Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Friday, March 02, 2007
When Is A Blog Not A Blog?
Everybody has a blog nowadays. Except me. That is, I don't have an active blog for two reasons. The first is that, blessedly, I have other outlets. And the second is, well, I forget what the second is, except that it may be that we've all reached the Blogger Saturation Point. Enough already. I will, from time to time update this space, but only when moved.For now, thanks for reading, and being in touch.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 10:24 AM
Monday, November 13, 2006
Sonic Boo
The good citizens of Seattle have rejected a measure that would have revamped its basketball arena with public funds. And so the Supersonics apparently will move elsewhere.Rick Horrow must feel, this morning, like George W. Bush. Rick is the marketing genius who over a 20-year period convinced city fathers and mothers around the country to float bonds or hike taxes in the short term in order to support such projects. How he did this was fascinating -- I watched him do it, as we worked together on his memoir, When The Game Is On The Line.
Rick retains no doubt that such funding is critical to a city's economic development. This argument has been challenged widely. Critics argue that the numbers Rick produces are suspect, and that very rich men who own sports franchises ought to finance their arenas.
Seattle, as it turns out, is something of an anomaly. It is one of the few cities that have demonstrated this hardline approach -- and this only after one of the world's richest men, Paul Allen, had the gumption to ask citizens to help him finance a home for his pro football team, the Seahawks.
As with every issue, the wisdom is somewhere in the middle. The Hartford Whalers, a team I once supported, brought revenue to downtown Hartford. How much revenue was probably overstated. But Hartford, in those days, was a destination. When it lost the Whalers to that traditional hotbed of hockey, North Carolina, it also lost a part of its indentity and fervor, and hasn't yet recovered.
Cities like Seattle, however, don't have as much at stake. It matters not whether it has a world-class sports team -- Seattle has its great downtown market and living community, Boeing and Microsoft, a spectacular natural setting, and attracts tens of thousands of young people who could care less about who is good at dunking a basketball.
And yet, for Rick, who seems to live a charmed life, this will all work out. He convinced the citizens of Oklahoma City to build an arena on spec -- and it just may be the place where the Sonics find their home.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 6:13 AM
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
The Party Line
A long line at the polling place this morning -- so pleased to be waiting in it. The kind of line usually reserved for presidential years. But then, in a way, this is a presidential year -- a year in which citizens are doing something in addition to to pulling a lever in support of this one or that for the Senate or Governor's office or Legislature. There are larger issues at stake including the consuming matter of what kind of country we want to be. What do you think?Posted by:Lary Bloom at 8:29 AM
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
An Explanation
My dentist pointed out that this blog has been idle since May. I've heard this from others too, including a former student of mine who has found fruitful work as a reporter in Alaska. A writer in the midwest wonders what gives.What gives is information and opinion overload. Not my condition. Our collective condition. There is a blog clog, and I am not eager to contribute to the pollution.
What moves me at this point to return, if only briefly, is to urge you to do what only you can do --cast a ballot in your name. If you're like me, just before you pull the lever or mark the card, or push the electronic button, your senses are heightened -- and, for a moment, you become overwhelmed by the responsibility. We may all argue in polite company, and even with ourselves, over how much our vote counts. Ut counts plenty. It says what you are made of.
We are all responsible for the acts of outrage our country commits, particularly if we don't stand up for our points of view.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 9:13 AM
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Stanley Kunitz, Remembered
Last night, I read "The Testing Tree" aloud. I'd heard Stanley Kunitz read it back when he was only 93 years old. He read it forcefully that night in the sunken garden at the Hill-Stead museum, and he spoke directly to me, it seemed -- it was a poem about my own childhood, and all that was at stake in the private games I concocted.After the news of the death of Stanley Kunitz at the age of 100, I emailed friends -- in the tradition of the way my mother called friends whenever a movie star died. I heard back from Anne Farrow, who told me that Kunitz's Passing Through was on her father's nightstand the day he died.
This week, I've been going through The Collected Poems, which Kunitz signed for me (at the request of Steve Courtney, who gave it to me as a gift). Over and over I have read the short poem titled The Portrait. I remember Kunitz reading that one, too, in the garden. How it stung me, and everyone else there.
My mother never forgave my father
for killing himself,
especially at such an awkward time
and in a public park,
that spring
when I was waiting to be born.
