The There Blog

And my purse isn't even all that big

2011-01-25T09:42:00.001-08:00

Inspired by The Hairpin, here are the contents of my handbag:

Outside pocket #1:
-black leather gloves (for when it gets cold at night.)
-purple cloth hat (for rainy days/cold weather. Yes, I'm in California. What?)
-tiny umbrella (from Target. It is only six inches when folded up. I love it. I don't like being wet, ok?)
-pepper spray (girly pink. a gift from friends.)
-hair tie
-folded up grocery list

Outside pocket #2:
-one red pen
-this is also the pocket I would keep a book or a magazine or a notebook in, but it doesn't have any of those things right now.

Inside main cavity:
-wallet (with driver's license, debit card, credit card, expired Safeway coupon, library card, AAA card, clipper transit card, gas station receipt, insurance cards, several business cards from friends/acquaintances, two $20 bills, change in coin purse)
-glasses case (with prescription sunglasses, because I'm wearing other glasses, and a cleaning cloth)
-keys
-pouch for iPhone (but phone is not in purse at moment)
-ticket stub (for Black Swan)
-other receipts (Bed Bath & Beyond, DB Shoes, a thai restaurant, two more gas station receipts, two ATM receipts)
-one penny

Inside zipper pocket:
-three battered tampons
-iPhone headphones
-case with tiny screws and screwdriver (for glasses repair)
-keychain pocket knife, in pink (attached to bike lock. I mostly just use the tiny scissors)
-Burt's Bees lip shimmer in watermelon (a little too pink but I still use it)
-moleskin rectangle (for blister prevention)
-one band-aid
-LipSyl lip balm in honey rose (smells nice)
-Jane mineral lip balm in brown sugar
-Clinique lipstick in currant stain (very bright, orange-y red. when I want to get Fancy)
-one lactase tablet (I'm holding it for a friend)
-emery board

A new issue of There!

2010-07-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

The most recent issue of There is now up!

Check out new work from Dean Brink, Jeff Crouch, Lara Durback, Melissa
Eleftherion, Mark Stephen Finein, Crag Hill, Carrie Hunter, erica
lewis, Anne Elezabeth Pluto, Francis Raven, Christopher Rizzo, Sam
Schild, Jennifer Styperk, and Nicolette Westfall.

So much to do

2010-05-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

We leave for Italy in less than a month. I am so excited about this trip (our plan is to visit Rome and the Amalfi Coast) — and I have so much to do before we go!

As I've previously mentioned, the new issue of There is soon to launch. I just have to have the latest issue live before we leave. I'm also planning to do a launch party, and I'm casting about for ideas on where to hold it. (Can I host it at home? Is that crazy? The place is actually pretty nice for entertaining.)

I'm also working on a cover story on sovereign wealth funds for The Institutional Real Estate Letter – North America (is that a mouthful, or what?), and the story is due Friday. As I've already told the editor, there is just no way it will be done by then. But the publication ships in a couple weeks — and my cover is going to have to be in it.

And then there's all the little things that have to be readied before we leave town — like getting travel-size bottles and photocopies of our passports.

Also, I just have to hope that no major volcanic activity happens between now and mid-June.

About that fallow period

2010-05-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago, I wrote a post "In praise of the fallow period", where I noted I'd been not-writing for a year. And while this blog hasn't had much activity since then, at least I have started writing again (I've gone back to the Pythia Says project, or rather, I'm doing something in dialogue with it), and a new issue of There is just around the corner.

No, really! It will be out soon (by June at the latest).

The gap in production of There can be explained by my desire to give the site a redesign. I'd hacked the thing together with some very basic Dreamweaver templates, and I really wanted to do something a little more sophisticated for the next issue. You would think, given that I'm living with a "senior web developer", that this would be easy.

So when I talked with Adam about this, oh, months ago, he basically handed me a book on HTML/CSS and said to get started on it. Now, I should say, this is probably why I love him. Instead of just building my website for me (as he has done for friends of mine! I should add), he wanted to give me the tools to build it myself. Which is a much slower process! And he hasn't been totally hands-off; he is building the complicated homepage that I wanted, and he's given some tips and done some PHP coding.

Still, I am going to use the "I had to learn CSS to get the new issue out" excuse whenever I'm asked about the very large gap between this issue and the previous.

One thing after another

2009-09-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

We've finally made our long-awaited, much-discussed move: to a townhouse on the Oakland/Emeryville border. It's a very nice unit, with all sorts of features that we've never had before, and the neighborhood has, so far, not caused any problems. That's the funny thing about a place like Oakland. We're in between San Pablo Avenue and Market Street, and although they're only a few blocks apart, they're worlds away from each other.

Still, the process of moving has so many details! And so much goes wrong! And every victory seems to come with another setback. In the setbacks column: our hot water has gone out, twice; ants, a lot of them; complications with the internet hook-up; plus we had to spend a day and a half cleaning our old apartment just to get it presentable enough to get the security deposit back. And each of those setbacks has delayed our ability to get unpacked and moved in to this new apartment.

But finally, one week in, I am sitting at a desk in the spare bedroom/my office. And we have the DSL and the wi-fit set up, and I am finally able to once again telecommute (or blog, as the case may be). So maybe I'm gonna make it after all.

Planned is Here (There?) Everywhere

2009-06-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

It's official: There is now a book publisher. I've taken delivery of two heavy boxes filled with Sarah Trott's Planned. You can still pre-order with free shipping until midnight.

Writing and the internet

2009-06-15T15:29:00.000-07:00

There is something happening at the margins today, something happening just outside my field of vision, and when I turn in its direction, it moves just out of sight again. And in the meantime, I am fitting together other thoughts.

Item 1. Ben Kunkel's "Lingering" essay, which has many interesting things to say about the internet and such as, including "If you want to make a culture your own, you have to make your own culture, and not just repurpose the productions of people with more capital (or contribute marginalia to news stories)." And also, "Bloggers on the whole write carelessly, their ideas are commonplace, they curry favor with readers and one another, and their popularity is no index of their worthiness."

Item 2. Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I find Didion to be a touchstone for me, nevermind the perception of middlebrowness that she has accumulated over time. And I spent a couple hours this afternoon reading parts of that essay collection, and felt this passage from the preface to be especially apt:

What else is there to tell? I am bad at interviewing people. I avoid situations where I have to talk to anyone's press agent. (This precludes doing pieces on most actors, a bonus in itself.) I do not like to make telephone calls, and would not like to count the mornings I have sat on some Best Western motel bed somewhere and tried to force myself to put through the call to the assistant district attorney. My only advantage as a reporter is that I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is the last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

In praise of the fallow period

2009-06-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

While out at dinner last Saturday night, I expounded a little bit on my current theory that the creative process requires excessive down time. There may have even been a little bit of table pounding (blame the wine). I'm currently in the midst of an unproductive period, so I might be a bit biased.

Truth is, I haven't done any major work since I finished Pythia Says. And I haven't done much with the Pythia project, which I know is a shame, because it's pretty good. One of the better things I've done, and no one has seen it. I feel like I found a good post-MFA confidence in my own voice and just let the project happen and take hold, without doubts or outside interference. But then I just let it accumulate dust.

And I finished it last summer. Which means we're at almost a year without writing (barring a few small things that fizzled, and instantaneity, which you should totally be following). Maybe I'm just wasting my time, but maybe I'm just wasting my time while preparing for something new. As in, the waiting is key. I don't know. And I don't know what comes next, writing-wise.

But exciting things are happening. There is bringing out Sarah Trott's book, Planned. It's the first full-length book of poetry from There, and I did the editing, book design, etc. So that's something.

There is publishing its first book: Planned by Sarah Trott

2009-05-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

Exciting news! There is publishing its first book: Planned by Sarah Trott. You can pre-order the book now, while it's at the printers, and get free shipping to addresses in the United States.

It's long been a dream of mine to expand the online journal into books and chapbooks. For our first project, we are bringing out the first book by Sarah Trott, who also appeared in the first issue of There.

Being on the winning side is a new, unusual feeling

2008-11-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

So pleased that Barack Obama won last night (and decisively, across the Interior West, Midwest, and New South, not just the blue Northeast and Pacific). It's strange to have someone I actually wanted to win do just that (even in primaries, I'm accustomed to backing the losing candidate). The only sadness (and it's a sharp one) is the passage of Proposition 8, amending discrimination right into the state constitution. (Adam says: Maybe we can get the state out of marriage entirely?) I just think of all those people who have married in joy and celebration during the past five months, and my heart breaks for them. So tears of sadness, tears of joy, bittersweet victory.

I voted

2008-11-04T10:18:00.001-08:00

And I have the sticker to prove it. Adam and I went to our polling place (the garage of a brown-shingle house around the corner) around 8:30 am; when we got there, the line snaked down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. The morning was cold and brilliant, and the waiting voters were, for the most part, quiet in their own thoughts. Not being in a swing state, it's harder to feel like an important part of history. Of course, there were lots of other important things on the ballot. As we walked up to the polling location, we passed a woman holding up a No on Prop. 8 sign at an appropriate distance. We assured her we would, but I worry that it will pass.

Elections and economics

2008-10-06T11:34:00.000-07:00

Another day, another drop in the Dow, another disappearance of money in my already meager retirement account, another attempt at distraction by a McCain campaign that doesn't want us to notice how poor the economy is, how poor McCain's economic plan is.

If you want to talk about unsavory acquaintances, a la Bill Ayers, you have to be prepared to talk about Charles Keating.

At least it's relevant to the current situation.

Also, I'm reading next week

2008-09-05T11:37:00.001-07:00

So the writer's block panic can be a bit explained right there. Here's the details:

THE MIXING BOWL
LITERARY READING SERIES
The Word is Out: Oakland’s Emerging Writers Mix it Up!
WHEN: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
WHERE: The Mixing Bowl Cafe, 4920 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland

The line-up also includes Aimee Suzara, Alexandra Teague and Lolan Buhain Sevilla. I'll probably be reading from "Pythia Says" and maybe some new stuff. If there is any.

Instantaneity

2008-09-05T11:28:00.000-07:00

I've started a new Twitter project. Check it out at Instantaneity.

Is it a gimmick? Yes.

Is that a problem? Not necessarily.

I'll admit I haven't a clue what it's about yet. I started it as a project to combat writer's block -- as I could publish any little thought I had, any time, with no pressure to be brilliant or write a whole poem. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach to find out how it progresses.

Wow.

2008-08-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

They should call him Lightning Bolt.

Impressions of Kauai

2008-07-21T16:27:00.001-07:00

Here's what I just e-mailed a co-worker about our trip to Kauai (we got back this morning from a week on the garden island):

By the by, Kauai was beautiful and wild, ocean and rainforest, and we kept pretty busy with hiking, snorkeling, kayaking and surfing (OK, I skipped the surf lessons). Also, we relaxed on the beach, we swam in pools made by waterfalls, we ate fresh fish or pineapple or kalua pork at every meal. We were on the windward side of the island, near Hanalei Bay, less crowded than the resort areas on the south side, and we stayed in a house that was practically in the jungle. Of course, there were also lots of mosquitoes and other insects, lots of chickens running wild, lots of hot sand and sunburned tourists and trinkets for sale. But it was an amazing experience.

Adam says the best part was the boat ride along the Na Pali coast (with rainbows, sea caves, dolphins, snorkeling, sea turtles, and the crest and dip of the ocean as we headed back to port). I think I will always remember the hike in the jungle (that ended with a swim at the confluence of a two small waterfalls). Also, kayaking the Hanalei River, because it was the experience I found most challenging.

New Issue of There

2008-07-01T12:40:00.000-07:00

A new issue of There has launched, with new work from Joel Chace, Andy Fitch, Andrew J. Jones, Heather Jovanelli, Nicholas Karavatos, Chad Lietz, Katrina Rodabaugh, Marisa Siegel, and Lesley Stampleman.

If you die in Canada, you die in REAL LIFE!*

2008-06-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

My latest obsessions.*

Said what we said

2008-05-21T09:37:00.000-07:00

As someone who can't get enough of reading comments on comments on comments on blogs, even I found Erika Staiti's new project, Said what we said, gigantic and exhausting. Which is not to say also important and impressive. At more than 250 pages on gender alone, OK, it will take a while to get to the end.

(For those who aren't in medias res, Erika has pulled together all of the conversations on a lot of blogs into a single document of an online conversation, showing how the conversation developed. For race, she follows the discussion of a flarfian poem performed by Michael Magee two years ago that started a conversation on language and racism and whether racist language can be appropriated in an anti-racist context. For gender, she pulls together the conversation around "Numbers Trouble" by Juliana Spahr and Stephanie Young in the Chicago Review, which took the low representation of female poets in poetry journals as a jumping off point to discuss women and poetry.)

Some of the discussion around the publication of women (and granted I've only read 20% of the conversation at this point) really rang true for me as a female poet and as the editor of an online poetry journal. For instance, the idea that women are published less than men could only be due to one of two things: sexism by male editors or lack of drive by female poets. Of course it's more complicated than that (and the discussion acknowledges that). As an editor, I do pay attention to the ratio of men to women in There (it's been pretty 50-50, but I have a very small sample size). And while I have solicited many of the women published in the journal, I have also solicited men, and I have also received work from men and women that I don't know. But I have noticed that creating a community of women poets, which has grown out of my relationship with Mills College, does seem to make it easier to find women poets and easier to solicit work from them and easier for them to hear about There as a publication where their work would be positively received. Now as a poet who is also a woman, I have found that I'm not always as active, as perhaps I should be, to send my work out to publications. But I don't know if that is a Woman Problem or if it is a Really Long Poem That I Don't Know How To Break Into Discrete Units For Publication Problem. How much is me, and how much is female? And I'd like to think that it's about me as a human, and not me as a person with ovaries.

Riviera Solid Vamp in Red Currant

2008-05-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

That's the name of the swimsuit I bought today. The fit is very flattering. It's more than I would normally pay, but I'm going to Kauai in a couple months, and I wanted to look stunning (plus, I've lost about 10 pounds, and wanted to celebrate).

Adam says I look Monroe-ish.

So glad it's finally cooled down

2008-05-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day in a while that our living room hasn't sweltered. Living in an attic does have it's downsides -- on Thursday, when it was 99 degrees outside, it was at least that inside. Every surface was hot to the touch, and we actually had to go to the movies to get some relief.

Coming soon -- More there there

2008-05-05T14:47:00.001-07:00

A new issue of There will be coming very soon -- I'm just adding a few more writers, getting everything proofed.

The poem dictates the poem

2008-04-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve been working on my latest project, Pythia Says, for more than a year now. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that there isn’t more of it. I’ve been writing it in fits and starts — several weeks or a month or two of activity followed by a longer stretch of nothing.

I don’t even know how to describe it — I don’t like calling it “stream of consciousness” as there is quite a bit of conscious action. And it isn’t “found” poetry, except for the Prologue (which is a flarfian bit of Google-generated sentences), although many phrases have been borrowed or appropriated. Instead, the words, phrases, sentences build upon each other, metonymically. Words, sounds, letter formations connect to others; images connect to images; the poem dictates the poem. It forms itself, grows organically, displays its crystalline scaffolding. (I am reminded of Rosemary Waldrop’s essay “Chinese Windmills Turn Horizontally.”)

If anything, it could perhaps be described as “channeled.” I do open myself up in a way to receive the poem, to let the connections tease and trace. And I have a couple touchstone images — visions of “Pythia” — a psychic in a bathtub, a priestess at the edge of an abyss, an old radio picking up distant frequencies.

Documentary poetry

2008-04-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Saw Juliana Spahr and Kristin Palm last night at SPT. Just an amazing event. Juliana is always an incredibly inspiring writer and performer, and I was jaw-dropped in admiration for her piece about Chilicothee, Ohio. And I was really pleased to see Kristin Palm again (she appeared in the second issue of There). I was also pleased to see her project, The Straits, was finally out in print. I'm looking forward to delving into it.

After the readings, David Buuck interviewed Kristin and Juliana about their work, the "documentary poetry" that they do, the "writing about place." As another "place-writer" and editor of a journal about place (OK, so There is a little bit on hiatus at the moment), I was very interested in how they saw the project they were working on. One thing I was suspicious about, though, was Buuck's continued reference to "found poetry" with regard to their work. And I don't think that's quite an accurate description of what either artist is doing. That points in a "Flarf"-ian direction and both Juliana and Kristin seemed to want to distance themselves from Flarf. If anything, it is research-based, fact-finding poetry, but the language itself seems more "authored" than "found," even when the language is borrowed or appropriated from other sources.

Kristin and Juliana were also asked why they are doing this work in poetry, and not memoir or non-fiction or essays or the like. I'm not sure why it is that they are writing the psycho-geographic (lovely word!), as they seemed to sidestep the question, but I think the answer for me is -- I don't know any other way to write. Valley/Ridge is poetry because poetry is what I write.

"A total gushing fangirl"

2008-03-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

I dragged Adam to the "New Reading Series at 21 Grand," which steps into the void left by the ending of New Yipes ("old" yipes?). It was a chance to see Lyn Hejinian read (and also K. Silem Mohammed).

Lyn Hejinian is the reason I became a poet. OK, not quite true. I was a poet before I read Hejinian. However, she is the reason I became the poet that I am. Her book My Life changed my life when I encountered it at 18 in my first year at Mills College. (I suppose grudging thanks are owed to Stephen Ratcliffe.)

I'm not even equipped to review the reading last night. As I told Brandon Brown (new curator of the "new" reading series), I'm a total gushing fangirl when it comes to Hejinian. I was just relieved to see her feet were not made of clay (or rather, aren't we all, but it didn't matter). There is something appealing and girlish about her in person, which may be reflected in the playfulness of her writing. She read from her new work, and of course it's the sort of poetry that washes over you at the time, with only snippets and snatches making any impression, and leaves you with a strong feeling of wanting to re-encounter it, slowly, on paper, with a cup of coffee and a long afternoon (or maybe a late evening, she said these are "night poems").

I bought a copy of the book she had on sale at the reading (not the one she read from, which is as yet unpublished and tentatively titled The Book of a Thousand Eyes). I'm looking forward to spending some time with Situations, Sings, a collaboration with Jack Collom.

The best political analyst on MSNBC

2008-03-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

I have a total girl-crush on Rachel Maddow, who hosts her own show on Air America and appears all the time on MSNBC. She is so smart -- and liberal -- when younger women are rarely allowed to be either on television. I just adore her.

Check out her bio here. A choice bit:

"Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism, prison reform, and other lefty rabblerousing.

She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader."

I want to go get a beer with her.

"He humiliated me and shamed me."

2008-03-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

So says Dina Matos McGreevey, describing the experience of having her husband, then-Governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey, confess at a press conference that he had a gay affair.

And I think that explains the feeling I have for Silda Wall Spitzer, just hurting for her, and understanding that Gov. Spitzer's hiring of a call girl is not separate from her. The idea, and this may be a modern notion, that her husband's infidelity reflects poorly on her. And I'm finally understanding, in a way I had not before, Hillary Clinton's struggles. I am older now, and I can identify with the wife instead of the intern.

[Sidenote: In the case of Mmes. McGreevey and Spitzer, their husbands' scandals compels the news media to give them back their maiden names. A way of reclaiming their personhood separate from the scandal-plagued spouse.]

I'm watching Eliot Spitzer resign right now, and Silda is standing by his side. She looks less blindsided than she did Monday. A few interesting comments from the XX Factor blog on Slate.

"In defense of the political wives who go to the press conference, smile forced smiles, and say nothing: Speaking (ahem) as a political wife myself, I can see one clear advantage to this option: It's all over quickly. And no one asks you for a follow-up interview. You appear once—and then you vanish forever, along with your husband's career. If you've been clever about it, you've kept your maiden name and can thus return to your own career. Those who make other, more attention-getting choices will later be forced back into the limelight to explain themselves, which is gruesome." — Anne Applebaum

"Each time they cut to footage of the Spitzers at their news conference, it only compounds my feeling that the sight of his dutiful wife is too sad to bear. Over and over, there she is, so mortified she's unable to lift her eyes from whatever piece of paper her louse husband is fiddling with. Doesn't it seem like this was longer than two days ago? My real problem with this scandal is not that it's none of our beeswax, but that I can't get past wanting to bake something for Silda—and then I hate feeling like that, too, because nobody wants pity-inspired sticky buns." — Melinda Henneberger

Quote of the Day

2008-03-04T17:44:00.000-08:00

"And there's nothing inherently ennobling about ugly shoes." — Mary Elizabeth Williams, reviewing new book How Not to Look Old in Salon.

"All My Friends"

2008-02-25T16:25:00.000-08:00

Maybe it's just that I've been sick the last couple weeks, and thus haven't gotten out much, but I've been feeling a sort of ache for my friends. No, the reclusiveness goes back farther, since the holidays at least. And with so many people moving away recently and with a trip up to Spokane to rekindle college ties, it all becomes this sort of missingness. I miss my friends.

Yesterday was the clincher, though, when I was at the gym and LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" came up on the iPod. If you don't know the song, check out the video. The end of the song repeats the line "if I could see all my friends tonight," and I realized that was just what I wanted.

I talked with Adam after the workout, and he agreed we have to do something about this. So my very grownup goal is to have a monthly dinner party. I wanted to start with next Saturday, but he's a bit busy finishing up some projects and asked that I hold off for a couple weeks. But this is something I will do. I just hope my friends will be willing to come.

Missing: One voice

2008-02-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Conversations around the apartment have been even more one-sided than usual this past week. Adam has had an extremely painful sore throat (diagnosis: strep; treatment: penicillin) and hasn't been able to speak above a whisper. Which means I talk at him, and he makes expressive grimaces. Perhaps by the end of this we'll be a masterful charades team.

"Universal" Healthcare

2008-02-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

OK, I have to say I am really getting tired of Sen. Clinton framing the difference between her healthcare plan and Sen. Obama's as one of "universality." It's really one of mandates -- her plan doesn't give away insurance to everyone, it insists that everyone has to sign up for a plan, and pay for that plan. Obama's plan doesn't mandate coverage -- people can choose not to participate. His goal is to come up with a plan that everyone will want to buy into. Her plan -- she'll garnish your wages to make sure you have coverage.

Now, I'm a freelancer who is paying out of her own pocket for a crappy health insurance plan, so I'll sign up for a better plan if Obama or Clinton can provide it, with or without mandates. But I know that mandatory payments are a complete nonstarter with Republicans and independents, and I worry that this could weaken Democrats in the fall.

Lurleen Wallace

2008-02-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Hillary Clinton is Lurleen Wallace with a better haircut," noted one response to Rebecca Traister's moving account of her own indecision on Salon. Not knowing who Lurleen Wallace was, I let the interweb educate me.

Two, no three, thoughts. One, I disagree that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be just a third term for Bill Clinton, a way for him to get around pesky term limits (at least, no more so than his administration served as Hillary's first two terms as president — if they were a twofer then, they'll be a twofer now). Two, George Wallace was a complete asshole (yes, this should have been obvious to everyone who saw his pro-segregation political career, so it's no surprise he treated his wife shitty, too). Three, Lurleen Wallace's Wikipedia entry was clearly written by someone who agrees with me about George Wallace's asshole-ness; however, that doesn't seem to diminish it's power as an encyclopedic reference. Sometimes "objectivity" is just a way to give cover to never taking a principled stand. Give me obvious bias over vague objectivity, any day.

"Now he's in, like, Chico."

2008-02-04T09:55:00.000-08:00

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, talking about Obama's ad buy in California going outside of the the San Francisco and L.A. media markets. At the moment, Obama is actually in New Jersey.

Nonstop Political Coverage

2008-01-30T11:23:00.000-08:00

I have turned into a political news junkie. When I'm home, I leave the television on with the talking heads pontificating in the background. It's all about MSNBC and CNN with breaks for the Daily Show. Plus following the campaigns on various news websites and blogs. Yes, it's sick. But it's also fun.

One new feeling is that California's primary vote will actual count. This is novel. I regularly vote in Democratic primaries for some guy whose campaign has already imploded after other voters in other states decided someone else was more "electable."

Plus, poets seem to matter, at least if they're Maya Angelou. I just saw Maya Angelou endorsing Hillary Clinton (the anchorman on MSNBC, about a third her age, kept interrupting her and trying to get her to talk about race; she closed the interview with the observation that she is "a woman, not an old lady").

On the Republican side, I mostly feel gleeful schadenfreude. So Republicans can't seem to find anyone they can rally around — whoo-hoo! As I was telling my sister last night, Huckabee is the one that really scares me, and fortunately he hasn't gotten much traction post-Iowa. Thompson and now Giuliani have dropped out. Romney is plastic and beatable, while McCain is worryingly electable, especially against a divided Democratic party.

