The Writer's Almanac)
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
