So many, and I'm so tired. Not much sleep. Got back last night, far later arrival at home than it should have been due to the muchas problemas des las transportas. Plane, AirTrain, Subway, Taxi. All of 'em.
Maybe start right at the top. We arrived at the Louis Armstrong Airport and went directly to WWOZ, for TR Johnson's Jazz show, "Live From the Market." So there were cuts and talk about Dr. John, particularly his latest (which according to a lunch here in NYC re the Dave Marsh Show on Sirius, is the oldest) version of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In." It was being discussed, along with other Dr. John / Mac Rebennack cuts. The phone rings and it is Dr. John, who says, "I want to talk to Ned." Ned takes the phone and Dr. John says, (re The World That Made New Orleans) "I LOVE that mother-fuckin' book!"
That's to start.
I'm so tired, and so running around, but there is More. Much More.
The Party at the Mother-in-Law is just not even in the middle. Highlight: Fats Domino sent via a proxy an autographed photo of himself and Elvis (yes, THAT Elvis), that was personally addressed to Ned, and which said, "KEEP WRITING!"
More. So Much More. So much More.
University of Delaware tomorrow. Keynote address.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Paz sin Fronteras -- The Juanes Concert, Live Broadcast
Alas we couldn't catch all of it -- 2 pm to 6 pm our time -- because there was a gathering in Brooklyn we had to go to. There we tried to pull it up on our host's computer, but he didn't have the right drivers for the live univision.com broadcast. So we got the top of it, X Alfonso, and we caught the end of it, which, appropriately was maybe the greatest band in the world, Los Van Van.
It made us dance and we wept while dancing. X Alfonso were just so freaking hot! There were so many polyrhythms going on that if one were an acrobat every limb of your body, and your cintura and your booty, and your shoulders, could all be doing a different one. The drummer is a woman, just layin' it down, holding it down. You never saw women playing drums in a Cuban band unless it was an all-woman band. Things have changed so much in the 5 years we haven't been able to be there. Revolutionary youth are changing the world.
There is nothing in the world like Cuban music, performed by Cubans, for Cubans, in Cuba. Nothing.
There were at least a million people in the Plaza de Revolucíon.
The flag of Cuba blowing proudly in the breeze all day was broadcast to the Spanish heritage, Spanish speaking populations of the world. Che's image was also part of that. Imagine how that went over in Miami ....
But most of all you saw all these people, musicians and audience alike, dressed in white, dancing and singing and communicating with each other and their brothers and sisters around the world. How proud the Cubans were today, performing with their sister and brother latinos, from Colombia, from Puerto Rico. At the end of the program they were all weeping too, as Juanes shouted out all the the nations of Latin and Central America.
I miss Cuba so much. Meaning, particularly, I miss our Cuban friends and seeing them there so much.
That's why we cried.
But on Tuesday we go to another great music capital of the world where we CAN see our friends. So we are very, very, very happy.
It made us dance and we wept while dancing. X Alfonso were just so freaking hot! There were so many polyrhythms going on that if one were an acrobat every limb of your body, and your cintura and your booty, and your shoulders, could all be doing a different one. The drummer is a woman, just layin' it down, holding it down. You never saw women playing drums in a Cuban band unless it was an all-woman band. Things have changed so much in the 5 years we haven't been able to be there. Revolutionary youth are changing the world.
There is nothing in the world like Cuban music, performed by Cubans, for Cubans, in Cuba. Nothing.
There were at least a million people in the Plaza de Revolucíon.
The flag of Cuba blowing proudly in the breeze all day was broadcast to the Spanish heritage, Spanish speaking populations of the world. Che's image was also part of that. Imagine how that went over in Miami ....
But most of all you saw all these people, musicians and audience alike, dressed in white, dancing and singing and communicating with each other and their brothers and sisters around the world. How proud the Cubans were today, performing with their sister and brother latinos, from Colombia, from Puerto Rico. At the end of the program they were all weeping too, as Juanes shouted out all the the nations of Latin and Central America.
I miss Cuba so much. Meaning, particularly, I miss our Cuban friends and seeing them there so much.
That's why we cried.
But on Tuesday we go to another great music capital of the world where we CAN see our friends. So we are very, very, very happy.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Pirate the Rapper
i'm a stick me pegleg up yo bunghole, mate
if you try to make off wiv me pieces of eight
i'm a steal yo beats cause it brings me joy
and then i'm gonna bugger me a cabin boy
i do whatever i wants to do
\i got a parrot on my shoulder thass smarter than you
you scurvy dog you wormy beef
i'd bite yo head off if i still had me teef
i say yo ho ho an a bottle of rum
make way, cause here i cum . . .
