Cocktail Hour
Letter to my Representative by Lia Purpura
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics
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We are very proud to have Lia Purpura join us as our guest poster. She is the author of seven books of essays, poems and translations. Check out her latest book, Rough Likeness, which prompted Philip Lopate to say: “Lia Purpura is at the forefront of the New Essay, and this latest book (her best) takes us much closer into the rough terrain of her quirky mind than she has ever gone before. The surprises and insights keep coming.”
Take it away, Lia:
Letter to My Representative: An Essay
Dear Representative,
Letters are so rare these days, and I believe we are sorely missing what they allow – a chance to feel oneself the sole subject of another’s attention.
Here’s the scene I’ve wanted to tell someone like you about for three years now. I had just finished watching Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth” in a church fellowship hall in Iowa City. It was well advertised and the room was full – students, professors, artist, writers, townspeople of all ages had gathered on this snowy evening. Continue reading →
Reviewing My Reviewers: Part II
categories: Cocktail Hour
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As some of you remember, a few weeks back I reviewed my Amazon reviewer, a strange man named Dobyx who mistook On Golden Pond for Walden. A couple of people suggested that I e-mail Dobyx the link to my post, but I didn’t want to take it too far. (He lives pretty close, up in Duck on the Outer Banks, and I didn’t like the idea of him running down here in his aviator’s cap and sicking his water dog on me.)
Today’s task is a happier one. I want to thank Gina Webb of the Atlanta Journal Constitution for her review this week. It’s been a hard slog getting The Tarball Chronicles out in the world, trying to get folks to listen to a story they don’t really want to hear. How heartening to have someone understand what you are trying to do. It’s not just that it’s a positive review–that’s great of course–but the best part is that she gets it.
(Of course I especially like that she calls the book “a full-strength antidote to the Kryptonite of corporate greed and human ignorance,” which somehow calls for a Bill and Dave superhero cartoon.)
Here’s her review. If you’re short on time, just read the last ‘graph:
The Little Sweep
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 1 comment
This past weekend I was in my first theater production. As a member of the chorus in Benjamin Britten’s opera “The Little Sweep.” Elysia played Sophie, and Juliet was in the chorus, too. A very stressful way to spend time together! And fun! Don’t let me forget to say that! Three more shows this coming weekend, if you’re in the vicinity, paired with A.A. Milne’s short comedy, “The Man in the Bowler Hat.” The talent in this little community is dazzling. I don’t know where to start. But Jane Parker, the musical director, taught us the difficult music with great good humor and dedication (Britten and his dissonance, cantilevered waltzes, rockslides of emotion, and snowdrifts, too). And Dale Hill, the director of both productions, is a kind of wizard. He lets you Continue reading →
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball
categories: Cocktail Hour
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There have been a lot of fine commercials in the history of Saturday Night Live, but my favorite has always been Happy Fun Ball (written by the brilliant Jack Handey and voiced by the great Phil Hartman). Now my daughter Hadley has discovered the happy fun and we repeat phrases from the mock-ad to each other (like “certain types of skin.”)
Enjoy: HAPPY FUN BALL!
Jerry
categories: Cocktail Hour
comments: 3 comments
Not long ago Bill made a bold attempt to attract Deadheads to Bill and Dave’s with his great post, Further, in Portland, Maine.
It occurred to me that that post deserved an official Bill and Dave’s cartoon. So here it is:
Bad Advice Wednesday (Creative Nonfiction: What Kind of Roast Chicken IS This, Anyway?)
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Eat This Image!
Andrea Zeeman, a very sweet and gentle friend of mine was, back in the day, a food stylist. Not a chef, not a cook, not a sandwich maker. What she did was prepare food to be photographed—whole menus for food magazines, sample dishes for cookbooks, convincing chef’s creations for Hollywood. She was brilliant at her work and made a good living because she was indispensable. And the reason the likes of Gourmet Magazine couldn’t live without her was that even the most beautiful, most appetizing dishes photographed as they were, fresh out of the oven, no matter how renowned the chef, looked . . . plain. And sometimes ugly. Or even sickening. Roasted chickens—plump and Continue reading →
Missy and Me
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Who me?
Understanding dawned much too late. When exactly did it come? Perhaps it was the day I looked into the back seat of our car and 
saw that Missy, our new yellow lab, had chewed right through the backseat seat belts, the belts themselves severed and the now-beheaded buckles lying useless on the seats. Perhaps it was the time when she took my black leather journal, the one in which I kept all the notes for my book about the Gulf oil spill, and tore around the back yard, excited about the prospect of an hour’s worth of keep-away. Or perhaps it was earlier when, as a cute little puppy, she ate the siding off our house.
Where’s Bildo?
categories: Cocktail Hour
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I’m on a top-secret mission for Orion Magazine. Any guesses where?
Bad Advice Wednesday: Spend a Week with Bill and Dave
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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So today’s bad advice is really bad advice:
Come spend some time in the mountains writing and drinking with Bill and Dave.
(Quick disclaimer: the following may sound like an advertisement but I’m hoping you’ll see it as more invitation than ad.)
The invitation is to spend a week with us, with Bill and Dave, in the mountains of Western North Carolina. We have recently been invited to co-teach a master class from June 17th to June 23rd at Doe Branch Ink, a mountain retreat 30 miles north of Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I taught there last year and it was great. Great food, great people, great hikes, great (brutal) bikes rides up nearby mountains, great talk about writing, great spaces to write in woods (and at desks). These sorts of weeks are usually about building a small community, something we have tried to do in a virtual way at this site, and often it is the time away from class that proves most valuable. And there are other benefits too. For instance you’ll be able to see Bill try to out-prance the local clog dancers.
Don’t let the fact that we call it a “master class” scare you too much either. The idea is to get a bunch of people together who really care about writing and are committed to the writing life. Here is the copy that Bill wrote for the Doe Branch website: Continue reading →
