Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
- William BlakeBehind the Locked Door
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Bleak America
What I want to see is not a rush to judgment, but a rush to justice. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don't understand the protests? What you're seeing is people pushed to the edge… fifth risk: the risk a society runs when it falls into the habit of responding to long-term...
The Last Town On Earth: A Recent Novel on the 1918 Pandemic
It is the autumn of 1918 and a world war and an influenza epidemic rage outside the isolated utopian logging community of Commonwealth, Wash. In an eerily familiar climate of fear, rumor and patriotic hysteria, the town enacts a strict quarantine, posting guards at...
Sea Gull Jazz Special: Judy Mayhan Kiyoshi Tokunaga and John Gilmore
In the 1970s and 80s the Sea Gull Cellar Bar was famous for many things and especially the live jazz performances on Thursday nights and Sunday afternoons. Thanks to Judy Mayhan we are able to present three live recordings from those times featuring Judy...
The 1918 Pandemic As Seen By John O’Hara
Think in the Morning continues our look into the literary memories of the 1918 Pandemic. Our first read was Pale Horse, Pale Rider. Katherine Anne Porter gave us an unforgettable memory of the impact of the Spanish flu and the Great War on a young couple whose paths...
Look Homeward Angel and The 1918 Pandemic
Previously on Think in the MorningPale Horse, Pale Rider: Katherine Anne Porter’s Classic Story of the 1918 PandemicWilliam Maxwell’s They Came Like SwallowsThe 1918 Pandemic And Willa Cather’s One Of Ours Then, under the terrible light which fell directly and...
Book Review: The Lady With Balls by Alice Combs
Midwest Book Review just published an abridged version of our book review on Alice Combs’ The Lady With Balls. The full review is below. I don’t want a mirror telling me I’m the fairest in all the land; I want another intelligent adult’s honest opinion. Alice...
The 1918 Pandemic And Willa Cather’s One Of Ours
Previously Discussed Literature On The 1918 PandemicKatherine Anne Porter: Pale Horse, Pale RiderWilliam Maxwell: They Came Like Swallows This grey wall, unshaken, mighty, was the end of the long preparation, as it was the end of the sea. It was the reason for...
William Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows
To deal with pandemics, read about them. That’s my advice.The 1918 pandemic did not inspire much literature of its own. World War I sucked up all the paper and ink with such greats as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front (1928) and Hemingway’s...
Some Personal Thoughts On Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet
“Cruelty to animals will get you punished, but cruelty to humans will get you promoted.” (as one of Brit's friends said to her at the immigrant detention center where she worked in Ali Smith's SPRING) In a previous blog I explored Ali Smith’s Autumn, the first of...
Here We Go Again
One of the first blogs I wrote concerned a philosophical conundrum that is also a political conundrum: The Trolley Problem and the Winter of our Discontent. The problem addressed is simple in theory but oh so difficult in practice. How should we deal with a policy...
The Evolution of a Book Cover
About a dozen years ago I took a picture of one of the many abandoned buildings in Oaxaca. I walked past this building nearly every day. It can still be seen (although transformed) on the corner of Reforma and Constitution Streets just across from the famous...
Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Katherine Anne Porter’s Classic Story of the 1918 Pandemic
Death always leaves one singer to mourn. In 1918 Katherine Anne Porter was 28 years old working for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver Colorado. A young soldier lived in her boarding house while waiting to be deployed overseas. They became close and spent much of...