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Post to the Host: Mary S. -- Bertha's Kitty Boutique was located in the Dales, and some other sponsors, and we dropped it because ---- well, because it was a local joke and the show went national a long time ago. Minneapolis, you see, has the honor of being the home of the First Large Indoor Mall ---- Southdale was considered the prototype, followed by Rosedale, Brookdale, Ridgedale, and so forth. To which we added Clydesdale, Chippendale, Airedale, and Mondale. Turning Fritz Mondale into a shopping mall was a lovely thing, but we killed off the joke before it got too old. Permalink» | Comments (11) »
Post to the Host: I'd like to say that I've been living a good life so far. I've kept my grades up, I'm doing well in Air Force ROTC, I've become fluent in Japanese and spent 8 weeks in Japan, and I am now learning about Irish culture (especially music), and am planning a trip to Ireland. It seems to me like I'm the odd one out in my generation. Other kids are getting in trouble and being stupid. Just last night, a kid got charged with a felony, because he was stupid enough to set off the fire extinguisher in the stairwell of my dorm, which subsequently set off the fire alarms, which we found out to be broken, because they wouldn't turn off! I was awake from 1:30 in the morning until 6:19AM when the alarm was finally cut off. I then had to wake up at 7 to make the 2 hour drive home. (Hey! This could turn out to be an interesting story!) My question to you is this. What is your opinion of my generation? Do you feel optimism? Pessimism? Impending doom? Taylor G. -- You are off to a fast start, Taylor, and evidently you've discovered the pleasure of learning which might prove to be a hindrance and keep you from settling down in a career since you'll always be anxious to learn a new one, but never mind that. Learning is not something imposed by others, it's the mind fascinated and engaged on its own, and I wish you well. (Read some of those mournful and delightful Irish memoirs of the drunken father, the long-suffering mother, the terrible priests.) As for the kid who shot off the fire extinguisher, he isn't going to be actually charged with a felony----- they're just saying that to scare him ---- and he was simply drunk and that doesn't reflect on your generation whatsoever. It's too early to tell about your generation, of course, but it may come to regret having followed my generation and having to fix what we messed up. Mine is idealistic, or thinks it is, or wanted to be, but we got handed the Vietnam war by the Greatest Generation which completely misjudged the situation and we haven't quite recovered from it yet. My generation was deeply engaged in politics, as a result of the civil rights struggle and Vietnam, and when I look at American politics today and the demagoguery and sheer trashiness, it's discouraging. Members of my generation fought long and hard to keep ROTC off college campuses, a wrong-headed campaign born out of anger against the war, and thereby deprived a lot of young men and women of valuable training, and also wasted time in needless controversy. So much righteousness and so little to show for it. The current debate over health care reform stands as the strangest and silliest in my memory. On the other hand, when I think that a 19-year-old in Knoxville is fluent in Japanese and turning toward Ireland, I feel hope for the future. I'm an optimist, of course. Being a parent of an 11-year-old, I'm more or less obliged to be. So stay out of trouble, keep your grades up, and enjoy your college years. And then report back. Permalink» | Comments (4) »
Post to the Host: Jackie B. -- The first obligation of a young writer is to describe your parents, a major project. I also think you should start a novel right away. I put mine off for years, thinking I wasn't ready, but it's invaluable experience ---- to set out to write a sustained work of prose fiction of a hundred-thousand words or so. The main character is you yourself, it's set in Bristol, and your parents are definitely in it. Your main character has to get in trouble and then get out. And maybe that's the problem here, Jackie. You've been too good, too obliging, helpful, kind, considerate, thoughtful, generous, responsible, etc etc. It's hard to be interesting writing about pure goodness. Find some vein of evil within yourself and work from that. You don't need to enact these things in real life, by the way. Unless, of course, you want to. The way to write a novel is to write a few hundred words a day, every day, no fail. So try it. Maybe it'll be a big failure, but big failures can build the foundation for great success. Good luck. Permalink» | Comments (0) »
Post to the Host: In early August my wife and I were visiting your lovely home city of St Paul. After strolling past the homes on Summit, we decide to take a break for ice cream in the homemade ice cream shop on Grand. I am sure I saw you there in person, my wife thinks not. It was about three in the afternoon on a Monday. Was that you? David B. -- It was I, Professor Bauer, taking a break in the early afternoon, which is about when my brain goes dead and I need to reward myself for a morning's work with a big dose of sugar and butterfat. The Creamery is a St. Paul institution on summer afternoons and it's in my neighborhood and they have butter brickle. For soft ice cream, I go to Conny's Creamy Cone which is north on Dale. Also a good place to lean against your car and talk about baseball or the state of literature or the Republican party's leap into unreality on health care reform. These ice cream places employ high-school kids and so when you walk in, you also get a dose of youthful high spirits, and you can think about what you were doing the summer you were 17, and what if you were condemned to go back there, a harrowing thought. Permalink» | Comments (1) »
Post to the Host: I am an avid reader and now an avid convert to the Amazon Kindle platform. Rev. Kevin P. -- I'm all for readers reading whatever they want wherever they want to read it, and if some people would like to see text projected onto the sides of large buildings late at night, or written in the sky by planes, or transmitted to their cellphones, or attached to the sides of trees, that's fine by me. For now, I seem to be still enamored of the paper book with the covers and the spine, but I'm a restless man and who knows? I could pick up a Kindle next week and be converted in a moment. But then I'd have to tell the employees of my bookstore that they're the wave of the past. And whenever I go in the store, I see people wandering around and picking up books and examining them and browsing. Browsing is the thing you need to do in person, and I don't think Kindle is so good at that. Our bookstore represents the taste and judgment of its managers but there are other influences, best-seller lists, reviews, word of mouth, etc. And then the visitor gets to browse, which is a peripatetic search for serendipity, which is how readers come to find books they would never ever otherwise find. Permalink» | Comments (2) »
Post to the Host: Thank you, -- I'm working on a screenplay now, a fragile love story set in Lake Wobegon, and want to finish it before Labor Day. And then we shall see. Permalink» | Comments (5) » | | | |
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