Reading and repairs

The number of books that I read to my son has now increased to a rotation of four. He lines them up on the floor, and when he decides to put them away he takes them, one at a time, to the bookshelf. We've been in the house a lot because the weather has been extremely cold. There's been a lot of reading.

Last week was only a two day school week with President's Day and two days cancelled due to cold. I'm sure next week will have at least one cold day. Temperatures have been below zero in the morning.

After swimming last week I was driving home in a light snow on a side street and hit a patch of ice. I was only doing about 15-20 miles per hour and slammed into the curb tire first. I knew I knocked the car out of alignment and managed to limp the short distance home. There I saw the tire had some chunks chopped out but it was not flat, yet. Limped to a repair shop that is open on Saturdays and hoped for the best, which did not quite happen. Needed a center arm and ball joint, which they could not get that day, in addition to the alignment so we had no car last weekend.

Picked up the car Monday afternoon, after waiting for the bus downtown in some freezing cold weather and was told the rim on the tire was bent, but they moved it to the rear so the car is drivable. Had to cancel a reading in Pittsburgh after getting the bill and have to make arrangements to get a new rim next week.

Today we had about half a foot of snow, which is equivalent to two feet in just about any other northern city. Roads were a mess. The temperature did get above freezing for most of the afternoon so the heat pump activated. I had to pour water on the blades to get some of the snow off as the fans were not moving. I also noticed this.



Steam freezes into interesting shapes, eh?

Neil's Page Turner

Stillness is difficult in my son. From the moment he wakes up, he is constantly in motion. It has always been hard, and rare, to be able to sit and read to him. He would always turn the pages out of my hands. When he does have a book, the pages turn quickly, as if he was thumbing through a magazine. I'm fairly certain he can read, but determining the level is difficult.



This afternoon my wife and I were lying on our bed, he was in his room and I asked him to come see us. He climbed on and played with my eyebrows for awhile, which has been one of his recent passions. He says "eyebrows" long and sinister.

After a while he went back to his room and starting repeating the same nonsensical sentence over and over. I asked him to stop, to come see me and bring a book.

He brought this book with him. I opened it up and started to read. To my surprise he let me, leaning into me as I continued.

When I finished he said, "The end," took the book from me, closed it, handed the book back to me. I asked him what he wanted, he said, "Bears." "What about the bears?" I asked. "Book," was his reply.

Read the book five more times to him, trying to prompt him to say what he wanted. Got him to say "read" and "to me." It's very hard to draw meaningful words out of him, but for a few minutes on a Saturday afternoon something clicked between us a little.

No resolutions, but must improve

Probably the worst year of reading than I can remember. The quality is there, but the quantity is missing. Could not even read a book a week in 2012. For me, that is ridiculously low. Plus, I included a number of shorter poetry books. They seem to merely pad my count, but you should all check out Jack Gilbert's work. Yes, I can do better.

There were a few books I started, then got about 25-50 pages in and gave up. Those do not get listed here. If I finished it, the book is here. Three stars is a cut above average, four stars is a very good book.

1) Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. 925 p. ***
2) John Doyle - The World is a Ball. 330 p.
3) Frederica Sager Maas - The Shocking Miss Pilgrim. 264 p.
4) Gil Scott-Heron - The Last Holiday: A Memoir. 321 p.
5) Jim Walsh - The Replacements: All Over but the Shouting. 304 p.
6) Annie Liebovitz - Pilgrimage. 246 p.
7) Stephen Fry - The Fry Chronicles. 438 p. ***
8) Kent Hartman - The Wrecking Crew. 292 p.
9) Susan Senator - Dirt: a story about gardening, mothering, and other messy business. 270 p.
10) David M. Wilson - The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott. 191 p. ***
11) Kate Winslet - The Golden Hat: Talking Back to Autism. 284 p. (mostly pictures)
12) Jack Gilbert - The Dance Most of All. 60 p. ***
13) Guy Delisle - Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea. 176 p.
14) Johnny Ramone - Commando. 174 p.
15) Francesca Woodman. 224 p. (mostly pictures)
16) Carole King. A Natural Woman. 489 p.
17) Mike Doughty. The Book of Drugs. 252 p. ***
18) Will Hermes. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire. 368 p. ***
19) Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven. 92 p. ****
20) John Irving. In One Person. 425 p. ***
21) Buzz Bissinger. Father's Day. 242 p. ****
22) Jack Gilbert. The Great Fires. 90 p. ***
23) Ken Calliat & Steven Stiefel. Making Rumours. 362 p. ***
24) Frank Langella. Dropped Names. 356 p.
25) Mark Haddon. The Red House. 264 p.
26) Gillian Flynn. Gone Girl. 419 p. **** (best fiction)
27) Christopher Coake - You Came Back. 416 p. ***
28) Ian Rankin - Black and Blue 397 p. ****
29) Dori Hadar - Mingering Mike. 192 p.
30 Joe Oestreich - Hitless Wonder. 293 p. **** (best non-fiction)
31) Natasha Trethewey - Native Guard. 64 p.
32) R.A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey - Wherever I Wind Up. 340 p. ***
33) Jay Stringer - Old Gold. 236 p. ***
34) David Davis - Showdown at Shepherd's Bush. 308 p.
35) Alexandra Scott - If I Could Be Louder. 20 p.
36) Jamaal May - God Engine 2.0. 30 p.
37) Paula J. Lambert - The Sudden Seduction of Gravity. 57 p. ***
38) Pete Townshend - Who I Am . 538 p.
39) Tadashi Ago, Shu Okimoto. The Drops of God. 423 p.
40) Christopher Hitchens. Morality. 104 p. ***
41) Susan McAllister (et al). A Bigger Boat: the Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam. 327 p.
42) Jack Gilbert. Tougher than Heaven. 24 p.
43) Richard Russo. Elsewhere. 243 p. ***
44) Michael G. Ankerich. The Sound of Silence. 260 p. ***
45) Kurt Vonnegut Jr. We are what we Pretend to be. 161 p. ***
46) Soccer and Disaster: International Perspectives. 193 p.

