Write in Maine

Endings...and a new beginning

2010-02-06T09:02:00.004-05:00

I've maintained a schizophrenic online existence, trying to maintain multiple blogs, including this one, which has by-and-large been focused on writing and publishing.

I've been looking for a way to consolidate my online profile and my writing, and I've done that over at jimbaumer.com.

From here on out, if you want to read my thoughts about writing, books, and publishing (which will continue, in a somewhat altered format), then the home page at that site is where to find me.

I've appreciated the many visitors over my time here, as well as the handful of regulars that have come and gone. I remain passionate about many things that prompted me to get rolling and embrace the blogging platform, and I'll continue to share them from to time via my blog at the new site.

Reading material

2010-01-16T17:35:00.007-05:00

Writers should be readers. In fact, a number of writers, particularly those writers that teach and instruct about the craft of writing, make strong cases to their students that regular time spent reading is essential, if they want to excel as writers. I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment.

My own abilities as a writer, especially regarding usage and grammar have more to do with reading than any kind of foundation I acquired during English classes in school. I could not diagram a sentence if my life depended upon it. I would have a hard time breaking down and naming the parts of speech. Yet, because I’ve been a reader since a very early age, I think I’ve acquired an intuitive sense for grammar and English usage.

Most of the books I’ve read over the years—probably 95 percent of them—have been nonfiction. This past year, I’ve read books like this one, by Susan Jacoby. I also read another stellar Jacoby nonfiction work on the freethought movement that became one of several History Maker Mondays I posted for a brief period of time at my other blog. Just prior to Christmas, I completed this one about God and Wal-Mart. These are typical of my orientation and flavor on the nonfiction side. Early in 2009, I read several excellent books about FDR, including Nick Taylor’s very thorough book on the Works Progress Administration. On the occasions that I have picked up a work of fiction, more times than not I’ve enjoyed reading the book. Some of them turned out to be page turners, and I blew through them quickly.

Over Christmas, my son was home for three weeks. A writer, too, Mark is currently enrolled in Brown’s two-year MFA program in Creative Writing.

Over his time away from school and relaxing at home, Mark read an assortment of books, sometimes one a day, with most, if not all of them being ones that were sitting on our bookshelves. This pleased my wife and I, as we’re both readers, and it also impressed me immensely. Not knowing a lot about MFA programs other than that many well-known writers have completed one, if the program demanded their writers immerse themselves in a literary atmosphere of books, readings, and writing for two years, this had to be a good thing.

It’s been interesting to follow Mark’s reading and MFA adventures via his blog. Much like I took an interest in his progress as a baseball player, culminating in a great four-year run at Wheaton College, I’ve been following his writing, first via a zine he created at school, called GMBO. Later, he developed Everyday Yeah, which has now morphed into the official brown mfa blog #1.

One of Mark’s holiday reads was Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I knew McCarthy’s book had been well-received, and even received a 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Heck, it was even featured as one of Oprah’s book picks. Maybe it was because of the latter that I stayed away, or maybe it was for some other reason that I passed on the book.

After Mark read it and wrote the following on New Year’s Day, I decided to reconsider and give it a try:

The Road is the best book I’ve read this year. Maybe even the best book I read in 2009. I read the first 80 pages a few days ago and read the rest of it today. There really is no reason not to read this. It’ll take about eight hours. I’m a slow reader and I almost read it all in one day.

I read McCarthy’s book the following day, in about four hours—all in one setting. It was a great book, and not at all “depressing,” as some reviewers have indicated.

Maybe it had to do with it being about the relationship about boy and his father. Certainly, if you crave nonstop action, The Road will probably be disappointing. For me, however, I think McCarthy’s take on the relationship of the two main characters, their struggles along the road in a bleak, post-apocalyptic world, with a few plot twists thrown in made me want to crave a subsequent follow up read like it—something that was fiction, and a page turner. Not my usual type of book, I know.

After Mark left to return to Brown, I looked around his room to see if there were some other books like The Road lying around. I attempted James Baldwin’s Nobody Knows My Name, about his decade of self-exile in Europe. I got about a quarter of the way into it, before putting it down. Another novel scavenged from our crowded book shelves only to spend two successive nights dozing off and not getting further than 20 pages told me that I needed to move onto something else.

Last week, I stopped at the Maine State Library for a quick peruse of their literary fiction section. I happened to find a collection of Raymond Carver short stories. The book’s captured my attention, and the short story format, not one I usually gravitate to, seems to be just what I need right now, as my reading attention span seems to be shorter than usual.

Carver’s Collected Stories, is published by the Library of America and edited by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll. This collection is the first one that gathered all of his stories in one volume and provides a comprehensive overview of his career. I’m really enjoying it.

I now know why Carver was considered one of the late 20th centuries best fiction writers, and someone that breathed new life into the short story. His writing, held up as an example of what was being called “minimalist” at the time, derives its power more from what is suggested, or left unsaid.

While I don’t think I can match my son’s reading prowess, and certainly not the ambitious book devouring proposed by another blogger, Lisa K, I’m going to try to incorporate regular reading of fiction to start 2010.

2009 was the year I finally conquered David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest along with many others. Maybe 2010 will be my year of mostly fiction, and the year when I finally tackle some of the classics, although I don’t think I’ll limit myself merely to older books. I’m finding an entire stable of newer fiction writers that Mark has referenced via his blog.

In the coming weeks are Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (an American fiction classic that I’ve never read), Candide, by Voltaire, and maybe some Flannery O’Connor.

I welcome any other fiction suggestions.

God's call

2009-12-05T09:56:00.008-05:00

[This narrative describes how I ended up in Indiana, at a fundamentalist Bible college in the Midwest in the early 80s.

If you've visited my various blogs, particularly Words Matter, you may have gleaned details of that experience from periodic posts referencing that time in my life, during my early 20s, when Mary and I were just starting out. In fact, Mark was born in Indiana, almost 26 years ago.

This post is something I wrote last year when I was attempting to sort through various experiences in Indiana, my fundamentalist adventure, and ultimately, understand how I ended up in that place (geographically, spiritually, and psychically).

Given my unique experiences near the inner sanctum of a major American theological movement, and sitting every Sunday, listening and observing one of fundamentalism's "A-list" figures, at least in the context of Independent Baptists has always made me think that capturing those experiences in book form might be a worthwhile exercise. Unfortunately, while I've started several times, including after spending a week in Indiana two years ago, revisiting the proverbial "scene of the crime," Hyles-Anderson College, in Crown Point, I've never been able to push forward and capture the story in a way that I think is worthy of a book-length effort.

While I'm not even close to having a book about those experiences, I've decided to publish periodic snippets of some of those initial pieces that I've been working on. Additionally, I have some other personal stories that I think I'll semi-regularly post here at this blog, which is centered on writing, mine, as well as other more successful, and probably, more talented writers.

Keep in mind that while I've edited these some for grammar and spelling, they're in a rough draft stage. I hope you enjoy these and feel free to offer thoughts, and constructive feedback if so led, and whether or not you think that others might want to know more about my fundamentalist journey.--JB]

Call To Preach

Waves of nausea washed over me, as the altar call dragged on interminably. The room was too warm. The strains of organ music warbling in my ringing ears only made it more obvious that if I didn’t exit the auditorium soon, admonitions to deepen my fundamentalist commitment, or not, I was going to spew vomit all over the middle-aged couple in front of me.

Excusing myself from my row, catching a glare from Dan Chamberland, my home pastor, I darted towards the exit, knowing I was seconds away from embarrassing myself, and depositing my breakfast from Bob Evans on the gold, inlaid carpet of the First Baptist Church of Hammond.

It wasn’t my intention to bail on the great Jack Hyles, closing out another rousing Sunday service, especially since this was my first visit to the Mecca of independent Baptist fundamentalism, at the start of Pastors’ School week, March, 1983.

Mary and I, still newlyweds, having been married the previous July, had traveled to Hammond, to attend Jack Hyles’ 20th annual Pastors’ School, an event that drew fundamentalist pastors and other leaders from around the world to economically-depressed northwest Indiana.

Hyles, who pastored one of America’s largest churches, held his annual prophetic call to pastors each March. The weeklong institute on how to simulate First Baptist’s magic elsewhere, was a lure for many struggling pastors, most of them in small communities across the U.S.

Chamberland, who was pastoring a small church running less than 100 regulars, had begun attending Pastors’ School several years prior. Stating that it “recharges my spiritual batteries,” Chamberland regularly sought to entice other members to make the 1,100 mile pilgrimage with him and his wife, Ruth.

Mary and I had been attending Tabernacle Baptist since early in 1982. Chamberland had taken a liking to us, possibly because he saw two young, energetic Christians, with a seriousness about their faith.

Early in January of 1983, I had gone forward one Sunday morning, during Chamberland’s call for a deepened commitment to Christianity. It was on that cold winter morning when I felt “called” to the pastorate. Later, when I shared this with Chamberland, he began insisting that I needed to head to Hammond with him and Ruth, in March.

Two vehicles left the Tabernacle Baptist parking lot, early Friday morning, March 17, 1983. Mary and I were ensconced in the backseat of Pastor Dan’s Suburu wagon, along with Ruth. Dick Ramsey, a deacon at the church, his wife, Phyllis, and Ken and Linda Morse made up the rest of the Tabernacle contingent.

The goal was to push it hard Friday, and then coast into the Hammond area on Saturday, in time for Sunday service at First Baptist.

A 12 hour day on the road put us just east of Youngstown, Ohio. The day had been long, and after some early awkwardness, riding in the pastor’s car, the conversation got easier along the way.

Both Mary and I were still comparatively new Christians, particularly practicing the fundamentalist brand of religion common to independent Baptists. While we both turned our lives over to Christ in college, back in 1981, both Dan and Ruth Chamberland grew up in Christian homes, and had been raised in the culture of the Baptist church.

To hear Pastor Dan tell it, however, his parents were members of a “liberal” church, one without standards—indicators of “separation from the world”—that independent Baptists put great stock in. Examples of biblical separation would be prohibitions against attending Hollywood movies, wearing bathing suits, gambling, drinking alcohol, and on and on the list goes, depending on the strictness of the church denomination.

Tabernacle based their separation practices on the teachings of Jack Hyles, who got much of his own guidance on the fundamentals of the independent Baptist way, and of separation, from John R. Rice, a well-known evangelist, who wrote many books, and was a significant influence on Pastor Hyles, and other similar pastors of his generation.

Hyles in turn, began influencing other pastors through his own books, and by holding events like Pastors' School. Each year, when Chamberland attended, he’d come back with sermon ideas, books he’d picked up, and a determination that this would be the year that his small church would “take off,” and start a dynamic growth spurt.

Interestingly, Chamberland wasn’t a graduate of Hyles-Anderson College, the school that Pastor Hyles founded in 1972, with financial help from Ypsalanti, Michigan businessman, Russell Anderson. Chamberland had attended Liberty College (now Liberty University), a well-known Christian college founded by Jerry Falwell.

While Hyles was a larger than life figure within the narrow confines of the independent Baptist world, a world separated from the “godless” practices of the heathen, Falwell was a giant, in the world of Christianity, as well as politics, having the ear of key leaders in Washington.

Falwell had been the founders of the Moral Majority, an organization made up of various political action committees, committed to political lobbying on behalf of Christian causes, as well as electing committed Christians to public office, locally, at the state level, and nationally.

It was Falwell’s belief that Christians were to be the “salt and light” to the world, based upon Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew 5:13-16. From this, Falwell developed an outreach much like Hyles, training the next generation of pastors and Christian leaders through his college. Where these two men differed, however, was in area of standards, and separation. Hyles also had little or no desire to engage in the political arena, stating that it was not the place of the church to politicize. It was his belief that the role of Christians and the church was to “win souls,” which was a position that Hyles gleaned from John R. Rice.

Chamberland had cooled in his ardor for Falwell, and much of what Liberty had become. Despite the school being his alma mater, Chamberland was vocal in his criticism of Falwell, for “compromising his standards,” and leaving the fundamentalist fold, as he characterized it. This falling out with his place of training had been the source of a major rift at Tabernacle Baptist the previous fall.

When Mary and I first began attending Tabernacle, in the spring of 1982, Lon Grovesteen had been the director of Tabernacle Academy, the church’s small Christian school begun two years prior. Grovesteen, also a graduate of Liberty College, was a dynamic presence in the church. A gifted, charismatic leader, both he and his wife Kay went out of their way to welcome Mary and I.

While we respected Chamberland as pastor, there was something about the Grovesteens that seemed different. Maybe it was Kay’s southern charm and warmth she gave off. Lon was grace and aplomb personified, and cast a large presence in the church community. Tall, and one who was at home in front of a congregation, leading music, or filling in for the pastor when he was off on one of his semi-regular fishing trips, Grovesteen was a sharp contrast to Chamberland’s more dour and confrontational personality.

One of the areas that independent Baptists put great emphasis upon was the area of evangelism, or “soul winning,” as they call the practice of going outside the church to proselytize, and attempt to preach the gospel to those that aren’t practitioners of Christianity.

At Tabernacle, Wednesday nights were visitation night. A small group would gather at the church, and Pastor Dan would have cards, either from visitors that had visited the church, cards from parents of students at Tabernacle Academy that may have not been attending regularly, and even notes that were sent to the pastor’s radio show that he taped each week, on WKXA, in Bath.

Mary and I began attending this outreach during the summer. Our first evening doing visitation saw us paired with the Grovesteens. I would be with Lon, and Mary assigned to visits with Kay.

Seeing Lon Grovesteen in action was impressive for me, since I had little experience with this kind of visitation, or evangelism. Since committing my life to Christ, in the fall of 1980, I had shared the gospel with others, while a student at the University of Maine. I’d also attempted to “witness” to my parents, my wife’s parents and family, and others, but other than seeing Mary convert, I’d not been what Hyles and others would consider a soulwinner.

Grovesteen had a natural and easygoing way of greeting people at the door. He was comfortable with small talk and even the most suspicious person was eventually disarmed by Grovesteen’s charm. He had an ability to revert to a southern “aw shucks” persona when appropriate, or when the situation called for it, be stately, and appear much more worldly in his demeanor.

Beyond Wednesday night visitation, the most effective outreach that was being done was Grovesteen’s work with families stationed in the Topsham, Brunswick, Bath area, at Brunswick Naval Air Station. Grovesteen had been involved in service outreach prior to being hired at Tabernacle, and as a result, the congregation had a strong representation of military families attending.

As a young couple in the church, looking to grow and get involved, Lon and Kay Grovesteen were great role models for us. It was Lon that recruited me to teach my first Sunday School class. Kay, tall and attractive, was someone that I know influenced Mary, and provided a couple that seemed more on our level, than the pastor and his wife, who both, for whatever reason, seemed aloof and removed.

In September, we were heartbroken to learn that the Grovesteens would be leaving Tabernacle. Not much was spoken about the reasons, but the rumor was that there were differences in doctrine between Chamberland and Grovesteen. Much of that difference probably had to do with Grovesteen being more of a Liberty man, and Chamberland’s devotion to the teaching of Hyles. Nevertheless, Tabernacle Baptist had lost a dynamic young couple, their family, and several other key military families. This left a major hole within the Tabernacle congregation that would never completely heal the remainder of the time that Mary and I attended.

Reflections on the inaugural Boston Book Festival

2009-10-25T19:20:00.009-04:00

Boston is remembered as “The Hub,” by most anyone that still has any sense of American history. It derives from Boston’s place as a leading economic/commerce, educational, and even intellectual center, as America developed as a nation. Originally coined from an Oliver Wendell Holmes novel, where in 1858, the Cambridge-born author/philosopher referred to the Massachusetts State House as “the hub of the solar system.” Later, residents of the burgeoning metropolis adopted their own self-referential moniker, calling Boston, “the hub of the universe. Sadly, the term is rarely used today, and most have no sense of what it means.

It is only fitting then, in that spirit, that Boston, a city with a long history of books and publishing, a place where America’s first newspaper was founded, as well as firsts for having a public library, and place of the first printing press, would host a major book festival. Boston was once the home of Longfellow, Emerson, and Thoreau. It is home to some of this country’s and even the world’s top institutions of higher learning. It is a place with a rich tradition related to the written word, and understands attention to words—an understanding that words matter.

I was thrilled to be attending my second major book festival of 2009. After April’s thrilling journey to the west coast, and spending a day at UCLA taking in my very first book festival at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I now had a proper frame of reference for evaluating Boston’s maiden voyage, celebrating books.

Copley Square was a good locale for the first one. The area offered symmetry and form that made logistical sense. As Boston goes, and given that there are areas of the city that are problematic to say the least, from an arrival and departure sense, Copley provided a positive setting to launch this first one.

I have always enjoyed the Copley Square area. The juxtaposition of old and new, historical, and modern, as well as the relative ease of getting there by car, with the Prudential Center garage nearby making my arrival practically painless, were all positives for me when I first considered attending. Then, the festival planners began listing the authors that would be attending; this first run-through would offer plenty of panels filled with A-list authors, thinkers, and funny people. Since it was only a bit more than two hours away by car (or bus/train, which I could have chosen) made this a no-brainer for me. Lastly, the festival offered a plausible excuse for my writer-in-training son taking the train up from Brown to meet me and hangout for the day with his old man.

We met on Boylston, after I exited Prudential Center. Unfortunately, his rural rube of a father had turned left, instead of going right, but a quick conference by cell phone with Mark got me turned around and we met up.

We strolled across Copley Plaza, picking up our program guides, $16 parking pass for me, and free ice cream sample provided by Brigham’s Ice Cream. We talked panel strategy for our day, or better, what three, or four events we’d like to check out.

I wanted to attend "Ties that Bind," featuring Richard Russo, who now lives in Maine, and a writer that I think captures the grittiness of small towns as well as anyone I’ve read. The other panelists, Elinor Lipman and Michael Thomas weren’t familiar to me.

Boston’s Old South Church, where this panel was being held is a magnificent example of what mid-19th century Boston must have been like. While most Congregational churches throughout New England tended to shun ornate construction, opting instead for a simple white, wooden design, and perfunctory architecture befitting their theology of the time, this historically significant building features a Northern Italian architectural design. Featuring a tall bell tower, brown, pink and grey stonework, walls of Roxbury puddingstone, decorative wood carvings, as well as a roof striped with tiles of red and black slate and a cupola or lantern of green and russet-colored copper, the church indicates that when built in the late 1870s, it was for a well-heeled congregation.

We arrived about 30 minutes prior to the 11:00 a.m. starting time, which was a wise decision on our part. The seating inside was about three quarters full, but we nabbed a decent spot about halfway back on the left side of the church.

I found Lipman’s presentation fairly non-descript, and unremarkable. She may be a successful author, but knowing little or nothing about her, I took nothing away from her 10-15 minute talk.

Next up was Russo. He appeared very comfortable in front of a large audience, which I estimated to be around 250-300 people. A 2002 Pulitzer Prize winner for his novel, Empire Falls, which depicted a once thriving mill town, fallen upon tough times—his fictional locale could be any of several communities in Maine, and elsewhere across the United States, as manufacturing dies a slow, painful death. When the book was made into a two-part miniseries on HBO, much of it was filmed in Skowhegan, Waterville, and Winslow, at the suggestion of Russo, who understood how these towns perfectly captured the aura of the fictional post-industrial town in his book.

Russo spoke about autobiography and imagination. He told a story about his friend, author Pete Dexter, who was upset when a reviewer referred to his latest book, Spooner, as autobiographical.

Apparently, many fiction writers bristle at having their work labeled autobiographical, because Russo intimated that it is thought to indicate a lack of imagination on the part of the writer. I thought Russo did a fairly good job of explaining differences between mere recitation of personal stories finding their way into a fiction writer’s work, and the kind of work that a good writer does with shaping and structuring experiences they have, and still being able to plausibly operate on the fictional side of the writing world. In fact, Russo mentioned that “life has no shape; shape is what we imagine and structure is what we (the writer) assign.”

Following Lipman and Russo, Michael Thomas stole the thunder on this panel. A gifted speaker, with obvious charismatic qualities, and someone that looks more like an NFL cornerback, than the stereotype of a writer, he may have the best “guns” I’ve seen on the author’s circuit.

With a recent IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in tow, for Man Gone Down, Thomas spoke about dealing with and processing memory, particularly in his context, growing up in Allston, and never feeling like he had an identity.

I haven’t read Man Gone Down, but the reviews indicate that it deals squarely with the issues of race, disillusionment, and the marginalized in America. Booklist characterized Thomas’ first work as a “rhapsodic and piercing post-9/11 lament over aggression, greed, and racism, and a ravishing blues for the soul's unending loneliness.”

Throughout his talk, Thomas dropped references to T.S. Eliot, and didn’t shy away from literary references in clarifying his thoughts, like referencing Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues in explaining his own take on the two sides of the black experience (Thomas is African-American).

I was particularly taken by his own inclination of being a “prodigal,” and how that urge was stronger for him, than to be “home,” as he phrased it.

Since the next event we planned to take in was in the same location, we just moved around the sanctuary and found a little better spot in the center and prepared to wait for Tom Perrotta, interviewing John Hodgman.

I read Perotta’s The Abstinence Teacher (which I reviewed here), and I was impressed by his ability to nail the born-again experience so well, having never gone through it in the first-person, according to interviews I’d read.
Perotta took on a persona of self-deprecation, talking and joking about his own failures to get published. Hodgman, who described himself for the audience as a “famous minor television personality,” was laugh out loud funny, and had some fun at Perotta’s expense.