On the Democratic side, my feelings are mixed. I lean Obama, rather strongly in fact, and I have had doubts about Sen. Clinton's ability to pull people across the country. But until recently, I've felt both were good candidates and could see myself filling in the bubble for either one in November. The race has taken on a sourness, though, and I worry about irreparable damage being done. Of course, it's only January, and there are many many months ahead.

That distinct waddle

2008-01-29T05:25:00.000-08:00

I just got home from taking Adam to the airport, and it is very early. I was lucky and still had my parking space right in front of our building. Just as I'm clubbing my car (less violent than that sounds), I see something moving in the rearview mirror. At first I think it is a dog being walked in the predawn morning. But there's no owner visible. Then I think maybe it's a cat, but by this time I can see it heading down the sidewalk toward me -- and the distinctive waddle and white stripes give it away. The skunk walks down the sidewalk, then up the walk to my front door, taking its time to sniff all around the walk, the flowers next to the house, the driveway. I had to wait until it had moved on to the next house before climbing out of the car. The past week I've been smelling a lot of skunk, but I very rarely actually see the animal that causes all the stink.

Chronicle endorses Obama

2008-01-28T15:07:00.001-08:00

In an endorsement of Barack Obama for president in the Democratic primary, the San Francisco Chronicle has this to say about his chief rival:

"Clinton, who arrived in the U.S. Senate four years before Obama, has tried to make experience the issue. ... But if she wants to highlight her White House experience as a defining difference, then it's only fair to point out that two of the projects she was most deeply involved with produced a debacle (health care) and scandals (fund raising)."

A few recent articles about real estate

2008-01-28T14:08:00.000-08:00

I’ve started contributing articles to IREI Weekly, a commercial real estate ‘zine. It’s been a challenge because the stories are supposed to be different from the usual stuff I do for Institutional Real Estate, Inc. — lighter, more opinionated, and shorter (getting down to 250 words can be harder than you might imagine). Here are a few recent pieces:

January 22, 2008
What Distress Looks Like
“Harry Macklowe is the new Donald Trump,” remarked a real estate investment manager at Institutional Real Estate, Inc.’s Sponsor Briefing on Jan. 9, referring to Macklowe’s much-publicized travails.
Last year, his firm, Macklowe Properties, paid $7 billion to acquire a portfolio of midtown Manhattan office buildings from The Blackstone Group — buildings Blackstone had just acquired in its $39 billion buyout of Equity Office Properties Trust. Macklowe Properties only put down $50 million in equity for the deal and financed the rest — and those loans will come due in February, just one year after his megadeal closed.
Read more...

January 15, 2008
The R Word
Here’s a brainteaser: Is the U.S. economy (a) weakening, (b) heading for a recession, or (c) already in a recession?
A spokesman for the International Monetary Fund, Masood Ahmed, said last week that we’re not in a recession, nor does the IMF predict a recession, although the risk of one has increased, reported Reuters.
Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which monitors business cycles, said last week that the chance of a recession was now more than 50 percent, but that a recession is “not a sure thing,” reported Reuters.
Brad DeLong, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley, said last week on KQED’s Forum (San Francisco Bay Area) radio program (and in his blog) that the odds we are in a recession right now are more than 60 percent and that it was likely we’ll find out the recession started last November.
Read more...

The online experiment

2008-01-16T12:06:00.000-08:00

A few thoughts on the shift by The New York Times to an advertising-supported online model. I think we can safely say that TimeSelect was a disaster. Unlike the Wall Street Journal, which charged a subscription fee for its most valuable content (accurate and timely business news) while, by giving it away, got the widest audience possible for its opinion pages (blatherings of rightwing blowhards), the NYTimes gave away its news content (the paper of record) and charged for its columnists (blatherings of leftwing -- and a few rightwing -- blowhards) and archives. With the shift, access to the NYTimes archives is a real benefit, as both a writer and an engaged citizen, while access to the NYTimes opinion pages has made little difference in my life -- I find I just don't need to know what Maureen Dowd, David Brooks or William Kristol (!) have to say.

Scary quote of the day

2008-01-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution, so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards." — Mike Huckabee, campaigning in South Carolina, Jan. 15

What would Jesus drive?

2007-12-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing it wouldn't be a yellow hummer with license plate: 2B4JSUS.

Yes, I really saw such a vehicle driving around San Ramon today.

Sitting in the waiting room

2007-11-27T23:00:00.001-08:00

My father had surgery on his heel today. I spent most of the day in the hospital waiting room. Mostly I waited.

First I waited for the orthopedic surgeon to come and see me. The last half hour was the worst. I was fidgety, couldn't read my magazine (I'd brought The New York Review of Books, which isn't always the most engrossing publication), kept worrying that I'd missed the surgeon somehow.

After the surgeon came out to see me (with good news--he was OK, there were a few large fragments, and they were able to partially reconstruct the calcaneous and added screws and a plate), I waited for my father to get out of the recovery room. I waited another two and a half hours, reading articles on the Met's production of Lucia di Lammermoor and on the Mughal emperors of China, reading about Paul Krugman's conscience and an unorthodox history of economic development.

They finally assigned him a room, and I went up to it, where I waited for him to come up from recovery. Mostly I paced.

When I finally saw him, as they wheeled him down the hall and into the room he'd been assigned, he looked good, and I was glad that I'd been there, waiting. When the surgeon had come out to see me and deliver the news that the surgery went OK, I had given him my father's glasses and asked that he return the glasses to him. My father told me that when he woke up and realized that he could see, he also had known that I was waiting for him, and he had felt better knowing that I'd been there, waiting.

Q: Who killed Lily Bart?

2007-11-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

A: Lily Bart.

Of course, that's never really been in doubt. But a new letter by Edith Wharton has reopened a controversy about whether her drug overdose at the end of The House of Mirth was an accident or deliberate.

I'll admit it's been a while since I read The House of Mirth, but I think it was always my feeling that Lily took her own life. There is her despair, and her careful ordering of all her belongings, the settling of all accounts. On the other hand, the language of the book is ambiguous, perhaps even slanting toward the accidental. The relevant passage is:

She had long since raised the dose to its highest limit, but tonight she felt she must increase it. She knew she took a slight risk in doing so -- she remembered the chemist's warning. If sleep came at all, it might be a sleep without waking. But after all that was but one chance in a hundred: the action of the drug was incalculable, and the addition of a few drops to the regular dose would probably do no more than procure for her the rest she so desperately needed....

Now comes the evidence of a letter in Wharton's own hand, which seems to lean toward the deliberate. Of course, you can always argue the author changed her mind when the time came to kill Lily. As Wharton wrote to a physician acquaintance, "A friend of mine has made up her mind to commit suicide & has asked me to find out ... the most painless & least unpleasant method of effacing herself." She then reveals that she is actually asking on behalf of her protagonist:

I have heroine to get rid of, and want some points on the best way of disposing of her. ... What soporific, or nerve-calming drug, would a nervous and worried young lady in the smart set be likely to take to, & what would be its effects if deliberately taken with the intent to kill herself? I mean, how would she feel and look toward the end?

The letter seems to point pretty clearly toward suicide. However, as illuminating as this might be for an ambivalent passage, I do believe that the passage, and the book as a whole, can support both interpretations. And I have little patience with authors who go about making claims for their fictional characters outside the text. Once an author relinquishes control over a story, it becomes the property of its readers.

The turducken fascinates me

2007-11-21T08:44:00.000-08:00

I just watched a cooking segment on a Spanish-language morning show in which the host and guest chef made a turducken. Fortunately, food and cooking is an area where I've retained most of the vocabulary I learned in high school, and I found it pretty easy to follow along.

I think it's official. Turduckens are everywhere. I don't totally get it (a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey?!), and I'm sure it's weird to eat, and probably easily messed up (overdone turkey, underdone chicken). But there's also something very imperial Rome about the whole thing, and it fascinates me.

Number four

2007-11-19T17:22:00.000-08:00

Oakland is the fourth most dangerous city in the United States. We lost out to Detroit, St. Louis, and Flint, Mich. Not exactly something to be proud of.

