Getting Outside Saturday: Costa Rican Critters
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Nice murals, too.
Just a little more from a vacation in tropical nature. Part of the pleasure, of course, was being in the rain forest and on the beaches and in the farmlands with an eleven-year-old, and watching her begin to draw the connections between absolutely everything. Continue reading →
Ira Sukrungruang Comes to Maine
categories: Cocktail Hour / Table For Two: Interviews
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Ira Sukrungruang, Buddhist Boy
I had nothing to do with it–in fact, Ira was invited by my friend Jeff Thomson at the University of Maine at Farmington, but here he came for an evening reading, just last night. I took advantage of his presence to have him for a quick visit here at my house yesterday afternoon, and lucked into a dinner invitation with UMF faculty. I left UMF in 1995 to go to Ohio State. Ira turned up Continue reading →
One on One: Larry Bird vs. John D’Agata
categories: Cocktail Hour
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When I was young a lot of my heroes were writers. But not all of them. One was 6’11” and from French Lick.
Larry’s great strength as a speaker was his directness (“Mosses does eat shit,” being one of his witticisms. See the Churchill Wit.)
And in today’s New York Times he has something direct to say that speaks worlds to the D’Agata/truth in nonfiction brouhaha.
About the play Magic/Bird which just opened on Broadway and on which he consulted, he says:
“My main thing is to get it right. Don’t say my mother said this when she didn’t.”
Magic, of course, takes the softer side: “We just wanted to capture our voice and make sure that, yes, it was an intense and tough rivalry, yet still, I’ve got this personality and Larry’s this subdued cat.”
Sounds a whole lot like “the emotional truth.”
Larry Joe will have none of it: “You wrote that Red said ‘S.O.B.’ but he never swore. ” And on insisting that the writers change the alcohol that Red was drinking to a Shasta: “I don’t ever remember Red drinking.”
Henry and Me (In 3-D and High Def): A Cartoon Essay
categories: Cocktail Hour
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We have been getting a lot more eyes on these pages lately, which seems a perfect excuse to recycle something old as if it’s new (which Thoreau, the thrifty bugger, would have approved of). Anyway here, in a slightly different format, is my cartoon take on my complex relationship with Henry David…….
Bad Advice Wednesday: Decision Time, MFA
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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My Alma Mater, Graduate, at least
I remember waking in the middle of the night, mid-April 1986, wondering where my life was going to go. I’d applied to five MFA programs all around the country, no great logic in my choices (which were strongly geographical, but one) and swung between total confidence and total despair. I was 33 and the idea was to change my life. The letters came in one-by-one. Okay, Montana! I’m in. I’m going. That would be wonderful. I knew Montana well. Or, holy shit, Arizona, which came next. Okay, definitely Arizona, though it was Continue reading →
The Georgia Review Wins It All!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Despite a furious late rally by The Paris Review, The Georgia Review holds on for a statement victory:
Emma, by Jane Austen, Poolside, With Crocodiles
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
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Books in My Suitcase
In college I often was sad for my future self. For one thing, I was sure I wouldn’t have any fun on the millennial new year. I’d be 47 and dull and would have forgotten how to party, if still alive. But I was still alive back then in 2000, and still knew how to party. And still now, too, actually, even further into the Jetson era. Callow college fellows don’t know about the stamina of late middle age. Continue reading →
Spend a Week Writing in Vermont at Wildbranch (as close as we get to an ad)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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MY CLASS LAST TIME AT WILDBRANCH!
Come join us! Last time it was a perfect combination of intense writing, great camaraderie, and a beautiful place.
Empty Nest Syndrome
categories: Cocktail Hour
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That was quick.
Wrens we barely knew thee. After two weeks of begging, and feeding, and begging, and feeding….they’re gone. Just like that. I thought I saw one of the little fellows flying off two days ago, but when I checked the nest they were still there. I was watching rapid-fire feedings like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Both the male and female were coming in under and over the screen door, with worms and insects, and trying to sate the insatiable kids…..
And then yesterday we saw what you see in the photo above. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Rain forest evening
Our trip was vacation. Nothing arduous, small glitches only, comfortable lodging, some of it expensive. Despite which all was exotic, beautiful, elemental, heartening. We started–Juliet, Elysia, and I–with a couple of orienting nights in Alajuela, not too far from the San Jose airport. First morning, Elysia breathed in the heat and light and all the greenery and said, “I love Costa Rica!” And that remained our theme. Second morning, not too early, we took an internal Sansa Continue reading →