The two elicited a good give and take, with Hodgman doing most of the talking. While he was funny, and didn’t stray too far from his public persona, he did spend some time speaking honestly about his own evolution as a writer, which is how he says he self-identifies.

A graduate of Yale, he initially wanted to be a short-story writer, and wrote an “exquisitely crafted short story,” which was published in the The Paris Review. He did emphasize he wrote only “one,” however.

After college, he worked as a literary agent, which while he described this experience as a “failed” one, it did lead to his column at McSweeney’s Ask A Former Professional Literary Agent, which then led to his first book, The Areas of My Expertise, his satirical almanac.

A couple of my favorite anecdotes from Hodgman; he told the audience that when he originally began writing, he didn’t think you were allowed to be funny. Once he began to understand humor, and the importance of being funny in his own writing, it opened up a wealth of opportunities, and he’s continued to ride that wave with a great deal of recent success. Hodgman in fact said that he sees humor as a “form of short story writing.”

He also described how he continues to be amazed by how often wildly successful people come up to him and want to know how to get a book published. He said it seems to be universal that almost everyone has that “one book” that they want to write before they die.

While my success as a writer/publisher is chump change when juxtaposed with Hodgman’s, but I’ve also been amazed how often other successful people warm to me when they find out I’ve written a book, as well as launched my own independent publishing company.

Hodgman concluded on an optimistic note for anyone getting started. Rather than lament the death of the book, or publishing’s dilemma, he said it’s a great time to be creative. He compared the internet to New York City, where so many writers traditionally would go to get their start in publishing. He said that there is no certain geographic place to go, today. In fact, he told one of the questioners during the Q & A session when asked for advice about getting a book published, to “move to the cheapest place you can find,” touching on his final thoughts that technology allows creative work to be done anywhere.

I didn’t have any preferences for events after Hodgman/Perrotta. Mark was interested in an afternoon panel titled, “Something Different.” The program guide mentioned that the featured authors would focus on quirky characters. The actual panel swerved slightly from that description. Jessica Anthony talked about her character, Rovar Pfliegman, a Hungarian butcher, a dwarf, who lives in a bus full of meat for sale, which seemed quirky to me.

Other panelists included Paul Trembley, author of The Little Sleep, who talked less about Mark Genevich, the South Boston PI who suffers from narcolepsy, than about his own sleep problems, and how this led to the surgical removal of his uvula.

The third panelist, R Sikoryak (real name, Robert), is a comic book artist who creates comic adaptations of classic literature. Mark and I both agreed that he was the most interesting of the three. He talked about his process, but I was particularly interested in his thoughts on taking what he considered literature, and “dumbed it down” or made it more accessible via the comic book process. His Wikipedia entry represents this as “a mashup of high and low cultures.”

The panel was hosted by Jennifer Haigh, who has won several PEN awards for her fiction. Afterwards, I glanced at several books at the author’s table, and was interested in her book, Baker Towers. I’m considering reading it, as it looks like an interesting read, detailing rise and fall of a western Pennsylvania coal town in the years following World War II, particularly given my interest in people and places, particularly small town America.

Just like at the LA Times Book Festival, I found sitting through three panels can be exhausting. Mark and I talked about whether we wanted to hit one more, or call it a day. I know that I wanted a free cup of coffee offered by Green Mountain, so I stood in a lengthy line for one. Mark headed for the book tent in the square where The Book Symposium was offering books for $1.00 each.

I got my cup of coffee, and Mark made off with 20 books for $20. We then headed for the car, with plans to check out Tavolo, in Dorchester. Since we hadn’t eaten anything more than an ice cream sample since breakfast, Italian food sounded great. After a great meal at an eatery I’ll definitely visit again, we hit the highway, bound for Providence, where Mark is enrolled in Brown’s MFA program for fiction writers.

My wife, Mary, had packed a tote bag of things for Mark, and he had requested that I bring a pair of boots, and his winter jacket to Boston. I had offered to drive him back earlier in the week when we spoke. I used the guise that it would be too difficult to schlep all this stuff back on the commuter train. Mainly, I was looking forward to conversation with my son that I miss, now that he’s grown up and on his own. I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Our 45 minute trip was filled with talk about writing, mainly the craft. Mark is leading a workshop for fellow writers next week. He was interested in “dry periods” for writers, and asked me about my own experiences. Just like the bond that we once shared via baseball, we now have a different kind of connection with books and writing. I also played some songs off my new Joel Plaskett CD for him, sharing my appreciation for the Canadian singer-songwriter.

Then, I headed for home, slogging through moderate to heavy rain on my three hour journey back to Maine.

We have plans to do it all again next year.

[Early morning at the Boston Book Festival]

[A MFA student can never have too many books]

[Book crowd enjoying some blues courtesy of Berklee student musicians]

Books in the Hub-Boston Book Festival 2009

2009-10-23T06:24:00.006-04:00

I'm excited to be headed off to Boston, tomorrow, for this year's Boston Book Festival. Actually, the festivities kick off tonight, in Copley Square, with Boston Out Loud. This is the opening night event when Boston's beautiful and important will come out.

I'll be joining the hoi polloi, tomorrow, from 10:00 to 6:00, attending events with authors the likes of Tom Perrotta, Richard Russo, Cornel West, and many others (including Alicia Silverstone, who I am not planning to see). Actually, if Boston's festival is like the one I attending in Los Angeles, back in April, the authors I tend to favor will have events that I should be able to get into. The celebrity writers, like Silverstone, will have events that are mobbed and impossible to get into.

I will attend Perrotta's event, where he'll be interviewing John Hodgman, resident expert on The Daily Show, which may attract a larger crowd, since if you are on TV, then that automatically makes you semi-important. I'd have preferred Perrotta in a setting where he was talking about his own books, as well as discussing craft. Oh well.

This is only my second such festival event celebrating the written word, and I plan on putting up a post afterwards, capturing my thoughts and observations on the day.

Oh, yes--I will be accompanied by Mr. Everyday Yeah, who is now part of the literati, MFA student and administrator of the Official Brown MFA Blog #1.

Inspired, or disciplined?

2009-10-18T07:16:00.003-04:00

Are writers born, or can one attend to, and develop their craft through toil and perserverance? That seems to be an age-old debate that continues to rage in writing circles.

Glimmer Train, a great literary publication featuring many new voices, sends out their magazine on a quarterly basis, and includes Writers Ask, along with it. Writers Ask deals with many of the craft aspects of writing, and it has always been a favorite of mine for advice on bettering myself as a writer.

I happened to be perusing an older issue (#42, Winter 2008), which discussed the topic of inspiration vs. discipline. The commentary and back and forth between the GT writers and the writers interviewed seemed to be split between a sense that a skilled writer had some inherent ability, but there was an obvious nod to the understanding that work ethic was also important.

Here are a few highlights from the issue:

Jay McInerney (interviewed by Victoria Blake)-

I used to idealize those people who made it seem all the work of inspiration, who seemed not so much to work as to channel the muses....I was wrong to imagine literature is a divine gift. A career of writing entails a lot of hard work, but if it were only a question of hard work, then anybody with enough of a work ethic who's ever enrolled in a creative-writing course would presumably be Phillip Roth. Whether it's ninety-nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration, I don't know. The predisposition and the innate talent can't be willed into existence. I think Jane Austen was in some sense was born Jane Austen.

Mark Winegardner (interviewed by Robert Birnbaum)-

If they (aspiring writers) have no talent, no matter what their work ethic is they will recognize that their talents lie elsewhere.

This is my twentieth year teaching...the most talented undergraduates, you can write them off. They'll never be writers. They don't have a chance. They are freaked out that they just did it. People who are brilliant at nineteen freak out. They don't know what to do with that, "How'd I do that? I don't know." And also, early praise is damaging. We live in a culture that thinks the entire country is above average. C is a bad grade now. C is what F used to be. So everybody gets this fatuous early praise and it ruins everybody who receives it. So they are all destroyed by it. People who are a little further along, blossoming later, even then I would bet on the person who shows up at the computer every morning, rather than the one who has a world of talent and no discipline.

So there you have it. Talent matters, but working at your craft cannot be overemphasized. I've touched on this in the past, referencing Stephen King's excellent book, On Writing.

If you want to be a writer, then you need to write. It's a simple fact, but one that many wannabe writers seem to miss.

Garth Stein and a dog's voice

2009-10-12T06:55:00.003-04:00

Back in May, our 14-year-old Sheltie passed away. My wife and I were devastated by the loss. Bernie had been a central figure in our family, and our house, occupying space, much like a human. With Bernie gone, and our son on the west coast, the house seemed dreadfully empty.

Animals have the capacity to enhance the quality of our lives. Dogs in particular have an innate ability to be whatever it is that we need them to be for us. For those fortunate to have had, or who have a special canine, they provide an unconditional support to us that no human is capable, or self-sacrificing enough to render.

In Garth Stein’s latest novel, The Art of Racing in the Rain, the story is narrated by a dog, who on the eve of his own death, looks back over his life, and takes you on a rewarding journey that will have you laughing, crying, and reflecting on those special dogs you’ve had the privilege of knowing.

Enzo, a yellow lab/Airedale mix, watches television, which his owner, Denny, leaves on for him when he’s at work. Enzo knows what is next for him. He’s seen it on TV, in a documentary about Mongolia—when he is finished living his life as a dog, his next incarnation will be as a man. Enzo has always known that he’s different than other dogs, and he is quite sure that his soul, stuffed into a dog’s body, is very human.

Denny is Enzo’s owner. He is a race car driver, trying to claw his way up from the lower rungs of racing’s ladder. By day he works as a parts manager at a high-end repair shop for expensive foreign, mainly German automobiles. His real passion, however, is his racing.

When we first meet Enzo and his owner, Denny is soliciting sponsors to buy a seat in a Porsche 993 Cup Car, to race in Daytona, during the 24 Hours of Daytona race, which will be sponsored by Rolex. Denny ends up gaining the seat, and as life would have it, the weekend that he is racing is when his wife, Eve, who entered Denny and Enzo’s lives earlier, gives birth to their daughter, Zoe.

Eve was seen by Enzo as an interloper at first, someone that would come between him and Denny. Initially, he was cautious in handing her his affection. Over the first year of their marriage, however, Enzo had warmed to Eve.

Eve had insisted on a natural childbirth, and as she is giving birth, Enzo hears her screams and realizes she is in pain bringing the new life into the world. As Eve lays in bed, nursing her newborn, Zoe, she asks for a minute with her baby; the midwives seek to shoo Enzo from the room, but Eve stops them and Enzo is puffed up with pride realizing he had a special dispensation with Eve that he had been unaware of. Eve reaches down and wiggles her fingers calling for Enzo. He bumps her hand with his snout, and Eve, still crying, and nursing little Zoe looks into Enzo’s eyes and asks him, “Will you promise to always protect her?” Enzo had found a place to begin with Eve.

Parents often drive wedges between themselves and their married children. Rather than accepting that their adult child has found someone that they want to spend their lives with, some parents spend inordinate energy in their state of overprotection doing their best to sabotage marriage and love for their child. Eve’s parents, dubbed “the evil twins” by Enzo, feel that Eve could have done much better than Denny.

Life takes on new meaning for Enzo, with Zoe around. For most of the first year, Eve stays home with the new baby. The apartment in Seattle is full of life, and noise, and action. Then Eve returns to work, mainly for the health insurance that their young family needs and Denny, working for a small employer, can’t pick up at his work.

At first, Enzo is lost, alone in the apartment, wandering from room to room. Denny begins leaving the TV on for him again, telling Enzo that he’s counting on him to “be responsible.” Of course, Enzo, in his narrator’s voice indicates, “I am responsible!”

Stein, clearly knowledgeable about the bond that exists between a dog and its owner, must also be a race fan. While I know little about racing, and tend not to care much about it as a sport, I found Stein’s tidbits about world class drivers like Ayrton Senna, Jackie Steward, Michael Shumacher, and the other drivers mentioned interesting, and I found racing to be an intriguing metaphor to use in telling this story about dogs and humans.

Dogs, at least one as intuitive as Enzo knows when bad things are about to happen—he smells something bad happening in Eve—the dog is always the first to know.

The Art of Racing in the Rain alas, is not a feel good story. Bad things happen to good people. The perfect cocoon of family that existed for Denny is sent into a spin, like a race car whose tires lose their grip on wet pavement. Is Denny a skilled enough driver to know how to steer out this spin, or will he ultimately crash?

I’m not sure if this book would have been as interesting if Stein hadn’t have employed Enzo as his voice in telling the story. Ultimately, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a book about the triumph of the human spirit, as it overcomes the misdeeds and calculations of other humans, acting in their own self-interest, claiming to want what’s best, but ultimately seeking to destroy the life of another.

I highly recommend it, especially if you have a soft spot for animals, and in particular, if you consider dogs, man's best friend.

Stop talking and start writing

2009-09-26T07:39:00.005-04:00

I've touched on this before. People find out that you write, and almost on cue, want to talk about why they haven't started that bestseller that they know they're going to write at some point, or want to ask you a series of inane questions about the writing craft.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to writing (or losing weight, learning to play guitar, etc.). If you want to write, then you need to start writing.

I will cede these wannabe writers one point. Occasionally, when you are just dipping your toe tentatively into the waters, having subject matter helps. For me, the advice to "write what you know" got me going. For others, having a book with writing prompts might be one place to start.

Ultimately, however, if you ever want to write that book that you insist you are going to write "in five years," then you need to get started now, not in five years when you "have the time."

Who has time to write? Ok, there are those few fortunate souls that derive their entire income from writing. Their entire day is devoted to writing, or fighting procrastination to do something else, but write.

Currently I work nine to 10 hour days, in a job that's demanding as hell. It's how I manage to prevent being homeless. I'm also engaged in the most rigorous fitness regimen I've participated in since high school (some 30 years ago). My time to write is at night, if I can manage an hour before the need to crash. Better, I set the alarm to get up 90 minutes earlier than usual, three mornings per week. For me that means getting up at 3:30 a.m. If you visit my other blog, Words Matter, you'll see I maintain a regular posting schedule, rarely going more than 2-3 days between posts. There is usually a longer post up weekly, and then one, or two shorter posts.

For me, writing is rarely a choice--it's just something I have to do. That's usually a sign that you've crossed over and become a writer. Writing isn't talking, writing is setting words down in some semblance of order. Then, it's going back and editing, rewriting, editing, etc., until you have something that exhibits some modicum of effort and care.

That's what it takes to write.

So do me a favor. If you aren't willing to put the time into your craft, don't disrespect my efforts by saying things that you have no intention of following through on. Basically, just shut the fuck up, ok?

Books in Brooklyn

2009-09-14T16:49:00.003-04:00

Jacket Copy, the LA Times blog devoted to books and reading has a post reporting out on this past weekend's Brooklyn Book Festival, which took place on Sunday.

Having attended The Times very own bookfest back in April (my first one), and with plans on being in Boston the end of October for the Boston Book Festival, I'm partial to festivals that trumpet books and reading (as well as publishing). What better way to hear authors talk about their books, or the craft of writing?

[Thurston Moore, Matthew Zapruder, Tracie Morris, and Lupe Fiasco talking about writing's intersection with music, at Sunday's Brooklyn Book Festival]

Infinite disappointment

2009-08-18T21:11:00.005-04:00

Since June 23, I've been slogging my way through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, a read that I earlier characterized as "claustrophobic." Interestingly, my choice of summer reading material also coincided with an on-the-spot decision to stop being fat.

Over the past nine weeks, I've knocked down 864 (of the required 981) pages in IJ, and also shed 28 pounds. These parallel events even prompted me to even entertain the possibility that there being was a possible connection between the two.

While I've persevered in my quest to conquer IJ, and lay hold to the claim of having completed the long reading cycle, almost entirely ahead of schedule, I'm looking forward to finally being rid of Wallace and his gargantuan work.

Sections of this overly long novel have been interesting, and some have kept me captivated (the Ennet House parts, mainly), but overall, this has been a taxing read, one of the most difficult books I've ever tackled. I empathize with those who have pulled up stakes and abandoned the rest of the group read.

I'm struggling with a desire to project a variety of issues/problems onto Wallace as I forge on to the end. My introduction to DFW's writing came via his nonfiction. Generally, this is my chosen genre to read (as well as work in as a writer). I'm not averse to fiction, however, and more often than not, when I choose to go the novel route, I find it pleasurable, and often an escape hatch from more serious fare. That hasn't been the case with IJ.

[Spoiler Alert] I have really struggled with a couple of incidents in my reading, both invoking dogs, and what I view as pretty sadistic behavior on behalf of Wallace's fictional characters. What I'm alluding to is Ennet House character, Randy Lenz, one of a cast of freaks, addicts, and general low lifes that populate much of IJ. These dregs populate and play a central role in DFW's narrative.

We find Lenz (on page 539) commencing a series of nocturnal outings involving death and mayhem directed towards rats, and then later, cats, and ultimately, his sadism is unleashed on several particularly vicious attacks on dogs. While this is entirely a fictional rendering, Lenz's character and his actions were particularly disturbing to me, and led me to wonder a bit about Wallace's own sentiment towards animals, particularly those of the canine variety.

The chosen method that Lenz ultimately graduates to with dogs involves luring his victim to the end of its chain by dangling a piece of leftover meatloaf (courtesy of Ennet House's culinary wizard, Don Gately) in front of the dog. Lenz then circles behind the dog and manages to slit its throat with a knife. Wallace doesn't spare us details, as we learn that the weapon is a Browning X444 serrated, with its own personal shoulder holster for ease of transport.

The other involves an Incandenza family dog being forgotten, tied to the bumper of the family car, and dragged to a brutal death, this time by young Orrin. I won't go into further detail, but it's another example of a gratuitously violent act against a dog, without much in the way of remorse from the character who perpetrates the act.

When a writer asks you to trust him/her enough to commit to reading a book of 250 to 300 pages, there is a tacit understanding that the reader leaves at the end with something--being entertained, enlightened, transported beyond the mundane four-walled, boring life variety, possibly so captivated by characters that the tension breaks and the relationship is enhanced.

With Wallace and his nonfiction, he always made me feel like I got more than I bargained for, and the expectations were always lived up to. Granted, a good deal of his writing was dense, and even difficult. Always, there was that interminable search through endnotes, which often delivered a golden nugget, although always distracting, and offputting.

With IJ, I'm feeling duped. Because of Infinite Summer, and its cast of guest bloggers, I came to the read prepared for a difficult start and to do some work (one mentioned giving the book to p. 200 before bailing).

With another 100+ pages to go before I hit paydirt, I have appreciated some of the great passages, characters I connected with, and an appreciation for the breadth and scope of the novel. There have also been entire portions/sections that I found nearly unreadable (the entire Canadian, Marathe, Steeply, Assasins des Fauteuils Rollents sections always produced an "oh shit" moment and consequent skim for the next break and segue).

What I'm left with is a sense that while I'll be happy to say "I read Infinite Jest," I'll also be second-guessing and wondering what other books I could have been reading instead, and that 10 or 11 weeks have been taken away and I'll never get them back.

Frank McCourt: A writer for the working-class

2009-07-26T07:26:00.006-04:00

During the time that I have been listening to Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man on CD, a book about his teaching days, the American-Irish writer and Pulitzer Prize-winner passed away.

I knew very little about McCourt until recently. I knew that he had become a darling of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club set for his memoir, Angela’s Ashes, a book I had resisted reading on several occasions.

When my wife handed me Teacher Man on CD, I thought I’d give it a try. While a best seller and well received, Teacher Man tends not to receive the universal accolades that accompany Angela’s Ashes. Like Angela’s Ashes, it is a memoir, but it primarily details McCourt’s teaching experiences, and many of the difficulties that accompany those experiences. Since public education is an ongoing subject of interest for me, given my day job duties as a workforce trainer, I figured McCourt might provide me with additional fodder on the shortcomings endemic in public school education.

What I found out listening to McCourt’s book on teaching was that he and I shared some commonality. I learned that he didn’t begin his writing career until much later in life, well beyond the age when most authors publish their first book. Secondly, he wasn’t your typical celebrity author. He was a genuine working-class stiff, who happened to find an audience for his storytelling, and the wealth of material that he’d accumulated from living his life, and teaching for 30 years, in New York City’s public schools.

For those who have read his memoir, you’ll know the details. Born in poverty in Brooklyn, his immigrant parents decided to return to Ireland during the Great Depression, because they were unable to find work. Returning to Limerick, where his mother was from, young Frank nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten years old. The family was beset with crushing poverty during Frank’s time in Ireland.

At 19, he returned to the U.S., joined the Army, went to Korea, and was stationed in Germany for much of his hitch. The Army provided him with access to higher education through the GI Bill, and young Frank was able to enroll at New York University, taking classes at night, while performing difficult manual labor during the day, on the docks along the harbor. He eventually got his Master’s degree from Brooklyn College, and became an English teacher, first at McKee Technical High School, in Brooklyn. Later he would go on to teach in other schools, including prestigious Stuyvesant High School

McCourt’s narrative details the difficulties of teaching American students—essentially bored and boorish—who don’t give a damn about Shakespeare, Emerson, and Thoreau. This was only compounded with the technical high students, who were forced to take English to graduate, but for these future plumbers, auto mechanics, and other skilled trades, English didn’t have an obvious application.

