The New York Times recently ran an article on a Brooklyn street poet named Robert Samuel Snyderman, who spends his days sitting on a white bucket with a powder blue typewriter, offering to channel his muse for a small donation. His hair appears to have exploded. A sign on his chest simply says “Poems.”

Harvesting the inspiration required to write poetry is a tricky business. I can't fathom writing a poem every day, much less doing it immediately, under the looming expectations of someone who has just paid me. How does Brooklyn's poetry entrepreneur manage? Snyderman finds that it helps to ask patrons for sources of inspiration rather than topics. The Times reprinted a poem he wrote for a woman whose friend had outlived a doctor's dire prognosis by 15 years, (for a mere $7). Here's the result:

I came here
to life

Leak well,
human
blood. Leak well.
There is no time.

Snyderman attracts enough interest (and cash) to have lived solely on the written word since May. Not that he's living that well (the typewriter is on loan from a friend).

Brooklyn's plucky street poet reminds me of a great poet of the New York School of poetry, Frank O'Hara, known for plucking poems at will from his city surroundings. Here's an example:

Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?
I was thinking of you
having a Coke in the heat it was your face
I saw on a movie magazine, no it was Fabian's
I was thinking of you
and down at the railroad tracks where the station
has mysteriously disappeared
I was thinking of you
as the bus pulled away in the twilight
I was thinking of you
and right now

John Ashbery described O'Hara's concept of the poem as “the chronicle of the creative act that produces it,” and often saw him “dashing the poems off at odd moments — in his office at the Museum of Modern Art, in the street at lunchtime or even in a room full of people.” O'Hara referred to his poetry as “I do this I do that” poems. At his best, O'Hara's this and that was pretty spectacular, exemplified by “The Day Lady Died” (for Billie Holiday):

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don't know the people who will feed me

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

I expect that Mr. Snyderman could find a little inspiration in O'Hara (if he doesn't already). Here's to the street poet for bringing his city a little closer to the word. May his verses bring him wealth — at least enough to let him purchase his own typewriter.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail

The Jewel also still has tickets. More importantly, with a ticket, it has an open bar.

But let's be honest — who really needs fireworks? The coolest thing to do this July Fourth may be in Lefferts Historic House in Prospect Park. Come between 1-4 pm on Saturday or Sunday and sign a replica of the Declaration of Independence. You can also make a plumed hat!

Interested in other esoteric options to celebrate America's independence? There's really no shortage of them.

Hit up Lincoln Center for a salsa lesson, as part of their Midsummer Night Swing Series, or Pole Dance to indie band Delorean at MoMA PS1.

World-famous competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi may not be in Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, but that doesn't mean you should forgo watching the other eaters battle it out. Be sure to get there early for a prime spot.

But the real place you should head to at the crack of dawn is Governors Island, where She & Him will be playing a much-hyped free concert. The folky duo released their second CD, Volume Two, in March of this year.

They're currently on a major North American tour, but their music was meant to be listened to outdoors. So don't stress about their Terminal 5 show selling out, and make sure to get to Governors Island before it reaches capacity (which it undoubtedly will). Water taxis run between Manhattan and Governors Island from the Battery Maritime Building on 10 South Street.

Get HuffPost New York On
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz!

Know something we don't? E-mail us at nytips@huffingtonpost.com

I
am befuddled by those who reach for their measuring beakers and electronic
scales, as if they were lab technicians, when pouring over sauce-smeared
tomes such as Cuisine Actuelle and French Chefs Cooking.
When I read lush descriptions of lamb tarts and pear Napoleons, my first
instinct is to chase my wife around the butcher's block.

I
am convinced that descriptions of pot lids trembling in the kitchen,
will, if executed well, quicken the pulse of even the most straight-laced
and proper. Who did not, for example, redden with embarrassment and
roar with laughter when, in the publishing and film sensation, Julie
& Julia, Julia Child compared the hot and hard sheaf of the
al dente pasta boiling in the pot to the stiffness of a man's
saucisson?

It
is probably the culinary image we will recall long after everything
else about Julia Child has been washed away with the dishes. And even
though cookbooks are the utilitarian manuals of the kitchen, the best
really belong in the boudoir rather than in the butler's pantry. Anthony
Bourdain, author of Kitchen Confidential, amusingly calls good
culinary writing “food porn.” He is entirely right. The language
of the kitchen – with its “searing,” “juices” and “drippings”
- is semi-erotic.

Of
course, some will consider it utterly inappropriate to be aroused by
the mere suggestion of pied de cheval oysters. Perhaps they are
right. But sweating palms and sweating onions have long been bedfellows
in the stews of great literature. Mrs. Waters' famous dinner seduction
of Tom, in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, is not just serious
literature and highly amusing, but, in the Tony Richardson film at least,
also seriously hot.

But
reducing the sensuality of good culinary writing to mere sex also misses
the point. For the best culinary prose is really about a healthy and
earthy appetite for life, and the goal of the culinary-inclined author
is to stimulate the readers' senses until they are fibrillating with
excitement and ravenous for the very essence of life.

You
don't have to be a professional scribbler to get this. I was recently
studying the writings of a 13th century Buddhist priest,
research for my next novel, when I came across a letter thanking a supporter
for sending him a sack of rice. The monk wisely pointed out that rice
does not just sustain life. It is life itself.

I
couldn't agree more. In the hands of the great literary masters, food
morphs into a symbol for all of life, from the sensual trigger of a
deeply personal story (Marcel Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past)
to the instrument of deprivation at the heart of a cruel society (Charles
Dickens' Oliver Twist). Gluttony and starvation, the destructive
extremes of food intake, have consumed every scribe from St. Augustine
to Franz Kafka.

