See Something, Say Something?

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, true story, ,

It’s the middle of the day. You are coming from one work meeting and on your way to another. You go down the subway stairs. A train is pulling in as you swipe your Metro-card. It’s not packed, but there are people.

You take a seat in a row of four seats to the left of the door. There is one other person sitting in the row. She is wearing a black niqab. There is an empty seat between the two of you. All that’s visible is her eyes. Not even her eye-brows or nose. You notice her feet. She’s wearing shoes that don’t have laces. They are not masculine or feminine and they are large. Grandma what big feet you have….

You don’t want to stare, but you look to the side and see what you can of the face. Plump bit of cheek. Dark copper skin. No make-up, no mascara. It’s hard to tell with only this side view, but there’s nothing “womanly” about what you see. Her body too is so covered it’s hard to make out the shape. She has a bag — it’s not a purse, more like a small briefcase with a zipper. You feel a weight in your legs like when you suddenly can’t move in a dream when something bad is about to happen.

She pulls a small leather-bound book from the bag and opens it. The print is Arabic and the borders are very elaborate. She looks like she is praying. You notice her hands holding the book. Her hands are unadorned and quite big. Suddenly you think of the phrase from that old TV show. Man hands.

The train pulls into the next stop. What do you do?

Nobody Knows Anything (About Publishing)

Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , , ,

The title phrase was of course coined by screenwriter William Goldman and refers to the entertainment industry. It is most applicable now to publishing though I thought of calling this blog, There’s Something Happening Here, but then got afraid that ASCAP would come after me.

I’m just an interested bystander, and my theories aren’t worth the paper they aren’t printed on, but I’ve been doing some reading and have listed below some interesting pieces. What’s it mean? Draw your own conclusions and by all means, feel free to drop by and spout off your opinion and relevant links.

Here goes:

Publish or Perish from The New Yorker in which Ken Auletta explains how big publishing is hoping the IPad will break Kindle’s hold on the ebook market and allow publishers to charge print prices for ebooks because of course we all know that that will save the book business. (If you go to The New Yorker’s website you’ll also see lots of blogs, letters and articles on related topics.)

The Rise of Self-Publishing in which The New York Times not only discovers self-publishing, but declares it respectable!  (which means that it’s now officially over.)

Man Bites Dog, no that’s not the name of it, but here’s an article from Publisher’s Weekly explaining why award winning writer John Edgar Wideman decided to publish a story collection on Lulu.

There’s More to Publishing Than Meets the Screen by Jonathan Galassi. The head of Farrar, Strauss & Giroux makes a not so subtle case for why publishers should hold digital rights FOREVER. This was as the youts say a pretty lulz-worthy piece of work and led to many responses including one of my own, though my favorite was by Heather Michon in Open Salon who boiled Galassi’s point down to “There is no “I” in book.”

You could also do worse than check out The Militant Writer blog in which Mary Walters takes a hard look at the industry. One of my favorites from that site is a piece where she blames literary agents for the mess. Some of the more blogactive agents posted replies making the discussion uh spirited.

Happy reading!

(Update:  Not too many comments at this obscure website, but there is an ongoing discussion over on a thread on Authonomy.  Anyone can “listen” in, though you’d need to register on the site to participate.)

The Federal Welfare State of Arizona Can Go F**k Itself

Politics and Culture, , , , ,

The governor of Arizona just signed the new law that will allow the police to pick up anyone anywhere  for suspicion of being Mexican or harboring  Mexicans.

Could I just remind Arizona that it is a federal welfare state in the middle of a freaking desert? Most of their water comes from the Hoover dam thanks to federal tax dollars paid by the rest of us. Much of what is grown there needs more water than they have, so the rest of us pay for it every April 15th. Plus there’s also farm subsidies making agriculture viable IN A DESERT. A lot of ranchers use federal land which if it were owned privately would revert to desert because of overgrazing. These whiners complain about the feds restricting their use of this land as another example of the government infringing on their freedoms. It’s a car dependent state so our federal highway dollars go to support their roads.

In return for all of this generosity, the people of Arizona hate us and our government. They hate foreigners too, but if all the Mexicans disappeared there’d be no one to pick their supplemented crops which would rot and then they’d ask for a bailout. They think they are taxed enough already and would like to elect someone even more conservative than John McCain. They think the President is a foreigner and want him off the ballot in 2012.

So can we please just let them go? Federal welfare does nothing but make them (and us) resentful.  We’ve been taxed enough (on many levels) and they deserve a chance to develop on their own. They’d be happier without the rest of us. They wouldn’t be forced to celebrate federal holidays they don’t approve of like Martin Luther King day or as they call it, well never mind.  You know damn well what they call it.  Maybe they could elect Ron Paul and Sarah Palin king and queen. Once their land dries up the “illegals” they hate so much will go somewhere else. (Maybe they’ll go home where without having to compete with America’s socialized agriculture they’ll be able to sell their crops at market prices.)

Who knows?  Arizona might thrive without federal interference.  They  can use their ingenuity to make the desert bloom  because they are chosen by God or through the unseen hand of the market or the ghost of Ayn Rand or something. They can make The Turner Diaries the official state book and live out their post-apocalyptic fantasies.

