Vid of the week: A Little Slave Girl and The Proud General

reading with sebastian junger

well. Ok. not WITH him exactly. But in the same bookstore! And... well no. not at exactly the same time. or day. But in the same month! and in the same paragraph...

BookCourt in Brooklyn encourages people to read actual live physical books and the love of reading (hooray because it means book books aren't going away anytime soon)--this is the owner Zachary Zook (Love that name. He sounds like he comes right out of a children's book) and the NY Daily News did a piece on the bookstore and lists the writers reading at this store this month... and yes. It's true. I'm in the VERY SAME PARAGRAPH as Sebastian Junger! See for yourself here

For their list of upcoming June events (Sebastian Junger, SL-J, etc) here

Come if you can! Would love to see you (so would Sebastian)

(BTW: since I'm doing more travel lately and also trying to fit in actual writing... I'm going to move to a regular once a week blog post... instead of three. hope you'll still come along... I'll try and make them extra super fabulous...)

What is a poet?

"Paul Valery said that a poet is like a man who carries huge weights up to a roof and drops them all at once on the head of a passer-by."

Jeannie Vanasco 

via 

NYT book review

What is a poet?

"Paul Valery said that a poet is like a man who carries huge weights up to a roof and drops them all at once on the head of a passer-by."

Jeannie Vanasco 

via 

NYT book review

are you ready? actual happy manhattan henge day

yes I already told you I know but that was completely deliberate and so you'd have advance warning... and be ready to go with your picnic and folding chairs at a moment's notice.

Here's your moment's notice. And the scoop on where to stand when.

(In case you don't know what I'm on about: two days a year, the sun sets along the east-west axis of Manhattan's street grid. So it's exactly aligned with the streets. This year it's May 30 and July 12.)

Which means here it is today. Happy Manhattan Henge Day! Here are the precise times to show up to see manhattanhenge (note: arrive half an hour before the times below):

Monday May 30: 8.17pm EDT (to see half sun on the grid)

Tuesday May 31: 8.17pm EDT (to see full sun on the grid)

For best effect (so says Hayden Planetarium and she should know) go as far east in Manhattan as poss but ensure you can still look west across the avenues to New Jersey. Here are some good ones: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th (and Empire State Building on 34th and Chrysler Building on 42nd give the view even more spectaculary-fabulousness)

(All this is all very well but what if it's raining as it has been for the past oh 700 years in Manhattan and you can't actually see the sun?)

Oh well. Never mind. Someone must have thought of that. Happy Manhattan Henge Day anyway!

 

aurora...

watching this you can't help but wonder... why is it necessary to be so beautiful? you get the feeling it's a virtuoso performance, a fabulous show put on for our benefit...

Like sunsets--these incredible paintings that appear every night... whether we notice them or not...

John Calvin said: "There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice."

stories and skimming

James Patterson (b. 1947) said:

"If you think of the story that you tell that's your favorite personal story, or funny story, it doesn't have flashy sentences. It doesn't have too much detail. It just tells the story. That isn't, for whatever reason, the way most people write books. But it seemed to me that there was no reason that it couldn't be the way at least one person writes books. I said: 'I'm going to stop writing the parts that people skim.' "

excuse me, can you watch this & NOT laugh??

didn't think so...