PUGGY'S HILL

6:01pm: Salon, Salon . . . Jewelry!
Despite kind encouragement from the world's greatest auctioneer, I really can't say it any better than our esteemed colleague the multitalented Ms. Bradford. And now my jaw is a-drop at the amazing conversation about Beading as Interstitial Art that is happening amongst crafties and IAF Auction contributors elisem, ktempest, copperwise, (moderator) krismcd59 and others on our third IAF Online Salon. You should go join them.

I'm just going to go take a hot bath and let everyone else be articulate and talented for awhile.

7:53pm: we love Holly Black, but . . . .
. . . that doesn't mean we're going to let blackholly just walk away with krismcd59's fabulous "Rainbird" earrings (inspired by Holly Phillips' "Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom") for a mere lowball offer of $20.50 over at the Interfictions Auction in the next 12 hours, now does it?

(Hey, klages, how'm I doing?)

2:59pm: KRIJTJES
I bet you didn't know that there were this many varieties of licorice in Holland alone . . . .! -- found while looking for a source for my favorites - I'm down to the last few in my little bag of "Oudhollands" brand from De Tuinen (hoarder? me? just because these are from, um, the same bag that got me through our move, which I am carefully eking out until...); I feel that they are inadequately described on the site as "Krijtjes drop white licorice pastilles" and "Krijtjesdrop (licorice crayons): peppermint shell with a licorice paste inside. Taste: sweet, peppermint." - to me, they're more like a salty licorice with a streak of menthol. ?? I'll give you the powdered white outsides, though - they look a bit like giant white pencil erasers. I guess.

8:39pm: My Wiscon Schedule
( Ellen's Embarrassingly Lengthy Schedule of Wiscon Panels, Readings & Presentations. )
I'll also be at the Gathering on Friday helping people find their True Clothes at the Swap (which Delia & I originated when we were GoHs - so glad it's continued thanks to other folks' enthusiasm & energy!) . . . and interested parties are invited to an Interstitial Arts introductory get-together on Sunday morning at 11:00 a.m. (place To Be Determined, probably Michelangelo's).

. . . And, Yes, you can buy me a drink.

Indeed, I insist.

2:39pm: more PASSING STRANGE
Fingers crossed for Passing Strange to win lots of Tony Awards on June 15th! If the Interstitial Arts Foundation had an award for Interstitial Theater, I'd vote for it.

NYTimes review uses classic "if only the word 'interstitial' were in common use for arts reviewers" language: “Call it a rock concert with a story to tell, trimmed with a lot of great jokes. Or call it a sprawling work of performance art, complete with angry rants and scary drag queens. Call it whatever you want, really. I’ll just call it wonderful….The story of a young man achingly out of place in the world, trying on poses and assuming new guises in his quest for an identity that, as he will ultimately learn, many artists can only find in their art.”

Kinda like Bordertown, actually. Maybe that's why I love it so much!

Discount tix are available at TDF, BroadwayBox.com and day-of-show for Under 25's. The website has cool stuff, including some of the music. And there's an album coming eventually....

8:29pm: IAF Jewelry Auction news
NEW PIECES: earthwalked's "And Then She Flew" and elisem's "Willow Pattern" are up. More photos of "Willow Pattern" are here, showing breathtaking detail.

Bidding on our first two glorious pieces ends tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon, so get your bids in or lose out on some amazing work!

We are putting new pieces up every other day, and each will remain open for bids for 5 days. We now have enough pieces to keep our Interfictions Auction going through May 23! So keep checking back in....

4:59pm: more INTERFICTIONS jewelry posted!
Previews of upcoming auction items to whet your appetite.

I am especially excited about the pieces by the authors of the actual stories - how interstitial is that?! And how Very, Very Collectible . . . . ADDED - Like this piece from Auction organizer K. Tempest Bradford, which she so craftily snuck into her blog . . . .

(and I just want to tell Elise, Mia, Kris & Deborah that your pieces have arrived safely. Thanks for the fabulous packaging jobs!)

