typewriter

What are you most sensitive about? 

I'm sensitive about being wrong, being perceived as wrong, and especially about being declared wrong when I am in fact right. Also damn sensitive about being wronged (see previous).

...Ericsson's primary finding is that rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving. Ericsson calls this exertion "deliberate practice," by which he means the kind of practice we hate, the kind that leads to failure and hair-pulling and fist-pounding.

From The Science of Experience, Time Magazine, 28 Feb. 2008

Show us your bible.
Submitted by Connie.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

The Chicago Manual of Style

This is how, time and again, I find myself in the indefensible position of being a fiction writer who doesn't like to make things up. Because real life provides so many stories that are literary, but wouldn't be credible as fiction. And these are the stories I'm most interested in.

Hillary Clinton picked a horse to win the Kentucky Derby. I would have urged her to resist the impulse, because of the symbolism and long history of metaphorical comparisons between political contests and horse races, and the very real possibility that it could turn out in a way that would be, shall we say, metaphorically inconvenient. I thought of all this before I heard the rest of the story. But I can also understand why it would seem like a charming opportunity. Because Clinton picked a filly to take it all. The first one to enter the race since 1999. A young horse named Eight Belles.

Eight Belles owner Rick Course has decided to take this chance despite his trainer Larry Jones' reluctance. Jones like others is concerned that Eight Belles has not proven herself even against other filly fields and on a grade 1 race. The demand required from unproven filly will put doubt in many a bettors mind but don’t count out the girl I’m sure Hilary would agree with that. [from onlinesportshandicapping.com, published May 2, 2008]

On Derby day, Eight Belles ran a great race. But after she crossed the finish line, in second place, she went down on the track. Her two front ankles had broken. She was euthanized even before her trainer could reach her.

The name of the horse that won the race? Big Brown.

Clearly, the symbolism is rich. But remove the presidential candidates from the story and it's just horribly sad. The part of my brain that is permanently eight years old always wonders why they have to put the horses down at all. Just because they break their legs?  But people break their legs all the time, and it's not considered particularly debilitating. Certainly not life-threatening. I just don't get it, even after it's explained to me. I can't help but wonder why it can't be changed. Couldn't they just give them horse wheelchairs until their bones heal? I know it sounds stupid, but I've seen two-legged dogs rolling around that way. And they weren't ever going to get better.

I didn't watch the Derby because it is part of a whole raft of things I'm not crazy about, like boxing and dog racing and circuses with animal acts. I'm not standing around outside these events holding up placards, or starting petitions and boycotts, because I realize that there can be admirable qualities on display at such events, and many other people are deeply invested in them. But these things are not for me.

What was your first car?

1967 Ford Mustang. Super Sport. Burgundy.

Tonight I read that Elisabeth Fritzl created a fairy-tale world for her hunchbacked, toothless, grunting children, telling them stories "about princesses and pirates." I was struck by the resonance, because all along this story has sounded to me like one of those fantastically cruel tales collected by the Grimm Brothers. I mean the ones that DON'T get anthologized. If we were told that Josef Fritzl cut open his daughter's gut, filled it with rocks, and sewed it back up again, I'm not sure it would come as a surprise.

I wanted to tell you something, but I can't remember now what it was. Hmm. Well, since we're both here anyway, what do you say to my showing you a picture of the view out my window last Saturday night? There is a boat docked down at the water's edge, and some people were having a party on it. It looked awfully pretty with all the lights and the music was coming in through the window.

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Annie Liebovitz is known for having taken many strikingly beautiful and iconic photographs. However, she is also becoming well-known, in my mind at least, for her lapses in judgment. I'm trying to decide which would be worse: to have Annie Liebovitz publish post-mortem pictures of me, or to have Annie Liebovitz publish soft-core photographs of my fifteen-year-old daughter. I suppose if I were dead, nothing would bother me overmuch. But I'm not entirely sure Susan Sontag would agree with me about that.

Weekend by weekend, I am slowly learning the set list of the cover band that is playing somewhere around the corner. I do not know which establishment it is; thus far I've been too indifferent even to make my way downstairs to look around. Maybe next week. Why go, when I can hear everything from home? Right now, for example, they are doing "Brick House." Before that, they did a credible job with "Love Rollercoaster." But before that, they were manhandling Prince's "Kiss." Of all the Prince songs they could do, that is not the one they should be doing. I don't know much about music, but to me, "Kiss" is a relatively light and frothy pop song. They were weighing it down with a heavy funk groove. From what I understand, Prince does not think that other musicians should cover his tunes, and I tend to agree with him. Especially in this case.

The cumulative effect of this set list is that it reminds me of all the Friday and Saturday nights I spent at the roller skating rink in Pinellas Park, Florida, circa 1979. Around and around I went, skate-dancing to "Rapper's Delight" and "The Rubberband Man." I really did spend almost every Saturday night there for about a year. They would have these all-night skates and we would literally skate all night long. I was sort of new to the area and I didn't know many people well. It bothered me to be so lonely all the time, but that was just the way things were for most of my youth. At least at the skating rink, I had something to do.