tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-181332342024-03-13T09:40:32.589-04:00MonkeysquirrelNot squirrel-monkeys.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.comBlogger501125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-47169564640583047932012-10-08T21:43:00.000-04:002012-10-08T23:03:18.888-04:00On the Shelf 10.9.12<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><img height="323" id="il_fi" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/Movie_poster_watership_down.jpg/215px-Movie_poster_watership_down.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="215" /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><b>Reading</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Watership-Down-Novel-Richard-Adams/dp/0743277708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349745208&sr=8-1&keywords=watership+down"><b><i>Watership Down</i></b></a>, <b>Richard Abrams</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It is hard for me to express how much I love this book. As a kid, I only knew it from glimpses of the movie version that I stole while playing at my friend Tony's house, the friend who had HBO. I remember only something about a black rabbit at the end, but I don't want to know more. I'm reading it now, out loud, to my seven and nine year old kids, usually near the wood stove now that it's colder, and it's such a great final hour of the day that I'm usually ready to be tucked into bed myself after a chapter or two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">If you don't know it, it's about rabbits, and they talk, but it's not a kids book, really--it's written with enough sophistication and there is enough subtlety of character here that most of today's popular young adult fiction looks laughably simple in comparison. And that's what's odd about it: I dare say it could be a difficult read for someone not used to challenging themselves much beyond <i>Harry Potter </i>or <i>The Hunger Games</i>, but, at the same time, my kids hang on every word, and it's not like they're especially special or anything. And I just spoke to another student last week who first heard the book read to her by her dad when she was seven, and it's her favorite book, too. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">But anyway, it's wonderful. The brave young rabbit Hazel, leading his small band to friendlier land, the descriptions of the land itself, the violence and fear that makes up the life of these small animals--it's one of the most affecting novels I've picked up in a long time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/"><i>"Disunion</i></a>," a series on the Civil War at <i>The New York Times</i> blog <i><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/">The Opinionator </a></i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I used to have a teacher who used to brag to us students that his Civil War final exam was so difficult that . . something, I don't really remember, but I know it was bad. We never found out because, luckily, he had some kind of health thing that made him retire before we got that far. Ever since, the Civil War has always hung there for me, like a war all my buddies went off to without me. There has been some guilt. But <i>Disunion</i>, a series of blog entries that focus on big and little stories of the war, is helping me to face this dark period of my personal history. It's full of details that feel quaint now: generals too timid to pursue an enemy to take a crucial railway station, the effect on mortality caused by a simple change in the shape of bullets. I still don't have a clear overall picture of the war, and would fail that test for sure today if forced to, but this blog gives me enough of the tiny stories that I would be able to bluff my way through an essay or two.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Watching</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The first six seconds of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NPdeJ_X0YU&list=FLqbgbXBVd7Hn012jnoGwN6Q&index=1&feature=plpp_video">this video</a> of Allen Ginsberg walking down the street. The video lasts a little over five minutes, a silent clip of home-video showing Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac walking down a Manhattan street in 1959, but all I care about are those first six seconds. There's something infinitely cool about the way he swings his arms, his lazy smile, his whole beat poet swagger. I don't love it as much as I love hearing him read his poem "America," but there is a lot of that poem in those few slow-motion seconds of film.</span><br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Listening</span></b><br />
<a href="http://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18010/homepage_large.54fb8838.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" id="il_fi" src="http://cdn2.pitchfork.com/albums/18010/homepage_large.54fb8838.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">My Last.fm scobbles might say differently, but it feels like the only song I've really heard for the past few weeks now is the mellow and naive R&B of Donnie & Joe Emerson's "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONIJXHvoynw">Baby</a>." The story of how their one album was recorded, forgotten for decades, and then re-discovered in a second-hand shop and given new life is so sad and weird it's funny, but there is nothing funny about this song. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /></span>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-26557672579033878002012-08-22T21:34:00.001-04:002012-08-23T06:21:42.375-04:00On the Shelf 8.23.12<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOx6xp3tdJ8c6M_Po-WAB0Owfjqa0CRQSuWHCRUmoiJ-5D-Hh5ja-TeBmCxkmVbwVo5QEjbEbnDbFWHFoANPVP68ca4UVtqWmv93LIuSVGoJrC5cSibK5OQBTSsm1u2J41KrjbA/s1600/Suicide-Edouard-Leve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDOx6xp3tdJ8c6M_Po-WAB0Owfjqa0CRQSuWHCRUmoiJ-5D-Hh5ja-TeBmCxkmVbwVo5QEjbEbnDbFWHFoANPVP68ca4UVtqWmv93LIuSVGoJrC5cSibK5OQBTSsm1u2J41KrjbA/s200/Suicide-Edouard-Leve.jpg" width="138" /></a></div>
<b>Reading</b><br />
I just read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Autoportrait-Edouard-Lev%C3%A9/dp/1564787079"><i>Autoportrait </i></a>by the late Edouard Leve. It reads something like a memoir, but really it's just a long, disconnected, unparagraphed string of assertions about himself. The opening lines:<br />
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<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
When I was young, I thought <i>Life, A User's Manual</i> would teach me how to live and <i>Suicide a User's Manual</i> would teach me how to die. I have spent three years and three months abroad. I prefer to look to my left.</div>
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It continues in that broken style for another 100 pages or so, and before long I started writing my own version, adding a line or two every few days as they occurred to me. Any book that gets you to pick up a pen has to have some merit, I think.<br />
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I also can't stop thinking about "<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/08/06/120806fa_fact_singer">Marathon Man</a>," a <i>New Yorker</i> article about Kip Litton, a dentist from Detroit who has recorded impressive finishes in dozens of marathons all over the country--all without, apparently, actually running them. Even with the entire online running world obsessed with catching him (see the <a href="http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3863010">200+ page thread </a>about him at Letsrun.com), no one has figured out how he cheats, although it appears that some of the races he has done well in did not actually exist. Mark Singer interviews Litton himself, who denies it all, and it is all you can do not to try to reach through the pages of the magazine and try to shake some sense into the guy.<br />
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<b>Listening</b><br />
<br />
Now that school has started back up, the best time for me to listen to music is usually when I'm in the kitchen making a weeknight dinner. And lately, apart from the new Frank Ocean, I'm back listening to Air again. No matter what time of day it is, the weather, my state of mind, it always feels like the right time to listen to their album <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omoacP1pgWU"><i>Moon Safari</i></a>, a record that can make an evening making quesadillas or curry, or a drive to Target to pick up paper towels feel like a scene from a movie worth watching. <b><br /></b><br />
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<b>Following</b><br />
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<a href="http://www.arestlesstransplant.com/">A Restless Transplant</a>. Guy quits his job, buys a van and starts driving up and down the west coast, surfing skateboarding, losing himself on lost. His blog documents his travels with lonely pictures of fog-shrouded coastal roads in northern California and Mexican beach communities, and they leave me wondering if maybe he has figured something out. Most surfers make me wonder that, actually. They seem to touch some kind of wisdom that eludes mere golfers and joggers. <br />
