“I abhor violence. When violence occurs, the cause is compromised.” ~ Anni Chung

She founded and heads Self-Help for the Elderly in San Francisco. And two days ago she was one of the Olympic torch bearers in that city. When asked if she, a Shanghai native, shared the concerns of the protesters in Paris and London who were speaking out against China’s violent put down of Tibetans calls for autonomy, the above was her reply.

Only someone named H.L. Hix.

Only from Etruscan Press.

God Bless.

Currently professor of English at University of Wyoming – which must seem a breath of fresh air after a stint at Cleveland Institute of Art – he has an MA and PhD from UT-Austin, which naturally endears him to me.  For some reason, Austin has been my personal platonic ideal of higher education and culture.  Not that I have spent much time there, which, come to think of it, is probably why it remains an ideal, but that the music-food-intellect factor associated is stratospheric.

From the back cover:  “Yoiks, what a strange and unexpected book God Bless is.  I feel my head turning all the way around like the girl in The Exorcist, and I feel a combination of stomach sickness and vertigo.”

Doesn’t that make you want to run right out and get a copy to curl up with on the sofa with a blanket, cat, glass of wine??

In days when I find politicians on both sides of the aisle to be egocentric commitment-phobes, it is truly wonderful to find an elected representative who is not only on the correct side of all the issues, but also articulate, savvy and poised. These qualities are all condensed into Representative Sondy Pope-Roberts.

I don’t know if you can read her button, but it says “The People’s Legislature: Fighting Bob Fest.” Fighting Bob being Bob LaFollette, of course, Wisconsin’s home grown leader of the Progressive Movement.

She is a member of Wisconsin for Edwards – so she can clearly see the differences among our presidential aspirants and recognizes a candidate who holds actual stands on issues.

She gets 100% on every Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters scorecard.

She’s the daughter of dairy farmers. She attended MATC and Edgewood College – Daniel has taught at both and at the UW-Madison, and sees far more engaged and interesting students at the first two than at the latter.

And today I watched her sit patiently for an hour listening to blowhard GOPers ask the most self-serving, inane questions without any bearing on the resolution she was presenting for a vote, and respond calmly and with a quick wit to their harrumphings.

“When you’re making a movie, you gotta amp it up, you gotta go to a greater scale and everything is gonna be a little grander, you hero is gonna be more ‘heroicaler’…. yes that’s a word….. now….”

Because Joss Whedon is such a brilliant – Brilliant! – script writer and director, I will forgive him this grammatical lapse.

I have only truly loved a very few television shows: Northern Exposure, Sports Night, West Wing, and Joss’ Firefly.

I can’t tell you how much I was emotionally destroyed by Serenity, the movie finale to the prematurely cancelled Firefly. It takes a special, insightful and charismatic writer to pull you in so deeply to what is, basically, a work of entertainment fiction.

And now he writes comic books – old style.

Doris Lessing provides me hope: She never graduated from high school, but taught herself amazingly well by simply reading everything around her. I have always thought there should be some way in which my reading could morph into a sustaining career; Ms. Lessing points the way: write as much as you read.

And she has most certainly done that! I’m heading right over to Powell’s to buy a good chunk of her opus; I’ve been sick and am out of reading material.

What I also like about her is this:

1967                     1973

She goes from being timely to timeless. And always beautiful.

This is all that is on Michael Chabon’s website.

I think he is my favorite author. His writing is the kind that sucks you under, consumes you, and makes you stay up all night, reading straight through, knowing all the while that when you finish you’ll be bereft at the loss of the companionship of his novel. And each of his books are wonderfully different, there is no sense while reading one that “this is the same story this guy has told in his last 12 books.”

But even more, I admire him because of this:

He was asked to be in People’s “50 Most Beautiful People,” but said, “I don’t give a shit [about it]….I only take pride in things I’ve actually done myself. To be praised for something like that is just weird. It just felt like somebody calling and saying, ‘We want to put you in a magazine because the weather’s so nice where you live.’”

Word.

“Carson was so enthralled by an illustrated copy of The Lives of the Saints that, at the age of five, she tried to eat its pages. In her teens, Carson’s literary tastes changed and she resolved to study Classics because Oscar Wilde had done so.”

A professor of classics and comparative literature who writes book-length poems about love and heartbreak using stylistic devices from classical Greek and Latin texts. And who is so enamoured of language that she needs to eat it to get close enough to it. What’s not to love?

Professor Carson has won the following prizes:

• Lannan Literary Award
• Pushcart Prize
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• MacArthur Grant
• Griffin Poetry Prize
• T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize

And she has written nine books.

 When my daughter started kindergarten, her school’s principal was this tall woman who strode around the playground in the most excellent shoes – always high heels – and wonderfully stylish clothes. Her hair was always done as was her makeup. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of a Wisconsin winter, winds howling, snow and ice all over the ground, she’d be out mingling with the kids in the morning in her completely impractical heels and no coat. The kids would swarm her, desperate for her attention: “Ms. A!! Ms. A!”

Sue Abplanalp, PhD., had led our elementary school out of the doldrums with low test scores and unmotivated staff into a period of renaissance. She secured amazing amounts of federal funding for staff development and then instituted a school-wide, staff driven, integrated curriculum. Lowell won awards.

Then, of course, she was promoted. First to Elementary Lead Principal and then to Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Schools. She’s now on the short list to replace our retiring Superintendent.

Ms. A: “I guess the most important thing I can do is to be an advocate by voicing my opinion, modeling, and letting teachers know about best practices, by continuing to ask the same question when I’m not sure about what to do: is this in the best interest of the child.”

All while looking smashing!

You look at this guy, and think, Man, that’s a lot of white. But then he cracks his smile…

… and you would do anything for him.

Shopgirl is not a long novel. In fact, it is referred to in book listings as a novella. Yet I found myself utterly forgetting that it was written by Steve Martin during the few hours it took me to read it. When I was done, I had to turn back to the cover, and peer intently at his name.

Despite recent years’ abominations like Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen (1 and – sigh – 2), Mr. Martin is one of the most expressive, elastic, eccentric actors out there. And he writes amazingly lyrical, sensitive, sweet books about the oddballs and misfits on the edges of life.

It is good to see that Justice Ginsburg can still smile. It must be rather disappointing to serve on the country’s highest court and yet find herself surrounded by subpar intelligence.

She must have envisioned the Supreme Court as something more intellectually stimulating and challenging when she was founding the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project.

Among the pieces I have read recently that have caused me to say “Hell Yeah!” have been her oral dissents from the bench. Her frustration with her colleagues is evident.