Last Bender

 
Hubert Humphrey
A Biography
By Carl Solberg
1984, Norton & Norton, New York
Borealis Books edition, 2003
 The Vietnam Project began with a simple desire to know what happened during the Vietnam War. By the time I got around to writing this blogh, to formalizing it as a ‘project’, my interest had run riot to include the entire history of [...]

11.2
And so when the time came to visit some of these places I had worked out plans. I didn’t go to Penn since I saw no reason to move to Philly. It was close enough to at least test the waters of commuting. Ditto New Haven. That left Baltimore, Ithaca and Providence.
“You wouldn’t move to [...]

My old friend Al Giordano at The Field has written a provokative and moving piece about Penny Arcade, the performance artist. The review of her career is fascinating, but more to the point for me are his thoughts on art and audience, on media and market, on being a working class artist and autodidact and [...]

11.1
I washed up the plates and poured a glass of wine and took off all my clothes and lay in bed. I put on TV and sat in the dark watching, waiting.
It was Iron Chef, not my favorite, so I watched This Old House and mostly gazed out the window at the helicopters and the [...]

10.4
There were no messages on the machine so I put on the TV and lay down on the bed and faced the sky above the buildings across the street. It was a clear night and still warm. I lay there not thinking, listening to book TV, until I started to get hungry. Nothing sounded good.
When [...]

10.3
Sally flew back to NY on Metro International, a charter out of Boston. She had spent the night there and was coming into LaGuardia. I was to pick her up alone and drive her out to the Island house for a weekend with the family. I parked the car with confusion and doubt and walked [...]

10.2
I rehearsed and recorded three more times with Joseph and Judy. Our rehearsals always began in auspicious ways. Judy and I sitting on the couch, feet up on the table, watching TV while Joseph set up. And just as inevitably, after recording two songs they would start to drink and people would start to drop [...]

Looking Like Arizona
Yesterday, as i walked home from work, I overheard a comment made by one student to another. The comment needs context. At Cornell, today is the last day of classes and the students traditionally hold a large party known as Slope Day. Once Upon a Time, Slope Day was an unorganized event. There [...]

10.
After the 4th it was brutally hot and I had no plans. I worked all week and tried to find things to do at night besides lie around obsessing that Sally was gone. I keened for her. I rent my garments, my chiton. Where had my wings gone? It was a constant throbbing disturbance of [...]

9.4
Roy pulled into the driveway. Our father moved a lot. This place was typical of his suburban phase. A fifties ranch on a mature cul de sac. The yard bordered woods. Behind the house was a kidney shaped pool and a putting green. There was a perennial border around the house with a white pebble [...]