A quick story (with news) about The Prostitutes of Lake Wobegon to lead into this blog: One of the reasons I set up a Facebook page for the novel this early in the game was because I figured that after the announcement that I’d been shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize I figured that I needed to grab up domain names and usernames and such before anyone else grabbed them and “held them hostage” as it were. I finally got enough Likes to get a…
Given all the press that Congress gets, it’s easy to overlook the impact that state legislatures have on our everyday lives; I’ll cop to being guilty of this. Just when you’re not paying attention, though, years like this one come along and wake you up as to what’s going on in your state capital. Although the efforts of Wisconsin’s governor and state legislature to kneecap state unions generated more press earlier this year, in Ohio newly-elected governor John Kasich (he whose offices, when he was…
(For those of you who asked about helping me with hiring a consultant for my screenplay without sending someone like Matt Drudge and his legions after me: On every page of the .org, at the top of the left-hand column, is a “Donate” button you can use to send me cash via PayPal or a credit card. I’ll need about $500 in total, but every single dollar counts.) Major Magic’s closes its doors (toledoonthenove.com) Popular kids pizza party place out of business (13abc.com) Although my video…
New in .poetry: “Carlos” and, sadly, there is a story to go with this one. Last night I got an e-mail about local events coming up in Toledo from an e-mail list I never signed up for. Since it’s at least more relevant to me than the other spam I get, I checked it out, only to find one of the events listed for this Saturday is a memorial reading for Rane Arroyo. Rane Arroyo was my poetry professor at the University of Toledo, and…
I’ve written before about how I went to private school with children of the family that runs Toledo’s local cable company, Buckeye Cablesystem. (The same family also owns our local paper, the Toledo Blade.) I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m hardly a fan of Buckeye, particularly when they were slow to add new channels I really wanted in the 1990s (Food Network, ZDTV, MuchMusic, Bravo), which was why I had DirecTV for a few years there. After the fire I didn’t bother…