 Red Room Writer Profile
|
|
Steve Hauk's Blog
November 16, 2009
- I've about had it with the big box stores. Today Nancy and moi trailed through four or five of them, logging 8,000 steps on my pedometer. The one good thing about these stores being, of course, you get a lot of exercise, even if someone pushes you in a cart. If they were smart they'd advertise: ``Shop your way to a trim waistline.''In any case, if I can get the backing – and I expect millions ...
- Continue Reading » 4 Comments
November 6, 2009
- My friend Farnsworth, a Wall Street stockbroker, called last night and said, ``How's the writing game going?'' `` So-so at best.'' I said. ``Same here,'' said Farnsworth. ``Well,'' I said, ``from the news, I see that at least you and much of Wall Street just got your swine flu shots, unlike the rest of us, including women and children.'' ``Yep, and naturally everyone's making a big deal out ...
- Continue Reading » 12 Comments
November 4, 2009
- The town Robert Louis Stevenson nearly burned down (wondered if the moss hanging off live oak trees burned, so took a match and . . . ), that Clark Ashton Smith and Steinbeck wrote in. . .Pacific Grove, California . . . could be without a library. There's a parcel tax on yesterday's ballot to keep the library going. Nancy's on the library board, works hard like others, hours of calls to get ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
November 1, 2009
- Got confused by the recent political Town Hall Tea Parties. For one thing, no one served tea. But a lot of yelling about health and insurance. Well, then, they should have serrved tea, a great source of antioxidants, especially if you drink green tea. The Cleveland Tea Party, of course, was a great symbol of American spirit, when we tossed, at the behest of the coffee lobby, all that damn ...
- Continue Reading » 21 Comments
October 28, 2009
- Talll, gaunt man in coveralls, plaid shirt, hat pulled down low, walks on. Same Actor who plays Christopher Marlowe, but the opposite of Marlowe's ``dandyism.'' Behind him, lettuce fields, wind blowing.MAN IN COVERALLS: John Steinbeck got a call one day from his hometown – Salinas . . . California . . . It's, it's 1938, or around then and he's in a little cottage . . . twenty miles away on ...
- Continue Reading » 3 Comments
October 17, 2009
- ``The last time they blew in that direction,'' the Captain said, staring up a pole at several nautical flags, ``we had that terrible earthquake up the coast.'' ``Are you saying we should expect an earthquake?'' ``I'm simply telling you,'' he said, ``that the last time the wind . . . ''I had – twenty years ago yesterday – driven into the little California harbor town of Moss Landing. The ...
- Continue Reading » 6 Comments
October 16, 2009
- Odd how these things happen. Wednesday I came across a youtube video by Simon Morris, ``The Literary Tourist: John Steinbeck's California,'' '' on Steinbeck and Cannery Row in Monterey, California.It includes a moving interview of Kalisa Moore who, as a restauranteur and indomitable free spirit, has often been connected with Steinbeck and the Row, though she had only one encounter with the ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
October 3, 2009
- I didn't see all of the segments of Ken Burns' documentary on America's National Parks, but from what I did, I was disappointed there was not more on the artists who were so instrumental in the founding and promotion of our greatest wilderness areas.If I'm wrong, and there was a one- or two-hour segment on them, someone please let me know, though I would still be disappointed because I think ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
September 21, 2009
- Two women into the gallery last week on consecutive days who are artists who also teach art. Both lost everything in California wildfires last year, one in California's Big Sur, the other several hundred miles north. Homes, studios, paintings, art libraries, sketch books. All lost. ``Thirty years of sketch books,'' said one, who has moved into a nearby town with her family. Sketches, to ...
- Continue Reading » 10 Comments
September 16, 2009
- Moss Landing is a busy fisherman's harbor and community tucked into the southern half of California's Monterey Bay. It's an overflow of sea-battered fishing boats, voracious sea birds and mammals, ancient cemetery on a hill, raffish seafood restaurants, modern major marine research centers and a once flourishing but now dwindling row of antique shops – and just to the east is Elkhorn Slough, ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
September 10, 2009
- It has always seemed a somewhat original concept to me – the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California. A museum with ongoing, changing exhibits dedicated to honoring a great writer. I felt privilegd a decade ago to be a co-curator with Patricia Leach of the Center's first art exhibition, and a lot has gone on there since of importance. Writing programs, agricultural and art exhibits ...
- Continue Reading » 9 Comments
September 3, 2009
- Jeffrey Whitmore knew there was a dance version of his award-winning, 53-word short story ``Bedtime Story'' out there somewhere. He just lost track of it. He finally traced it via the internet to Montreal, where dancers in 2004 retitled it ``Revolver Tango.'' Since Montreal is the world's second largest French-speaking city, Whitmore's dialogue is delivered by the dancers in French. The film ...
- Continue Reading » 4 Comments
August 27, 2009
- When I heard Ted Kennedy had died, I immediately thought of Philip J. Schlessinger, a professor of political science I had eons ago at Los Angeles City College. I was able to track him today via the University of Southern California Alumni News, the Winter 2001 issue. There, it said, Schlessinger had been honored as a distinuished alum by USC for a 63-year teaching career, 51 of those ...
- Continue Reading » 2 Comments
July 30, 2009
- OK, "Elvis" is a little British kid, and he recently posted on YouTube that he can't make himself read Of Mice and Men. Class assignment. He's really heartfelt about not liking reading at all.Check out what he has to say:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ku0ITm_MgUYou're back? Traumatic, right? If whatever he has becomes epidemic, we're all in trouble. He does make some interesting points, ...
- Continue Reading » 14 Comments
July 13, 2009
- About 1915. Late morning. Salinas, California. Three children _ same actors who were Susanna, Judith and Hamnet in Scene Two at Stratford_ standing beneath a window, calling ``John! John!'' No response. The boy _ Herb _ throws a pebble at the window. A large, gawky boy in a flannel shirt and jeans comes to the window. Pushes it open. It is John Steinbeck, age twelve or thirteen, big for his ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
