another book list: recommendation list

1. Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
2. The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
3. Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
4. The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love by Thomas Moore
5. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

6. Shelter for the Spirit: Create Your Own Haven in a Hectic World by Victoria Moran
7. Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic Brussat
8. A Blue Fire by James Hillman
9. The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry
10. The Invitation by Oriah

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some Facebook drama happening behind the scenes.
Boy just told me I looked like Sarah Palin.
The tragedy of attempted reconnection/reconcilation: rejection

1920s and 1930s music: where to listen online

Community Radio isn't supporting my fringe listening interests.

KSER's "Let the Twenties Roar" left the air in April.
KBCS is canning "Vintage Jazz" and "Jazz of the 20th Century"

What's left: The Art of Jazz on KPLU and The Swing Years and Beyond on KUOW.

What's on the Web:
WWOZ - commercial free Cajun, blues and jazz
Radio Dismuke
Radiola
Jazz 24
Evolution of Jazz

Radio Paradise

http://ask.metafilter.com/128087/Vintage-jazz-radio-streamspodcasts
WAMU Saturday Night Jazz
KJAZ
Jazz After Hours

coz, if you're out there, I've missed reading you. Drop me an update line, please?

My son is learning chess

This suits me fine. It's an intellectually demanding game, but genteel, but best of all it is NOT TRADEMARKED. What this means: game rules don't change, pieces don't adapt or evolve. You can buy a board and a working clock and study positions. I was disillusioned with SCRABBLE® because:

* rules of tournament play changed;
* club and tournament lexicon was restricted for televised play;
* Canadian spellings not altogether permitted in North American play

Chess is simpler that way. I mailed my son's registration for U.S. Chess Federation membership. He attends chess camp and a local man I know, whom I learned yesterday was state champion twice, has lent Chess Life magazines and his first chess book to my seven-year-old sun.

Mental To-Read Dump

I have many messes right now. My external life mirrors my internal and vice versa. Write it down, get it done, set it free.

Don De Lillo - White Noise, Underworld
Carson McCullers - Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Jeffrey Eugenides
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
Philip Roth - The Plot Against America
Christopher Isherwood - The Berlin Stories
Lewis Nordan - Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair
Elinor Lipman - The Way Men Act
Carol Shields - The Republic of Love
Elizabeth Hay - Late Nights on Air
Sara Jeanette Duncan
James Morris
Paul Scott
Iris Murdoch - A Severed Head, An Unofficial Rose
Jonathan Lethem - Amnesia Moon
Titles: An Unexpected Light, Travels in Afghanistan
David Goodis
Cornel Woolrich
Terence Blacker - Kill Your Darlings
Haim Ginott - Between Parent and Child
Howard Zinn
Marc Reising - Cadillac Desert

Why should I read poetry?

Yes, yes I took a minor in English, but had to be spoonfed meaning and interpretation in most poems surveyed in the curriculum, except for those lamenting the war dead or imagistically representing a brave, chaotic new world post-armistice.

It may be that my mind is not ruminative or patient enough to peel layers of meaning and intent in poems. Some poems are simple; others are difficult. My mind runs at a great pace, not necessarily in one direction at a time, so when I stop for a poetry break I'm not "ooh, I would like something difficult please." I'm wanting a playful diversion.

I either like how the words smash against each other by sound, or I like a vivid single image. My son's teacher shamelessly professes her love of poetry and loves to share that passion. Me, I read either Dorothy Parker's "Frustration" or Hart Crane's "Chaplinesque".

What brought this on? 8.3% of the US populace has read a poem in the last twelve months. If we agree that "Frustration" or "Chaplinesque" are poems (the latter most certainly qualifies), or include Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" then I'm one of the 8.3%. But seventeen years ago more like 17% of the populace read poems. Whose poems were being read? Whose poems do you read?

When I was reading poetry, back in my twenties, I read:
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dorothy Parker
Charles Baudelaire
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
William Butler Yeats
William Carlos Williams

I even wrote poetry. No, I will not share. I have too much respect for my audience. But in this bleak and gloomy period, the only poems I've read are Wislawa Szymborska's and Homer's epic poem "The Iliad." Whom should I read? Is there a place for poetry nowadays among those out of school?

living with music: a weekly feature of NYT's online blogs

I discovered this today, while Googling "Chip Kidd," the Associate Art Director at Alfred A. Knopf, and author of two lively novels: The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners. The Living with Music blog feature lets writers share with the Net-surfing public songs they're currently listening to. Mr. Kidd, who'd released a music video with his band Artbreak ("Asymmetrical Girl") has a list I found accessible and tasteful.

I hope against probability that I'll come across an author's list, find her or his list stunningly agreeable, and devour the writing like so much pavlova. Or that he or she will nurture the same passion I have for an obscure artist and that shared connection will be the key to a wonderful new journey of the mind and spirit.

in case you were interested where I am these days

I was here on Friday and Saturday. More later.