Teacher Man for me was about how McCourt used his intuition to craft exercises, as well as his gift as a storyteller to capture his student’s interest, and impart as much grammar, and writing craft to his students, as possible. His skill and ability for doing this wasn’t always appreciated by his principals and other administrators. For his efforts in engagement and instruction, McCourt was shown the door by educational bureaucrats.

One particular example of this was when he had his students begin accumulating recipes to bring to class. He then had students read these recipes, while other students—gifted musicians—composed scores to accompany the reading. For this creativity, McCourt once more drew the ire of an administrator, with his theories and intellectual understanding of pedagogy, but no real practical idea how to translate it into actual instruction that imparted an iota of knowledge and something that students would take away for later.

When McCourt was teaching upwards of 150 to 175 English students a day in public high school, he had little energy, or desire to work on his own writing at night. The sheer volume of essays and papers to grade by themselves were more than enough to take over his evenings. This is the duality that many talented writers face; making a living from some other means, while keeping the flame of one’s writing alive. McCourt, for all his talent and eventual recognition, couldn’t accomplish this while he was working full-time. McCourt was awarded his Pulitzer, for Angela’s Ashes, at the age of 67.

This book helped put some of my own frustrations in perspective. I’ve been fortunate to continue to write as much as I can while maintaining an increasingly demanding day job. Last year, I managed to launch a second book, spending nearly every free moment from January, until June, working on my project. I’ve also managed to do a bit of consulting work for several other writers, helping them get their own book ideas to market, or steering them towards a better manuscript.

Currently, I’ve moved away from any self-imposed deadlines, choosing to focus on writing longer essays, which eventually will find their way into what will be a varied collection of essays, and a new book.

Frank McCourt is a reminder that books have their own timing. You can only force your writing so far. While I continue to burn the candle at both ends, the craft of writing is often found flourishing when given time, space, and some breathing room from life’s immediacies. That’s not to say that you can’t write evenings and on weekends (between mowing the lawn, fixing the sink, and vacuuming the house), but having the luxury of being able to throw yourself fulltime into your writing projects is probably the optimal road to success.

Moxie: One year later

2009-07-17T05:59:00.003-04:00

Last year at this time, I had just sold a boat load of books about Moxie. I spent the day at the Moxie Festival, signing and selling books, my one opportunity to get a sense of what it might be like to be a famous author.
One year later, things are more low-key. I’m working on essays that will one day be part of a book of essays about the state of Maine. These are longer works (4,000 to 6,000 words) and some will read more like an investigative news feature than pure essay. I also have an essay on the late Maine writer (and longtime Christian Science Monitor columnist) John Gould in search of a home.

As much as Moxie has been part of my recent history (in addition to the book, I provided PR and marketing for the festival committee in the past), I didn’t make it across the river this year for any of the festivities. We had a wedding on Saturday, and on Sunday, we had family over because our son and girlfriend were in for the w/e from LA.

BTW, Moxietown is sold out. I have plans to reprint next spring, with some newer material, some of which didn’t make it into last year’s printing. I also hope that the book of essays is ready, which would be my third book.

Summer Reading-Infinite Jest

2009-07-03T09:45:00.007-04:00

So I’ve set out on a summer reading journey, tackling David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, all 981 pages, an additional 388 endnotes, which tacks on 96 more pages. Not the kind of reading assignment one tackles frivolously. Staying power is required.

Infinite Jest is a “claustrophobic” read, commented one person at Infinite Summer, the focal point of a community read highlighting Wallace’s most famous, and talked about work. Maybe “famous” is the wrong way to describe Wallace and his work.

Unlike the books that get passed off for today’s best selling novels—books that are a cinch to read on your lunch break, the subway, standing in line at the supermarket, or between innings during commercial breaks, watching Red Sox games; Infinite Jest requires heavy lifting—mentally, physically, and metaphorically. Strong arms and a healthy back are also helpful, with this chock-a-block of a novel.

Infinite Summer provides readers, who might be tempted to veer aside, and toss the book down with a loud “thud,” a guide and the company of fellow travelers in reading, which for me, has willed me forward, and actually found me ahead of schedule. Woe to those who got a late start, or haven’t been as religious in their daily reading. Falling behind adds additional pressure to an already tough read, and might be the primary reason many pull up short. Infinite Jest, as presented via Indian Summer, is not a reading plan for procrastinators.

One of the reasons I’m ahead of the reading schedule (as of this morning, I’m at page 227) is illustrated by one of my evenings after work, last week.

Tuesday night, Mary was out for her monthly book club meeting (their group had tackled Khalid Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns), and I had hours of time after work to do what I wanted, as well as an empty house, filled with quiet.

Rather than frittering the time away with the empty calories of sitcoms in rerun, or even pissing away an hour online, with the all-too-often lauded social media tools of Facebook, or Twitter, I arrived home, cracked open a Diet Pepsi (in lieu of a couple of frost-brewed Coors Lights), and set about knocking out some pages over the next hour, or two. Maybe if the sun had been out and it wasn’t raining once again (June has visited rain upon us, 21 out of 30 calendar days), I’d have decided to jump on my bike for an invigorating ride to leech the work day’s stress from my system. The occasional downpours and soaked pavement made my decision to sit under artificial lighting an easier one (that and the stories of how so many have abandoned IJ further on than I’m currently sitting at).

Now that I’m ten days into my assignment, I’m viewing it less as a chore and recognizing now that reading IJ is a subversive act. Understand that for me that’s a real motivator.

When DFW committed suicide last year, no one outside of my wife and son knew anything about him, or his writing. My few failed attempts to explain his significance to co-workers just drew empty looks.

Back in the mid-90s, during my indie rock heyday, I hosted a couple of Saturday night music shows on Bowdoin College’s radio station, WBOR. I was one of a handful of community members that knew enough about college radio, and the CMJ-type formats most programmed at the time, to land a slot, not once, not twice, but for three semesters (and it would have gone longer, if I had decided to continue).

I always gave my shows some kind of “outsider” moniker, like “Swimming Upstream,” or “Against the Grain,” which allowed me to use Bad Religion’s title track from their 1989 album as one of my show’s intro music each week. Subversive college rock radio, I suppose.

During that time, I thought my actions ran counter to the mainstream. I hated much that passed for popular culture, particularly mainstream rock music. I went to great pains to strike a pose running contrary to it.

Looking back a decade, I’m not so sure I was as rad, or counter-cultural as I once fancied myself to be. My musical tastes did run to the fringes of indie rockdom, however.

Given that IJ is my book of choice for the next six to eight weeks (possibly less, given my current reading pace), I’m fueling my page turning forward by thinking of it as an act with seditious tendencies. Accomplishing completion is something that disconnects me from the mainstream of popular culture and its technological mores of watching bad television, mindless trolling of the interwebs, and the current trendy magnetism of social media.

Call the reading “claustrophobic,” difficult, or even impossible to do (as so many are moaning about on the various Infinite Summer blogs) if you want; bail on it after 200 pages if you dare. I’m choosing, however, to move forward as part of a greater reading community of people struggling by various degrees to do something unique in our time—read and think.

I’ve been asking myself (and ruminating on other reader’s comments) the past ten days, why is this book causing us all so much consternation, and even stress? What makes poring through a difficult tome run so counter to our everyday experiences in the 21st century?

I think that most of us, even those that still regularly read books, have been co-opted by our digital world of blog posts, where 300 to 400 word posts are deemed too “wordy.” Even worse, now our written communication must conform to a tool that tries to box us into 140 characters. In that context, David Foster Wallace, and Infinite Jest might just be too goddamn difficult, or “claustrophobic.”

As a writer, I appreciate DFW’s legacy with words. I admit that IJ isn’t an easy read and that his usage has been taxing the two dictionaries I have utilized regularly—both my Pocket Oxford English Dictionary, and the other, more unwieldy New Lexicon Webster’s Dicitonary of the English Language, with its 170,000 definitions and entries (30,000 more than the POED)—neither are sufficient tools for IJ. What current writer strings mixes nouns like “phonemes” and “fricatives,” and an adjective such as “trochaically?”

While it’s convenient for some to accuse Wallace of leaning towards pedantry, crafting prose fat with unfamiliar words to most of the rest of us mere mortals, on the contrary, I think Wallace’s appreciation for words and language is one of the endearing characteristics that I’ve pulled from my reading to date.

Even better, reading Wallace makes me want to write better, and pushes me harder at my own craft.

Jesting infinitely (all summer)

2009-06-26T15:53:00.004-04:00

I've accepted the challenge--I've begun reading Infinite Jest (finally) because of two occurrances: 1) my son sent me a belated Father's Day package including DFW's novel, a hefty tome that one writer described as "a doorstop novel." 2) I discovered (ironically, the day my package arrived containing IJ) that an entire group of people that still consider reading important have decided to do so.

I'm joining in and I'm going along for the ride.

More to come on this summer reading project.

Back to my use of "finally."

When DFW committed suicide, like many others, I was shocked, horrified, and ultimately deeply troubled and saddened. I wrote about it.

At that point, I determined to read IJ, "finally," but to my dismay, I couldn't score a copy for an upcoming long weekend (every store and online resource was "out of stock"). When I returned, I made several more attempts and forgot about reading it.

I'm 63 pages in and I'm as confused, exhilarated, awed, and frustrated as many others who've taken the plunge.

Noir, Los Angeles style

2009-06-21T18:58:00.006-04:00

There is a great deal of conjecture about books and “the future of publishing.” What that basically means is that major publishing’s empire has been forced to contract and consolidate.

Amidst all of this hand wringing about books and their demise, small press publishing continues to experience healthy growth. There are a wealth of innovative small press publishers, particularly those publishing new fiction.

One of the things I enjoyed when I was in Los Angeles, and attended the LA Times Festival of Books, was meeting some of these small press aficionados and seeing the diversity of titles they were bringing out. All of the publishers I talked to were optimistic and saw opportunities in the particular niches they occupied.

One of my favorites of these various presses has to be Akashic Books, a Brooklyn-based small press, founded by former Girls Against Boys bassist, Johnny Temple. With a focus on urban literary fiction, Akashic has developed an expansive catalog of quality titles over the past decade.

Their noir series is pure genius. Launched back in 2004 with the first title, Brooklyn Noir, this innovative concept has expanded into double digits, including noir books highlighting Baltimore, Chicago, Manhattan, Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles.

After tooling around Los Angeles for a week, I knew I had to read Los Angeles Noir when I returned to the sedate environs of my home state.

What I really like about the two noir books I’ve read, the one set in Los Angeles (and also, Baltimore) was how each story is centered in a particular neighborhood, or section of the city.

Each one of the books is edited by a writer hailing from the featured city. The Los Angeles book’s editing duties were handled by Denise Hamilton. Hamilton is a native Angeleno and former reporter for The Times. She now regularly shows up on best seller lists for her crime novels.

Hamilton clearly knows about noir and the city’s penchant for that writing genre. Interestingly, Hamilton shares with readers in the introduction to the book that she was surprised given LA’s noir tradition that a similar book hadn’t already been done.

With each subsequent story being set in a neighborhood/section of Los Angeles, the book mirrored my own take on the city, which Hamilton echoes when she describes the city as a “grab bag of ethnic clusters, neighborhoods, communities, subcultures.”

LA Noir captures the best of the genre, with a 21st century take on it. With each story’s twists, turns, double-crosses, characters drawn to Hollywood’s former myths, and deals gone awry, given to readers by some of the city’s best writers, it shouldn’t be a surprise when they find themselves eagerly turning pages, disappointed once they reach the book’s final one.

[Johnny Temple of Akashic Books/(LA Times photo)]

Eula Biss: Essayist extraordinaire

2009-06-13T15:37:00.010-04:00

Essays and short stories have been my reading domain of late. The essay has also been where I've been focusing my own writing energies.

While the essay is not uncommon, and many writers utilize the essay as a writing platform, an entire book of essays in the wrong hands can often go flat.

Several weeks ago, I happened upon Eula Biss reading her essay, "Time and Distance Overcome" on C-SPAN's BookTV. She was in the midst of the essay, which uses telephone poles to convey several themes about America, including the inherent racism represented by our history.

The telephone pole allowed wires to be strung, linking communities and eventually the entire country. We now view this and Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone as wondrous things. Biss points out in her essay that Americans at that time opposed telephone poles vociferously.

She writes about the New York Times in 1889 reporting a "War on Telephone Poles." Biss tells us that as soon as the telephone company erected a new pole, home owners and business owners would saw it down, even resorting to defending their properties from telephone poles with rifles.

According to Biss, newspaper editorials at the time considered telephone poles as contributors to urban blight.

Despite America's initial disdain for telephone poles, Biss writes that "it would only take four years after Bell's first public demonstration of the telephone for every town of more than ten thousand to be wired, although many towns were only wired to themselves. By the turn of the century, there were more telephone poles than bathtubs in America."

Thomas Edison is quoted as saying that "telephone poles annihilated time and space and brought the human family in closer touch."

Telephone poles also made convenient stations upon which to lynch blacks, something I never learned in history class, and wouldn't have known, if this essay by Biss, contained in her collection of essays, Notes from No Man's Land: American Essays (Graywolf Press, 2009).

Biss doesn't blame telephone poles. They were merely an instrument, a practical one at that given that they were tall and straight, had a cross bar, and they stood in public places, making them great for humiliation and degradation, key elements of lynchings.

Writing about telephone poles and lynchings might seem perverse, and evoke discomfort from readers, Biss conveys something about America in this essay, about racism from our nation's past that is not common knowledge, even though telephone poles are ubiquitous.

Her essays are like that. She looks at things, like race in America, and the prevalence of fear in our country, through a lens somewhat altered from the norm.

We also learn from Biss that her father told her that her grandfather was a telephone lineman and "broke his back when a telephone pole smashed him against the road."

The 13 essays in the book are placed in sections, three of which are geographic divisions where each essay is rooted--New York, California, and the Midwest.

In "Black News," Biss breaks down illusions outsiders have about San Diego, with its beaches and white sand, just like advertisements she had seen, promoting the city.

Biss writes that "most of the people on Pacific Beach were young and white and tanned and muscular." Biss assessed from the beaches that San Diego was "almost entirely white." She would learn later that this wasn't the case.

She didn't live near the beach--she couldn't afford to. She lived in a section of San Diego that was predominantly African-American, where there were "four liquor stores within two blocks two blocks of my apartment." She points out that the nearest bus stop was 10 blocks away.

Biss landed a part-time job as a reporter and photographer for the Voice and Viewpoint, the African-American community paper in the city.

She learned from this that news is different, depending on who hold s editorial control. The beat she covered yielded news that wouldn't be found in the cities white-owned and white-controlled newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune. For instance, the Voice and Viewpoint didn't carry a beach report. The Union-Tribune didn't report on Child and Protective Service's (CPS) systematic assault on black families.The CPS beat was one that Biss was assigned to. Biss learned that not all news was the same, and who reported on it really mattered, and who read the paper mattered more.

What holds these 13 disparate essays together is Biss's obvious chops as a writer. Not one of the essays is a "clunker." Her skill allows her to tie together lynchings on telephone poles, governmental malfeasance towards African-American families in San Diego, and in her essay, "Is This Kansas," the intellectual and ideological poverty of college students, and college administrators in the Midwest.

While all of the essays have a thematic center, which is race in America, a subject fraught with peril for any writer, Biss never comes across as heavy-handed, or haranguing readers, and the essays aren't about ideological axe-grinding.

Throughout Notes from No Man's Land, Biss regularly showed her adeptness and skill as a writer, tackling tough subjects in each essay, but always with a twist or turn that took you somewhere different than you originally thought you were going. In the process, you admired the journey, and how Biss made you think about her points.

This is Biss's first full-length work, made possible when she won Graywolf's Nonfiction Prize for 2008.

I'm sure this will be the first of many books from Biss, as this first book of essays is a winner.

Billy Graham: Friend of Republicans

2009-05-28T07:50:00.006-04:00

Ross Douthat weighs in on Stephen P. Miller's new book, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

Douthat, whose political leanings generally tilt differently than my own (read, conservative), nonetheless, was a regular stop during the last presidential election to take the Republican pulse, and also to witness some rare, nuanced conservative views on Obama, McCain, and the daily machinations of presidential politics. He was one of several bloggers at The Atlantic (like Megan McArdle) that I respected as writers, even if I didn't always march in lockstep with. Sadly, Douthat stopped blogging for The Atlantic in April (he now is a regular op-ed contributor to the NY Times).

His review is solid, like most of what he writes. Douthat, btw, also has a book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, which came out in 2008.

Looks like I'll need to add Miller's book to my growing list of summer reading material.

Aimee Semple McPherson-Fundamentalist Queen

2009-05-24T12:12:00.002-04:00

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, by Matthew Avery Sutton (Harvard University Press, 2007)

Long before megachurches and names like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen became commingled with American Christianity, Aimee Semple McPherson was America’s key religious figure, representing fundamentalism and old-time religion in America between the two World Wars. She was America’s most famous and certainly flamboyant minister, during the 1920s, 1930s, and even into the early 1940s. Given the scope of her influence, and thorough remaking of the country’s religious landscape, it is unfortunate that so few within, and without the confines of American Christendom know about “Sister Aimee” today.

While there have been books detailing McPherson’s life before (both Edith Blumhofer and Daniel Epstein produced solid works about McPherson) Matthew Avery Sutton’s Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America is the first book that places her firmly within the cultural, political, and religious milieu of her era.

The book, which came out in 2007, avoids some the traps of previous treatments of McPherson’s life—the stereotypes and caricature so often attendant with this early 20th century religious icon.

Avery does an excellent job of highlighting the context of the period when McPherson’s star began to rise. From simple beginnings on a farm in Ontario, McPherson would utilize the new media of her day, particularly radio, to draw upon the burgeoning appeal of popular entertainment, and the development of modern day Hollywood.

Raised by a strict mother, McPherson’s religious underpinnings were forged by the conservative theology of the Salvation Army. Later, she would meet an itinerant Pentecostal evangelist and fiery preacher, Robert Semple, when he came to Ingersoll, her hometown, for a revival. Later, the two married and after a brief time in Chicago, the newlyweds were off to the mission field in China. Semple later contracted malaria, and died, leaving Aimee stranded with her young daughter. She would return to the States, enter into another relationship leading to marriage to Harold McPherson, a successful businessman. This one would fail mainly due to McPherson’s inability to forego preaching, for domestic chores and duties.

It was as an evangelist that McPherson began to find her true religious calling. After a transcontinental journey in her “Gospel Car,” which was painted with the slogan, “Where will you spend eternity?” and holding meetings from the farflung reaches of the northeast in Maine, down the eastern seaboard into Florida, and across America’s heartland, in the Midwest. From there, McPherson headed west, arriving in Los Angeles in December, 1918, with mother and children in tow.

While there is no doubt that McPherson would have attained a measure of fame and notoriety regardless of where she put down roots, the city of Los Angeles during the 1920s was the perfect place for someone with McPherson’s gifts, charisma, and sexual aura to be living. It is Avery’s ability to place McPherson within this context, and his understanding of its importance that makes his book the standout that it is.

Los Angeles in the 1920s had been transformed from a sleepy agricultural town, to the place where 500,000 Americans descended over the next decade, lured by train to an Edenic paradise with its fabulous climate, marketed by legions of real estate developers and other civic opportunists. Score of Midwesterners—retired farmers, grocers, Ford agents and others—would sell out their farms and businesses to settle in California, and in particular, the “City of Angels.” It was from the bulk of these folks that McPherson would build her following from.

Civic leaders were thrilled that McPherson chose to build her magnificent Angelus Temple in sunny Los Angeles. They saw her choice as vindication of their city, and would serve as a magnet for tourists, and it wasn’t long before these leaders saw the economic bump that McPherson provided.

The Temple was located a few miles from downtown, at the corner of Sunset and Glendale Boulevards. I visited the church a few weeks ago, when in Los Angeles, and it is a magnificent building even today. It had to have been a spectacular attraction nearly 90 years ago, when first built. Avery points out that famed California journalist and historian Carey McWilliams believed that McPherson’s timing for establishing her church, and its location “were perfect.”

McWilliams wrote, “The postwar period, so full of restlessness, with its craze for entertainment and passion for frivolity, had already given birth to the Jazz Age. The flapper had arrived, a little tipsy, with short skirts and bobbed hair. It was time for petting and necking; for flasks and roadside taverns; for move ‘palaces’ and automobiles…and Aimee was determined to lead the parade on a grand detour to Heaven.”

Attendees would parade to the Angelus Temple en masse during McPherson’s heyday, with church officials counting weekly attendance at between thirty and fifty thousand people, as the church was packed almost nightly and on weekends. They came to hear McPherson’s sermons, and theatrical delivery of her biblical message.

Avery clearly makes the case that it was McPherson who deserves credit for the megachurch movement, and the political strength exhibited by the religious right, and figures such as James Dobson.

Eighty years ago, fundamentalism was floundering. It was on the ropes, after taking an uppercut to the jaw from the Scopes Trial, and repeated attacks from liberal theologians like Fosdick, making claims that modern science invalidated the fundamentalist theology. McPherson and her allies reshaped the “old-time religion” and found new ways to promote it and connect it to changes happening in mainstream American culture.

Avery’s book is well-researched, without being overly pedantic, or unnecessarily scholarly. This isn’t to say that it doesn’t hold up well as a strong source of historical documentation.

He takes a very even-handed approach to an important 20th century figure, one that is sadly underrepresented in the 21st century, and should be, given the importance of who she was, and what she represented, particularly her role model for women, as a religious and cultural pioneer.

