Kung Fu, Consciousness Change, and Sandy One Year Later
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Orrin Pilkey in Mantoloking (Photo by Jeremy Lange)
Today marks a year since Sandy hit the East Coast. The natural media tendency is to look for “lessons” on the anniversary of any big event. I won’t go that far but it is fair to say that I have noticed some changes since Sandy. When we followed the path of Sandy last February, Orrin Pilkey and I talked about how we were encouraged by the fact that suddenly people were at least talking about ideas that no one had been talking about during our earlier trips on the coast Maybe what was is surprising isn’t the fervor to re-build on the coast–that is same old, same old–but that this time there were actual murmurings about not re-building, and that those murmurings became official with the offer by New York State, backed by Governor Cuomo, to buy land and homes that was in the danger zone. Even the vain Weather Channel jocks, so proud to always be the only ones standing out in the storms (and so outraged when mere civilians dare to go outside and stand next to them) have begun to admit that things like climate change and stronger storms might just be real after all.
As for the damage from the storm itself, it was staggering, even when I saw it four months after Sandy hit. Here are some images taken my the photographer Jeremy M. Lange, who travelled with Orrin and I up the coast: A Sandy Gallery
And here is an excerpt from my Outside magazine piece of the moment when Orrin and I saw the worst of it:
All talking stops when we reach Mantoloking. Four months after the storm and the place still looks like it just survived aerial bombing. The signs of devastation here make that on Long Beach Island look mild. Crumpled houses, houses floating out in the bay, houses cracked in half with their innards—TVs, rugs, lamps, books, and in one even a comfortable looking easy chair—revealed, as if this were some giant’s diorama of a human habitation. All this time passed and the homes remain deserted, the power still off. Huge mansions lie splintered, and, on the bay side, formerly deep-water docks now float not on water but sand and debris. Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Lee Martin
Bad Advice Wednesday: Applying for an MFA Program? Whoa! Not So Fast
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Lee Martin
‘Tis the season when undergraduates’ thoughts turn toward applying for admission to an MFA program, which has me thinking of how different the culture is these days than it was when I got my B.A. in 1978. Although I knew I wanted to write, I also knew I needed a bit more seasoning. In those days, it was assumed that some much necessary time would pass between that undergraduate degree and the attempt to enter an MFA program. It was also very clear that the competition was fierce and admission wasn’t guaranteed. When I finally thought I was ready to try four years after that B.A., I wrote to the Associated Writing Programs and asked them for a list of MFA programs. When it arrived, it was a single sheet of 8 1/2” by 11” paper. The list from the front side continued on the back and stopped about half-way down the page. Continue reading →
My Hall-of-Fame Brother
categories: Cocktail Hour
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As those who read this blog regularly know, I spent twenty years playing ultimate Frisbee. (At last check, 26,000 readers had at least browsed our Bill and Dave’s essay, “Ultimate Glory,” which was noted in this year’s Best American Sports Writing anthology.)
The best thing about the sport, hands down, was getting to be good friends with so many teammates, and two weeks ago one of my teammates, David Barkan, was inducted into the Ultimate Hall of Fame. Ten members of our former team, the Hostages, made it down to Texas for the ceremony. I did not make it but sent along this letter:
He was my first real Frisbee hero.
Others can talk about David Barkan’s long career on the West Coast, his contributions to international Ultimate, and I am a great admirer of these. But it is the early blaze that interests me. That first sighting of this intense guy sprinting around the field, jumping and running and even pivoting faster than anyone else, like some high speed Star Trek creature who moved too fast for the crew to see. I would wager that he still holds the land speed record for the time between conceiving of a huck and the moment the disc left his hand.
Guest contributor: Joseph Longcore
Single Parenting and the Aspiring Writer
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Joseph and Lillie
When Bill asked me to write about being a single parent and a writer I suddenly realized it has been something like 3 years since I’ve written anything. It has definitely been that long since I’ve published anything. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Our Own Dave Thinking 20 Years Out on MSNBC
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Dave explains the role of dunes on MSNBC’s The Cycle Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Kerry Headley
Five Months after the MFA: Getting Friendly with Reality
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Five months ago, I was elated and exhausted. I’d just completed three years in a creative writing MFA program I loved. I’d accomplished that which I had intended: to become a better reader and writer. As I waited for my diploma to arrive in the mail, I allowed myself to read for pleasure, watch trashy television shows online, and sleep—a lot. I enjoyed a few celebratory meals with friends who bought me crème brulee in shot glasses and hibiscus margaritas. They toasted to my success: Girl, you’re fabulous! Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Nina de Gramont
Bad Advice Wednesday: My Top Ten Pieces of Advice
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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The top ten pieces of advice I have received, some of it about writing, some of it about life, in no particular order:
1. My friend Melinda Macinnis said, “Always believe what people tell you about themselves when you first know them.” We were in our twenties at the time, and I think the conversation was about potential love interests. But I have found over and over again, in all kinds of relationships, that this is true. Pay particular attention to the things people tell you by accident.
2. I worked in a bookstore in Chatham with a woman who was a therapist – she’d just moved there with her husband and hadn’t decided whether she was going to set up a practice or retire. Sadly, I can’t remember her name, but I liked her enormously. Diane? Maybe it was Diane. She told me that she never read her own work at a certain time of day because that was when she was most critical and apt toward anguish. A bell went off inside my head, and now I never read my own work in the late afternoon.
Table for Two: An interview with Nina de Gramont
categories: Cocktail Hour / Table For Two: Interviews
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Nina
Bill: Where would you like to have our pretend dinner?
Nina: I wish we could have dinner at The Bombay Club in Harvard Square.
Bill: Ah, perfect! I will order the hydrabadi bagare bagain. Because it sounds like a bargain, at least in Boston talk… And I like eggplant always. So, just quick, before the waiter comes, tell us about your newest novel, Meet Me at the River.
Nina: I will need a moment to choose between the vindaloo and the saag. Also, I just found out The Bombay Club moved to the South End and then closed, which is a travesty, but since this is my imaginary dinner I can be stubborn.
Bill: We can have our imaginary dinner wherever we want! And a ghost restaurant seems appropriate, come to think of it. Though I think they may have reopened in Burlington, Mass. Continue reading →
The New Normal: Meditations from the Rubble Pile
categories: Cocktail Hour
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by Karen Auvinen
A month after the 100-year flood reduced most of Jamestown, CO, my community, to a rubble pile, I hear the click on the door closing as life in the outside world returns to normal. Eyes turn toward the government shut down and the Nobel Prize announcements. Fading from public memory is the image of my friend Nancy’s blue house tipping into James Creek like a collapsed accordion, or the dramatic helicopter rescues—more than Katrina—up and down the Front Range from Lyons and Estes Park to the north, to James, Left Hand, and Fourmile Canyons outside of Boulder. Gone are the visits from the governor and state senators. Fading, too, is the memory of Vice President Joe Biden’s phone message to Tara Schoedinger, our extraordinary mayor.
All Photos by Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post