Seeking and overlaying

Work is usually work, and I rarely write about it in any social media anymore. However, the past week or so has had me working with some old materials. We're building or matching together bibliographical records for thousands of materials that have insufficient records, making them very hard to find in the catalog. Some of what I have to look for is pretty easy, others a moderate challenge, still others make me bang my head on the desk - in a good way of course. I do enjoy the work, the search process, the matching of records and organization.

This is what 1849 looks like.



A simple math primer. I get a weird charge working with items that were printed when Zachary Taylor was president. The materials I've been working on are very diverse, tax laws, midwifery, a treatise on infidelity that had the date of purchase inscribed, hand written by the owner of the book - a certain Mr. Orton, in 1853.

Then there was this, from 1869. I liked the cover.

There is a lot to go through, in many different languages. It makes me think about preservation and storage, a major issue in libraries that have depositories. What do we do with the stuff? Even in the digital age not everything is available online, nor can it be found at the Gutenberg Project or Google Books. Space is becoming tighter and tighter though. Decisions have to be made. May those wiser than me be making the correct ones.

Over three minutes ten seconds, you go back to your seat. You feel shame

Last night was another IWPS qualifying slam at WB. There were two rounds, the first a three minute poem, the second a one minute.

I’d done the three minute so many times, and in so many places. I slowed it down, just a little too much and the time was 3:11. One second over the ten second grace period left me with a half point deduction. Such is the animal of slam. I would have finished first in the round instead of tied with two others.

My one minute was a brand new poem. A bit on the odd side; inspired in part when Hanif said there were no Tito Jackson poems in a Facebook comment. I used it. It went ok, but a couple poets sailed by me in the standings.

Turns out, I would have finished in third had I not had the time penalty. No one to blame but me. Congratulations to Ethan and Gina who tied for first place, and Vernell for coming in third.

Also a welcome to the fold to Aaron, who broke his Slam Cherry last night. He was so cute, doubled over in his chair all nervous before going on stage.

In other news the book I’m anthologized in came in the mail yesterday!



If you want to read the rest of the poem you can get the book HERE.

Also been watching the internet foam at the mouth over the ACA today.

I thought seeing 30/30 every day in April was time consuming. I was wrong.

For the record. I wrote seven poems in April. Put one of them here. Another in Facebook notes. None of them were haiku.

It's great when poets get a book deal. It really is. Right now there's a publisher that is running a contest. About twenty poets are finalists in a process that will end with about four to eight of them getting published. This month, they have to post a video on Youtube. The number of "likes" they get will count towards their overall grade. Twenty percent from what I understand. This is also not a fly by night publisher. You have to be a good page poet to get your work here. They're legitimate and high quality.

Sure, if you're the publisher you want to know if the poet can read their work in public. Part of the book deal is that they tour with their work. Part of this smacks of American Idol to me. A gimmick that bores the crap out of me. Not only that but having to scroll past the same twenty links on my Facebook feed multiple times a day makes me a bit cranky.

So if we click on all the links, which makes the voting process equal, what happens then? They can't all be winners, right? Hard to imagine being the poet who, literary merits being equal, did not get a book deal because their video did not get enough hits on Youtube. I guess that's branding in the modern world.

It makes me want to see the same pictures that George Takei posts, over and over, because it takes up less of my time.

Seriously. Good luck to all the poets, especially the ones who work hard and do not get the deal. Especially the ones who do get the deal and survive this ordeal.