Today -- the same day the rankings were announced -- a close friend and neighbor was mugged within a few blocks of her (and my) apartment. At noon. In what is regarded a 'nice neighborhood.' But then, Oakland is in the midst of a crime wave. Of course, I had no longer felt safe in my neighborhood after dark, but I did think it was pretty secure during the day. Ironically, another acquaintance had e-mailed her the article about Oakland's crime ranking before she took her walk this morning.

The mugging was unsuccessful, by which I mean my friend wasn't robbed. My friend, a tough city girl, was too angry to do the rational thing (give up her bag), and argued with the would-be mugger, even saying she was going to kill him. She says he was about 15, and threatened her with a gun that was probably just a fist in his pocket. She also says he hit her a couple times, but not that hard.

The mugging was successful, though, in scaring my friend. And in reminding all of us how vulnerable we are in the fourth most dangerous city.

But mostly ups

2007-10-23T12:46:00.001-07:00

So Hazmat didn't win last night for Zombie Noir (the prize went to some game about frogs...), but blah blah blah honor to be nominated. Adam did, however, get a job offer doing web stuff for a software company in San Francisco, and he accepted the offer today. Which means things are going pretty well for him and, by extension, me. I'm always much happier when he's happy. Not having to move for the job is also a plus. And him having a regular salary for the first time in nearly two years will also be a plus (I'm hoping for regular dinners at Gary Danko, but I think I'll be happy with Indian takeout from the Irish bar down the street). He'll be a joyful consumer for a couple months, and I'll be a beneficiary of his largesse (if he buys himself a new television, I get to watch it, and if he buys a Wii, I get to play it), but I'm not sure it will have too drastic an effect on our lifestyle. Of course, now he can buy a big plot of land somewhere and build a weekend cottage. But we'll stay in the same apartment and drive the same cars. Though maybe, once he has some vacation time, we'll be able to travel somewhere interesting (that isn't Maine).

Answer: Two Months

2007-10-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's been ages since I've posted (so long that I couldn't even remember how long it's been). In the interest of covering much ground quickly, I shall post in list format.
1) Current mood: Cautiously optimistic (Hazmat Games is up for an award from Motorola tonight).
2) Odds that I'll spill coffee on my outfit: High. I've gone monochromatic with pants and sweater in taupe.
3) Last poetry reading I attended: Ron Silliman at Mills two weeks ago.
4) Number of poetry readings I meant to go to but never got around to attending since then: Two (Meg Hamill at Prosody Castle; New Yipes last night).
5) Strangest shopping experience in the last month: Designer jeans at a Mexican restaurant in Spokane. The name of the restaurant appeared to be "Mexican Restaurant," and it was in a seedy strip-center part of North Spokane. In the back room, there were tables of knockoff handbags and homemade jewelry, and then racks of half-priced designer jeans hanging in a row in the back. If you needed to try on a pair of jeans (and who would buy them without trying a pair on?), you could carry them into the back storage room of the restaurant and try not to step in something sticky. I did not find any jeans that I liked or that fit, but under the circumstances, I'm surprised any were sold at all.
6) Favorite thing about the trip to Spokane: Getting to spend a weekend with the girls, especially the ones I hadn't seen in a long time. It was almost like freshman year of college, but without the drama, stress or Empire Records.

If it's the end of summer...

2007-08-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Starting the year in January has never made a lot of sense to me. Nothing changes from December to January in Northern California. It stays cold, and dark, and rains all the time. No, the year ends and begins at the end of August. September is new beginnings: school, football, prime time television schedules. By the end of August, the grass has faded from green to yellow to brown to bone. Everything is hot and dead. The year is over.

Perhaps not coincidentally, late August is also my birthday. And every August I mark myself getting a little older, completing another year, preparing to start another. I do this by getting sick, or going crazy, or both. So I'm sitting at home with a head ache, sore throat, sniffles. I'm also stressing about all the projects I have to complete in the next two weeks. I think the stress has made me sick. No, I know the stress has made me sick.

The weird world of child pageants

2007-08-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

If Little Miss Sunshine has taught us anything, it's that little girl beauty pageants have an inherent ookiness. What amazes me is all the attendant weirdness that gets normalized for participants. For instance, this site offers retouching for pageant photos. And as creepy as I found the pictures (doll eyes in particular) I just had to keep clicking on the "view more samples" link until I'd seen every last, strange digital makeover.

Shake it like a polaroid picture

2007-07-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

As a poet and a copyeditor, I spend a lot of time with language — reading it, writing it, using it, thinking about it. I am language-immersed. So it shouldn't be a surprise that I got to thinking about the difference between wiggle and jiggle. The rhyming pair, often used together, have slightly different meanings. While wiggle suggests a side-to-side movement, jiggle is a more multi-directional, up-and-down bounce. Random House Webster's (our House dictionary) captures this difference, defining jiggle as "to move up and down or to and fro with short, quick jerks" and wiggle as "to move or go with short, quick, irregular movements from side to side." Things that jiggle include Jell-O, breasts, and Etch-A-Sketch, while wiggling describes puppies, hips, and an Australian band for children.

Writing again

2007-07-27T18:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't write anything for weeks. Not a line of poetry. Not even a blog post. A fallow period. And in the middle of it, a couple weeks ago, I started going to a weekly poetry workshop. Which meant that I had to share poems. The first week I brought in something from mid-June. But the process of going to the workshop has got me writing again. Last week, it was something about The Death of Marat. This week, I picked up where I left off months ago with the "Pythia says..." poems. I brought the first couple poems in the series to the workshop and the response was so warm, that I've started working on it again.

I find I'm writing in the car on the drive to and from San Ramon. Actually, I don't write while driving, I just repeat lines over and over until I can pull over and scribble down a stanza. I think it's affecting the rhythm of the process, hopefully for the better.

Morning Excitement

2007-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

It's a holiday, and I'm sleeping late. Trying to sleep late, anyway, when Adam sits bolt upright and says, "Radio!"

Did he lose his clock radio? Does he hear one outside? What am I supposed to do with this information? I say something to this effect (Me: "Whaa??!").

"Radio the cat," he says. This is when I look over to the windows and see our downstairs neighbor's cat filling up half the screen. This is somewhat surprising, as we live in a third floor attic apartment.

After a minute or so, he leaves, and we wonder how he's going to get off the roof (the window is in a gable, so we're already at roof level).

Half an hour later, Radio is back, whimpering to get in. This time we're ready. I grab a camera and take a picture (soon to come, I hope). Adam slides back the screen, and Radio comes in. He's a big, friendly mass of gray-brown fur. I get out a piece of turkey and carefully lure him out of the apartment. Once in the central hallway, Radio has no interest in leaving by the front door, so Adam knocks on Sarah's door and brings the truant cat back to his owner.

As I'm writing this, I hear a "Meow" from the living room window. He's back, camped out now on the fire escape.

"I'm surprised he didn't do this years ago," says Adam.

If he can get up, I guess he can get down.

Should Poetry Editors Edit?

2007-07-03T15:37:00.000-07:00

Quite the brouhaha has erupted on the Buffalo Poetics List about Listenlight magazine. Apparently, the editor has been changing poems before publishing them on the website. In some cases, it seems the editor contacted the authors prior about the changes, but in other cases it appears the poems were just published in a substantially altered state. I actually had some pieces published there a few months ago, and I never noticed any changes had been made (of course, I didn't exactly compare it word-for-word with a print-out, so I don't know).

What is even more interesting about the discussion is the general attitude that poetry editors must take poems as inviolable works, and even suggesting changes is beyond the pale. (In my capacity as editor of There, I have also followed this rule.) This is, of course, in pretty stark contrast to the actions of editors in other lines of publishing (books, magazines, most prose writing, in fact). My diurnal job of copy editor expects me to "improve" other writers' work.

It would seem, then, that a poetry editor is not expected to edit poetry, but rather to compile poetry; their role is that of anthologist, perhaps. What editing there is takes place in the choice of collection and the ordering of works.

Changing a poet's work without asking would seem pretty unethical (though I question the claims of illegality -- it would depend on what sort of contract existed). But is it wrong to suggest changes to a poem? Writers do it in workshops all the time, so there is, at least, a period of time when a poem isn't inviolable. And shouldn't a good editor be someone who encourages a writer to do her best possible work?

Of course, I see no reason to get on the wrong side of public opinion on this one. There will continue to publish poems that I already find pretty great; no need for "improvement" on my part.