Yo! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ho!
if you try to make off wiv me pieces of eight
i'm a steal yo beats cause it brings me joy
and then i'm gonna bugger me a cabin boy
i do whatever i wants to do
\i got a parrot on my shoulder thass smarter than you
you scurvy dog you wormy beef
i'd bite yo head off if i still had me teef
i say yo ho ho an a bottle of rum
make way, cause here i cum . . .
Yo! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day. Ho!
The Practice of Domination in Everyday Life
Elsewhere there's been a lively and informative discussion about bullies and bullying, from many aspects.
Thus, this leaped out at me in that context of what is and what makes a bully.
Thus, this leaped out at me in that context of what is and what makes a bully.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
New Orleans Schedule 9/22 - 9/29
The Stone Center - Tulane Website provides some information.
Here's the schedule for The Year Before The Flood appearances, readings and signings next week in New Orleans.
September 22, 4:00 -- straight from the airport to WWOZ, to guest on "Jazz from the Market" with T.R. Johnson
September 23 -- Times-Picyune Book Editor, Susan Larson has done an interview with Vaquero for an article on The Year Before the Flood -- look for it!
September 23, 5:30 -- Reading, Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania
September 24, 6:30 -- Party, Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne*
September 25, 5:30 -- Community Book Center, 2523 Bayou Road
September 26, 6:00 -- Beth's Books / Sound Café, 2700 Chartres St.
*Note that Stooges have been confirmed as the band for the party at the Mother-in-Law. Attendance at this party is highly recommended.
Looking ahead, Vaquero will be back in New Orleans in October, and will do a bookstore event: October 10, 6:00 -- Octavia Books, 513 Octavia Street
AND
October 16 -- Zocalo Public Square in New Orleans "La Nueva Orleans?" Race and Immigration in Post-Katrina America
as well as other events T.B.A in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Here's the schedule for The Year Before The Flood appearances, readings and signings next week in New Orleans.
September 22, 4:00 -- straight from the airport to WWOZ, to guest on "Jazz from the Market" with T.R. Johnson
September 23 -- Times-Picyune Book Editor, Susan Larson has done an interview with Vaquero for an article on The Year Before the Flood -- look for it!
September 23, 5:30 -- Reading, Garden District Book Shop, 2727 Prytania
September 24, 6:30 -- Party, Mother-in-Law Lounge, 1500 N. Claiborne*
September 25, 5:30 -- Community Book Center, 2523 Bayou Road
September 26, 6:00 -- Beth's Books / Sound Café, 2700 Chartres St.
*Note that Stooges have been confirmed as the band for the party at the Mother-in-Law. Attendance at this party is highly recommended.
Looking ahead, Vaquero will be back in New Orleans in October, and will do a bookstore event: October 10, 6:00 -- Octavia Books, 513 Octavia Street
AND
October 16 -- Zocalo Public Square in New Orleans "La Nueva Orleans?" Race and Immigration in Post-Katrina America
as well as other events T.B.A in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
ME TALK PRESIDENTIAL ONE DAY
This. Is. Amazing. "To this day I really don't understand what happened."
as a speechwriter for George W. Bush during the final years of his presidency, I’d seen crises and controversies. But nothing prepared me for the imminent collapse of America’s free-market system.
In Gentleman's Quarterly -- go here.
Matt Latimer worked as one of Dubya’s speechwriters during the president’s final twenty-two months in office. He was there to help sell the surge to a skeptical public. He was there as we pretended that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. And he was there to see a president who failed to grasp his own $700 billion bailout package—even as he was pitching it to the American public on live TV. A disillusioned insider reveals for the first time just how messy things got.The first two paragraphs:
as a speechwriter for George W. Bush during the final years of his presidency, I’d seen crises and controversies. But nothing prepared me for the imminent collapse of America’s free-market system.
I was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building with another speechwriter, a young man named Jonathan. (His last name was Horn; the president nicknamed him Horny.) We were chatting casually when the president’s favorite speechwriter came in. Chris Michel was in his midtwenties, with sandy blond hair. He was usually chipper, though at the moment his face was so pale he must have been the whitest man in the Bush White House. And that was no small accomplishment. Chris had just come from a secret meeting in the Oval Office, and without so much as a hello he announced: “Well, the economy is about to completely collapse.”
In Gentleman's Quarterly -- go here.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Someone Who Knows, On Multiple Levels, Weighs In On Los Libros
The Hound Blog: Put That In Your Pipe and Smoke It!
It is the most fun to read what authentically knowledgable people, who aren't professional reviewers, but may well be professional something else when it comes to music and places and history, think about these books.
