A small armload of books from last week’s Stone Ridge Used Book Sale plumps the shelf. The Dylan Thomas has a title that has long intrigued me, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, and for two beans, how could I say no? TriQuarterly #137 is, alas, the last print volume for this alma mater literary publication. The Rachel Carson is a loaner from Leta, residual from last October’s project.
Category: Like Life
On the radio: 5
Louisa Lim and me, together at last. I voiced Peking University sociologist Zheng Yefu for Lim’s piece about new sumptuary laws in China restricting language on billboards. 2:50 is the lucky time point again.
On the radio: 4
Stacey used me for another voiceover, this time for restaurateur Hironari Takanobu in a Jim Zarolli piece for ATC. That’s me at about 2:50.
For Lydia Davis
13 June 2002
This evening on the subway I saw a man reading a comb-bound book with a green cover. From the side I could see diagrams, small circles arranged in orderly polygons. I reasoned that I was seeing diagrams of aromatic molecules. Perhaps this man was a medical student on his way to a class at GWU.
The I read the phrases “four couples…,” “partner…,” “in a circle or a square…” The book was a manual of square dance patterns, hundreds of them.
In the man’s hand I could see a walkman and a bandanna, folded, printed with stars and stripes.
On deck: 6
My read-me shelf is freshly built up with a Christmastime shipment from Amazon.com and a visit to the ARC rack at work. About half of these titles are also queued up in my Goodreads account.
My year in cities, 2010
Not very much travelling this time around. Overnight stays this year:
2009’s list. 2008’s list. 2007’s list. 2006’s list. 2005’s list.
On the radio: 3
I recorded two more translation voiceovers: for another Peter Kenyon story, this one filed from Kurdish Iraq (I come in at about 1:30); and for Ofeibea Quist-Arcton’s report from Ghana (at about 2:40).
Providence side trip report
Leaving the Providence metro, I took a long swing west to the Berkshires to visit the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and its incredible edible installation of Sol LeWitt wall drawings. The painted brick and steel of these former mill buildings is a perfect counterpoint to LeWitt’s hard-edged, sometimes kandy-kolored koncepts.
A couple of blocks away from the museum, I found another relic fallout shelter sign.
On the way to my motel, I paused for this gaudy building in Pittsfield that’s seen some better days. At one time an athanaeum, it’s now a courthouse building named in honor of James A. Bowes.
On the radio: 2
The ever-awesome Stacey again used me for a voiceover, this time in Peter Kenyon’s Morning Edition piece from today. Filing from Istanbul, Kenyon interviews Ramin Haghjoo, a gay Iranian activist living in exile.
Riding the rails
When I interned in New York back in the late 1970s, my colleague/mentor Glen taught me how to ride the Long Island Rail Road in comfort. The rolling stock was fitted with five seats across, with the center aisle dividing them into a bench of three and a bench of two. Trouble was, there was really only enough room for four to sit easily. So what the two of us did, per Glen’s instructions, was to sit in the three-seat bench “and look big.”
The other thing I remember—dimly—about commuter rail in New York was the bar cars. It turns out that the tradition of alcohol service is still going strong in the New York metro, with the added assist of bar carts on or near the platforms. Michael M. Grynbaum reports on new data released by the MTA about differential tipple preferences between Metro-North and LIRR riders.
Wait for it
My desktop is never this clear, so why not take a picture to remember it this way? My in basket is sorted; my out baskets are empty; my Thunderbird inbox is empty. To be sure, I do have a lot of little piles in the project boxes.
Be assured, this state of grace won’t last long.
On the radio
My friend Stacey, an audio engineer, was so generous as to ask me to do one of the voiceovers for David Greene’s most recent report from Estonia, which deals with the tensions between Estonians and Russians in this small Baltic country from which the Iron Curtain was raised only two decades ago. I’m the unhappy Russian at about 1:40 in the clip.
It’ll be fun
One day before your procedure:
Drink only clear liquids for breakfast, lunch and dinner. All solid foods, milk, and milk products are not allowed. No alcoholic beverages of any kind….
Approved clear liquids: All clear soft drinks: 7-Up, Sprite, etc. All clear juices: Apple, white cranberry, white grape, or lemonade. PULP FREE. Gatorade or Kool-Aid (not red or purple)…
You may also have: Jell-O or Popsicles (not red or purple); Clear broth or bouillon; Black coffee and tea
No, this isn’t the latest checklist for travelers from the TSA.
Do you think I can convince them that chardonnay is white grape juice? At least I’ll have coffee. And what the heck is white cranberry juice?
Some links: 49
USGS’s home page for the magnitude 3.6 this morning, event ID us2010yua6. No shaking felt in Reston: but rather a boom loud enough to rouse me from indifferent sleep. I checked the basement for some mishap, found nothing. I figured that, somewhere down my row of neighbors, a bookcase had fallen over. Then Leta’s Facebook news feed began to light up with WTF?s from friends in suburban Maryland.
On deck: 5
The August Wilson is on the shelf because I really need to catch up my familiarity with his work; the Neil Simon and Nicky Silver (alphabetical order buddies) are for a post that is gestating. The TriQuarterly volumes are the penultimate in the series; my “hometown” literary journal is slated to go online-only after #137. Nathanael West is a re-read of much-loved snark: cold comfort food, if you will. The Guy Davenport replaces a copy of this collection lost in last winter’s snowmelt floods.