6:09pm: INTERFICTIONS Jewelry Auction has begun!
Go right now to the Interfictions/IAF Auction page to see beautiful things and to sign up for the RSS (or LJ) feed to find out when new stuff goes up.

Go here to read Gavin's fine description on the Small Beer Press "Not a Journal."

And here are sneak previews of upcoming pieces. (Because I have Minions....)

If all this doesn't make you want to read Interfictions, well, I just give up; as the poet says:

Who loves not original one-of-a-kind jewelry, stories that fall between the cracks of recognized genres, women, wine and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.

11:53am: "Vissi d'Arte"
I'm not the world's hugest Italian opera fan - but Tosca! How can you not love a show in which a villainous baritone Baron threatens Our Heroine against a background of giant chorus and clanging bells of a pious Te Deum (and then has her shadowed by Tre sbirri, una carrozza [3 Cops, 1 Carrlage]) . . . . while the wretched object of his loathsome affections objects that she simply lives for Art and Love, and when they fail her leaps to her death from the -- oops, spoiler!

And now (with 4 weeks to our Rome Trip and counting) someone has kindly published an article letting us know the whereabouts (and admission times) for the "Tosca Trail" to see where it all takes place . . . . I shall go. And I shall make a huge fuss. See,

I have been utterly disgusted lately by the TV worship one sees here in NYC: not only are crowds lined up outside the stage door of every Broadway show featuring an actor they've seen on the screen - and only those - I mean, we're talking people actually screaming and flashbulbs popping when Clay Aiken (who?) emerges from Spamalot. Yeah. We saw Boeing Boeing last night, and they were lined up to, I dunno, like kiss the hem of Brad Whitford's jeans (leaving the unbelievably brilliant Mark Rylance to escape scott free - all this will change, of course, when he finally achieves greatness and plays a prosecutor on some show about the brave men & women who track down semen stains on criminal microwaves or something) - but yesterday for the first time in several years I revisited our old haunts at the far end of Bleecker Street, to discover it all utterly transformed: Juicy Couture where the little Japanese fountain store used to be, Ralph Lauren in place of the Indonesian carving place where I bought Delia the little deer while we were writing The Fall of the Kings. . . . and why? Because of the Magnolia Bakery. Which makes perfectly decent cupcakes, I'm sure, but is now a pilgrimage site for Sex in the City fans. I liked that show, but now I may never forgive it for making it literally impossible to walk down the block, the sidewalks were so crammed with tourists waiting to get in (which I assume is what encouraged name brand shops to move in to take advantage of them). And I'm, like, People, look! You're in Greenwich Village! Two blocks further down there are Italian cafes with homemade cannolli!

But, gee, nobody's made a movie or TV show about the old hipster Village, or Edna St Vincent Millay. If they did, I'd probably never get a seat - or a little ricotta pie - at Rocco again.

It's as if only things that are on TV are real. I am filled with hate - No, not hate. Something more 19c. Anomie, perhaps, some kind of spiritual loathing and general sickness that seems to find relief only in making loud rude remarks as I pass the mindless hoards, who probably think I'm some kind of TV stunt or other. Or possibly simply not real, as they've never seen me behind glass.

I must go put on Tosca now, and cry my eyes out.

Vissi d'arte, baby.

1:19am: PASSING STRANGE
We took Titi & Tempest tonight to see Passing Strange on Broadway. It's even better than everyone says it is. You must go. We loved it so much we waited outside the stage door afterwards to thank Stew for doing it. He invited us to go across the street for drinks with him. Talked about life, art, and Octavia Butler until they closed the place.

Sometimes I can't believe my life.

