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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC
When Hunter S. Thompson died
When Hunter S. Thompson died, his ashes were shot out of a cannon on top of a custom built 153-foot tall tower shaped like his Gonzo logo. The funeral was funded by actor Johnny Depp.
So I write
"The things you are passionate about are not random. They are your calling."
Fabienne Fredrickson
When Hunter S. Thompson died
When Hunter S. Thompson died, his ashes here shot out of a cannon on top of a custom built 153-foot tall tower shaped like his Gonzo logo. The funeral was funded by Johnny Depp.
wasted day writing
I spent an entire day writing a short story as it came to my head, sort of an auto writing thing...it didn't work. What I had at the end were three pages of garbage, just garbage. Goddam commas.
That just isn't my writing style. I won't do that again.
That just isn't my writing style. I won't do that again.
Blogable films: ‘The Captain’
Blogable films: ‘The Captain’: Director/writer: Robert Schwentke (Who also directed “RED,” “R.I.P.D.,” and “Insurgent,”) Max Hubacher Milan Peschel Frederick...
Why the world needs editors
Have you noticed that the writing in your local paper, if your local paper still exists, has become just plain bad? Such is the state of newspapers today. Newspapers are in trouble, not just because they are technologically out of date but also because the best and the brightest are no longer there....they left for the internet ions ago. Advertising dollars went with them and newspapers, which are expensive to produce and distribute, are cutting corners everywhere and the deepest cut of all has been to the much-needed eagle-eyed grumpy editors that once watched over what the news writers produced. The results are the example below.
Julia Roberts newspaper headline goes viral after an unfortunate typo
By Nick Bond | news.com.au
A newspaper has been forced to apologize after an otherwise glowing interview with Hollywood star Julia Roberts was ruined by perhaps the world’s most unfortunate typo.
The Post-Journal of Jamestown, New York, ran a weekend feature on Roberts, 51, looking at her current career renaissance more than 30 years after her first film role.
Their headline? “Julia Roberts Finds Life And Her Holes Get Better With Age.”
Oh dear.
A day later, a retraction — in much smaller font than that attention-grabbing headline.
But it was too late. The errant ‘H’ had already given Jamestown’s Post-Journal perhaps its biggest international readership ever, as effusive praise for Roberts’ “Holes” swept social media.
“With age comes more complexity of possible parts,” Roberts had told the Associated Press in the new wire interview that the Post-Journal had published.
“You know, I’m happy and I have fun at home, so it would take a lot for someone to say: ‘Look, you can play this part where you’re happy and have fun.’ Well, I just do that at home!”
I saw that my life was
“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
- Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
A whole lotta soul has John Steinbeck
A KIND OF LIGHT
SPREAD OUT FROM HER. AND EVERYTHING CHANGED COLOR. AND THE WORLD OPENED OUT.
AND A DAY WAS GOOD TO AWAKEN TO. AND THERE WERE NO LIMITS TO ANYTHING. AND THE
PEOPLE OF THE WORLD WERE GOOD AND HANDSOME. AND I WAS NOT AFRAID ANYMORE.
William Faulkner
In 1932, William Faulkner was
offered a $500-a-week contract ($8,500 today) to write scripts at
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer but didn’t have enough money to send a telegram to answer yes.
When literature goes wrong
In 1890, 60 common starlings were
released in Central Park in an attempt to introduce every bird mentioned in the
works of Shakespeare to America. They became a pest, and there are currently
150 million of them.
We would
“We would be together and have
our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the
stars bright.” - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
BUT IN THE NIGHT
BUT IN THE NIGHT
HE WOKE AND HELD HER TIGHT AS THOUGH SHE WERE ALL OF LIFE AND IT WAS BEING
TAKEN FROM HIM.
- Ernest Hemingway
Love Shots: Deadline: 14th December
We are currently looking for plays. Thanks for sharing. All writers invited to submit from all over the world.
After Shorts @ The Canal – 1&2, Shorts @ The Union and The Twilight Hour season 1&2, we are inviting all writers to submit a play no longer than 15-minute, for our next show:
"Love Shots"
The show will have a love theme and will be performed at the award-winning Canal Cafe Theatre, a renowned comedy and theatre venue in London.
