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Speaking Out on the Number 4 Train – Greed, Girls, Yankees

October 29, 2009

Writing a daily blog can do strange things to you.  One of the more dangerous is that it strengthens the propensity (already outsized in most bloggers) to openly speak your mind.

This was brought to my attention last night when I  was jammed on the Number 4 train heading for Game 1 of the World Series.  The guy squeezed next to me had a slightly pudgy face that was decorated by half-there facial hair (some form of beard or goatee, probably intended to better define his face shape.)

He noticed, in the mass of people clumped around the  subway pole, a tall pale guy, whom he recognized.  The tall guy held the hand, knotted around the pole, of a young woman who looked up at him with eyes thick with make-up, shiny with adoration. (It turned out these two had only been married for a month.)  But I digress.

The pudgy guy, clearly hoping to impress the tall guy, told him about that big things had been happening in his life.  He’d gotten married the previous year; his business, four years old, was doing great; he was employing his brother; his wife was expecting.

After asking the tall guy where he lived, he revealed that he’d “closed” on a place in mid-town Manhattan last week.

Finding out that the couple had just married, he asked the tall guy where they’d honeymooned.  “Nice,” he said appraisingly.

They talked of a mutual friend who was also doing great, the pudgy guy said.  This friend had had a student loan business which he sold for $150 million dollars last year, then, “two weeks later,” the pudgy guy went on, “the government changed the regulations for, you know, student loans, and the place literally closed its doors.  Busted.”  He grinned widely.

(For government “changing regulations”, the blogger in me thinks “cracked down on corrupt business practices.”)

“Beautiful,” a third guy said.  I don’t know if this third guy, young, short, bristly, was a stranger or friend.  It’s hard when everyone is cheek by jowl, arm by guy, to know who’s with whom.

Who was going to the Yankees’ game and who was just headed up to the Bronx was a bit clearer.  For example, a very slight Hispanic girl, just opposite me, who had worried eyes, a  worried complexion, a small stud below her lower lip, and a large rumpled SAT prep book under one arm, looked like she was probably not going to the game.  (In fact, she got off in the Bronx, but before the stadium.)

“Well, you must be doing okay,” the pudgy guy said to the tall guy, “if you can buy Yankees tickets.”  He rubbed middle finger to thumb, moola-style.  (He had season tickets himself.)

(I should note here–yes, to make myself look virtuous–that my ticket, the most expensive single ticket, other than for a flight, that I’ve ever held in my hand, was given to me.)

Trying, I think, to change the subject, the tall guy at the pole asked the pudgy guy when his baby was due.  The pudgy guy pulled out a cell phone and directed it to an image of the baby’s sonogram, which he pressed across multiple limbs to his friend’s face.

This might have been a touching gesture.  But he kept saying, “you can see he’s a boy, right?  I mean you can’t miss it, right?”

The tall guy tried to say something about how amazing it was that the pudgy guy had a sonogram on his cell, but the pudgy guy wouldn’t let go of the fetus’s penis. “Look at the size of that.  You know what that is right?  I mean, how can you not see it?”

The tall guy said that he knew what it was.   “You’re happy then, with the baby coming?”

“Oh yeah, sure.  I’m just so glad it’s not a girl.  I’d just hate to have a girl.”

The blogger in me could suddenly no longer control myself.  “I think you’re horrible for not wanting a girl,” I said loudly.  “And I think your friend who made the 150 million for selling his worthless company was horrible too.”

As silence descended over the car, I was glad I had not added anything about the guy’s obsessing over the size of his son-to-be”s genitalia.

No one looked at me, except the third guy, who sneered.  “No, it wasn’t horrible.  I don’t want girls either.  And what that guy did was great.  That’s what capitalism is all about.  That’s what the Yankees are all about too, that’s why we’re all here.  To beat these guys from the start.”

I, thought about the incident repeatedly during the game.  It was a game in which one had a lot of time to think about things (such as, will anyone ever hit one of Cliff Lee’s pitches?)