5:09pm: TONIGHT: Writers on View
Ellen hosts a reading of poems and stories by NY writers in dialogue with the photographs of Margalit Mannor and the bronze sculptures of Varda Rotem.
Center for Jewish HIstory, 15 W. 16th St
Yeshiva University Museum
6-7pm View Art, 7-8pm Presentation

7:30pm: We Love Boerne (pronounced "Bernie"), Texas
We love the Hill Country and the liveoaks. We love the Ye Kendall Inn*, a 19c Coaching Inn - formerly the private home of a Texas senator who never refused hospitality to "decent" travelers. (Oddly enough, it's not nearly as pretentious & tarted up as the website tries to make it appear.) We love our room ("Laverne") with its "tester" bed & 2 (non-working) fireplaces. We love sitting in rockers on the 2nd floor verandah outside our room, drinking wine or typing. We love eating at PO PO Family Restaurant. We wish we had a giant truck (and a larger apartment) so we could bring home all the fabulous regional Eastlake-y furniture in all the antique stores lining Main St. (We did buy a green glass lemon juicer, which has apparently been missing from Delia's life for just ever. Who knew?) We love Delia's old friend Becky (the model for Elinor in Through a Brazen Mirror, and now I know why!) and her husband John (who is working on the first mission to Jupiter) and their many pregnant cows.

We arrived late Tuesday after a typical day of travel (for us): ( Read more... )
*And yes, I am aware that "ye" means "the" - but somehow. . . I just . . . can't.
ADDED: While I was writing this, deliasherman was issuing her version of the trip report - put them together and you'll know all.

10:16am: Oberlin. Today. Java Zone, 3:55 pm
.

10:13am: overheard at the breakfast table
Ellen (looking up from reading NYTimes Style section article about upcoming wedding): Jenna Bush is only having a lousy 200 guests? Hell, we had more than that.

Delia (sleepily, between bites of cereal): Well, she's only inviting people who like her father.

10:34pm: THE EMPTY KINGDOM
By my watch, I still have an hour & a half (East Coast Time) to congratulate Elizabeth Wein on today's book launch of the sequel to her (Norton nominee) The Lion Hunter (which is, for all us Winter Prince fans, actually the sequel to 2 other books featuring Medraut's rather terrifying son) . In fact, I think I'll run over right now and open a fresh bottle of bubbly at her Virtual Book Launch party!

(Oh, and she'll be signing at the 4/25 Austin Nebula event, too!)

10:41am: Signing in Austin 4/25
As part of the Nebula festivities next weekend, the kind committee is generously throwing a mass autographing for attending authors, which will be open to the public on Friday, April 25. ( DETAILS: )

11:55pm: . . . and now, I must pack
Leaving tomorrow with a suitcase that must contain apparel suitable for the following:
• Ohio weather (springlike)
• getting Mom's kitchen kosher for Passover (scrub, scrub, haul, haul, cook, cook....)
• outfits for family Seders conservative enough to reassure family that have not turned into total Bohemian wacko, yet allow me retain some measure of self-respect
• visiting Pat at Oberlin
• Texas weather (equatorial)
• following Delia's old friend Beckie around her new ranch outside San Antonio for several days, admiring goats
• signing books in Austin
• appearing at Nebula banquet in clouds of sartorial glory so all may look upon me and despair (while not eclipsing Delia, who is the one with the actual nomination)
• riding many airplanes

Will try not to forget toothpaste.

11:45pm: Interfictions a Tiptree Honor Book
See what happens when I actually bother to read my Friends List?

I find great news like this!!

Congratulations to the editors, the writers, the publishers, and everyone at the IAF who worked so hard to make Interfictions worthy of this honor.

11:59pm: Sweethearts of Riverside 2008
N'est-ce pas?

(Well she said I could.)

T-shirts are here and here.

Must go back to dying of ego-joy now.

12:05am: "St Vier" in French
Swordspoint will be coming out this October in France, from the distinguished house of Calmann-Lévy. I am fortunate enough to know my translator, Patrick Marcel (we met at Worldcon in Glasgow), a.k.a. mantichore-- he drops in here on LJ from time to time, and weighed in on the French pronunciation of "St Vier" recently - but now we're down the nitty gritty, and came to a surprising realization. Here, with his permission, is our latest correspondence for your amusement:

( Read more... )

"Saint-Vière" it is, then! And god bless La Marseillaise.

