photo credit: Jill Moore

Earlier this summer, the Clockhouse Writers Conference (CWC) at Goddard College hosted a keynote session on balance and writing. S&R is pleased to pass along, over the next three days, essays by the keynote panelists.

by Jennifer McConnell

“If I can’t have too much, I don’t want any.” — quoted in “Lit” by Mary Karr

No truer words from an addict were ever spoken.

___________________________

If I knew anything about balance, I probably wouldn’t be a writer.

My two years at Goddard were a perfect example. I was living in San Francisco and working part-time. I had the luxury of entire days to devote to writing–often ten hours at a stretch. I wouldn’t shower or leave the house all day, completely immersing myself in writing and editing and worrying over my short stories and novel chapters.

After graduating from Goddard, I was able to maintain this intensity for another year, until reality came back and I had to get a real job. Soon after, I moved across the country and started a family. I was able to come to CWC each summer, which seemed to partly quench my thirst for writing time.

But how I yearned for those days of nothing but writing. Full story »

by Joseph Domino

As the quality of life continues to decline in America, I’ve been wracking my fevered brain for the single, perfect image to represent our downward spiraling dystopia. Like the “Grand Unification” theory sought by physicists.

There is a dark, comic film called Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) directed by Goran Dukic based on a short story by Etgar Keret entitled “Kneller’s Happy Campers.” In the film suicides face an afterlife that is familiar yet diminished in quality. If they off themselves again, it just keeps getting worse. Think shopping at Walmart for clothing and jewelry instead of Neiman Marcus. Full story »

by Louise Baker

Football, or soccer, as the Americans know it, is the most popular sport in the world. Yet, the United States, one of the largest countries in the world, has never embraced it. The excitement generated by the recent World Cup has left many wondering why. In an attempt to answer that question, we have compiled five of the top reasons that Americans never got into soccer.

5. Availability, Familiarity, and Stigma

Some argue that the game is neither available nor familiar to the Americans, but this is not entirely true. Full story »

I’m not normally a slam guy. I’m a poet, and slam poetry tends to be more about the performance and less about the words, per se. That’s a generalization, I know, and there are exceptions. Most slam I see has more in common with hip-hop than poetry.

All that said, this guy is amazing.

Full story »

I occasionally have these conversations with people that run a long a fairly predictable script. The subject of reading will come up, and people will talk about what they’ve been reading, and then drift more generally into what people like and don’t like, that sort of thing. Then comes the good part, when I tell people that I usually read science fiction, because that’s the most interesting stuff out there. At this point there’s usually a pause, and the other person will look at me sadly, with a note of pity, and say something along the lines of “Oh yeah, that Star trek stuff. Can’t stand it myself.” I just had one of these recently with an old friend, who is smart and well read. These conversations, I must say, no longer surprise me. He did mention, I should point out, that he hasn’t actually read much science fiction the past thirty years or more, although he did like that Neal Stephenson book he read.

I long ago gave up any pretense of trying to cure people of what they don’t know. If readers choose to compartmentalize themselves, I can’t help that. But it does lead to some interesting conundrums for some people. Reviewers here in London were universally enthusiastic over Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (an embarrassingly bad book from a good writer), Full story »

The acclaimed new film Countdown to Zero may serve the purpose of alerting neophytes to the full extent of the danger of nuclear weapons. But for others, it’s best viewed while wearing a hazmat suit. Activist and cutting-edge disarmament commentator Darwin BondGraham explains at Monthly Review’s MRZine:

On its surface Countdown to Zero is about nuclear disarmament, but deeper down the film . . . is actually an alarmist portrayal of dark-skinned men, Muslims, “terrorists,” and other racial or ethnic bogeymen who we are told, over the span of 90 minutes, are seeking nuclear weapons to use against the American people. A related theme in the film is the demonization of Iran and North Korea which are portrayed as dangerous rogue states with ties to terrorist organizations . . . against whom military action may be warranted — or else.

If it’s not the likes of filmmaker Lucy Walker or, by implication, the Global Zero project of the World Security Institute, which is behind Countdown to Zero, that (wo)mans the frontlines of disarmament, then who or what is? Is it? How about Ploughshares and its president Joseph Cirincione? Full story »

Tony Judt, a vocal proponent of social democracy at a time when such proponents are increasingly rare, died today, after a long struggle with ALS. It was the inevitable result, and everyone, including Judt, knew it was coming, but that doesn’t make his passing any less painful. He was a brilliant thinker and writer, and apparently a brilliant professor as well. Since learning he had ALS several years ago, he had been spending his time writing and speaking at university campuses, trying to get students to believe that government can be a positive force in people’s lives, and that activism us not only warranted, but a desirable state of affairs. I discussed some of his work in an earlier post. Back in the US last month, I picked up his most recent book, Ill Fares the Land, which summarizes his views on the need for a broader and more participatory approach to social democracy. It’s sitting on the bedside table, waiting for the careful read I intend to give it. He was a beacon of reason in an age increasingly dominated by political charlatans, hysterics, and the criminally stupid. And boy, will he be missed.

Update: The Guardian does a nice write-up, with some selected quotes from Judt.

One Saturday morning in 1965, mom dragged us to the Western Auto Store on the Lewisburg square. I was 10 and Glenn was 12, so we were really too old to be taken shopping, but make a single mistake with a bottle rocket inside the kitchen, and suddenly you can’t be trusted.

