Miles

Here is a sampling of the links from this week that I found to be thought provoking.

• Why you can’t work at work – “… people are working longer hours, people are tired – I’m working 50-60 hours this week. It’s not that there’s 50 or 60 hours worth of work to do, it’s because you don’t work at work anymore. You go to work to get interrupted.”
• Minimalism – I have a stack of boxes filling up half the garage that fuels my interest in minimalism. The question is how to implement a reasonable form of mimimalism.
• Minimalism Rethunk
• Why I’m wary of 100-thing Minimalism
• Facebook privacy concerns continue
• Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative
• 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account
• CAREFUL: Facebook’s New Settings Publish Your Interests, Even If They’re Private

It’s been seven years since the passing of Joe Strummer and tonight the net is filled with tributes.

• Don Letts Tribute to Joe
• Joe Strummer: 7 years Later – Adam Ricard
• Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. Willesden to Cricklewood (YouTube)
• Remembering Joe Strummer / Live Clash from Jamaica
• And many others, including Mauricia Reyes and Leah.

Last night I drug myself out of the apartment and went to the Doll Hut. There I experienced a warm greeting from Lilli the bartender / ringleader. “Where have you been?” she exclaimed. I made my lame excuses, but I was struck by how good she looked. I’ve always found Lilli to be intriguing, but last night she was downright HOT. When I asked what was different, she explained that she’s changed her hair. I noticed that she was also wearing different glasses and a bright yellow tank top. But here was something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Finally, it stuck me, “That’s it, you look happy!” I said and a broad smile crossed her face as she nodded her agreement.

Later, after enjoying the Rocketz – especially their song, “East LA” – I noticed something else. It seems a little romance has entered Lilli’s life. That would explain it all. How did I miss it?

How often do I allow myself to get caught up in work, obligations and “stuff” and forget how to have a little fun, how to be happy? I left the Doll Hut last night happy. How hard was that?

I’ve returned from my trip. Though I have not yet completed all of the captions, the pictures from the trip are posted here.

In just over a week from now I am off on vacation to England and Scotland. I will be providing more details later, but for now I’m posting the itinerary here.

As part of the follow-up research to my reading of Oakley Hall’s Warlock and The Art and Craft of Novel Writing, I ran across this Oakley gave at UC Berkeley. Oakley is introduced by Michael Chabon, one of his former students.

Jon Hassler is no longer with us. I stumbled across his name yesterday in the “In Memoriam” column of Poets and Writers. My enjoyment of Jon’s novels is difficult to explain. His characters lived in small mid-western towns or, in the case of the Rookery series, a small mid-western college town, and struggled with issues familiar to most of us. He didn’t rely on hobbits, wizards, psychopaths, political intrigue or explicit sex.

I find myself looking more closely at the obituaries these days. This habit started, I believe, after the death of Strummer. I’ve discovered many people this way, including David Lavender and, more recently, Oakley Hall. Presumably, authors who happen to make it into the L.A. Times’ obituaries have managed to distinguish themselves to some extent and, in the cases above, there is something in the obituary that interests me enough to more research or read one of the deceased books. This is an admittedly morbid way of compiling a reading list. It has the advantage of identifying authors based not on this season’s buzz, but rather on the strength of their life’s work. In my case, though, I find myself looking beyond the author’s career for something more, some aspect of their life that that resonates with my interests or some indication – and in authors’ obituaries that have particularly intrigued me have done so because there was some other aspect of their life that did so. In David Lavender’s case, something in his story – growing up in Colorado, working in a mine and later as a rancher, attending Stanford and later Princeton, and finally settling in Ojai, CA where he taught high school English as the well known prep school, Thatcher School. Here was a “Western Writer” who had been there.

So there was Jon, listed right under Oakley Hall and Nuala O’Faolain. At least he’s in good company.

(via Tim Ferriss)

A few weeks ago I heard a fellow diner at my local German deli recommend Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf. This was a book I had wanted to read (somewhere earlier I had heard the same recommendation, but the source of the earlier recommendation has been lost in my gray cells) so last week I picked up a copy and, unlike most books, I took the time to read the introduction. In the introduction, Heaney puzzles over the relative obscurity of Beowulf, arguably the epic English poem, compared to Greek mythology:

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In case you missed the new / personal interest articles telling his story (the one I spotted was in the LA Times), Mike Flynt is the 59 year old grandfather who has returned to play college football on the team was kicked off of for brawling in the dorms 37 years ago. More than the obvious the obvious physical challenge of playing college football at the age of 59 — it helped that Mike spent many of the years as a strength and conditioning coach at Nebraska, Oregon and Texas A&M — I find his ability to think outside of the box an inspiration. How many men his age, even the very fit ones, would even think about going back to play football with men less than half his age?

(Here’s an AP video.)