The 1970’s — What Was America Reading?

          
Minerva, 1889 - 1890, Roman goddess of poetry, music, wisdom, and warriors (Greek, Athena), bronze sculpture by Norwegian American artist, Jakob H. F. Fjelde, downtown Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
 
 
The first black hole was discovered in the same decade that Star Wars was released (and not by Columbo, [...]

Read Full Post »

WRITING TOPIC - THE 7 DEADLY SINS

7, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Can you list the 7 Deadly Sins? I usually get to number 6 and fade out. I can never remember all 7. The 7 Deadly Sins began with Evagrius Ponticus as a list of 8 capital vices. A condensed version of the list [...]

Read Full Post »

Got Poetry? (National Poem In Your Pocket Day)

Pocket Poetry, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2008, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

April 17th is the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day. It’s part of the wider celebration of National Poetry Month. I went to my monthly poetry group last Friday. We talked about the life of Maya Angelou, read her poetry, sat [...]

Read Full Post »

A 40-Year Love Affair

By Teri Blair

Parkway Marquee, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

In 1989 the Academy-Award winning Cinema Paradiso was released. The Italian film takes place in a post-World War II Sicilian village, and chronicles the friendship of a young boy, Toto, and the town’s gruff but lovable movie projectionist, Alfredo. Toto [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE: Hair - 15min

I have brown curly hair. I am the only one in my family with curls. Not just waves, but corkscrew curls. People asked throughout my childhood: Who has curls in the family? The answer to strangers was: Her grandmother had wavy hair. To friends and one another, we joked: Her father was Zorro.
Zorro is what [...]

Read Full Post »

Natalie Goldberg — Old Friend From Far Away

from vodpod.com posted with vodpod
Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away - The Practice of Writing Memoir, December 21st, 2007 (to play video, click either green arrow twice)

Natalie Goldberg has a new book coming out on February 12th, Old Friend from Far Away - The Practice Of Writing Memoir. One of our readers [...]

Read Full Post »

On Eating December Snowflakes

           A Charlie Brown Christmas, snippets on YouTube by FlyingForGlory

Patty:  Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue. It’s fun.
Linus Van Pelt:  Mmm. Needs sugar.
Lucy Van Pelt:  It’s too early. I never eat December snowflakes. I always wait until January.
Linus Van Pelt:  They sure look ripe to me.

I love to watch the snow fall. I’m a [...]

Read Full Post »

WRITING TOPIC - LOVE ME LIKE MUSIC (TOP 10)

    
    
Blood On The Tracks, newly painted garage door on Dylan’s childhood home, part of the Dylan Days tour, Hibbing, Minnesota, May 2006, photo © 2006 by Liz. All rights reserved.

I’ve had music on the brain. Last week I watched an October interview with Nancy and Ann Wilson on A&E’s Private Sessions. The two [...]

Read Full Post »

I’m Not There - The 6 Faces Of Dylan

The 6 Faces Of Dylan, Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There, Uptown Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, November 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Buttered popcorn in hand, I viewed I’m Not There at the Uptown Theater a few weeks ago. I have to admit, when my friends and I plopped down in the [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE - I Find Humor - 15min

I find humor in ridiculous things like the Great Pumpkin Catapult or singing moldy oldies with Liz in the morning when I’m spooning French Roast into the Braun. I crack up after belting out dreadful tunes from the seventies, something by Gilbert O’Sullivan or Bread, or rocking out, jammin’ to Stevie Wonder in Happy Feet.
I [...]

Read Full Post »

The Brave One

Yesterday, 35mm Movie Projector detail, inside the recently refurbished Parkway Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

After dinner at the Tea House last night, Liz and I went to see The Brave One. I’ve always been a big Jodie Foster fan. She’s got charisma, isn’t afraid to tackle psychologically [...]

Read Full Post »

What If Merv Were Chicano?

Merv García, pen and ink and pencil on graph paper, doodle © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Merv Griffin: OK, my little pajaritos, do we have any requests?

Someone in audience: Y volver, volver, volver…

Someone else in audience: …a mis brazos otra vez…

MG: Coños, babies, come on, I’m not Al Hurricane…let me play you una cancioncita about my [...]