She locked her name
in her deepest cabinet
and would not let him out,
though I could hear him thumping.
When I came down from the attic
with the pastel portrait in my hand
of a long-lipped stranger
with the brave moustache
and deep brown level eyes,
she ripped it into shreds
without a single word
and slapped me hard.
In my sixty-fourth year
I can feel my cheek
still burning.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 11:26 AM
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Pardoning Bill Gates
As Bill Gates struggles to fend off Google's challenge, he at least no longer has to worry about me. I have taken my name off of the Bill Gates Critics list ever since my conversation a few days ago with a nice fellow in Bombay named Anup.Gates knows he has critics, though I have not bothered him with my issues. I haven't said, "Why is it, Bill, that everything about Microsoft is in a language other than English, and why is it that the so-called Help site on Windows XP is indecipherable and is it your intention to keep your customers always in the dark so that they have to buy advice from your technicians?"
I didn't do this even when vexed by the latest issue, a horizontal line that appeared in a manuscript I'm working on -- and which I couldn't get rid of no matter what I did short of tossing the laptop out of the window. But, dear readers, I am pleased to say that all is well, except that Bill Gates, not the man I know as Anup in Bombay, is the richest man in the world.
It was Anup, a technician at the other end of the 800 number, who solved my problem. More than that, he was entirely sympathetic and understanding. He became, in short, my best friend. I may even visit him one of these days and we'll have a few laughs over plates of tandoori chicken, or whatever they really eat in Bombay. And we'll toast his boss. "To Bill Gates, we wish you 4%x*I)X%,<+." (See Microsoft manual to translate message.)
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 4:07 AM
Monday, April 24, 2006
Wally Lamb And His Flock
On Sunday afternoon, Wally Lamb came to an auditorium in Deep River. He brought with him two of the 11 co-authors of Couldn't Keep It To Myself, the collection of memoirs that stirred all the trouble at the highest levels of Connecticut government a couple of years ago.I have known Wally for more than 20 years, since he submitted his first piece of fiction to me when I edited Northeast magazine at the Hartford Courant. Like everyone who knows him, I celebrated his subsequent great success as a novelist (She's Come Undone and This Much I Know Is True) -- for once, the phrase "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy" really applied.
Even the inmates at York Correctional Facility -- women who committed felonies ranging from fraud to murder, and who enrolled in Wally's memoir class -- found him so. When I did a piece about Nancy Whitely, one of the authors of Couldn't Keep It To Myself, she told me, "You knew instantly that Wally would nothing to hurt you."
In his remarks in Deep River, Wally recalled the outrageous reaction of the state Department of Corrections to what happened at York. After working with the inmates, Wally decided that their memoirs could be collected into a compelling book. Harper Collins agreed, and in 2003, Couldn't Keep It To Myself was published. Each writer was given a $5,600 advance, small in the publishing world, but huge to them. And to the State of Connecticut, which sued the women. It wanted not only the money they were paid but reimbursement, under a rarely enforced law, for the costs the state incurred for incarcerating them -- $117 for every day they were under lock and key.
It was ridiculous. The state was punishing prisoners for learning a skill that could help them when they got out. Many observors (I was one of them) thought part of the state's motivation was that the book contained criticism of York and its policies. After an anti-state onslaught in the press, the DOC backed away from its demands.
And yet, as Wally pointed out yesterday, ironies abound. For one: Many of the inmates are now free, and leading productive lives. The governor of Connecticut, who supported the action against the inmates, became an inmate himself. The head of the DOC at the time went on to a position at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In the program yesterday, two former inmates read work by them and others. Brenda Medina said her greatest challenge after getting out of prison was technology. She didn't know what an ATM was. And she confided that she was startled just before she came on stage in Deep River when the toilet in the women's room flushed automatically.
Robin Cullen said she was startled when she first went to York. She had assumed that a prison wouldn't kick people while they were down. But it was clear to her that York wasn't interested a the time in rehabilitation (a position that has changed).
Wally, it would seem from the evidence, has started a new prison industry: Memoir. And poetry and fiction and art and dance (taught by others, and inspired by Wally and by Dale Griffith, who co-taught the memoir workshops).
We shouldn't, of course, forget the victims of the crimes of these inmates. But it seems a reasonable idea that it is possible for people to emerge from prison with the tools and motivation to become productive citizens.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 8:20 AM
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