The Hound is equally at home in NYC as NO, and knows his music in the way only a guy who owns bars/lounges, programs juke boxes, and has done music radio can.
BTW, Señor K? I think you'd like the Hound's blog, and those that he recommends.
It is the most fun to read what authentically knowledgable people, who aren't professional reviewers, but may well be professional something else when it comes to music and places and history, think about these books.
The Hound is equally at home in NYC as NO, and knows his music in the way only a guy who owns bars/lounges, programs juke boxes, and has done music radio can.
BTW, Señor K? I think you'd like the Hound's blog, and those that he recommends.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Swotting
Up Kate Chopin's The Awakening.
This is difficult, since I don't care for this novel and never did, from the first time I read it back when it was 'rediscovered' as a great lost feminist work.
What I didn't like about it is what was wrong with so much of that wave of feminism back then: an economically prosperous, white protagonist, who possess no sense whatsoever that her context in the world doesn't apply to about 99 percent of it, male or female. In the case of Edna Pontellier, this is further exacerbated by the large number of servants -- of color -- that cushion all aspects of her life everywhere and who are taken as much for granted by Edna and her author as are the other props that decorate and service her life. This kind of blindness runs through much of the so-called feminist fiction written by white feminists of the 70's and 80's. It is solidly bourgeois, it is more about getting what bourgeois men have and that is denied bourgeois women than about an actual progressive liberation (but shoot, almost all progressive movements seem more to be about what men have been taught to value, than about what serves humanity, much less women (snark mode open).
Additionally, feminist literary criticism claims The Awakening as a progenitor of Southern Fiction as a class of American fiction. To me this means the progrenitor of the female character of Southern Fiction as insane and / or suicidal / homicidal and / or both. This female character persists to this very day in Southern Fiction, unfortunately. You have a young woman as a primary character in novel set in the South? She's nuts!
There are elements that are indeed first rate: the eye of the author, the structure, the wit and wordplay that even approach jokes (particularly around music, since Chopin's works are what we hear in The Awakening). The novel's keen observation of much around her makes The Awakening a source of period, location and class information. The Gulf itself in many ways seems at least as much a character as any of the human individuals. There is the continental, particularly French influence of compositional and psychological composition -- a novel by Goncourt, for instance, like Chopin's music, that points the reader's recognition that Edna's taste is superior to the women around her.
I personally like this French sophistication very much. But where is the Zola view of class and privilege, political and economic oppression of the less so? Sometimes I've thought that the disappearance of Edna, the ambiguity around her suicide (did she?), that her body is never seen, is a reaction to the death scenes of Zola's Nana, or Flaubert's Bovary.
It's too bad that Kate Chopin didn't live long enough to absorb Colette's Chérie and The Last of Chérie. She might have reversed the crazy Southern female fiction protagonist right there, then.
I dunno that I'm really competent to talk with a bunch of undergrads about this.
This is difficult, since I don't care for this novel and never did, from the first time I read it back when it was 'rediscovered' as a great lost feminist work.
What I didn't like about it is what was wrong with so much of that wave of feminism back then: an economically prosperous, white protagonist, who possess no sense whatsoever that her context in the world doesn't apply to about 99 percent of it, male or female. In the case of Edna Pontellier, this is further exacerbated by the large number of servants -- of color -- that cushion all aspects of her life everywhere and who are taken as much for granted by Edna and her author as are the other props that decorate and service her life. This kind of blindness runs through much of the so-called feminist fiction written by white feminists of the 70's and 80's. It is solidly bourgeois, it is more about getting what bourgeois men have and that is denied bourgeois women than about an actual progressive liberation (but shoot, almost all progressive movements seem more to be about what men have been taught to value, than about what serves humanity, much less women (snark mode open).
Additionally, feminist literary criticism claims The Awakening as a progenitor of Southern Fiction as a class of American fiction. To me this means the progrenitor of the female character of Southern Fiction as insane and / or suicidal / homicidal and / or both. This female character persists to this very day in Southern Fiction, unfortunately. You have a young woman as a primary character in novel set in the South? She's nuts!
There are elements that are indeed first rate: the eye of the author, the structure, the wit and wordplay that even approach jokes (particularly around music, since Chopin's works are what we hear in The Awakening). The novel's keen observation of much around her makes The Awakening a source of period, location and class information. The Gulf itself in many ways seems at least as much a character as any of the human individuals. There is the continental, particularly French influence of compositional and psychological composition -- a novel by Goncourt, for instance, like Chopin's music, that points the reader's recognition that Edna's taste is superior to the women around her.
