JOYCE CAROL OATS DOES NOT WRITE QUICKLY

THE GUARDIAN; JOYCE CAROL OATS :PEOPLE THINK I WRITE QUICKLY by Hermoine Hoby

EXCERPT :  Oats, a five time Pulitzer finalist, might be "very intensely interested in a portrait of America", but clearly she has no truck with the ego-vaunting, personality driven paradigm of contemporary celebrity.  She appears more to belong to some other, long-passed era, with a pronounced gothic streak colouring much of her fiction, which tends to be peopled by powerful men and introverted women who frequently experience sexual shame.

NEW YEAR ACCOUNTING

For years, the first week in January, I did my taxes. I would do an accounting of all my bills, what I had spent. That January I realized I could no longer be friends with Daphne. I had spent a half weeks pay, money I very much needed, calling her across town, long distance, because I was the kind of person who returned calls when someone, even a flaky someone, called me and left a message. I said I would on my message. So honorable!

Daphne and I had an intact friendship when we lived a canyon apart. She lived not far from work so we got together after. 

Then her parents bought her a condo at a real estate auction and she moved to the South Bay. 

We made one plan after another and time and time again she cancelled at the last minute. She never said she was sorry or acknowledged that we had a plan or said the world cancel. Instead she'd say that her parents were waiting for her or that the mysterious "Bud" was on his way over. "Gotta Go!" she'd exclaim.

Or - most ludicrous - she'd coo with warmth - "We'll get together soon, I promise!'

I didn't like being put aside for Bud.

She didn't like Bud. 

They were all involved in trying to sell real estate. If you want to be cancelled on, involve yourself with someone selling real estate.

Bud was always promising to cut her in. It was clear she couldn't afford to assert herself with the man. She'd call and say he came over but poo he didn't give her any money. Give, not pay. 

She told hilarious stories though some were mortifying. Bud had a fart problem and when he let one out everyone could smell, he'd make a face and look around for the real culprit, usually her.

He was crude and embarrassing but he was going to cut her in.

Bud wasn't it.

One call, she never had anyone to date. Next call she'd just been on a Date From Hell. She was taking an emotional beating. Some really were, really bad men you'd put a curse on, if only you knew how. Others, simply Wrong.

Date From Hell. 

Date From Hell!

Date From Hell?

If you think I grew to hate Daphne, you're wrong. I admired her for hanging in there. She had terrible struggles and I suspect had developed her sense of humor to get through a life that brought tragedy. I still laugh about stories she told as a naturally gifted storyteller who knew how to build suspense and then let you in to the ending. Stories about real estate agents getting drunk and having sex in bathrooms at parties; so European!

I went over to see her at her condo and see the infamous bathroom. 

"They walked out like noone could hear them. Like noone had to pee the whole time they were in there. I don't know what they did. The shower curtain was in the tub. Eeewwe."

We laughed till tears sprang and our tummys hurt then laughed some more.

Daphne was sexy without ever dressing provocatively or moving to attract attention. She got asked out at art galleries. She got asked out at the market in the frozen food section.

Her social skills were terrific. She'd dated celebrities - more stories - who had cut a decade off his age - who needed glue for his wig. 

She was artistic and educated. Smart and wise in her way. But Daphne was held hostage by money, her parents money, her step father's money, if she'd get an inheritance or her mother would give it all to her new gay dance partner that let her grind on him, or maybe it would all go to her cousin with all her improbable babies, or maybe her parents would finally help her network her way into marriage with a politician or some rich man would "take her" off their hands."

Meanwhile, I was a overworked worker. I couldn't afford Daphne in my life. I got to that point where I was not willing to make another plan with her. 

I finally got it about Bud. Yes, he got leads from her. Maybe he did cut her in and pay her some of the time, but she was involved with him way more than she'd admit to herself or candidly to me, until someone better came along. He gave her money to go buy herself something pretty, while her parents paid her mortgage. She could not afford to support herself in the manner to which she was accustom.

C 2021

TROUBLE WAS EXCITING

The phone rang.

"Christine, could you put my wife on," he demanded, not wasting words.

"She's not here," I said, not wasting any either.

"She said she was."

"She's not here. I don't know where she is."

We hung up. He had misunderstood. So I thought.

They were boy and girl next door and married young. 

I wasn't the last to know. He was. She wanted out. She was having an affair.

