Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 187 entries, all of them here in full.
April 5, 2007 · 1,621 words
The Sarge and Me
For the last ten days or so I’ve been indulging in that annual American rite of spring, the preparation of the income tax. It is my custom, while slowly going blind staring at faded receipts marked with cryptic notes that doubtless seemed perfectly understandable at the time, to avoid encroaching madness by renting and
Read entry →April 2, 2007 · 88 words
Sky Glow
Why New Mexico? Here are four colorful reasons. We had a storm pass through the other night, darkening the sky to near-black. Then the setting sun broke through the cloud cover to the West and set the whole Eastern horizon ablaze. Here are some rather inadequate pictures. Today, Palm Sunday, we passed a group of [&hell
Read entry →March 30, 2007 · 995 words
A Place to Stand
Last night I caught two episodes of the Travel Channel’s latest, 1000 Places to Go Before You Die, based on the best-selling book of the same name. (A copy of which my 2005 Clarion students kindly gave me as a parting gift. Or maybe not so kindly. Maybe they were suggesting I go to Borneo […]
Read entry →March 24, 2007 · 167 words
Who Knew?
So I have now discovered a previously unknown demographic: that strange and heretofore occult overlap between the fans of science fiction and professional ice hockey.Yes, my signing at the New Mexico Scorpions game was a success! (Or at least, a success in the category: previous signings with me in them, not taking pla
Read entry →March 23, 2007 · 358 words
The Virtues of Repression
This topic has been inspired by mention of Samuel R Delany in an earlier topic, Tour de Force, below.I am moved to ask the following question: Is repression good for you? Or, if not for you exactly, for art?Take Delany as an example. In his early career, it was forbidden, particularly within our commercial genre, [&hel
Read entry →March 17, 2007 · 647 words
Tour de Force
I just reread Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness for the first time in maybe thirty years. I’m not sure how I missed it during that time, since I regularly reread Roger’s work. Perhaps I failed to go back to the book because my personal copy seems to have gone missing, so when I […]
Read entry →March 15, 2007 · 248 words
"Heinasirkka, heinasirkka . . . "
In honor of St. Urho’s Day, which is Friday, I’d like to send you all a card. I’ve had St. Urho in mind this spring, since our weather is so far proving ideal for the propagation of locusts. I hate the little buggers flying about and eating every leaf in sight, and will do my […]
Read entry →March 12, 2007 · 779 words
Monsieur Vidal
As I’ve been driving about the state, I have been enjoying an audio book of Gore Vidal’s latest memoir, Point to Point Navigation, as read by Vidal himself. I admire much of Vidal’s fiction— not so much the historical bestsellers like Burr and Lincoln, where he’s so busy trying to shock us with the behavior [&hel
Read entry →March 7, 2007 · 977 words
The Lure of Africa
I was viewing the Travel Channel last night, and caught the Namibian adventures of celebrity chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain. (And has anyone out there read his fiction, by the way?) During this episode, Bourdain joined a group of bushmen for what he described as the worst meal of his life, beginning with what a [&h
Read entry →March 4, 2007 · 814 words
The Turks Were Here!
The Turks turned out to be legit. They swing this way every year, working their way through the South and Southwest, to sell any carpets they failed to sell at the big Atlanta carpet show. So a van filled with a million dollars’ worth of Turkish carpets turned up in our driveway this afternoon, and […]
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