Cocktail Hour
Serial Sunday: Crash Barry’s “Tough Island: True Stories from Matinicus, Maine”: Episode Six
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Episode Five
[To read episode 5, click here][To read Episode 4, click here][To read Episode 3, please click here][To read Episode 2, please click here][To start at the beginning with Episode One, please click here]
Deputy Jerold Day got run off the island on a beautiful spring day, about a month after the pistol-whipping. Since attacking Alex, he’d gotten the cold shoulder from every islander. No one waved at him on the road or acknowledged him at the post office or the store. His kids – a pair of goofy, home-schooled teenage boys – were cruelly mocked and taunted. The worst harassment, however, occurred under the cover of darkness. Someone poisoned the deputy’s geese and threw a bucket of black oil paint on his white truck. Rumors circulated of shots being fired at his house, but no bullet holes were visible. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Debora Bikes Steamboat Springs (a photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 8 comments
A Bill and Dave Classic: The Top 10 Sexiest Nature Writers in History
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 15 comments
(Note: Bill and I felt it was only right to exclude ourselves from this competition. )
IN REVERSE ORDER…….
NUMBER 10: JOHN MUIR
(Here’s the link to where this photo orginally appeared.)
Bad Advice Wednesday: Start Everywhere
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
comments: 3 comments
An Early Draft
Here’s a test exercise to invoke as you’re writing a book or story, a play or essay, really anything: flip to any page thereof and declare any paragraph or scene you find there the first paragraph or scene of the work in hand. And read as if it were. Read it aloud. Does it rise to the occasion? It should. Does it inspire a new way of thinking about your material or story? It might. Does it seem to cast a different character or idea or storyline in a newly leading role? Think about that (all of our characters are the stars of their own stories). Is the voice and timbre and delivery and energy and interest and draw and promise everything the original start was? The current finish? It better be. No room for slacking anywhere, never. Every paragraph (or scene) should be rich enough to be the first. Repeat. Continue reading →
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “The River Swimmer,” by Jim Harrison
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
comments: 1 comment
Jim Harrison
As readers we all have our favorites–authors whose work seems to speak directly to us and resonate in our very bones. For me Jim Harrison is one of those writers and now we are graced with a new collection of novellas, The River Swimmer, that further enhances Harrison’s legacy as a writer with “immortality in him.” Continue reading →
No Mountains (a guest post by Thierry Kauffmann)
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 6 comments
Thierry Kauffmann
There were binoculars, pointed at the stage like mirrors of a telescope, there were eyes probing the darkly lit hall until they had found the keys of the piano, and the hands, that moved those keys. The music, essential and articulated, resonated its simple brillance in the packed hall. That night, the first Tchaikovsky piano competition had been won by a young man from Texas. The year was 1958, the man was Van Cliburn. Continue reading →
Serial Sunday: Crash Barry’s “Tough Island: True Stories from Matinicus, Maine”: Episode Five
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 2 comments
Episode Five
[To read Episode 4, click here][To read Episode 3, please click here][To read Episode 2, please click here][To start at the beginning with Episode One, please click here]
Ever since the first white settler, Ebenezer Hall, a notorious thief and scoundrel, got scalped in 1757 by the local Indians who owned Matinicus, a mist of violence has loomed like low hanging fog, enshrouding the island in a bad reputation. Mostly because of a few loud, bad apples. Stabbings. Arson. Fisticuffs. Sucker punches. Cold-cockings. Ass-kickings. Home invasions and destruction. Murderous threats and name-calling. Guns aimed. Shots fired. People wounded. All part of island history and lore. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: New Leaves (a double photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
comments: 2 comments
Beech
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “The Astral,” by Kate Christensen
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
comments: 1 comment
Kate Christensen, author of The Astral
Among the wealth of pleasures of working in a bookstore like Longfellow Books, with its family of literate customers and colleagues, is learning about treasures that might, in another lifetime, have passed unnoticed. A recent serendipitous connection led me to Kate Christensen’s The Astral and the acquaintance of her protagonist Harry Quirk, one of the more finely drawn and winsome characters to be found in recent fiction.
21 Blocks: A Firsthand Account of April 19th in Watertown
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 7 comments
Greetings all Bill and Dave’s readers.Dave has been trying to get me to write this since the night the 2nd Marathon bomber was captured,but alas,I’m not a writer and have none of the discipline that true writers possess. I do,however,possess tremendous discipline to put fishing above almost everything else I do. So that’s my excuse.I’ve been busy fishing.
21 Blocks
I have lived in Watertown,Massachusetts for 21 years. I love Watertown. Even though it’s only 5 miles from downtown Boston it has a decidedly non-urban feel to it. Quiet neighborhoods are home to people of all ethnicities where at no time have I ever felt threatened or concerned for my safety.
On Monday April 15th I left my apartment at 1 pm and drove 30 miles west to meet a good friend of mine who was up in the area on business and go fishing at Wachusett Reservoir. Not only is Wachusett my favorite place to fish, the reservoir also supplies the city of Boston and my town as well with our drinking water. We fished all afternoon and into the evening oblivious to what had happened at 2:50pm in Boston. Only after getting to the hotel at 9 pm did we find out about the bombings at the Boston Marathon. Shocked and horrified we sat glued to the tv screen while being brought up to date about the events of that tragic afternoon. All we could do was shake our heads in disbelief and feel bad for those who were killed or injured. Not a great night.
The next 2 days, the 16th and 17th, we also went fishing because that was our original plan and we weren’t going to change it. While I was concerned, appalled and angry about the bombings I was at that time far enough away not to feel threatened. All that changed beginning the night of the 18th when I was back home in Watertown.
I remember being half asleep the phone ringing and on the answering machine hearing an automated message from the Watertown Police saying that there was an “active incident” and for all residents to remain in their homes. I thought to myself “great, I’m already in my home” and fell back to sleep. It never dawned on me that they might be talking about the search for the bombing suspects.
On Friday the 19th I woke up at 6:30 AM fired up to go fishing out at Wachusett. I made coffee and sat down to check out the weather report on the local news. The first thing I saw on the screen were the words NO ONE ALLOWED IN OR OUT OF WATERTOWN. That was Continue reading →
