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This is my first non-art, non-fiction book. It’s a little book (7″ x 7″) available through Blurb.com. The book summaries forty plus years of wisdom I’ve borrowed, evolved, and stolen from a large number of sources. It’s meant to be an informal guide to THINGS THAT WORK in everyday communication, especially with couples. The acronyms and phrases are simple, some merely “common sense” (which seems to disappear in daily communication), and some you may not have heard before.
Send me more and I’ll credit you in Book II.
Click on the Blurb logo and it will take you to the book. You can actually buy it!
The North Country. Yeah, you know it. Then again, maybe you don’t. Snow, ice, canoeing, fishing, roadkill stories, and nonexistent cell service. We could learn a lot from its plucky and resourceful inhabitants if we would only slow and stop grousing about spotty Internet service. Like the days before cars and snowmobiles, residents still to learn to entertain themselves through the idyllic summers and the long sometimes brutal winters. Gosh darn it, these Americans can still make things to play with!
The folk “cartoonages” collected in this book were originally inspired by the Surrealists (the French ones circa 1910 not the rock group). Those jaded creatives sitting around their cafes invented a game called Exquisite Corpse where each artist would draw one section of a body (for example the head) then fold the paper so the next artist (drawing the upper torso) couldn’t see what had already been done. At the end all four sections of the “corpse”are revealed! Mon Dieu, nous sommes des génies!
Pass the cognac, etc.
Between hunting moose , creating huge ice sculptures of Hessie the sea monster, and chasing bears out of the compost pile, the hardy people of Minnesota’s Gunflint Trail are all artists. Like the Balinese who said (before their international airport went in) “we have no art”, these people also have no art if you exclude chainsaw sculpture and lumberjack poetry jams. “Up North” the Exquisite Cartoon has become a veritable way of life. “Artists” (largely but not exclusively minors but working mostly in non-sweat conditions) would come and go, some would even “grow up” and go off on their own vision quests to Alaska or college, so the population of Exquisite Cartoonistas shifted and changed over time. Among these artists you won’t find any whining about fame or distress at not being represented by a Soho gallery. Heck no. This is real live up here.
Thanks to advances in book publishing I have been able to collect some of these works before the purity of this culture is lost to postmodern diffusion. So Skol, drink up, for drinking is life (or something like that). Coffee is good too. Even decaf can be guzzled with gusto.
In solidarity with our brothers and sisters in pen at the Writers Guild of America (West and East coasts), by this declaration I hereby call a STRIKE by all UNA members! UNA, Unpublished Novelists of America, may be the largest unofficial union stopping work in sympathy with WGA. Though a virtual community, our numbers are vast indicated by the number of writing classes, MF programs, and spa-oriented writing vacations advertised in Poets And Writers magazine. As a self appointed spokesperson for UNA, I hereby ask all members and affiliate members to cease and desist writing first drafts, tenth drafts or other rewrites, and put on indefinite hold any attempts to market (to agents or publishers) any novels, complete or incomplete. We are asking members to put on hold any actions associated with self-publishing (either print or P.O.D.)
Furthermore, we are working closely with representatives of UPA, Unpublished Poets of America, to expand our work stoppage to include that most ancient and meaningful form, the poem. Though we feel that the impact of our sympathy strike might at first be mistaken as “good news” by those agents and publishers supposedly inundated by so-called “slush,” inevitably as the months (and possibly years) tick away, we predict a quiet panic developing in the publishing world. How long can they rely on “already published” authors? How long can the waning market for fiction remain “exciting” without some previously unpublished UNA member breaking out to become the genius of the day? We, who count among our members all FGAFs (Future Geniuses of American Fiction) are as important as any directors or production union sitting home and writing blogs in sympathy with WGA.
Look at it this way: if farm produce could strike wouldn’t it also be “funny” if corn went out on strike? Sound like a story in The Onion? Maybe so, but sooner rather than later we’d all feel it, subtly at first (like the impact of ethanol on the price of vegetables), but the discomfort would grow into serious pain. Some joke indeed! Let them laugh all the way to starvation! Did people laugh when the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg joined the Allied Powers to fight against the Nazis in World War II? I think not. So laugh not at UNA (soon to be joined by UPA) and revel in our support!
Letter to the Editor, published in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 07-18-07
As a recovering hippie who reads The Wall Street Journal (apparently there are a few of us out here), I felt one perspective was missing from the Ted Nugent discussion (Letters, July 14).
The fact that Mr. Nugent remains controversial (as the stream of letters indicates) cuts to the core of the “hippie paradox”: How did our peace and love (and freedom, ostensibly) generation end up spawning the legacy of political correctness? The truth is that our generation, especially the hippies, were intolerant of controversy and distrustful of diverse opinion from the beginning. When it came from “straight people” (judged primarily by style and shopping venues) it was easy to identify and ridicule. When it came from one who looked like us, especially a rock musician, the backlash was impassioned and unrelenting.
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