But What can I Get for a Kidney?

Politics and Culture, Uncategorized, , ,

Republican cream puff Sue Lowden who’s running against Harry Reid in Nevada has suggested that a simple solution to the health care crisis.  No need for socialized “Obamacare.”  Let’s go back to the “olden days” when you could bring your doctor a chicken or paint his house.

She really said this.

I’m so thrilled that the Republicans are finally offering real ideas instead of simply going negative.  What brilliance this woman has!  Only someone from the true heartland of America, a place known for openness to new ideas about revenue streams like gambling and prostitution could look backwards to the future and come up with something like this.

The only problem is that I live in an urban area where most people don’t keep livestock (except for ritualistic purposes).  So without a chicken, is my medical goose cooked?  She also suggests housepainting, but that could take out my back which would just lead to more need for medical care.

I suppose if I were going in for surgery, I could simply allow the doctor to take out any extra parts — like say a kidney or slice of liver for exchange.  Women under 35 could offer their eggs which go for a lot on the open market and could probably cover a healthy family for a year. I suppose if we’re going to look for models in  the “olden days” — the days before credit cards, bankruptcy and insurance, we could go back to the ultimate barter item — oneself.   Yes, if faced with a serious illness and no other option, one could opt for indentured servitude and/or giving away one’s first born.  (If you can’t afford to pay the doctor, you probably shouldn’t be raising a child anyway.)

You Can’t Do This with a Kindle — A Tale of Love and Books

book reviews, true story, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Back in the early 1990’s, I met Craig at the Samaritans — a suicide hotline. He was a trainer and I was a volunteer.

Sometimes on Friday nights, a group of us Sams would go bowling at University Lanes in Greenwich Village which is still there but it’s now the very retro-trendy, Bowl- Mor.  Back then it was a normal bowling alley and could have been anywhere. Then we’d go to the Old Town Tavern, the one that used to be featured in the opening credits of David Letterman’ s show back when it was on NBC.

I liked Craig, and thought that maybe he kind of liked me, but he never asked me out. Then he was going to go on vacation, and I was determined that when he came back I would make my move and finally suggest that we — just the two of us — do something together.

Only when he came back it was too late. Something was now going on between him and another Sam-gal recently separated with whom he’d had a longstanding friendship.

Suicide hotlines — hotbeds of romance and intrigue. Who knew? (Years later I worked at the Crisis Clinic in Seattle,which brought more people together than E-Harmony.)

I let it go. I became good friends with both Craig and his girlfriend.

Two years later I finished grad school and  got my first social work job in Burlington, Vermont. I wanted to start fresh and was getting rid of most of the stuff in my little apartment in pre-gentrified Williamsburg. (You want to know details don’t you? Bedford between North 11th and North 12th, $250 a month when I moved in, and the neighbors thought I was being ripped off. Probably now ten times what I was paying then.)

The place was crammed with books. I would regularly shop at Strand Books where it was easy to find everything in the 5 for $2 or 48 cent each bins, so there were just too many to move. I decided to have an ongoing book sale. These were the days before Craigslist and Facebook, so I just told my friends and they told their friends and people would call me and come over and leave with boxes of books for which I might get $5 or $10.

Craig was one of those people. Because he was a good friend, I allowed him to take some of my favorites, books I was pleased he’d chosen and wanted him to read.  But I confess it was hard to let some of them go. His take included: Gissing’s New Grub Street, Peter S. Beagle’s supernatural tale A Fine and Private Place, a Flannery O’Connor collection as well as one of Grace Paley’s, a couple of novels by Anita Brookner, La Batarde by Valerie Leduc (which I never actually read but was supposed to have for a class), A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin, Up the Junction by Nell Dunn, and several more.

Cut to about sixteen, seventeen years later. Coming on Christmas 2003. Craig is between girlfriends and I haven’t had a date in years.

We are at a Pisticci’s, an Italian place up in Morningside Heights where, having returned to New York in 2001, I now live.

Craig starts talking about his dating issues. I interrupt and say, “Have you ever thought about dating me?”

It wasn’t spontaneous. I’d been thinking about broaching the subject for weeks, months, possibly years.

There’s a stunned silence that feels very, very long and finally he admits that it had crossed his mind.

In 2007, I finally told him that I really, really wanted to quit my job and while I believed I could afford to be unemployed for a bit and would find something, I couldn’t afford it paying my full monthly apartment maintenance and COBRA (health benefits). He agreed we should marry. We ran off to Niagara Falls to do the deed. It was another month to unpaper-train and properly housebreak his dog (Yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks). And then he finally moved in.

We bought a few things together — night tables and dressers from Ikea. He gave all his furniture away and some of his many books were donated to a local church. He still brought box loads to what is now our apartment. These included — Gissing’s New Grub Street, a Flannery O’Connor collection, Peter S. Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place, Grace Paley’s Little Disturbances of Man, a couple of novels by Anita Brookner, La Batarde by Valerie Leduc, A Recent Martyr by Valerie Martin and Up the Junction by Nell Dunn which I’m just starting to re-read.