Urf!

My cactus

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:23:58 -0500

My cactus

Reunion by Alan Lightman

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:27:19 -0500

A reunion is a coming together, a reuniting of like minds that have shared like experiences. At the core of REUNION (2003, Pantheon Books) by Memphis’s own Alan Lightman, however, is detachment. In the opening scene, Charles, a small-college professor, is lying post-coitus with a woman and wishing he was someplace else. “I fly above mountains, dizzy, frightened,” Lightman writes. Charles is there, but he isn’t, in this house that once belonged to an ex-wife who left it to him. It is his, but it isn’t. On televsion, Charles and Sheila watch news footage of a devastating Honduran earthquake and, even as Sheila says she will donate money and urges him to, as well, he has trouble mustering sympathy for something so far away. “The truth is, I feel no connection to the faces on the screen. The Hondurans are just so many electronic pixels.”

Yesterday’s treasure on today’s turntable.

Sun, 05 May 2013 11:35:58 -0500

Yesterday’s treasure on today’s turntable.

Mid-day bicycle break. Shelby Farms Park. Memphis.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:30:00 -0500

Mid-day bicycle break. Shelby Farms Park. Memphis.

My roses

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:53:00 -0500

My roses

Cooper-Young. Memphis.

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:36:00 -0500

Cooper-Young. Memphis.

Photo

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:23:58 -0500

Backyard

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:14:00 -0500

Backyard

In my yard.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 18:24:00 -0500

In my yard.

Boats. Memphis.

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:58:00 -0500

Boats. Memphis.

"In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie..."

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:34:11 -0500

“

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

”

- -Dylan Thomas

“In My Craft or Sullen Art”

Spring

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:57:49 -0500

Spring

“We Sail from Memphis” Oxford American, spring 2013

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:58:59 -0500

“We Sail from Memphis”

Oxford American, spring 2013

Rainy day music

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 13:29:00 -0500

Rainy day music

Michelada

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:44:32 -0500

Michelada

James Conaway's NOSE: a review

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:43:00 -0500

James Conaway's NOSE: a review:

Way back in 1993, James Conaway published his memoir MEMPHIS AFTERNOONS. Not long after that, he came to Memphis for what was then the River City Writers series of lectures at the University of Memphis. I went to a reading and signing of the book, and we later met for drinks at Old Zinnie’s in Midtown. I was writing then, though I never would have said of myself, “I’m a writer.” It was all too new for me, I was an unfocused and gangly 23-year-old, still green on the vine. But I wrote every day and I told Jim this and he told me that, if that were the case, then I was already far ahead of many of the graduate students he’d taught. He implored me to continue. I didn’t ask him to read anything I’d written and, blessedly, he didn’t ask to see any. I can’t imagine what I might have been working on then, but know for a fact it would have gone down bitterly, with an aftertaste of youth and angst throughout.

Brooks. Memphis.

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:01:48 -0500

Brooks. Memphis.

The Blues Foundation. Memphis.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 13:38:00 -0500

The Blues Foundation. Memphis.

History lesson for kids to include what Klan does not stand for

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 09:16:56 -0500

History lesson for kids to include what Klan does not stand for:

From my current “Because I Said So” column:

It’s been all over the news lately that at the end of this month the Ku Klux Klan plans to march on Memphis. Like any good civic organization staging a rally, or a circus, they’ve applied for and received a permit from the city. And they have presumably tidied themselves up with Tide and some Snuggle fabric softener. It’s always important to make a good first impression.

But this is not their first impression, is it? They’ve been around for far too long. In 1923, my great-grandfather, J.P. Alley, was editorial cartoonist for The Commercial Appeal, and he, along with editor C.P.J. Mooney, used their respective talents to speak out against the KKK. They won the newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service that year.

"LONG GONE DADDIES (John F. Blair, Publisher, 2013) is a book about the road and redemption, trains..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 10:55:00 -0500

“LONG GONE DADDIES (John F. Blair, Publisher, 2013) is a book about the road and redemption, trains and beer and long legged women who dance like water and scheme like politicians. It’s about all the things that make for a good blues, rock-n-roll or soul song. It’s a book about finding that song.””

- From Urf! (via longgonedaddies)