I really do like the Yankees.  Despite their ridiculous pay scale.  But when you go to the new stadium, when you sit in a large crowd many of whom have paid hundreds of dollars for this ticket (and have a season of them) , beneath the bright lights, in the freezing cold,  surrounded by $10 special hot chocolate cups,  $8 beers, and small private suites which have crowded full bars, big TVs and a real Las Vegas feel, you become conscious of a few things which are both obvious and, to me, unpleasant;  (i) sports is a big, greedy,  business; (ii) the players are highly-paid, highly-skilled entertainers, and (iii) many fans, particularly now that the prices have gotten so high, are demanding consumers, some of whom look to the highly-paid, highly-skilled players to act out their own (slightly impotent) macho instincts.

You can’t blame the players for the business aspect, and you really can’t blame them for taking advantage of the big bucks.  Many of them grew up in poor or working class families and have worked incredibly hard to hone their skills.  (Mariano Rivera apparently practiced pitching rocks as a child.)   In fact, it’s amazing to me that so many players are so genuinely devoted to the game, so genuinely excited by their victories, so seemingly tolerant of their team members.

You can’t blame the fans (or at least some of them) for acting like consumers, getting irritated not just when their team is losing, but because the show is not up to the high admission price.

But because the amounts of money involved are so large, something  has gotten very out of whack.  And strangely enough, it almost makes the TV experience feel like the truer sport experience, simply because the audience there hasn’t paid hundreds of dollars for its seat and doesn’t have to look at signs that say things like “Make Noise,” and “Win It For the Boss” (meaning George Steinbrenner.)

The game can also be watched on TV even by those folks getting off in the Bronx, before the stadium is reached.

Categories: Baseball, Blogging, Uncategorized, Yankees
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What Makes Young People (And Some of Us Others) Re-read

October 27, 2009

For those of you who actually follow this blog, and don’t just click on a link that happens to mention Robsten or the Twilight Saga, I’m sorry!  There’s not been much poetry over the last couple of days, but a lot of clicks.

Yes, I like the clicks.  (And, strangely, “Robsten” seems to generate a whole bunch more than, let’s say, “sestina.”)

But I want to explain to you (who may not understand why in the world I write about this stuff) that I truly am interested in a couple of facets of Twilight mania (besides each of Rob’s cheekbones.)

First:  despite all the poetry I’ve posted on this blog, I am mainly a fiction writer, primarily for children and young adults.  As a result, I am fascinated by the question of what makes people read a book again and again.  And I have to say (without mentioning anything about my own experience) that the Twilight mania proves Twilight et al. to be a set of those much re-read books.

It’s a given that books that generate this type of obsessive re-reading are not always particularly “good” books, i.e. well-written.  In fact, many “good” books, that is, really profound, original, heart-wrenching, or poetic books, are not the most dog-eared at the end of the day (or lifetime.)  It’s almost as if such books are too sharp, too bitter, too stinging, to be savored again and again (in the same way that grapefruit is not typically considered a comfort food.)

This is not to say that much re-read books are poorly written!  (Charlotte’s Web and  Harry Potter are much re-read great books.) Only that good writing alone does not make a book a good re-read.  (Nor does a good plot, good jokes, good suspense, even though one or more of these is likely to be present.)

So what does make a book a good re-read?

To me, the distinguishing factor is that the book creates characters with whom readers like to spend time, sometimes, too, a world in which readers like to spend time.

Reading a book is a commitment.  It means hours in which you are not conversing, i-ming, watching TV; hours, in other words, in which you are alone.  Sometimes, in fact, a book is a way to be alone, a path to privacy in a place with hard-to-place boundaries, such as a subway, or, if you are a child, a family dinner.

Because of the inherent solitude of reading, it is important that the main character is good company—fun, cool (but not too cool as to be unempathetic), willing to share confidences.  Being admirable is helpful too, as long as there are also sympathetic and/or humorous failings and idiosyncrasies.  (Sam Vines, Captain Carrot, Granny Weatherwax in Terry Pratchett, even Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie.)

The world of a much re-read book can, of course, have its dark side.  But it is hard to repeatedly spend time in a world that is overwhelmingly creepy or frightening. (The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, and even Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier, are obvious examples of wonderful books in which the worlds created, or re-created, are just too horrific to motivate re-reads.  On the children’s shelf, similarly, the later tomes of the wonderful, His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, that is, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass, also, with the exception of certain scenes, get both too threatening and rarified for a child’s immediately repeated visits.)