I personally like this French sophistication very much. But where is the Zola view of class and privilege, political and economic oppression of the less so? Sometimes I've thought that the disappearance of Edna, the ambiguity around her suicide (did she?), that her body is never seen, is a reaction to the death scenes of Zola's Nana, or Flaubert's Bovary.
It's too bad that Kate Chopin didn't live long enough to absorb Colette's Chérie and The Last of Chérie. She might have reversed the crazy Southern female fiction protagonist right there, then.
I dunno that I'm really competent to talk with a bunch of undergrads about this.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Nearly Incandescent From So Much Interaction
With so many people of such brain power and achievement over this action-packed period of hours. Whew!
Africans, Europeans, Usians, Afro-Latins, Caribbeanists, artists-musicians-dancers-scholars, academics, non-academics -- what everyone had in common was a high level of accomplishment and a personal relationship with Bob Thompson of love and respect.
I am trashed, physically from all this -- so much standing, so much sitting in non-ergonomic seating, all of which play havoc with the damaged cervical and spinal vertebrae -- but the experiences, the new knowledged I acquired, the new relationships, the strengthening of previous ones -- more than made this weekend at Yale worthwhile. I am so appreciative of this privilege.
There was the same number of women participating in this event as featured presenters and honorees as men, which so often in this context is not the case. There were men and women of color -- latinos, Caribbeanists, Africans, in at least equal numbers as white Americans. This IS who Dr. Thompson is. I talked with the principal organizer of this symposium and dinner in honor of Dr. Thompson's life achievement, and his contributions to Yale, and mentioned this. He said, "You wouldn't have dared tried anything else if you are honoring Bob." There are so many of such accomplishment that have been influenced directly by him, it was a terrible and lengthy process to whittle down the qualified candidates to anything remotely manageable, and then fill the few available slots. They put in tremendous hours to get this right.
Among the large number of brilliant take-aways, it's impossible to pick and choose, which one best liked, but maybe it was learning about Malian botanical magics and, again, re Mali, the artist of bird masquerade.
Africans, Europeans, Usians, Afro-Latins, Caribbeanists, artists-musicians-dancers-scholars, academics, non-academics -- what everyone had in common was a high level of accomplishment and a personal relationship with Bob Thompson of love and respect.
I am trashed, physically from all this -- so much standing, so much sitting in non-ergonomic seating, all of which play havoc with the damaged cervical and spinal vertebrae -- but the experiences, the new knowledged I acquired, the new relationships, the strengthening of previous ones -- more than made this weekend at Yale worthwhile. I am so appreciative of this privilege.
There was the same number of women participating in this event as featured presenters and honorees as men, which so often in this context is not the case. There were men and women of color -- latinos, Caribbeanists, Africans, in at least equal numbers as white Americans. This IS who Dr. Thompson is. I talked with the principal organizer of this symposium and dinner in honor of Dr. Thompson's life achievement, and his contributions to Yale, and mentioned this. He said, "You wouldn't have dared tried anything else if you are honoring Bob." There are so many of such accomplishment that have been influenced directly by him, it was a terrible and lengthy process to whittle down the qualified candidates to anything remotely manageable, and then fill the few available slots. They put in tremendous hours to get this right.
Among the large number of brilliant take-aways, it's impossible to pick and choose, which one best liked, but maybe it was learning about Malian botanical magics and, again, re Mali, the artist of bird masquerade.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Abercrombie, Joe. (2009) *Best Served Cold*. Orbit, New York
It seems that the first day of autumn rolled in this morning. Since summer didn't show up until August it does seem too soon. But then, we are going to be on a real campus this weekend, so that I feel invigorated by the sense of snap in the air today is appropriately seasonal. A sharp contrast with yesterday, which was pillowed in the humidity pushed up from the south by another tropical storm.
Among yesterday's many tasks, I had to return a book to the library, where I scored a winner -- Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night on cd. Since finishing Donaghue's late 18th C historical novel, Life Mask I had failed to find any audio book that worked for my work-outs. When I find one, I settle in for several hours for often several weeks -- Life Mask was 19 discs that played for about 70 minutes each. It's hard to transition out of the world that one's workout has signaled entry into after so long. Finding the right workout book is not easy.
In any case, I followed Donaghue's Life Mask on cd, with a print book, Joe Abercrombie's 15th-century Italian flavored fantasy, Best Served Cold. Along with Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (also experienced via cd) and Treason's Shore by Sherwood Smith, these were the novels that held my interest this summer.
Best Served Cold is signally composed with more originality and sharply limned characters than many Fantasies. This isn't easy to do, since thousands of Fantasy works have been published, and published in ever more numbers every month since LOTR created this new publishing genre -- and demographic audience.
