Andy Mozina as Super Model

My pal Carla Vissers coordinates the Hope College Visiting Writers series, and my pal Andy Mozina happens to be reading in that series, and Carla sent a missive on Friday saying Andy's photo was unacceptable. She demanded that Andy come to my house and have my darling Christopher take a better photo. So Chris was brought round (Carla can be very bossy and convincing), and Andy came to lunch. Andy is self-conscious about having his photo taken, so we tried to trick him into relaxing with a sandwich, a beer (Bell's Lager of the Lakes), a cat skull, a paper bag that we folded like a book, and finally some firearms, including a pellet gun, a .22 Marlin rifle and a twelve-gage shotgun. Finally, the shotgun seemed to work. As Andy wrote in an email later, "Holding the weapon, aiming it, for some reason, just for a second, I felt complete. Strange." Andy promises that next time he is photographed with a gun, it will be "in a more level-headed way, possibly illustrating safety tips." Also posted here is the photo of Andy that Carla posted to the Hope College VWS website (http://www.hope.edu/vws/). However, she cropped out the beer.

Dogs in My Life

I don't currently have a dog, but I look forward to seeing all the dogs in my life. My cousin Mimi Lipson came to visit from upstate New York with her writer boyfriend, Luc Sante, and her dog Medusa. Medusa is black and takes two pills every day without argument, and she chases cats, so we had to close off the back part of the house to protect the yellow cat. Whenever I am jogging past my niece Kellee's house, I look for her out in the yard, and if I see her, I offer to take her dog Pi jogging, something she loves. Pi is an Australian Cattle dog, a very smart creature with a lot of energy. My neighbors Lynne and Mike M. are struggling with their dogs, two German Shepherds, Bear and Greta. Greta (pictured above) is a recently rescued dog, and she has to stay in a cage in the house or she and Bear fight. This is very stressful for Lynne and Mike. Our neighbors on the other side, the Ruizes, have two Jack Russell Terriers that bark and bark and bark and bark and bark. They were way down at the bottom of the list of my favorite dogs until yesterday when my Aunt Joanna came to visit with her lovely dog Cleo, sister of Medusa. I have always liked Cleo, despite her penchant for chasing cats, so I locked up the yellow cat and invited Cleo in. Then Cleo stood before the locked door leading to where the cat was and she peed on the carpet. Just stood there and peed, made a big stinking puddle. Bad dog.

(I'm posting book-related entries at http://screenporchlit.blogspot.com/)

Eleemosynary

Christopher was up at 6:30, which is the usual time that our cat, Paw Paw, spurts bloody diarrhea on the wood floor near the foot of the bed. I lay ready to jump into action with paper towels and spray enzyme. The cat, however, was just sleeping, and Chris was up wandering around. When he got back to bed, he said he’d been looking up a word in the dictionary. It was a word that appeared in the first line of Fielding's Tom Jones, and it had appeared again while he was reading last night at 2:00 am. And it was driving him crazy. Eleemosynary. He handed me the 1963 mass market paperback, with a cover depicting a man who looks something like Tom Jones the Las Vegas singer. I held the book at various distances from my face, and it took a surprisingly long time to focus and read the tiny type.

“An author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary at which all persons are welcome for their money.”


The word turns out to mean “involving charity or charitable donations” I hadn’t realized my eyes were going. And I’ve read Tom Jones, so I should also question my retention of vocabulary. The sun was rising nicely through the woods, and a breeze was blowing through the room. I didn’t know if I’d settle for five hours of sleep or if I'd go back to sleep. The cat stirred, jumped down, expelled diarrhea onto the wood floor. He has IBS. It’s not his fault, I remind myself. I wonder if all the stuff we literary writers write is eleemosynary because of how little money we get for it, or if it a “public ordinary” because the reader has to plunk down real money for it. I got up, got the paper towels.

(Aside) We found this spider on the garage wall. Does anyone know what kind it is?

Also, please note that I'm going to post my literary stuff, including updates on my new collection on my other blog, http://screenporchlit.blogspot.com/

Rick Campbell's photos

I’ve been looking for photographs that I can send to my publisher as possible cover photos, and I convinced my dad to go through boxes of his old photos, and he came through with some beauties. Not only did he produce the old five children in a bathtub photo, but he found group shots from about 1972, back when we Campbell kids were part of a neighborhood gang, while Roy Hill was still alive. I don’t know if any of these would make good book covers, but they sure have captured something.

Very, very hot and now

Congratulations to Christopher, who has now had his photos published in the Kalamazoo Gazette. We saw the black plumes over Comstock, and headed toward the smoke in order to smother the mosquitoes that have been attacking us, and we found the old Hot 'n' Now burger joint on fire. Christopher did not hesitate to get close and start snapping his shutter. Then we headed downtown. We managed to sneak into the Gazette newsroom through the loading docks, and convinced Brad, the photo desk fellow, that Chris was the next big thing. Brad was won over. He even offered Chris a parttime job taking photos.