Ideally, the created world, even if dark, has a fun, semi-magical side.  (Hogwarts, obviously; the barn in Charlotte‘s Web, Florida, as seen by Carl Hiassen, Discworld, as envisioned by Terry Pratchett.)

Re-reading is a particular practice of the young and the young (or perhaps, immature) at heart who can repeatedly find sustenance in something that’s already well-digested.  (Sort of like baby penguins.)   This may be because the young (and not young, but immature) are themselves subject to (i) so much fluctuation, and (ii) so much beyond their control, that they find special comfort in the predictability of a “known” fiction.   The combination of the familiar with the fantastical may be especially appealing.

Romance makes a great re-read as well.   First love is a story that has been told again and again and again; is it any wonder that some people don’t mind re-reading the exact same version of it?

Which brings me back to Twilight.

Tomorrow or in the near future (if I get time),  I’ll write about the second facet that I find interesting—that is, what makes people re-see a movie, as opposed to re-read a book.

In the meantime, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson on Amazon.

Categories: children's reading, Twilight Saga, Uncategorized, writing
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Hey Rob! Hey Kristen! The Jury’s In Session!

October 26, 2009

I’ve always thought that one of the biggest difficulties faced by any celebrity is the inability to spend time peacefully and quietly in public.

Robert Pattinson (surprise!) is an obvious case in point.  This, in fact, is one of the main reasons I am so interested in him.  (NOT because of his chiseled good looks, his self-deprecating charm, any confusion I have between him and Edward Cullen, the sweet, rich, loving, handsome vampire he portrays.  Not even his hair.)

No, I find Rob fascinating simply (okay, partly) as a study in modern day fame:  the poor guy’s life has been upended.

Sure, there’s been good stuff—movie contracts, money,  a possible love relationship with Kristen Stewart.

But look at what’s come along with all of that—virtual (in all senses of the word) non-stop surveillance.

Rob may be fairly private in his hotel room (maybe), but he cannot do anything in a public space without the constant click and taunt of paparazzi–paparazzi, combined with the more welcome, but undoubtedly wearing, attention of fans.

What’s a teen idol to do?

Jury Duty!

I have recent first hand experience of jury duty (if not, of actually serving on a jury), so I feel quite qualified to make this recommendation.

Think about it, Rob.  Jury duty has not even been that bad for me, who, despite my persistent blogging, does not have either name or face recognition.  For someone like you, who could not film Remember Me on the streets of New York this past summer without (a) a security detail, (b) a Pattinson “lookalike” (or at least “dressalike”),  (c) a 7ft. high wooden box to stand behind; and (d) a gang of paparazzi, jury duty could be a real godsend.

Here’s why:

1.  Photographic devices are not allowed into most court facilities.  (Which is great news for the media-pressured; the soft shushing of colored pencils is a lot more soothing than camera clicks.)

2.  There are loads of law enforcement officers in courthouses either (a) enforcing the law, or (b) under indictment.  Either way, they will not take kindly to paparazzi pulling out their iPhones for a sneaky snap.

3.  The jury areas  (at least in New York County) are quite pleasant, especially if you avoid the relative comfy seats in the main windowless jurors area, and go for the uncrowded wooden benches in the outside hall where large, south-facing, windows give sunny views of downtown Manhattan.  (It’s almost like a spa!  With benches!)

4.  Okay, the pay’s a six or seven digit cut from your current wage scale, but jury duty offers a young actor a great opportunity to study human nature in all its varieties and vagaries.  The emotional gamut runs from bored, to worried, to bored, to scared stiff, to bored, to deceptive, to bored, to confessional, to bored, to greatly greatly relieved, to very very sorry.

5.  Not only no paparazzi, no werewolves.

6.  And, hey, Rob, if you’re enjoying the peace and quiet, you can  volunteer for a three-month trial.  (They may even let Kristen serve too!)

For more Rob, Kristen, Robsten, Twilight,  and other silliness of many descriptions,  check out other posts  from my homepage –  https://manicddaily.wordpress.com.

Also, if interested in children’s books, check out 1 Mississippi, by Karin Gustafson, at link on homepage, or on Amazon.