Today's resolution: contest that book

2007-06-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

OK. It's time to start pushing my book-length manuscript. I've let Valley/Ridge just hang out, congealing slowly online. It's really time to make a concerted push for it. And the best/easiest way to do it is to enter contests. Now, I am not a fan of poetry contests. I'm highly suspicious of them. On the other hand, they are one of the few opportunities to simultaneously submit a manuscript, and I don't have the time to sit around waiting to get rejected before sending it on to someone else. Finally, some people I really respect had their first books published in contests. So now the only thing for it is to print up a bunch of copies of the poems and put them out into the world. I know Adam will hate it if I use up so much toner, so maybe I'll do a bunch of copies at the cheap copy place on Grand Ave. I know that if I had six or seven copies of the manuscript stacked up in my alcove I'd be a lot more likely to mail them out when deadlines come around.

Coincidence?

2007-06-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I did tell Adam about the Softball Incident, and today I'm driving the 11-year-old VW Golf -- back again from rehab and swearing this time will be different.

Flying balls

2007-06-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

Being part of a couple means being part of a team. You work together, you share possessions, you look out for each other. So when my car got stolen a year and a half ago -- and Adam had just bought a second car -- it made sense not to get another car right away. I was grad school poor and didn't do much driving as it was. When I started working in San Ramon, I agreed to pay for the insurance and some maintenance on the VW Golf in exchange for being able to drive it out to the office. It was a good system until about a month ago, when the Golf started having problems, all sorts of problems, cascading. Since Adam's been working from home, I've been taking the Audi TT to the office and he's had to do without.

All of which has worked out really great for me. The TT is so much fun to drive, and I know how cute I must look behind the wheel of the little roadster. But I'm very worried about something going wrong while I'm driving it -- an accident, or a sudden malfunction. I take extra care parking it at the office, too. I've found a great parking spot around the side of the building, where no one ever parks. It's shady, but the tree doesn't drop too many leaves and twigs, and I can see it from my window. And when I glanced out the window about half an hour ago, I saw the company softball practice in full swing (or throw, rather), in the empty parking lot right next to the TT. Not good. I went right out and moved the car.

Now I just don't know if I should tell Adam.

New month, new post

2007-06-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

We finally finished our apartment renovations -- the painting we started back before Thanksgiving. We just had the bedroom to finish up, and now it's a lovely green, a Loretta green. And in the process we threw out a whole bunch of stuff -- eight bags to Goodwill, mostly clothes but also all sorts of other things we didn't need and couldn't keep.

Then we threw a party.

Now our attic truly is a home, and it pleases me to be in it. And I'm starting to think we might not live here that much longer. Ironic, I know. But Adam has started looking for a job, and it might take us to the City or the South Bay or somewhere else. I just hope we can enjoy this newly ordered place for as long as possible.

Counting up my failures (and successes)

2007-05-14T21:53:00.000-07:00

So I am one year post-Mills and it seems about right to look at where I am. And the ledger has a number of failures, or at least, successes that haven't occurred yet.

For instance, I am no closer to publishing my book, Valley/Ridge. Hell, I can't even seem to get journals to publish individual poems from it. I keep saying that's because the poems must not work by themselves, that they need to be part of a unified whole. As to why that unified whole isn't attracting any attention, well, that must be because I have failed to send out my manuscript -- in the past year, I have submitted it to exactly one publishing house (Palm Press, because Jane Sprague is fantastic).

The biggest success of the past year is There, which has published three issues so far. Additionally, we can add the reading I organized for There in November at Mama Buzz. And there has been some progress on the publication front: Mirage #4/Period(ical), Deep South, ListenLight. Making the chapbook for Nissa's Art for Autism event was an important experience -- who knew it could be that easy to make and publish a little book? And I enjoyed performing some of my recent work ("Pythia says") at the event. It didn't go terribly.

Perhaps I can say that for the past year, too.

I really hate these guys

2007-05-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

This is the guy in charge of promoting abstinence around the world? I don't know why the hypocrisy of these people continues to surprise me.

As Adam said: "Interns aren't safe. Prostitutes aren't safe. Pretty soon they'll have to sleep with their wives."

Issue 3 is finally up

2007-04-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

Be There or be square.

With work from Cindy Emch, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Donald Illich, Alexander Jorgensen, Ruth Lepson, Warren Lloyd, Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen, and Jeffrey Schrader, as well as the landscape paintings of Arthur Cadieux.

Blacksburg

2007-04-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, upon hearing of the shooting of 32 students and professors at Virginia Tech, I mostly felt relief that Adam's friend Mike, who works and is a student in the engineering program, was OK. He was lucky to have a Tuesday-Thursday class schedule.

Today, as I read stories of what happened at the campus, I am saddened and shocked by the unspeakable horror. But this, in the New York Times, is what made me start crying and realize I shouldn't read any more at the office:

Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said. His father, a Holocaust survivor, immigrated to Israel from Romania, and was on sabbatical in Virginia.

10 Little Things I Love for No Big Reason

2007-04-09T19:03:00.000-07:00

OK, if Scottie and Amanda can do it.
1. Palm trees. Maybe it’s a California thing, but I love seeing a palm tree or two silhouetted against the sky. They’re so brave, all tall and spindly and higher than the houses and apartment buildings they flank. I even like the bedraggled ones that need to have their fronds trimmed. There’s one across the street that I can see from my living room, and I frequently check on it to see how it looks in different lights and weather.
2. Clean sheets. I love climbing into bed with clean sheets, all crisp and cool, like water with cucumber slices floating in it.
3. The scent of eucalyptus. It reminds me of this place. Though, when I heard the 120-foot ones along Kapiolani Road were going to be cut down this summer, I shed nary a tear. What with the falling limbs and buckling sidewalks, they’ve become a bit of a menace.
4. Daffodils. So yellow and trumpety and leonine. When I was a little girl, every February, daffodils would bloom in a meadow near our house, and I’d pick a bouquet to take home. Plus, they’re palindromic.
5. Little girls. I’m not much into babies, but little girls, about 4 to 7 years old, I love. They’re so unselfconscious and true to their inner spirit, not yet beaten down by the world. A couple weeks ago at the Y, I saw the most adorable little girl, with black hair and eyes, a navy sailor dress, and red tights. She just kept spinning in a circle, getting dizzy, and then spinning some more, joyful as her dress spun out in a circle, with no care for anything beyond the present joy of spinning herself dizzy.
6. Picnics. This one should be self-explanatory.
7. Satsuma mandarin oranges. They taste like Christmas. And there’s nothing like the vaguely illicit feeling of buying a giant bag out of the back of a truck.
8. Drinking coffee while reading my e-mail. Coffee and e-mail go together like, well, coffee and cigarettes, I imagine.
9. Tiny books of poetry. Small enough to tuck into a purse and read anywhere the mood strikes. Post-Apollo Press has a lovely series of tiny books.
10. Foggy mornings. Sleeping in on a foggy morning, staying warm and snuggly in bed while it stays cool outside, and there’s no sun shining in to wake me up early. Perfect.

A kid'll eat ivy, too

2007-03-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

I get to see baby goats!

Actually, I get to see baby goats almost every day now, because I drive by a pasture full of goats, and the younglings are bounding around the hillside. But in a few weeks, Scottie and I are going to a working dairy farm to visit the source of (goats' milk yogurt) production.

You couldn't pet baby goats at a soybean farm!

a new issue will be coming soon

2007-03-15T22:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally started working on the next issue of There. I'm a bit behind schedule, and it will be a smaller issue -- a mini-issue, perhaps -- but I just have to get it done so I can get on to all the other things I should be working on.

I've been thinking about including some of my own poetry this issue. I've got this longish poem, "lands_cape," that I haven't wanted to send out to other journals; I haven't really trusted anyone else to present it as I want it to be presented. It's 20 quatrains, and I'd want it to be spaced out with just a few stanzas to a page. So if I publish it myself, I get it to look just how I want it. But if I publish it myself, am I preventing it from getting a wider audience?

And is it wrong for me to put my own poetry on my own website? Up to this point, I've only run essay-type work on the site, as I figure that helps to guide its editorial mission. But poetry? Maybe it would be inappropriate.

Speed traps and the kindness of strangers

2007-03-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

One of my freelance editing gigs is for a company in San Ramon, and I've been going out to the office pretty regularly. I've been taking Crow Canyon Road as a shortcut through the hills from Castro Valley to San Ramon.

