Accommodatingly

Our Xmas in Connecticut is was nothing like Xmas in Connecticut… but it’s been important to us, and worthwhile. We have seen many– but not all– of the family-members-of-Jessie whom we travel here to see.

If you are a fan of Jawbox, Government Issue, DeSoto Records, Threadless T-shirts, or giving to people in need, you should seriously consider helping Callum Robbins, the 10-month-old son of Jawbox songwriter J. Robbins; Callum has been diagnosed with the scary childhood disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and Callum’s family friends of Callum’s family are hoping indie-kids chip in to help with whatever therapies the family believes will make Callum’s time on Earth happier and more hopeful.

Superblogger Chris Bowers has a very plausible short account of the success, failure, collapse, and partial resurrection of liberalism from the end of the Civil Rights era to the present age of Kos Dean Era war-driven realignment day. Bowers’ stories reminds me of Todd Gitlin’s very plausible long account of what went right, and wrong, in the 1960s. If you are a fan of DNC chair Howard Dean, as I am, you’ll almost surely like it too. (Note that you do not have to be an admirer of 2004 Presidential candidate Howard Dean to be a devoted fan of DNC chair Howard Dean. I’m iffy on the first, crushed-out on the second.)

Did you know that the villanelle wasn’t really a form until some mid-19th century French people committed conscious literary-historical fraud? It seems to be the case. Thanks, MLQ! Thanks, Julie Kane!

If I know you and you’re going to be at the MLA in Philly this week, and we haven’t made social plans, and you want to make social plans, do get in touch. Note that I am not free during daylight hours on any of the convention’s four days: mostly I’ll be interviewing people who want to teach at Macalester. We have some very, very cool applicants.

I am also giving a paper on Wednesday night at 8:45pm about the poetry of Laura Kasischke. Here’s one of her many good poems. She’s about to become at least a bit better-known, because one of her novels is about to become a film starring Uma Thurman.

Elizabeth Elmore’s band The Reputation, maybe my favorite live act of recent years (that is, pre-baby years, when I still saw live rock music regularly), and certainly one of the greats of recent indie-rock songwriting, has just played their final show. Rumor has it Elizabeth won’t be touring again.

That bums me out, especially since I’m listening to her previous band’s farewell record as I type this. I hope she keeps recording songs. (You can also hear her voice on the latest masterpiece from the Hold Steady.)

If you just can’t get enough poetry criticism, you can now get a bit more with A Poetry Criticism Reader, which includes essays from Helen Vendler, Lyn Hejinian, Donald Justice, Karen Volkman (on Lorine Niedecker), Stephen Yenser, and several other writers, including, er, me: I am represented by the trend piece that wouldn’t die, to which the volume’s coeditor, Jerry Harp, generously allowed me to add a new postscript.

We had a long night, during which I gave in to the wailing little man in the crib and brought him in bed with me, then spent the remaining hours of the night trying NOT to get kicked out of my own bed by an 11-month-old. Not much in the way of uninterrupted sleep. Now, he is stubbornly resisting his nap, still complaining after a half hour in the crib.

My original plan for the day was to hang with him in the morning and bring him to day care after his nap. During this magical nap, I would get web work done that I’m supposed to post tomorrow morning. While he was at day care, I would go get my hair trimmed and run a couple of errands, then return to the day care for our monthly meeting at 4.

Now it’s looking like he’s going to have another nap-resistant day–a nice repeat of yesterday when we were both at the day care all day and he only slept for about a half an hour in the swing. I think I’ll just have to bring him in and drop him off earlier than planned so that I can go sit in a coffee shop and work on the laptop instead of on my desktop with the big, beautiful screen. Arrrgggh. If only we lived right next door…

Why am I blogging instead of working right now? YOU try to lay out a web page with a baby wailing pathetically in the background.

I finally get motivated to post again…

The AMC Har Mar Theater is closed after 36 years. AMC opened a new stadium-seating multiplex (about which I have been quite excited for some time) about a half mile away, so keeping open this tiny-screened, paper-walled, sticky-floored suburban dinosaur was not in the cards. Steve and I saw “Stranger than Fiction” there last weekend. The original Har Mar Theater, where we saw the movie, was a two-screener that was eventually split into three screens (they later added more screens in an attached part of the shopping center). It had giant, groovy Venetian-glass chandeliers and the weirdest bathrooms–each stall in the women’s room had its own color scheme and a private sink. I wish I’d taken a picture. Everything was curvy and space-age-y. It’s the type of space that would be great for a second-run house, maybe to replace the terrible one slightly closer to us that seems to be a place for local drug dealers to make exchanges (but, hey, $1 movies on Tuesday night!), but rumor has it that the space will no longer be a theater.

Oh, and, yes–Har Mar Superstar is named for the shopping complex. Great pic of the exterior of the theater on his website.

We’ve just been slammed, at work, then at home, then at work: Nathan got a scary ear infection (high fever and groggy fussiness, or is that fussy grogginess) on Sunday, which Jessie noticed almost before it happened, and the ear infection ate the next 48 hours before being fortunately dislodged by antibiotics. Yay, antibiotics. And yes, we know that we have to give Nathan the whole prescribed dosage, even though he seems to be feeling all the way better now.

I for one will post again as soon as (a) I have half an hour and (b) my mood improves. Cheered somewhat by editors’ interest in various new projects, from a book-length literary-historical study to a big commissioned essay on Robert Creeley (the latter just today– I hadn’t planned to write on him but I do like him, sometimes a great deal). Also cheered by recent womens’-hoops-blog-related fan mail: let’s go Bowling Green!

Live in the Bay Area? Want to be onstage? Try out for Maya’s Clown Bible.

I am reading tons of neat books for our fiction-writing search, and so far I’m happy: lots of talented, talented fiction writers want to work at Mac. I wish we could hire several.