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<b>Eating</b><br />
<br />
My friend Tracy Row told me about this recipe that is supposed to recreate Chipotle's barbacoa burritos, and finally, this weekend, it is going to happen. It has to. Or at least I will get myself to Chipotle.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-35323613042992750332012-08-16T22:42:00.004-04:002012-08-16T23:34:30.073-04:00On the Shelf I finally got a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Writings-Brainard-Library-America/dp/1598531492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345169265&sr=8-1&keywords=joe+brainard">The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard</a> and opening it to any page is like a happy machine for me. He says everything that comes into his head, he says way too much, he makes drawings of his to-do lists and creepy versions of old <i>Nancy </i>cartoons. It's naive and easy and makes you want to start copying excerpts from "I Remember":<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
<span style="font-size: small;">I remember solid red when you close your eyes to the sun.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I remember the pale green tint of Coca-Cola bottles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I remember French kissing and figuring out it must have something to do with the tongue since there isn't anything else in the mouth except teeth.</span></span></blockquote>
And now I remember how I miss teaching Composition because assigning students to write their own "I Remember" led to the creation a lot of my all-time favorite student work.<br />
<br />
Will Oldham has always been one of my favorite enigmatic singer-songwriters even though I once convinced a bunch of friends to go see him with me in Bloomington and he put on one of the most awkward live shows I've ever seen. Except for Cat Power, which was so much worse. His <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Will-Oldham-Bonnie-Prince-Billy/dp/0393344339/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345170521&sr=8-1&keywords=will+oldham+on+bonnie">new book</a> is pretty much all I want to read right now. I envy his gypsy lifestyle, friends in every city, no mailing address of his own. I would have to get rid of a lot of stuff to do that, though, and I would miss my family, and the stuff, too, probably.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/where-do-sentences-come-from/?ref=opinion">This simple article</a> about writing has me making sentences in my head and then playing with them as a new pastime when I am driving around the city in silence or standing in the yard staring at my stacks of firewood.<br />
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Months later, I am still returning to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/opinion/2011-Shapton-Months.html">this collection</a> of Leanne Shapton's drizzly and intimate watercolors. <br />
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<br />Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-44041094927484084492012-01-18T11:55:00.007-05:002012-01-19T09:14:37.777-05:00Pulphead, Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBctnmOvM92z8gwIbsH6B7e7DZDq0-OT8IUzrWsE2x1gAeLz-3ju3_0X1VPnRk2ZWzgKFXs7aBrWqRIUVbMSkJtSfa3zQgWiHEiMFV6gT9IdqGxFZtSNRx_1_roAtGZqjLqh-qmg/s1600/pulphead.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBctnmOvM92z8gwIbsH6B7e7DZDq0-OT8IUzrWsE2x1gAeLz-3ju3_0X1VPnRk2ZWzgKFXs7aBrWqRIUVbMSkJtSfa3zQgWiHEiMFV6gT9IdqGxFZtSNRx_1_roAtGZqjLqh-qmg/s320/pulphead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5699016763253605330" border="0" /></a>For months, Amazon.com has not shut up to me about John Jeremiah Sullivan's book of essays, <i>Pulphead</i>. Every visit to that site has shoved it in my face: the casual Windows Paint-made script of its cover page, the washed-out, gritty sentimentality of the photograph.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Somehow, Amazon’s algorithms, or whatever you call them, had determined that it was the perfect book for me, the one I was destined to meet and fall in love with, the book that would make me happy.<br /><br />I don't even remember ordering the book itself, but yesterday, it came in the mail, and on the same day I got a notice from the library that it had come in for me after I’d placed a hold notice for it. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>True story. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I don’t remember doing either, but here the book was, so I <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"></span> took a day off from reading George Eliot and started into the first essay, “Upon the Rock," a pretty hysterical account of driving a 29’ RV to a Christian-rock festival in remote Pennsylvania. <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s a story full of characters—mainly a small, odd group of male concert-goers from West Virginia who spend their time going frog-gigging, antagonizing the festival security guards, and talking about their faith.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Because of their gregarious West Virginia goofiness, they come across as easy people to make fun of, and Sullivan does, quoting them to let them make themselves look silly:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">“I was born in Louisville,” I said</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in">“Really?” said Jake.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“Is that on the Ohio River? . . Well, I know a dude that died who was from Ohio . . .”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">When he does this, gets to come across as though he’s not a mean guy, he’s just letting these people speak in their own voices. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>But he’s choosing which quotations to include, and his choices usually create humor at their expense.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sullivan comes across as a person of complicated faith here. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>One interesting passage for me is his recollection of a time he calls “his Jesus phase” in high school, something he remembers when he sees that aging Christian rock band Petra has taken the stage. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It’s an interesting story, and it feels more like he’s pondering a subject for a future essay rather than treating it fully here, which is either sloppy writing or an interesting glimpse inside the narrator’s relationship to his subject.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the end, Sullivan comes away as more in awe than he does bemused.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>After describing a sense of “sneering machismo” that most American males saunter around with in public places, stadiums, males, etc., he observes the following:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>“In the three days I spent at Creation, I saw not one fight, heard not one word spoken in anger, felt at no time even mildly harassed.<span style=""> </span>Yes, they were all of the same race, all believed the same stuff, and weren’t drinking, but there were also one hundred thousand of them.” </blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I am feeling an urge now to get a Lilly grant so that I can rent an RV and hit festivals all summer and meet people. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I should get started on that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-23462962002720340682012-01-09T22:45:00.006-05:002012-01-09T23:36:58.115-05:00Eric Baus<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzJc3zHXpE79Qr3K0IXsdoTOzYSYFoRPEueLQQmyXSH5ErfiI3-gMueKtNYueSvz3Ec0pzdiS_5tiRXQKMk0uOUK3hiE1JuWquib0mC-E-UUvBCeAq_fUM-Dt7X8ZcoNQy9CMOQ/s1600/Baus-cover-3-e1309550316553.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 350px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBzJc3zHXpE79Qr3K0IXsdoTOzYSYFoRPEueLQQmyXSH5ErfiI3-gMueKtNYueSvz3Ec0pzdiS_5tiRXQKMk0uOUK3hiE1JuWquib0mC-E-UUvBCeAq_fUM-Dt7X8ZcoNQy9CMOQ/s400/Baus-cover-3-e1309550316553.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695844825266800546" border="0" /></a><br />"<span style="font-family: courier new;">Here is how to hand a glass deer a beetle.</span>" <span style="font-style: italic;">from </span>"Glass Deer."<br /><br />Oh, this guy and his poems. The newly released <span style="font-style: italic;">Scared Text</span> is Eric Baus's third book and maybe my favorite and I can't even begin to speak about it. It is full of lines like this, lines that seem to make such perfect sense to themselves. "Oh," I think, "so that's how you hand a glass deer a beetle. I need to remember this." <br /><br />The poems themselves feel matter of fact, so poised in their delivery, even when they are depicting moments of miniature, impossible violence:<br /><blockquote style="font-family: courier new;">There are several kings in a single fox. They haunt one another's brows. They hunt their brains for a broken stinger. A crown of hornets fleeces their phlox.</blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">from </span>"Hornet Fleece." I like the way "hunt" echoes "haunt" here. It makes me think the voice is mis-hearing or mis-reporting something, but doing it with confidence. That confidence helps make the all the fantastic action here seem plausible and even likely, which is pretty magical.