Categories: Robert Pattinson, Uncategorized
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Poetry Exercise For Those “At Sea”

October 23, 2009

Yesterday, I set forth the rules for a somewhat reductive poetry exercise for the inspirationally-challenged.   (https://manicddaily.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/for-the-inspirationally-challenged-writing-exercise-for-harried-poets/)

The exercise mandates the writing of a poem which is really an extended metaphor;  the tension in the poem comes from using a set of physically- charged, action verbs.  These are verbs which describe tasks performed in a particular occupation or craft (and are listed as Column B) .  The poem is put together from a list of these Column B verbs, and a random list of unrelated nouns  (Column A). The poem is put together by making lines which use a word selected from Column A and a word selected from Column B  (and, of course, other words.)

Here is a a poem (a connected pair of poems) which I did a few years ago using this exercise.   Unfortunately, despite spending some time looking through my very disorganized notebooks, I have not been able to find the full Columns A and B that I used;  however, I know that the chosen occupation was “sailor.”  (I’m not sure of the nouns except to be certain that “gutter”, “mother”, and, I believe, “burlap”, and “brick” were among them.)

The “sailor” words went fairly far afield from those that you might at first associate with sailor–they included words like “weigh”  (as in weigh anchor), “spy”, “navigate,” “haul,” “scrub” (as in scrub the deck), “run” (as in run up a flag), “tack”, “man” (as in man the deck), “cast”, “seek”, “spy”, among others.  (If you are doing this exercise, feel free to be similarly wide-ranging in your choices.)

The poem has been edited since the first iteration.  I’m posting it because I like it even though I’m not sure it’s the best illustration of the exercise.  (Tomorrow, I’ll post a less edited poem, that may be a better illustration.)  Still, I hope it gives a taste of how a “set” of verbs chosen as part of an exercise can direct your ideas if you are someone, like me, who is frequently “at sea.”

At Sea

I.  Brother

The boy hauled the roses like burlap sacking
that scrubbed his arms with prickle.
Navigating the bunch through kitchen door which he kicked
to the side for noise value,
he hated his mother.  What he wanted was to man
the road, casting his day by the side
of the long green wood where he
could lurk and spy and brick up
hideouts with clods of dirt and brush and never lean
to any whim or wish except
of sky and guttering stream
to whose wills he’d willingly tack
his whole young life.

II.  Sister

The girl rigged her skirt to
the base of her hips,
tacking the elastic waist
to her pelvis, a convenient gutter
for fabric that would run its own course.
Bottling lips into an appraising O,
she weighed her chances, spying out
navel and the smooth flat skin of her belly
like the long sought shore, distant
yet within reach.

All rights reserved.  Karin Gustafson

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writing exercises
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For the Inspirationally Challenged – Writing Exercise for Harried Poets

October 22, 2009

For those, like me, who want to write but have limited time and mental space, inspiration can be difficult to come by. 

In large part, this is a “limited mental space” problem.  Your “free” moments may be free of immediate obligation, but your brain may still be tangled in worry, chores, regret, lonliness. 

The problem is that you don’t want to just whine.  Whining in print may offer some relief to the writer, but it’s  a  lot like the relief that vomiting offers to a person who is sick to their stomach.  It’s not all that great for the person doing it;  it’s even less appealing to their audience.

 So how can you make good use of your writing time when inspiration is otherwise engaged? 

 Here’s a trick:  try something that’s both completely arbitrary, and yet carefully defined.  In other words, a writing exercise!  The arbitrariness of the exercise can nudge you out of your over-trod groove, while the structure turns into something like a game, reducing both decisions and ego-involvement.  (It’s only an exercise!)

 In July and August, I wrote about exercises aimed primarily at prose writers.  This one is for the inspirationally-challenged poet.

 Before reading on, please set side aside snobbery.   The exercise below is a bit stupid, but it is offered as a springboard.  It relies on the fact that many poems involve tropes (a wonderful word I hardly ever get to use), that is, metaphors.  The exercise sets up a structure which is intended to turn an extended metaphor into something resembling a poem.  And it’s intended to make you think about verbs. 