Read Full Post »

WRITING TOPIC - “I WANT TO LET GO OF …”

On Thursday, September 6, the City of Santa Fe, NM, hosted the annual “Burning of Zozobra.” Zozobra is a fifty-foot-tall bogeyman, Old Man Gloom in effigy. Each year he is set before an audience of thousands and burned. (Burn, baby, burn!) Most onlookers are ecstatic to see him go; others feel sorry for him in the [...]

Read Full Post »

MN State Fair On-A-Stick II - Video & Stats

Foods On A Stick At The Minnesota State Fair 2006, YouTube Video by TKordonowy.

Whoa! After 8 hours at the Minnesota State Fair, Liz and I made it home at 10:30p.m. last night, not much worse for wear. Unless you count the fact that we could hardly walk and had giant food hangovers!

Here are our MN [...]

Read Full Post »

What If Madge Were Chicana?

You’re Soaking in it, pen and ink doodle on graph paper, doodle © 2007 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

Madge: Ei, alá, you’re so-king in it…

Client: ¡Chale! ¿De véras?

Madge: Sí, hombre, te digo la verdad.

Client: ¡Oralé! ¿Qué pasó? Was there a ganga at Dollar Store?

Madge: Bitche, how did you know??

-Inspired by Topic post, Cleanliness.
-Related to post, Everything [...]

Read Full Post »

The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?

 
BookMark, Minneapolis Central Library, downtown Minneapolis, through the rain, August 2007, opened May 2006, architecture by the design team of Cesar Pelli & Associates, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. 
 
Time for another decade of bestselling books. At the end of the 1960’s, gas was 39¢ a gallon, a 1962 Jaguar XKE would set [...]

Read Full Post »

Everything I Know About Cleaning I Learned From My Mother

I have a picture in my head of Mom. She’s wearing soft denim shorts to just above her knees. Her hair is in curlers, a red bandana tied around the curlers, a cigarette on her lip. Next to her, on the floor, is a flat metal ashtray, the kind that folds like tin when you bend it. [...]

Read Full Post »

Eloquent Nude At The Riverview

Riverview Theater, vintage 1948 sign, designed by Liebenberg and Kaplan, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved

A good friend called me last Sunday completely revved up about a film she had seen at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis. The last showings were scheduled for Sunday at noon and 5:30p.m. and [...]

Read Full Post »

Night Owl

Blue Light Special, downtown Minneapolis, shot from the car window, August 3rd, 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

I’m a creature of the night, a night owl all the way. On Friday afternoons, I’m pondering the wonders I’ll accomplish when daylight melts to dark. Maybe I adopted the tendency from my Mother. She [...]

Read Full Post »

Duck & Cover

              -Duck & Cover, posted on YouTube by maesterjay, May 16th, 2006

In a quest for memoir details and memories, I spent the afternoon driving through Southern childhood neighborhoods with my mother and step-father. When we had finished walking through tall blooming magnolias in Georgia’s historic Magnolia Cemetery, we drove by my grandfather’s ranch home from the [...]

Read Full Post »

Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac

 -Can’t Sleep, April 7th, 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey, all rights reserved

I stayed up writing until 4am last night. I recognize the state of mind as one of my creative zones. It’s also a lonesome place where I live in the heart of darkness and pulpy gray brain matter. Thoughts, feeling, and ruminations move [...]

Read Full Post »

Help Wanted

By Sharon J. Anderson

Fantasy Jobs (in chronological order)
Miss America
Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”
Maria in “The Sound of Music”
Nancy Drew
Sherlock Holmes
Archeologist
Barbara Bain in “Mission: Impossible”
Stephanie Powers in “The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.”
Diana Rigg in “The Avengers”
Margaret Mitchell and/or Scarlett O’Hara
A keyboard player for Carole King, Judy Collins or Joni Mitchell
Ayn Rand
A gang member in “A Clockwork [...]

Read Full Post »

CSI: Miami - Smoker’s Paradise?

 
-No Smoking Clock from QuitSmoking.com

At an art opening last night, I overheard a conversation by a woman who used to do research for a stop smoking campaign in Minnesota. County by county, people are electing to vote for legislature that bans smoking in public places.
This is no surprise. It’s going on all over the country, [...]