Immature. Badly Raised. Gossip. Trouble Maker. Missing Something. User. 

These were terms used to explain Doreen to me by others.

I don't know what I would've said if she'd asked me to cover for her. She hadn't.

She was drinking after work and with the other man. Coming home to her clean living LDS husband late and with boozey breath, claiming she was out with me while I was at home alone, eating my chili and grilled cheese and reading a book. 

Shit.

She bought her new man gifts on their charge cards. She said they were for me. Was she kidding? Macy's men's wallets?

She took the flowers he brought her home from work and said they were part of a display struck on Friday. 

She wanted to get caught. Trouble was exciting.

Her never married lover asked her to marry him. She had her out. If only he could get a better job, she said. So he got one, risking the loss of tried but true. He was heartbroken when she broke with him and kept the little diamond - his life savings. He went back to another state from where he'd been raised, nothing left for him in California.

How shocked she must have been when her quick acting husband sold their house sans profit, paid off her charges, gave her the car and a couple thousand cash, removed her name from his life and medical insurance, dropped her possessions off at her mother's, signed the divorce, moved to Orange, started his own business, and married someone he just met - in mere months. Wasn't he supposed to beg her back, buy her presents, prove he loved her?

She was terrified of living alone in an apartment she could afford.

Of course she remarried. Was he the man who won the fist fight over her that she managed to produce at a party in the Hollywood Hills?

ASAP.

C 2021

NORMAN VINCENT NOT SO APPEALING

It started with Norman Vincent Peale and his Power of Positive Thinking book, which came out in 1952 and was a precursor to the Positive Affirmation Movement. My relative bought it and believed. In doing so, at first, she was just ignoring the bad and promoting the good. Seeing the glass half full.

She had made it through the Great Depression as a teenager who had to quit school and went to work cleaning houses. No shame in that. Now, distanced, she stood high on a pedestal, a Greek Goddess. Hera. Enthroned in her kitchen where she gave dollops of wise advice the same way she plopped buttery mashed potatoes on my plate, next to the stuffed cabbage, when I visited.

I ate.

But moving forward, like President Donald Trump, she had taken to talking in the present about things as if they were true. She took to condemning those, including me, for living outside her philosophy of life, for questioning, and for discerning the truth. The real truth. 

My relative became more dramatic as she aged. She told her stories, in which she starred, over and over again. The stories co-starred her husband and children who worshipped her.

I was so sure she had more stories that one day I called her and mentioned my father told me they'd gone hungry during the Great Depression.

"It never happened!" She yelled into the phone. She went on, going opposite of everything he said. I believed him. Not her.

My father had so many stories about things he'd done for food.

I used to believe everything she said.

One lie after another.

They piled up like rocks on a corpse.

Once she lied to others long enough, she believed her lies to be truth.

C 2021

A CROATION SINGS ME AN OPERA AT THE BUS STOP : TALKING TO STRANGERS

Although there are distinct cultural difference between Poles, Croatians, Slovaks, Slovenians, and other Slavs - eastern Slavs and western Slavs, here in the United States we all seem to be put into the same niche, and Slavic people seem eager to identify with each other more so than other Europeans - just an OPINION (You know, EVERYONE HAS ONE!)

I was more disarmed than charmed when this old man began to gleefully sing me a song in Croation - LOUD - and was proud of his operatic voice.

I thanked him.

And then, though we had started out talking about what time the bus to take us up a hill was due, and that it was overdue, he got up and walked home.

WARREN BEATTY - STAR by PETER BISKIND : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

I don't normally review books that I wouldn't give one star, but there is a purpose in not recommended this book and that is the whys I hated it. 