“Why are we going to Western Auto?” asked Glenn.

“To see something,” said mom.

“What?” I asked.

“The future,” she replied. Full story »

Today, my kids and I visited the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. There, on April 19, 1775, colonial militiamen fired on British soldiers who’d marched from Boston to seize an arsenal of weapons cached in the town. Earlier in the day, the British soldiers had gunned down colonial militamen in the nearby town of Lexington—but this time, when they opened fire on the colonists (killing two of them), the colonists fired back. Two British soldiers died, and a third was mortally wounded.

Willie Mays had “the catch.” Ozzie had that ridonculous reach-back grab where he’s diving left as the ball hits a rock and hops the other way on him. Jim Edmonds made a spectacular full lay-out dive running directly away from the plate that’s maybe awesomer than both. But sonofabitch, you gotta see this grab. It answers the question “what if Spiderman played centerfield?”

Full story »

“The radio makes hideous sounds.” Who said it? Full story »

Originally published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1948 and in a 1956 book, a poll was posted on Ptak Science Books History of Ideas blog in 2007, but only recently brought to my attention. It seems that in July 1945 answers to a multiple-choice questionnaire were solicited from 250 scientists at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory division of the Manhattan Project. The question and choices:

Which of the following five procedures comes closest to your choice as to the way in which any new weapons that may develop should be used in the Japanese war? Full story »

At Wonk Room on Think Progress Max Bergmann wrote a commentary on how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is shepherding Republican obstructionism on the passage of the new START. As you may have heard, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry felt compelled to delay the scheduled START ratification vote. You may have also heard McConnell’s disarming comment:

All they have to do is find enough money to satisfy Senator Kyl. … In my view they need to do that, because without that I think the chances of ratification are pretty slim. Full story »

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis (italics mine) in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Judge Vaughn R. Walker
August 4, 2010

And this, my fundamentalist Christian fellow citizens, is precisely why you are not the boss of me, or of gay couples, or of women, or of African-Americans or of anyone but your own selves (and your children, until they escape you). Irrationality. Beliefs based on, well, belief. Faith without reason. Useful for searching souls, perhaps, and it seems to fill the plates and build the megachurches, but it’s no way in hell to run a country. Full story »

Being born a woman (albeit a “natural” and therefore conservatively acceptable one), the prospect of joining a club in which my functions would be limited to possible figurehead, full-time cook and designated dicksucker* baby machine has consistently failed to seduce me. Short version: I’ve never been tempted to become a Republican. It’s difficult to imagine that any female could ignore the patriarchal worldview that is the GOP, no matter how terrifying crime and the shaky economy are… and yet self-identified Republican women exist and thrive here in the steamy crotch of the Bible Belt. I see the bumper stickers in the preschool parking lot. I hear the conversations everywhere from Neiman-Marcus to Target. Several of my friends and acquaintances have an elephant in their closets.  Hell, I love and trust one enough to leave my daughter (Her Majesty in the picture there) with her at least once a week, more often if her grandfather can wheedle hard enough. Full story »

Correction: Figure 3 below was originally Figure 3 from the Cao/Caldeira paper instead of the correct Figure 1 from the paper. This has been fixed.

In 1992, the National Academy of Sciences defined “geoengineering” as the “large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry.” The most significant changes in atmospheric chemistry today are the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by human activities, especially but not limited to carbon dioxide (CO₂). In recent years, climate scientists have begun to investigate whether or not geoengineering is practical as a means to give humanity the time it needs to adapt to climate disruption or, as some would prefer, a means to controlling the environment such that no changes in energy consumption patterns are even necessary. Full story »

It’s difficult, I know, to have rational thoughts about Iraq these days. We’re being told the troops are being withdrawn on schedule–British troops left earlier this year—but the bombings continue on a regular basis, and it’s not at all clear what will happen after US troops are no longer actively patrolling the country. The political dimensions of what the new Iraq will look like remain very unclear, especially since there is no new government actually in place, except for the fact that Iran is a lot more influential under the new government than it ever was under their sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein. There has been some movement in making Iraq more like America, however—Iraq is now back among the world leaders in executions. So one is left with rage and frustration over the waste, the carnage, the millions displaced, the hundreds of thousands dead, the geopolitical wreckage that will take decades to repair.

The fact that there are some bright spots might not—and does not—compensate. But bright sports there are. One is the tale of the Iraq marshes, and the efforts by Azzam Alwash to restore them. Full story »

Dear Conservative Family Member, who just forwarded me mass chain email about how great Joe Arpaio is and how the author of the email has “long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas”:  [full text available here]

While I recognize that the author of this email suggested that “If you agree, pass this on. If not, just delete it,” I cannot in good conscience delete this cheery little mess of bald-faced lies, distortions, and grotesque misinformation, without at least giving others a chance to know exactly how bald the lies are that they are passing on.

Whatever one’s position on the immigration issue–which Arpaio paid almost zero attention to until after 2004, when he almost lost the Republican primary to a virtually unknown opponent, and he was seeking a new angle to keep him in the media spotlight because he had alienated so many people in this state with his previously equal-opportunity abuses of civil rights, human decency, fiscal responsibility, and the duties of his office.  Full story »

Yeah, I don’t know, either. It’s fun, though. Stop whatever you’re doing and dance.