TONY HILLERMAN from SELDOM DISAPPOINTED answers "Where do you get ideas?"

Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001
Harper Colins Publishers

page 253

The answer to the "Where do you get the ideas" question is that writer's minds are a jumbled, chaotic attic cluttered with plot notions, useful characters, settings for events, bits and pieces of information, overheard remarks, ironies, cloud formations, bumper sticker slogans, unresolved problems, bon mots, tragedies, heroics, etc. One's memory contains enough stuff to produce three or four longer versions of "War and Peace" if only once could sort it out and from it into a coherent fable.

That leads to the next FAQ. "When do you write?" One writes while peeling potatoes, driving to work, standing in line, suffering through a boring mo vie, eating oatmeal, digging out dandelions, trying to drift off into naptime sleep. Finally when the sorting is mostly completed and the next scene is set in the imagination, one goes to the computer and types it onto the screen.

I liken the writer to the bag lady pushing her stolen shopping cart through life collecting throwaway stiff, which, who knows, might be useful some way some day....

JEAN COCTEAU quote

"A writer develops the muscles of his mind. This training leaves hardly any leisure for sport. It demands suffering, falls, laziness, weakness, setbacks, exhaustion, mourning, insomnia, exercises which are the reverse of those which develop the body.



From OPIUM, the Diary of a Cure, Peter Owen Limited Publishers, London MCMLVII

SCRABBLE OFFICIAL WORD LISTS ADDS THREE

Za," "qi" and "zzz" were added recently to the game's official word list for its original English-language edition. Click on the title to get to the Wall Street Journal article!

From JOHN ADAMS by DAVID MC CULLOUGH - about THOMAS JEFFERSON in PARIS and BOOKS

JOHN ADAMS
by David McCullough - Pulitzer Prize Winner EDIT
C2001 the author
Simon and Schuster Publishers

Page 321 of the hardback (note: Thomas Jefferson's library upon his death founded the University of Virginia. Both JOHN ADAMS and THOMAS JEFFERSON DIED ON THE SAME DAY - 4th of July - the same year!)



"Paris booksellers soon found they had an American patron like no other. In the bookshops and stalls along the Seine were volumes in numbers and variety such as Jefferson had never seen, and his pleasure was boundless. To Madison he would describe the surpassing pleasure of "examining all the principal bookstores, turning over every book with my own hand and putting by everything related to America, and indeed whatever was rare and valuable to every science." There were weeks when he was buying books every day. In his first month in Paris, he could not buy them fast enough, and ran up bills totaling nearly 800 francs... The grand total of books he acquired in France was about 2000, but he also bought books by the boxful for Washington, Franklin, and James Madison."

OUR DAILY MEDS by MELODY PETERSEN (ARE YOU ON MEDS BY DRINKING WATER FROM THE TAP?)

OUR DAILY MEDS How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked The Nation on Prescription Drugs. By Melody Petersen C 2008 Sarah Crichton Books Farrar, Straus, and Giroux... If you're like me you want to be healthy and energetic and live without pain, WITHOUT DRUG addiction - prescription of otherwise. So Petersen's book of how the Big Pharmaceutical Companies manage to get doctors to prescribe their products and people legally hooked on them - at great expense to insurance companies - is fascinating. Actors and athletes in interviews seem to mention their happiness with a particular drug they are taken and thousands call their doctors asking for the same... But what about this? Those frog mutations may not be from solar flares or Global Warming after all. A lot of people on prescriptions pee into their toilets and the drugs turn up in the PUBLIC WATER SUPPLY IN Iowa - THE CORN BELT. Is the water I've been confidently drinking from the tap in Los Angeles TESTED for prescription drugs such as HORMONES AND PAINKILLERS! Until now I thought bottled water was unnecessary. Now I'm not so sure. Pages 255 to 257 Thirty percent of the water samples from Iowas rivers in 2001 were laced with TAGAMENT a heartburn medication Twenty percent had codeine, a powerful narcotic. Another 20 percent CARDIZEN for hypertension. 70 percent of downstream waters polluted with TEGRETOL. for epilepsy..which had been also given for mood disorders and pain. Found also, fragrances, insect repellents, disinfectants, household chemicals in 80 percent of the streams sampled in Iowa and twenty-nine other states. ARE THESE DRUGS THE REAL CAUSES OF CHANGES TO THE ECOSYSTEM that have genetically mutated frogs and killed off fish rather than global warming ?