<br /><br />Baus and I actually went to the same high school, not at the same<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie77Y7MTziau0FXlak6tNi7bDziLpqcFZjFek1b_aIQWyiLtGc9PKxHG2SuD3cobldD87Cr1KIr2sQEu8JgrMuxVQdm_WeH_9J7UH2UrVSwovIm2PS758c0xNWW_VliMNAQ5BS7Q/s1600/baus-eric.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie77Y7MTziau0FXlak6tNi7bDziLpqcFZjFek1b_aIQWyiLtGc9PKxHG2SuD3cobldD87Cr1KIr2sQEu8JgrMuxVQdm_WeH_9J7UH2UrVSwovIm2PS758c0xNWW_VliMNAQ5BS7Q/s400/baus-eric.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695846157055136722" border="0" /></a> time, but we had the same teachers, both experienced the passionate maelstrom of Mr. Rusk's English class. How nice to know that our town can give birth to such, I don't know, <span style="font-style: italic;">difference</span>, maybe. It is more than a little inspiring to me.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-23748242669062681782012-01-09T22:25:00.003-05:002012-01-09T22:44:45.618-05:00Currently<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7HXs7sXl6JBr9ULs37SAORwP95Yt2m_3_ZtFg9zVI4eXPE7OmhWws5QQixRRhP26qQ0tzWYM3lG9_UaXxBrvmKVXsJ5FNKygbHrW4rLp_KhJgMoLbJCBphA2bZC6GVRLOBwsBw/s1600/P1000495.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO7HXs7sXl6JBr9ULs37SAORwP95Yt2m_3_ZtFg9zVI4eXPE7OmhWws5QQixRRhP26qQ0tzWYM3lG9_UaXxBrvmKVXsJ5FNKygbHrW4rLp_KhJgMoLbJCBphA2bZC6GVRLOBwsBw/s400/P1000495.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695839553357595570" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Some recent purchases</span><br /></div><br />". . . they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under them but among them and they rode at once like something jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing." <span style="font-style: italic;">All the Pretty Horses</span> (30).<br /><br />As much as I think about re-reading <span style="font-style: italic;">The Savage Detectives</span>, it's <span style="font-style: italic;">All the Pretty Horses</span> that I seem to open up and browse the most. I open it and pretty soon I am reading it out loud, usually some passage like this, with stars in it, glum cowboys nearby. Right now I wonder about the repetition of "thieves" here. Is it awkward? Could he have chosen a different word the second time? Sometimes I like to think that it's evidence that the narrator is trying again, trying to get it right, but that doesn't really fit with the tone of tragic omniscience the narrator usually carries in this book. It's not the voice of a consciousness that wouldn't get it right the first time. But anyway, I'm glad to be back in this book again.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-34226015912512777442011-11-13T20:18:00.009-05:002011-11-13T22:46:21.677-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfIV6vm3_OhgPQL4ITpCikSv0i6Yaj6oVQVkP9enhmOral46I-1Sv7PwbnFEeEQo1DdQo9Alwx9cBnz_Ry6pp1nnnGC1q5YDZTlk4_j87lDYl_wPWi25_tSsf__IzEhUejexcevA/s1600/reading+shack.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 285px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfIV6vm3_OhgPQL4ITpCikSv0i6Yaj6oVQVkP9enhmOral46I-1Sv7PwbnFEeEQo1DdQo9Alwx9cBnz_Ry6pp1nnnGC1q5YDZTlk4_j87lDYl_wPWi25_tSsf__IzEhUejexcevA/s400/reading+shack.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5674654790943119618" border="0" /></a>Someday I want to outfit one of these with some shelves, make it an ice-reading shack. I'll drag it out on Burt Lake and start spending some nice alone time there. When sportsmen knock on the door and ask if I'm getting any bites, if that is indeed what they normally say in these situations, I will nod and tell them "you have no idea." If they ask why there isn't a hole in the floor of my shack, I don't know what I'll do. Maybe read them some Kenneth Koch. Or nod, give them an unnerving smile, and answer "<span style="font-style: italic;">exactly</span>."Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-36698265155450474992011-09-12T06:27:00.000-04:002011-09-12T06:27:43.672-04:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjVfalA6bZAOYmMWNocNCHxr9jrD6nagfppt14ttvI2ZUDVoACGZE0QTBpvi1bU-oUtwwuV3qGw2z2ounN-GMV1BhS0eGsJzvZrCe66rhXL3sP6B8ev29u7oypdyKi37Nwl9F76g/s1600/PICT0119.JPG"></a></div><br /><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zkJoRo9tz6tsp4DtY71zBDI_G8AXPx27xojfNEr6mHL_7tM3tnkBGMh5Jctm4ECIHs04yXkTdxiaA3EpanOW2EarHgF2vYHflNZc-dyUzbBDk20wHo10lY6MjgAS7VP9iZAf1g/s1600/DSC08108.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3zkJoRo9tz6tsp4DtY71zBDI_G8AXPx27xojfNEr6mHL_7tM3tnkBGMh5Jctm4ECIHs04yXkTdxiaA3EpanOW2EarHgF2vYHflNZc-dyUzbBDk20wHo10lY6MjgAS7VP9iZAf1g/s400/DSC08108.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-25216918367373319792011-08-26T07:41:00.005-04:002011-08-26T12:05:24.297-04:00Currently<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/edward_abbey.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 580px; height: 300px;" src="http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/edward_abbey.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Edward Abbey</span>
<br /></div><span style="font-style: italic;">
<br />Desert Solitaire, </span><span>Edward Abbey
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Between Parentheses</span>, Roberto Bolano
<br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Any Human Heart</span>, William Boyd
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Beautiful & Pointless</span>, A Guide to Modern Poetry, David Orr
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey</span>, Trenton Lee Stewart
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">This week: 388 pages</span>
<br />Last week: 446 pages
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sentences of the Week:</span>
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<br />1. "I'm in the stifling head of the trailer opening a can of beer, barefooted, about to go outside and relax after a hard day watching cloud formations." <span style="font-style: italic;">Desert Solitaire</span>
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<br />2. "When a nonspecialist audience is responding well to a poem, its reaction is a kind of tentative pleasure, a puzzled interest that resembles the affection a traveler bears for a destination that both welcomes and confounds him." <span style="font-style: italic;">Beautiful & Pointless</span>
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<br />3. "Larrain photographs a parked car and it seems to be going more than sixty miles an hour." Roberto Bolano, <span style="font-style: italic;">Between Parentheses</span>.
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<br />I read mostly from Any Human heart this week--up until I realized that finishing the book would kill him--and as much as I enjoy the book, there are not a lot of stand-out sentences to my ear. So William Boyd gets shut out again this week.
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<br />Edward Abbey is not as consistent a writer, and he seems self-conscious about it almost, but there is some fun variety here. In this week's winning sentence, he's referring to his job as a caretaker at Arches National Monument, where his main duty appears to be passing the time.
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<br />Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-47867608614886554302011-08-25T20:36:00.004-04:002011-08-26T05:52:29.389-04:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3CQFPHhk9xX-dmkoNtX38YVujTAOG-e-sPPIOvf9vC7ANWqGO-8I7lhsiKcd4IfklXWL-Zg1as8m-YxvOJPc_xMwrwMg2l7dAkMg9Qlo5cWBzWKWIZL1a9HexaMaMQVSjN_O-A/s1600/DSC00330.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3CQFPHhk9xX-dmkoNtX38YVujTAOG-e-sPPIOvf9vC7ANWqGO-8I7lhsiKcd4IfklXWL-Zg1as8m-YxvOJPc_xMwrwMg2l7dAkMg9Qlo5cWBzWKWIZL1a9HexaMaMQVSjN_O-A/s400/DSC00330.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>I'm not sure what you call this season we're in now is, but it's my favorite.It's not really summer anymore. The evening light has changed and there is a cooler air, like summer left a door open by mistake and let in a nice draft.
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<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJbGMww-un3DaKBqLIjFNCzfZvCEjBzJb6ZjiJfD79cUjrjwbk4hi_SlF8aNKDPaqJNkzq_Pb51NBlo6OjpUcs4UJQGOi9Y5CoLnL413-jynLjJsq3sAyT52kuFARI4U1hTWWANg/s1600/DSC00349.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJbGMww-un3DaKBqLIjFNCzfZvCEjBzJb6ZjiJfD79cUjrjwbk4hi_SlF8aNKDPaqJNkzq_Pb51NBlo6OjpUcs4UJQGOi9Y5CoLnL413-jynLjJsq3sAyT52kuFARI4U1hTWWANg/s400/DSC00349.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>Telling June Apple that she's read enough Peanuts for one day.
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<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX7cXgutIBpGWD-seeVKy248fAnIXl7gqwCgP5_8QoqbvCZv8SNOxQfCFjNkAJ5_3G_sE4eLbQhxaEMjREd4-z1rQnkvxRzDd9QjGs4ULBql8sTlFVJsH0W9oDyeyjVkW6pY77jw/s1600/DSC00357.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgX7cXgutIBpGWD-seeVKy248fAnIXl7gqwCgP5_8QoqbvCZv8SNOxQfCFjNkAJ5_3G_sE4eLbQhxaEMjREd4-z1rQnkvxRzDd9QjGs4ULBql8sTlFVJsH0W9oDyeyjVkW6pY77jw/s400/DSC00357.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>Hammock reading makes this particular kids book somewhat more bearable.
