Cathleen cooks up a savory dish of sauteed organic vegetables (from our Community Supported Agriculture share) over pasta. After a few bites, Eliza starts placing her pasta into her glass of chocolate milk. Cathleen and I glance at each other and silently shrug. Eliza then picks up her glass and drinks the milk.
Moments later, Max starts talking.
Max: This winter I am going to find two snowflakes that are exactly alike.
Cathleen: You know, Max, that there are no two snowflakes that are exactly alike, just like humans.
Max(without even looking up): You'll see.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Still here
Wow, it has been 19 days since I last posted. I'm finding it more difficult to find the time to wax poetic in this forum. I typically post at night, and lately I've been consumed with watching baseball, playing ultimate, and going to sleep, all of which seem to preclude a certain amount of blogability.
Not that I've been without thoughts and experiences. July has been a busy month, with highs and lows.
I flew out to L.A. by my lonesome on July 6th to attend Sameer and Shruti's wedding. It was a marvelous happening at a semi-exotic locale. It was a traditional Indian (Gujarati) wedding, or at least as traditional as I could tell, which made it a fascinating cultural experience for me, on top of the fact that I was so damn happy to watch Sameer get married. I felt a little bit of the outsider all weekend, given that I was "the high school friend" who did not fit neatly into any of the larger groups of friends, but Sameer, not surprisingly, has surrounded himself with warm, sincere and interesting people, and they welcomed me into their fold with open arms. Very good time for me, though I missed Cathleen and the kids. This past weekend Cathleen and I attended a larger Connecticut reception hosted by Sameer's parents. Mike also attended and we were most interested in hanging out with each other (something that we don't get to do too often anymore, certainly not as adults).
I then had to return to my office to fully confront the reality that Bloomberg and the City Council, in what can only be described as an odious and cowardly move, completely gutted HIV Legal Services funding as part of an approximately $70 million wack at human services programs. Sure, they managed to find a way to keep the middle class property tax rebate in the budget (thank goodness I'll still get my $400!) but they abandoned the City's most vulnerable residents. My program took a $111,000 hit -- I'm not only at risk of having to lay off two-three employees, but unless I find alternate funding we are going to be without funding to provide housing legal services (eviction prevention work), which just happens to be the most important issue our clients face. Needless to say, I was pretty depressed for a few days, but adversity kind of gets my juices flowing and I'm resolved to find alternate funding. Game on. We already completed a grant application that I feel pretty good about it, and we're pursuing a couple of other avenues.
SLIPPING has been garnering great reviews. We don't know yet how well it has bee selling, but there's an incredibly positive vibe about the book lingering in the air. Maybe that's a bit naive, but Cathleen has been receiving such overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback that I feel confident in saying that some identifiable level of "success" has been achieved. So far two otherwise-unconnected young readers have emailed her after having read the book to express how much they enjoyed it. Fanmail! How cool!
Finally, for reasons I need not get into here, I was recently forced to confront my father's death in a way I had not had to do in years. And you know what? Twenty-three years later and his death is still painful for me. As difficult as it was to be taken back to that time and encounter those feelings of loss and grief, it was strangely reassuring, like I hadn't lost my connection with him after all of these years. In a choice between feeling something or nothing, I'll always take the something.
Not that I've been without thoughts and experiences. July has been a busy month, with highs and lows.
I flew out to L.A. by my lonesome on July 6th to attend Sameer and Shruti's wedding. It was a marvelous happening at a semi-exotic locale. It was a traditional Indian (Gujarati) wedding, or at least as traditional as I could tell, which made it a fascinating cultural experience for me, on top of the fact that I was so damn happy to watch Sameer get married. I felt a little bit of the outsider all weekend, given that I was "the high school friend" who did not fit neatly into any of the larger groups of friends, but Sameer, not surprisingly, has surrounded himself with warm, sincere and interesting people, and they welcomed me into their fold with open arms. Very good time for me, though I missed Cathleen and the kids. This past weekend Cathleen and I attended a larger Connecticut reception hosted by Sameer's parents. Mike also attended and we were most interested in hanging out with each other (something that we don't get to do too often anymore, certainly not as adults).
I then had to return to my office to fully confront the reality that Bloomberg and the City Council, in what can only be described as an odious and cowardly move, completely gutted HIV Legal Services funding as part of an approximately $70 million wack at human services programs. Sure, they managed to find a way to keep the middle class property tax rebate in the budget (thank goodness I'll still get my $400!) but they abandoned the City's most vulnerable residents. My program took a $111,000 hit -- I'm not only at risk of having to lay off two-three employees, but unless I find alternate funding we are going to be without funding to provide housing legal services (eviction prevention work), which just happens to be the most important issue our clients face. Needless to say, I was pretty depressed for a few days, but adversity kind of gets my juices flowing and I'm resolved to find alternate funding. Game on. We already completed a grant application that I feel pretty good about it, and we're pursuing a couple of other avenues.