This book was so unbalanced a star bio of Beatty (whose film REDS is one of my favorites) that it's as if a personal vendetta got the backing of a publisher.  (Shame!  Shame!)  One half step above the trashing typical of a Darwin Porter book, Biskind's entire effort is - cringe worthy. I kept listening in hopes that I would finally come to some redemption.  Unbelievable to me is that so many hateful people would be willing to be quoted and so few loving.  My guess is that the loving wouldn't speak to the author out of their respect for Beatty, that is if the author tried to talk to them.  Attacked so, its no wonder Beatty and many other stars are hell bent on guarding their private lives and personally refuse to cooperate with a memoirist or biographer, even refuse to defend themselves or comment.  Pretty much deemed a failure by the author, I come to the defense of Beatty in that if he is a failure, he is a failure who kept on trying, and how many of us would love to fail as well as he has!  Funny how so very many people undoubtedly heard of the difficulties of working with him but kept signing on.  OK, I know everyone is desperate to make a living, but still.  Beatty has managed to hire a great number of talent people in his years as a film maker.
Biskind also suppose that it's Beatty's reputation as a sex symbol and seducer that makes him famous. He implies the star only married and had children after becoming a washed up old man.  In a ridiculous attempt to compare Beatty's career accomplishments, he brings up Clint Eastwood!  Excuse me but are we comparing road warrior movies that include a pet chimp with the Russian Revolution?!


And so this book reminds me that a friend always sees the best in you and an enemy always sees the worst.  As a writer involved in memoir or biography, aim for the truth, but keep mean spirited analysis and bullshit psychobabble out of it. 


Enough said.


C 2018  All Rights Reserved   Christine Trzyna.

ATLANTIC MAGAZINE BRINGS BACK THE SHORT STORY

Atlantic Magazine has brought back the short story. A few years ago the magazine quit their tradition. But now readers are full of opinions. Should short stories stay or go again?

I AM SO HAPPY THAT ATLANTIC IS MAKING SPACE FOR SHORT STORES! I wish more magazines would do so!

It was in magazines that I was first exposed to short fiction, a genre a studied and wrote quite a bit for a time. Pre-Internet, I believed that people would read short fiction, collections of it, because they still wanted to read and did not have the time for reading full length books. I anticipated that this form would intrigue more readers.

Now the Internet has everyone reading blurbs and abbreviations. We quickly assess a site and decide if it will provide the information we're seeking. It's difficult to imagine life without at least an hour a day on the computer. So it's not THE TIME TO READ after all, but a significant change in our attention span that's changed, which SHOULD MAKE SHORT FICTION HOT AGAIN!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

ANGELINA by ANDREW MORTON : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

ANGELINA (Unauthorized biography of Angelina Jolie)
by Andrew Morton C 2010
St Martin's Press

This review isn't so much about the CONTENT of Andrew Morton's biography of the famous actress and world traveler, who along with life partner Brad Pitt, has become the mother of 6 children, three who've been adopted from Africa and Asia, and who is now also an official Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, and perhaps one of the most powerful people in the world, the pair being philanthropists.

No, this review is of Andrew Morton as an outstanding writer in his genre, which is the celebrity focused biography. Morton has, through research and interviews of those surrounding the life story of a celebrity, made a great story of it, which meant making choices about what information mattered to make a book of it.

Morton's book held my interest, not because I'm a special fan of Angelina Jolie, since I'm merely curious about her. Morton's book held my interest because he presented a character so fascinating, that the story held even if she had not achieved the fame or infamy that she has. What's fascinating is the conflict within Angelina and in her life, which she seems to have succeeded because of or in spite of.

First, because motherhood has become her claim to fame if acting isn't, Morton begins with a scene of her infanthood, baby Angelina in an all white on white room, being tended to by an array of babysitters because her own mother is too depressed to deal with her.

Then he shows us, Angelina,as a young adult. She hardly seems to have overcome any psychological problems she might have developed because of this early deprivation, or growing up with divorced parents who never did agin become real friends, and a mother who never forgave a father for his cheating.

Morton shows Angelina as she was; a drug addicted person who used this that and heroin, bisexual and a dabbler in bondage, a wild child, so to speak, who without apology or a lot of explanation makes good anyway. She's unconventional and she seems to be doing a fine job of raising children with her life partner, Brad Pitt, so is it despite or because of her own childhood?

How does someone who collected knives from a young age and took to cutting herself (and then got all those tattoos - ouch!) become stable enough to raise happy children while globe trotting, granted there is "help?" Morton mentions the opinions of a couple psychologists, and mentions neither have ever met her, but their theories don't actually seem to make a lot of sense when life as lived now is evidence. She's a Method Actor, and she becomes her roles, but seems to relish the mom role that she made up on her own the best.

Angelina's father John Voight, the actor, attempted many interventions, and got not much gratitude for the bother. Angelina has a habit of freezing out those who she no longer likes. That means that she froze out two ex husbands, but went back and befriended one of them a while, at least until Brad. So I am left with this question: Is Brad Pitt actually the stability that made it all possible?