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<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DwdaOd5a8SzViVzyey6LDtj9bvYgo6xknvHaje3rcdnvIp5dAk-qIXfYF0B-tDRuIRKFDwC2qiNfVcmS2ETwAMshJEc3j0EWibsk2W6vZQ9Uskv47MkYQyo3sORL3DiBNiy0tg/s1600/DSC00377.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DwdaOd5a8SzViVzyey6LDtj9bvYgo6xknvHaje3rcdnvIp5dAk-qIXfYF0B-tDRuIRKFDwC2qiNfVcmS2ETwAMshJEc3j0EWibsk2W6vZQ9Uskv47MkYQyo3sORL3DiBNiy0tg/s400/DSC00377.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>Catherine continues to work wonders with the cutting garden.
<br /><div style="clear:both; text-align:CENTER"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-37430016000288855282011-08-23T06:08:00.003-04:002011-08-23T06:13:56.866-04:00Any Human HeartThis book still feels like something of a guilty read for me because I'm not used to reading things in which so much <span style="font-style: italic;">happens</span>. I'm just ripping through it, though, sad that it's almost over but also sad, I'm realizing, that, because it is written in the first-person style of a journal, the end of the book means the end (death) of Logan Mountstuart.
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<br />He's a sad, pill-popping mystery to himself, Logan is, but I still care about the guy. Ominous how his new year's entries for the late 50's say "need to cut down on the booze," and his early 60's entries are starting to say "need to cut down on the booze and pills."
<br />Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-42445393297357240132011-08-21T08:15:00.007-04:002011-08-23T21:09:22.280-04:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs7seiy5Xe-Y8BXNZG_QTkJqgsbGgzf_pAujaS-_XfiDaRG0zcoSJ0rtjaaabplcwPsH31Hw3HpaoprKvHKNvYvdHNM5a76fFQgdznDHN6GvW0I_4AWg-RZ9u4O4S6MU8HNmPu9A/s1600/DSC00194.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs7seiy5Xe-Y8BXNZG_QTkJqgsbGgzf_pAujaS-_XfiDaRG0zcoSJ0rtjaaabplcwPsH31Hw3HpaoprKvHKNvYvdHNM5a76fFQgdznDHN6GvW0I_4AWg-RZ9u4O4S6MU8HNmPu9A/s400/DSC00194.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">A peek inside June's new indoor reading yurt.
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<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0N4pvgZBo-LrnOa61RMYFZs5h-3E60d6Ehq-rINhQnltWNhafNHf7_ThNimFudF5JzVAsQF-cnnrrXnivP1HAk24dZjbZ8tvYx4Nbg5fmPjj-AtXYeHzeDfZkhHycua4IpVqWBA/s1600/DSC00207.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0N4pvgZBo-LrnOa61RMYFZs5h-3E60d6Ehq-rINhQnltWNhafNHf7_ThNimFudF5JzVAsQF-cnnrrXnivP1HAk24dZjbZ8tvYx4Nbg5fmPjj-AtXYeHzeDfZkhHycua4IpVqWBA/s400/DSC00207.JPG" border="0" /></a>
<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Flower Buddha happy in the Zinnias and Gomphrena.
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<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QZzzNJzTc5_JrPi3NH3qt5pBqz46wG6khiaEggXmBobfyUjnFOe4uVQY1k0ypbiZ3OjmYspUMKuu0MEVchOMKShBg4mPq1aBnPmthbpZ7LpGa8YGW21df7f8AOcu9AyBOG2zww/s1600/DSC00202.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_QZzzNJzTc5_JrPi3NH3qt5pBqz46wG6khiaEggXmBobfyUjnFOe4uVQY1k0ypbiZ3OjmYspUMKuu0MEVchOMKShBg4mPq1aBnPmthbpZ7LpGa8YGW21df7f8AOcu9AyBOG2zww/s400/DSC00202.JPG" border="0" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">new n+1.
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<br /><div style="text-align: left;">Compared to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Believer</span>, n+1, as I understand it, is supposed to be similarly omnivorous and, I don't know, "youthful" or something, but more willing to look critically at its own generation. I think some people believe <span style="font-style: italic;">The Believer</span> and stuff coming out of the Dave Eggers empire in general can be too pleased with itself or too willing to sit back and just be a cheerleader for whatever cleverness their friends have submitted. n+1 is supposed to be more serious, and I do find myself laughing much less frequently than I do when I'm, say, browsing <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/tendency">Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency</a>.
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<br />Toward this goal of seriousness, the issue that came yesterday, no. 12, includes an attempted take-down of the taste-setting music site <a href="http://pitchfork.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Pitchfork</span></a>. Richard Beck, the cheeky so and so, gives P4k a "5.4," and tries to explain to us why we should not like it either. But it's an unconvincing piece, and I don't think it is at all honest with itself about its own ambivalence. Anyone who goes to that site is ambivalent about it. Much of the good new music we like we heard about there, but we worry, at the same time, that we are too dependent on it, that it is too popular, as if we can only maintain our indie cred if we know when to jump ship just before it loses its cool.
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<br />Beck seems to be arguing that this has already happened, but he can only throw a mish-mash of hand-wringing complaints at it. He accuses the writing of being too sloppily exuberant, but also concedes that that is the nature of the genre. He points out that no critical stars have arisen from the site, but also suggests that this anti-star feel is a conscious strategy on their part, and may be part of the reason for their success. He accuses them of being "king-makers" (as if <span style="font-style: italic;">Pitchfork </span>were more responsible for the success of Arcade Fire than Arcade Fire themselves) and suggests that we are all missing out on more challenging and novel music as a result. Ultimately, he blames the music itself, arguing that we should "pursue a musical culture more worth our time." Go for it, Mr. Beck. But until that happens, you and I both know that we'll still be reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Pitchfork </span>every day and agreeing with much of what they say.
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<br />In the end, he sounds just as conflicted and unresolved about this as we all are, but unaware of that ambivalence or even dishonest about it. He also could have acknowledged the <span style="font-style: italic;">Pitchfork</span> spinoff, <span style="font-style: italic;">Altered States</span>, which attempts to fill in some of those eclipsed musical corners he complains of, but maybe he didn't know about it.
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<br />Most importantly, though, Beck's single article had me thinking more than any five issues of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Believer</span> put together, and that's why n+1 is worthwhile.
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<br />UPDATE: Reading this over, I really sound like a blowhard. "Go for it, Mr. Beck"? What was that about? I still think that this article doesn't quite explain to me my own ambivalence toward its subject like I wanted it to, but the author deserves more credit than I give him here. I guess the snark bug took over when I was writing.
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<br /><div style="clear:both; text-align:CENTER"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-65053447795746873752011-08-18T21:59:00.006-04:002011-08-19T06:09:45.491-04:00Currently<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9zKa-aLKmUpGZTG5cFFBiUl1Wm7NQLb_DqweNPwyb1xgEZ4r0MRKB4Rh1Ruy03jI6uTKaCM2dNSKAIUecFYpR4uI8tELKb6MbfH57VnRirNPjFXASmg5u-mb97ihDWSy-tpQ4gw/s1600/frustration.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 148px; height: 222px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9zKa-aLKmUpGZTG5cFFBiUl1Wm7NQLb_DqweNPwyb1xgEZ4r0MRKB4Rh1Ruy03jI6uTKaCM2dNSKAIUecFYpR4uI8tELKb6MbfH57VnRirNPjFXASmg5u-mb97ihDWSy-tpQ4gw/s320/frustration.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5642384043986575538" border="0" /></a>
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Any Human Heart</span>, William Boyd
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Beautiful & Pointless</span>, A Guide to Modern Poetry, David Orr
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Frustration, </span>Seth Fried
<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey</span>, Trenton Lee Stewart
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">This week: 446 pages</span>
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<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sentences of the Week:</span>
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<br />(1) "Our job was simple: get the monkey in the capsule."