YIDDISH LITERATURE ARCHIVE IS NOW ONLINE

Interested in Yiddish literature which preserves language, culture, history, and religion? An archive of over 10,000 works of modern Yiddish literature which includes about 150 years of out of print novels, poetry, stories, fiction and nonfiction is on line thanks to Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, Aaron Lansky, founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center non-profit, and Steven Spielberg Digital library. You can read, download, and print...

Click on the link above for more information...

TONY HILLERMAN - SELDOM DISAPPOINTED

Tony Hillerman
Seldom Disappointed - a Memoir
C 2001
Harper Colins Publishers


pages 262-263 about teaching in academia in the mid 1960's:


"The middle sixties were the ideal time to start if one was fated to spend almost twenty years teaching journalism at an university. Student lethargy still ruled as late as 1963, providing a taste of lecturing to a disinterested audience. But even then the long, loud, and lusty revolution was moving in. Before I could conclude that a professor's life tended to be boring, the late sixties were upon us and students were showing up full of fire, demanding to be taught something relevant, protesting war; the establishment, parking tickets, poorly prepared lectures, prejudices against pot smoking, unisex rest rooms, police brutality, and so forth.'

"Odd as this may sound, it was a wonderful time to be teaching. Students were interested, grade mania and the resulting grade inflation had barely emerged, the curse of political correctness had not yet paralyzed deans and department chairmen and corrupted the faculty. Teaching a roomful of bright young folks who yearned to learn and were willing to argue forced you to defend your position. Sometimes you couldn't. You were learning as much as they were, and it was fun. it wasn't until the early eighties that lethargy restored itself. The numbing dogma of PC hung over the campus, tolerating no opinions but anointed ones. With free speech and free thought ruled out by inquisitors running Women's Studies and the various minorities studies, the joy of learning had seeped out of students. With it went joy of teaching. Time to quit.'

JUDY GRUEN - HILARIUS!

Judy Gruen writes a column for a give-away magazine called Jewish Life. In the February 2009 issue she wrote an article called YOUR RESULTS MAY VARY.


Judy Gruen's latest book is "The Women's Daily Irony Supplement." Clever title!

to quote the article...
"Most of us have been severely chastened by bad economic news, along with an epidemic of business chicanery. Now we are left to wonder: How can we protect ourselves from bunco artists, flimflammers, bamboozlers, rouges and the otherwise slippery, shifty, and shameless? ... One relatively easy way to protect ourselves is to pay closer attention to advertisements, because darned if those ads are not always cleverly sneaking in critical information about their products and services right under our noses.... I became suspicious, however, when it finally dawned on me that the woman pictured in the ad looked young enough to be far more likely candidate for acne cream rather than wrinkle filler. Sure enough, when I whipped out my handy Hubble telescope, I was just able to make out the words: "Model pictured is not an actual customer. In fact, she's not even old enough to buy liqueur legally in most states."

CONVERSATION by Elizabeth Bishop

CONVERSATION

by poet Elizabeth Bishop (deceased)


The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions.
And then it stops and undertakes the answer
in the same tone of voice.

No one could tell the difference.


Uninnoccent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses
only half meaning to.


And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;
until a name
and all its connotations are the same.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA QUICK BOOK REVIEW OF JUST DO IT BY DOUGLAS BROWN

JUST DO IT
How One Couple Turned Off The TV and Turned on their Sex Lives for 101 Days
(No Excuses)
C Douglas Brown
Crown Publishing New York

Douglas Brown looooves his wife, Annie, and (of course) she loves him. Fourteen years into married life, they have two children who are doted upon and (of course) like to interrupt their parent's sex life whenever possible. The kids got on my nerves with their demands for attention but hey, that's the reality of having children in a household. Annie also got on my nerves. She's entirely too cute. But that's not her fault, it's her husband's perception...And it occurs to me that if she had written the book, from her perspective, I don't think she could get away with being as descriptive of Douglas...

