You’re Never Alone When You’re with a Drone
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Not too worried about drones? Maybe you should be.
Here’s my cartoon:
And for more on the danger of drones in the woods, here’s my latest blog post at OnEarth… Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Bill Lundgren
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” by Ben Fountain
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
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Ben Fountain
War is a petri dish for the creation of great literature. Setting aside the absence from the “forgotten war” in Korea, the United States‘ recent military engagements have inspired The Naked and the Dead and Catch 22 from World War II and The Things They Carried and Dispatches from the Vietnam War. Yet until recently there has been a glaring absence of a defining work from the War on Terror. Until now. Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Crash Barry
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 →
Guest contributor: Debora Black
Getting Outside Saturday: Debora Bikes Steamboat Springs (a photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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A Bill and Dave Classic: The Top 10 Sexiest Nature Writers in History
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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(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
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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 →
Guest contributor: Bill Lundgren
Lundgren’s Book Lounge: “The River Swimmer,” by Jim Harrison
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
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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 →
Guest contributor: Thierry Kauffmann
No Mountains (a guest post by Thierry Kauffmann)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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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 →
Guest contributor: Crash Barry
Serial Sunday: Crash Barry’s “Tough Island: True Stories from Matinicus, Maine”: Episode Five
categories: Cocktail Hour
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 →