I
learned the value of food as social commentary when I was Forbes'
European Bureau Chief. My personal journalistic technique, when needing
to quickly understand where a country was on the global scale of economic
development, was always to head directly to the local markets. In the
Ugandan capital of Kampala, for example, I followed brown-hide longhorns
into the abattoir, where the walls were splattered with blood and the
steers' hacked-off hooves were stacked and sold as a culinary delicacy.
Outside, under the flame trees, women sipping milky tea shelled beans
and sold Nile Perch broth or a peanut sauce to go with a starchy-green
banana mush called matoke.

In
short, the hardscrabble African nation instantly entered my soul through
my pores, and the market descriptions in the subsequent article made
Forbes' readers in New York or Seattle viscerally understand Uganda's
economic landscape, far more effectively than the dry recitation of
per-capita GDP statistics.

Now,
in The Hundred-Foot Journey, my novel published by Scribner about a lowly Indian chef
who conquers the elite world of French haute cuisine, I have tried,
successfully or not, to use food in the same big-picture manner. The
novel is very much about the lighthearted joy that comes from whisking
together good food with eccentric characters, but it is also, at another
level, about clashing cultures, destiny, ambition, passion, and the
opposing pulls of modern society. All of life, in short, and it's
funny how, during the writing process, the unconscious pulls from its
depths the precise culinary image the novelist needs to make his case.

When
writing my novel, I came to a passage where I wanted to convey the shock
that hits my Indian protagonist when he is abruptly transplanted from
steamy Bombay to chilly London. At that precise moment, I recalled the
local Portuguese technique for catching octopus, which we all used when
I was a boy summering with my family in Cascais, Portugal, during the
late 1960s. I flashed to my father dragging the quivering grey blob
from its underwater lair up on to a rock, where he inserted his fingers
inside the slit of the octopus' gill, and then abruptly turned its
entire head inside out, so the octopus' organs were exposed to the
air. Death was fairly quick.

This
culinary image – head turned inside out – seemed like just the right
means of conveying what profound culture shock feels like. And that's
how it mysteriously unfolded. Every time I put pen to paper, I found
my nib dripping with the juices of a cognac-basted pork roast.

Are you a poet? Do you feel overwhelmed by negativity? Feel like there's no hope for a poet in this world? Especially a female poet? Well don't despair. Spend some time with Amy King. She's the author of Slaves to Do These Things (Blazevox), and, with Ana Bozicevic, she co-curates the Brooklyn-based reading series, The Stain of Poetry, and, maybe most importantly, she has ideas. Over the past few weeks we've been emailing back and forth about her ideas of what it means to be a poet today. Here's a few slices of the force for your perusal. Enjoy.

Do you think it's a good time to be a female poet in America?

Poetry remains one of the most undervalued arts because it brings neither fame nor fortune. To boot, women have historically resided in the realm of the undervalued or “behind the scenes,” where everything from child-rearing to minding the minute details necessary for a society's survival takes place. There's a freedom in those positions though; one may escape popular notions of success, and instead, interrogate the origins of such notions right on through a host of other personal, cultural, philosophical and moral considerations.

The “undervalued” tag disguises another truth; poetry consistently spearheads the most transformative force every cultural history attests to: the power of the word. Children of the Baby Boomers, now in their 30s and 40s, are hitting their writing strides and, thanks to the women's movement, daughters especially are benefitting from their foremothers' efforts to identify and break the machinery that kept women working quietly in the domestic world of letters and diaries. We need only look to the work of so many innovative female poets for inspiration and incentive –models such as Kathy Acker, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Harryette Mullen, Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Anne Waldman, Rosmarie Waldrop, and more– to understand why younger female poets are experiencing a “Feminaissance,” to borrow the title of a recently-published anthology focused on women's poetry and poetics.

These women are thrilling readers, male and female alike, by expanding definitions of just what poetry can do, broadening the scope of how poetry interrogates and, ultimately, challenging the way things are. I'm motivated by new books and anthologies of younger women hitting the shelves these days; their voices stand firmly on the liberating permission of our foremothers' work and are daring in ways largely unprecedented. The potential I feel in my own writing resonates with a larger chorus that confidently and publicly explores what has either been buried or unspoken. No doubt: it's exciting to be a female poet today because the sense of possibility, and the transformative power in that possibility, is palpable. The catch, of course, is to sustain the momentum by getting more of these poetries into the world despite relatively low distribution due, in part, to poetry's marginalized position in the capitalist value system. Poetry also wants to change that system, so poetry's peripheral position is no accident. Only safer, “tamed” poetry is marketed by the big machines today.

Do you think the traditional publishing industry still dictates what poetry does (and does not) get read?

This year, Barnes and Noble poetry shelves shrank from half an aisle to a few shelves. Trade publishers print fewer poetry books, and while the traditional model retains a slipping foothold on what uninitiated readers may encounter, interest in poetry is a running wildfire, likely to turn up in your neighborhood next. Evidence the exponential increase of MFA programs, local poetry readings, online journals, Facebook reviews, Twitter challenges, and the like. Poets are full of ingenuity, embracing it with an eye towards the shapes language takes. We see the changes in literacies, the technologies altering how people read and receive texts, and we react. With the advent of POD (print-on-demand) and the proliferation of E-books, small presses are springing from the giant's loins and poets are doing it for themselves. From numerous niches, Whitman is stirring beneath our boot soles.