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<br /> --from "Those of Us in Plaid," in Seth Fried's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Great Frustration</span>.
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<br />(2) "There are several things in this passage that seem interestingly right to me, but there are several things that are interestingly wrong as well."
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<br /> --<span style="font-style: italic;">Beautiful & Pointless</span>
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<br />(3) "Oh for a world that contains Cynthia Goldbergs!"
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<br /> --<span style="font-style: italic;">Any Human Heart</span>
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<br />A decent crop of sentences this week, but the winner by far is the hilarious Seth Fried, and if I wanted to be totally fair, he could probably have taken all three spots this week. I've even read these stories out loud to the kids and they get it; Birk keeps repeating this line about the monkey. It's the first line of the story, and maybe one of my favorite first lines to any story I can remember, though, honestly, I can't remember all that many.
<br />Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-39990145666084792762011-08-16T20:56:00.004-04:002011-08-16T21:13:22.600-04:00Birk, Birds<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNe1NUzw33H0zyhhfbYCNEHEH2WHyW0hqs78QGu1xNGHCdo4ibkbZDXQP4wa1QpGbKzMQEoMc30M_ktf2IqqmBh22iwsg3Dcf-AnLVCeep_Lep8zZE1oDevP1txyGzolVAinnEKw/s1600/DSC00045-1.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNe1NUzw33H0zyhhfbYCNEHEH2WHyW0hqs78QGu1xNGHCdo4ibkbZDXQP4wa1QpGbKzMQEoMc30M_ktf2IqqmBh22iwsg3Dcf-AnLVCeep_Lep8zZE1oDevP1txyGzolVAinnEKw/s400/DSC00045-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641623041868317698" border="0" /></a> Birk and June Apple at the A.C. extension garden a few nights ago. This looks like an album cover to me for some reason.
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Qu8tt9KWl1dKDoZhuq8YDJZF97NrcWy7CBCM2WXBCuAv0jE6mH4TzaAkAcl3cf0oyt5Fn15f7yoELZ_cAsguwAJ8gP71keT3XJW-Rao1z8puaItUeWuPnshTNQKYI9oXY9ondA/s1600/DSC09995-1.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Qu8tt9KWl1dKDoZhuq8YDJZF97NrcWy7CBCM2WXBCuAv0jE6mH4TzaAkAcl3cf0oyt5Fn15f7yoELZ_cAsguwAJ8gP71keT3XJW-Rao1z8puaItUeWuPnshTNQKYI9oXY9ondA/s400/DSC09995-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641622758450384898" border="0" /></a>Decided these frames weren't quite right at our neighbor Barb's garage sale. She did have the exact kind of old popcorn popper I use to roast coffee beans, though, and gave it to me for free. I usually spend around $50 on ebay for them. Good old Barb. First time I ever met her.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG9vBdUxuBq2c69lC2z-qCp7n3qYYjpO0Dv9j5fGfasnXeG1DyL19HsqVQYp2IEKTzVUYUQwVa1ZUsqnXT7gtly76kybbNk3pTp0Wx9L_o4e9tKPeXfCspHE9JSqWYO3lLatdiww/s1600/DSC00191.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG9vBdUxuBq2c69lC2z-qCp7n3qYYjpO0Dv9j5fGfasnXeG1DyL19HsqVQYp2IEKTzVUYUQwVa1ZUsqnXT7gtly76kybbNk3pTp0Wx9L_o4e9tKPeXfCspHE9JSqWYO3lLatdiww/s400/DSC00191.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641623382610834162" border="0" /></a>And for an anniversary present tonight, C gave me a t-shirt she made out of this drawing I did a few weeks ago. New favorite shirt!
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<br />Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-82332606792568162612011-07-08T10:21:00.003-04:002011-07-08T10:32:08.296-04:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQx1TRb-u-XdlphH-K_0hHGNXabeDuBcMo05QL-Rw3TzB30urQDUw3Jw44gtgaMmGoqYQIKKLEf1jGNaDCtYqX0flQag5Ck5uPccVv6QXipXiOfbgyqjQYyVBuj65bhrxuhP0ILQ/s1600/07location-span-articleLarge.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 111px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQx1TRb-u-XdlphH-K_0hHGNXabeDuBcMo05QL-Rw3TzB30urQDUw3Jw44gtgaMmGoqYQIKKLEf1jGNaDCtYqX0flQag5Ck5uPccVv6QXipXiOfbgyqjQYyVBuj65bhrxuhP0ILQ/s320/07location-span-articleLarge.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5626987795837749506" border="0" /></a><br />I spend too much time looking at other peoples' houses on the internet, and sometimes I see <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/07/garden/20110707-LOCATION.html?ref=garden#1">one</a> that is so beautiful it almost feels like a cruel hoax.<br /><br />It's less about the house than it is the imagined life of solitude and no plastic toys on the floor and solitude. <br /><br />In my own experiments this summer, I have figured out that solitude is found early, when the garden is still cool, not too late to water a corner or two. And not playing music or Radiolab podcasts around the house can extend this period of peace well into the late morning, when the pressure of errands starts to impede.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-2593671648230614832011-06-04T12:20:00.001-04:002011-06-04T12:26:10.177-04:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4X0qrOTVTJf7VM5pTmyzKHQnYok2W8fO07NADG121pElBWtugYtBbing_7vAs4LvaQGCWAKSbtckV4AM8aN6sSXbBE9hY651MBHJQWWicC0BoQS3C5-eB17y-1uOuyECSNi0NYw/s1600/DSC07963.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4X0qrOTVTJf7VM5pTmyzKHQnYok2W8fO07NADG121pElBWtugYtBbing_7vAs4LvaQGCWAKSbtckV4AM8aN6sSXbBE9hY651MBHJQWWicC0BoQS3C5-eB17y-1uOuyECSNi0NYw/s400/DSC07963.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghtNURKrdCVNR7XkBEwYXMLhSzJUD91JtM1JF5qgC4wX68J7yHCHZxbLZls_pV6pic-FlFUTGQbC-_8nGBQkmue2HTmKP_G8NyjmBDnixUbgqS7jRB1aTKpZkb8ruEKpz_DNYo-w/s1600/DSC07962.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghtNURKrdCVNR7XkBEwYXMLhSzJUD91JtM1JF5qgC4wX68J7yHCHZxbLZls_pV6pic-FlFUTGQbC-_8nGBQkmue2HTmKP_G8NyjmBDnixUbgqS7jRB1aTKpZkb8ruEKpz_DNYo-w/s400/DSC07962.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Our kitchen fox has gone all Anglophile on us lately. Stiff upper lip and that sort of thing, don't you know, what what. And the wolves keep dropping spoilers. I keep threatening the eraser, but isn't doing much good.<br /></div> </div><div style="clear:both; text-align:CENTER"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-56292762885205474022011-05-28T07:36:00.005-04:002011-05-28T08:14:27.018-04:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGIAyVaKjtNZkpM8fZKW7ymtG-wKPfcDLMRfk8xv9v2zlYv_AkHrmbPXiitNpJh5p2Re2RSaLeHeUh9Wmv9NiAjA0Rdqecza4tmXupI_xFmi2pFN2DyjaE_KhvUtNiYQAO_Y1Vw/s1600/DSC07987.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgGIAyVaKjtNZkpM8fZKW7ymtG-wKPfcDLMRfk8xv9v2zlYv_AkHrmbPXiitNpJh5p2Re2RSaLeHeUh9Wmv9NiAjA0Rdqecza4tmXupI_xFmi2pFN2DyjaE_KhvUtNiYQAO_Y1Vw/s400/DSC07987.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">before.<br /></div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KKjuBOPj47xr_DNM6xxvDKb4i4tpJf_n9BRWyDuRWuP0953dYW7dzZ4SpRKWlsGYVeAzCibCtxkpXtpuXXdG-irjMnaZbXlxc_-qEJtv0uWnCVm2nHVgrRqtct-ryLnNfI_CQg/s1600/DSC07988.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9KKjuBOPj47xr_DNM6xxvDKb4i4tpJf_n9BRWyDuRWuP0953dYW7dzZ4SpRKWlsGYVeAzCibCtxkpXtpuXXdG-irjMnaZbXlxc_-qEJtv0uWnCVm2nHVgrRqtct-ryLnNfI_CQg/s400/DSC07988.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">after.<br /><br /></div>I love a nice walk up the street to Caliente. I get to pronounce the words <span style="font-style: italic;">papa relleno</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">ropa vieja </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">tostones</span>, trying to communicate to the smiling owner that I, unlike most of her customers, <span style="font-style: italic;">know </span>a thing or two about Spanish. But I know nothing, nothing, except that I like Cuban sandwiches and that I will read every last article the internet ever makes about drug violence in Mexico.