Having an Anarchist Son
My oldest son has always listened to a message I can't hear. Once when he was two, he seemed to be in very deep contemplation, and I said, "What are you thinking about?"He turned to me and said, a smile on his face, "Something nice."And then he went back to thinking.Through pushing and pulling, he managed to graduate from high school, and then he found himself at a ...
"I love Beethoven, especially the poems." --...
Did you know that pianist Alfred Brendel writes poetry? This is the title poem from his collection Cursing Bagels(Faber & Faber, 2004)That pianosshould not merely be cookedbut also smokedhas recently been discoveredby pure chanceA fire in the local piano storesurprisingly revealedthat smoked pianossound nobler than cooked onesIn huge fireplacesthey now hangthose dispensers of musical ...
Time For Myself
…whenever I see people turn their back on me, I had this one thing on my mind…it means goodbye…it’s a darn thing that each time I want to let go of something or someone, I always picture their "backs"…it may mean "i’ll be back sometime again in the future or I may never be back for a long time…but when I do, I’ll be a better person…sometimes we have to let go of ...
The jungle of New Publishing
From Publishers Lunch. The bold text is mine. Mr. Grossman has said this better than I ever could:Time: What Publishing Will Look Like? Lev Grossman thinks he has big ideas about the evolution of publishing, and the novel in particular:"A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's ...
Pia's Nest
My family and I live in Mid-City across from the country's fifth largest public park. Our house is on a narrow ridge and didn't flood, but my neighborhood did. A block behind us, houses took in water, and my son, Andrew's, high school, eleven blocks away, had 8 feet of water. When the bowl of the city filled up with water, I moved to Houston with Andrew for four months so he could go to school. ...
My heart belongs to Daddy!
My mouth is still open after learning from ABC News ("When is a Sperm Donor a Dad?", http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting) that written contracts absolving sperm donors of financial responsibility to children born from their semen are legally non-enforceable. Some circumstances turn a biological father into a Dad. True, the reasons why a New Mexico Appeals Court judge ruled that the ...
A night with all the groan-ups
This weekend was yet another reminder that I’m just not cut out for the parent thing. Sure, I’m good about spending time with the kids, the love, the discipline and the misguided instruction that will likely lead to years of psychotherapy for the both of them.It’s giving up my time to spend it with other parents that forever grates on me. Saturday was a case in point. It was the annual ...
Murder in Moscow
An open letter to Dmitry Medvedev, president of Russia:Your Excellency: On January 20, Stanislav Markelov, lawyer for the independent newspaper Novaya, was gunned down on a Moscow street.. As you may recall, Mr. Markelov was counsel to journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot to death in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow in October, 2006. An award-winning journalist, ...
Inaugural Red Room Blog: Windows
Over a decade ago now, the man I was to marry and I met face-to-face for the first time, in the city of Vancouver in Canada. This meeting took place after months of Internet acquaintance; we were not strangers to one another, but we were, at best, friends, and anything else was still a fledgling thing and hidden by the mists of the future. On one evening, as we walked across one of ...
Thorn, fanciable men and fire drills
Lovely to see Thorn in the Flesh on the Bristlecone Pine Presswebsite today, and I also managed to do some marketing last night, so I’m hoping that raises interest in the eBook. Don’t miss out!At work, I’m trundling through the minutes of yesterday’s meeting – interest levels are low at the moment due to (a) total exhaustion and (b) impending holiday, but I’m doing my best. Am also ...