No mainstream publishing industry exists anymore for poets than does a single readership – for example, the dwellers of a small town who we in the city might imagine only access what's offered in the mall B&N could just as well be tapping into a lively poetry circuit, which might range from the county laureate to experimental eccentric to local academic to nature poet mom to open-mike Mike to talented country songstress, all with access to blogs and YouTube and POD. How people read & how they publish is a wholly new Borgesian beast in the 21st century, and I think this is cause to celebrate.

A few from the old guard characterize this growing multiplicity as “chaotic” and the “watering down” of poesy, as though mediocre poems never fell from industry presses, as though we might breach a mythological stalwart horizon and create too much. Really though, they fear losing the power to dictate the canonical and omit the peripheral, a fear that opposes asking exactly how we determine value and engage with texts, now that literature is opening to more democratic vistas reflective of our ever-changing population. That power speaks mountains about sustaining status-quo-think and keeping specific people “in their places.”

While traditionalists may sit safely in stasis amid old tomes keeping others out, they will miss this evolving engagement, this poetry that refuses to stay still and reflect only what has passed. James Baldwin wrote, “A language comes into existence by means of brutal necessity, and the rules of the language are dictated by what the language must convey.” For better or worse, the means by which people exchange ideas are rapidly changing, and poetry, if it is to have a say, must adapt and innovate. We have never needed and hoped so much of poetry as we do today. Poets across the food chain have a chance to be heard in unrestricted ways, or as Susan Howe wrote in The Midnight, “Where philosophy stops, poetry is impelled to begin,” and, in these new formats, become the vehicle for what and how we might imagine.

How do you think the means of publication for poetry and poetry itself are related?

If you have the freedom to publish online or through a small press and reach a good number of people, you will likely feel more comfortable writing exactly what you want. If a small press accepts even the outré or controversial work you do, you'll feel less pressured to conform to what a big publisher might deign to shill in the local B&N. In short, alternative means of publication=creative freedom, the mother's milk of experimental and progressive writing.

This raises the question, “What does it mean to 'sell out?'” The range of writing might be simplified on a scale from that which simply entertains to that which calls attention to the unusual and discomforts. Popular literature puts readers at ease, providing the familiar and comfortable. The latter challenges a lot such as what we expect and is expected of us, what else can stimulate and charge us, what peculiar and unjust matters have we suppressed, etc. Big publishers steer clear of the latter because those issues tend to be political, complex and encourage us to think in ways that seem odd or unpermitted.

For example, I'm often told that I have an occasional beautiful line or image but my poetry sometimes doesn't “make sense.” I'm told to “move on” from poetry and write a memoir because I relay great anecdotes. These encouragements are grounded in the notion that reading should please rather than challenging what people know, thus asking them to step beyond that comfort zone. For them, there is a progress from poetry to memoir that is, in fact, a move towards ease and comfort, rather than opening up and exploring what else our minds are able to conceptualize. It's the equivalent of my students asking me, “Why do we have to analyze these texts? Why can't we just enjoy them?” As though analysis disallows pleasure–try telling the teenager who is suddenly fascinated by cars not to analyze why he likes them, what goes on under the hood, or which tires work best on what surfaces; tell him instead to just to sit back and enjoy how graceful the cars are as they speed by.

Experimental poetry, and writing in general, challenges the “natural” order of things, the surface of “what's real” or the status quo mentality. Such poetry, by default, requires unusual methods of distribution to enable “difficult” or challenging literature to unseat the mainstream model and the politics of our prescribed co-existence (via religion, gov't law, social mores, etc), or else writers will “sell out” and remove those elements, reducing literature to mere popular entertainment. My students learn that literature can usually be boiled down and characterized as doing one of two things: you can simply write what everyone sees and reflect the culture you live in or you can change it by giving shape to new ideas, concepts, and voices silenced or ignored.

How does book distribution and online publication tie into a project like Poets for Living Waters?

Poets for Living Waters, as an action and project, would be next to impossible without the Internet: from two separate states, Heidi Lynn Staples and I were able to create the site, post a call, and begin publishing poems in the face of a national tragedy–all within a week of conception. We are only two weeks in now, and the site's audience grows daily. We have helped organize readings across the U.S. for World Oceans Day, and video and audio from these will be posted on the site. Everything has been done at no cost, except our time, and with the support and desire of so many. The fact that submissions and comments come from a range of “established” and unknown poets is testament that we really are entering a time when the Internet is just as, if not more, relevant to the poetry community than print. Eventually, we may edit an anthology from this project, and I know of several small presses that would likely be interested, or we could publish it ourselves; the stamp of “print” adds yet another facet to the project's reach. The measures of “legitimacy” are inevitably and presently changing.

A few folks have asked me what this project will “do” in the face of such a tragedy, as if responding with words is not an action or won't have an effect. Of course, donating money, time, and energy to clean up the BP oil spill is a direct address, but why can't we, as poets, speak directly to this experience as it unfolds? Must we all sit, in the media age, watching the saga play out on screen via television programs that leave us feeling impotent and removed? One of the roles of poetry is to raise awareness and broaden our own understanding at the same time. Besides feeling angry and impotent, what else can we feel? How are we to proceed in the future? What else can we do as clean up progresses and later damages appear? How will we address the aftermath and how must we change our lifestyles? This “queer” questioning is something I was getting at in my essay, “The What Else of Queer Poetry” – what can we learn, through poetic dialogue and exploration, that the media and our limited awareness can't teach us? This “we” includes those willing to step outside of the “normal” mediums that process information for us, the mainstream media and publishing companies, swallow our trepidation and venture into uncertain territory where we become actors in the world, speaking and listening through the poetic, words carefully chosen and shared in an effort to respond and act, however cacophonous our symphony, instead of being told exactly what is and how it will be by those in charge of the big distribution machines. The Internet provides us with the tools to respond, and we're doing just that.

