After these guys retire, it won’t be so happy, but maybe there’s someone young waiting in the wings to be trained for this job?
Tag Archive for sj rozan
Thirteenth Saturday
Seagull circles, lands,
Pecks at food scrap, changes mind,
Floats on rippling waves.
Second gull soars in,
Tries same scrap. Same opinion.
Bobs beside his bud.
Big blackback swoops down.
Others lift off, flap away.
Empty kingdom’s his.
4 Storytellers/4 Friends redux
In case you needed to know what we looked like. My stage debut! Or as close as I’ll get. I have no problem with the idea of reading my work, or of speaking to a crowd. No problema. But acting? Doing someone else’s words justice? Arrggh. My buddies made it easy, though.
4 Storytellers/4 Friends
Tomorrow night, Tues. the 22nd, at the Center for Fiction, 17 W. 47, NY NY. Joe Goodrich, Honor Molloy, Jonathan Santlofer, me. Free! We’re expecting you.
Twelfth Saturday
Pearl water reflects
Red rim surrounding far clock,
Palest blue of sky.
Looking for breakfast
Geese zig-zag through piling field.
Slow-motion pinball.
In sunlight spotlight
Tanker powers upriver.
Two white gulls follow.
Ad copy we could do without
This is unbelievably trivial, but I’ve heard some dumb advertising phrases one too many times lately and I’d like them to just go:
Spring Into/Fall Into
Savings, fashion, adventure — every six months we’re urged to spring or fall into something as though this were a new and clever pun. Every six months. Staaahp!
It All Starts
Usually used for TV shows, the ad will show you a smiling leading man, an explosion, and then tell you “It All Starts Tuesday!” All what? “All” implies lots of stuff. If you’re going to use this cliché, show me lots of stuff.
This Changes Everything
Often on car commercials, a car that looks like, well, a car, has been redesigned using New Thinking that Changes Everything. Except, well, everything.
Anyone else want to weigh in?
With friends like these
So here I am, in Ohio, keynoting a fine Sisters in Crime conference at the Writers’ Center branch of the Cuyahoga County Library. It was an excellent event, well-run and interesting, with a majority of the attendees (90+) coming from the Library’s patrons, not (yet!) SinC members. Kudos are due to the Cuyahoga County Library system. Well done, folks!
Giving the keynote, entitled “Categorization and Its Discontents,” about genre, class, and snobbery, I noticed a couple of people snapping photos. Well, pix or it didn’t happen. I figured to find myself on Facebook, and I did. Marjory Mogg posted this:
And then Tim Dill, such a wiseguy, put this in the comments. Caesar, because he couldn’t find a statue of Genghis Khan.
Then Merideth Wright found Genghis Khan.
And Nancy Conyers added Mao.
Sonuvagun, huh? With friends like these…
Eleventh Saturday, from Independence, Ohio
Cardinal on branch.
Flock of starlings invades tree.
Red blur streaks away.
Granulated frost
Dusting cars in parking lot,
Vanishing in sun.
Traffic whizzing by.
Cars’ long shadows race ahead,
Slicing through morning.
Greetings, earthlings
SJR coming to you from the Newark Airport United Club, my home away from home in Terminal C. I seem to spend half my airport life in Terminal A, where the short hops go from, and I expected this flight to Cleveland to leave from there, too. Terminal C in my mind has always been for international adventure — the flight I take to Rome (for the Assisi program you’re all going to come study with me in this year) leaves from here, as well as flights to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul (which is for Mongolia as well), Tokyo. And such non-short-hop US destinations as Portland and San Francisco. Love me some Terminal C.
But lo, Cleveland takes off from here, too. This is a good thing, because this is where the Club is — no such comforts in down-market Terminal A — and I need a nice place to sit and drink a nice cup of tea, because I’m 2 1/2 hours early. Which is about an hour longer than the flight. (Remember, I went to Oberlin, I know this trip.) I heard a horror-story report on the news last night about hour-plus waits at security even for TSA Pre-check passengers, and I figured it’s Friday so lots of people would be traveling. So I cleverly left very early. Here’s the thing, though: TSA workers denied it, but the news story smelled to me like an unauthorized work slowdown to protest understaffing. (Apparently TSA has stopped paying overtime, which means fewer workers per security station.) I guess they got their point across, because I breezed through that Pre-check line like grass through a goose and now here I sit.
And by now you’re asking, “That’s all very well, but why are you going to Cleveland?” For this: Sisters in Crime Northeast Chapter’s Death March Conference. I’m giving the keynote, on “Categorization and Its Discontents.” Hope to see some of you there! The rest of you, as the poem has it:
Write right
Right wrong
Sing song
Long gone
I’ll report from beautiful Ohio.
I Love New York
A restaurant called Caliente Cab Company, which has been on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth for decades, has a giant foaming Margarita in a golden cup on its facade. Apparently the Margarita has recently been attracting pigeons. Management has installed a robotic owl to scare them away. Apparently it doesn’t work.
I love New York.
