Back porch, Cafe Driade, Chapel Hill, NC
Over the past two days I’ve enjoyed sipping fine espresso thanks to the efforts of Scott Conary at Carrboro Coffee Company and the baristas at Cafe Driade in Chapel Hill. Like wine, coffee is culture, and culture is found in intelligent places. Chapel Hill is an intelligent place.
Author and recovering zinester, Pagan Kennedy, has a funny essay in the Times Sunday Book Review about literary corners of MySpace.
I’d jumped into the social-networking site after a fellow author told me I absolutely had to use MySpace to promote my forthcoming book. “I’d try it myself, but I feel too old to be on that thing,†she said. So here I was navigating though pages of Hello Kitty wallpaper and frat brothers wearing chicken heads. Supposedly, thousands of writers had migrated onto MySpace, but where were they? Eventually, through trial and error, I discovered the best way to find them: if you type the right word into the site’s search engine — say, “Foucault†or “Kafka†— you will tumble through the rabbit hole into MySpace’s literary scene.
Imagine a version of Studio 54 where Jane Austen, wearing nothing but gold panties, vomits all over Harold Bloom’s shoes while infomercials for debut novels flash on the walls. In literary MySpace, most people are cruising: they’re hoping to find cute nerds, to hype a memoir or to indulge some bookworm fetish. Pranksters pretending to be Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein and Ovid rub elbows with authors masquerading as their own characters. Of course, many of the profiles are just glorified advertising pages. And yet, amid all the craziness, readers have formed dozens of groups — for instance, Ladies and Lads of Library Land — to engage in serious bibliophilic conversation.
Salt Lake Tribune looks at that city’s race for mayor and in doing so questions my good friend D.K., also known as David R. Keller, associate professor of philosophy at Utah Valley State College and director of the Center for the Study of Ethics.
DK, a native, envisions a vibrant, modern Salt Lake City.
“The real issue that transcends the sky bridge or the mayoral race is the fundamental question: What kind of city should Salt Lake be?” Keller says. “A celestial city or a cosmopolitan city? A city that reflects the values of one particular social group or the value of pluralism, which is fundamental to the American experience? The latter option is more economically viable, and, more importantly, interesting.”
Of course, pluralism requires a “live and let live” mindset and that’s not where members of the LDS Church are coming from. Proof of this can be found in the church-mandated worldwide proselytizing/recruitment efforts. And in the state’s arcane liquor laws.
Having lived in Salt Lake City twice, I will say it’s a great place with great people. Yet, I could never quite get comfortable there. The reason I could not has everything to do with the fact that the Mormons can’t quite get comfortable with me, and those like me, living among them as neighbors.
D.K. and I have talked before about the difference between a place settled by pilgrims and a place settled by pioneers. Salt Lake was settled by pilgrims—those with a religious agenda. Yet, we expect Salt Lake as a Western frontier city to embody the pioneer spirit. But that’s not the case. Salt Lake embodies the pilgrim spirit, much like the New England states once did.
As in most arguments about American culture, the debate eventually winds its way to an economic answer. For pilgrims, like pioneers, both share a love of American money. The Mormons have become more adept than most at gathering this money. Thus, the fundmental question is: Will Salt Lake’s desire to become even wealthier than it already is, lead the LDS Church to embrace pluralism? In the short term I don’t think it will, for the simple fact that the economy in Salt Lake has been, and remains, quite strong. Hence, there’s little incentive to change.
“We discovered a different Woody Guthrie in the archives from the one everyone thinks they know. Woody Guthrie is seen by most Americans, if they know him at all, as a Dust Bowl troubadour, a political activist and a hobo from the ’30s. You wouldn’t think he could write lyrics about flying saucers, Ingrid Bergman and Christ for president. But he did, and that gave us the nerve to come up with music that’s different from what everyone expects.” -Billy Bragg
There’s an article in today’s Sunday Times about Woody’s daughter, Nora, 57, and her efforts to find new collaborators to breathe musical life into some of her father’s 2400 unpublished lyrics.
Guthrie said that the success of the Mermaid Avenue albums with Bragg and Wilco whetted her appetite for more. Since then, she’s invited punk band The Dropkick Murphys, kelzmer band The Klezmatics, German cabaret outfit Wenzel, Delta bluesman Corey Harris, Texas campfire singers Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and classical musician David Amram to compose new music for her dad’s songs.