Getting a book published and then to hit the Best Sellers list takes a lot of guts, even more determination, tremendous amounts of creative networking and even more persistence. Have you ever wondered how to get your book to be a best seller? I have and now have a book #1 at Barnes and #1 Business Books at Amazon. This is my first published book, Wiley and by working closely with the publishing company, hammering social media and then inspiring my customers, friends and associates it looks like we will hit the NY Times Best Sellers List this upcoming week.

Here is what I have learned:
1) Don't believe anyone when they tell you it can not be done.
2) Remember it is best selling book, not best written.
3) It will require a lot of energy, effort and creativity.

The first thing I did was decide that I could do it despite all the naysayers. The second thing, was write about a book that is personal to me and relevant to many. And then I did everything I could to make sure everyone knew about it.

The book is about the importance of dominating in business and the idea that competition is NOT healthy. This was inspired as a result of the recent economic contraction. This contraction was so severe it terrified me into the reality that individuals and companies are only protected against economic uncertainty by being the dominant player in their market or sector! And don't kid yourself the same thing holds true for book sales, dominant the charts or no one will know you exist!

As we redefined our business over the last 18 months I started writing this most recent book about what I was learning as I recreated and rebuilt my business so that I could get it into a more dominant position with the hopes of being immune from economic conditions. The first title I had was, Screw The Economy, Create Your Own and then I changed it to, Don't Be a Little Bitch but Wiley convinced me those titles might be too aggressive, even offensive to some, so we ended up with, If You Aren't First, You're Last.

I don't pretend to know the exact formula for getting your book to #1 but no one else seems to know the formula either. I can tell you, the most important thing is you have to get people to know about you and your book. Quality of content is critical but getting people to know about the book is senior! This is where a lot of writers seem to err, spending too much time on content and too little time on selling and promotion. In the real world, the quality of the product is meaningless if no one knows the product exist.

The days of going on tour and promoting at book stores are over. The margins for the stores are so small that they can't make sense of the energy it takes to put together book signings. I actually offered to do this at my own expense nationwide and there were no takers! It seems like TV is almost impossible to get without taking your clothes off, cheating on your spouse or overdosing. Today you must utilize social media, blogging and then inspire existing clients, friends and those that could benefit from getting your book sold.

Two years ago I went to my first book fair and walked into McGraw Hill's booth and introduced myself with the hopes of having them publish a book for me. I actually got them interested but because of other commitments to similar books they elected to pass. I went ahead and self-published my first book, Sell to Survive, which sold over 20,000 copies in two years. Only a small amount of these were sold on Amazon and only one book store, One Stoppe Shop in Clearwater carried the book. It's interesting book stores don't seem to like self published books even if they sell – no wonder traditional book stores are having problems. This book was successful because of the efforts of my company selling directly to our clients and at my seminars and then catching on by word of mouth.

I later hooked up with a niche publishing company that focuses on business books. I ended the relationship before we went to press because it just didn't feel right. Some thought I was crazy because I finally had a publishing deal but the same day I canceled our arrangement, Wiley Publications called me. They saw me there writing and liked was I was doing and asked me if I would be interested in them publishing my next book. We made a deal and I got busy selling books.

Here are some things I learned that may help you get your book to be a best seller:
1) Go where bloggers go and write as many articles as you can about the topic of your book.
2) Survey other authors about what they have done successfully in hopes that you can get them to review, comment or involved with your book's release.
3) Consider joint ventures where others promoting your book may benefit them.
4) Build your platform that you are going to sell the book to. Publishing companies want to see that you have a way of selling this book.
5) Build your social media and start talking about the books and then hammer it to levels others would consider unreasonable!

In the three months before the book came out we added almost 10,000 fans to my Facebook page, 3000 or so on LinkedIn and Twitter and starting making entries to inspire this public about the concepts of the book. This was building our platform. The day of the book's release I literally made entries sometimes every ten minutes for 18 hours of where the book was in the rankings as it fell from obscurity to 98,000, to 287 and then to #1 on Amazon Business and #1 overall at Barnes. This spurred more interest and had my clients and friends interested in helping the book move to #1. Understand that a few entries on social networks annoy people and seems self promoting. A consistent and unreasonable pounding of social media will get your audience intrigued and involved in moving your book to #1.

Grant Cardone, Author and International Sales Expert

No, I am not talking about the James Frey who wrote A Million Little Pieces, the controversial piece of creative “nonfiction” that initially made a splash with Oprah but then fell into ignominy. The man I want to praise today is James N. Frey, probably the best writing teacher on the face of the earth.

As far as I know, Jim is still leading writing workshops all over the place, giving of himself, helping others improve their craft. According to his website, “Many participants of his workshops have gone on to publish with major New York houses and receive solid advances (as high as $2 million) and much critical acclaim.” I don't for even a second doubt the veracity of that assertion.

I first met Jim in the spring of 1984, the year he published his first thriller, The Last Patriot. I had seen an ad in a Berkeley, California, newspaper for something called “The Story Laboratory,” a writers' workshop that met every Monday evening in the basement of the Finnish Brotherhood Hall near the corner of University Avenue and Chestnut Street in what we called the flats. We working stiffs lived there, not with the rich and famous up in the Berkeley hills. It didn't take me more than five seconds to decide to check out the Story Lab because I lived just a half block away on Berkeley Way. Somebody was trying to tell me something. I seemed destined to become a member of this little group of struggling scribblers.