SLIPPING has been garnering great reviews. We don't know yet how well it has bee selling, but there's an incredibly positive vibe about the book lingering in the air. Maybe that's a bit naive, but Cathleen has been receiving such overwhelmingly positive and supportive feedback that I feel confident in saying that some identifiable level of "success" has been achieved. So far two otherwise-unconnected young readers have emailed her after having read the book to express how much they enjoyed it. Fanmail! How cool!
Finally, for reasons I need not get into here, I was recently forced to confront my father's death in a way I had not had to do in years. And you know what? Twenty-three years later and his death is still painful for me. As difficult as it was to be taken back to that time and encounter those feelings of loss and grief, it was strangely reassuring, like I hadn't lost my connection with him after all of these years. In a choice between feeling something or nothing, I'll always take the something.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Slipmania
It's here. And there. And somewhat everywhere. SLIPPING is out. June 24th was the official release date, which mainly meant that amazon.com shipped out it's pre-orders. Our pre-ordered copy arrived the next day. Yes, I said our pre-ordered copy. Cathleen's contract with Bloomsbury guaranteed her 25 author's copies, but she was so excited at seeing the book listed on amazon a few months ago that she ordered one.
A day or two later Lorri emailed around photos of Ari standing in a western New York Barnes & Noble pointing to copies of SLIPPING on the bookshelf, and holding it in the store. Very cool stuff.
Around mid-week, Cathleen's editor forwarded to her a PDF from Publisher's Weekly with their forthcoming review. SLIPPING received a "Signature" review, and it was fairly glowing. Here's a clip from a New York Sun article in 2005 explaining the significance of such a review:
PW reviews are important because they can jump-start the publicity for a book or can, just as easily, push a book a lot closer to oblivion. PW claims that its policy of unsigned reviewing is done not to shield reviewers but to ensure a consistency of standard and tone.
The magazine's new editor, Sara Nelson, who is making major changes in the publication, said, "We hope to have a signature review in many issues. We want to match up a fairly prominent book with a fairly prominent reviewer. Frank McCourt is, of course, a very prominent reviewer. We will still have non-bylined reviews. But certain books just seem to scream out for special treatment."
So, you know, it was pretty exciting to see that review. It was published in the June 30th edition of Publisher's Weekly.
Last night we hosted a book release party at Pacific Standard, a great little pub around the corner from our home. We had platters of food from Fairway, I had ordered custom-made M&Ms in two different shades of blue that had "Slipping" printed on them, and there was an employee of a local bookstore, Book Court, hawking copies of the book. Approximately 30 friends and family showed up to celebrate with Cathleen and listen to her read from the book, but she had laryngitis! Are you kidding! Thanks to drastic measures, she had enough of her voice to socialize, but I had to step in as her reader proxy. On one level it was disappointing for her to not be able to read to this crowd; on the other hand she really enjoyed listening to her book being read out loud. And I had a lot of fun reading it. Woohoo, we were all having fun!
We still haven't seen it in a bookstore ourselves. Maybe we'll do that this weekend. It's pretty good times right now.
A day or two later Lorri emailed around photos of Ari standing in a western New York Barnes & Noble pointing to copies of SLIPPING on the bookshelf, and holding it in the store. Very cool stuff.
Around mid-week, Cathleen's editor forwarded to her a PDF from Publisher's Weekly with their forthcoming review. SLIPPING received a "Signature" review, and it was fairly glowing. Here's a clip from a New York Sun article in 2005 explaining the significance of such a review:
PW reviews are important because they can jump-start the publicity for a book or can, just as easily, push a book a lot closer to oblivion. PW claims that its policy of unsigned reviewing is done not to shield reviewers but to ensure a consistency of standard and tone.
The magazine's new editor, Sara Nelson, who is making major changes in the publication, said, "We hope to have a signature review in many issues. We want to match up a fairly prominent book with a fairly prominent reviewer. Frank McCourt is, of course, a very prominent reviewer. We will still have non-bylined reviews. But certain books just seem to scream out for special treatment."
So, you know, it was pretty exciting to see that review. It was published in the June 30th edition of Publisher's Weekly.
Last night we hosted a book release party at Pacific Standard, a great little pub around the corner from our home. We had platters of food from Fairway, I had ordered custom-made M&Ms in two different shades of blue that had "Slipping" printed on them, and there was an employee of a local bookstore, Book Court, hawking copies of the book. Approximately 30 friends and family showed up to celebrate with Cathleen and listen to her read from the book, but she had laryngitis! Are you kidding! Thanks to drastic measures, she had enough of her voice to socialize, but I had to step in as her reader proxy. On one level it was disappointing for her to not be able to read to this crowd; on the other hand she really enjoyed listening to her book being read out loud. And I had a lot of fun reading it. Woohoo, we were all having fun!
We still haven't seen it in a bookstore ourselves. Maybe we'll do that this weekend. It's pretty good times right now.
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