It's a beautiful drive through a little slice of ranchland in the middle of the Bay Area, and lately Crow Canyon has been even more spectacularly beautiful. The slopes, with grazing cattle, sheep, horses, are green, like golf course green, so green it looks fake to my native eyes. As soon as the rains stop, it will all turn brittle-yellow and then crisp to gray-brown in the summer heat. But now it is green green green, and the skies are blue blue blue, and the road winds delightfully through the canyon beside Crow Creek.

If I were the only car on the road, it would be perfect. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Either I'm stuck behind a very slow driver, or a pushy driver is right behind me, or, usually, both at the same time. You shouldn't be braking for every slight curve in the road -- that's what downshifting is for -- and you certainly shouldn't be braking while going UPHILL! And I hate the cars that aggressively pass me on the city streets of Castro Valley (or San Ramon) and then immediately slow down once the road begins to wind and bend.

My favorite drivers, though, are the ones that stick it to the man by warning oncoming cars of a lurking highway patrolman. About halfway through the canyon, the valley flattens out, widening enough for the road to have an extra passing lane in each direction. And lately, the CHP has been staking out the area in the hope of catching speedy passing cars. I've learned to watch for flashing headlights as I approach the passing zone and adjust my speed accordingly.

If I have to drive out to an office, I'm glad I get to take a drive I actually enjoy.

Perfect pairing

2007-03-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

I've been at a loss for words the last couple days, unable to describe what was one of the most amazing evenings of my life: a five-course dinner, with wine pairing, at restaurant Gary Danko. I can say I had the lobster risotto, pan-seared sea scallops, duck with rhubarb compote, cheese tasting, and chocolate souffle, but I really don't think the description does any justice to the meal. And of course, the evening was about more than just the food, but the paired wines, the attentive service, and the excellent conversation with three of my favorite people.

Art for Autism

2007-03-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went with Nissa to look at the gallery space she's found to do her Art for Autism benefit/event. It's in a somewhat sketchy-looking neighborhood in West Oakland, so, naturally, there's a giant construction site across the street where they're putting in luxury condos.

I've agreed to edit the anthology and try and get some writers/poets to perform at the event. I think my official title should be Poet Wrangler. I've gotten a lot of interest, now I just have to firm up the date, get the submissions, design and edit the book, get it printed, and have the performers show up at the event -- scheduled for the end of April.

Post-panel wrap-up

2007-03-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure whether I can say the panel I sat on was a success or not, as in did anyone in the audience take away something beneficial from my experiences (perhaps Scottie can better say whether it was successful).

I can say I forgot to mention a few of the things I'm working on: Nissa's "Art for Autism" benefit, for which I'm performing, wrangling other performers, and editing the book of work from the event; the book reviews I've been doing for the Quarterly; the projects I'm writing, Don't Panic and Pythia Says.

It was a very different dynamic from the one I expected — I thought I'd know a lot more of the people in the audience, and that it would be more of a conversation. As it was I felt like I was supposed to be some Expert, dispensing wisdom from on high. And since I already felt like a bit of a fraud (in that I am no expert), it just added to my sense that the audience wasn't really going to take home all that much of value.

I guess because I look more successful than I am

2007-03-03T09:10:00.000-08:00

Is what I said to my mother when she asked me why I was chosen to sit on a panel at Mills' Professional Survival Weekend today. I have the coveted last panel of the afternoon, which means what audience is left will be mostly napping.

Or maybe it's because of this and this and this.

What I do know is that I'll be the only one on my panel with cramps.

Why I'm glad my kitchen is too cozy for two

2007-02-14T13:47:00.000-08:00

I just read this article about couples who cook together, and I couldn't help but think of my dear, near neighbors. It also suggests why my sister and I, who both like to be the boss in the kitchen, went out and found men who don't cook (and why it used to be so hard for us to share a stove).

Sniffle, sniffle, cough

2007-02-13T17:27:00.000-08:00

I'm sick with a sore throat and assorted other symptoms this week. Things I'd write about if I didn't feel so tired: Pan's Labyrinth, Writers With Drinks last Saturday, Gavin Newsom, Morningside Heights, and Stephen Colbert repeatedly calling Loretta Sanchez a whore.

New work by me!

2007-02-03T14:08:00.000-08:00

I've been having pretty good luck with getting my work accepted lately. Listenlight has published some pieces from my global warming chapbook, Don't Panic. Poems from that series should also be appearing in Coconut, soon.

Take notice

2007-01-22T21:42:00.000-08:00

Meg Hamill's first book, Death Notices, has been released as part of Factory School's Heretical Texts series.

These poems take the form of obituaries mourning lives that have been lost in the current War in Iraq. Attempting to exclude no group from this public display of grief, alongside obituaries for Iraqi civilians and Iraqi Police, there are obituaries for American soldiers, suicide bombers, and contractors for Halliburton. The poems in DEATH NOTICES repeatedly strive to rise above blame and judgement, until the project becomes simply an effort to sustain our gaze long enough in order to feel all of these losses fully.

Influenced by Judith Butler's essay on "Violence, Mourning, Politics," (in which Butler argued: "There are no obituaries for the war casualties that the United States inflicts, and there cannot be.") Meg began writing obituaries for those who had died in Iraq, and in the process, she began exploring how the media covers their deaths.

I can't wait to get a copy.

Last of the New York School

2007-01-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

John Ashbery says he isn't poet laureate material:

To be poet laureate you have to have a program for spreading the word of poetry. I’m just willing to let it spread by itself.

New Yipes reading series

2007-01-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

Sean Manzano and Melissa Benham will read at the next New Yipes, this Sunday in Oakland.

A show not to be missed.

Transcribe this, bitch!

2007-01-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

From a review of that new reality show that unrealistically follows interns at Rolling Stone.

Meanwhile, the authentic experience of interning at a glossy magazine goes unexplored by the popular arts—by necessity, perhaps, as it would alienate a popular audience, only shaping up as a nightmarish hybrid of Beckett, Sade, and The Office. (It would be an epic documentary about cassette-tape transcription.)

Yes. Just, yes.

Product placement

2007-01-06T00:33:00.000-08:00

I feel I have to rave about my newest skincare product: the Olay Regenerist Thermal Skin Polish. It's a facial scrub that reacts with water by heating up, which is supposed to relax pores and feels kind of weird. The product claims to provide 'professional mini-peel results in 10 days,' and it's been a little over a week and I am definitely noticing a difference. My face is softer, and problem areas, like my chin, have been smoothed out. It is amazing.

Adam tried it, and he likes it, too.

Goodbye to all that

2006-12-26T11:52:00.000-08:00

So the Christmas holiday is finally over, and what a relief it is. It's a rainy morning in Chico, just pouring down. I'm sitting at Moxie's cafe, which used to be Cafe Siena, which used to be my home-away-from-home in high school. God, I've spent a lot of time in this room (think exposed brick walls, lots of tables, rotating art, front windows that face a busy downtown street).

Strange how being here has brought back all sorts of memories, some good, some bad, but mostly things I haven't thought about in a decade.

Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T08:07:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of a neverending Christmas celebration. Here it is only Christmas Eve, and I feel like I've pretty much exhausted this holiday. On Friday night, Gina and I had dinner and presents at my Dad's house; then Saturday here at my Mom's, more presents and dinner, as Gina has to go today to do Christmas with her fiance's familiy. Finally, on Monday, I'll have dinner again at my Grandmother's.

A fresh perspective

2006-12-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

I have finally managed to find a cafe in Chico with wi-fi, so I'm no longer beholden to my parents' dial-up.

The weather has been cold and clear, and my anxieties have been wiped away. Getting out of town has been good. I feel less crazy than I have in weeks.

Still no strong showing of Christmas spirit, but we did decorate the Traditional Holiday Ficus, and strung lights around the windows. And there's been some gift shopping, with my mom, and seasonal frut, mandarin oranges and tiny braeburn apples, and visiting with my grandmother.

It's been a long season

2006-12-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

For the past six weeks or so, I've been insane. Like truly, chemically imbalanced insane. Crying all the time. Panicking about ridiculous things, like, whether or not we'll paint our bedroom in January. Unable to decide what to have for dinner without extended hand-wringing.