When I walked into that basement, Jim was sitting at one of those long, institutional folding tables that reminded me of the ones at the Berkeley Chess Club, where I had spent a humiliating few weeks the year before. Jim was about forty, and my first impression was that he was a red-nosed Irishman who liked his whiskey just a wee bit too much. But that perception evaporated as soon as the rest of the crew showed up and he began to talk shop. Jim spoke more lucidly than any college professor about language, plot, characterization, setting, and something else of vital importance that I will get to in due time.

The way the Story Lab worked was that someone would read a short story or a chapter of a novel, and then the rest — especially Jim — would most likely tear it to shreds with scathing comments. Jim would invariably start out with, “The problem with this story is … ” And he'd always be right. The first work of fiction that I read at the workshop was of the type known derogatorily as a “slice of life” piece. Its title was “The Loft,” and it was about my experiences with a punk rock band in New York City during the late 1970s. It was full to bursting with funky description and quirky characters. I thought it was just great, of course, but no one else around the table in that cellar seemed to agree. They all had something a bit nasty to say, but only Jim was able to articulate what the problem really was.

“This bit of writing could get you into the Creative Writing Masters program at San Francisco State,” Jim told me, “but it isn't any good.”

The first part of that seemed rather encouraging, I thought, but the rest sounded crazy to me, as it appeared to contradict what came before. Jim went on to explain, “You use words very well, and the images are fine, but the story lacks conflict.”

I was flabbergasted. He was right! Why hadn't I seen that myself? I felt like a fool, and I told him so. Jim responded, “Don't feel bad. Everybody starts out as you did. But writing is like everything else. Somebody has to show you how to do it.” After that, I must have heard him say at least a hundred times to other writers around that table, “Your story needs three things: conflict, conflict, and conflict.” He liked to illustrate this point by showing how Charles Dickens had used conflict to the utmost effect in A Christmas Carol. Jim made that story come alive in so many ways that I realized I had taken Scrooge for granted all my life.

That was just the first of many invaluable lessons from the master, and it led to the writing of one of my best short stories, “Decibels.” Thanks, Jim, for helping with the manuscript.

I'll never forget the time I read another short story, “The Little Room.” Right after I finished the last sentence, Jim called for a break and took me by the arm and said, “Let's go over to Taco Bell and get a cup of coffee.” The fast-food restaurant was just across the street.

I thought for sure that I was walking my last mile as a writer, that Jim was going to tell me something like, “I didn't want to say this in front of everyone else, but I was wrong about you, kid. Give it up. You've got no talent.” But no. He said that my story was terrific and that I had found my voice as a writer. Actually, that's what I think he said. I was so blown away by his praise that I really don't remember his exact words, but he thought the story was good, and that's all that mattered. I think I was actually in shock as we walked back to the Story Lab.

When we sat back down inside the Finnish Hall, other members of our group had some comments critical of “The Little Room,” but Jim wouldn't let any of them stand. He said the story was a piece of literary fiction of the highest quality. Perhaps it really is as good as Jim thought it was, but perhaps it isn't. The point is that I wouldn't have been able to write it at all had it not been for Jim's tireless encouragement and excellent advice.

Sadly, I haven't spoken with him in years. I know I disappointed him by not living up to the potential he saw in me. After all, I don't have even a single novel under my belt, just a modest collection of self-published short fiction. But whatever writing skill I do have I owe to Jim. I hope he is doing well.

Jim has written nine novels, among them The Long Way to Die, an Edgar Award Nominee, and Winter of the Wolves, a Literary Guild Selection. Yes, I've read them all, and I've enjoyed every one. Jim is also the author of the How to Write a Damn Good Novel series of instructional books for fledgling writers.

Metal Gear Solid: Raiden Has Changed

Earlier today, Microsoft apparently slipped up and showed Metal Gear Rising's box art on the Xbox Live Marketplace. It's gone now, but the internet, she never forgets.

If this is indeed what happened, it's…yeah, it's a game cover! One that may change, since the game is nowhere near release! Metal Gear fans will be thrilled, though, no doubt poring over every pixel searching for clues as to what's actually going to happen in the game.

All I can see is that Raiden is sparky. Oh, and that the most talented people at Kojima Productions may well work in logo design.

[via IGN]

Send an email to the author of this post at plunkett@kotaku.com.

Concluding a series of posts for Short Story Month, a review of The White Road and Other Stories by Tania Hershman.

Beginning with a café in Antarctica, nothing at first seems more otherworldly than this slim collection of stories. Yet soon it becomes apparent that no matter where the stories take us–from the polar ice caps to a casino in Vegas to the interior of a spaceship–one thing remains a constant: the narratives are defined by the pull of human longings, ephemeral voices clamoring to be heard.

Often inspired by articles from The New Scientist, the sometimes extremely short stories in Tania Hershman's The White Road and Other Stories use scientific principles as a springboard into an exploration of human emotions and dilemmas.

For example, in the title story, the “white road” is that which winds through the Antarctic; the main character is a wisecracking woman from southern United States who runs a café for visitors. But beneath her tough exterior, the café owner has a dark secret that has drawn her to live at the end of the world, and to find a solution to the plague of her memories.

Some of the stories are no more than a paragraph, and could be quoted here in their entirety if it were not a violation of copyright. Yet they contain the emotional complexity and depth that one would expect in much longer fiction; in this regard, the stories are like poems. My personal favorite, Plaits, is a portrait of a romance and marriage, told with such clever nuance that the reader is pulled deep into the intertwining complexities of the relationship, a welter of feelings, even in what amounts to a couple hundred words. Line by line, the language is beautiful, building a silent symphony of images, rhythms and characters' unique voices. In such short fiction–as in a poem–every word is made to count all the more.