What I liked most about Best Served Cold is the picture it provides of the terrible harm private mercenary armies are to everyone. They are fighting a war for their own profit. They collude with each other to drive up prices, throw battles and wars, betray each other and their employers, create wars where there are none. You have to think about Blackwater and, at last accounting, nearly 200 other private militias that are getting U.S. military contracts. If you ever thought privatizing a national military is a good idea, you should read this novel of Abercrombie's, particularly p. 239. But surely there's no one in these current real world militias who is a classic likeable rogue like the former merc General, Nicomo Cosca, in Best Served Cold.
Like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Mercy (2008), and Sherwood Smith's conclusion to her Inda series, Treason's Shore (2009), Best Served Cold is a Fantasy novel that feels infused with current political events and catastrophes. But readers who read to escape the real world, never fear! Though this deep connection to contemporary events and conditions is successfully accomplished, none of these works will lose anything in depth or effectiveness as all these events disappear from our national attention deficit disordered mind.
This may be the first Fantasy novel that has a character of agency who is an autistic, just on the edge of functioning. Friendly has no bonds with other humans, or booty, or power. He's not likely to commit betrayal. He counts things, anything. His dice are his comfort objects. He is happy and content in prison, where the rigid routine allows him to feel safe. He's a splendid addition to any group of thugs or soldiers because he loves the dice, and he never miscounts. He's a methodical killer in a fight or battle, counting, counting, counting. He's a sudden savage killer when the numbers are wrong or someone has broken his comfort routines. Friendly provokes the reader into thinking about what the chances were back in such times and conditions of autistic persons surviving at all.
Morveer is the chemist/alchemist/master of poisons-for-hire. Morveer reminds one of certain portraits of Merlin, including TNH's description of the "unreliable magician" in her current "Re-reading Sandman" here, and which others like Kit Kerr have also discussed at different times -- Kit has also employed this specifically in her Deverry works. Most of all it is Morveer's relationship with his apprentice that recall a twisted Merlin, a penetrating reading of that odd end of Merlin's life with the entry of Viviene, she who wished to learn all his magic and secrets. The Merlin parallel feels most strong around p. 195. However, you will be surprised how this narrative strand plays out.
The two 'primary' characters are the peasant turned mercenary general, the ruthless and brilliant strategist-swordswoman, Monza Murcatto, and Caul Shivers, a Viking sort, who has foolishly followed advice proferred at home and come south to become a better man, rather than a killer and seeker after ephemeral booty. It's seldom I see actors in the role of fictional characters, but I couldn't get rid of the image of Shivers as Sex and the City's Aiden: hunky, competent, unsizzling personality, dull of expression, and twice jilted by Carrie Bradshaw. There are many more characters than these, but these are the most successful, with the most page time. All of them betray each other and re-align frequently.
The structure of the novel includes a variety of time periods, a variety of charcters and multi-threaded narrative lines. These are written with an admirable deftness. Nor does the prose plod. The opening section is some brilliant satiric repartee by deeply knowing, profoundly cynical characters who know each other better than they want to, and have loyalty to nothing or anyone. At first you can't believe what you are reading -- you think this author is maybe an untalented sap and you're going to close the book. But that's not what is going on. It's a brilliant bit. And something that's included in this bit, is there, at the very end of the novel.
What was problematical for this reader concerning the novel was the name Abercrombie gave the featured region of his world-building -- Styria. My eyes and brain insisted on seeing Syria every damned time, which threw me out of where we are. Nor did it feel like a name that would be found on the 15th Century latinum peninsula, of which this tale of warring city states is so reminiscent -- as well as of Mario Puzo's The Family (2001), featuring the Borgias, with historical characters including Niccolò Machiavelli.
This novel was just about perfect for this reader -- see, in 'my interests': betrayal. It feels significantly superior to Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy. This may be because the world is so emphatically modeled upon a historical time and place, and historical characters. There was more than one very strong female warrior in that period of the warring papal and city states.
Hopefully, Best Served Cold is the stand-alone work it appears to be.
Among yesterday's many tasks, I had to return a book to the library, where I scored a winner -- Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night on cd. Since finishing Donaghue's late 18th C historical novel, Life Mask I had failed to find any audio book that worked for my work-outs. When I find one, I settle in for several hours for often several weeks -- Life Mask was 19 discs that played for about 70 minutes each. It's hard to transition out of the world that one's workout has signaled entry into after so long. Finding the right workout book is not easy.
