“We have learned again that democracy is precious. Democracy is fragile. And at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed . . . America has been tested and we have come out stronger for it. We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again.”
#neverforget #quoteoftheday
If there’s one thing Russell Baker knows in spades, it’s about the tragedy of American nuclear families. Why, when the American family unit is so small, do the members all seem to fly apart like random molecules in an atom collider? It doesn’t work. The American nuclear family doesn’t work.
The lawyer, Mitchell Stephens, has one child, Zoe. She’s a drug addict and a runaway. She’s broken his heart in so many ways. Then, suddenly, while he’s in the middle of filing this suit on behalf of the families whose kids were killed in the school bus accident, she calls him out of the blue.
“Daddy, it’s me!” she’d said. Her voice was full of the usual phony enthusiasm, but it was dead, dead as the kids in their caskets.
“Zoe! Jesus!” I’d been shaving, and I snapped off my electric razor and sat down on the bed. It was like getting a call from a ghost. Every time I think my period of mourning is over, she calls to remind me that I haven’t really started yet.
— The Sweet Hereafter, p.140
Ever since Cleaver Magazine published self’s story Toad, a few years ago, she has had a soft spot for this scrappy little independent publication, based in Philadelphia, a city always close to her heart because that was where Dearest Mum studied piano (at Curtis) and where Dear Departed Sister got her MBA (at Wharton).
Given how they were already operating on a shoestring budget, self offered fervent prayers that they would somehow make it through the pandemic, and they have!
Today, they announced the winners and finalists of their 2022 flash contest. Let’s give all the winners and honorable mentions a big hand!
First Place: Sabrina Hicks, “When We Knew How to Get Lost”
Second Place: Janet Burroway, “The Tale of Molly Grimm”
Third Place: Dawn Miller, “The Egg”
Honorable Mention: Laura Tanenbaum, Fannie H. Gray, Andrea Marcusa, Lisa Lanser-Rose, Andrew Stancek, Luke Tennis, Emily Hoover, James LaRowe, Paul Enea, Kris Willcox, Christina Simon
All the writers are from two central Philippine islands: Negros (yes, that IS the name of one of the islands, thank you Spanish colonizers who named it after the locals, who were “Negros” — dark-skinned) and Siquijor.
Buglas was the pre-Spanish name for Negros.
It is edited by writers from the Dumaguete Writers Workshop.
Self’s story Dumaguete is in it, which renders her speechless. Just speechless!
Welcome from the Editors.
Submission Guidelines here.
This book is so entertaining. It’s way more entertaining than the movie The Social Network.
Jobs gets kicked off the board of Apple, forms his own company, NeXT, and hires the ad guy, the one who dreamt up that genius plan to get universities to buy Apples in bulk. This guy is no slouch: he’s a Princeton grad.
Sculley goes ballistic, Campbell (whoever that is) goes ballistic. Campbell not only goes ballistic, he calls the ad guy.
Wife of Lewin: Sorry, he’s in the shower. Can I take a message?
Campbell: I’ll wait.
(After five minutes)
Wife of Lewin: He’s still in the shower.
Campbell: I’ll wait.
It takes three “I’ll waits” to get Lewin on the line.
Campbell to Lewin: Is it true?
Lewin: Yes.
Campbell hangs up.
Self is about a third of the way through Steve Jobs (If anyone is DYING from all the Steve Jobs quotes and hoping she just moves on, the answer is: newp)
At this point, Jobs has been kicked out of Apple, humiliatingly, by the man he helped install, John Sculley. He’s had temper tantrums culminating in “bursting into tears” right there, in the office, in front of his team.
Let me tell ya, the bursting into tears thing is something Jobs does often. He is so temperamental. There will never, ever be anyone who takes his job as seriously as Jobs did. No, it wasn’t just a job, it was a passion. Self does not think it is anything to be ashamed of.
He takes a time-out by going to Europe with his girlfriend. When he returns to the San Francisco Bay Area, his ever-restless mind leads him to place a call to “the Stanford biochemist Paul Berg to discuss the advances that were being made in gene splicing and recombinant DNA.”
Berg described how difficult it was to do experiments in a biology lab, where it could take weeks to nurture an experiment and get a result. “Why don’t you simulate them on a computer?” Jobs asked.
— Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson, Chapter Eighteen: NeXT
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
On-line through UCLA Extension Writers Program
Starts Aug. 3, ends Sept. 13
Registration details here.
Don’t trash that “failed story”, dear readers. If anyone can resuscitate it, I can.
Never give up. Just keep on row, row, rowing your boat. It’s hard, but one day you might just win the race.
Why Sam (the MC) is so sad:
In the old days, if you had just a little money, you could make a phone call and, thirty minutes later, there would be Papa John’s bringing you a giant pizza.
— Hunger, A Gone Novel, p. 88
To refuse to countenance a war that does not speak its true name . . . you can no longer mumble the old excuse, “We didn’t know”; and now that you do know, can you continue to feign ignorance or content yourselves with mere token utterances of horrified sympathy?
— Simone de Beauvoir, French author and activist
Here’s how Leya introduces this week’s Lens-Artists Challenge:
Yes, life does give us these memorable moments! I’m so happy that my memorable moment happened just two days ago, on the Mendocino Headlands.
I spent a good part of December 2021 here. It’s a quieter time of year, but there were still people around. So it’s quiet, but definitely not lonely. I deliberately stayed away from TV and news, brought a stack of books to read — what more could one ask for?
Since hotel rates were at bargain basement level in January, I decided to drive up again. This time, I was in the throes of editing a manuscript to send out. So, unfortunately, the first couple of days here, I was a hermit in my room.
Then, I got an important call, and I could not get out of it. The hotel is so quiet — I knew I’d be disturbing people if I continued talking in my room. So I headed to the bluffs. It was my first walk in a number of days, the call was cutting in and out, but I didn’t care. Because — WOW! To think this was just a five-minute walk away, and I was so deep into my work I couldn’t even manage getting out. And with the weather so gorgeous, too!
As soon as the call ended, I started taking a bunch of pictures. Here are a few:
Kanlaon 