Some of the stories are funny, such as Space Fright. On the one hand, it is a story set in the future, when people will presumably fly spaceships with the ease that we now drive cars. On the other hand, it's a hilarious depiction of a date gone wrong–a date that just happens to take place in outer space.

As he floats helplessly near the ceiling, having lost control of the technology,

“Bill felt like he might cry. How long had it taken him to get this woman–any woman, for pity's sake–to take a spin in his new XCOR 5000, which had extra comfort features and a dual spin turbo backdrift with built-in stabilizers; how many times had he run through his space seduction scenario ('look at the view of the cosmos' – slide arm around shoulders; 'doesn't it make you feel small and insignificant?' – go in for the kiss)?” (page 19)

A remarkable thing about The White Road and Other Stories is that for all that there are over twenty stories in this collection, each character possesses a distinct voice, molded by childhood histories and informed with deep-rooted desires and loves. Where the story concepts begin with science, fiction becomes a laboratory for examining the most intimate secrets of the human heart.

Originally posted Jun 4th 2010 9:10 AM PDT by TMZ Staff

TMZ has learned Oprah Winfrey is trying to snag former Food Network host Juan-Carlos Cruz for a jail chit chat.

Cruz is currently behind bars after being arrested for allegedly hiring three homeless guys to kill his wife.  TMZ broke the story … Cruz's wife — Jennifer Campbell — was suicidal because the couple was infertile but could not take her life because it's a mortal sin in the Catholic Church. We're told even the cops and prosecutors believe Cruz may have hired the homeless guys as an act of mercy, that would be followed by Cruz taking his own life.

The story certainly got Oprah's attention.  We're told Oprah's peeps reached out to Cruz's reps for an interview. 

We're told Cruz hasn't responded … so far.

FanHouse:

SANDESTIN, Fla. — Making his first public appearance or comment since an investigative report that questioned the eligibility of guard Eric Bledsoe during the 2009-2010 season, Kentucky head coach John Calipari appeared at the Sandestin Hilton as a coach's meeting ended. Standing alongside the downstairs elevators, Calipari took just over three minutes of questions before ducking into an elevator and disappearing.

Read the whole story: FanHouse

Get HuffPost Sports On
Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz!

Know something we don't? E-mail us at sports@huffingtonpost.com

Mac(R) Users and Creative Professionals Can Upgrade Storage with Custom Labeling, High Performance and Full Metal Sleekness

LAKE FOREST, Calif., June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new high performance My Book® Studio™ LX external hard drive, which offers a high-speed FireWire 800 interface and features a sleek new, cool-to-the-touch aluminum case that complements any iMac®, G5 or MacBook Pro®. The award-winning, book-like design, with its customizable, always-on digital e-label, allows creative professionals to easily archive and find photos and videos from different projects and time periods, even when the drives are unplugged.

Key features include a FireWire 800 interface to give users the speed they need for demanding tasks like photo and video editing and graphic design, as well as a customizable e-label that enables users to easily personalize their media collection and identify critical information about the drive, such as the contents and remaining capacity, without having to boot up their computer and plug in the drive. The My Book Studio LX drives also support USB 2.0, so users have maximum flexibility in allocating their FireWire and USB ports or plugging the drive into a variety of computers.

My Book Studio LX drives offer automatic, continuous backup through WD SmartWare software and also sync seamlessly with Apple Time Machine software, so consumers can choose the backup method that suits their needs. And the 256-bit hardware-based encryption, typically only found on much more expensive drive systems, provides a high level of data security along with password protection that acts as a virtual padlock to keep users' data safe. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store (shopwd.com), the new My Book Studio LX drives are formatted for Mac® and come in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB.

“When choosing the right hard drive, creative professionals look for high-quality materials, maximum speed and visual appeal to complement their creative toolkit. The My Book Studio LX drives offer high-speed FireWire 800 performance and a design that will look right at home next to their G5 or MacBook Pro computer,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. “With the customizable e-label, My Book Studio LX drives help videographers, photographers and graphic designers create, organize and locate their clients' valuable content, no matter how many drives are in their studio.”

The new My Book Studio LX drives come equipped with WD SmartWare software, an optional application that provides automatic and continuous backup, control of the e-label display, password and other settings. The real-time visual interface of WD SmartWare software gives users a reassuring view of their backup as it happens. After the first backup, users' files are backed up automatically every time they change or add a file.

My Book Studio LX External Drive

The new My Book Studio LX drive features:

* New, contemporary aluminum casing that remains cool to the touch and matches the aesthetics of Mac computers;
* High-performance FireWire 800 interface to access data at top speeds and USB 2.0 interface for maximum flexibility;
* Smart display with a customizable e-label that reminds users of what is stored on the drive, available capacity and security status at-a-glance, even when the drive is unplugged;
* Plug-and-play ready for Mac users and compatible with Apple Time Machine;
* WD SmartWare visual backup software, 256-bit hardware-based encryption and password protection to give users peace of mind knowing that data is protected from unauthorized access;
* WD GreenPower Technology™, lowers internal drive power consumption by up to 30 percent. WD GreenPower Technology also includes a sleep mode that reduces power during idle times, and a power-saving feature turns the drive on and off with your computer;
* Planet-friendly packaging derived from recycled materials to minimize waste; and,
* HFS + Journaled formatting and are compatible with Mac OS X Tiger®, Leopard® and Snow Leopard®.