<br /><br />This issue of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Paris Review</span> starts with a meandering and kind of self-indulgent piece by the late Edouard Leve, but I love it. It is so hard sometimes to know whether or not I should love something I read, and I found myself questioning myself as I read this one. "Should I really be liking this as much as I am," I will ask. And I never answer myself, but instead answer in the imagined voices of friends. I try to imagine whether Catherine would put the book down or read it in two days. If there is a part of me that suspects I'm being taken in, I imagine Joseph bestowing his inimitable "Ugh," Or if it is good in a way I can't describe, I imagine him giving it a gentle, thoughtful nod with his chin as if he's thinking about Pynchon. If I'm trying to decide what it is about the language that attracts me, I think "what would Dawn say"? It's amazing how little I participate in the formation of my own judgment.<br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" align="right"></div><br /><br /><div style="CLEAR: both; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img style="BORDER-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; BORDER-TOP: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; BACKGROUND: 0% 50%; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; moz-background-clip: initial; moz-background-origin: initial; moz-background-inline-policy: initial" alt="Posted by Picasa" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-32977682627563792102011-05-19T20:53:00.005-04:002011-05-19T21:20:31.967-04:00quick update.<div style="text-align: center;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6A6_WkoWpr7mj2zCnW-r0BQvy7WMiCLI52DC6H1d7YFiHvqctwfUXm8_blFhrIL0SRyGcClqaIjnqbDS8nuGVvQSBE6ZrYZKanN_4rmYIYH7Yc6xTCPPFqA2ozw7V4nMVO_JWRA/s1600/DSC07928.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6A6_WkoWpr7mj2zCnW-r0BQvy7WMiCLI52DC6H1d7YFiHvqctwfUXm8_blFhrIL0SRyGcClqaIjnqbDS8nuGVvQSBE6ZrYZKanN_4rmYIYH7Yc6xTCPPFqA2ozw7V4nMVO_JWRA/s400/DSC07928.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">5 min. ago, the street outside my office during a sudden hard rain storm during the sunset.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9KOHl4SUo-yPtITs7AcFg97XrPA4-sShG5S-P7MLDJCmDqDQCP5grxlOBm3aAVnRBRBcljSmoCigU_igJkCa6F5-7sO-2RwPK-rHbNGRaVxrluHD4wnDIz6ph_clNd1hetnknng/s1600/DSC07892.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9KOHl4SUo-yPtITs7AcFg97XrPA4-sShG5S-P7MLDJCmDqDQCP5grxlOBm3aAVnRBRBcljSmoCigU_igJkCa6F5-7sO-2RwPK-rHbNGRaVxrluHD4wnDIz6ph_clNd1hetnknng/s320/DSC07892.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608597598340756194" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">During the day, about to turn the under-used herb garden into more of a cuttings garden.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYd-1Q96ufWQyE2bH8zLCQ4fpXIZp-NH1ZjZAlHnXgHeQA_zpnBJ-zxtk7PNOjuBwNFKLjPHYOaNPL3429QDEnQWzfoC4Bt7cridEAu1KsHAQGbXA9j42i79ff6ThI98Ct1HTXOg/s1600/DSC07771.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYd-1Q96ufWQyE2bH8zLCQ4fpXIZp-NH1ZjZAlHnXgHeQA_zpnBJ-zxtk7PNOjuBwNFKLjPHYOaNPL3429QDEnQWzfoC4Bt7cridEAu1KsHAQGbXA9j42i79ff6ThI98Ct1HTXOg/s320/DSC07771.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5608596102997165458" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">And the dog, somehow, lives.</span> <span style="font-size:85%;">And is pretty happy, actually.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;">And meanwhile I am in one of those phases where all I want to do is read a long John McPhee book about anything, just read him telling me about the regular Joes he meets in his travels around, this time, Alaska. It's so relaxing. I finished The Leopard recently, too, and I miss the prince a little bit and his untended gardens with their parallel lives</span>. It's striking to me how much that novel reminds me of Faulkner's Hamlet/Town/Mansion trilogy, with the Snopes family standing in for the classless and conniving and ineluctably rising merchant class of Italy.<br /><br />It's that nice part of the school year when all of your planning is pretty much done, the day-to-day obsession with the question that never leaves: "what else can I do to avoid boring these poor students to death?" There is a momentum to this part of the year, and we all feel it, students and teachers both. Or, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who feels that way and everyone else thinks things are dragging on; I've never bothered to ask.<br /><br />But for me, the summer has started in my head, it's true, because the worrying about planning is what invades the rest of my life the most. Now all I do is ration the grading that needs to be done each day, enjoy these last couple of weeks with students I will never know this way again, and then go home to think about my garden and read. And plan for our awesome trip to Spain that is going to be so awesome. <br /><br />So that's where things stand.<br /></div><br /></div><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"> </div> <div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"> </div><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"> </div><div style="clear:both; text-align:CENTER"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-45998365429540147352011-04-24T20:59:00.004-04:002011-04-24T21:18:15.675-04:00<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8UaecZZE9ZQkA6XRCv85U_ORb7Eqg13IYEK1ZlLLEyQ4UTuZ1Jw6pBuQD7o3M1Y629yDmLoqP4XVyUY5yRMgg2VokPlxpY7lB6jXmf9jErXNqM4FI84yeNXO6x6eNNRC78NfbNw/s1600/garden.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8UaecZZE9ZQkA6XRCv85U_ORb7Eqg13IYEK1ZlLLEyQ4UTuZ1Jw6pBuQD7o3M1Y629yDmLoqP4XVyUY5yRMgg2VokPlxpY7lB6jXmf9jErXNqM4FI84yeNXO6x6eNNRC78NfbNw/s320/garden.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5599323130947418722" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">From a fun tumblr called <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://outdoorsanctuaries.tumblr.com/">Outdoor Sanctuaries</a>.</span><br /><br /></div>O, I haven't been here much lately. It happens in spring. One of the nice things about winter is the way it forces you to narrow your focus. Instead of inside and outside things, you can only do the inside, for the most part. The spring happens and, as I said to my friend Clare the other day, I see all these perennial weeds popping out early and I feel like my laundry has been scattered about the yard. All I want to do is be out there doing the yard laundry.<br /><br />I need to start a demanding book of some kind is what I need to do. I'd been avoiding a novel because anything I started would have lain mute in the shadow of Adam Bede, so I went to anthologies like the new Pushcart, short and funny memoirs like Scott Carrier's odd ramble <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Running-After-Antelope-Scott-Carrier/dp/1582431795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303694198&sr=1-1-spell">Running After Antelope</a> and this other one I forget, plus some other stuff like Mark Doty's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Description-World-into-Word/dp/1555975631/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303694163&sr=1-1">The Art of Description</a> and Michael Schmidt's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Poets-Michael-Schmidt/dp/0375706046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303694130&sr=8-1">Lives of the Poets</a>. And they are okay, but without some novel going at the same time I feel a little directionless.