Read Full Post »

Cuz Mom Don’t Waltz Either

“Hey Mom, didya see Billy Ray yesterday?”
“God, he was awful.”
“I hope they vote him off next week.”
“Me, too. He’s such a hick.”
“Yeah, you can tell he’s counting the steps in his head.”
“He reminds me boys I grew up with.”
“Well, you know hicks.”
“That’s fer sure.”
 

Read Full Post »

On Candy

By Barbara Rick

Whirly Pops from Harrods in London, photo © 2007 by Barbara Rick. All rights reserved.

In my freckle-faced, firmer-thighed youth I had a thing for Butterfingers. And Clark Bars. Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddies, Tootsie Pops and Pez.
It was a long way for a little girl to Lyons, the candy store on the corner. I [...]

Read Full Post »

The 1950’s — What Was America Reading?

It was the 1950’s. Gas was 29¢ a gallon, cigarettes 25¢ a pack, a hospital stay was $35 a day. The Franklin National Bank in New York issued the first credit card, and the World’s first shopping mall in the U.S. - Seattle’s Northgate Mall was built. The First Grammy Awards happened, RCA’s Color Television [...]

Read Full Post »

Because Goat-Sucking Creatures Do Exist

A friend of mine sent an email today letting me know our PBS station is airing a documentary tonight on writer Rudolfo Anaya. It’s called From Curandera to Chupacabra: The Stories of Rudolfo Anaya. You can watch the documentary via the link; it’s only 26 minutes long.
My favorite Anaya book is Bless Me, Ultima. His latest book, Curse of [...]

Read Full Post »

Continue Under All Circumstances

By Teri Blair
 
I thought this directive, this encouragement, this heed applied only when things were going badly. You know, just keep going even though the chips are down on all fronts - when you have nothing to write in your notebook but garbage, when you just keep getting rejection letters from publishers, when you feel [...]

Read Full Post »

Richard Wright - 810 Haiku

A few nights ago, I stayed up past midnight writing a piece. PBS was on in the background. I wasn’t paying much attention until pre-film credits started to roll and I glanced up to see opening scenes of Native Son.
Not the 1951 version where Richard Wright played Bigger Thomas. It was the 1986 version with [...]

Read Full Post »

Mary Tyler Moore’s Boots

-Mary Tyler Moore’s Boots, Nicollet Mall & 7th Street, Minneapolis, photo by QuoinMonkey, March 2007, all rights reserved

NOTE TO MARY:  When I watched your show every week in the 70’s, I never dreamed I’d someday be living in Minneapolis.
Oh, by the way, I did make it after all!

-from Topic post, These Boots Are Made for [...]

Read Full Post »

Shoeless Joe Jackson

When the topic of shoes posted last week, all I could think about was Shoeless Joe Jackson. Remember his appearance in Field of Dreams? I can picture him walking out of a sparkling corn field in Dyersville, Iowa, scuffling over to the bleachers, tossing a baseball, hand to pocket, hand to pocket, talking to Kevin [...]

Read Full Post »

I Would Fly Away

Yesterday Dee asks, “If you could fly or hold your breath underwater, which would you choose?” At first I think she means fly in a plane, and for a moment I don’t understand the relationship between planes and holding your breath.
She tries me again. “If you could fly like a bird with wings or swim [...]

Read Full Post »

Top 7 Wonder Woman Quotes

I got a short, one page letter in the mail on Wonder Woman stationery from someone in last year’s Taos writing Intensive that inspired me to scour the world for Wonder Woman quotes.
It made me wonder if they actually remembered that writing practice I read about carrying the Golden Lasso of Truth through Missoula, Montana [...]

Read Full Post »

PRACTICE - Living a Double Life – 30min

I’m exhausted. Can’t seem to find my ground the last few weeks. I live a double life. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. How hard it is for artists and writers to live an alternative life. No wonder so many writers are alcoholics and addicts. I can feel the great need for relief from [...]

Read Full Post »

Black Dog Calling

Something about movies I watched when I was 13, 14, 15 years old. They left an impression on me that no other films seem to have done since.
There was Jaws. I remember sitting in the dark theater, my feet up on the back of the seat in front of me. When the great white shark [...]

Read Full Post »