I have undone all boundaries or barriers; I am permeable. I've lost track of where I end and other people, especially Adam, begin. He says I've been alternately controlling and helpless, both bossy and needy, which sounds about right. So now he's gone to Maine for two weeks, and I have a chance to relearn what is me, and what isn't me.

Scottie writes a lot about the solstice, and how the winter solstice is the darkest time of the year. It's been a long winter, and it's hardly ever light out anymore.

Bah, Humbug!

2006-12-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

Maybe I just don't get it, but I am not feeling the holiday spirit this year. The music is mostly dreadful; the forced cheeriness is terrible; the food is making me fat; the weather is making me sad. But most of all, it is the shopping for useless crap for people I don't particularly like (office party, anyone?) makes my skin crawl.

So I am putting the world on notice: I'm through. I'm not buying anyone else a present just because I'm supposed to. I will be handing out handicrafts and homemade art projects. I will occasionally buy something the recipient will actually like. But that's it. No more consuming just to be consuming. And, if I can help it, I don't want to set foot in a mall.

Let this is be a non-proliferation treaty.

today's crazy headline

2006-12-06T19:51:00.000-08:00

How embarrassing would that be.

A Virtual Writing Group

2006-11-28T09:35:00.000-08:00

I've signed on with a virtual writing group, the Artist's Daily Almanac. Let's see if I'm better blogging in a group than I am on my own.

Finally writing

2006-11-27T09:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was highly productive (for a change). Hoa has convinced me to enter the Poetry Society of America's chapbook contest (deadline Dec. 23), and I realized I didn't have anything I wanted to enter. So I've been pulling together some poems I wrote 2 years ago with some newer stuff, shaping it around the climate change push.

So far I'm pretty pleased with the results, but I need to write another 5 to 15 pages to meet the 20 to 30 page requirement.

My morning commute

2006-11-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

I've been working with Ben's mapping program to make poem sequences. Check out my morning commute in haynaku (three-line poems comprising one word/two words/three words). Try zooming in with satellite for the best results.

I guess you had to be There

2006-11-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about titling my journal There is that I can make all sorts of bad puns.

Last night There celebrated its second issue with a reading and party at Mama Buzz in Oakland. And a good time was had by all, at least I hope that's the case. It was fairly well-attended, as such things go, with people in the audience besides the other readers.

The response to There has just been tremendous, so overwhelmingly positive. I was quite touched.

Going deep

2006-11-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

A reminder that my series of laments is finally up at Deep South, published by the University of Otago. Don't let the "Spring 2006" fool you; they are on the other side of the equator.

You had to go There

2006-11-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

The second issue of There is official, with new work from: Skip Fox, David Huntsperger, J.D. Mitchell-Lumsden, Kristin Palm, Anne Elezabeth Pluto, Kyle Schlesinger, and more.

And I, for one, welcome our new Democratic overlords

2006-11-08T14:25:00.000-08:00

So the results are (mostly) in, and I'm still having trouble believing it. The Democrats have taken the House and have a good chance at grabbing the Senate. Donald Rumsfeld has resigned, and Christmas came early this year.

For the past couple months, even with polls indicating the Republicans were in trouble, I was sure that the Democrats didn't have a chance. Maybe because I'm so used to losing, so used to being puzzled by other voters' actions. It's taken six years of dictatorial rule (Iraq, Katrina, Abramoff), but the rest of the country is starting to question the direction we've taken.

There Reading and Launch Party

2006-11-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

There, the online journal of arts and literature that I edit, is celebrating its first two issues with a reading featuring Kristin Palm, Sarah Trott, Jacob Eichert, Laurel DeCou, and Su Pike.

There is Here: Launch Party and Reading
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

Mama Buzz Cafe
2318 Telegraph Ave. at 23rd St.
Oakland, CA 94612

I'm very excited and a bit nervous about the reading, but I think it will go really well. I've gotten a very positive response from the community.

so I just got 10

2006-11-01T13:06:00.000-08:00

I started strong last month in my goal of 29 posts (to match my previous record of most posts in a single month), but things fell apart in the second half. In my defense, it's gotten very busy between parties and costumes and increased hours at the office. I'm going to try to do better in November. Really. This time I mean it.

How to do things with words

2006-10-25T11:28:00.000-07:00

Saw Joan Retallack last night as part of the Contemporary Writers Series at Mills. They get some first-rate writers in that series.

It was interesting to see Retallack read. She's friendlier than I expected, almost chatty. And she made an effort to explain what she was doing in the poems she read, which made them a bit more accessible. Even still, for me, I felt more in the layering of sound and metonymy than I actually understood. At one point, and I'm not even sure why, I had tears running down my face.

One thing she mentioned at the outset, which troubled me, was that her book How to Do Things with Words has gone out of print. I was saddened to think that it would now be difficult for more people to find and read that book, and I started thinking about how it might be possible to start up a press devoted to helping authors keep books in print. It might be pretty doable for cases where the author retained copyright. Some sort of print-on-demand system might make the project feasible, though print-on-demand has promised a lot more than it has delivered in the last decade or so.

crawling on Valencia

2006-10-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

Tired but a little bit giddy from a very enjoyable evening at the Lit Crawl on Valencia in the Mission. This is an annual event that caps off the end of Lit Quake's week-plus of literary events in San Francisco. The Lit Crawl is a marathon of poetry and prose: three hour-long phases, ten simultaneous venues during each phase, four to six readers at each venue.

I don't usually go in for the Lit Quake thing — it's all a bit Official Literary Scene — but my friend Hoa (not to be confused with that other poetess Hoa Nguyen) was reading in the second phase and I wanted to show my support. She put on a great performance, taking the podium with confidence and giant can of Sapporo. She connected with the audience so well, in fact, that when she and I and a couple other friends headed off to the next venue, we had managed to attract a couple hangers-on. Very fun meeting new people, barhopping, getting home at midnight.

schizophrenia and cyborgs, oh my!

2006-10-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Bhanu Kapil's reading was not quite what I expected; better, perhaps, and I found her steadier and sweeter than I expected. She read from three works that intertwined Indian immigrants, schizophrenia, and cyborgs. And it worked.

Must-see reading: Bhanu Kapil

2006-10-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

Bhanu Kapil is reading at the Mills Contemporary Writers' Series this week. See her Tuesday, October 10 at 5:30 pm in the Mills Hall Living Room. From the press kit:

Bhanu Kapil was born in England in 1968, to Indian parents, and grew up in a working-class, South-Asian community in Greater London. She came to the U.S. in 1990 and currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she teaches at Naropa University. A writer forged by this history of migration, and who has come to understand the border as a site of both transformation and loss, her work crosses genre and subject borders in the prose chapbook Autobiography of a Cyborg (Leroy Press, 2000) and a full-length collection of prose/poetry, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001). She has recently completed a long prose work, Humanimal: a project for future children, a creative non-fiction account of the Wolfgirls of Midnapure, two children found living with wolves in 1920s Bengal. Other forthcoming prose works include Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works) and Water-Damage: A Map of Three Black Days (Corollary Press).

things that go boom

2006-10-08T23:18:00.000-07:00

North Korea has tested a nuclear weapon, and I'm worried about lettuce gone bad.

lodging a protest

2006-10-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

I've lost my faith in protests. There seems to be something ineffectual about several dozen middle-class, white liberals holding placards (STOP THE WAR; IMPEACH BUSH) and chanting "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. The Bush Administration has got to go!" while walking up and down a street populated with other middle-class, white liberals who, while not disagreeing with the first group, are really more interested in their dinners of organic greens and Niman Ranch pork.

Maybe I'm just being cynical.

Plastique

2006-10-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Went to Plastique: A Gallery of Poetics last night for Sequence 1 at The Willowbrook Creamery, an artists' live/work/performance space in a very dodgy part of West Oakland.. It was an installation of various poetry-related projects, with book sculptures, wall hangings, audio files, projection screens, and other stuff to poke around. I knew most of the artists involved, so spent most of the time doing the chat routine. There will be a second installment from 6-10 p.m. on October 20 at Mills College.

if they're doing it over at the moon

2006-10-04T21:31:00.000-07:00

So if a certain well-nourished blogger can try for 80 posts in September (matching her best-ever month of posting), then maybe I can try for 29 posts in October (matching my best-ever month of posting. Officially, this is #3 (and there's a new site design to inaugurate the promotion; it's kind of like pledge week).