Best sight on the subway today. The rings, the bling, the hat, the shades, and the Rubik’s Cube. He didn’t put it down all the way uptown. I love New York.
Archive for SJ’s Photos
Snowzilla, the aftermath
Went out this morning early, in the bright sun. Lots of dogs and photogs: the day was absolutely gorgeous.
Steps
Car waits to be dug out
Wheeling the bike back into the garage (after she flopped into the snow to flatten a path)
Another bike to come back for
Be a while before this pile melts
Down by the river (Carlos Dews, this one’s for you)
This isn’t usually a pool, it’s a small inlet with a bridge over it about three feet above the water
Scrollwork on the back of my bench
Why I couldn’t sit on my bench this morning
Car, somewhere in there
Snow on low wall, against high wall
Grace is everywhere
Snowzilla, Part Two
Went out a second time about an hour ago. Snow’s blowing harder. Walked — okay, trudged — in the other direction, not toward the river but into the neighborhood streets. Went maybe ten blocks away. Out and back took an hour. Here are the afternoon’s photos. Now I’m done, settled in, about to go back to the book I’m working on and then watch the Knicks, who apparently made it to Charlotte last night although the airports were closed by the time they were finished losing to the Clippers.
Door as I was leaving the building
Statue in the park
Green means go but so what, really?
Wall
Sidelined sidewalk cafe
Snowplow oops
I think we’ll come back tomorrow for the bike
Rather Gothic gate
We NYers will take our icicles where we can get them
Hope the 6th Precinct doesn’t need that car
Or that one (the 24-hour pharmacy, by the way, is closed)
Pipe connection
This is a traffic-ticket vehicle, so you KNOW they don’t need this one
Scrollwork
Citibikes going nowhere
Grate
Vines on the wall
Snowzilla, Part One, plus a manifesto
These are some of the photos I took this morning in NYC. Yes, I was out. I go to the river every morning before I start work, by which I mean, every morning. The exceptions are morning when I have some early appointment, but the exceptions are not weather. Weather is part of the point.
Because I learned this in a sudden epiphany years ago: gorgeousness and pleasantness are not the same. What happened was, I went with a friend to Storm King Art Center. It was summer, July or August, a very hot day. Storm King’s a vast outdoor sculpture park, conceived and operated to present, well, vast outdoor sculptures. We’d been roaming over the rolling hills for about half an hour, sweating as we ambled from diSuvero to Noguchi, when it started to rain. My friend was all for running into the small house they use to show small works. But this was just a warm rain, no thunder, no lightning, and we’d been so hot and sweaty. And a Henry Moore was glistening white and wet in the distance. My friend went in; I stayed outside, meandering around on the soggy grass, seeing the glistening Moore, watching drops plink into puddles in Noguchi’s carved stones. And I realized: physical discomfort is unavoidable, and everywhere. My back hurts after a couple of hours at my desk. I have to grab for air playing basketball. Nothing, as long as I live in this physical body, is without cost. So why not get wet in a fabulous rain near plinking Noguchis?
This philosophy has served me well. I got to see double rainbows in Mongolia after a cold wet night.
I tramped through — and fell down in — slippery mud in the terraced rice fields of Yunnan, and I saw this.
And I went out today in Snowzilla, and found many things.
Outside from inside, just before I left.
Holly
Snowplow tracks
The river near my bench
Light and its reflection
Grating
Sledding kids (what a good daddy they have)
Trees and wall
Benches
Trees
I wasn’t at the river alone
Hard-working building super
Bella the Cat
Bella fans — how weird is this? I took Bella to the vet for her yearly checkup — had a struggle stuffing her into her carry case, had to listen to her curse me out the whole way there (a 7-block walk), but of course at the vet she poured on the charm. He pronounced her a “perfect cat.” Coat glossy, teeth sharp, heartbeat absolutely regular. Fabulous, say I, but I felt a tiny lump under her skin, at her shoulder, could you take a look at that? Says he, it’s probably just her microchip. Says I, this cat has no microchip, she’s an adopted (by me) foundling (by her last people). Oh, the vet says, waving his microchip reader over her shoulder, then where’d she get this? And indeed, someone, somewhere in her first almost-year of life, implanted a microchip in Bella the Cat! For all I know she’s been sending reports back to the mothership all this time.
End of the holiday season
Gosling Black Rum about to be mixed into Ronnybrook Eggnog in a Honolulu Airport glass at an annual end-of-holiday-season party with some of my best buddies. Trying to keep that sense of a fresh beginning that the New Year always brings, even while 2016 meanders into its second week.
Forward into the breach!
Many of you know that my 2015 was in many ways pretty crappy. Except for a few bright and shining spots — trips to Italy, Mongolia, Indiana, and Mississippi; my genius students — a whole bunch of things piled on to add up to a lousy year. 2016, which starts in a few hours, will be better, I have determined: will even be affirmatively good. So I say, bring it on.
2015, not sorry to see ya go.
2016, pleased to meet ya!
Way down south in the land of cotton
Just got back from a trip behind the Magnolia Curtain. Thought you might enjoy some photos while you finish baking that plum pudding. Which I had in Mississippi, and it was delicious. Along with the catfish tacos and the breakfast kibbee and grits.
Me on the Mighty Mississipp.
Cotton is King, even off-season.
Went to research the Delta Chinese community for a new Lydia Chin/Bill Smith book.
Cotton snowperson in Cleveland, MS.
Baptism mural in Helena, Arkansas. Lunching in Helena knocked one more off the list of states I’ve never been in. Down to 4!
The Archangel Michael, though his sword looks like a tie, from a Charles Eames church in Helena.
All is not sweetness and light in Helena, however.
