The Minnesota Lynx Official Blog features Nathan today in Huskies gear from last night’s viewing party at Champps (why the extra P? i don’t know…) in Mpls.
The Huskies totally blew it last night, losing to an almost equally stinky Rutgers. Truly one of the worst games of the year.
1. Our having a baby has become an occasion for me to realize just how breathtakingly generous and giving our close friends, in Minnesota and elsewhere, can be and have been. I hope to live up to their example (and have not done so yet). It’s a life lesson.
2. Cool people have heretofore-unknown-to-me (or, in some cases, new) blogs: for example, Helen McCookeryboook from the neat early-80s proto-lo-fi indiepop outfit the Chefs. She’s got a new band, she’s writing a book called Lost Women in Rock, and she claims that the Slits are about to get back together.
Also the essayist and novelist Meghan Daum, who remains best known for writing an essay about how she couldn’t afford to (remain hip and) live in New York as a writer, and then actually moving to Nebraska. That move became the subject of her novel The Quality of Life Report, which I just finished reading and do not recommend, though the first 100 pages are snarky fun. I do recommend her collection of essays, and given how negative her novel feels both about New York and about middle America I was not surprised in the least to discover that she’s settled in L.A. and now writes opinion columns for the LA Times. (No, that is not a hit at L.A. I have become increasingly curious about it and very much hope my potential poetry reading in LA next year pans out, because I’d like to see the place, though I don’t think it’s somewhere I’d want to live.)
Other websites worth knowing about, though maybe less fun: City Project appears to do mainstream-liberal-to-progressive position papers on New York City fiscal issues, and Fiscal Policy appears to do exactly the same thing w/r/t New York State. Useful if you ever have to answer a question about where New York’s money goes and find that the first ten Google hits are manic, unreliable libertarians and Chamber of Commerce types (which actually happened to me on Friday)…
3. Sarah Fox’s book is out! Recommended if you like C. D. Wright, Fanny Howe, Peter Gizzi or… oh, just read it already. It’s full of green and growing things, and you’ll like it. (Yes, she is definitely one of the generous people mentioned in 1., above.) (UPDATE: she also has a blog, making her worthy of 2., above, as well. )
He smells as good as he looks!
Nathan received from Demetri and Geralyn a gigantic cake made of diapers and decorated with, among other things, Eeyore and Golden Gopher gear. It is truly fantastic.
And, yes, we still have Christmas lights up. Nathan LIKES them. I think they may be up until he enters kindergarten.
The truly astonishing diaper cake gift inventory:
1 classic Eeyore doll
1 U of MN hat
1 U of MN romper
1 very soft striped blanket
1 bottle Aveeno baby bath
1 bottle Aveeno lavender and vanilla baby bath
1 bottle baby powder
1 tube Aveeno lavender and vanilla baby lotion
2 teethers
4 pacifiers
4 spoons
4 bibs
8 washcloths
8 pairs of socks
A LOT of diapers
Wow. Geralyn is truly a genius and she and Demetri are, of course, amazing friends.
Thanks to everyone who came to the reading last night. Special thanks to Dobby– check out his book!– to Team Graywolf and to bookstore host Micawbers. Shop there, please.
If you missed it, and live in the Twin Cities, watch this space: I shall read again.
Next weekend I’ll be at the University of Chicago for this conference, with a poetry reading on Friday afternoon and panels all day Saturday. You can read the papers by downloading them from the conference site. I will be responding to Jennifer Scappetone’s essay on Ezra Pound and Jackson MacLow: suggestions and reactions (either to my paper, or to hers) are welcome.
Steve was on KFAI’s Write on Radio yesterday–until next Thursday, you can listen to the show here (Real Audio stream). After next Thursday, the show will appear for an additional week in the archives; after that, you can ask me for a tape of it.
This afternoon, Steve will be on All Things Considered on Minnesota Public Radio. And tonight, he’ll be appearing live and in person at Micawber’s Books at 7pm with Dobby Gibson.
Many hearty cheers for the nice folks at Graywolf Press for getting Steve out there so effectively.
from our friends at Republic of Heaven:
Annike Tiede is a five-year-old girl who was born with a form of liver disease that almost always requires transplantation. Her mother writes a beautiful and touching blog called Falling Down Is Also a Gift; it’s hard to read it and not become utterly taken by her story. She’s had two transplants so far, and it seems that she is going to need a third. She’s been in and out of the pediatric ICU over the last couple months, with some big scares.
And her insurance has a $1 million calendar year limit. And they have already reached that limit for 2006.
WHAT? How that be? It’s only February. Apparently, the pediatric ICU can eat up that limit pretty rapidly, and a liver transplant can cost as much as $500,000.
What is wrong with this country that a child (anyone, in fact) has to FUND-RAISE for a life-saving medical treatment? Well they do, and they are.
One of the strangest things about blogging is how you can find yourself embedded in a community of people you’ve never met, and probably never will. Yet, folks band together to help one another out.
I suspect most of my readers are already aware of the fundraising campaign and have seen all the links. Nevertheless, if I can spread the word to one extra person, I’ll be happy.
To donate cash to Annika’s campaign, you can visit her page at the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. Other folks have organized a raffle, an eBay campaign, bake sales, even a jewelry sale. If you can, participate in whatever works best for you.
*I suggest $20 because it’s what I felt we could give this week without looking at our finances carefully. Please think about giving more than that if you are more flush than us.
and here’s a cute movie of Nathan:
Nathan beats up on brightly colored animals
(don’t click unless you really want to see our kid in action. it’s a 2mb file.)
sitting on daddy’s shoulder
The Andy Roberts memorial page is live. Click the link. Hear his songs. View his comics. Wish he were around. I do, regularly.