In any case, I followed Donaghue's Life Mask on cd, with a print book, Joe Abercrombie's 15th-century Italian flavored fantasy, Best Served Cold. Along with Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (also experienced via cd) and Treason's Shore by Sherwood Smith, these were the novels that held my interest this summer.
Best Served Cold is signally composed with more originality and sharply limned characters than many Fantasies. This isn't easy to do, since thousands of Fantasy works have been published, and published in ever more numbers every month since LOTR created this new publishing genre -- and demographic audience.
What I liked most about Best Served Cold is the picture it provides of the terrible harm private mercenary armies are to everyone. They are fighting a war for their own profit. They collude with each other to drive up prices, throw battles and wars, betray each other and their employers, create wars where there are none. You have to think about Blackwater and, at last accounting, nearly 200 other private militias that are getting U.S. military contracts. If you ever thought privatizing a national military is a good idea, you should read this novel of Abercrombie's, particularly p. 239. But surely there's no one in these current real world militias who is a classic likeable rogue like the former merc General, Nicomo Cosca, in Best Served Cold.
Like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Mercy (2008), and Sherwood Smith's conclusion to her Inda series, Treason's Shore (2009), Best Served Cold is a Fantasy novel that feels infused with current political events and catastrophes. But readers who read to escape the real world, never fear! Though this deep connection to contemporary events and conditions is successfully accomplished, none of these works will lose anything in depth or effectiveness as all these events disappear from our national attention deficit disordered mind.
This may be the first Fantasy novel that has a character of agency who is an autistic, just on the edge of functioning. Friendly has no bonds with other humans, or booty, or power. He's not likely to commit betrayal. He counts things, anything. His dice are his comfort objects. He is happy and content in prison, where the rigid routine allows him to feel safe. He's a splendid addition to any group of thugs or soldiers because he loves the dice, and he never miscounts. He's a methodical killer in a fight or battle, counting, counting, counting. He's a sudden savage killer when the numbers are wrong or someone has broken his comfort routines. Friendly provokes the reader into thinking about what the chances were back in such times and conditions of autistic persons surviving at all.
Morveer is the chemist/alchemist/master of poisons-for-hire. Morveer reminds one of certain portraits of Merlin, including TNH's description of the "unreliable magician" in her current "Re-reading Sandman" here, and which others like Kit Kerr have also discussed at different times -- Kit has also employed this specifically in her Deverry works. Most of all it is Morveer's relationship with his apprentice that recall a twisted Merlin, a penetrating reading of that odd end of Merlin's life with the entry of Viviene, she who wished to learn all his magic and secrets. The Merlin parallel feels most strong around p. 195. However, you will be surprised how this narrative strand plays out.
The two 'primary' characters are the peasant turned mercenary general, the ruthless and brilliant strategist-swordswoman, Monza Murcatto, and Caul Shivers, a Viking sort, who has foolishly followed advice proferred at home and come south to become a better man, rather than a killer and seeker after ephemeral booty. It's seldom I see actors in the role of fictional characters, but I couldn't get rid of the image of Shivers as Sex and the City's Aiden: hunky, competent, unsizzling personality, dull of expression, and twice jilted by Carrie Bradshaw. There are many more characters than these, but these are the most successful, with the most page time. All of them betray each other and re-align frequently.
The structure of the novel includes a variety of time periods, a variety of charcters and multi-threaded narrative lines. These are written with an admirable deftness. Nor does the prose plod. The opening section is some brilliant satiric repartee by deeply knowing, profoundly cynical characters who know each other better than they want to, and have loyalty to nothing or anyone. At first you can't believe what you are reading -- you think this author is maybe an untalented sap and you're going to close the book. But that's not what is going on. It's a brilliant bit. And something that's included in this bit, is there, at the very end of the novel.
What was problematical for this reader concerning the novel was the name Abercrombie gave the featured region of his world-building -- Styria. My eyes and brain insisted on seeing Syria every damned time, which threw me out of where we are. Nor did it feel like a name that would be found on the 15th Century latinum peninsula, of which this tale of warring city states is so reminiscent -- as well as of Mario Puzo's The Family (2001), featuring the Borgias, with historical characters including Niccolò Machiavelli.
This novel was just about perfect for this reader -- see, in 'my interests': betrayal. It feels significantly superior to Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy. This may be because the world is so emphatically modeled upon a historical time and place, and historical characters. There was more than one very strong female warrior in that period of the warring papal and city states.
Hopefully, Best Served Cold is the stand-alone work it appears to be.
Nice Review -- With Odd Typo
For some reason at one point 'Sublette' becomes 'Lunette.'
This is the first review that has taken the memoir aspect front and center. Written by the book editor of the Christian Science Monitor, this one is particularly pleasing.