The book should appeal to anyone wanting to broaden their understanding of America and early 20th century history. It also is a very strong work on the phenomenon of urban growth in the last century, particularly Los Angeles, and its ascendancy to becoming one of the nation’s great cities.

Writing about dogs

2009-05-19T18:15:00.007-04:00

Mark Doty is a fine writer. Equally at home writing poetry, as well as prose, my first contact with his work was via his wonderful memoir, Dog Years.

The book was one of many that I jammed into my backpack while readying for our summer vacation, in August 2007. Mary had found what looked like a delightful, rustic cottage along Maine's rocky coast, in Steuben, about an hour east (or Down East, if you prefer) of Mount Desert Island, and removed from the tourist Mecca of Bar Harbor. Granted, we were working from a picture and description from a guide to Maine camps and cottages (put out by the Maine's Office of Tourism , I think), but we decided to take and chance. I'm glad we did.

Bernie, then 12-years-old, was beginning to show the first signs of aging. Occasionally, after he would run chasing balls in the yard, or aggressively exert himself running, his rear haunches would shake and quiver. I wondered if he was showing the first signs of a possible genetic hip condition that Shelties are prone to have.

Steuben became a magical week away from television, cell phones, and computers. It was a week filled with early morning walks in the fog, exploring the shoreline at low tide. We met a local clammer, 82-year-old Reny, who kept us supplied with the freshest clams for the rest of the week, for a pittance of what we'd have paid in Portland. Mark, our son, and his girlfriend, Gabi, would arrive midweek, and share the cottage for the remainder of the week.

One night, we had Sandy Phippen, Maine writer extraordinaire, over for dinner. Phippen and I had struck up a relationship over the phone over the past few years, and I thought it would be great to have him by, since he lived nearby in Hancock. His homespun Maine humor and stories kept us all in stitches throughout dinner and afterwards.

I read Doty's book in a day and a half. Without giving away too many details of the book, the ending, where Doty eloquently conveys the passing of one of his two beloved 70-pound labs, Beau, touched an emotional resevoir, as if my own canine friend, Bernie, had passed away. Little did I know that less than two years later, I would personally experience the loss of my own friend.

Doty's book has a much greater depth than the popular Marley & Me. That's not to say that the latter isn't fine for some tastes, but for me, Doty's writing is much more grounded in the harsh complexities of life's realities, with their joy, pain, heartbreak, and the inevitable death of loved ones, both animal and human that all of us must come to terms with.

This is only the second day without Bernie, but his departure has left an almost palpable emptiness in our home. This void has much less to do with the absence of Bernie's 35-pound physical frame, and much more to do with his larger than life spirit and personality that filled rooms, and always elicited a smile. He was a dog that truly loved everyone he was ever with, as long as it was human, and not a fellow dog (an association that I don't think Bernie ever was comfortable with).

I know that both Mary, Mark, and I will ultimately come to terms with the loss of our dog, but in the short-term, it's just really hard to cope with, just as Doty was able to convey in his wonderful memoir.

Writing awards for Mainers

2009-05-14T19:35:00.003-04:00

In book news that has virtually gone unnoticed in her state of birth, former Maine resident, author Elizabeth Strout, won a coveted Pulitzer in fiction, for her latest novel, Olive Kitteridge.

Ironically, it was the LA Times where I learned of this. Back in 1999, Strout had scored the newspaper's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, for her debut novel, Amy and Isabelle.

While much of the Pine Tree State seems to be oblivious to Strout's award, Carolyn Kellogg of the Times' Jacket Copy blog, wrote a nice post featuring Strout.

Strout's prior novel, Abide With Me, captured accurately, I think, life in a small Maine town, like few other books I've read. While Strout's lived away for several years, she's obviously still connected to her Maine roots.

In an interview done a few years ago, Strout, a Bates College grad, touched on the small town way of life that still characterizes some of the state's more remote areas, although it's disappearing rapidly.

"I come from Maine," Strout says, "and both my parents come from eight or nine generations of Maine people. Even though I've been in New York for so many years, there's something deeply familiar to me about that kind of small town. There is a way of life up there that's disappearing. I did not set out to do it. Not at all. But the pressure inside of me was asking me to write about these people, and it occurs to me that I am sort of documenting the end of an era."

Strout isn't the only native Mainer garnering a recent award for their writing.

Wilton resident Kathy Lynn Emerson was awarded the 2008 Agatha Award for Best Non-fiction Book at the Malice Domestic conference in Washington, D.C.

The Agatha Awards are named after noted mystery writer, Agatha Christie, and are awarded annually to writers working in the mystery genre.

Emerson is nothing, if not prolific, having penned 40 books over the past two decades, averaging two published books per year.

While Stephen King is the name most likely to crop up in conversations about Maine writers, both Strout and Emerson prove that there are other writers with Maine roots worth taking notice of.

Laying it out, 140 bits at a time

2009-05-12T06:42:00.003-04:00

Saw this at both Jacket Copy and The Elegant Variation, this AM.

Dispatched (as in "canned) writer, Dan Baum, is using Twitter to regale his followers about his tenure with The New Yorker.

Gawker had a piece about this, yesterday, also.

One bit that I found particularly interesting, was Baum lamenting life as a freelancer--it took him seventeen years of pitching stories to finally break through with the magazine.

From Baum:

First, a little about the job of New Yorker staff writer. "Staff writer" is a bit of a misnomer, as you're not an employee, But rather a contractor. So there's no health insurance, no 401K, and most of all, no guarantee of a job beyond one year. My gig was a straight dollars-for-words arrangement: 30,000 words a year for $90,000. And the contract was year-to-Year. Every September, I was up for review. Turns out, all New Yorker writers work this way, even the bigfeet. It's Just the way the New Yorker chooses to behave. It shows no loyalty to its writers, yet expects full fealty in return. It gets away with it, because writing for the New Yorker is the ne plus ultra of journalism gigs. Like everybody, I Loved it. More later.

I freelanced. I never even came close to landing a gig like Baum's, at The New Yorker. Still, I can appreciate the tenuousness of that life, and it's one of the reasons I have a f/t day job to pay my bills, and pursue my own writing/publishing in my "free" time.

Taking the scenic route

2009-05-08T06:50:00.005-04:00

If you like author interviews (as I do), then you'll enjoy this Mark Doten interview (via Bookslut) with Binnie Kirshenbaum, talking about her latest book, The Scenic Route.

The next to last question is an interesting one, about the pigeonholing of authors (particularly female authors). Kirshenbaum's honest response, particularly related to the difficulty that authors have in getting their books into the hands of people that would most appreciate reading them, highlights an issue that most writers face--all but the handful of matinee, best-selling types--the ones that non-writers assume are the norm, which then perpetuates the false romanticism about writing.

BTW, Kirshenbaum is also the chair of Columbia's Creative Writing program.

Content is still king

2009-05-06T20:38:00.005-04:00

I have have been pondering this for awhile. I think that content still matters. Maybe this thought is a 20th century idea and I am holding onto a world where print and hard copy still matter. I hope that's not the case.

While many trumpet the death of print, and even the written word, and with an ever-expanding stable of devices and social media applications, all seemingly devoted to the least common denominator regarding content, one can understand the tendency to heed the siren of doom, particularly as it concerns the state of words and writing.

When I was in LA, I had lunch with a friend, and former writing colleague. We met in Koreatown, as I had never experienced Korean BBQ before. The culinary experience was worthwhile, but even better, in my opinion, was the conversation.

My friend is attending Annenberg’s Master's program in communications. Our conversation started with what we’ve both been up to, and gradually drifted to all things media, and journalism, in particular.

It was McLuhan that famously uttered, “the medium is the message,” and all too often, I think that might be true. Twitter is a case in point. Given its 140 character limit, and the moniker given it that it is a “micro-blogging” platform, lends greater credence to it than I think it deserves. But how much can really be conveyed in 140 words, or less?

The point my friend made, and one that I've considered for some time, is this--newspapers, and other media outlets that have primarily been invested in print are making a mistake in the transition, online. Rather than ensuring that their content remains the focus of their efforts, all too often, newspapers and magazines have opted to "dumb down" their content thinking that somehow, by doing this--aiming for the lowest common denominator--they could preserve their readership, transitioning to a new medium. In the process, they've lost readers, like me and newspapers (I no longer subscribe), instead of preserving something meaningful, and figuring out the new model of publishing, have opted to publish drivel, calling it news.

Interestingly, my friend, who is nearly 20 years my junior, validates the idea that others are making--content still matters.

I plan on periodically highlighting print models that appear to be working, from small press book publishers, to hybrid models of journalism.

California readin'

2009-05-01T06:49:00.006-04:00

Corresponding with my trip to Los Angeles, I made sure that the books I stuffed my back pack with also had a connection to the city.

On the flight out, my reading choice was Post Office by Charles Bukowski. I finished it, and began another book by one of my favorite writers, Joseph Wambaugh.

Wambaugh's books are basically a version of cops and robbers, LA-style, but if your tastes run to that region, Wambaugh will rarely disappoint. Ever since I first read The Glitter Dome, back in 1983, I've been hooked on his books that capture the grittiness of urban police work. I've read most of books, since then. I had hoped to get into the Festival of Books' panel that he was on, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to get tickets.

I started Hollywood Crows (A "CRO," is a community relations officer, so the title is a play on that acronym) on my flight out to LA, but put it aside during my nine days, tooling around greater-LA, while on vacation. I actually read another book, while staying with my son. He recommended I read his copy of Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit, by Matt McCarthy.

McCarthy, a Yale grad, spends a summer in Provo, Utah, playing for the Angels' Single-A Rookie League team. This is an honest account (I think), of the side of professional baseball that doesn't get much recognition. The rigors of playing baseball everyday, instead of the much less demanding college schedule McCarthy and other college draft picks are coming from, is detailed. McCarthy also shows sides of baseball people that aren't always flattering. I'll probably return to this book at a later point, as McCarthy's portrait of life in the minor leagues is a worthwhile one. After McCarthy's one ill-fated season that was the fodder for his book, he went to Harvard Medical school and is now a first year intern at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, in New York, illustrating that there is life after baseball.

Back to Wambaugh's 2008 novel (he just released another book, Hollywood Moon, this year, the third in his Hollywood Station trilogy), the fine officers of LAPD are once again the subjects of his book, and Wambaugh continues to provide readers with an honest portrait of the men/women that wear the badge, and promise to protect and serve.

Long before David Simon was giving us his own version of law enforcement, ala Baltimore, Wambaugh was drawing upon his experience as a former LAPD detective, to write provocative fiction, based upon the lives of the real men and women that make police work their vocation.

If you enjoy The Wire, or other cop dramas, I'd recommend that you check out Wambaugh's books. I think you'll find them enjoyable, and grounded in reality.

Final days in LA

2009-04-29T07:58:00.005-04:00

The next to last day of a trip is always worse than the final day. Getaway day, you're prepared to leave, and you begin preparations such as repacking the suitcase, figuring out how to get in those extra things (books) that you didn't bring with you, and how best to avoid freeway traffic and find the least harrowing route to the airport--well, actually, that final thing might be unique to LA and LAX, since I'll be traveling to the airport during rush hour.

My first trip to the City of Angels has been a memorable one. Seeing my son for the first time since August was the highlight, but there were so many other things. Attending my first major book festival, the Festival of Books on Saturday, spending time in some of the great neighborhoods of the city, like Los Feliz, and Silver Lake. That entire morning in Silver Lake was very enjoyable, beginning with a visit to Angelus Temple, strolling around Echo Park, and then relaxing over coffee at Intelligentsia, drinking in the vibe of hipness, while being the antithesis of "the scene" there, that morning.

Driving the Pacific Coast Highway, late Sunday afternoon was a highlight, as was yesterday's amazing visit to Griffith Park and Observatory. The park was stunning, and the views fabulous. This was one of the "must sees" I had on my list of things to do, and it exceeded my expectations. What an amazing gift that Mr. Griffith bequeathed to the people of Los Angeles, and those that come here to visit. I know that if I lived here, this would become my periodic sanctuary from the urban craziness.

[One of the highlights of my visit to LA]

Last night, my son and I spent dinner with many New England transplants, at Sonny McLean's, watching the Celtics eke out an exciting OT victory over Chicago. One of the great things about west coast time, is that games from the east are on so early. Nothing is worse than fighting sleep to stay up on a work night, or worse, going to bed and missing the excitement. Here in the west, most ball games are done, and the box scores online, long before slumber, and playoff games from the east are watchable over the dinner hour. A sports junkie's dream!

The city has been so much more than I expected. Actually, I didn't know what to expect. It is more beautiful, in its urbanity than I expected. Yes, traffic is crazy, and Angelinos cannot drive, or park their own cars, or mow their own lawns, etc., but by and large, as cities go (and I'm not really a city guy), LA exceeds Boston, Chicago, and the other U.S. cities I've spent time in.

The visit's also been good in one other way--I've actually gotten a bump in my blog stats from readers who have found Write in Maine based upon my posts on the Festival of Books, so that's been positive.

Today will be another great day, as I'm getting together with Bill, an old friend and fellow writer. He and I got to know one another when he was living in Portland, attending Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. He was part of a group of writers that founded the free weekly, The Portland Pigeon that helped me get my start, writing regularly, and having a supportive group of people to critique my articles. It was this group, and the paper that helped me hone my writing, crafting articles like this one, which then led to my first book project. As they say, the rest is history. I've continued to write, blog, and I'm in the early stages of a third book. The Pigeon helped lay the foundation for that.

My friend is now back on the west coast (where he's from), attending the graduate journalism program at USC's Annenberg School for Communication. Like many, as newspapers decline, and the face of journalism changes, people like Bill are opting to pursue graduate school, as they hope to have a role in changing reworking news journalism in the digital age. This article from The Times touches on that phenomenon.

As I contemplate my departure, I have plans to keep Los Angeles close over the next few months, reading books connected to the city, and its culture. There is a posting here of someone asking about good books about the city, and understanding its uniqueness. This seems like a good starting point, including the books by Mike Davis, which I plan to tackle. There was even a recommendation of Weetzie Bat, by Francesca Lia Block. I welcome any other suggestions from readers.

I bid you "Adios," as this will most likely be my final post from Los Angeles. The next time I sit down to post, I'll be back in Maine, but enriched from my time here.

A festival for readers

2009-04-26T10:01:00.010-04:00

The LA Times Festival of Books is being held at UCLA, a sprawling campus, located in the Westwood section of the city.

As a longtime viewer of C-Span’s BookTV, I’ve watched much of their frequent live coverage emanating from various major book festivals from around the U.S. Yesterday, I had my first opportunity to attend one of these festivals in person.

Arriving early, with my son, I parked my rental car in one of UCLA’s numerous remote lots and boarded one of the shuttle busses headed for the campus. Even at 10:00, when the festival first opened, there were already thousands of other book aficionados focused on the same task as we were—getting to the festival.

The special festival tabloid the the LA Times handed out was perfect, with a campus map, schedule of events, and bios on the various authors that would be in attendance.

Our first panel that we attended was Biography: The Corridors of Power, and had three authors and historians, each talking about their latest book.

The three authors, Jim Newton, H.W. Brands, and Ronald C. White, Jr., discussed their books, and in particular, how they came to choose to write books about Lincoln, FDR, and Earl Warren.

Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas, was particularly engaging. Not your typical academic, droning on about facts and minutae, Brands was captivating, and made a compelling case for why he would choose to write yet another book about Roosevelt. In fact, having spent considerable time reading about FDR and the New Deal of late, I fully intend to pick up Brands’ latest book, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when I return to Maine.

We attended a second panel in the afternoon titled, Sports: The Athlete As Role Model, which included Diana Nyad, who at one-time was considered the greatest long distance swimmer in the world. She is now a journalist and author. Other members of the panel, moderated David Davis, were Bill Dwyre, sports editor at the Times, and Michael Vetre, who writes for a variety of outlets, including MSNBC.com.

[David Davis, Diana Nyad, Michael Vetre, and Bill Dwyre on athletes as role models]

While I'm not sure I came away with any clearer picture of where athletes fall on the continum between celebrity entertainer, and role model, but the discussion was interesting. Dwyre, the stereotypical gruff, cynical male that used to write sports, before the influx of the new sports "journalists," like Bill Simmons, and others, was a good counter, to Nyad's perkiness.

One of my favorite activities during the festival was visiting and chatting with the many small press publishers that were in attendance.

There were some great literary small presses, like Red Hen Press, and Akashic Books, represented. McSweeney's was also there.

I stopped by the booth of Small Press Distribution and talked some shop with one of their representatives, as well as picking up a book about Los Angeles, by Otis Books, called Seeing Los Angeles: A Different Look at a Different City.

While the festival continues today, I probably won't be attending merely because my stay in Los Angeles is limited and there is just too much to see and do.

[Yours truly with the C-Span bus in the background]

Bookstores matter

2009-04-25T09:39:00.005-04:00

Skylight Books is the kind of quaint bookstore you once found in every community large enough to support a retail book seller, usually perched on main street, or wherever residents congregated to conduct commerce. Actually, let me edit that sentence to read, Skylight Books is the kind of quaint bookstore you once found in every community large enough to support a retail book seller, before large chain and online book retailers began stealing their customer bases.

On Friday, I visited this vibrant book emporium, located in the Los Feliz neighborhood, to hear one of America’s last remaining journalists speak. Amy Goodman was at Skylight, along with her brother, David, as part of a 70 city tour supporting Standing Up To The Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times.

The noontime appearance drew a turnout of about 100 people, packing the bookstore with those of us who respect the work of the Goodmans, and the program that Amy is most associated with, Democracy Now. While 100 people is a good turnout at any book event for non-celebrity authors, this was also taking place in a city with a population over 3 million people. Goodman has spoken several times in Maine (appearance I always have missed, unfortunately), and I’m sure that in our state of just over 1 million, in a city like Portland, with 60,000 people, turnouts rivaled her LA appearance.

It’s unfortunate that while Amy Goodman has a devoted following, and many continue to tune in daily to Democracy Now, often on community stations like Pacifica's KPFK-FM, she is still unknown to those who get their news entirely from mainstream sources. Still, while not a household name, those that seek alternative sources for their information respect Democracy Now’s work that regularly covers the stories that corporately controlled media no longer deem viable.

Goodman, who the night before was in Idaho, and ran into traffic issues on her way from LAX, was about 30 minutes late for her 12:30 appearance. The friendly crowd chatted, browsed the book selection, and when Amy arrived, she was greeted by a warm ovation. David arrived a bit later.

She is a captivating speaker, rattling off details effortlessly. Her LA talk touched on how the majority have been silenced by the corporate takeover of our media.

She spoke about how the mainstream got the story wrong (on purpose), when Rosa Parks died. They portrayed her as “lowly seamstress that just wanted a seat on the bus after a hard day of working. “ In truth, according to Goodman, Parks “knew exactly what she was doing when she sat down on that bus.”

Goodman also spoke about Martin Luther King Jr., and his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delivered exactly one year before this death, on April 4, 1967. King’s speech was a speech he didn’t want to deliver, and was advised to not deliver by those close to him, because he was taking on America’s militarism (and the war in Vietnam), but maybe even more importantly, America’s materialism, and it’s abandonment of its poor. Once more, King’s legacy has been “whitewashed” by a media that doesn’t want its audience to ever consider class, or disavow its culture of fancy cars, electronic gadgets, and cosmetic enhancements, to focus on the inequality of our country, a divide that continues to grow wider.

As Goodman said, “we need a media that is the fourth estate, not for the state.”

She closed with the election of “Barack Hussein Obama,” and the significance of his becoming president. As Goodman put it, “how do we organize today, when the community organizer in chief, is now the commander in chief?”

Both Amy and her brother David said that their new book is about the groundswell that they’ve encountered across America, of ordinary people, organizing, and working to take back their communities, and their country. It is a story of the people—not celebrity activists—but everyday people, working to bring about change. This is the groundswell that swept President Obama into office.

I bought a copy of the new book that I’ll probably read on my return flight. I stood in line with about 50 others, and had it signed by both David and Amy.

Amy Goodman will be part of a panel today, at the LA Times Festival of Books.

Angelenos

2009-04-24T07:55:00.007-04:00

So, how do I like Los Angeles? Well, other than the over-emphasis on cars, clothes, and the cosmetic surgery, Angelinos seem like a nice group of people. Just don't cut them off in traffic, or follow too close, as apparently they've not discovered their directionals, yet.

Actually, I spent last night with a bunch of transplanted New Englanders at Sonny McLean's, watching the Celtics pound the Bulls. It was nice to find a place where Boston sports rule, and in LA that would be Sonny McLean's Irish Pub.

Real folks, real food (no arugala, here), and Boston beer (I had my first Sam Adams Summer Ale of the season), and the Celtics had the place rocking.

I'm headed up to Silver Lake later this morning to spend time with the hipsters, and the other artsy types that make Silver Lake and Echo Park home. Given my current book project, related to religion gone afoul, I'm hoping to visit the Angelus Temple, where Aimee Semple McPherson once worked her magic, and duped thousands with the gospel according to Aimee. Actually, today's megachurch stars, like Rick Warren, owe a huge debt to Sister Aimee, because without her, there would be no Saddleback Church.

Tomorrow is book day, at the Festival of Books.

Writing times

2009-04-23T08:47:00.002-04:00

I'm in sunny SoCal, in Los Angeles actually. I'm out visiting my son who relocated here last August, from Boston. It's great seeing him (I haven't seen him since he headed west), and I'm also going to spend the weekend with 130,000 other fans of the book at the LA Times Festival of Books, happening at UCLA, April 25 and 26.

