In preparation for shutting down my account, I first downloaded the Facebook file of my entire 12 year residency there. Quite fortuitously, or maybe not so much, I signed up to be part of that world on January 13, 2008. As I was downloading my file, I saw that it was the evening of January 13, 2020. Exactly twelve years on Facebook. Far out.
Someone could become a millionaire selling a bumper sticker that says:
“If you don’t feel like you’re losing your mind these days, then you’re probably part of the problem.”
Over the past decade things in America just keep getting weirder and nastier. I’d like to blame that on social media and/or our ubiquitous portable communication devices, but I honestly don’t know if I have a leg to stand on with that.
Near the end of my senior year of high school, I asked my favorite instructor for advice on becoming a writer. Mr. Stawski was an extremely gifted English teacher, a PhD with 30+ years of teaching under his belt, certainly the most respected faculty member at our high school. He’d held a party for our Shakespeare class at his house. I was in a small group of students lingering after because it was so great to be around such a wonderful human being. I also wanted to hear his thoughts on what we should all be thinking about as we graduated and then headed off to college. Asking for advice on writing was also my way of telling him that I might be serious about pursuing a career as an author.
Mr. Stawski’s advice was simple and obvious. He looked me in the eyes and said: “Read as much as you can. People say writers need life experience, and I can’t argue with that, but it’s more important to read anything and everything–especially over the next decade or so as you mature.”
Special Note: This post was composed a week prior to the decision to overhaul the theme for this website. Thus, the font reference below, "Domine," is now anachronistic and passé. The font family here, now, is Lora. Apologies for any confusion.
In the category of “Will the Internet Always Be a Wild West Show?” I want to discuss font choices online. There used to be fairly clear rules for when you use sans serif fonts and when serif ones were more appropriate. In the old days when you finally got that Mac and were confronted with this massive fruit basket of typefaces your instinct was to go hog wild. I have always loved Comic Sans and once used it to print out a draft of a short story I’d written, only to find myself dizzy and feeling quite puckish reading half way through the second page.
My new story “MANY WAYS TO FIND OUT” was featured at the BULL magazine website earlier this week. Bull specializes in quality fiction (and some essays) directed in varying ways at the complexity and dynamics of masculinity here in 2017.
There’s a theory out there that men don’t like to read “serious fiction.” I think a lot of men just don’t like to read crappy stories that have little to do with them. I might be wrong. Who knows?
I want to add something to the endless discussion about why it’s important to read literary fiction. The discussion is important.
You may have graduated from high school English class and feel like you never want to go back again, but you didn’t graduate from Life. Too many people have stopped reading quality fiction that makes them think about Life these days. That’s why this endless discussion about books and their import continues — taking the time to think about life is essential for all of us. Books assume that’s why you’re reading them — especially literary stories by anyone from James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to Joy Williams and James Salter.
You can find a lot of essays and blog posts out there on the value of novels, short stories, and plays because they teach empathy and help people understand another person’s point of view. Indeed, the written word in general is still the most effective way to express all the nuances of human emotion. These days, it feels in some ways that people are losing touch with emotional reality and concern for how other people feel in any number of social situations. Could it be that fewer people are reading quality fiction these days? Maybe people are spending less time with books and more time with porn and video games.
You can also find arguments on how readers of serious fiction are proven to be more intuitive, better problem solvers, superior communicators, and higher achievers at Continue reading →
FAKE NEWS from Washington Free Beacon, dated August 17, 2015
Note: The image to the right is not real. It is fake. It is not a dead parrot, but it is not a real parrot either.
Reading and listening to the mainstream media, it has been suggested that this new president is willing to distort reality openly and brazenly with essentially no subtlety or grace mostly for his own self-aggrandizement and to protect his brand. The Trump brand has been his bread and butter for over forty years. Should we be surprised? We’ve known this guy since at least 1973. But is brand protection really an excuse for a president?
When I started writing this essay we’d just witnessed the pissing match between Trump and the media over how many people had attended his inauguration. During a very weird scene at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, Trump said in the middle of a harangue about crowd numbers: “I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.”
He had also sent out his two main mouthpieces, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway to stir things up. Spicer, in his first ever White House lectern performance with the media, berated them for concocting lies and misinformation. The next day Kellyanne Conway introduced the idea of “alternative facts” to an incredulous Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. Everything’s been going downhill since that first weekend in the communication department for this administration. Continue reading →
A Repost from 2013, slightly modified: This piece got a lot of play over at OpenSalon (when it was open). It was an “Editor’s Pick” and got more than 2,000 views, plus a good number of comments. That was back in 2012. I’ve added a few comments here to update this for 2016. Pardon me if that messes with your time continuum.
In the summer of 1977 I was home from college ambling around our local library looking for a novel to read. I was also there because I wanted to ask Ann Jefferson out on a date and knew she worked in the library. I found her quickly enough and we chatted a bit while I roamed the stacks. I didn’t get up the nerve to ask her out, but I did sort of stumble on this big-ass tome of a book called The Fountainhead by a writer with a weird name.
I devoured Ayn Rand’s first successful novel about Howard Roark, a brilliant young architect who will not give up his principles about art and creativity to achieve what Continue reading →
It really has been time for a lot of us to upgrade our blogs and websites. I finally bit the bullet and bought a new theme, then spent the next 10 hours trying to recover from my own stupidity. Things are looking better, but we’re still under construction. One coffee break. Two potty breaks. Brunch with my family. That’s it.
So pardon our appearance. Page down, though, and check out how things are looking.