Interestingly, "St Vier" gave the Spaniards trouble as well - I had a long conversation with my wonderful editor, Luis Prado of Bibliopolis, when he was about to publish A Punta de Espada - for sociological as well as linguistic reasons I still don't fully understand (as my Spanish is pretty much nil), he begged me to consent to changing it to "de Vier." I honestly don't object to any of this; names are mostly sounds to me, so if it sounds better in translation, why not?

11:34am: Grammar Patrol: Forbidden Fruit
What is with this forbade from? Isn't it forbade to?

I hear/see it all the time now - on NPR, in a recent (excellent) story in the NYTimes, even on Neil Gaiman's blog! It's (mis?)used most often in the past tense: "They forbade them from landing on the beach." Isn't it "They they forbade them to land..."? Move it to the imperative and it becomes clearer: surely it's "I forbid you to open that door!" - not "I forbid you from opening that door!"

Is this a language elision, a regionalism, or what?

12:05am: the god abandons antony
All those within the sound of my voice: RUN AND GET TICKETS TO ANTONY & CLEOPATRA at Theatre for a New Audience!! It's playing on 42nd St through May 2, and there are still TDF tix (if you're a member) up through April 27th. Best of all, if you're under 25, tix are only $10! I haven't seen Shakespeare this good in a long time - and this play is so rarely performed, it's a real treat. The acting is wonderful - they do things with the old lines that really let them breathe and speak afresh - and the director is a goddam genius. Plus he's added some magic: the God (who is also the Soothsayer) walks through the stage from time to time, and stirs the waters of a small pool in the middle with his staff. It's a tragedy, sure, but they're all so over the top that there's nothing for them but death, so I maintained my composure -- until the very end, when ol' Darko threw in an image that utterly dropped me. The Enobarbus was a joy - I loved that actor as LeBret in Kevin Kline's recent Cyrano, too - and Octavius Caesar was young, gorgeous, and properly nerveless and chilling. (deliasherman will probably blog and say something more intelligent about all this soon.)

And I'd forgotten that some of my favorite lines came from the last act: The bright day is done, and we are for the dark . . . and of course, I wish you joy o' th' worm! . . . And I'd forgotten that in IV, iii the God leaves Antony, leaves Alexandria - just as he does in the beautiful poem by Cavafy (here are a couple more translations - the best, I think, may be in the 2001 translation of all his work by Theoharis C. Theoharis, still too much in copyright to be posted here). The story supposedly came from Plutarch - and most of Shakespeare's details certainly did!

Leonard Cohen turned The God Abandons Anthony into an exquisite song called "Alexandra Leaving" - listen to it if you get the chance.

3:59pm: Loss
Condolences to our friend, writer & performer Ellen Klages, who's just lost her dad.

9:22am: "Facing the Late Victorians"
At the Book Fair I picked up a postcard with this rather arresting image, notifying us all of an exhibit at the Grolier Club (a little gem!): Facing the Late Victorians ( Read more... )
The show is "open to the public free of charge" through April 26th. They're also offering a book of it, if you long for it but cannot come to E. 60th Street.

10:23pm: Book Fair
Thanks to the kind generosity of Henry Wessells, today I attended the 48th Annual New York Antiquarian Book Fair. Here are some things I got to pick up and/or look at there:

• William Timlin's original sketchbook for The Ship That Sailed to Mars, a book I'd never heard of and am now in love with - and delighted to find reproduced online - here are some of my favorite illos!
• First editions of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice
• Renaissance books of anatomical drawings
• The copy of Charlotte's Web that E.B. White inscribed to Vladimir Nabokov
• Jane Morris's own copy of Tennyson's Maude from the Kelmscott library (and a steal at $650)
. . . and my very favorite:
• Tuccaro, Arcangelo: TROIS DIALOGUES DE L'EXERCICE DE SAUTER, ET VOLTIGER EN L'AIR (Paris, 1599) (Three dialogues on the practice of jumping and vaulting in the air. With figures that will serve as a perfect demonstration and understanding of said art. ) - open, of course, to the page showing his famous triple jump.