Connections

Stumbled across the special effects climate disaster spectacle The Day After Tomorrow. Doesn't seem as far-fetched as when it first came out. Switched to see the news and the top three stories were about climate disasters. Not as extreme but extreme enough and all in the family. Tick tock tick tock.

O boy

An email from an actor friend -- are you going to make any more movies? -- got me thinking that, actually, a film adaptation of the recent novel would be doable. Small cast. All local settings. Challenges to find ways to do News and Heavy Reading in the film narrative ... this could be done. For starters, I invited the actor to read the novel and see what he thought. He'd be a good CJ.  His wife would have a role. Hmm. HMM.

Blue Muse Escapes Paparazzi

Recent work by Tom Strah. He's on a roll. Here is his drawing that I call "CJ" after my recent protagonist.

Attitude

Best thing about feeling better is a better attitude. Almost human again ha ha. Now for energy and stamina to get work done around here.

Was New American Review the best literary magazine ever? - Slate Magazine

Was New American Review the best literary magazine ever? - Slate Magazine:

"I dare you to name a better one."

So do I. And a regular contributor was M. F. Beal, one of the great short story writers to come out of Oregon. She wrote a novel, Amazon One, long out of print. She lived in Seal Rock for years and may still. She, her husband at the time David Shetzline, and myself were all at the U of O at the same time, getting grad degrees in writing (we already had better publications than some of our professors!). Beal and Shetzline both need to be rediscovered for their fine literary work.

Thomas Mann Said

Thomas Mann Said

How true

Slug city

I can't believe it. 2 weeks into my summer and I've gotten no planned chores done. Well, yeah, I've been sick, more or less bedridden for two weeks, these viruses always knock me out for a couple weeks, but it's gone now, I feel, leaving me weak and exhausted but on the mend. I need to get right and get to work.

Having fun with a comic story idea. Ah, me.

Rupp Edges Lagat In Thrilling 5000m At Trials - Track & Field Video | NBC Olympics

Rupp Edges Lagat In Thrilling 5000m At Trials - Track & Field Video | NBC Olympics:

"Galen Rupp beats Bernard Lagat in the men's 5000m for the first time in his career as both men, along with Lopez Lomong, qualify for the London Olympics."

Good long story on this in LA Times this morning. Can'f find a full story in The Oregonian anywhere. The Oregonian has become a terrible paper. Rupp also broke Prefontaine's track record! Man, can he get a medal in London? The build up begins.

Waiting for normalcy

I feel like I'm in a sanitarium. However, this is no staff and no services.

Ah, the media!

The bewitching hour, 7 a.m., Supreme Court rules on health care: and the headline at CNN is, Obamacare unconstitutional! but over at MSNBC is, Court upholds Obamacare! Terrific. Ends up MSNBC was right and CNN looked a bit stupid.

Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberals (!) for the 5-4 decision.

KARLIE KLOSS - Top Model ( Victoria's )

Lynn Hirschberg's Screen Tests: Karlie Kloss

Careful

Better. But when I worked in office, discovered no stamina and had coughing fit. Work into this slowly.

Bikini Models - 2013 Show

CHARLOTTE HOLMES - Miss England 2012

Munich Olympics massacre: the fight for remembrance | World news | The Guardian

Munich Olympics massacre: the fight for remembrance | World news | The Guardian:

What appalling resistance over the years. Corporate morality.

It wasn't just Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse that was shocking | | The Guardian

It wasn't just Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse that was shocking | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"The systematic cover-up that accompanied the Penn State football coach's crimes was every bit as bad"

Salman Rushdie fatwa turned into Iranian video game | Books | guardian.co.uk

Salman Rushdie fatwa turned into Iranian video game | Books | guardian.co.uk:

What times we live in.

BBC's John Simpson: I'd rather take my own life than face illness in old age | Television & radio | The Guardian

BBC's John Simpson: I'd rather take my own life than face illness in old age | Television & radio | The Guardian:

Hear, hear!

Sun returns

Forecast has summer returning. About time. Maybe I can work in office and yard if just a tad. Feel less like a slug.

Recent reading

Winner Take All: China's Race for Resources and What It Means for the World by Dambisa Moyo

This fact means that we find ourselves on earth at a unique time with the extraordinary challenge of managing and navigating the headwinds of commodity shortages that the world faces over the next two decades. At present we are ill prepared to contend with this eventuality, yet the challenges we face go beyond our living standards to the survival of the planet as we know it. This fight is about life or death.

 Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

When Martha could not write, when what she called lockjaw of the brain paralyzed her for week after week, or when she read back what she had written and decided it was worthless, she despaired—not only of herself as a writer but as a person, a friend, a human being. She felt herself to be literally pointless and would sit brooding, disconnected, haunted by the futility of the human condition.

 

Fragments Before the Fall

Fragments Before the Fall: Click title for full story

The Literary Review (Summer, 1971)

Charles Deemer

I WALK a tightrope between two mountain tops over the Valley of the Waters of Fire. The waters are rising and all too soon the flames will disengage the embracing strands of fiber which hold me up, casting me to my fate below — incineration. I stand very still. To move would be to lose my balance and become cinder too soon.

I RECOGNIZE the voice: "Mummy, can I take this magazine to school? It has a story in it that is full of symbols, and Mr. Walker just loves symbols.""

---

This surrealistic and strange story has a very specific history, which I remember vividly. We were living in Portland, our year out of grad school, and I finally was beginning to publish in the literary magazines but not yet with consistency. One day the mail brought six -- count 'em SIX -- rejections at the same time. I was in the small woodsy house we rented outside of Multnomah Village alone. Two of the rejections came from The Literary Review, where I really wanted to be published.

I remember throwing all the stories across the room. I sat down at my big Remington manual and pounded out this "story" in the time it takes to type it. It came quickly, it came from the heart. It's the closest thing to a Poetics that I've ever written, before or since. I typed it and didn't even reread it. I put it in an envelope and drove straight to the post office and mailed it to The Literary Review. Take that! I was thinking.

They did. A few months later, I got a letter accepting this. A rather amazing story.

Not so fast

Frustrated and impatient, I decided to start on my office this morn, sick or not. Until I walked determinedly across the room ... and almost passed out. Back to bed.

Quotation of the day

After the match, it was beautiful 35-mile sunset drive back across the mountain to Malad, listening to '50s-60s love ballads on the box. I swear, life does not get sweeter. .  --Tom Strah

Sunset near Malad, Idaho (Google)

The "match" was a jalopy destruction derby kind of deal that my friend Tom had taken in with family and friends. I just liked his description and values here, the mountain west, the radio. I dig what he's saying.

Penalty kicks

Peter Handke

Yesterday's high dramatic football match between Italy and England, scoreless after regulation and two extended periods, reminded me of one of my favorite literary titles, Peter Handke's The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. Because this was how the match would be decided -- even though Italy outplayed England throughout and, except for hitting crossbars, could have won easily in regulation. When England took a temporary lead during penalty kicks, I thought Italy might be robbed, but they recovered and won and move on to the semis.

What is incredible about European football is that a scoreless game can be so engaging and tense and dramatic. It took me a while to understand this -- several years, in fact. But the key is understanding attack strategy in the more popular game. And understanding time and its relationship to drama. In American football, most of real time is spent between plays -- in other words, nothing is happening most of the time! Time in European football is always active, building tension, increasing the dramatic moment. It can drive you crazy. It's much more tiring to watch this than slow, slow, slow American football. I'm very curious how I'll make out this fall when it returns, after finally understanding why the world is right and American is wrong about "football." Of course, most Americans can't admit anything they do is inferior to another country's version. Americans are too arrogant to embrace "football" the way the rest of the world does, despite various attempts in leagues here.

After the game, I tried watching the Portland-Seattle soccer game but the level of play was so poor in comparison I found it frustrating and stopped watching. We have a very long way to go in this country to gain the skill of teams like Germany or Spain. Give either the ball, and the atmosphere becomes electric as they move down the field with an evolving attack strategy. There is never a dull moment in this game because the ball is always in play. The drama is relentless.

Here's what the Guardian wrote about the game:

"a night of grand footballing drama in Kiev that was first explosive, then thumb-gnawingly attritional, and finally, for England, rather desolate.

Most American sports fans don't get it because they haven't taken the time to understand a game that's more complex (chess to checkers) than their version.

Lingerie Sexy Show

Breaking up

A tad better, the cold breaking up, messier but maybe on the road to recovery. Still moving very very slowly. Thank the gods for soccer tournament in Europe, something to distract me, and the trials in Eugene. Lots of watch instead of feeling sorry for myself. Not to mention several great books I'm in the middle of. Weather sucks, health sucks, everything else on the homefront fine.

KATE UPTON - Summer In Vogue 2012