C 2011 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

EXCERPT : AND THE SHOW WENT ON : CULTURAL LIFE IN NAZI-OCCUPIED PARIS BY ALAN RIDING

Pages 239-241

"...the Nazi had...long since "cleansed" the publishers' back lists...some 20,000 books were seized.

"...After the Otto List, a far wider sweep followed, with German military police raiding seventy publishing houses, closing eleven of them, and confiscating over 700,000 books. But the Nazis were not yet satisfied. In July 1942, Propaganda Staffel issued an updated Otto List of 1,070 titles; some books on the first list were removed as mistakes, and others were added. Then in May 1943, a third list was issued, naming 1554 authors, including 739 "Jewish writers in the French language.'

... "In his memoir Heller said that a total of 2, 242 tons of books were burned. He noted, "I was able to visit the place where these books were stocked before their destruction. it was a vast garage on the avenue de la Grande-Armee. In the sad light coming through dusty windows, I saw piled up, torn dirty books, which for me were the objects of a veritable cult. A mountain of horror, a dreadful sight which reminded me of the autos-da-fe in front of Berlin University in May 1933.'

C 2010 Alan Riding
Borzoi Book
Alfred A. Knopf Publisher

MY HOLLYWOOD by MONA SIMPSON : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

MY HOLLYWOOD
C 2010 Mona Simpson
Borzoi Book Alfred A Knopf Publisher

Filipina nanny "Lola", the dominant voice and sensibility in this wonderfully rendered portrait of new century life in Santa Monica, California, comes to Los Angeles to work and send money home to her own Hallmark card artist husband and four good children. She, over several years, works long hours and seven days a week to send the family about half a million in USA dollars so that they can go to college and become professionals, raising their status and class in Manila. In the meantime, focused on her own real work of mothering the children of strangers, she slowly loosens her own marriage and roots in the Philippines.

To succeed at sending money home, Lola raises the infant children of two career couples and single mothers attached to television writing and the Hollywood business until they are pre-schoolers and then some. She falls in love with her charges, first Williamo, and then Laura, and becomes an important player in the local nanny network, helping to rescue one woman who is held as a slave, brokering marriages, and providing mentorship and referrals. She is there when the parents are too busy to have had (in my opinion) children in the first place. She is self sacrificing and these children of parents who are self-involved, but besides meeting her goals, where is the thanks?

IS THERE EVER THANKS IN MOTHERHOOD?

As dedicated as she is to raising Williamo, the only son of a mother who cannot handle raising a child and compose music at the same time named Claire, and a father who spends the vast majority of his life at the office where he writes situation comedy but is not even in his marriage, the boy will, a few years later, not even remember her.

The important woman's work of raising children - with help - has not been fully left behind by the birth mothers in this book, it's just that they have to hold onto their marriages at the same time, and childbirth and marriage turn out to be not so romantic after all.

The individual language and mentalities of Claire and Lola balance the overall view point of this book, which is to expose their individual and collective delimma as they raise and lower their class through hiring help or getting divorced. Upper class women, many accomplished and educated, slowly move their lives to leaving careers behind and dependence on husbands, and sometimes husbands have affairs to keep their marriages, but what is most important for them all is supposed to be the children, but that's not it either. They have left their goals behind for taking it one day at a time, making playdates, worrying if their child seems behind his peers or unpopular. Knit in a community like this, having your children get along with the children of your husband's work peers or boss is essential.

Laura, born slow but able to catch up with the ongoing attention Lola provides as a devoted babysitter rather than a professional special ed teacher, has a single mother who is mostly absent and self indulgent, and we get to know her so little we are, like Lola, not so sure where she goes or what she does. Despite Lola being in the traditional role of stay at home mother to the working woman who brings the income like a man in a traditional role, another relationship with a man who would be father, displaces Lola once again.

This then is the short short of the novel.

The clash of cultures and the mutual ambivalence about marriage and raising children that is cross-cultural, along with the broken English talk of Lola, which is more revealing than if she spoke English well, provides the nuances as well as a series of small informing shocks. This is no doubt a feminist novel, one that reveals intricacies between women who seem both striving and misguided, and who have things in common even when they are from different cultures and are kept from closeness by the employer - employee role they play out. It's one for my permanent bookshelf.