My little cabin away from home, in Clarksdale, MS.
My cabin on left, with the back porch of the Big House on right and the plantation owner, Eric Stone.
Rufous-sided towhee in Eric’s shrubs.
Terra cotta in Helena. The spirit of Prosperity. A touch ironic.
River report — winter birds!
Two weeks ago a pair of male buffleheads came splashing in for a landing at the piling field near my bench. It was early for our locals who winter here, so I figured they were headed farther south and just taking a rest. Didn’t see them again, so I was probably right. But this morning, a single male landed, floated around a piling with a seagull on it, and dove for fish, looking right at home. About twenty minutes later a flight of Brant geese went by, showing their plump white behinds in a messy V. The winter visitors have arrived!
Also this morning, a gull swooped into a float of debris and came up with a small eel. He flew away and was immediately mugged by another gull, who stole it. Then the first gull and about a dozen others all chased the thief, not to bring him to gull justice but to steal the eel themselves. Or maybe that is gull justice. Anyway, I didn’t see who ended up with the prize, but I started to wonder: do gulls hold grudges? Will Gull #1, who caught the eel, be gunning for Gull #2, who stole it? Will he knock #2 off a perch, or hang around on purpose to see what he finds to eat so #1 can steal it, turnabout being fair play? Also, are some gulls better at finding food, or quicker at catching eels or whatever, and are they therefore stalked by other gulls, who find it easier to steal a faster gull’s prize than to fish themselves?
These are the questions that come up in the early morning, by the river.
The Rozan Report, December 2015 Edition
Greetings!
It’s been a long time since the last Rozan Report and I’ve missed you all! I hope you’ve been happy, healthy, and productive. (Yes, I still use the Oxford comma and I don’t care who knows it.) For my part, I’ve been traveling, writing, teaching… oh, all kinds of things. And sometimes, all of them at once.
Sweet tea, espresso, Mongolian salt tea??
For the first time in my life I was in Mississippi. That leaves only four states I haven’t at least set foot in. (Should we have a contest on the website to guess which ones?) My friend Eric Stone (http://www.ericstone.com/) moved down there, to Clarksdale in the Delta, so I went to visit. After two days of tooling around with Eric (the world’s best tour guide) and local hero Ace Atkins (http://www.aceatkins.com/), I woke up with a hangover and an idea for a new Lydia Chin book. Luckily the one that faded was the hangover. The book, to be called SWEET TEA, is underway.
In July I was in Assisi, as usual, teaching a writing workshop. An awful lot of you keep saying “maybe next year” about coming to Assisi to take a workshop and I want to say, THIS YEAR! Come to Assisi! This summer’s dates are July 27 – Aug. 9. Room, breakfast, dinner, and workshop in a four-star hotel with a very friendly staff; plenty of time to relax, to explore the beautiful town, and to GET SOME WRITING DONE! http://artworkshopintl.com/
My big trip this year was in August, when I went to Mongolia for the third time. (And how many people do you know who can say that?) Went with a bunch of traveling buddies, had a fabulous time. We hit the Gobi, where we climbed a big giant sand dune and then had a picnic dinner in its shadow as the sun went down;
to the wild east where we camped in the middle of a thunderstorm and woke up in the middle of a herd of migrating gazelle;
and further into the wild east to a pine-surrounded lodge built by a Mongolian man who spent a few years in the US as a rodeo bull rider. There’s a book coming out of Mongolia, too, THE KHAN’S KEY. Stand by.
Assisi, Martha’s Vineyard, or Wisconsin?
While you’re standing by, and if you can’t come to Assisi (come to Assisi!) here’s where I’ll be teaching in the US in 2016.
I’ll be in West Bend, WI, for the third annual Writers’ Bookcamp (like Bootcamp but for books, get it?) for a week, May 15 – 21. A week in a beautiful quiet retreat, hills, pond, walking trails and other writers. No specifics on the Wisconsin Writer’s Association website yet, but keep checking back. And no, you don’t have to be in, or from, or ever have seen, Wisconsin, to come.
Then June 19-25 I’ll be doing a Crime Writing Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, MA, at the Noepe Center for Literary Arts. Again, beautiful and serene, a great place to focus and work.
Mark Your Calendars Now!
Now, if you need something to help you keep track of the days until your workshop starts, I have three new 2016 calendars. (Because of what use is an old 2016 calendar?)
They are: Travels, Flowers, and The Five Snouts of Mongolia, plus.
Pick them up and never be confused again. At least, about what day it is.
Listen up! Bill Smith’s music recommendations
In preparation for a trip to the Mississippi Delta, Bill Smith has been spending time with some of BB King’s recordings, particularly “Live at the Apollo.” BB King recently died at 88. He and his guitar, Lucille, are well worth any number of hearings. Here they are — King and Lucille — doing “The Thrill is Gone.”
Ma Chin’s Kitchen Table
I know many of you have been following the stories of my daughter’s cases. I would certainly rather she had chosen a path that did not lead her into association with the type of person she encounters in her detecting work. I mean, of course, both the criminals, and the other investigators. I am sure that soon she will outgrow the foolishness of her current career and realize how many other more respectable possibilities are open to her. However, until she does, I am still her mother and it is my duty to assist my children in whatever way I can. To this end I have recently begun to investigate some cases myself, ones involving people too distasteful for me allow to associate with my daughter. If you are interested, two of my cases are chronicled in these publications.
“Chin Yong-Yun Meets A Ghost,” by S.J. Rozan, in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March-April 2015.
“Chin Yong-Yun Makes a Shiddach,” by S.J. Rozan, in MANHATTAN MAYHEM.
Well, that’s it for now. Have a great holiday season and a terrific start to 2016. See you around the block!
SJ