 The specifics:

 First, choose an occupation, preferably one that involves some physical craft.  (Carpenter, fisherman, cook, for example, not stock analyst.)  Now, list all of the verbs that are particularly associated with that chosen occupation.  (Usually, “crafty” occupations have strong verbs.  Cook, for example: “braise, broil, boil, peel, sauté, fry, deep-fry, mince, cube, slice, skewer, stab.”)    List at least ten of these verbs.  This list is called Column B.

 Second, make a list of nouns which will be called Column A.   These nouns should be fairly randomly chosen and NOT specifically associated with your Column B verbs.  (For example, if you’ve chosen “cook” as your occupation, you can choose “mother” as a random noun, but not “chef.”) 

 While it’s nice to choose some specific nouns – such as “lilac” rather than “flower”–choose at least a couple that are very flexible  (examples:  “mother,” “father”,  “ocean”.)   You should list at least ten.

 NOW,  imagine you are at a Chinese restaurant ordering a luncheon special in which you are allowed to mix and match items from Column A (egg rolls or dumplings) with items from Column B ( bean curd homestyle or General Tso’s chicken.) 

 And NOW,  write a poem of at least five lines, using a noun from Column A and a verb from Column B in every line.   (Example:  “the ocean braised the shore.”)  (Sorry!) 

 Clarifications:  (i) Verbs from Column B can take any tense;  (ii) you do NOT need to use every word listed in Column A and Column B, just one from each Column in every line;    (iii)  line length is up to you (meaning you can use some long lines with lots of extra  uncolumned words.)

Finally, remember the two most important rules of any writing exercise:

 1.  Follow the rules.   

2.  Cheat.  (Remember that you’re trying to write a poem, not an exercise.)  

And, NOW, get going. 

Tomorrow, I’ll post some samples of my own.

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing exercises
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Didn’t work.

October 19, 2009

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Who Needs Water? Drilling the Marcellus Shale

October 17, 2009

Ten Reasons (That Anyone Can Understand) Why New York Should Say No to Upstate Natural Gas Drilling.

1.  You need water to make beer.

2.  Even a cold bath is better than one that leaves you with boils.

3.  Casino-Resorts without (a) hot tubs (that don’t leave you with boils), or (b) good beer (I’ve heard Adirondack is infinitely superior to Coors) tend to go bust.

4.   Milk is good for your teeth.

5.  Mountains are good for your soul.

6.   When the animals go, we’re next.

7.   It’s hard to create jobs in a place where you can’t drink, bathe, feed animals, or wash clothes in the water.

8.  It’s hard to keep jobs downstream of a place where you can’t—oops! Correction.  It’s hard to keep jobs in a place whose reservoirs hold water that can’t be drunk, bathed in, or used for any human or animal purpose.

9.  Wyoming was once a beautiful state.

10.  And I haven’t heard that it’s become the jobs capital of the country.

Six Reasons Why New York Should Say Yes to Natural Gas Drilling

1.  I can take my one-time drilling lease payment and rent a trailer (maybe) somewhere a whole lot warmer than Upstate New York.

2.  Those stupid dairy cows really build up a stench.

3.   Coors is okay by me.   (Better not drill in Colorado.)

4.  Mountains make me carsick.

5.  Those stupid, rich, New Yorkers—don’t they just buy bottled water?

6.  They don’t use water to make diet soda, do they?  Regular?

Categories: Environment, New York City, news, Uncategorized
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Talismans – Go Yankees!

October 10, 2009

Last night, I heard news of the first nine innings of the Yankees game only intermittently as various men in my family returned periodically to the dinner table to report, conversationally, “one-all”, or terribly, “down three to one,” or amazingly, “A-Rod tied it in the Ninth!”

I missed Mariano.  (Dishes.)  But sat through some of Aceves’ inning.  (He was the second Yankee closer, who also did an admirable, if nail-biting job.)

I am sometimes concerned that I’m not good luck for the Yankees.  This is probably just grandiosity on my part.  But I worry, when they are down and when I am watching, that my own insecurities pass in a reverse osmosis through the television screen, and endanger their efforts.

So after a few minutes  in which nothing good was happening, I left the TV room and helped the Yankees in the only way I could think of, that is, putting up a “Go Yankees” post, with a repeat elephant baseball picture, hoping for luck.

Silly, sure.  Except that a few minutes later (even with me watching), Teixera hit his wall-scraper home run!

Aha!