Don't read this book if you're hoping to read for graphic erotica. There are some details but most is left to the imagination. There's a focus on the changes that Douglas and Annie go through as a married couple in their search for permanent "home" which turns out to be - well - WHERE THE HEART IS! Yeesh! But, yes, it's true.

page 267

(CHAPTER: MAKING LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON)
"Love happens. Yes, it takes nurturing, heat, and light. It demands commitment. it requires certain chemistry. Bur for lucky people, for whatever combination of factors, love blossoms. It's unconscious: a force, a fire, a spirit. Romance, by contrast, is alert. It's intentional. It has an intelligence. It's a dance, of sorts. Both people in a relationship must consider what please their partner; but surprise - something new - claims an important piece of the romance puzzle. So delivering romance is much more complicated than simply referring to a list of likes, picking one, and going for it. In sum, it's magicians' work.


Page 217. I learned something new: asshole bleaching is the latest craze - big thing on both coasts - pornography gone mainstream... No. I don't think I personally want a lighter shade of pink!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY !

COMMENTARY ON HARRY CHAPIN TAXI

"Se was going to be an actress and I was going to learn to fly...now she's acting happy and I'm flying in my taxi..." A bitter sweet love song, and lyrics that tell an entire story...

RUMI LOVE POETRY

The intellectual runs away.
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.
-Rumi.

TURQUOISE BOOK KITTY

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE LINK ADDED HERE

Smithsonian magazine is one of my favorites. Here's the link to get a paper-mail subscription OR read a bit online. The article about SLAVERY (presently about 2.3 million citizens of earth live as slaves) is of special interest.

LENI (LENI RIEFENSTAHL) by STEVEN BACH : CHRISTINE TRYZNA BOOK REVIEW

Christine Trzyna quick review... and a quote LENI is C 2007 by Steven Bach and published by Borzoi - Alfred Knopf This book asks the question "Was film-maker Leni a Nazi?" and attempts to answer it fairly. Leni Rifenstahl is known for her films that "glorified" the reign of Adolph Hiter and the Nazi's which today provide us historical footage. But Leni, who lived to be 101 and who, after being out of work for a long time after WWII, got back to work in old age, was an person who self invented all along. And so, are we to believe her protests that she was unaware of the atrocities? Leni went filming in Africa when she was in her 80's. She would have it that she was a rare person - a WOMAN FILM MAKER - at a time when few women made films. She would say that when she got the assignment she was sure to give it her best efforts, to fulfill the job description and advance her career. Who hasn't had a boss they didn't like but they kissed ass on? Leni used her careerism as her reason or excuse for fraternizing with Nazi's. She may have even submitted a faked genealogy to cover her own Jewish bloodline. The feminist me is interested in the issue of a woman having a career in the 1940's, especially a woman who was not of the class to be formally educated, but who had insane energy (to put it in modern terms) and was driven and ambitious, as well as willing to make her love interests useful to her career. Leni's work is controversial but she has her advocates who admire what she has pulled off at a time when film making didn't benefit from the technologies now assumed. There is another reason I took to this book. I have come to believe that the Nazi's came to power in a Germany in which there was great poverty - a horrible economy - and so the people wanted to believe the newest political messiah, even as his message turned ugly. Are we in danger of this in the United States today? The Berlin that Leni grew to adulthood in is described as so poor that entire families commit suicide rather than endure the cold and hunger while homeless... And this is what the author, Steven Bach, had to write on page 18 of the hardback. "The ripples grew larger with the daily struggle for survival. Postwar (WWI) food shortages and influenza hastened a breakdown in prewar morality. The pervasive mood was one of perpetual emergency in which opportunism of every kind flourished until, as one observer put it, "a kind of insanity took hold." In this volatile atmosphere, Alfred Riefenstahls (her father) - still unaware of his daughter's new obsession with dance - decided to sequester her.... no scheme could have been better calculated to provoke resistance in Leni, who thought of domesticity as drudgery is she thought of it at all..." Hilter accession to the office of chancellor in 1933 was thought of as "a seizure of power" though it was "not violent, illegal, or inevitable (page 98)... On February 27th the home of the German Parliament was set ablaze - arson (page 99) and what was called terrorism... It set the stage for what is called a "blueprint for dictatorship"... Page 100... "The decree read, in part, "Curbs on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press, of association, and of assembly, surveillance over letters, telegrams and telephone communications, searches of homes and confiscations of as well as restrictions of property, are hereby permissible beyond the limits hitherto established by law." Such measure have found echoes in more recent times as responses to acts of terrorism, though Hitler's dramatic expansion of executive power, restrictions of civil liberties, and surveillance of citizens were openly detailed in the Nazi press." C Christine Trzyna