Both he and I are up early (4:30), blogging, and typing away on our laptops. He maintains the witty EverydayYeah site, writes fiction, and continues to hone his craft, while also maintaining a f/t job. I certainly have my own experience with burning the candle at both ends. For most successful writers, that's the type of discipline that you must develop if you ever have hopes of moving your writing to the next level.

When is your best time to write, and once you determine that, are you making a regular appointment each day with yourself to spend at least an hour working on something--an essay, novella, that book you've said you were going to finish, or an article for a magazine--writing doesn't just happen. You plan it, or life crowds it out.

In anticipation of my trip to LA, I've been reading Bukowski. While his life has been romanticized by some, especially those that love the idea of the writer's life being one of booze, women, and debauchery (lack of discipline), the reality, when you view the amount of material that he published, he obviously had a very disciplined approach to writing. It may not have been at 4:30, or before noon for that matter, but writing at 11:30 pm, while you're polishing off a six-pack still gets material down on paper. Even better if you can leave the booze for some other time.

If you call yourself a writer, then by all means, write.

I hope to have some interesting stories, photos, anecdotes, and general positive things to report from the weekend's book soiree. On Friday, I'll be at SkylightBooks, in downtown, hearing (and possibly, meeting) Amy Goodman, co-host of DemocracyNow.

A baseball brief

2009-04-20T19:48:00.003-04:00

Baseball, more than any other American sport, has had countless books, essays, and articles written about it. For whatever reason, baseball attracts the literate, the intellectual, and writers, in ways that basketball, football, and hockey rarely do.

What is it about a game that was once our nation's pastime, warrant the attention of best selling authors, political columnists, theologians, and many others?

John Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent, is trying to teach baseball to his 6-year-old son, with limited success, or so he indicates in his latest column. He's looking for someone to refine the essence of a game, filled with history, scandal, various rule changes, with its current incarnation something that a hard-boiled player from its stories past, say Ty Cobb, would barely recognize, into a pithy 150 words. Why has everything connected to writing and words been taken over by limitations and minimalism? Not everything worth writing about lends itself to 140 characters, ala Twitter.

I did take Dickerson up on his challenge, however, and sent in my 150 word take on America's grand old game.

Publishing experience comes with a price

2009-04-18T09:08:00.005-04:00

In 2005, I had a completed a 287 page manuscript, culled from a year's worth of research, and six months of working on the manuscript. My idea for a book had warranted interest from several regional presses. Each one of these small press publishers were intrigued by my idea for a book about small town baseball, based in Maine, during the postwar years of 1945, through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Ultimately, however, none of them had experience marketing a book about sports, so I was left with a dilemma--sit on my manuscript, or undertake the task of doing it myself. I chose the latter, and RiverVision Press was born.

With the release of When Towns Had Teams, my first book, a fledgling Maine-based small press garnered a national award, receiving an IPPY, in 2006, as my book was selected for Independent Publishers' Best Regional Non-fiction Title for the Northeast, beating out a well-established university press, the University Press of New England. This validated my decision to go the DIY publishing route.

Two more books; another author's work in 2007, and my second book, Moxietown, in 2008 (which has sold out its first printing) has firmly established RiverVision as a legitimate small press. Additionally, I recently helped another Maine author with pre-press support, and provided consulting assistance, allowing him to launch his own book, detailing his experiences as a basketball coach in Maine's western mountains region.

By learning to publish through a combination of trial-and-error, seeking out others doing something similar, and locating some very solid resources, and guidebooks, I now have something that borders on expertise in my niche corner of the publishing world. I can help anyone serious about getting a book to market, guarantee it will look professional, and help with the wealth of pre-press details that are the difference between having something that looks amateurish, or producing a sharp looking book that will be accepted by independent book stores, as well as the large chains, and Amazon. In fact, my background in sales and marketing will help any would be author/publisher develop a solid brand and marketing strategy.

Another area where I have a wealth of experience that extends far beyond publishing, is the ability to collaborate and partner with others, which leverages additional resources that I could never provide on my own.

On the writing/publishing side, I've forged a friendship and working relationship with a highly-skilled designer, and fellow small press publisher, in his own right. Ari Meil, of Warren Machine Company has been a real asset and his friendship has helped me to persevere as a publisher, when the going has been difficult. He and I have talked about collaborating beyond what we've done recently, where Ari provided layout and design support (and a great cover) for Moxietown. If the right project were to come along, I'd certainly consider it.

Still, despite my experience and relative success as an independent publisher, I still have many people that initially gravitate my way, expecting me to give that experience away. You wouldn't expect another professional, consultant, or other service provider to work for free--why would you expect me to do the same?

I regularly receive requests from people asking me to take a look at their manuscript, or wonder if I have the time to meet them, to talk about a book idea. Given that I work a 55-60 hour Monday through Friday job, am in the process of working on my third book, and also would like a few hours a week to spend with my wife, and enjoy Maine's all-too-short summer, I would say that having an expectation of being compensated for my services, and expertise, is not unreasonable.

Writing is work

2009-04-14T20:47:00.003-04:00

Writers that publish and show output, are writers that find a way to work, when they would rather be doing anything else, but write. Like tonight.

After working a 11-hour day that had me in the office at 7:00 am, I found a way to spend another hour at the keyboard tonight, banging out over 1,000+ words. This is the second night in a row at this level of output, which is good. Normally, I try to average 500-750 words, four nights per week, when in production mode, with weekends given to doubling and tripling that amount. That's the kind of commitment that's required to continue to publish, when you require a full-time job to pay the bills.

Reading Gay Brewer's book on Charles Bukowski, one of Twayne's U.S. Authors Series, I learned that Bukowski worked a series of day jobs, including a 12 year stint with the U.S. Postal Service, which provided the fodder for his first novel, Post Office.

A web-based slant on journalism

2009-04-12T07:45:00.004-04:00

With newspapers continuing to experience their own Social Darwinian contraction, its hard to predict where journalism goes next. As print struggles to remain viable, the migration has been to the web, as various models have sprung up, attempting to capture readers moving away from print, and the younger demographic that never developed an affinity for newspapers in the first place.

Last week, reports were circulating that the Boston Globe was in serious straits financially, with the parent company, the New York Times, telling union officials who represent the paper’s 10-plus labor unions that they need to cut costs by $20 million by May 1, or risk having the veritable Hub newspaper shuttered. The unions have fired back that "enough is enough," so it's up in the air whether the Globe will remain a viable big city daily, or not. Either way, when news stories intimate that a newspaper like the Globe is in danger of going away, you know daily newspapers in general are dangerously close to flatlining.

Yet another new model of web journalism has sprung up, utilizing what is being termed, "open alpha." As Walter Mossberg, the Wall Street Journal's personal technology writer indicated, this means the site, True/Slant, is "rough around the edges, and not yet taking in revenue, but hopes to attract enough participation to hone its design and operations."

The new site is run by a former AOL news executive, Jonathan Miller, and will cover a variety of topics including politics, culture, sports, business, health, science, and food.

It appears to me to be similar in scope and focus to the Huffington Post. Time will tell if True/Slant can capture the critical mass it needs to pay writers, which is what web journalism is lacking at present.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who had been a staff writer for Time, has joined True/Slant's roster of experienced journalists, which according to Mossberg, numbers 65.

Takeuchi Cullen offers her take on why she's left traditional print, to help the new site set up its own journalistic beachhead.

Books on LA

2009-04-09T06:20:00.004-04:00

I'll be headed to Los Angeles in a few weeks to visit Mr. Everyday Yeah, and also, to take in the LA Times Festival of Books.

When forced to travel, good reading material is a necessity, particularly to while away time in airports, and during my flight. My experience with flying is that passengers don't (can't) hold conversations, so I need something to lose myself in while crossing the country.

John Fante's Ask the Dust might be a good choice. Possibly some Bukowski; maybe some Raymond Chandler.

Anybody have any good "plane reading material"?

So you want to be an author

2009-04-04T08:59:00.007-04:00

You may have noticed (you small cadre of visitors) that the postings here have been more frequent of late. That's because I'm spending more time focused on writers, books, and the world of publishing.

This may be in part because I've dipped my toe tentatively into my next book project. By tentative I mean, I've begun the process of writing again, albeit, more sporadically than I'd like, but it's begun.

As a writer that derives most of his income from some other source besides my writing/publishing, having a demanding day job can make finding writing time challenging, but not impossible.

My last book, Moxietown, came together over a five month period that entailed 70+ hour weeks in order to have a book out in time for a deadline, which for that book, was the Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls.

The new book, which I'll remain mum about until later, is less deadline driven, and more about capturing a period in my life that's always been lurking as a book idea, and the time seems right to make it happen. More to come about that.

I happened across a website for the writer, John McNally (can't recall how I ended up at his site), and found that he dishes some good material for aspiring writers, such as the following:

This may be basic to the point of sounding stupid, but if you want to write, you need to read. I can't begin to tell you how many people write but don't read, or, if they do read, they don't read anything contemporary. Writing doesn't work that way. You need to be reading all the time - great books, good books, crappy ones.

McNally's advice about learning to tell the difference between good writing, and crap, is important, particularly since it's not necessarily subjective.

I'm not sure if this happens for other writers, but when people find out that I've written two books, I get a variation of the response, "I'd like to write a book someday," or, "I know I've got a book in me." While I rarely say it, I often think, "have at it," knowing what it takes to get a book to the finish line.

It isn't easy, but if you really are a writer, it's just something that you have to do, especially once you've done it once. In fact, for me, when I'm not actively engaged in working on a new book idea, I usually feel guilty, like I'm not being true to my calling.

Fiction representing reality

2009-03-28T12:02:00.002-04:00

I referenced Tom Perrotta’s excellent book, The Abstinence Teacher, over at my other blog, Words Matter. I don’t read very much fiction, but when I do, I prefer works that make you think, and have believable characters and a plots.

Perrotta’s characters were believable, and not hokey, or cardboard thin. What also impressed me about the book, was how the author handled the subject of born-again Xianity and the characters from the Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth, and in particular, Tim Mason, one of the book’s principal characters.

Mason is the soccer coach for one of Stonewood Heights’ (the fictional northeastern suburb of the novel) youth soccer leagues, who becomes embroiled, and entangled with Ruth Ramsey, the book’s protagonist.

Ramsey becomes enraged when Mason gathers the girls on his team (which includes her daughter, Maggie, a star player on the team) for a post match prayer. Ramsey, a sex ed teacher at the local high school, is already in the midst of her own controversy, after a churchgoing snitch reports her teacher's blasé endorsement of oral sex to her parents. This brings down the ire of several Xian parents, and puts her in the crosshairs of Pastor Dennis, the right-wing firebrand preacher of the Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth. The school, which has signed on to pushing an abstinence agenda, forces Ruth to push something she regards as ''a farce, an attack on sexuality itself, nothing more than officially sanctioned ignorance.''

Ruth, who now finds herself the target of the church’s crusade, describes the experience as like ''living in a horror movie. ... 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' or something. You never knew who they were going to get to next.''

Many writers misrepresent fundamentalist and/or conservative evangelical Xianity, not due to errors of commission, but most often, omission. It’s hard to write about something that most people have no firsthand knowledge of. Perrotta, on the other hand, writes like someone that has spent time within the inner sanctums of this world. His treatment of Mason, Pastor Dennis, and the other believers, especially the part of the novel that has a group of men on their way to a Promise Keepers-type rally, and the ensuing drama that transpires really hit home with me (although this "true believer" has issues with Perrotta’s fictional account).

Tim Mason is every man that at one time, or another, got sucked into the vortex of manipulation and control that is right-wing religion in America. In Mason’s case, a former musician, with a substance abuse problem, and someone whose life was spiraling downward, Xianity provided a lifeline that he grabbed onto. (in the book, his mother accuses him of ''using Jesus like a substitute for drugs, like methadone.'') His conversion experience is one that tens of thousands of other so-called believers share, and has become a spiritual meme trotted out over and over during Sunday night “testimony” sessions, and other public displays of conversion stories.

Given my own background as a former “follower of Jesus,” Mason’s pangs of guilt and conviction as he begins to see the cracks in Pastor Dennis’ theological subterfuge are realistic, and something I experienced when I recognized my own fundamentalist house of cards was crumbling. His own “arranged” marriage to Carrie, a nice Xian girl, but someone so unlike Tim that matrimony becomes the equivalent of doing time, rather than the connubial bliss promised by Pastor Dennis, when he brought the two of them together.

When Tim tells the pastor that there are problems in the marriage, he counsels that what Tim and Carrie need to do is spice up their sex life, courtesy of Hot Christian Sex: The Godly Way to Spice Up Your Marriage, a Xian sex manual for couples that according to the pastor, revolutionized his own sex life with his wife.

Perrotta obviously did his homework, because Hot Christian Sex: The Godly Way to Spice Up Your Marriage is the fictional equivalent to the books of Tim and Beverly LaHaye, Xian fuck manuals designed to help Xians "sex up" their marriages. These books were what I knew LaHaye and his wife for, long before Mr. LaHaye became better known for his Left Behind series of books, co-written with Jerry Jenkins. (Tim LaHaye once made the statement that "Christian men and women experience a higher degree of orgasmic enjoyment than non-Christians")

Pastor Dennis is like so many pastors that populate evangelical and fundamentalist churches across the U.S. Men that have their own “Damascus Road” experience, and feel “called” to pastor. The damage done, and the human wreckage that emanates from their spiritual wake is something that isn’t widely known, unless you’ve been a victim of their methods of control, and abuse.

The Abstinence Teacher is great fiction, and even better if you’ve got your own issues with the religious right, whether a former convert, or someone, like Ruth Ramsey that they’ve trained their sights upon, because she’s violated one of their archaic codes, or stand in their way of taking over their little corner of the kingdom. The book also accurately captures the politics of smaller communities, and how religious mores, rather than being the exception, are often the norm, contrary to the claims of religious right leaders who know better, but use this subterfuge of persecution quite effectively.

On being prolific

2009-03-25T02:13:00.003-04:00

Why are some writers much more productive than others? Geoff Nicholson weighs in on the subject in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, including some interesting examples from the literary world.

Nicholson has churned out 22 books in the past 20 years, but even he admits that pales compared to PG Wodehouse (100 in 75), John Updike (60 books in 50), and Joyce Carol Oates (100 in 45), resulting in the late Updike making reference to her “astounding productivity,” and suggested she was born a hundred years too late and “needs a lustier audience” of “Victorian word eaters.”

I can't claim anything approaching these writer's ability to crank out words in a prolific fashion, as my book production has been a mere two books in the last four years. Does maintaining multiple blogs count? Obviously, if you look at my time stamp on this post, you'll see that I obviously have insomnia that only a blog post can assuage.

You can read the rest of Nicholson's worthwhile article here.

Making history

2009-02-10T12:09:00.005-05:00

People regularly ask me "what's next" for book #3. After last year's crazy sprint to get Moxietown out in time for the Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls, it felt good to have the rest of the summer off from focused writing, and getting another book out.

While my original intent was to have a full-length book out for the holidays, taking the Moxie book, and adding other local history about growing up in a small town to the mix that plan has been put on the back burner for now. There's a considerable amount of material that will eventually make its way to book form, but for now, I'm not sure what my "next book" is going to look like.

For those who enjoy history, and want to read my blogging at its most focused, check out History Maker Mondays at Words Matter. My goal is to put up a history-related post every Monday for the next year, going through the alphabet, but not necessarily A-Z.

The past two weeks have been focused on the presidency of FDR and the New Deal period, primarily because I see parallels between then and now. I'm also concerned about the need of some conservatives to engage in historical revisionism of the worst kind when it comes to former President Roosevelt, and his policies.

In addition to regular posts at Words Matter, I also offer regular reports on workforce development (my day job) at Working in Maine.

So what's next on the book front?

2008-11-23T20:07:00.004-05:00

With two books to my credit, and some independent publishing success (at least in terms of national recognition for book #1), my choice of book topic #3 is a key one. Do I continue with my Maine-based book theme, or is it time to break out of the regional ghetto and tackle a theme with national resonance?

While I can't complain about what I've been able to do in terms of establishing a small press (RiverVision) beachhead, and proving to myself that I was up to the task of setting writing/publishing targets and actually hitting them (rather than merely talking about them), at the same time, my ambitions are set slightly higher.

The release of Moxietown was fun, and somewhat unexpected. I had originally intended to come out with another book like When Towns Had Teams, in terms of length, and focus, this one being on my hometown of Lisbon Falls. Instead, Moxie, the drink, took me in a different direction, and I couldn't pass up the chance to get out something shorter, in order to capitalize on Lisbon's Moxie Festival, and the chance to intersect with fans of the drink descending on the town, in July.

The toughest aspect of independently releasing my own books, is the amount of effort that's required when you are forced to wear the multiple hats that are necessary to make it work.

That's where I'm at the tail end of 2008. I want to get moving forward on a couple of ideas. At the same time, I'm not eager to plunge into the 14-16 hour days that I logged from January to June, bringing Moxietown to the market.

2009 will find me working on another book project. I'm just not sure it will be another small press effort via RiverVision Press.

2008-07-09T08:28:00.002-04:00

If by chance you found your way here, in search of how to acquire a copy of Moxietown (possibly from the WCSH/207 site), you'll want to head over to the RiverVision Press site.

Unfortunately, the link posted on the 207 site took everyone to JimBaumer.com, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it just tests one's web surfing capabilities. You, however, are savvy, having found your way to this blog, and with one more click, you will have found your destination.

If you happen to live in Maine, I'll be making several appearances over the next few days, signing copies of the new book.

In addition to the appearance on 207, I'll be at the following locations:

Thursday, July 10; 10:00 am to 4:00 pm-Moody's Diner/Waldoboro

Friday, July 11; 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm-Kennebec Fruit Company, 2 Main Street, Lisbon Falls (The Moxie Store)

Saturday, July 12; 8:00 am to 2:00 pm Moxie Festival, Lisbon Falls

FMI about Moxietown, visit Words Matter, my regular blog, where I'll be keeping readers posted on Moxietown, and the upcoming Moxie Festival.

Blog consolidation

2008-04-29T17:06:00.003-04:00

If you have happened to find your way to my writing blog, I'm going to ask you to head back over to Words Matter, which is where I'll do all of my blogging from here on out.

You'll be able to find updates about the new book (s), Moxietown and Moxie Matters:Life's Beginnings in a Small Maine Town.

Updates from RiverVision Press

2008-02-02T07:38:00.000-05:00

Posts at Write in Maine have been few and far between. That doesn't mean that RiverVision Press hasn't been busy. Actually, we've been busier than ever, most of it behind the curtain, however.

First, RiverVision is no longer accepting submissions of new manuscripts for publication. There are several reasons for this, the major one being, I am actively engaged in a book project of my own. It's been over two years since When Towns Had Teams was visited on the community of books written about the great state of Maine. Looking back, I'm very gratified by the sales, the award (2006 IPPY for best regional non-fiction) validating the project and continued interest in the subject.

Once again, after clearing the deck of projects and allowing the dust to settle from our venture into publishing other writer's books, I knew it was time to get back to doing what drove me to start RiverVision in the first place--to publish my own ideas about Maine and bring them to market.

The new book will be tied closely to my experiences growing up in Lisbon Falls. Additionally, Moxie, the uniquely original soft drink and star of the town's annual festival, will be making a cameo in the book. Without revealing too much about the book at this time, I will tell you that it will be titled, Moxie Town.

Over the next couple of months, I will begin posting pre-release snippets of chapters over at a new blog that I've begun to focus exclusively on my writing and the release of Moxie Town. There are a couple of posts up at Words at Work, including a recent essay I wrote about winter in Maine. Look for much of JimBaumer.com to be migrating over to that location and eventually, we'll shift all that content to my own domain. This blog will disappear, although I'll probably archive the best of the content, particularly my thoughts on publishing.

Stay tuned for news and announcements from RiverVision Press.

The art of the Op-Ed

2007-11-13T09:32:00.000-05:00

The op ed is writing platform that I’ve utilized on numerous occasions. In the past, I’ve had a great deal of success getting them placed in various Maine newspapers and other publications. Occasionally, lacking the official backing of an organization to lend credence to my point of view, my opinion pieces didn’t make it to a wider audience.

For the past 15 months, I’ve been active in a new realm, that being the world of workforce development. My position has given me a firsthand look at skill development and how to prepare Maine workers for the world of the 21st century. It has also helped me to develop an understanding of the pressing issues facing both workers, as well as employers, in addressing Maine’s shrinking labor pool. Our state must find a way to address it, without going to the same old well of throwing money at a moving target. One-size-fits-all solutions won’t work, which is what our current education commissioner and others are proposing.

I took some of my time, two weeks ago to craft my thoughts on the state’s plan to require students to fill out a college application, in order to receive their diploma. My Op-Ed addresses some of the issues that I see as paramount for the state of Maine, as far as preparing our workforce for the jobs of the future, as well as having the kind of skilled workers that make businesses want to locate to Maine. If we fail to take a serious look at the problem and think that doing things the same old way will yield different results, then we, as Mainers, are deluded.

Let me say first of all that I am not anti-college and that college is a necessity for many students. However, one of the dark little secrets that college admissions people don’t tell you about is that less than half of incoming college freshman actually obtain the degree that they went to college to acquire. Worse, many high school graduates are not prepared for college and spend much of their first year taking expensive remedial courses.