Price and Availability

The new My Book Studio LX drives are offered in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB and have a 3-year limited warranty. My Book Studio LX drives are available now at select retailers and online at shopwd.com. MSRP ranges from $199.99 to $269.99 USD depending on the model.

About WD

WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to expected growth in digital libraries, consumer demands for access to personal media, and the market for connected consumer electronics devices. These forward-looking statements are based on current management expectations, and actual results may differ materially as a result of several factors, including business conditions generally and other risks and uncertainties listed in WD's recent SEC filings, including its form 10-Q for the third fiscal quarter of 2010. WD undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect new information or events or for any other reason.

Western Digital, WD, WD logo and My Book are registered trademarks; Studio, WD GreenPower Technology, and WD SmartWare are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. All other brand and product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies. One terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.

This Apple iBook Has a Built-In iPad

Remember in Dark Knight when the Batmobile got all busted up and Bruce Wayne jettisoned spectacularly out of its wreckage riding the Batpod? That's kinda what this gutted iBook iPad dock is like.

The antique iBook was hollowed out to accommodate the iPad and a new Apple keyboard, connected to the tablet via the camera connection kit. Just getting your hands on one of those things is hard enough; putting it right to use in a wacky novelty iPad dock—not to be mistaken with the serious-business ClamCase laptop dock—shows some serious dedication.

The builder says the iBook can't be properly closed without scratching the iPad's screen, but whatever, do you think Bruce Wayne was ever worried about the Batpod getting scratched up as it was birthed, fully formed, from the Batmobile? Of course not.

Do keep in mind, though, that the whole reason the Batpod was so awesome was because of its surprise emergence from its Batmobile husk. What I'm getting at here is that you're gonna have to make sure all your friends see you using your old-school iBook a few times before you can yank out its iPad screen in your moment of gadget-stacking-doll glory. But it'll be totally worth it. [Apple Noir via Dvice via Unplggd]

Send an email to Kyle VanHemert, the author of this post, at kvanhemert@gizmodo.com.

Chef Allison Sosna: doing it right for the kids. This is the second of three articles detailing how food made from scratch using local ingredients is served to students at the Washington Jesuit Academy in Northeast Washington, D.C. The first is here.

Allison Sosna is a young chef who fell in love with local produce. She remembers where: it was in a Washington, D.C. restaurant called “Hook,” working with celebrated sustainable seafood chef Barton Seaver.

“We would get amazing produce every day from farmers in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania,” Sosna recalls. “They would just walk through the back door into the kitchen and start unloading all of these ingredients that I had never seen before: candy-striped beets, purple bell peppers, black radishes, pom-pom mushrooms. And I got hooked. I wanted to know what else was out there, these ingredients I had never seen or heard about before–and right in my own back yard.”

Sosna is executive chef at Fresh Start, the
for-profit catering arm of D.C. Central Kitchen, a
social services innovator that provides much of the food for the city's
soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Fresh Start handles the cafeteria duties at Washington Jesuit School. To make her vision of good-quality local ingredients for Washington Jesuit's 71 students, Sosna and her crew have had to think hard about costs–and test their resourcefulness. What they've learned can teach us important lessons for how to bring healthy food to the nation's 31 million children who rely on the National School Lunch Program.

Lunch Lessons

Sosna's infatuation with locally grown food helps explain why cook Eraleigh Green was sorting  baby beet greens and mache the morning I arrived to check out the kitchen operation at Washington Jesuit Academy. Sosna insists local produce is not only fresher, more vivid, healthier, ”it allows the kids to see what real food is, where it grows, and to establish the connection that food comes from somewhere, and how special and delicious that somewhere is.”

While I looked on, Eraleigh Green carefully rinsed and sorted the ingredients for a diverse salad bar that later would be wheeled out of the kitchen and into the dining hall for lunch service. On the salad bar for the school's 71 middle-school boys to choose from were mixed salad greens, spinach leaves, sliced mushrooms, sliced radishes, carrots, raw broccoli florets, cucumber slices, red onion, red and golden pear tomatoes, diced beets, bean sprouts, baby beet greens, mizuna leaves, green apples and plums, and a chicken salad made from roasted local chickens.

The kitchen even made two dressings from scratch: Caesar and honey-mustard.

The selection–all of it locally grown–definitely reflects a restaurant chef's sensibilities and is miles away–about 3,000 miles, to be exact–from the salad I saw being prepared at my daughter public elementary school here in the District when I spent a week in the kitchen there. That salad arrives as plastic bags of processed iceberg lettuce from California, each containing smaller bags of processed carrots and shredded purple cabbage for mixing.

You might well ask whether 11- and 12-year-olds can possibly appreciate the difference between baby mizuna from southern New Jersey and iceberg lettuce from California. But there is more going on here, says Sosna, than designer greens.

Quite a bit of thought and effort has gone into selecting ingredients that aren't just different and interesting, but fit into the school's food budget. Specialty items such as the beet greans and mache are purchased when they are on sale, or when the produce distributor is having trouble selling them at all. In fact, provisioning Washington Jesuit Academy with local ingredients has taken months of legwork, endless conversations with farmers, and constant prodding of the Washington area's agricultural distribution network.

“When you work out partnerships with farmers by explaining to them–vividly–your expectations for deliveries, price points, and volume ordering, you can get local produce into schools,” Sosna says. “It takes time to build relationships, nurture them, and grow them. Through high volume and accurate inventory keeping, you can lower your price points and food costs and still buy local. This is not to say that every ingredient can make its way into your refrigerator. Local corn shoots and micro-greens are still going to be expensive because they take a lot of labor to produce.”