I've linked to Mona Simpson's site!

C Christine Trzyna 2011 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved

CARLOS CASTANEDA Quote

"We're all nothing but bags of stories." 

Don Juan to Carlos Castaneda

TAISHA ABELAR NEW BOOK COMING OUT : UPDATE

Guess what?  If you go to April 1 2023 and see the post TAISHA ABELAR'S LOST BOOK -   STALKING WITH THE DOUBLE (RESTORED VERSION)  you will be able to read a manuscript copy of the book.

*******************

Linking to a French blog site that has videos of Interview of Taisha Abelar: still checking : Her book due out ANY MOMENT. (That's what they said in the spring too!)

According to http://www.nagualist.com/new-taisha-abelar-book it is due out July 30th 2011, published by Penguin.

You can use the search feature of this blog to read past posts on Taisha Abelar.

UPDATE JANUARY 5, 2011 I'M STILL WAITING....

AMY WINEHOUSE DEAD FROM LIFE and WHY USING ILLEGAL DRUGS is STUPID STUPID STUPID

The surprising but not shocking death of AMY WINEHOUSE, the Jewish-British singer, whose music I've posted on this blog because I like it, who took a hell of a lot of International Razzing over her drug and alcohol addictions, and who appeared to be too fragile to deal with fame and the pressure of having to outdo herself on her next try, has me thinking about drug use and abuse : addiction.

Reading one story about Amy's life, I was reminded that she wasn't always sick.

I was thinking about a Psychology 101 class I took years ago in which the professor, explained to us why we should never bother to take that first opportunity to use cocaine. She said a small percentage of us have cocaine receptors in our brain and will become addicted that first try. The chance of ruining your life was a chance not worth taking.

It's a chance I never took not only because the professor said so, but being out of control of one's life never sounded like fun to me. Also I wanted to feel what I was feeling. I consider emotions to be important, a form of intelligence.

Since when did "recreational" use mean - not a little buzz - but out of control? For some people the first drink is the slippery slide down to the street, or in this case, Amy's, coffin.

I also thought about how I was often shunned by "druggies" and "boozers" in my own life, shunned for not being cool enough, or whatever.

To this day my reputation proceeds me. No one has ever offered to sell me any illegal drug.

Cool seems to have been the most important thing for a lot of talented people, most of them probably posers, since the most naturally cool people are actually sociopaths, they with their unblinking reaction to things that make most of us quite emotional.

When someone says "You cool with that?" What are they really asking us to not mind?

Should I suppose that "CREATIVE" people are more prone to use illegal drugs? (And by illegal I also mean the misuse of prescriptions since you are not using it as prescribed.) Are creative people all actually psycho, in need of psych meds, and self treating?

Back to Psychology 101, I believe that basic needs pyramid - food, shelter, clothing - and creature comforts, along with a lot of equipment such as a lap top computer, are essential for allowing us to create. The struggle with drugs, with survival, does not support creativity.

The list of the talented musically, dead at 27, goes like this: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse. Is this the perfect age to move out of this life and leave behind a collection of music that is classic enough to create estates; wealth not enjoyed while living? Maybe its all about a hard "Saturn Return" astrologically, in other words fate, or simply the fast burn of a not so eternal flame.

C 2011 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet Rights and International Rights : Contact author to reuse.

HAVANA NOCTURENE by T.J. ENGLISH : BOOK EXCERPT

Page 110

"The casinos were in fine fettle and the Havana Mob was beginning to assert itself in the early months of 1953, but all was not right in the land of Christopher Columbus. Batista's golpe had created a mood of unrest that would not go away. A tradition of rebellion had been reawakened, though it was difficult to gauge the actual level of resistance. Censorship was rigorously enforced on the island. The regime enacted the Law Of Public Order, which had a subset of Legislative Decree 977, a law that made it a criminal act to release any statement or information against the dictatorship. Through SIM, the government maintained a network of spies and paid informants who passed along information regarding "subversive activities." Newspapers were a common target, their offices trashed and editors threatened or imprisoned if they published anything even remotely contrary to the wishes of the government. In fact, anyone who disseminated anything perceived to be anti-Batista - pamphleteers, political activists, or rabble-rousers of any kind - was met with harassment, imprisonment, or death.