<br /><br />So today was warmer than they said it would be, and I was able, after a hearty Easter brunch and a damp egg hunt, to do enough yard laundry to ease my conscience, take the whole family to the driving range, and then come home to start The Leopard. I can already tell it was the right thing to do. The prince has an overripe garden outside, and even the decorated walls of the palace itself are described like a something growing out of control. It feels a little familiar, that is. And now, to go read myself to bed.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-10062788663031610892011-03-11T20:11:00.002-05:002011-03-11T20:32:50.111-05:00<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVXfSLvZ0os1Y8tCqS2NaLVzzEg9GT347DnS-Oa8d1BRjkIPeUwYO4VxUYyAAoCRnn3SGcUgWf9vmnNj0iJskE0AHAt0i8SvbukVH-c0gLlSP87c07lC1B1rEHE4b6bVtaKij1DQ/s1600/DSC07216.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVXfSLvZ0os1Y8tCqS2NaLVzzEg9GT347DnS-Oa8d1BRjkIPeUwYO4VxUYyAAoCRnn3SGcUgWf9vmnNj0iJskE0AHAt0i8SvbukVH-c0gLlSP87c07lC1B1rEHE4b6bVtaKij1DQ/s400/DSC07216.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>O, elementary school. It does not change, cannot be changed. Our first family science fair. Second place for attempting to discover what will happen if you put sugar in different bottles of things and shake them. Based on the first place ribbons I saw, it is clear that the science fair judges of today have a distressing lack of experimental spirit, awarding only those projects that answer questions we all know the answers to: yes, potatoes and lemons still light bulbs, you can still make crystals with a crystal-making kit, heavy things still sink.<br /><br />Second place is reserved, it must be, for the questions that grown ups can't answer and are afraid to find out. And this is why the ribbons are red. The judges are looking in the wrong places.<br /><br />Next year I will bring my own special ribbons--I think they will be black, maybe with an unblinking eye in the center--to award those projects that leave me cold and trembling, the ones that I hurry by, with results that have been slowly sliding down their cardboard boundaries all night and pooling on the folding table below them or that explain their research in a 10 point font named "Scrawl." Until next year. <br /><div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZCvbmTBZyJpAXD2UQ-8JZPIiP-QkMipwv6-dGdbme8e0yx0HjAsylR00vHIVb7bkkraCeGsXab3WBuA9BE010RvN7TsqypYyrLFb_nXLyn30VGnWWkJl2AQG-FG1yj6YuCkIlA/s1600/DSC07214.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPZCvbmTBZyJpAXD2UQ-8JZPIiP-QkMipwv6-dGdbme8e0yx0HjAsylR00vHIVb7bkkraCeGsXab3WBuA9BE010RvN7TsqypYyrLFb_nXLyn30VGnWWkJl2AQG-FG1yj6YuCkIlA/s400/DSC07214.JPG" border="0" /></a> </div>We learned a lot about the Civil War. <br /><div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFbmgwAJHsgXANrw4wwF6Ibqzx4TL38t4a0xwLzJpvzT9XthDBnyxStKYp21DAdtLSAJlsTPfWQYKzQ1_3wNSL-8sBs79zq1MPPuUM9TUQX7BCIxJ9V4eXBvDH8x85OBEQ05pQ3A/s1600/DSC07210.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFbmgwAJHsgXANrw4wwF6Ibqzx4TL38t4a0xwLzJpvzT9XthDBnyxStKYp21DAdtLSAJlsTPfWQYKzQ1_3wNSL-8sBs79zq1MPPuUM9TUQX7BCIxJ9V4eXBvDH8x85OBEQ05pQ3A/s400/DSC07210.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;">And the book is alive and well. <br /></div> </div><div style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://picasa.google.com/blogger/" target="ext"><img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif" alt="Posted by Picasa" style="border: 0px none; padding: 0px; background: none repeat scroll 0% 50% transparent;" align="middle" border="0" /></a></div>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-69488807100771663112011-02-28T20:27:00.003-05:002011-02-28T20:48:59.683-05:00With luck, this will be my last George Eliot post for awhile. Managed to complete <span style="font-style: italic;">Adam Bede</span> this weekend in a torrid session of reading during a rare extended period of silence at home. And the thing is so dang good. Reader, I cried. I'm not sure I was quite ready for the turn the plot takes after Hetty's fate is resolved, but it's still done so beautifully you just don't care. And to drag out the suspense a little Eliot even parades the whole cast of the Poyser farm out for one last ensemble piece at a dinner; we get to meet the bit players in mini-portraits at the table. I had been wondering why we hadn't seen more of the common laborers on the farm, since Eliot seems to love training the lens on them so much. I wish she didn't wait so long to do it here. But at least this last supper scene lets us savor for one last time the phenomenon that is Mrs. Poyser, who might be, of all the Eliot characters I can remember, the one with the quickest, most biting, most creative wit. And then there is a wedding and then it is done.<br /><br />I'm in that rosy period where you remember the book and the characters and you can think about it actively and productively and even authoritatively if you are in such a mood. It won't be long, though, before the particulars will fade and I will remember only broad outlines of things and then I will forget even that and only remember that I loved the experience of reading the book. It will turn into pure feeling. Hopefully, I will have room in my life for a re-read by then.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWwd-Qi93kOmgA0N5xNYztcZPlFwiMzE9x8rmAsvmHKcIeZggvpIheogZkPNe0vgWw9v_7Cl1y_NhLfpgHMYhZ3bG50Y_l3fRXr5WRy2G7l_HF2ZEvyIwAZMeUHM6VcalTEOds1Q/s1600/_horses.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 315px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWwd-Qi93kOmgA0N5xNYztcZPlFwiMzE9x8rmAsvmHKcIeZggvpIheogZkPNe0vgWw9v_7Cl1y_NhLfpgHMYhZ3bG50Y_l3fRXr5WRy2G7l_HF2ZEvyIwAZMeUHM6VcalTEOds1Q/s320/_horses.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5578921748336761506" border="0" /></a>The last couple of days, I've been easing my way through the Patti Smith memoir of her life with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, on recommendation of Sarah Jane, and it's a fun glimpse into 70's NYC. My favorite moments are the scattered impressions she provides of fellow residents at the Chelsea Hotel. Harry Smith, in particular. It reminds me of my days living in the dorms at IU, to be honest.<br /><br />My other first impression is that Smith got taken for a ride by Mapplethorpe, who feigned an emotional connection to her until he could find a male lover with more money. She just seems so naive that it's hard to believe she made it at all there. But she did.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-3243000679114560272011-02-24T16:19:00.004-05:002011-02-24T16:51:08.467-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY3teBwc3Cq0hQOLU9HyAF3_q805yPrdJKm73CoViU1AB8-92OiOZoaoS0Xf-gR9llbHSnRqTQPs0qG8LG0rZkqD5S2X03A5ADEs4_Cj-gb66RtWO9zlGwE5Ax1Oy4kT031IW8NA/s1600/DSC06981.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY3teBwc3Cq0hQOLU9HyAF3_q805yPrdJKm73CoViU1AB8-92OiOZoaoS0Xf-gR9llbHSnRqTQPs0qG8LG0rZkqD5S2X03A5ADEs4_Cj-gb66RtWO9zlGwE5Ax1Oy4kT031IW8NA/s400/DSC06981.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5577369574374424626" border="0" /></a>Another snow day. I've been reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Adam Bede</span> to Smokey today and we are trying to finish it today or tomorrow, but that will be difficult because for lunch I went to my favorite sketchy Mexican restaurant that no one else in my family, except June, will visit with me to eat as much as I could with the $8 I had on me. I was able to eat way too much and still leave $1.50 on the table, so, anyway, I'm now very sleepy as a result. Smokey is, too, as you can see.