In the world of traditional restaurants, supermarkets and school kitchens, a vast distribution network easily delivers foodstuffs from California, Mexico, Florida and beyond with a simple phone call or the click of a computer mouse. Alas, no such system exists for local foods. Sosna and other enterprising food lovers like her are simply making one up to suit their own needs.

Recently I attended a conference here in Washignton where Doug Davis, the head of school food service in Burlington, Vermont, explained to a group representing school kitchens across D.C. how it has taken him eight years to incorporate local farm products into school cafeterias in Vermont. Making the connection between schools and local farms requires determination and persistence. Local family farmers are just begining to understand the needs of large institutions such as schools. 

“As a catering company, I had to ensure that we had inventory and access to all products within a 48-hours notice, and sometimes less,” Sosna explained. “So this requires me to have purveyors that can keep a steady and consistent product in-house and are able to get it to me with a relatively quick turnaround. Over the course of a year, I have been working to get more and more farmers and artisans set up so that I can buy from them consistently and in high volume.”

A year ago, D.C. Central Kitchen hit upon its own scheme for using local produce cost effectively in the 4,000 meals it cooks for the District's needy every day. The Central Kitchen positioned an employee in the Shenandoah Valley two hours southwest of Washington to start talking with farmers there. Soon, the kitchen was dispatching trucks once or twice a week to purchase “seconds”–produce blemished or otherwise unable to command top dollar–and haul it back to a new processing and storage facility in the city.

D.C. Central Kitchen now makes regular 145-mile trips to a produce auction in Dayton, Virginia, with access to about 100 Shenandoah farmers, to purchase large lots of wholesale fruits and vegetables, some of which is processed and frozen for future use in things like the corn chowder I saw being served to the students at Washington Jesuit Academy.

Sosna said that through the Virginia produce auction, D.C. Central Kitchen in the last year has used more than 50,000 pounds of local fruits and vegetables–50 percent of the kitchen's total requirement–and directed  10 percent of its total food budget into local products.

The Central Kitchen's facility is now viewed as a potential model for a proposed city-funded plant that could process local produce for the District's entire school system. “Healthy Schools” legislation pending before the D.C. Council includes a provision for just such a facility.

If Sosna seems thrilled by local vegetables, she is positively giddy over the organic dairy she's placed in Jesuit Academy cafeteria. She chose Trickling Springs Creamery, in Chambersburg, Pa., because the company “gets the struggle that chefs like I have with trying to get local produce and ingredients.” Grassfed, hormone-free milk from Trickling Springs is displayed in gallon jugs on the food line for Jesuit Academy students, and the kitchen uses butter and cream for cooking. But getting to that point wasn't necessarily easy.

“For two months, I worked with this local company to figure out price points, drop-off times, and an invetnory that made sense and ensured a smooth operation,” Sosna said. “This is just one exmple and we are currently using 12 purveyors, from which we use 15 farmers and local artisans.”

The day I visited the Academy, the kitchen had run out of milk. Chef Duane Drake said Trickling Springs only delivers once a week, and he doesn't have room in his walk-in refrigerator for all the milk the he needs. Instead, they were serving grape drink from powdered mix.

You get what you pay for

Okay, so getting local farm goods into school meals can be done, although not without some effort. But how much does all this cost?

Sosna figures the food cost at Washington Jesuit Academy for each student at around $3.50 per day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By comparison, the food cost for a typical lunch in a public school is estimated to be around $1, or a little less. But a significant portion of the food used in public schools consists of commodity products donated by the federal governement. Publich schools that participate in the federal meals program receive up to $2.68 in subsidies for each lunch served (about two-thirds of that amount goes to overhead, leaving just a dollar or less for ingredients). Washington Jesuit Academy does not participate in the program and does not receive commodity donations.

While Eraleigh Green was putting the finishing touches on the salad bar, Duane Drake stirred a spaghetti sauce he was making with local plum tomatoes in the kitchen's free-standing kettle cooker. He began peeling eggplants to add to the sauce, along with the meat from some leftover roasted chickens.

“We were getting organic chicken from a farmer in Pennsylvania, but it was expensive,” Drake says. “We're looking for a farmer who does his own processing.”

Drake peeled and sliced carrots, scattered these over sheet pans with snow peas to roast in the convection oven for a vegetable side dish. In just a few minutes, there would be a mob of hungry boys–and teachers–clamoring for lunch. It looked like we'd be ready for them.

Monday: why the administration at Washington Jesuit Academy committed to paying more for better school food.

Radioactive Man….

(WaPo)- Facing a tough midterm election in which they could potentially lose their majorities in Congress, Democrats are privately debating where and how President Obama can help — or hurt.

The president is unlikely to campaign in Arkansas and hasn’t been to Illinois since last summer, even though both states have important Senate races.

Although many states won’t hold primaries until next month, Obama has appeared at only one campaign rally this year — for Martha Coakley, who lost a special Senate election in Massachusetts. He has held no big events in any number of states — including Pennsylvania, Louisiana and Ohio — with competitive races.

In the anti-establishment climate, some Democrats are saying that it's smart for Obama to keep his distance from candidates in difficult races, allowing them to run against Washington and avoid the downward pull of his approval ratings. Others say he should heed the lessons of last year's Democratic losses and begin campaigning early enough to make a difference with the Democratic base.

Even while that debate begins, there is a clear no-fly zone for Obama, said senior administration officials, who discussed internal White House strategy on the condition of anonymity. “There are some cases, like Blanche Lincoln, where it's not helpful” for the president to travel, one senior administration official said, referring to the two-term senator from Arkansas who is facing challenges in the primary.

Rest here>>>

ZIP