Currently writing with Guthrie are Lou Reed, jazz bassist Rob Wasserman, cabaret satirist Nellie McKay, folk rapper Michael Franti and the alt-country artist Jay Farrar (formerly of Wilco).
The Times also notes that a new live recording–The Live Wire: Woody Guthrie in Performance 1949–will be released this week on CD. This historical recording was captured by Peter Paul Braverman, a student at Rutgers, owned a wire recorder — a device that magnetized sound onto stainless steel wire. On a whim he lugged his equipment to Fuld Hall in Newark on a December evening in 1949 to check out a folk singer he had just heard about. With a few dozen other listeners, Mr. Braverman heard Guthrie’s wife, Marjorie, lead her husband through give-and-take interviews about his childhood in the Oklahoma Territory, his Dust Bowl migration to California, his work on the Bonneville Dam project in Washington State and his current life in New York.
I just finished reading John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley In Search of America, which is appropriate since our trip to Alaska was a journey towards self and our selves are thoroughly American. Yet, we’d like to think we are somehow separate from the mindless hordes that consitute “American†with a capital A.
Emerging from the Savage River Loop in Denali National Park on Tuesday, a middle-aged woman and man were standing at the trailhead talking. Upon our approach the woman asked, “Are you Americans?â€
“Yes,†we replied.
“Oh, thank god,†she snapped. “This place is crawling with foreigners.â€
Appalled once more by the attitudes of our fellow Americans, we didn’t hesitate to walk on and find a nice German couple observing a caribou through binoculars, which they kindly offered to share—the very thing Mrs. America refused to do. Allow me to add that Denali is a park with six million acres and only one lightly travelled road.
In Steinbeck’s travel chronicle he doesn’t find fault with the characters he encounters so readily. I believe he was a man of great compassion. In my narrative the faults compound and compete for supremacy.
After meeting the Germans, we boarded a loaded bus back to the Wilderness Access Center. Before we could get underway we had to contend with camera-slinging tourists fighting for window space along the right side, where the caribou we had been casually observing was wisely escaping up the embankment. A few miles down the road things really heated up when a bull moose was spotted. One over-zealous white shoed cameraman had the gall to bark orders at the moose. “Come on. To the right. That’s good. Head up. That’s it.†When he was satisfied that the moose was safely trapped inside his digital tool, he said to no one in particular, “I’m glad that moose showed up. I was gonna ask for my money back.â€
Alaska is a stunning place. We expected that. What was unexpected was how the beauty of the place would provide such stark contrast for observing those who visit it. A lot has been said about Americans and our essential character. More will be said. But one thing we know for sure, “Americans†(in the pejorative sense) are an ugly people living in a beautiful land.
Of course, we can’t in good conscience find fault with others without also seeing it ourselves. For no one in the country is totally immune from the sins or arrogance, ignorance and detachment from nature. It would also be half-baked not to mention the good people encountered on this trip, for there were many. My hope is this kind of raw exposure to the land and the beasts who are supported by it, including humankind, fuels our will to be better, kinder, smarter people. America certainly is “the beautiful.” Let’s learn from the land and be beautiful too.
We’re on the Island Princess at the moment along with 2000 other guests and 1000 crew. When this floating city pulls up to the dock as it has done in Ketchikan, Juneau and Skagway over the past three days tourists flood into these little Alaska towns, multiplying the daytime population by two, three, four, even five times.
Many cruisers make their way to Princess-owned jewelry stores for reasons beyond my comprehension. Others go sight seeing, fishing, hiking, bicycling, dog-sledding, zip-lining and the like. Whatever the case, it’s hard to “escape completely,†despite Princess’ claims to the contrary. Thus, we were incredibly fortunate to see Juneau and Haines with the help of our friends Gary O’Quinn and Tony Tengs, respectively.
