John and Katrina -- (Continued)

Awhile back I posted two videos made by two very creative people. You can view this previous post by clicking HERE. 

It's now time to update what John Buffalo Mailer and Katrina Eugenia have been doing recently.

First, Katrina has been involved in shooting photos with Julie Mollo. She has also been modeling for the photographer Bill Wadman, as well as for Me in My Place. Katrina also paints, too. You can find her Facebook page HERE. Girl, you got it going on!

--Katrina Eugenia photographed by Bill Wadman. See Bill Wadman's Katrina photos HERE.

--I love this painting by Katrina Eugenia
(because most elephants in the room are not so happy)

John Buffalo has also been busy. John has been an activist to stop publications such as the Village Voice (of which his father was a founder) from selling ads soliciting underage girls for prostitution.

--John Buffalo Mailer speaking at a rally

John has also been writing. His story "Bleed" was recently featured in Provincetown Arts Magazine. 

--short story by John Buffalo Mailer

You can obtain a copy of this issue by checking your local library or university library to see if they subscribe, or you can send US$15.50 to:

Provincetown Arts
650 Commercial Street
Provincetown, MA 02657

You can also email Christopher Busa at cbusa@comcast.net to subscribe. Other subscriptions are available as well. See the subscription page at Provincetown Arts magazine HERE and also see John's Facebook page.

John has recently written an essay for the Huffington Post. This essay is about the recent tragedy in Colorado and how it relates to the Columbine tragedy years ago and how we need to figure out what is happening in our society while we still can. You can read the essay HERE.

It is not necessary that you should read A Ticket to the Circus by Norris Church Mailer before viewing this video that John Buffalo posted on the Norman Mailer Society website. But I think it will provide better understanding to the life of Ms. Mailer. I was mesmerized by this video, a wonderful tribute to Norris by her family and friends.

--Norris Church Mailer Tribute from John Mailer on Vimeo.

Wordless Wednesday: Baby Elephant

--from PETA

Wordless Wednesday

¡feliz cumpleaños, EMH!

On this day in 1899, Ernest Miller Hemingway (EMH) was born. I celebrate because learning about his life has enabled me to make many new friends in the past 4 years. Gracias, EMH! I am still learning about EMH and attended my first Biennial  Hemingway Society Conference in Michigan last June.

--EMH on his boat, Pilar

Reading EMH's personal writing in Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends edited by Linda Patterson Miller sparked my curiosity to want to learn about more him and his life. I have learned so much in the past 4 years, and am stil discovering even more about the life of this interesting, talented writer.

Two of my favorite EMH-related books this year were Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson and Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage by Ruth A. Hawkins. But the year is only half over!

Fun Video Friday: Surf Texas

Wordless Wednesday: Sunset and Powerlines

--Wordless Wednesday

15 Seconds by Andrew Gross

15 Seconds by Andrew Gross

New York: William Morrow

July 2012

336 print pages

Welcome to M. Denise C., one of many stops on the 15 Seconds blog tour. 15 Seconds is the latest suspense novel by Andrew Gross. This book was just released a week ago on July 10, 2012.

--author Andrew Gross

After reading the first few pages of this book, I have to say I did not like the character portrayed of Amanda, a drugged-out driver who can only gripe about anything and everything in her life. I put the book down for a number of days after reading those few pages and was not looking forward to reading more about this character. However, when I picked the book up again, I finished the novel in a day and a half. I became sympathetic to another character’s story, a guy named Henry who was stopped by the police for a bogus reason, and whose life then unraveled in a horrible way. As the title suggests, any one of our lives can change drastically in just a matter of seconds, because of our own choices or due to mysterious or unknown reasons.

Henry Steadman was on his way to a medical conference where he was to be the keynote speaker when the police in Jacksonville, Florida, pulled him over. Within a short time of his being stopped, a policeman was dead, as was one of his college buddies. I was intrigued to find out how this character’s story would intersect with that of the pathetic Amanda from the beginning of the book. Sometimes I catch on to what’s going on in a plot way sooner than I did in this novel. I kept wondering what the connection was between the two totally opposite characters and/or the people they knew. Really, the plot got more intriguing as I got more emotionally involved with Henry and his situation. The two stories finally do intersect, but the resolution was not immediate, which I appreciated. By the way, I was more sympathetic to Amanda by the end of the novel.

What are some of the relevant topics this book addresses? Well, there’s drug use and addiction to prescription medication, there’s what happens to someone when they just keep getting beaten down by society through loss of a job, benefits, and home, there’s loss of a spouse due to death and/or divorce, there’s the emotional upheaval when a child is in trouble or injured, there’s police corruption, and there’s even ease of getting firearms in today's society. Throw in relationships between parents and children of divorce and you have some good stories. Trusting others and believing that you can overcome anything with a little help from someone who believes in you when no one else does also are relevant to this thriller. 

The book is very current--so current that there was even mention of Mubarak and Egypt and the war in Afghanistan. However, I did take issue with one of the character’s constant use of an iPad (basically a cell phone) when trying to evade police, which was not very believeable in our technologically advanced world. Some other plot elements were a little farfetched at times, but I think the book as a whole was believable and it definitely held my attention. 

I like to read mysteries and had not read any of the author's previous works, and I enjoyed being introduced to Mr. Gross' writing via the book tour. I recommend reading this latest novel by Mr. Gross, a great book for a long plane ride or for a summer beach read. This book makes you want to always keep your affairs in good order!

Thank you to Trish from TLC Books for inviting me to participate in the 15 Seconds blog tour. And many thanks to Mr. Gross for an exciting and relevant thriller. I am sure I will pick up some of his earlier books now that I have read this one. For participating I received a hardback copy of 15 Seconds.

To follow along the tour and with other bloggers' reviews of 15 Seconds, please CLICK HERE!


Also, this very evening you can participate in a Live Chat with the author. For more info, CLICK HERE!

Some other links regarding 15 Seconds can be found at the following links:

Andrew Gross' website

Andrew Gross' Facebook page

Andrew Gross' Twitter account

Reading Guide for 15 Seconds

A Very Happy Birthday!

Before the day gets away . . . Happy Birthday to H. R. Stoneback, aka Stoney . . . 

 --my previous post on the above book/essay is HERE.

More to come from Stoney and New Street Communications in the near future!

--Happy Birthday to a poet, singer, writer, scholar, and teacher! Not to mention a really nice man that I had the pleasure of meeting recently at the Hemingway Conference in Michigan. I just ordered his most recent book of poetry and cannot wait for it to be delivered this week!

Mexican Art at the Meadows

Recently I returned to the Meadows Museum to view the latest exhibition on modern Mexican art. The collection being exhibited was from the Andrés Blaisten Collection, dated from the early 1900s to the 1950s. Following is just a small sampling from the exhibit:

Diego Rivera, Doctora mexicana (Retrato de Irma Mendoza), 1950, oil on canvas, 70.7 x 54 cm

--portrait of a real life surgeon (note the enlarged hands) by Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, El puente de San Martín, 1913, Oil on canvas, 91 x 111 cm

--from the artist's Cubist period

Rufino Tamayo, Naturaleza muerta con alcatraces, 1924, oil on canvas, 39.1 x 40 cm

--a flat still life piece

Agustín Lazo, El Carnicerito, 1926, 64x47 cm

Emilio Baz Viaud, Autorretrato con camisa azul, 1941,

watercolor and dry brush on pasteboard, 100 x 65.5 cm

--my favorite from the exhibition (click to enlarge and then enlarge more)

Coffee and Seinfeld: Quelle Collaboration!!

Wordless Wednesday: Fiesta y EMH

In honor of the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona, I present two original pieces of art I was so generously given by Ennyman:


The first I have shown before and really like of a bull and is from an interview I did of Ennyman a while back:

The second is a newer picture of EMH, who popularized Fiesta in his novel The Sun Also Rises:

--Wordless Wednesday

Fun Foto Friday: Red Dragonfly

--the red dragonfly stands out in its beautiful garden surroundings

Wordless Wednesday: 4 rue de Juillet

--from Paris Daily Photo. Happy 4th of July, America. 

Wordless Wednesday

Where the Heart Beats by Kay Larson

Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner
Life of Artists by Kay Larson

The Penguin Press, New York, 2012, 496 print pages (including notes and an index)

Electronic and print editions available July 5, 2012

I am pleased to be the first stop on the Where the Heart Beats book blog tour presented by TLC Book Tours. Wanting to read some nonfiction, I was fortunate to be given Kay Larson's first book. I think I enjoyed Where the Heart Beats because I knew absolutely nothing about John Cage, his life, his music, or his thirst for a spiritual direction and enlightenment. Being enlightened on whom one of the twentieth century's most renowned and innovative composers was fascinating because he knew and collaborated with so many artists (including painters, writers, choreographers, etc.), some I am familiar with and many I am not. Learning about the history of artists and their friends has already introduced me to the Lost Generation. Now I have been introduced to a whole slew of post World War II artists of all sorts.

--author of Where the Heart Beats Kay Larson

I found the book to be a little daunting when I received it in the mail, but it is written in a manner that kept me interested. Much of the book has italicized thoughts from the viewpoint of John Cage, who passed away in 1992, an innovative technique by Ms. Larson that I enjoyed and found useful. Ms. Larson herself studied Zen Buddhism for an extended period of time. She was previously an art critic and reviewer so I can understand how her interest in Mr. Cage took root and blossomed into this book. 

Where the Heart Beats is divided into three main sections that are entitled using mountain metaphors. These sections are really follow Cage's life as a young man, a more mature man at a crossroads of which direction to go or path to follow, and then his later life. I usually read about writers and/or painters, so this foray into music was a learning experience for me. 4' 33" is one of Cage's more known innovations and it reflects the Zen Buddhist idea of the negative space or the spaces between the notes that really shape a composition, but in the case of 4' 33", there are NO notes. Cage began reading about Eastern ideas back in the 1940s and they were definitely reflected in his works.

--John Cage (from Wikipedia)

If you didn't know much about Mr. Cage, he was the long time collaborator and real life partner of the choreographer Merce Cunningham, someone I was a little more familiar with, but not much. So this book taught me more about his life as well. Just to name drop a few of the other people and/or artists that Cage knew, met, or worked with are Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, D.T. Suzuki, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, M.C. Richards, Joseph Campbell, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, and countless others. Cage taught at The New School and the sculptor George Segal sat in on some of his classes at the time, before he was known for his "Pop Art sculptures." 

The most fascinating ideas I was left with after reading the book are the concepts of interconnectivity and serendipity and the number of artists Cage influenced. Of course, reading some of D.T. Suzuki's books would be helpful in today's noisy world. 

Hemingway Conference Pictures, Part VI, The End

After the conference I went on a day trip to the Upper Peninsula sponsored by the Michigan Hemingway Society. Jim and Janice Byrne were wonderful tour guides.

--bridge in Seney that has meaning if you have read "Big Two-Hearted River." This river is actually the Fox River and is brownish in color from the tannic acid from the native trees.

--did not see a fish on this day, however

--the railroad bridge is next to an old highway in back of the main drag of Seney

--the river on the other side of the highway

--deterioration

--logs that didn't make it downriver perhaps

--a pastie (pronounced pass-tee), food passed down from the

Cornish miners that worked/settled in the UP

--Jack Jobst joking

--old railroad depot (now a museum)

--EMH section

--at the junction

--at Tahquamenon Falls

--wonderful guide at the park

--a tree that is more rare, even for there (I don't remember the type)

--the Upper Falls (see Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha")

OK, that is the last of my Hemingway Conference posts. Hope you enjoyed. EMH--bringing people together from all over the world.