This Op-Ed was intended to address what I see as a flaw in Commissioner Gendron’s and the Maine Legislature’s plan to require all seniors to be channeled towards college. For whatever reason, none of the state’s daily newspapers, nor Mainebiz decided my opinion was worthy of publication. My primary issue with this isn’t a case of sour grapes, as much as it shows that presenting opposing views of tired and traditional ways of educating our workforce apparently are not worthy of a wider audience. It also continues the trend that I’ve noted before of presenting the same chorus of voices on various issues.

Here is my op ed that I had hoped might find its way to print;

College for Some, But Not Necessarily for All
By Jim Baumer

Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron has followed through on a bill proposed the Maine legislature, which will require all Maine high school seniors to fill out at least one college application, before being eligible to graduate.

On the surface, Gendron’s plan looks good. Upon closer examination, however, this “one size fits all approach” in career development doesn’t make as much sense. Too often, educators, who hold a vested interest in the system, perfunctorily push college upon students that have no desire to pursue that option. Far too many students finally reach their senior year in high school, chomping at the bit to be done sitting in a seat, facing the front of the room and preparing for yet another test. They are tired of being forced to recall information that has no relevance to their lives. For these students, imposing a prison sentence of four more years makes no sense at all.

I don’t begrudge the Commissioner for trying to raise the aspirations of Maine’s high school students. However, it is readily apparent to workforce professionals and employers that too many of Maine’s future workers graduating from high school and even college are sadly lacking the “soft” skills that employers are clamoring for in the 21st century. Far too many college freshman end up spending their first year taking remedial courses and worse, end up dropping out..

As Maine’s labor pool continues to contract, due to demographics and as our best and brightest leave the state for greener pastures elsewhere, finding ways to equip our current workforce for the jobs at hand is essential to the state’s economic well-being and any hope for future growth. Envisioning high-tech careers and jobs not yet created might sound good in political sound bites, but real life in many rural areas of Maine is much different.

Maine has an abundance of employers, most offering above average wages, many of them in manufacturing, construction and other skilled trades—yet they can’t find candidates to fill these open positions. I’ve spoken to several firms in our region who are being forced to outsource significant portions of their work, out of state and even out of the country. Cianbro Corporation, one of Maine’s top construction firms, has an immediate need for 400 welders. In addition, they’ve recently signed a contract to produce modules at the former Eastern Fine Paper facility, in Brewer, where they will employ 500 welders, electricians, pipe fitters and other skilled personnel, all of these jobs paying very well.

Rather than mandating that all high school seniors fill out college applications, our workforce needs dictate that we be more innovative in preparing graduates for career success here in Maine. Instead of continuing to rely solely on seat-based, K-16 learning models, the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board supports initiatives and training that will prepare students for the jobs that Maine has to offer, as well as recognizing the importance of lifelong learning. Contrary to conventional rationale, we believe that the economic benefits resulting from alternatives to four-year degree programs are comparable and in some cases even superior in earning potential.

One possible area that could be explored is a “13th year” program that might be facilitated by a partnership between Maine’s regional tech centers and the community college system. For others who’ve graduated from high school and are stuck in dead-end jobs, or are underemployed, work credential programs, like a new statewide initiative called WorkReady™, is one way to help workers acquire the requisite soft skills employers now require. By combining WorkReady™ with additional employer-specific training, it is possible to move someone quickly, from low skills and few options for employment, to having some very marketable skills and thought of having a career, for the first time in their lives.

For students clearly focused on a college career track, Maine’s community colleges are uniquely situated to address the workforce challenges of rural Maine, offering a cost-effective option for graduates. All of these schools offer programs centered on the workplace skills that prepare high school students for high wage jobs in a variety of occupations. Additionally, the Maine Department of Labor sponsors the Maine Apprenticeship Program that does an excellent job preparing workers for viable careers in the state of Maine.

Attempting to get students to focus on life after school is important. Let’s just be sure that the drivers of education in our state take into account the specific workforce needs that Maine’s employers are facing and craft their curriculums to meet those needs. The economic future of our state is dependent on that.

------------------
Jim Baumer is the Director of Business Services for the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board. He also serves on the statewide steering committee for the WorkReady™ program.

A new book begins

2007-10-27T06:06:00.000-04:00

My struggle of late has been to find a way to a book of my own. It's been over two years since When Towns Had Teams hit the streets and I had no intention of going this long between releases. As it stands now, it looks like it will be nearly three years between books for me.

The good news is that I've decided on a theme and will be starting with my research. My goal is to have the book release next July, to coincide with Lisbon's Moxie Festival. Without giving away the theme and what the book's about, let me just say that it will focus on my hometown of Lisbon Falls and will be a book that connects with people and place.

RiverVision Press seems to work best when it has a book of my own to schlep around and market, so that will be our focus for the next year. While I'm happy to have had the experience of working with another author and releasing someone else's book, the excitement and the logistics of my own book, vs. one by another author, is no contest. Because there isn't alot of financial gain from the kind of micro-publishing that I'm capable of, I need to find other means of satifaction and positive feedback and unfortunately, they haven't been there with the latest book. I'll spare readers the gory details, but I think it all comes down to expectiations--my expectatons of publishing are rooted in the realities of what I know the local market will bear. With my own book, When Towns Had Teams, I think my upfront sense for sales and the marketing plan were well coordinated. I had a realistic goal and I actually exceeded it.

When you release someone else's book, however, unless every detail is hammered out in the contract (which is almost impossible, unless you want to spend your life with a lawyer) and every scenario is discussed up front, you are bound to have misunderstandings.

As they say, live and learn.

Book machine

2007-09-10T20:34:00.001-04:00

Fellow small press publisher and all-around great guy, Ari Meil, is announcing a unique project from his own venture, Warren Machine Company.

Meil is launching a new line of locally written, printed, and published books. They are looking for fiction or creative non-fiction 7000-12,000 words(+/-). Each piece that is accepted will be published individually in a short run of uniquely signed and numbered books.

According to Meil's email I received, the purpose of this unique venture is three fold.

Writes Meil, "First, it is meant to break down some of the barriers for writers to get into the market. The stakes are lower than other publishing ventures, because the scope is small, and the print run short, so we will take greater risks, and publish things that might otherwise not be published. Second, it is meant to equalize the relationship of the writer, publisher, and bookstore. We will profit share equally with each party,meaning that no one benefits any more than anyone else from sales. And we will look for sponsorship for each book by a company or individual, adding a community building aspect, that will also equal greater profits for the artists and art related businesses involved. And third, we are very interested in the idea of books as art, and making small runs of books that are personally numbered and signed by the author, without any more to be made available, we make each book more precious, like a limited edition print. "

Submissions can be sent via email to smallbooks@warren-machine.com; please indicate "submission from" in the subject line.

Here's a great chance for new writers to have their work brought to the market by a publisher that values writers and the difficulties inherent in getting published.

Finding new ways to stay in the publishing game

2007-08-29T21:00:00.000-04:00

Of the two, publishing is much more involved than writing. With writing, you get to plop down a manuscript with typos, grammatical inconsistencies and worse, so-so craftsmanship and if the editor is solid, still end up with a finished product that reviewers will wax eloquent about. The publisher on the other hand assumes the entire risk and the cost of producing your book and in the small press world, there is rarely a significant return on your investment of time and energy.

It always amazes me how little writers actually understand what goes into publishing their book. Maybe this is why so many writers have unrealistic sales expectations and so little appreciation for the effort that goes into bringing their title to market. Worse, they rarely know who their audience might be and how many actual copies of the book will be sold.

When I published When Towns Had Teams in 2005, I also knew very little about the publishing side of things. No matter how much research you do (and I was diligent in finding out as much information up front as I could), you still know only a fraction compared to what you learn as you proceed with the various step-by-step activities of printing and then, distributing a book.

The distribution piece may be the most misunderstood part of publishing, particularly if you are a small press publisher. Because your sales volume is smaller and if your book has a regional audience, in most cases won’t be able to use national distributors like Baker & Taylor, or Ingram. As a result, in order to get your book in front of readers, a small press distributor must parcel together a distribution network the old-fashioned way—one bookstore and gift shop at a time. If you are lucky, you’ll find a regional distributor to handle some of your stores. I was fortunate to find Magazines Inc., in Bangor. They handle the Mr. Paperback chain, as well as a few other smaller stores in rural Maine.

Recently, I’ve begun to take the knowledge that I’ve acquired, much of it learned the hard way, by making mistakes and have begun offering consultation to other writers who are crazy enough to want to go the independent route, like I did. I’m even starting to believe that this is a valuable service and that there might be a small market for this service. The current writer that I’m working with is going to save himself a lot of headaches and sleepless nights, because I’ve already been there and figured out what works and what doesn’t.

If you are a writer who is interested in independently publishing your own book, you should contact us at RiverVision Press. We offer a free initial consultation with you about your book idea. In addition, we also offer the following services.

Manuscript critiques
copyediting services
Creative services and cover designs
Manuscript layout and preparation for printingRiverVision can take your idea and bring it to fruition and save you pain, agony and money you don’t have to spend.

With an award-winning book under our belts and a solid track record as a small press publisher, RiverVision Press can help you realize that dream of seeing your book in print.

Education that matters

2007-08-10T14:46:00.000-04:00

Franklin County is one of the more interesting rural areas of Maine. The more time I spend there, the more I’m coming to recognize that it also may offer solutions to other parts of rural America. The county’s people are entrepreneurial and infused with a Yankee cussedness that turns challenges into opportunities.

I posted something back in June, at Words Matter, about some of the people making things happen in Maine's western mountains. There are others.

The county is also home to a great new local publication, The Daily Bulldog. TDBG was founded by husband and wife team, Bobbie and Woody Hanstein and is attempting to be the news source of record for this region of Maine. Bobbie has extended an opportunity for me to write semi-regular articles, focused on workforce training and education, highlighting some of the positive things happening in the area.

Here is my latest article, from the August issue of the paper, setting btw, opposite Maine writing legend, Al Diamon.

Building a network to the future
by, Jim Baumer
[Published in The Daily Bulldog, August 2007]

Education is a key component in any region’s economic future. The skills necessary for success in the workplace require greater sophistication than ever before. While there was a time, not too long ago, when a post-secondary education wasn’t essential that time is now gone. Without additional training, today’s workers are sure to be left behind, unable to compete in a global marketplace.

The formation of The Franklin Community College Network provides an important catalyst, promoting educational opportunities and eliminating obstacles and barriers that in the past, may have prevented many in the area from accessing, or even considering college as an option.

How did this forward-looking partnership come together; a diverse cross-section from Franklin County and beyond, representing business, education, economic development and faith-based groups?

Gary Perlson, director of Community Education for MSAD #58, at Mt. Abram High School, points to a meeting that took place in June of 2005, between representatives from Central Maine Community College, the local regional technical high school, as well as members from adult and community education.

The Triple Convergence

Perlson points to a “triple convergence,” which helped to facilitate the formation of the Franklin County Community College Network.

On June 5, 2005, Dr. Scott Knapp, president of Central Maine Community College, met with area educators to discuss the possibility of offering community college classes in Franklin County.

Knapp solicited input from members of the county’s education community, which included Perlson, Reva Merrill, from Foster Regional Applied Technology Center and Ray Therrien, director of Franklin County Adult and Community Education.

During that meeting, President Knapp directed a unique question Perlson’s way.

“I still remember this meeting; most people don’t let me talk about my dreams—they want the concrete; the sequential,” Perlson recalled. “Dr. Knapp asked me to talk about my dreams for Franklin County.”

Perlson recounted sharing his vision with Knapp and the group.

“I envision that wherever one goes in Franklin County—every business, every school, every public building is a college campus—that instructors from this area with advanced degrees are teaching people from this area; that our community members are able to transition to on-campus colleges, four-year schools, because they’ve had this community college experience.”

Meanwhile, as this meeting was taking place with Knapp, another group in Franklin County also envisioned and were planning for community college classes being offered to area residents. Neither group, however, knew about the other.

In December, 2004, Doug Dunlap, a professor at UMF and pastor of the First Congregational Church in Wilton, along with Fen Fowler/Western Maine Community Action, Paul Scalzone/CEI and Steve Cole/Opportunity Center of Northern Franklin County, attended a conference sponsored by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Sante Fe, New Mexico. The focus of the conference was rural economic development.

“At this conference, we learned that there was a direct and positive correlation between the economic development opportunities for rural communities and their proximity to a community college,” said Dunlap. “After returning from Sante Fe, our group decided on three goals, one of which was the establishment of a community college presence in Franklin County, unaware of what was going on with Gary’s group,” said Dunlap. “We felt this was important because we were the only rim county in Maine that didn’t have a community college at the time.”

These two groups, operating along parallel tracks, were destined to come together.

“Franklin County is a small county in the sense that everyone knows everyone else,” said Dunlap. “We all shop at the same supermarket, eat at the same restaurants, see each other at sporting events. Word got out about our two groups and Rick Batt, from Franklin Community Health Network, offered to host a meeting on July 16, 2005, bringing the two groups together.”

This 10 am meeting, facilitated by both Dunlap and Perlson, represented 27 different organizations. Interestingly, two hours later, the Maine Community Foundation’s Western Mountains Advisory Committee was meeting in the very same room. Several of their members, having read Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, were looking to fund a networking approach to building educational capacity and infrastructure.

Were these three things a coincidence? Maybe; however, these three things working together, helped to propel the formation and provide funding for what was to become the Franklin County Community College Network.

With the writing of a proposal and subsequent awarding of a network-based capacity building grant from the Maine Community Foundation, a unique approach to rural education had the capital it needed to move forward.

“The grant, while not the focus of the network, helped provide the underlying rationale of what this group’s formation was about—economic development,” said Perlson. “While all of us believe in the intrinsic value of education and we want our people to be successful and get a college education, the underlying reason for this network is the economic survival of rural Maine.”

Alison Hagerstrom, executive director for Greater Franklin Development Corporation, the fiscal agent for the grant, echoes the economic importance of increasing educational opportunities for the county and having community college classes offered in Franklin County.

“I regularly talk to businesses, looking to relocate,” said Hagerstrom. “They all expect to have to retrain the local workforce; what they want to know is whether there is a community college nearby to help support their efforts,” she said.

Community College Classes Come to Franklin County

In the fall of 2005, three classes were offered at one site, launching community college classes in Franklin County.

Kirsten Brown Burbank, assistant director of MSAD 58 Community Education and an adjunct professor for community college courses in Franklin County, remembers how everyone originally assumed that the classes would be located in Farmington.

“If we had continued to offer classes only in Farmington, many students in the other parts of the county would have been left out,” said Brown Burbank. “We’ve gone from three classes (fall of 2005), all at one site, to now, we are offering 12 classes, at five different sites throughout the county,” she said.

Since the launch of classes, Brown Burbank has taught College Writing each semester. In speaking with her, Brown Burbank’s enthusiasm and passion for her students is apparent. Students, many taking their first college class ever, are getting a special opportunity to learn from a caring instructor, one who is approachable, as well as being gifted as an instructor.

The network’s community liaison, Betty Gensel, sees enrollment growing steadily, which bodes well for future success, as well as more course offerings.

“We started with 74 students in 2005,” said Gensel. “Our spring registration saw 231 students, accounting for 358 total registrations (some students taking multiple classes). Our rate of students matriculating has also increased; from 21 percent, to its current 33 percent.”

What should be readily apparent about Franklin County, which makes it different than other rural areas of the state, is the willingness of community members to meet challenges head-on, such as bringing college classes to the county and finding creative solutions to problems, utilizing available resources—most often, the ingenuity and creativity of the community at large.
-----------

Beach reading, Part II

2007-07-04T11:26:00.000-04:00

Kitchen Boy, by Sanford Phippen (Blackberry Press, 1996)

The Maine Myth gets served up in a variety of packages. Magazines, like Down East and Yankee, catering to a clientele that’s bent on buying up the rest of Maine’s coastline, the more palatial the better, imbibes this mythology in heaping portions.

To others, Maine represents a place of escape. A place where every open field and undeveloped acre hasn’t been paved over (yet), or turned into a retail complex—although developers are doing their damndest to make this a reality.

As a state, Maine has no shortage of writers and literary figures. From the mega-successful genre specialists, like Stephen King (a true native) and Tess Gerritsen (who comes from “away”), to writers like Linda Greenlaw, who has been able to mine the Maine native experience, coming up with her own pot of literary gold.

Sandy Phippen represents another kind of Maine writer, along with Carolyn Chute, Cathie Pelletier and even the late Ruth Moore, who write (wrote) about a Maine that most from away know little about, or if they have some sense of it, would rather pretend it doesn’t exist.

Hailing from the coastal hamlet of Hancock, Phippen has spent the past 40 years carving out his own unique take on his home state, writing about the Maine that makes tourism directors and marketing firms cringe. It’s not that Phippen writes about things that aren’t true, or even common, north of Portland and east and west of I-95. It’s just that for those that know Maine from the inside of an air-conditioned BMW, or large SUV, or from stops at swank boutiques in Camden, L.L. Bean in Freeport, or the outlets in Kittery, Phippen’s characters and sense of place will be unfamiliar.

I’m sorry to say that I had never read Kitchen Boy, his fictional account of growing up poor, in downeast Maine, working at The Manor, on Mount Desert Island, from 1959, through 1964. Obviously based on personal experiences from his life, Kitchen Boy rings autobiographical and is very much based in the cultural milieu of a very different Maine, some 40 years ago.

Kitchen Boy is the story of Andy (An-day) Harrison, who works for two eccentric, but interesting women, who own a tourist establishment that caters to mostly wealthy visitors, who come from Maine from all over, to experience the unique qualities that Maine offered at the time.

Phippen obviously has fun poking fun at the eccentricities, cheapness and condescending manners of many a guest that he had to tote bags for, serve drinks to, or peel potatoes that became their sustenance during their stay. While some of the guests were generous with their tips and rose above being a rich, boorish snob, most came across like what anyone with experience catering to tourists from south of here, would expect.

While Phippen’s book, released by Maine-based publisher, Gary Lawless and his imprint, Blackberry Press, has purportedly sold very well, I’m amazed how few Mainers I talk to know about Phippen as a writer. Sadly, recent events like the Maine Festival of the Book and other literary events, seem to be gravitating more to authors who have adopted Maine, because they can now afford to buy pricey real estate, rather than local treasures like Phippen and others.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kitchen Boy, as it helped me to better understand my home state and also prepared me for my upcoming vacation, where we’ll be renting a place for a week in Mr. Phippen’s backyard. I even hope to have the opportunity to have him over for supper and chat at length about writing, Maine’s culture and the differences between the “Real” Maine and the version served up by the Maine Tourism Bureau.

My recommendation for those of you prefer a more rustic and less commercialized version of Maine, is to run out, preferably to a local independent bookstore, like Gary Lawless’ store in Brunswick, Gulf of Maine Books and score a copy of Phippen’s book, along with The Messiah in the Memorial Gym and Other Writings 1973-1998 and maybe a copy of one of Ruth Moore’s books. You’ll enjoy being transported back to a Maine that is more authentic and considerably grittier than you might expect.

For an interesting read about "The Maine That Never Was" and the development of myths about the state, there is this interesting online article, which cites Phippen and other writers of his orientation.

RiverVision launches its latest title

2007-06-24T08:09:00.000-04:00

[T.W. Moore greets the crowd and talks about the new book]

[Reading from I Love Today—Musings From New England]

[Moore with his family]

[Chatting with folks between signing books]

Last night, RiverVision Press held its official book launch event for T.W. Moore’s, I Love Today—Musings From New England.

Deciding that we wanted to hold our coming out event in Lewiston, where we are based, we partnered with a great local bookseller, Laurie St. Pierre and held it at Percy's Burrow, her delightful store in the Lewiston Mall. Laurie is a gracious host and had prepared punch, cookies and nuts to go along the wine and cheese that we brought for those who came to hear Moore talk about the new book.

Small press publishing is fraught with challenges, none more pressing than being able to get the word out about the work and the books that you produce. One of the best ways to get your name out into the highways and byways is the old-fashioned way—meeting people one on one and talking to them about your goals, mission as a publisher and most important—telling them about your books.

Having been through my own experience with When Towns Had Teams, I know how important it is to be willing to travel around and talk about your book. I’ve found that people like to know how you came up with the ideas that make up your finished product and people enjoy hearing the “story behind the story.”

Being a new publisher, I’m always looking to learn from those publishers that have been doing it for awhile and have a solid track record. One of the key things that most experienced publishers say about promoting books is that you need to have authors that are willing to go out and promote their own book.

T.W. Moore (Tom to his friends) is going to be that kind of author. He came across as folksy, informative and told some great stories about how he came to write the essays that ultimately became I Love Today—Musings From New England, during our book launch event.

Afterwards, Tom told me he was nervous and that fact was verified by his wife, LuAnn. However, none of us listening to him read and enthrall the crowd in attendance picked up on that. It looked like Tom had been doing this for his entire life.

After spending two hours plus, reading, signing books and chatting with those who came out, it was off to the RiverVision Press compound, for a lively after-party to celebrate the new book and two years of publishing success.

Training Maine's Workforce for the 21st Century

2007-06-12T15:24:00.000-04:00

The writing community is made up of a diverse assortment of writers. Some writers, like Stephen King, are known primarily for the fiction that they write. Other writers, such as Chris Hedges (who I’m reading at the moment), operate in the realm of non-fiction.

The former category, I know little about, other than I occasionally enjoy reading a book written by a practitioner of this genre. I primarily focus my attention on non-fiction, as my choice of books, but also as the mode of writing that I’m oriented towards and most comfortable working in.