This is the first review that has taken the memoir aspect front and center. Written by the book editor of the Christian Science Monitor, this one is particularly pleasing.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Labor Day in America
Where are the jobs then, that we all stayed in school to have?
A librarian who is just, yanno, asking the hard questions of the ruling class establishment D.C. administration(s). A librarian's function is to provide information, and if she doesn't have it, go out and find it.
Is this the actual reason so many were so wigged that Obama was addressing school children to encourage them to work hard at learning? Alas, naw, don't think so. Because if it was, that would be meaningful, and not be crazy. But one can't help but speculate that there just might be some connection between the crazy and no jobs, of some kind, somewhere.
A librarian who is just, yanno, asking the hard questions of the ruling class establishment D.C. administration(s). A librarian's function is to provide information, and if she doesn't have it, go out and find it.
Is this the actual reason so many were so wigged that Obama was addressing school children to encourage them to work hard at learning? Alas, naw, don't think so. Because if it was, that would be meaningful, and not be crazy. But one can't help but speculate that there just might be some connection between the crazy and no jobs, of some kind, somewhere.
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Each story is hyperlinked to the sources. From Project Censorship's "The News That Didn't Make the News:"
■#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
■# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
■# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
■# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
■# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
■# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
■# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
■# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
■#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
■# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
■# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
■# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
■# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
■# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
■# 15 Worldwide Slavery
■# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
■# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
■# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
■# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
■# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
■# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
■# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
■# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
■# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
■# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Tonight -- Enyenison Enkama
At Joe's Pub (Vaquero's playing there November 20th, I believe).
A full description of what this is about can be found here. This is exciting. You don't hear Abakuá outside of Cuba or the Calabar very often. The Abakuá are part of my ritualist home. More about the Abakuá here in an interview Vaquero did with Ivor Miller. Ivor will be playing with the group tonight.
Last night's full moon was spectacular. It's a beautiful weekend here.
In the meantime we finally scored some decent arugula, to go with our cheese tortellini's with mushrooms and tomatoes. Also, magnificent homemade pesto classico, mozzella cheese and bread. We are going to have a lovely dinner before going out, under this brilliant fat white moon!
A full description of what this is about can be found here. This is exciting. You don't hear Abakuá outside of Cuba or the Calabar very often. The Abakuá are part of my ritualist home. More about the Abakuá here in an interview Vaquero did with Ivor Miller. Ivor will be playing with the group tonight.
Last night's full moon was spectacular. It's a beautiful weekend here.
In the meantime we finally scored some decent arugula, to go with our cheese tortellini's with mushrooms and tomatoes. Also, magnificent homemade pesto classico, mozzella cheese and bread. We are going to have a lovely dinner before going out, under this brilliant fat white moon!
Honest Scrap
Citizen K awarded Fox Home the Honest Scrap Blog Award according to his own criteria, which are:
Foxessa at Fox Home takes her stands with notable integrity and compassion. I can always count on her to provide a different and thought-provoking perspective on any issue she chooses to address.Honest Weblog Award Rules:
1. You must brag about the award. (Done)
2. You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to that blogger. (Done)
3. You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. (See below)
4. Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with the Honest Weblog Award. (See below)
5. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. (Ten? I have to do ten?)
Then pass it on with the instructions!
- The Tiger Beatdown is the personal blog of professional, feminist blogger, Sady Doyle (you can see some of her work on salon.com's Broadsheet, for instance). She is one of those young feminists who makes me just love them: they are geeks, they are witty as all hell, and often very funny, and almost always right on the money. She often has guests on this personal blog. She does not back down evah, but she will reconsider and will admit she's wrong if she thinks she is.
- Story and Truth belongs to Brit critic, reviewer, musician, writer, Dan Hartland and his wife, Anna French. For quite some time Dan's been going through the Sherlock Holmes ouvre, analysing why the story is effective and successful. He and Anna say: "The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see." Often writers of books he's discussed will show up to present their viewpoint, when it doesn't agree with Dan's.
- Premium T's blog is filled with the beauty with which she walks through her beautiful world. I express it this way because she creates beauty as well as takes note of the beauties found in her daily life, that she shares with us through her poetry, her photographs, her food and in any other way that she is prompted to put her hands to. However, she's never sticky sweet, cloying or in lalala land. She sees what is there. Perhaps some might think that peace and beauty loving T isn't an appropriate candidate for an honest scrap. But when it comes to fighting for what is right, again, in those daily battles we all face, such as insurance companies and so on, she does not give up and she does not give in. It is my conviction that if there were more T's in the world, there would be less need for other kinds of scrappers.