A selection process will follow and if your play is chosen, it will be rehearsed and then
staged for 2 nights. Dates 15th & 16th February.
An excellent opportunity for writers to see their work come to life in
front of an audience.
Things to bear in mind:
It has to have a love theme, any type of love
No character limit
Minimal set
Up to 15-minute running time
Please send your short plays to:
shortsatthecanal@gmail.com
- Charles Bukowski
THE FREE SOUL IS RARE, BUT YOU KNOW IT WHEN YOU SEE IT - BASICALLY, BECAUSE YOU FEEL GOOD, VERY GOOD WHEN YOU ARE NEAR OR WITH THEM.
I thought this was interesting
In 1922, Ernest Hemingway was working on a temporary newspaper assignment in Lausanne, Switzerland. Journalism was his day job; at night, he wrote fiction, the thing he cared about most in the world. He was 23 years old. None of his fiction had ever been published. He and his then-wife, Elizabeth Hadley Richardson, lived in Paris, as did F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and many other American expatriate artists hoping to become something big.
Hemingway asked his wife to join him in Switzerland for Christmas. She was sick at the time, and she packed her luggage the way you do when you’re sick: in a haze, forgetting useful things you need and throwing in extra stuff that you don’t. She knew how valuable her husband’s work was to him, and so she packed that, too. Every manuscript, every draft, all the handwritten notes for future novels, even the carbon copies, all went into one suitcase. One single suitcase.
At Gare du Lyon, a porter loaded her bags into her compartment. And then, just before the train left, Richardson—who was still under the weather, and had an eight-hour journey ahead of her—dashed quickly into the station to buy some water for the journey. When she returned, one suitcase, the suitcase containing every piece of fiction Hemingway had by that point produced, was gone.
Hemingway didn’t believe his tear-stained wife when she stepped off the train and told him the news. He left Richardson in Lausanne and took the train back to Paris to see for himself.
Charles Bukowski
"I WILL REMEMBER YOUR SMALL ROOM, THE FEEL OF YOU, THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW, YOUR RECORDS, YOUR BOOKS, OUR MORNING COFFEE, OUR NOONS, OUR NIGHTS, OUR BODIES SPILLED TOGETHER, SLEEPING, THE TINY FLOWING CURRENTS, IMMEDIATE AND FOREVER, YOUR LEG MY LEG, YOUR ARM MY ARM, YOUR SMILE AND THE WARMTH OF YOU WHO MADE ME LAUGH AGAIN."
How Do You Move A Bookstore? With A Human Chain, Book By Book
LAUREL WAMSLEY
People pass books down a chain to help the bookstore October Books move to a new location on Sunday in Southampton, England.
October Books
When October Books, a small radical bookshop in Southampton, England, was moving to a new location down the street, it faced a problem. How could it move its entire stock to the new spot, without spending a lot of money or closing down for long?
The shop came up with a clever solution: They put out a call for volunteers to act as a human conveyor belt.
As they prepared to "lift and shift" on Sunday, they expected perhaps 100 people to help.
"But on the day, we had over 200 people turn out, which was a sight to behold," Amy Brown, one of the shop's five part-time staff members, told NPR.
Shoulder to shoulder, community members formed a line 500 feet long: from the stockroom of the old shop, down the sidewalk, and onto the shop floor of the new store.
Cafes brought cups of tea to the volunteers. People at bus stops joined in. Passersby asked what was happening, then joined the chain themselves.
"We had elderly people, children, and everybody in between," Brown said.
When the great bookchain began, she was in the stockroom. "I was handing books to people without actually seeing the entire of it. So it was only after about 20 minutes I actually go out into the road and saw the extent of the people," she said.
October Books, founded in 1977, calls itself "more than a bookshop." It sells political and current affairs books, fiction and children's books, and and some food and fair-trade products.
But as it struggled to pay rising rents, it had launched a campaign over the summer to raise $400,000 to buy a space of its own: an old bank building. And raise it they did, through donations, crowdfunding, and people who donated money as "loanstock" — the shop will repay them the money that they've lent after one, five, or 10 years depending the loan terms.
"There's been people who've been visiting us and buying books from us for 40 years" as the store has moved around the city numerous times, Brown said. "So a lot of people feel quite invested in it as a thing."
