pigs

The good Christian leaders of Raleigh NC have dispatched those who "protect and serve" to halt the wanton feeding of the hungry and the homeless. So now the enharbored and engorged Raleigh homeowners can sleep in peace. The corporal works of mercy (see below) are, apparently, no longer necessary in this golden age of prosperity and voter suppression in the Tar Heel State. The leaders may have forgotten this biblical injunction:

Prov. 14:31  Anyone who oppresses the poor is insulting God who made them. To help the poor is to honor God. 

• To feed the hungry;
• To give drink to the thirsty;
• To clothe the naked;
• To harbour the harbourless;
• To visit the sick;
• To ransom the captive;
• To bury the dead.

We thank North Carolina for doing what it can to make Florida look good.

(and thanks to Paula in Southport) 

jane goldberg

   My friend Jane has just published her dance memoir.  Get your copy here:

woodshedproductions@yahoo.com

it was a dark and stormy night

"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Picataway, N.J."  This year's winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Prize.

writing exercises

I've got a piece in the September issue of The Writer on how to start your fiction.

why i write

George Orwell has a blog.  "This morning all surfaces, even indoors, damp as a result of mist. A curious deposit all over my snuff-box, evidently residue of moisture acting on lacquer."

king's head pub

An article about our favorite watering hole.  The King's Head was also voted Best Restaurant for Intimate Conversations.

booklist

A few kind words from Booklist online's Book Group Buzz. 

interview

On the Jordan Levy Show in Worcester.

bully

Send Bill O'Reilly back to school.  

work, not

via Notcot.org

spoony

I make dictionary.com's word of the day!

promise

Another flash fiction from my pal Merle Drown.

eco-terrorism, not

A dispatch from Beth Wellington, fighting the good fight.

cat and crow

All right, I'm a cat lover.  This is an amazing little story.  [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSCVrb9pxA4]

tom swick

Newspapers continue to insist on their irrelevance.  I stopped subscribing to the Sun-Sentinel a year ago, but if I hadn't then, I would now.  Tom Swick, a great traveler and compelling travel writer, came home from a vacation in Australia to learn he'd been fired and was told by the classy managers at the rag to clean out his desk.  Here's an interview with Tom in World Hum.  And here's a link to Tom's book A Way to See the World.

interview

Here's an interview I did with Pat Grant and Elisabeth Grant-Gibson on KMLB-AM's Book Report while I was in Monroe this week.

gone to eat catfish

. . . and grits among other things.  I'm off to Louisiana and Mississippi--back on Saturday.

creative writing

From Ronan McDonald's The Death of the Critic: "Another way in which 'Eng. Lit.' could profitably reconnect to its evaluative roots is to move closer to creative writing programmes. Creative writing has proved an irresistible draw as a university subject in recent decades, perhaps satisfying the appetite of literature lovers for the sorts of evaluative approach they are unlikely to obtain in a conventional English department.  Unabashed as it necessarily is about evaluating literature, taught creative writing is an important arena for aesthetic judgment in a university setting.  Such judgements generally happen ad hoc, or as a means to an end. Creative writing programmes rarely treat criticism as 'creative'. . . . But these programmes are nonetheless spaces in third-level institutions where literature is treated seriously as an end in itself, not just as an aperture to social or political context.  If English were to move closer to creative writing, it would highlight affinities between creative wnd critical writing, as well as helping produce close connections between critics and artists.  As movements like the Bloomsbury Group sugest, rapport between artist and critic can create energized contexts for artisitic innovation and creativity."

requiem, mass.

In the Fort Myers News-Press.  In the LA Times.   

home again, home again

Just back from the Mass. leg of the tour.  Off to Louisiana and Mississippi in the morning.  Had a wonderful time at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, at Sal's Cafe in Worcester, and at Tatnuck in Westboro.  Be back online Friday or Saturday.