On Wednesday morning we rode mountain bikes nine miles around Auke Lake to Mendenhall Glacier where we were greeted by a brown bear and her two cubs. After a tour of Alaskan Brewing Company and lunch at The Hangar, we took a cab to Auke Bay to meet up with Quinn and J.J., who is visiting from Colorado. We boarded Quinn’s 22-foot skiff and took off across the bay to Lynn Canal to check his shrimp pots. His wench wouldn’t start, so Quinn decided to pull the pots up by hand from a depth of 350 feet. A hungry man will do these things. Thankfully, there were over two-dozen giant shrimps (pardon the oxymoron) in his third of three pots. When we got back to Quinn’s cabin after an afternoon of salmon fishing off Douglas Island, he steamed these newly acquired sea creatures like the true sportsman that he is. The lobster-like meat was delicious and it’s the first time I’ve had shrimp caviar. Quinn also tossed some Halibut cheek in the frying pan for our tasting pleasure.
On Thursday, we poked around Skagway in the morning, drinking coffee and tea, writing postcards to our parents and talking to a Spanish couple on a six week bike trip of BC and Alaska. Then we boarded the native-owned Fast Ferry to Haines, where Darby camped in a tent 16 summers ago. In Haines, we were met at the dock by Darby’s old friend Tony Tengs. Tony, a Haines native and present day operator of the Chilkat Cone Kitchen in Juneau, took us to the Bamboo Room for lunch. The restaurant and its sidekick Pioneer Bar was run by Tony’s parents until recently when his sister took over. The Halibut fish and chips is legendary and now I know why. Freshee!
After lunch Tony drove us out to the sacred ground where Darby camped all those summers ago. Tony then introduced us to two local artists in their gallery workspaces before heading over to the White Fang movie set. Inside this Hollywood set are working Haines businesses, including the Haines Brewing Company. We tasted the hoppy goodness there and bought a litre of Spruce Tip Ale to take back to the ship. I’m about to enjoy some now, thanks to the kindness of friends.
Rice University professor, Justin Cronin, is an emerging voice in fiction, commanding multi-million dollar deals from both Manahttan publishing houses and Hollywood producers.
His 2001 release Mary and O’Neil garnered the author prestigious literary prizes, but now an unfinished manuscript has people writing big checks.
According to The New York Times, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions won a biddng war for movie rights to Cronin’s lastest, eventually offering $1.75 million. This is on top of the $3.75 million Ballantine Books is paying for a trilogy from the New England-bred, Houston-based author.
Ellen Levine, a literary agent at Trident Media Group, is the woman orchestrating these deals on Cronin’s behalf. One of her ploys was to send out the new book under the pseudonym “Jordan Ainsley” because Cronin was known more for writing midsize family dramas than for Stephen King-size thrillers, and she didn’t want her client to be typecast by his previous literary success.
Cronin’s new story, a futuristic fable about death row inmates transformed into vampires by a government-spawned virus, has vast commercial potential, Ms. Levine said. She is currently shopping the trilogy to foreign publishers, having already sealed deals in seven other countries.
[via Burning Oak]
video courtesy of YouTube member “CSPAN Junkie”
Last night during the AFL-CIO-hosted Democratic candidates forum in Chicago audience members were given the chance to ask pressing questions. None were more pressing than Steve Skvara’s. Skvara, from Indiana, worked at LTV Steel for 34 years before he was forced to retire due to a disability. Two years later LTV went belly up and Skvara lost his pension.
Go to the 2:45 minute point in the video above to see Skvara’s tear-jerking appeal for reform.
Mules are noble creatures. This is especially true for the inhabitants of Trujillo, one of Venezuela’s three Andean states.
According to a BBC report, mules are four-legged libraries in these parts, thanks to an innovative service from University of Momboy, a small institution that prides itself on its community-based initiatives.
We reached Calembe, the first village on this path.
Anyone who was not out working the fields – tending the celery that is the main crop here – was waiting for our arrival. The 23 children at the little school were very excited.
“Bibilomu-u-u-u-las,” they shouted as the bags of books were unstrapped. They dived in eagerly, keen to grab the best titles and within minutes were being read to by Christina and Juana, two of the project leaders.
“Spreading the joy of reading is our main aim,” Christina Vieras told me.
Not content to stop at books, Robert Ramirez, the co-ordinator of the university’s Network of Enterprising Rural Schools, also wants to hook the remote villagers up to the Web.
“We want to install wireless modems under the banana plants so the villagers can use the internet,” says Ramirez. “Imagine if people in the poor towns in the valley can e-mail saying how many tomatoes they’ll need next week, or how much celery. The farmers can reply telling them how much they can produce. It’s blending localisation and globalisation.”