Vacation

I'm going to be mostly offline from 12/24 - 1/7.  All Lame House orders have shipped/are shipping this week.  Any new orders in the coming weeks will be fulfilled by mid-January.  If you're in NYC, maybe I'll see you at the Poetry Project on New Year's Day.  If you're in Saginaw, you should go to Garfield's this week for 29 cent drafts.  Have a good holiday everyone.

Happy Retirement

My Dad & Mom in Florida

This Friday, December 26, 2008, my mom will be going into work for the last time to hand in her ID and keys. She has worked for the State of Michigan for 36 1/2 years for an agency that has been called at various times the Department of Social Services, the Family Independence Agency, and, most recently, the Department of Human Services. I have a feeling my parents will be spending a lot more time in Florida. Happy Retirement, Mom!

The New School has been taken over by students

Read about the occupation and the demands of the students here and check out the New School in Exile site here.

Kate Greenstreet's This is Why I Hurt You

Pamela Hart reviews Kate Greenstreet's This is Why I Hurt You in the new Galatea Resurrects.  You can read the review here, and, if you are interested, you can purchase a copy of the book here--there are only a few copies left.

A wonderful story

Yesterday's Saginaw News reported that Payless Shoe Source is giving shoes and boots to 150 youngsters in need.  Workers from the First Ward Community Center were to take the kids shopping at the Fashion Square Mall location yesterday.  It is really wonderful to hear about a business, especially in times like these, give back to the community.  Thank you Payless!

You can read the full Saginaw News story here.  [It sounds like someone, or a group of people, were responsible for donating to Payless for this to happen, so a great big thanks to those individuals too.]

Bettie Page, Rest in Peace

See the LA Times obit here.  Since Page is an icon of the rockabilly scene, it seems appropriate that I'll be at White's tonight where Cash O'Riley and the Downright Daddies will be playing.

Give the Gift of Charity

It's not too late.  Check out Redefine Christmas for a number of giving opportunities.  A description from the website:

Give others donations to their favorite charities

Redefine Christmas is neither commercial venture, no money-maker.  It's simply a charitable idea, shared by many, that our holiday gift giving could be more meaningful and do more good.  In addition to the gifts we enjoy shopping for and giving, we're often compelled to give gifts that aren't so meaningful.  Imagine if we replaced those gifts by giving others donations to their favorite charities.  And we just request that others do the same for us.

Just wondering

Is it impossible to embed delicious updates in a blog?  For example, if I had a series of bookmarks labeled "Ted Berrigan" and wanted to post the bookmarks to a blog, is there an easy way to do this without typing each link?  I just created a delicious account today to ideally use for a class next semester, but I'm not sure if it is going to fit my needs.  

In the meantime, if you wish to add me, I have no Delicious friends!  Here's my profile.  I've only been adding news sites so far.

Review of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps

The new issue of BookSlut with my review of Brandon Shimoda's The Alps launched this past week.  You can read the review here.

Born to lose, destined to fail

Jackie Clark very kindly asked me to write something for Coldfront Magazine's Poets off Poetry series.  My essay, "You can run your whole life, but not go anywhere," is up now.  I attempted to tie Camus, Saginaw, and alternative country music together.  At the very least it makes sense to me.  Jackie selected a lot of wonderful images and songs.  I supplied the photos of Saginaw.  Check it out here.

World AIDS Day 2008

Today is World AIDS Day and I thought I would point out this collection of essays about AIDS in India, AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India.  I heard about it on Tell Me More, and no, I haven't read it yet, but the conversation Michelle Martin has with Sonia Faleiro and Siddharth Dhanvant, two authors from the book, is really wonderful.  You can listen to it here and read an excerpt.

Pushcart Nomination & Coconut News

I just received word that my poem "Love Poem to Someone I Do Not Love" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  Bruce Covey, of Coconut Magazine and Coconut Books, has previously nominated this poem for Best of the Web.  I really appreciate Bruce's support.  As he said in his nomination, they almost never select poems from web-based journals, so he's hoping I'll treat the nomination as a prize in and of itself.  Sounds like a good idea to me.  Thanks Bruce!

Now is also a good time to point out that there is a new issue of Coconut up now, as well as two new titles from Coconut Books: Jen Tynes's Heron / Girlfriend, and Sueyeun Juliette Lee's That Gorgeous Feeling.  Check them out here.

Mlinko on Dickinson

I am just now getting around to Ange Mlinko's essay "Her Nature was Future: Emily Dickinson's White Heat" in The Nation.  Read it here.

If you like contemporary ruins as much as I do

Then you might be interested in this: Crumbling South Bronx as a Muse.  Ray Mortenson has a show of his photographs of South Bronx from 1982 to 1984.  "Broken Glass" is currently up at the City Museum of New York.

I was recently checking out Camilo Jose Vergara's New American Ghetto, which also has photos of the South Bronx from this time period.  However, Vergara's book has photos from a lot of other cities (and boroughs/neighborhoods) too--Brooklyn; Harlem; Gary, Indiana; Detroit; Los Angeles; Chicago; Oakland, California; Newark, New Jersey; etc.  The photos span from the early 1970s to 1994.  (The book was published in 1995.)  One nice thing about this large time span is that it allows for photos of the same building to appear to see how it transforms over time.  For example, an abandoned bank in South Bronx is later pictured as a supermarket.  These photos are run side by side. 

But this isn't just a picture book, it has an in depth chapters discussing everything from housing to commerce and industry, fortification of homes and business to graffiti, domestic interiors to resistance to degradation, and homelessness to the transformation of ghettos.  The final chapter concludes with a look to the future, and it isn't promising.  The title of that chapter, "No Solution in Sight," pretty much sums it up.  What is especially of interest to me is that the final chapter focuses on Detroit's future.  

Unfortunately I have not gotten around to reading it all yet, and it is due back to the library today.  Re-checking it out now won't help me timewise.  You can view some images from the book online here.