And in just one hour on Sunday, the community passed more than 2,000 books, hand to hand, to the new shop.
"It was really sort of surprising and positive, and just a really moving experience to see people chipping in because they wanted to help. And they wanted to be part of something bigger," Brown said.
Meanwhile, the bookshop's new location is being painted and built out. And Brown says she currently is surrounded by boxes and bits of broken-up furniture.
There's a lot to get ready for the shop's next chapter. The new, permanent location of October Books has its grand opening on Saturday.
Antarctica scientist stabbed colleague for spoiling book endings
By Natalie O'Neill
In the first attempted murder
ever on the frozen continent of Antarctica, a Russian scientist reportedly
snapped and allegedly tried to stab a colleague to death because the victim
kept giving away the endings of books.
Sergey Savitsky had been trying
to use literature to pass the lonesome months at Bellingshausen Station on King
George Island, but his colleague Oleg Beloguzov was making it impossible to
enjoy his hobby.
“[He] kept telling [him] the endings
of books before he read them,” The Sun reported, citing an unnamed source.
So on Oct. 9, the 55-year-old
Savitsky finally had enough and allegedly plunged a kitchen knife into the
chest of his 52-year-old tormenter. Part of Beloguzov’s heart was wounded,
Russian authorities said.
Beloguzov, a welder, was flown to
the nearest hospital, in Chile, where he is expected to survive.
The men previously had spent four
frigid years working together at the facility. Officials said that while the
reading dispute was the final straw, the close confinement in the camp on
remote Antarctica played a role in fueling the attack.
“They are both professional
scientists who have been working in our expeditions, spending year-long seasons
at the station,” deputy director of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute
Alexander Klepikov told the Russian news outlet Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“It is down to investigators to
figure out what sparked the conflict, but both men are members of our team,” he
said.
Savitsky was deported to St.
Petersburg, Russia, and charged with attempted murder on Oct. 22, according to
Pravda.
Savitsky admitted to the stabbing
but claimed he didn’t mean to kill him, the Russian news outlet Nevskie Novosti
reported, citing law-enforcement sources.
The station, which was set up by
the Soviets in 1968, is located in one of Antarctica’s few mild regions — where
winter temperatures hover around a balmy 15 degrees.
Workers can spend time flipping
between two Russian TV channels, exercising at a gym — or reading in the
research library.
Hold em
much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.
Brenda Ueland,
writer
Four Poems In One
We know little
We can tell less
But one thing I know
One thing I can tell
I will see you again in Jerusalem
Which is of such beauty
No matter what country you come from
You will be more at home there
Than ever with father or mother
Than even with lover or friend
And once we’re within her borders
Death will hunt us in vain.
by Anne Porter, from An Altogether Different Language, 1994
Let Evening Come
Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Jane Kenyon, “Let Evening Come” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.
Source: Let Evening Come: Poems (Graywolf Press, 1990)
The Portrait, Stanley Kunitz, 1905 - 2006
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked his name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with a brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning
Born on July 29, 1905, Stanley Kunitz was the author of many poetry collections, as well as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Selected Poems, 1928-1958
Departures by Linda Pastan, 1985
They seemed to all take off
at once: Aunt Grace
whose kidneys closed shop;
Cousin Rose who fed sugar
to diabetes;
my grandmother's friend
who postponed going so long
we thought she'd stay.
It was like the summer years ago
when they all set out on trains
and ships, wearing hats with veils
and the proper gloves,
because everybody was going
someplace that year,
and they didn't want
to be left behind.
I enjoyed the simplicity, the directness of this poem
Elvis Kissed Me
“Elvis kissed me once,” she swears,
sitting in a neon dive
ordering her drinks in pairs.
Two stools down you nurse a beer,
sensing easy pickings here.
“Back in sixty-eight,” she sighs,
smoothing back her yellow hair.
Teared mascara smears her eyes.
Drawing near, you claim you’ve met,
offer her a cigarette.
“Call me cheap,” she sobs, “or bad,
say that decent men dismissed me,
say I’ve lost my looks, but add,
Elvis kissed me.”
— T.S. Kerrigan
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