C 2007, 2008 T.J. English

Published by William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

MURDOCK AND BROOKSIE HAVE GONE TOO FAR HACKING INTO PRIVATE VOICE MAIL ACCOUNTS : A BRITISH JOURNALISM SCANDLE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA OPINION

Scandal of the New Century ? YES! CERTAINLY! (If you haven't heard about this one yet, click on the title above to get to the Christian Science Monitor article, one of thousands of news reports about reporters !)

Do Reporters have the Right to Break a Story just because they can?

It seems that in an effort to have the news (and sell copy), there has been a severe and unforgiveable amount of privacy invasion. In this case someone who was found murdered, it is implied, may have just had a chance because, to cover their actions, journalists may have erased communications between the victim and those phoning her.

(( I think : As we know voice mail is time and date stamped. These attempts at communication are now tampered with. When, during the 6 months from missing to found dead, did these journalists pick up her voice mails and erase? Was she alive but her cell phone turned off? Had she been using it?))

THE ACTIONS OF THE JOURNALISTS, THIS EDITOR, THIS PUBLICATION and ITS OWNER are challenging existing notions and laws about privacy for the vast majority of us who are not celebrities, but in this case, even if this mudered one were a celebrity, it would still be unforgiveable: this is not the same as reporting a "baby bump" when your informant is a sales clerk on Rodeo who waits on the rich and famous.

TO THE POINT : There is need for a new and clear understanding of JOURNALISTIC BOUNDARIES these days and that means REVIEWING THE JOB DESCRIPTIONS.

Journalists should never misrepresent themselves or their intent in writing an article and SHOULD NOT BE, for instance, SNEAKS, LIARS, or LAW BREAKERS in order to get a story!

Sometimes it seems that, in search of a story and accuracy, Investigative Journalists (which includes gossip columnists) seem to be doing the job of Police Investigators, Private Eyes, Spys. The competition to get the story first is fierce, but journalists should be judged too on their professionalism and that means holding to standards! Do you have informants who remain unnamed? Of course!

INTERFERING in the work of Police Investigators, Private Eyes, and Spys, of law enforcement and the criminal justice system however, is WAY TOO FAR OVER BOUNDARIES.

I do hold the editor more responsible than those working under her. I hold editors responsible for their decision to hand out assignments and to choose to print articles as they were written and to challenge reporters to greatness.

C 2011 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internation and Internet Rights

DAVID FERRY : POETRY FOUNDATION 2011 LILLY POETRY AWARD

The Poetry Foundation announces this years Lilly Lifetime Achievement Prize for poetry to poet David Ferry - link above.

And the New York Times article to go with :
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/david-ferry-wins-the-worlds-biggest-poetry-prize/

RUTH LILLY THE GREAT PHILANTHROPIST OF POETRY

Ruth Lilly, the only living heir of the Eli Lilly fortune pledged $100 million (have heard $200,000 million also) in 2002 to the Poetry Foundation to publish Poetry Magazine and more. She also provided that every year one poet receive the Lilly award which is $100,000! Linking to the New York Times article from 2007 which reveals the lack of appreciation some have shown for this amazing bequest.

(I can't think of any other philanthropist who gives/gave a rats ass for poets or poetry. It's difficult to get a free space to run a nonprofit writing group as is.)

(IS THIS ATTITUDE ONE MORE EXAMPLE OF THE NOTORIOUS POETS' DEVOTION TO BELOVED POVERTY? Aren't some of us a bit tired of the notion that poverty is always honorable or the natural state of poets and poetry? I used to know people who posed that they were poor to be accepted in certain Los Angeles poetry circles!)

I'll be linking to more about LILLY scholarships, awards, and so on...)

BRUCE FEIRSTEIN quotation

"Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower." - Bruce Fierstein

ANCIENT SEMETIC LANGUAGE - AKKADIAN - THE CHICAGO ASSYRIAN DICTIONARY PUBLISHED AFTER 90 YEARS OF TEAM RESEARCH

Love this story... Akkadian is a Semetic language (last written 1900 years ago) and ancient form of Assyrian and after 90 years (and many academics) working on the project have finally published a dictionary. the dictionary gives us some idea of what people spoke in Mesopotamia!

Oh how I admire linguists, since I have absolutely no talent with languages...

Like anthropologists, they looked at tomb stones, and other evidence of this cuneiform written language.