- Geek Feminism Blog is a group blog of young feminist geeks who write, again, with wit and snark, about the issues of women in the digital worlds. Additionally, you can appeal to them for help with your all your digital woes, as well as learn more about computing and coding than you thought you could learn -- while enjoying yourself and their voices. They too are why I fell in love with young(er) feminists! If you are in a wrangle, these are the people you want to be with!
- The Angry Black Woman has guest voices, though it is mainly Tempest's blog, who also is a young feminist of color, a geek and a writer. This blog covers from the perspective of people of color, particularly women of color, the constant issues they are still facing in the freakin' 21st C, such as putting your hands on your friends' dreads is made of massive fail! Now you may think this is non-issue, but if so, you are a person who, learning about this, will be empowered to better share the spaces we all share. Are we seeing a theme here? Young(er) feminists, who write, who love sf/f among other literatures, who are willing to share space with other voices, who believe in community building, who are totes cool and handy with the digitals, who are warriors, in the most positive, productive way of the warrior, warriors all communities need.
- Asking the Wrong Questions is the personal blog of critic and reviewer Israeli Abigail Nussbaum. Among other publications, she, like Dan, writes for Strange Horizons, a web sf/f magazine that pays its writers. On her blog Abigail writes about a variety of books, television and movies. Lively discussions ensue.
- Dar Kush is the blog of television and film writer and novelist, Steven Barnes. His wife is the writer and novelist Tananarive Due; they have a child. Steve regularly discusses on his blog the means for building strong life committed relationships, that even within a strong marriage it can be difficult to rear a child, particularly if the child is difficult, and when your own childhood was fraught (and whose childhood wasn't? he likes us all to keep in mind). His politics are fairly conservative, often even on issues that are the concerns of POC. He's very different, for instance from Tempest, or me, for another. I don't always agree with him. I often think he's wrong. A lot of what he writes about feels sooooo L.A. / Hollywoodish, and this midwestern farm girl finds his newish age approaches silly sometimes. So what? It's his life, and we all have the right and obligation to work out what works for us. That we can and should work on living our lives right, rather than passively accept misery of any kind, is his philosophy, and who can disagree with that? More to the point, Steve's positions are not necessarily predictable, which shows again how carefully he thinks his positions through.
- The 34th anniversary of our first date was this week -- the same night as the B&N reading and signing, the first public reading from The Year Before the Flood.
- I believe that Cuba is brilliant at defense and protection of her people, pets and animals when threatened by hurricanes.
- I loathe salmon. Perhaps I've never been served any but farm salmon, and these fish are fat and flabby due to lack of exercise and force feeding of unnatural food.
- I have significantly impaired vision.
- We have the best friends!
- I have always been blonde.
- I have never voted for a republican.
- I like the company of horses, cats and dogs and many other animals.
- I believe heaven is July, spent at a midwestern fresh water lake.
- I have not yet been to India.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Marcus Rediker Teaches His "The Slave Ship: A Human History" in Prison
If you haven't read any of Rediker's books, much less The Slave Ship, you need to, particularly if you have an interest of any kind in naval history. It's terrible reading, but necessary reading.
Rediker's was teaching his Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, in Auburn prison, located in upstate New York, via a program sponsored by the Cornell University Prison Education Program (CPEP). This moved on by natural interest by the predominately black prisoners to his latest book, The Slave Ship.
He describes his experience, "Inside Auburn Prison: Teaching The Slave Ship to Prisoners," on Counterpunch, here.
That the predominately black prison population of this nation would be interested in these subjects is not surprising. How well educated they are in these matters, the lengths they go to learn these matters, might be surprising to some
Rediker's was teaching his Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, in Auburn prison, located in upstate New York, via a program sponsored by the Cornell University Prison Education Program (CPEP). This moved on by natural interest by the predominately black prisoners to his latest book, The Slave Ship.
He describes his experience, "Inside Auburn Prison: Teaching The Slave Ship to Prisoners," on Counterpunch, here.
That the predominately black prison population of this nation would be interested in these subjects is not surprising. How well educated they are in these matters, the lengths they go to learn these matters, might be surprising to some
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
OK -- When and What Is The Reformation?
Last night we were at a small Lutheran college, addressing a senior class in a course in the Communications Dept. "Media and Business."
Only one person in the entire class of 30 + had heard of the Reformation. None of them knew what Reformation was. Two members thought it was the Renaissance, but they didn't know what the Renaissance was either.
Only one person in the entire class of 30 + had heard of the Reformation. None of them knew what Reformation was. Two members thought it was the Renaissance, but they didn't know what the Renaissance was either.
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