<br /><br />I am a little disoriented with <span style="font-style: italic;">A.B</span>. right now, what with Hetty's sudden pregnancy and apparent infanticide and all. Was I supposed to know that she was pregnant? Should I have been able to infer that from the desperation of her quest to Windsor in search of Arthur? I'm used to feeling this way when reading Faulkner--stupid, that is--but usually Eliot's talky narrators keep you pretty well filled in on things. I'm hoping that this all ends up as one big mistake, for Hetty's sake, but this does not feel like a hopeful book to me, so I'm trying to keep my expectations modest.<br /><br />It's interesting what time has done to the relationship between the high-class classlessness of Arthur and his "Most likely to have no prospects" milk-made Hetty. At the time it was written, I'm sure Eliot intended this relationship to depict the cruelty and carelessness of the class system as represented by Arthur and his father the squire. Arthur is the bad guy. Today, though, it's a little bit easier for me to see him as a victim of class as much as Hetty is. I mean, I think if it weren't for his "station" and all, he'd be with her, and, dopes the both of them, they'd have just as much a chance at making it as anyone, I suppose. I'm not supposed to, but I think Arthur is just as tragic a figure as I'm sure Adam is going to turn out to be.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-45441880181216498572011-02-22T09:33:00.002-05:002011-02-22T09:36:15.432-05:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN6iSI3NLDivJpqfy7RDwKfdmF0MjeMHCB_A_dBXdNXgOVJWK_UYeLvtsyv9zrS2ZDA7RboUz0cXm66leJAQsGM9QpaHwCrhZ4aB2JlTwM7zOuOHD4q6fl_8V60Tn-DiUsYik1Ng/s1600/boots.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN6iSI3NLDivJpqfy7RDwKfdmF0MjeMHCB_A_dBXdNXgOVJWK_UYeLvtsyv9zrS2ZDA7RboUz0cXm66leJAQsGM9QpaHwCrhZ4aB2JlTwM7zOuOHD4q6fl_8V60Tn-DiUsYik1Ng/s400/boots.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5576522093882794162" border="0" /></a>Oh, so that's where I left them. Actually, this reminds me of a hairy bushwhacking experience I had once on Vancouver Island.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">via </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://paradisexpress.tumblr.com/">paradise express</a><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span></span>Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-60465161272099348832011-02-12T10:51:00.008-05:002011-02-12T12:53:18.245-05:00<div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWn5puNAVSSyOKbTSZbMP9FS_DxDVRXd8a4VPMD0fEc3a5msnQx3nyv5KvecGN4_DuLyqQixKrqBFeoARnSZIunwzw0KajYbQWz_OXKkSIkNbvPH1XDTHf41Vc68FePxkAYBFdOA/s1600/DSC06899.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWn5puNAVSSyOKbTSZbMP9FS_DxDVRXd8a4VPMD0fEc3a5msnQx3nyv5KvecGN4_DuLyqQixKrqBFeoARnSZIunwzw0KajYbQWz_OXKkSIkNbvPH1XDTHf41Vc68FePxkAYBFdOA/s400/DSC06899.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;">A friend of mine de-friended me on fb the other day because of a comment I made to one of his many humorous status updates. His was a witty pro-Kindle provocation, and I responded in what I thought was a similar spirit, but in defense of those of us who still think that the old fashioned book has benefits that can't be reproduced by an lcd screen, back-lit or otherwise.<br /><br />He must have taken it differently, though, as I found out during an awkward exchange when we crossed paths irl recently. The best, most painful, part of our conversation can be paraphrased as follows:<br /><br />Me: "So, did you leave fb?"<br />Him: "er, no."<br /><br />I guess my comment came across as irked rather than good-natured ribbing. I take the blame, though, in my defense, my comment did employ irony and self-deprecation in an attempt to signal my peaceful intentions. What remains to be negotiated is how we are to act when we see each other at our daughters' dance classes. Or if his wife takes their daughter, do I have an obligation to tell her, before we engage in pleasantries, that her husband has de-friended me? I would write a letter to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Ethicist</span> about this, but Randy Cohen has been replaced, and I don't know if I can trust the new guy yet.<br /><br />But at least I am still the friend of the book. Just look at <span style="font-style: italic;">The Leopard</span> up there. I tried to start reading it late last night, but ended up just contemplating the spartan elegance of its cover for a few minutes before falling asleep on the couch.<br /></div> </div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLh3a5cslpUY7KWqiDTydnanFS6j5i1cq1KviTyI9LyuwYZL85pmVCB5OhOqEa39fb58D9nRkQg3JSWaseHvfjGguK3TsUywWdichRu4mLiBTcduzF_NiOfrCxPcrc7CutPGkmg/s1600/DSC06900.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTLh3a5cslpUY7KWqiDTydnanFS6j5i1cq1KviTyI9LyuwYZL85pmVCB5OhOqEa39fb58D9nRkQg3JSWaseHvfjGguK3TsUywWdichRu4mLiBTcduzF_NiOfrCxPcrc7CutPGkmg/s400/DSC06900.JPG" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;">The paperback of <span style="font-style: italic;">Adam Bede</span> I am slowly rationing to myself lately is just as pleasurable to look at and hold. I've decided that one of the critical advantages that books have is their <span style="font-style: italic;">depth of field</span>. They can pose for photo-shoots, for heaven's sake. They look different depending on the light, they have profiles, they can even be coy.<br /></div> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHqocUw8xkwSARR4XrK6KQ8R7DdS0Cf_YYPDVh4MgfpFE9totz7b-fTljJgxDFaPnNXcF6m-XGtVdbNb75MyZY7SFXJbT_lBDKYGj7lER5Mycey3hUkixplXQHsV9MpnxBHueGlw/s1600/DSC06901.JPG"><img alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHqocUw8xkwSARR4XrK6KQ8R7DdS0Cf_YYPDVh4MgfpFE9totz7b-fTljJgxDFaPnNXcF6m-XGtVdbNb75MyZY7SFXJbT_lBDKYGj7lER5Mycey3hUkixplXQHsV9MpnxBHueGlw/s400/DSC06901.JPG" border="0" /></a></div><div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;"> </div> </div>Just look at Hetty here, for example--it took me a lot of shots to capture this expression on her face. She is not the most cooperative of subjects. Whereas the Kindle is all about cooperating with, accommodating, the reader, pragmatism above personality. Who needs friends like that? Unless I am sneaking one into a wedding ceremony, my books are always too big for my pockets. They make me hold their hands, cause me to drop packages as I dig for the house key. By far, these are among the most unaccommodating relationships that I have.Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18133234.post-6328344469399395872011-02-06T11:50:00.002-05:002011-02-06T11:55:13.039-05:00<iframe title="YouTube video player" width="560" height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fpbUNj8j-RE" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br />Sheehey makes #1 Play of the Day! <br /><br />As a school, IU does not dunk a lot. We just are not dunkers, never have been. Back when John Laskowski did the color for IU games and someone dunked, he would actually say "Baston with the dunk shot." Yes, "Dunk shot." Las, former IU player, expressed the general attitude of IU toward on-court flamboyance. I think I can remember every interesting dunk by Calbert Cheaney, Alan Henderson, Jared Jeffries, DJ White, there were so few.<br /><br />But in our last two games we've had a couple of good ones, and this one by freshman Will Sheehey is so fun. As ESPN guy says "Indiana loses, but who cares?"Mr. Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13238870658008166956noreply@blogger.com5