A Page from an Old Book I Found

Here's a page from From the Tower Window of My Bookhouse Five (1921) edited by Olive Beaupre Miller--looks like illustration is by Donn P. Crane:

Google Let Me Down

So a friend sent me the cryptic message: Brueggacino. I know this is probably in reference to a drink that will be like the drink I was addicted to in Greece, but I did what I always do: I Googled it. But when I hit Google Search, I got only this in return: "Your search - Brueggacino - did not match any documents." Not even a "Did you mean...."

I just stared at the page, dumbstruck, realizing how long it had been since Google didn't have the answer. I didn't know what to do. My world didn't make sense anymore. Is there a God, I wondered. I hit the search button again. Nothing. I went to MSN and did a MSN search but, of course, they had nothing. I almost cried.

Not only that, but here's what came up on Google Images when I searched for the promised kitten/puppy deathmatch:
Thanks, Google, thanks for nothing....I take it back, don't leave me, Google....

Other People’s Writerly Advice Tip #4 (Celebratory Edition)

So it's been a busy weekend, plus some. Mainly because Heather graduated with her MFA! Congratulations to her! Now, she's official. Officially...well she was already a poet...officially a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry, I suppose.

Which brings us not to The Twilight Zone, though it might as well be because we come to that popular party question: why get an MFA anyway? That's the subject of our advice today. Mike Kobre gave part of the commencement address, and in his remarks he delivered a great account of Melville's friendship with Hawthorne. Melville's literary star was fading while he worked on the ultimately doomed novel The Whale (a.k.a. Moby Dick) which would kill his career until it's brilliance was "rediscovered" years after Melville's death. What kept him going was his friendship with the more popular Hawthorne. And Kobre would say that is the kind of unquantifiable benefit of an MFA: a community of writers.

I would have to agree. Though I do owe a lot to UNC-Wilmington, what matters in my day-to-day life now are the friends I still have: Melody Clayton and Derek Nikitas chief among them. But even ones I don't see or talk to that often offer help in the dark night that is writing. Eric Vrooman, for example, just returned my manuscript with the kind of comments and close line readings that you should have to pay thousands of dollars for.

With this post and the last, I feel like I'm getting too sentimental. I promise to kill a kitten or a puppy in later posts to make up for it. Maybe a cute animal caged death match. Stay tuned.

Blogs Are Good For Something After All

I have finally discovered what blogs are good for: reconnecting with those lost people in your past (and possibly for hooking up with slightly older Cretan Goddess/Witches--if your girlfriend weren't so hung up on this monogamy thing...I mean, it's not like I'm trying to be Henry Miller or anything). Anyway, thanks to my public narcissism, I've been reconnected with a great friend from my undergrad days at Wingate University (the university formerly known as Wingate College): Scott Lewis. Here's a link just for him...he knows why...

Your Etiquette Advice from Some Old Books I Found

Today's etiquette advice comes from Book of Etiquette: Volume II by Lillian Eichler 1921 (Nelson Doubleday, Inc.):

Ask questions only if you are gifted with great tact. Otherwise you are bound to create embarrassing situations. If you do ask questions, make them of a general character, rather than personal. But never be curious, because people resent inquisitiveness--and rightly so, for it is a very undesirable trait to have, and each person has a right to privacy.

That's right, stop questioning me, you damned inquisitive people...everyone resents you anyway. This has been your etiquette advice from some old books I found.

The Elephant in the Reading

Jet lag has made me into a 9 to 5 guy. I wake at 7 in the morning and get tired at 10 at night. I'm working through the pain. So I went to the Queens MFA reading tonight. First up was Margot Singer, who read from her short story collection The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press), winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. The other reader was Alan Michael Parker (AMP to acronym lovers), and he gave me hope for poetry with his comic listing poems and his reading of the title poem from his new collection Elephants & Butterflies. It also helps that he admitted to being a "pretentious shit" for titling a poem in Latin.

Triumphs and Disappointments

So 2 plane rides, 4 rough hours sleep in 36 hours, and some number of students (the correct number, not a one lost...physically--I'm sure they're lost in all kinds of mental and spiritual ways I'm not responsible for) delivered to the good ole U.S. of A., and I'm back in all my shabby, jet-laggy self.

Note to shabby self: write a museum guide for people who hate museums, e.g. ignore the overplayed Mask of Agamemnon at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for the far more humorous phallic-handled spoon.

My major disappointment came when watching a round of Eurovision in an Athens restaurant where they gave me a salad with lettuce rather than that Greek abomination that contains only tomatoes, olives, and feta. Eurovision you probably know though I've never seen it mentioned in the States is that infinitely superior American-Idol-esque competition where countries send a musical act to represent them (often well known rather than just discovered). These are often pop princess clones like Greece's own entry this year, but sometimes...not. My favorite this year was eliminated that night of the lettuce salad: Ireland's entry. I'm doubly sad because mocking the contest you're trying to win is probably noble and also because the country that wins hosts the next year's contest, and I'll be in Ireland then.

So here's to the fallen Dustin the Turkey: