sometimes i live in the country / sometimes i live in the town

So Irene kept us inside with our beans and bottled water. Only some minor flooding in Northampton, but we missed calamity by a whisker. Very bummed for Vermont, which is full of strange antique barns buried behind weird rivers, and might not be so full of dry ones right now. One story I remember about Vermont is a few activists drove to the woods in search of chupacabras, but one of them was a diabetic and started getting insulin withdrawals, so they had to stop at some strange house and knock on the door. Nobody answered. The diabetic began scratching himself. Then a truck pulled up, and this guy got out carrying a cage with a parrot in it. The activists tried to explain the situation to the guy, but he just held up the parrot cage and grinned. He went inside the house. A few minutes passed. The diabetic was kneeling in the driveway controlling his breath. Then an old woman opened the door and invited everybody in. She led them into the living room, which was full of Nestle crunch bars. "I was just watching my programs, which is why I couldn't hear y'all," she said with a Texas accent. The guy with the parrot was in the kitchen still grinning, still with the parrot cage. Someone told me this story at breakfast one time, but it might as well be a story I made up because I didn't eat enough for breakfast. Good luck, Vermont.

In other news, hoo doggie, so much change. Took my last shower on Orchard Street. Moved to Baltimore. Taught my first class at UMBC. Seems good. I'm very
excited to ride the 35 back and forth between UMBC: when I first rode it, there
was a new father covered with IT'S A BOY STICKERS and everyone congratulated him/joshed him for having too much sex. There was a jovial mass
battle over whether to turn the A/C on. There was a man who gave up his
seat for an old man and he sat down next to another man and said "If
you don't respect yo elders you ain't got no mowls" and they became friends.



Next Saturday, I'm seeing Jeff Mangum in Boston with my carrot cake as a nice climatic-type event before she goes to Thailand. Kind of can't believe we're doing this. Then we're having a big Bye Bye Have Fun in Thailand party on the 10th anniversary of September 11th, which is much better than a lot of other things to do on the 10th anniversary of September 11th. Kind of weird to think my UMBC students were eight years old when Nine-Eleven became more famous than Seven-Eleven. I remember the first thing I heard about it that day was my mother told me the Weather Channel told her that all planes in the country were grounded.

So speaking of hearing and telling, it turns out I am doing a lot of readings this September! There is one stretch where I'm doing readings three days in a row: three readings and one panel discussion. Kind of nuts. I've made a thing on the right side of the blog to keep track of it all. If you live in NYC or Baltimore, I would love to give you a high five.




Thanks Barry Graham for putting Look! Look! Feathers on this list of his favorite books he's read so far this year. And thanks to him also for this Fab 5 feature he did, where I picked my 5 favorite of my online published stories and also 5 other stories online by others that I really like. Also Tyler Gobble and Layne Ransom's ultimate enthusiasm magazine Stoked just put out Volume II, which is full of great stuff from Matt Hart, Daniela Olszewska, Carol Guess, Nate Pritts,
Adam Moorad, Joshua Helms, Thomas Patrick Levy, Christopher Newgent, xTx, Len Kuntz, Parker Tettleton, Nick Ripatrazone, Ryan Rader, Ashley Farmer, and J.A. Tyler. I have a little piece in it talking about how much I was taken by the book Sayonara, Gangsters by Genichiro Takahashi. Do do the checking out if you do that sort of thing.



Wow, hard to believe how much is in the pipeline right now, and that's not even counting the pipeline that people are sitting down about. Let's end on a sad and happy thing and thing: sad is that my sister's dog Sasha is gone. =( My best energy and love her way.

The happy thing is this: