electric urgency

Pudding House Press has just published my chapbook of poetry and flash fiction, Electric Urgency. Of course, chapbooks must be hawked. so, I officially announce the news here! If anyone is interested in buying or reviewing a copy, send $12. to me at paypal (use my email addy: moondoxy@mac.com) or email me or comment here.

I have to say I rather like the book. I'm glad to see the selections I choose together and the cover is growing on me. I think the blank billboards are the electric sort, non-working (thus, urgency); jim thinks I am reading too much into it.

I like the blankness because I can write or draw in there! or, readers can color in their own copies! how cool is that?

Ossabaw Island

As part of the Ossabest Program, I spent three days on the magical (if itchy) Ossabaw Island, a large (26,000 acres) barrier island 20 miles south of Savannah off the coast of Georgia.

or click here
(from wikipedia):
History
Evidence of human presence extends for at least 4,000 years based on pottery shards unearthed from the island's numerous oyster shell middens. It was inhabited by the Guale Indians at the time of the Spanish exploration of the Georgia coast in the early 1500s. Throughout the Spanish mission period the Guale alternately supplied and fought with the Spanish. When English occupation of the area replaced the Spanish in the 1730s, the Guale had moved inland possibly in response to disease and coastal marauding under the Spanish. The earliest English treaties reserved the island as hunting and fishing grounds for the Creek Indians.
In 1758 a group of Creek leaders was persuaded to convey the island to King George II of England. In 1760 the island passed into private ownership and was farmed and timbered with slave labor and was eventually divided into four plantations. After the American Civil War the island was farmed on a small scale by several owners and tenant farmers until the early 20th century. After 1916 it was used as a hunting retreat while owned by a group of wealthy businessman until it was purchased in 1924 by Dr. Henry Norton Torrey and his wife Nell Ford Torrey of Detroit, Michigan.
In 1961 The Ossabaw Foundation created by Eleanor Torrey West and Clifford B. West launched the Ossabaw Island Project as an artistic and scholarly retreat. Over the years the island's solitude and natural beauty served as the setting for such luminaries as: composers Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber; writers Ralph Ellison, Annie Dillard, Olive Ann Burns, and Margaret Atwood ; sculptor Harry Bertoia; and scientist Eugene Odum among many others. The Ossabaw Foundation was also host to The Genesis Project, scientific research and public use and education programs on the island.
In 1978, no longer able to subsidize the artistic, educational, and scientific activity on the island, and eschewing lucrative offers of resort development, Mrs. West and her brother's children chose to sell the island to the State of Georgia as a Heritage Preserve with the understanding that Ossabaw would "be used for natural, scientific and cultural study, research and education, and environmentally sound preservation, conservation and management of the Island’s ecosystem.”

poetry was killing her

Are poets and fiction writers equal but separate? Read what my dear friend, writer Laura Valeri has to say about her experience in her essay in Fiction Writers Review.

a conversation about creativity

between authors Ellen Meister (my good friend) and Saralee Rosenberg in Eclectica.


Thomas Edison once said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Can the same be said about creativity in general? Novelists Saralee Rosenberg, author of Dear Neighbor, Drop Dead, and Ellen Meister, author of The Smart One, had an online chat to discuss this issue.

michael jackson, rip

yay, fat (but not too much)

June 26, 2009 The New York Times
Excess Pounds, but Not Too Many, May Lead to Longer Life

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Being overweight won’t kill you — it may even help you live longer. That’s the latest from a study that analyzed data on 11,326 Canadian adults, ages 25 and older, who were followed over a 12-year period.

The report, published online last week in the journal Obesity, found that overall, people who were overweight but not obese — defined as a body mass index of 25 to 29.9 — were actually less likely to die than people of normal weight, defined as a B.M.I. of 18.5 to 24.9.

By contrast, people who were underweight, with a B.M.I. under 18.5, were more likely to die than those of average weight. Their risk of dying was 73 percent higher than that of normal weight people, while the risk of dying for those who were overweight was 17 percent lower than for people of normal weight.

The finding adds to a simmering scientific controversy over the optimal weight for adults. In 2007, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute reported that overweight adults were less likely than normal weight adults to die from a variety of diseases, including infections and lung disease.

“Overweight may not be the problem we thought it was,” said Dr. David H. Feeny, a senior investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Ore., and one of the authors of the study. “Overweight was protective.”

He said the finding may be due to the fact that a little excess weight is protective for the elderly, who are at greatest risk for dying, or because many health conditions associated with being overweight, like high blood pressure, are being treated with medication.

The study took into account smoking status, physical activity, age, gender and alcohol consumption. It included a separate analysis excluding those who died early in the 12-year period, in order to weed out participants who might have been thin because they were smokers or had an underlying disease, like cancer.

happy Bloomsday!

Dublin ignores recession to celebrate Bloomsday


Tuesday, 16 Jun, 2009

DUBLIN: Thousands of James Joyce fans Tuesday cast aside worries about recession in Ireland to recreate Bloomsday, the fictitious day at the centre of the author’s most famous novel, ‘Ulysses.’

The annual literary hooley involves devoted Joyceans dressing in the fashions of 1904, eating the ‘inner organs of beasts and fowls,’ attending readings and celebrating at various venues and pubs mentioned in the book.

The 700-page Ulysses charts the adventures of the novel’s hero Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising salesman, and young poet Stephen Dedalus as they wander the streets of Dublin 105 years ago.

Bloomsday was first marked in 1929 in Paris, eight years after ‘Ulysses’was completed. It has now become a June 12 to 16 festival for the Irish capital as followers of one of the country’s leading writers flock from around the
world.

Joyce himself famously worried on the 20th anniversary of Bloomsday: ‘Will anyone remember this date?’The first and most famous Bloomsday celebration in Dublin took place on the 50th anniversary in 1954, when a group of writers set off in horse drawn cabs with the intention of visiting all the locations of the novel.

Their odyssey was truncated after stops at several pubs. Followers are similarly diverted today.

There is no official Bloomsday programme said James Quinn of the James Joyce Centre.

‘We have the traditional breakfasts here but there is no co-ordination of events. People wander around and turn up at locations throughout the day for events like the lunch that Bloom had of a gorgonzola sandwich and glass of burgundy.’ Arts Minister Michael Mansergh, who performed a reading in the centre city, described Bloomsday as a ‘unique day for Dublin.’

‘It provides an opportunity for Joycean followers all over the world to celebrate Joyce’s seminal work.

‘It is best celebrated and recognised in his own city. Nowhere else in the world is Bloomsday and indeed Joyce himself commemorated with such enthusiasm.’ Traditionalists dressed up in Edwardian costume, or something resembling it — straw hats, stripy blazers, waistcoats, long skirts, parasols, watchchains and any other trimmings.

For the purists with strong stomachs breakfast was a grilled pork or mutton kidney, slightly singed, but could also include giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart and liver slices fried with crust crumbs.

Any cooked breakfast is acceptable, especially if accompanied by booze.

Aficionados also swam at the Forty Foot bathing spot in the south city visited the Joyce museum in a Martello Tower in Sandycove and bought lemon soap.

‘Anyone who happens to be in Dublin on June 16 who might not have heard about Bloomsday before really enjoys it because there is so much going on,’ said Aine Kavanagh, Dublin Tourism spokeswoman.

‘Its great because it then gives them an interest in Joyce and the various attractions associated with him.’ Joyce, who spent most of his life in exile, had a love-hate relationship with the city of his birth.

‘How sick, sick, sick I am of Dublin!’ he wrote in 1909. ‘It is the city of failure, of rancour and of unhappiness.’ — AFP