I’m not taking any credit.   But I’m reminded of the man in South India who put salt around his porch to ward away tigers.  When told that no tigers had ever been sited in that part of India, he nodded at the salt, “effective, isn’t it?”

Few people know that I have protected New York City from further terrorist attack by wearing a certain silver-balled necklace every single day since 9/11.

My mother wards off car accidents among family members by wearing the color blue.   (This can be quite difficult when it is too hot in Florida for a certain favorite periwinkle jacket, and her cerulean short sleeve shirt is dirty.)

My husband keeps loved ones safe through three knocks on the vehicle that holds them.   (He sometime has to do this on the trunk of the cab to the airport since it’s pretty hard to get close enough to airplanes to knock on them these days.)

I can’t really speak for my mother and husband.  I can only say that I don’t just adopt any object or action—the talisman has to proven to work.   This means that I don’t pick a lucky object, rather the object presents itself to my notice after the magic has already started working.  In the case of my silver necklace, for example, I conveniently realized, after several weeks of just happening to wear it, that no further terrorist act had happened in NYC.   (In this sense, I am quite different from Charlie Chaplin, who seemed, at least in City Lights, to adopt talismans in a rather desperate ad hoc way that proved comically inefficient.   I’m thinking here of the scene before his boxing match, in which he sneaks a rabbit’s foot from a very brawny professional-looking boxer and rubs it all over himself only to see the boxer carried out on a stretcher.  Then Chaplin tries frantically to rub the rabbit aura off .)

Oddly, one reason that I like the Yankees is that their success does not seem to depend on luck.   (Yes, they have good luck, and their own little talismanic rituals to keep hold of it.)    But, of course what the Yankees really rely on (aside from Mariano) is skill.   (Yes, this skill was bought with multi-digit figures I don’t want to think of.)   But what impresses me even more than the Yankees’ skill, is their endurance–the way they just keep going– beyond bad luck, beyond bad odds, beyond even those times when their skills have failed them and their prior innings’ performances have been embarrassingly bad (especially considering their pay).  They just keep trying until the very last out.

Probably even without silver necklaces.

If you liked elephant baseball, check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at link above.

Categories: Uncategorized, Yankees
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Go Yankees!

October 9, 2009
Go Yankees!

Go Yankees!

I’ve posted this picture before, but am hoping it’s good luck!  Hurray New York!  (Sorry Minnesota!)

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“Home”

October 8, 2009

Home

Her cheekbones, Cherokee, she’d told me
when we were younger, have
reasserted themselves.  Last visit
her face was swollen, foreshortened by
pink scarf, but hair has grown
what with the end of the chemo
into small feathery clumps,
and her features, that web of
intent-filled bone, have resurfaced.
You look so beautiful, I say.  Smile
flickers until she turns again to
trying to sit up, though we have
to catch and lift and
her husband
to support her,
which she cannot
bear for long. But
I have to get up, she says,
I have to get out of this place.

He talks of brushing her hair first,
fingering brief curls.  This
brings a nod.  She has been naturally
beautiful her whole life,
but also a beauty who brushed hair first.
But I’ve got to get home, she insists
suddenly, arching away.
You are home, he tells her, in
your own room, your own bed,
but she pushes now so hard
that we have to turn
her legs, gather her arms, lift and walk
her to a chair, its chintz print
roses on vines, then, when she can’t sit,
walk her back.

Did you call the car? Tell him
to come right now?  You’ve got
to call it.
I called it, her husband lies
as he holds her head close to slide down drops.
But I’ve got to go home, she cries, pulling away
from body, pain, still air.
Just stay for a bit, he whispers.

 

***************************************

I originally posted this for National Poetry Day 2009 in the U.K. on a theme of heroes and heroines, but I am relinking to the Trifecta Writing Challenge on the topic of home.  Trifecta has very cool challenges that look to the third meaning of the word – here, “a familial or usual setting: congenial environment, also focus of one’s domestic attention.” 

This poem was published in my book GOING ON SOMEWHERE, (by Karin Gustafson, illustrated by Diana Barco). Also check out l1 Mississippi -counting book for lovers of rivers, light and pachyderms, or Nose Dive, a very fun novel that is perfect for a pool or beachside escape.

 

 

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