While I would love to be able to have the time to focus exclusively on my own writing, as I honestly feel that I have two or three solid outlines that I think are worth putting together proposals for, right now, I just don’t have that option, between working full-time, releasing my latest book with RiverVision and trying to get started on my next major project and first priority of a book idea.

Despite all the activity swirling around me, I’ve actually been writing a few articles that relate to the work I do to pay the bills. Last fall, I developed a Powerpoint detailing some of the issues that I think are pertinent for Maine, in the area of workforce development, which is the sphere I inhabit during my nine to five time. In fact, I think the ideas that I set forth are portable to other areas beyond the borders of the Pine Tree State.

My Powerpoint is a good starting point in the discussion of where we are and where we need to go. Recently, I took the ideas from my Powerpoint and put them into an article form, which The Employment Times, Maine’s premiere employment newspaper, was kind enough to print.

I wanted to get this article on the web, in order to have it accessible to others and in order for me to link it, as it will probably disappear off the ET’s site, at some point.

The Challenge of Remaining Competitive: Training Our 21st Century Workforce
By, Jim Baumer
[Published by The Employment Times, May 28th; Vol. 9, Issue 22]

All over Maine, New England and throughout much of the U.S., employers are finding it increasingly difficult to match qualified candidates with their open positions. By qualified, employers mean workers that have the increasingly important “soft” or “applied” skills that the 21st century world of work demands.

More and more I’m hearing experienced HR professionals tell me of their frustration, which comes from doing all the right things when it comes to recruitment—advertising their jobs in multiple places, offering above-average starting pay, with benefits, participating in job fairs and other networking events—and still, they are not getting the responses they used to and if they get a response, the skill level is usually below the basic level that their positions require.

As one recruiter said to me recently, “Whatever happened to Maine’s labor force?” Better yet, as Bryant Hoffman, Executive Director of the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board is fond of saying, “Our labor pool has become a labor puddle.”

The above question is an excellent one and it offers a great “jumping off” point to talk about Maine’s current labor market. Our state is one of the oldest in the U.S. As our working population ages, we are also seeing an out-migration of younger workers, who normally would backfill the labor pool as workers leave, due to retirement. In addition, several burgeoning employment sectors in Maine continue to require skilled workers to staff positions that accompany continued growth. Healthcare, a leading employment sector in nearly all regions of the state, is finding it increasingly difficult to fill positions associated with radiology, nursing and other healthcare-related areas.

This talent shortage is by no means unique to Maine, either. Nationwide, staffing professionals are finding talent hard to come by. According to an October, 2006 survey conducted by Manpower, a worldwide leader in staffing solutions, 51 percent of HR leaders in the Northeast who responded indicated they would have hired permanent professional staff over the past six months if they had been able to find candidates with the right skills.

The Double Whammy: Labor shortages and accompanying “brain drain”

The U.S. workforce is getting older. According the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is projected that from 2004-2014, workers who are 55 or older will grow from over 15 percent to 21 percent of the workforce. Not only are American workers aging, but baby boomers are nearing retirement age, creating labor shortages in various segments of the U.S. labor market.

Additionally, what’s compounding the issue, nationwide, is corporate America’s awareness of the problem, but not acting proactively to stave off the consequences. A January, 2006 survey, conducted by Ernst & Young LLP, ExecuNet, Inc. and the Human Capital Institute, predicted a looming labor shortage, driven by the retirement of boomers. The loss of employees to retirement isn’t the only issue associated with this issue. Experienced workers, when they retire, take their accumulated business wisdom with them when they leave. This leads to “brain drain” in the workplace of countless American companies. While the survey illustrated that employers are putting off tackling the issue of an aging workforce, an overwhelming 90 percent said they are committed to putting formal retention programs in place in the future. Of the 30 percent who have identified where business wisdom resides, only 67 percent have formal processes in place to transmit that business wisdom to the next generation.

Meanwhile, writers like Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Thomas Friedman, have documented a world, which is increasingly “flat”, requiring the U.S., for the first time, to start paying attention to the need to radically alter the ways in which it prepares workers for the world of work.

Tomorrow’s Workers Not Ready for Work

The world of work has radically changed. Even entry-level jobs require essential core skills, which several recent high-profile reports indicate aren’t there. Employers are looking for talent to staff for attrition and grow their companies, and the replacements just don’t have what it takes to get these jobs done.

In the fall of 2006, The Conference Board on Education released a report that indicated that today’s high school and even college graduates, were lacking the basic skills for work—these skills, defined as “soft” or “applied” skills, are the basic foundational skills that all workers must have today.

What are these soft or applied skills?

Basic Communication Skills
Knowing the importance of showing up for work, as scheduled, ready for work
The ability to work as a team
Knowing how to manage conflict in the workplace
Critical thinking skills
Creativity/innovation

According to the report released in October, nearly 75 percent of 431 HR respondents surveyed cited deficiencies among incoming high school graduates in basic or applied skills, such as professionalism and work ethic, defined as “demonstrating personal accountability, effective work habits, e.g. punctuality, working productively with others, time and workload management.”

While over half of those surveyed indicated that critical thinking skills, as well as being able to problem solve were important, 70 percent said that recent high school graduates were deficient in both areas.

The report’s accompanying notes that the finding should serve as a key indicator and provide the necessary push to begin looking at new ways of training our future workforce.

Susan Meisinger, President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management indicates that,

“This study should serve as an alert to educators, policy makers and those concerned with U.S. economic competitiveness that we may be facing a skills shortage. In a knowledge-based economy a talented workforce with communication and critical thinking skills is necessary for organizations and the U.S. to be successful.”

We can’t keep doing the same old things and expect our results to be any different. To expect that is to perpetuate the current dysfunctional approach to education and training.

WorkReady: An Example of a Public/Private Partnership that Works

Traditional, top-down approaches no longer work. If the global economy moves at the speed of light, education and training must also move that quick. Bureaucratic models are out-of-date and will only leave us further and further behind, eventually making the U.S. workforce outmoded and unable to compete economically on the global stage.

The Local Workforce Investment Boards have the potential to pull together the key players in each community and bring key stakeholders to the table. In their role as conveners, they have a unique ability to advocate for the kinds of business-specific training that is essential for global competitiveness.

Currently, the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board, in conjunction with other partners, has developed a foundational training initiative called WorkReady.

WorkReady is a portable credential that imparts the necessary soft skills that businesses want. It was developed in Lewiston/Auburn, from a partnership of leading businesses, Lewiston Adult Ed, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., Central Maine Community College, as well as the Lewiston CareerCenter, and is an example of the kind of local, forward-thinking approach that Maine needs more of. Other WorkReady programs are set to launch in Skowhegan and Farmington soon. Each of these local training programs aligns key local partners, including key businesses in each community.

WorkReady provides foundational skills that businesses demand. It sets the stage for and compliments additional industry-specific training and certifications, which can come from the Maine Quality Centers and other employer-based training such as apprenticeships, or on-the-job-training programs.

Business as usual will no longer work here in Maine, or anywhere else. We need to find creative ways to develop the types of skills that the flat world requires. Education and business must come together and begin a dialogue if our state and our nation have any hope of remaining competitive. We have no other choice if we hope to grow the state’s economy, as well a remaining a competitive economic force in the world as a nation.

About the Author:

Jim Baumer is the Business Assistance Coordinator for the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board. An engaging and dynamic speaker, Jim would be pleased to present to various groups and organizations about workforce training issues, employee retention and the importance of developing public/private partnerships in order to meet the training needs of the 21st century economy.

In addition to his work with the Local Workforce Investment Board, Jim is the author of the award-winning book on Maine town team baseball, When Towns Had Teams.

In the news

2007-06-01T06:26:00.000-04:00

I released When Towns Had Teams in September, 2005. Now, almost two years later, people are still discovering the book, which has become the quintessential book on Maine baseball history.

Matt DiFilippo, a sportswriter for the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel, in Central Maine and a fellow SABR member, had received a "tip" from a Kiwanis member in Augusta, also a member of SABR that I was speaking at their noon luncheon. DiFilippo sent me an email and we arranged a phone interview.

We had a nice chat Monday night, with DiFilippo saying he hoped to run a short story about my talk, which happened yesterday, prior to the event.

With everything else happening with RiverVision Press and the launch of a new book, I forgot about it. My boss came in yesterday morning and said, "Baumer, I didn't know you were so famous."

Apparently, I was front page news on the sports pages of the KJ, yesterday morning. DiFilippo filed a nice advance article and my talk at the Kiwanis Club, in Augusta saw about 60 people in attendance. I had a good time, got to give one more talk on my book and local baseball in Maine and even sold a few books. I've posted DiFilippo's article below, in case the link goes down at some point.

Maine author speaking in Augusta
Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel

By MATT DiFILIPPO
Staff Writer

When Jim Baumer was growing up in Lisbon Falls in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed every town had its own baseball team.

"I got to thinking, 'What ever happened to all the baseball?' " Baumer said.

That thought and more than 40 interviews later, Baumer had self-published a book, "When Towns Had Teams," which covers town baseball from the World War II era to the demise of town baseball. Baumer will be speaking about baseball and his book at noon today at the Kiwanis Club in Augusta.

Much of Baumer's passion for his subject comes from his own memories. He remembers going to Pettengill Park in Auburn to see teams from all over the state play in the Yankee Amateur Baseball Congress tournament.

"This was '71, '72," said Baumer, who lives in Durham and is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research. "You would still have, on a weekend, two or three thousand people coming out to these baseball games."

Baumer, 45, said his book validates the stories that the players on town teams have told their children. He learned how proud the players were about their accomplishments when he sat down and talked to them.

"They remember these games 40 years ago like they were yesterday," Baumer said. "I would go ask one or two questions and they'd talk for 2 1/2, 3 hours."

Like many Mainers, Baumer feels that "coming to Maine was almost like stepping back through a window in time" and laments that it is not that way anymore. In a sense, Baumer's book helps capture the time when it was true.

"A lot of people who have read the book have told me that it's very much a baseball book, but it's also a book about small-town Maine," Baumer said. "It's a book about a Maine that, if it hasn't disappeared, it's very close to being gone.

"Part of it is the way society's changed. We don't go to our local drugstores anymore. We go to Wal-Mart, or we go to box stores."

Baumer started a company, RiverVision Press, to publish his book, and has branched out to help other Maine authors. A book by T.W. Moore of Buxton, "I Love Today -- Musings from New England," which will be released June 14. A Q&A on the company's Web site says, "We endeavor to be a publisher that releases a small number of books each year, intended for a specific audience."

"I feel like there's an awful lot of very talented writers in Maine who don't have a lot of options for getting their books out," Baumer said.

Start honing your craft

2007-05-28T17:41:00.000-04:00

Writing is a craft where, the more you do it, the better it gets, or at least that’s what we’re told by people like Stephen King and others. I tend to agree.

While I wouldn’t put myself in league with the likes of King, J.K. Rowling, or even a best-selling non-fiction writer, like Christopher Hitchens, my writing style has improved immensely, even since I wrote When Towns Had Teams. I consider myself a much stronger writer and am much more sure of my voice and where I want to go, than I’ve ever been.

Since November 4, 2004, I’ve put up over 500 posts, primarily at Words Matter (467) and here, where I post much less frequently and limit my posting primarily to the craft and business of writing. As King said in On Writing, in order to get published you have to be a good writer. Unless you are absolutely horrible, you should improve enough by writing regularly to reach the publication stage.

What’s been most interesting to me over the past year has been going back to work full-time, which was a concern for me, at first, as I thought it would result in fewer writing opportunities and the potential loss of writing momentum. On the contrary, the enjoyment of my new job, along with its many challenges, has injected my writing with a new enthusiasm, urgency and I am more productive and prolific now than I was when I was calling myself a full-time writer. In reality, I’m writing more now, for work and pleasure, than I was then.

As I travel about for work, I often meet people and have the opportunity to share with them my passion for words and writing. On several occasions, I’ve had one of these folks remark about how they’d like to write a book and are planning to when they have more time. My experience tells me that you’ll never have more time than you do right now. With that being the case, seize the moment and begin working on your craft, building towards writing that book that many people seem to think they have within them.

Writing is a mindset. If you are looking for the perfect situation, it probably isn’t going to happen. If you can carve a mere one or two hours out of your day and can spend some additional time on weekends to hone your craft, you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to do. Whether you’re looking to begin freelancing articles, become a specialist in crafting op eds, or you are determined to write the "Great American Novel,"start today and build towards your goal, one word and one sentence at a time. In order to do this requires some compromises. You may have to give up a favorite television program, or forego time at the gym. Maybe you’ll have to set the alarm to get up an hour earlier, or work later into the evening. Each writer is different. Find a routine that works for you and stick to it. You’ll be able to look back and point to your decision as your own personal writer’s signpost on the road to success.

Better yet, start a blog. It’s simple and easy—just make sure you are ready to commit to posting more than once or twice per month. While this blog in not regularly updated, Words Matter is and I challenge you to build your own volume of writing, just like I have. You don’t get to 500 posts by procrastination. Rather, you get there by making a pact with yourself to find something you’re passionate about and determine to write 500 or 600 words on that subject on a regular basis. If you can do that, you are well on your way to writing success.

Beach reading, part I

2007-05-27T17:02:00.000-04:00

Racial Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980-1989, by Robert A. Catlin (University of Kentucky Press, 1993)

I’ve spent much of my last 20 years, avoiding beaches, less by choice and more because of circumstances. You can read about it, if you care to.

What I’d like to do here, throughout the rest of the summer, is to review the books that I end up reading over the summer. Because I’m committed to getting to the beach more, inevitably, some of my reading is bound to be with sand between my toes and an ocean breeze in my face.

Recently, I spent time in northwest Indiana, including Gary, Indiana. I’ve written about that trip and you can read about it over at Words Matter. My time in Gary produced a fictional account of a presidential debate that should occur, but for many reasons, won’t. The account was good enough to get picked up by Counterpunch, which I was thrilled about.

My time in Indiana during my early 20s was a formative experience, although I didn’t realize it for about 15 years. Only recently have I fully grasped all that those five years meant in my development, politics and worldview. Obviously, going back to “the region” was powerful on many levels, particularly the brief time I spent in Gary.

Robert Catlin’s Racial Politics and Urban Planning: Gary, Indiana 1980-1989 is a comprehensive look at the many issues plaguing cities of 50,000 or more residents that are majority-black. Catlin looks at Gary, a city he came to in 1982, to interview for the faculty position of chairman of the Department of Minority Studies at the Indiana University Branch in Gary (which goes by the name of Indiana University Northwest).

Catlin would ultimately leave his teaching position at the University of South Florida, in sunny Tampa and move his family to Gary, with its billowing smoke from the U.S. Steel plant and its grimly, depressed downtown, with boarded up storefronts, products of the white flight of the 1970s.

Having lived in northwest Indiana, arriving a year after Catlin did, I can empathize with how he must have felt. I also drove Broadway (Indiana state road 53), Gary’s main artery, north/south and experienced the desolation of downtown Gary.

Unaware of it when I lived there, Catlin points out how the local daily, the Gary Post-Tribune, now called the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana, went out of its way to portray longtime Gary mayor, Richard Hatcher, in an unfavorable manner. The paper, run by conservative, business-oriented whites, was about maintaining the status quo. Hatcher, who was first elected in 1967, became the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city. Hatcher would hold the office for 20 years. The Post-Tribune was obviously threatened by Hatcher’s outspoken positions on civil rights and his unwillingness to cede Gary’s assets to the Democratic political elites of Lake County, “the machine,” as Catlin refers to them. Basically, Hatcher was a man who commanded respect in the black community, used that respect to acquire power and his power and pride made him a threat to those whites in Lake County and nearby, who wanted to extract what few assets remained in Gary, for their own benefit and to the detriment of the majority of African-Americans living there. The case study of Metrolake is a powerful example of this and an indictment of crooked politicians everywhere, craven only to power.

The strength of Catlin’s book, in my opinion, is his detailed look at the many issues that the Hatcher administration had to contend with. The desertion of downtown by business, the aging housing stock and crumbling city infrastructure, as well as the loss of nearly 30,000 jobs at Gary’s U.S. Steel plant, jobs that provided the majority of blacks in Gary, with a comfortable middle-class standard of living.

While the book is scholarly, Catlin’s writing style is also very readable. The majority of the book looks at three case studies that Catlin was directly involved in, as he served as a direct advisor to the Hatcher administration, in addition to his duties with the university, in Gary.

Catlin was certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and it’s his urban planning orientation that serves his readers so well. He supervised the planning of Gary’s revised Comprehensive Plan, as well as taking an active role in a number of other planning capacities, including opposing the proposed Metrolake Plan and the expansion of Gary Regional Airport.

Catlin’s book isn’t for everyone. If you prefer Oprah’s book-of-the-month club, then please look elsewhere. If you are like me, however, seeking to increase your understanding of the competing complexities that should inform our politics, but too often don’t, then Catlin’s book will be an eye-opening read, particularly as it relates to entrenched racism and the disastrous effects of Reagan’s cuts on northern industrial cities like Gary. Also, you see what might have been done 20 years ago, to address the shift from an industrial economy, to a more service-driven model, if those in Washington actually cared for anyone other than their wealth benefactors.

Fast-forwarding nearly two decades after Catlin’s observations show me how important public-private partnerships continue to be, particularly in light of our current federal cuts and shifts away from sending any help to cities such as Gary. It’s tough to fight a war, spend $450 billion and have anything left for the citizens at home.

Poetry

2007-05-18T15:54:00.000-04:00

I don’t know a lot about poetry. At one time, I tried to learn about poetry and even tried to write some, but realized that, like golf, my time and energy was better served by other pursuits.

I know that I’ve read poetry that I’ve liked—Whitman, T.S. Eliot and some William Carlos Williams—but never enough to speak with any authority about what’s good, valid, or proper.

Today, on my drive to a graduation of a training class I had some hand in putting together, I caught Garrison Keillor, hosting his morning The Writer’s Almanac spot and he read a wonderful poem, “Mrs. Krikorian,” about a teacher that makes a difference in a young boy’s life. How fitting that he read that poem, on my way to this graduation, a ceremony of significance for nine people, jumpstarting their lives.

The poem was written by a poet named Sharon Olds, who I knew nothing about until Mr. Keillor read her poem. But I now know that Ms. Olds, when summoned in 2005, by Laura Bush, to the National Book Festival, indicated she could not, saying “she could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration."

Maybe it’s time to read some poetry?

David Halberstam, dead at age 73

2007-04-24T20:17:00.000-04:00

For the second time this month, the writing community lost another giant. David Halberstam, one of journalism’s real treasures, was killed in a car crash in San Francisco, on Monday. He was 73.

Halberstam was a master at capturing the subtle nuances of whatever subject he chose to write about—sports, politics, war, the civil rights movement—setting him apart from the rest of his breed.

While not exclusively a sports guy, he was able to use athletics as a vehicle to get at the larger issues of the time he wrote about. Reading Halberstam helped ground us in the historical realities of the period he covered in each one of his 20 books. Rather than give his readers pap and nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake, Halberstam the journalist, dug into his subjects and provided context.

Read the rest at Words Matter.

Meet RiverVision's newest author

2007-04-16T10:23:00.000-04:00

[RiverVision Press (the small press I started back in 2005) is planning on releasing its second book, T.W. Moore’s book, I Love Today—Musings from New England. Here is a recent interview I conducted with Moore. Our release date for Moore's book is June 1st.]

RVP: We’re here with T.W. (Tom) Moore of Buxton, talking about his latest book, I Love Today—Musings from New England. Tom, thanks for coming in to discuss the book.

TWM: You’re welcome.

RVP: Tell us a little about the genesis of I Love Today—Musings from New England?

TWM: I Love Today—Musings from New England consists of a variety of poignant, but mostly humorous vignettes regarding everyday life in New England. I think most people will agree that New England carries with it a certain “mystique,” along with a somewhat “pastoral” or “the way life should be” connotation to it and it is this very essence that I tried to capture in my book.

RVP: In my reading of the manuscript, I immediately thought, “Chicken Soup for the Mainer’s Soul.” Do you think that’s an apt description of what you were aiming for?

TWM: That’s an excellent analogy. While experiencing life here in Maine, I felt that there were so many stories to be told—good stories that shed a little bit more light on life here in New England—stories that truly show the heart and soul of the people that work and play here.

Of course, I’ve added some of my own thoughts and observations, too!

RVP: I don’t know if I should let the “cat out of the bag” here, but you’re not from Maine, right? What brought you here and well, what turned you into such an enthusiast about our state, tucked away in the northernmost reaches of the New England region?

TWM: I have to admit that I am “from away.” I’ve been living in Maine for over six years now, but I began visiting this part of the country with my family many, many years ago. My mother-in-law used to live in North Conway and then for a while in Old Orchard Beach and once or twice a year, we’d pack up the car and drive up to visit. That was my first indoctrination to this region—beautiful mountains and the awesome coastal area. How could one not fall in love with a combination like that? From east to west, this region has a raw beauty that’s absolutely wonderful. When you think about it, we really do have it all here.

RVP: In your chapter, “Daddy’s Not So Little Girl,” you detail your daughter, Taryn’s evolution, from that sweet child who rushed to the fake, plastic cow at the Fryeburg Fair, to a teenager, who no longer wanted to wait in line for the opportunity to pat the cow and have her picture taken. It struck a nerve with me, as my son just graduated from college—I think you really latched on to a universal theme for parents—how to cope with our children’s growing up.

TWM: It is a universal theme—in fact, the title of the book says it all. Meaning it’s important to seize the day, seize the moment, because before you know it, your children have all grown up and moved out and started families of their own. It’s a very fast, complicated world out there today and again, I think that’s what makes this area so special—the fact that we’re not half as crowded or as populated as some of our more southern neighbors. I think this attribute naturally translates to a somewhat slower pace and hopefully this book will serve as a reminder to try and take advantage of that extra time and spend it with your kids—before they grow up and pass up the plastic cow!

RVP: So how are you coping with Taryn’s teenage years and the dreaded, boyfriend?

TWM: (laughs) So far—not so good! I mean she’s only 15 going on 25 and of course, I don’t want her to date until she’s at least 30! I’ve found that I’m way over-protective and usually end up making a fool of myself. Thank God my wife, LuAnn, is more level-headed about this particular subject and seems to have a much better handle on this boyfriend/girlfriend thing than I do!

RVP: I really like how your essays flow thematically, from “Life, Love & Children,” to coping with “Holidays,” your section on “Heroes” is very poignant and you don’t miss sports (“How Sporting of You!”) and of course the final section, “Shopping and Taxes.” Is there some philosophical message for readers here?

TWM: With a few exceptions, it’s to try and find humor in our everyday lives. But a lot of it also goes back to that central theme: love today, love every moment and learn to cherish every breath you take, because the world out there is such a complicated, crazy place that you never know what might happen from one day to the next or what the future holds….So you may as well keep a sense of humor and live life to its fullest!

RVP: Since we mentioned sports and it’s April (although with this last snowfall, it doesn’t seem like it), all thoughts in New England turn to the Red Sox. Any thoughts or even more bold, predictions for this summer’s version of New England’s team?

TWM: Oh, we’re definitely going all the way this year! Especially with the recent addition of the fifty-million dollar man, Dice-K. Anyway, I unfortunately can’t say we’re still tied for first place because we just lost the opener, but up until we won the World Series a few years ago, everyone in the entire New England area claimed we were going all the way for 86 straight years, so this time of year—hope springs eternal!

Speaking of eternal, one of the stories in the book deals with that very subject—about how Major League Baseball recently signed a venture with the funeral industry where you can actually emblazon your favorite team’s logo on the side of your casket!

I say sign me up—but not just yet!

RVP: You’ve been freelancing for awhile and I know a version of many of these essays first appeared in Maine’s largest daily newspaper. Any other projects in the works beyond I Love Today—Musings from New England?

TWM: My next book project is a supernatural thriller titled Circle of Stones. This is a story about a young teenage girl who befriends two mystical wolves in the northern woods of New Hampshire. I’m very excited about it.

RVP: Tom, it’s been a pleasure. I know we’re very excited that you’ve chosen RiverVision Press to handle your book. Our plans are for a June 1st release date and we’re going to do our best to run you out there to bookstores, libraries and wherever to share your great stories about the unique and sometimes quirky qualities that constitute a life lived in the northernmost state in New England.

TWM: Thank you. Believe me, the pleasure has been all mine. Because this is my first book project, I didn’t really know what to expect and RiverVision Press has made the entire process not only very enjoyable, but quite painless as well. I’m looking forward to getting out there and sharing these stories with the great people of Maine!

[You can find RiverVision Press books, including our award-winning first release, When Towns Had Teams, at most of Maine's independent booksellers, all Mr. Paperback locations, as well as the Borders stores in Bangor and South Portland.]

At the tradeshow

2007-03-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, RiverVision Press packed up its operations and headed over to Central Maine Community College, for the Afox Small Business Fair. This was our first trade show/business fair we’ve done since our inception, back in June, 2005.

I was part of the Afox planning committee, helping to put together this three county conference, one of Governor Baldacci’s Conferences on Small Business and Entrpreneurship. As part of my responsibilities, I was tasked to set up the Resource Fair, where a number of state and federally-sponsored organizations like, SCORE, AVCOG, SBDC and other services, designed to help promote and support the small business community, had tables providing information and assistance to any small business people and prospective entrepreneurs.

My wife and I designed a DIY, low-cost trade show display, promoting RiverVision Press as a resource for prospective writers/authors and advertising some of our consulting services—manuscript critiques, copyediting, as well as other writing-related support that comes from our own experiences with independent publishing.

It was another opportunity to get When Towns Had Teams out into the public, once again and also, an opportunity to talk about our newest book, T.W. Moore’s, I Love Today—Musings from New England. We have developed what will probably be our cover artwork, so it was good to get that design out into the public eye, as well as a print version of Write In Maine, which describes the RiverVision mission and some other information about our company.

The keynote speaker, Michelle Neujahr (New-yar), was great. She was an energetic and motivational speaker and really energized the audience and got them excited, I think, about the possibilities of seeing their own ideas transition from mere thoughts, into serious plans, leading to future success.

I also enjoyed being able to talk to others about what publishing entails and meet a handful of other writers, who inquired about what it takes to publish a book.

While I only sold a handful of books, it was a great opportunity to expose others to RiverVision Press and hold court with fair participants and answer their questions.

A step-by-step approach to success

2007-02-27T19:20:00.000-05:00

I became a publisher, more by default, than any overarching desire to own and operate a small press. With a story that I thought was important and a year’s worth of research in the can, I had come to a place where it was publish it myself, or be just another writer with a manuscript squirreled away in my desk drawer.

RiverVision Press, while born of necessity, has moved beyond being a one-trick pony and has been ramping up production for its follow-up offering to the award-winning, When Towns Had Teams. While our operation is more-or-less a one person show, we have a highly-skilled and diverse support team providing necessary services that are beyond my range of skills. Because of this special ancillary team, I’m very optimistic about the possibilities as we approach our second year in business.

One of the things that I was determined to provide as a publisher was support for new writers, who, like me, had a worthwhile manuscript, but few options for getting it to market. At first, that vision seemed a bit presumptuous, but as I become more comfortable in my role as a publisher, I am certain that in another year, or two, we’ll have a catalog that is diverse and fills an important niche in the Pine Tree State.

I’m really excited about our second offering, a wonderful book, called I Love Today—Musings From New England. Buxton-based writer, Tom Moore, sent me the manuscript a year ago. At first, it just sat there, along with a handful of others. The others were not worth the effort it takes to get a book to market. Once I took the time to read through Tom's however, I knew I had my second title.

Comprised of a series of daily vignettes, I Love Today captures Maine’s special character. Whether focusing on events like the magic of parenthood, or the experience of a Maine Fourth of July celebration, Moore’s talent, humor and eye for detail shine through his work.

While Tom doesn’t necessarily break new ground by writing about what most of us already know, he has a penchant for skillfully and humorously getting inside many of the day-to-day and even mundane experiences of life. In doing so, he gives his readers a positive, uplifting and affirming look at life in one of our nation’s truly special regions.

RiverVision has set a June release date for the book and we are eager to have the chance to get Tom and his book out and about in Maine and maybe beyond. We’ll be making an announcement in the spring about our special launch that we’ve planned for the book. Additionally, we’ve just started having conversations with another talented Maine writer about another intriguing manuscript that is still without a home. While we’re in the formative stages of talks, it looks hopeful that RiverVision will have yet another title to add this fall, to its ever burgeoning list of quality books about Maine.

Keep an eye on the RiverVision Press website for upcoming details and announcements about Maine’s unique small press.

A quote with some resonance

2007-01-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

Ran across this quote at Pete Lit, a blog with a literary bent.

"Writers should live and know the world — a job, heartbreak, divorce, poverty, jail — and the lack of experience in very literate young writers...is the most serious flaw in their work. That and secondhand imaginations. "

--Barry Hannah, in Oxford American

Just so you know, I "stumbled" over to Pete Lit doing a Google search for Joel Phelps, a great writer in his own right, or should I more correctly say, "songwriter"?

If you need something perfect for a snowy January day, order Phelps' most recent release (or anything else, for that matter). Until it arrives, check this out over at WFMU.

John Gould-Maine Treasure

2006-12-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

I'm currently reading the late John Gould's book, Dispatches From Maine, 1942-1992 (W.W. Norton, 1994). Mr. Gould was a prolific writer, who captured Maine and represented it well to the millions of readers who regularly read his columns, for the six decades he was syndicated in The Christian Science Monitor.

While this blog is almost strictly given to writing, writers and the writer's craft, I chose to post this piece over at Words Matter, as it also has some tie-in to the social commentary I try to provide at that site.

Stephen King-Rock Critic

2006-12-04T20:39:00.000-05:00

For most Maine writers (hell, why include the Maine qualifier?), Stephen King is the “holy grail” by which success is measured. Love his work, or not, most of us will never sell a fraction of just one of his titles.

I’m not an obsessive fan of King’s books, but I’ve read a number of them and both the The Dead Zone and The Stand are books I could read again. In fact, The Stand is one of my top 25 books of all time.

One of King’s books that holds a special place in my life is his book, On Writing, where he details the writer’s craft and gives some great advice. It was following his advice to write regularly, on schedule that helped me ramp up my writing and get it to the place where I finally began to get it published. Of the multitude of writing books on the market, I never hesitate to recommend this one to any aspiring writer.

While King is prolific to beat the band, he also writes a regular column for Entertainment Weekly, where he comments on American pop culture. The Pop of King, is King’s regular take on all things current and relevant.

In his latest column, where he shares his best of 2006 list of musical artists, he names Festus, Missouri’s favorite sons, The Bottle Rockets, as one of his top ten acts for the past year. As a fan of Brian Henneman and Company, I appreciate King’s endorsement, especially recognizing that this band's blue collar rock deserves some attention, particularly in light of the deluge of inferior “talent” that receives more than their fair share of spotlight time (can you say Paris Hilton, former American Idol, Carrie Greenwood, Madonna and a slew of other names that are too numerous to mention).

King, like many writers, would probably trade all his literary fame and awards for a chance at rock stardom. He actually plays guitar and was a member of a group of writers “slumming” as musicians for a short period of time. With fellow wordsmiths, Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Matt Groenig and others, he played in the Rock Bottom Remainders for a brief span of time.

I’m sure the boys in the Bottle Rockets are appreciative of the mention and the additional units of inventory moved that an endorsement from a writing god like King is sure to result in. If you don’t know the band, or their recorded material, check out Zoysia, their latest, but for sure, pick up some of their earlier stuff like The Brooklyn Side, 24 Hours a Day, as well as the the Doug Sahm-influenced Sons of Sahm.

A perpetual chip (on my shoulder)

2006-11-25T10:56:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I can be a bit abrasive. Those who know me well, know that I'm not above the sarcastic barb, or worse, sharp putdown, particularly when I'm of the opinion that my subject is dealing some serious bullsh*t.

I would say that I've gotten better at controlling those urges to "put people in their places," but from time-to-time, even now, my frustration bubbles over and I revert to being "petulant Jim."

Over the past four years, trying to find a way to market my writing and locate an audience for my opinions, commentary and views about all things Maine, I've been irked on how tough it is to get noticed and register attention with readers and others, particularly those who pay writers for their work. Now, more than ever, I'm convinced luck plays a huge role in catching a break or two as a writer.

While luck is a factor, having some support from members of Maine's writing community would certainly be helpful from time to time, not that I'm holding my breath, waiting for this to happen. If that sounds like part sour grapes, maybe it is.

Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance has been around since 1975, with a mission to "promote the value of literature and the art of writing by building a community of publishers, writers, and readers of all ages within Maine." They claim to be the largest writer's group in the country, when factored on a per capita basis. Having been a member for the past three years, I've found that they've offered very little for a writer like me. It's possible that if I wrote poetry, or children's books that they might have more to offer in the way of support. Granted, they operate as a small non-profit, which limits what they are able to offer in the way of support for writers in Maine. However, they are held up by many writers as some paragon of literary virtue. More times than I care to recount, some well-meaning pseudo-writer, the kind that's got a manuscript they've been working on for a decade, will say to me, when I whine about the lack of a writing community in Maine, "have you joined MWPA?" Personally, I've found the yearly fee I pay to be of no value whatsoever. In fact, some national trade organizations have given me real "bang for my buck" and have proven invaluable in what they've been able to offer me.

Recently, feeling shortchanged by Maine's only literary organization, I fired off a letter to MWPA, pissed that I was being "snubbed" for the second year in a row for their holiday book signing. I included some choice lines like the following:

"For the second consecutive year, writers of books that have sold a mere fraction of what my first book, the award-winning "When Towns Had Teams" has, find themselves invited and once again, I’ll be on the sidelines, excluded from an event that I have earned the right to be a part of."

The only problem with my perception is that I hadn't paid attention. If I had given heed to their monthly newsletter, "Maine In Print," I would have known that to be part of Holiday Book Fair and Author Signing, you had to send your materials in for review, since it is a juried selection process. Talk about the proverbial "egg on my face." Actually, I did send along a packet in 2005, which was rejected. But, with all that's going on here at the end of 2006, I forgot about these details and of course, when the recent"Maine In Print" showed up in my mailbox and I wasn't part of the list of 20 authors, my pride got the best of me.

I wasn't done, however, in fact, I was just warming up, as is obvious from the following:

"To be quite frank, I’ve established my own publishing beachhead with little support from Maine’s myopic writing community. At first, this was a bit of an issue for me, particularly when I first started. It is now much less of an issue, as I’ve come to accept that there will always be those who don’t value what it is that I’m trying to accomplish with RiverVision Press, both as a writer and as a publisher, plus 65-70 hour work weeks leave little room to worry about what others are doing.

While it is easy to feel slighted on a personal level, I’ve heard from other writers that this isn’t unusual for MWPA to highlight particular writers and publishers, to the exclusion of others. Yet, when a state like Maine lacks much else in the way of a writing community, it’s hard not to feel some indignity for being overlooked."

Needless to say, I didn't score any points for style and probably won't be extended an invitation to take part in any MWPA events any time soon.

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to make it on my own, DIY-style, just as I have been since day one.

The power of (advertising) money

2006-11-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I feel that I'm publishing in a vacuum. While When Towns Had Teams has sold better than I had any right to expect, as a first time author, independently releasing my own book, with no publishing experience to speak of, I still have a sense that not enough people know about the book. Interestingly, here I am, one year later, finally with some cake for advertising and the fields book readers ripe for the picking. Can we approach 2006's lofty holiday buying numbers? I think we can, precisely because I have some cash, a plan and some targeted advertising planned, via print and even radio.

There are no official channels to measure book sales for small Maine presses. If I can be so bold, however, I'd hazard a guess that my numbers for offering #1 are comparable to some of the better known presses, like Down East, Islandport and Tilbury House. I know that some of my book sellers told me last year that I was one of their better local sellers. On top of that, I've talked with other writers who offered insight into how their books did. Additionally, I check out bookstores whenever I can and my book is in alot of bookstores that some of the other publisher's books are not. Lastly, some publishers don't seem particularly interested in welcoming an upstart like RiverVision Press, Maine's unique small press. Hey, whatever!

The holiday book buying season is an exciting time for this new publisher. Prior to my foray into the book biz, I only had the usual reasons for looking forward to the holidays. Now, I have new visions of book sales dancing in my head, heading into the upcoming season.

The independent life

2006-10-24T21:28:00.000-04:00

Being an independent, small press publisher can be challenging. It becomes even more challenging when you must get a day job to support your publishing, then it ramps up exponentially.

For much of 2006, my small press venture, RiverVision Press, has been on autopilot, shipping books, dabbling in some idea creation, but just maintaining the fort, after a whirlwind year that saw us cope with the marketing and other details that accompany the release of one’s first book and try to figure out exactly where we are headed as a publisher. The road had a few bumps, like the ill-fated anthology that I had hoped to get out in 2006, only to be saddled with a shortage of solid writing. As a result, I had to shelve that for another time.

Independent Publisher, the voice of the independent publishing industry and the awarder of the IPPY’s, of which yours truly was awarded one, for When Towns Had Teams, has many interesting articles on its website about the world of independent publishing, including this one.

While there are certainly independently (or self-published) efforts that are poorly done, filled with typos and lacking any type of consistency of design, you’ll find more and more mainstream, large press offerings that are thrown together for the sake of getting a product to market and often, there is little or no planning regarding the marketing of these books.

Speaking of marketing, I’ve been extremely busy with my holiday advertising push. While having to go back to the 9 to 5 world has been taxing on my time, it has provided RiverVision with some much needed capitalization and I’m using some of this to push When Towns Had Teams hard during the year’s busy book buying season. I’ve been designing a series of ads that are set to run in publications covering a good chunk of the state. I may even be running a few radio spots.

While it has forced me to burn the candle at both ends more often than not, it has also unleashed a well of pent up creativity that I’m channeling back into my publishing. I’m happy to report that 2007 looks like a year when RiverVision will be releasing not one, but two titles! I’ve acquired a great manuscript from a first time author that I think will make a great follow-up book to When Towns Had Teams. I’m currently reading the manuscript and will be sitting down over the next few weeks with this writer to begin discussing terms and hopefully, we’ll have a signed contract soon. On top of that release, set for the spring, I’ve begun research on my second book. While this book will once again highlight the people and places of Maine, I think readers will be pleasantly surprised at how different it will be from my first book. This should be out just in time for next year’s holiday book buying bonanza.

I’m excited again about publishing and this excitement should translate into a very productive year for RiverVision Press, Maine’s unique small press. And don’t forget to pick up copies of When Towns Had Teams for that baseball fan of yours!

Writers that inspire

2006-09-06T07:57:00.000-04:00

The blogging has been sparse, particularly at this site. I’ve tried to keep the focus of this blog on writing and the associations that pertain to its craft. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve gone back into the fulltime workforce, which is actually proving to be a positive thing—obviously having a regular paycheck is a good thing—but I also find my creativity seems to have taken an upturn. Not only am I actively pursuing new ideas for writing, I’ve also gotten out my guitar and have been playing the past couple of evenings—when you open up the creativity spout, look out!

One of my favorite non-fiction writers, particularly for his insights on writing and living an authentic life, is Po Bronson. For me, he has a very “real” grasp on writing and removes the sentimentality and romance from something that is as much about hard work as it is about epiphanies and creative bolts hitting you from on high.

I’ve read several of his books, including the excellent, What Should I Do With My Life?, which helped me put my need to write in the proper focus and helped me to have the courage and will to begin freelancing and eventually, write a book of my own. I continue to find Bronson’s insights and reality-checks helpful as I move forward with my writing and begin working on a new idea for a book that I hope to have out at some point in 2007.

I’m somewhat disappointed by having to shelve, or at least put on the back burner, my non-fiction anthology that I had hopes of releasing this fall. While the decision to pull the plug, or at least delay the release was tough—I had to contact several very good writers, telling them I had decided not to publish my anthology, after actively promoting it to Maine’s non-fiction writing community—I realize now, about six weeks after making my decision that it was the right one.

I find that I’m excited again about the prospect of a new idea for a book and actually, the possibility might be there, in the context of my new vision for a book, to actually include some of the better submissions I received for the anthology, if the writers are willing to give me another shot.

Writing has been both frustrating and rewarding, often at the same time. However, I remain committed to my craft—refining it, developing new skills and perfecting the ones I have—all with an eye towards seeing what new ways I can define progress and even success in what I love to do.

Friends for breakfast

2006-08-24T07:13:00.000-04:00

This morning, I got up, lifted weights and took a walk with my dog. This has become my every-other-day ritual since going back to work, three weeks ago. While it’s still semi-dark at 5:30 am, when Bernie and I set out, I wear a fluorescent vest and the traffic hasn’t yet picked up. If we wait until 6-ish, many folks headed off to work begin clogging our section of Route 9.

These walks are good because they allow me to put my day into focus and think about ideas and other things I’d like to do, particularly on the writing side. While my means of making a living has shifted from my writing to the 9-5 gig, I still am drawn to my blogging, as well as other modes and methods of writing.

After my walk, I sat down for some breakfast and coffee and as I’ve done most every day since I can remember, read through the morning newspaper. The Go section of the Portland Press Herald occupied most of my attention, today. I’m glad I took the time to read through the movie, music and restaurant reviews, because tucked at the end of these sections was an interview with Cactus Highway, a talented Maine due. I have a special affinity for this exceptional musical act, since I once worked with Andrea Wollstadt, who comprises one half of the duo. The other half, is Andrea’s husband, Rob Duquette. Andrea used to be a frequent participant at a semi-regular lunch gathering of four or five folks, the last time I occupied a corporate cubicle. Both of us were “between things” and I enjoyed her genuineness and good humor.

Getting to know Andrea, I found out she was a musician and that her and Rob had toured the country a couple of times, with Cactus Highway. I had the privilege of meeting Rob one Friday, a few years back, over beers at Gritty’s , in Portland. Like Andrea, he came across as genuine and someone easy to be around. I finally got to catch their act two years ago, in Auburn, during one of their summer noontime concerts. They totally blew me away. Andrea has this incredible voice and is a talented multi-instrumentalist, primarily on sax and flute. Rob, who plays both guitar and drums, has a wonderful percussive playing style, reminiscent somewhat of Trey Anastasio, of Phish fame. While duos can be limited in the groove they put down, both Andrea and Rob were phenomenal—one of the best local acts I’ve seen. I had the opportunity to catch them again, about a year ago, at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, in Portland, shortly after Andrea had given birth to their daughter, Estella.

Check out the Cactus Highway website and if you enjoy music that’s original and well-performed, make an effort to catch them, as they ramp up their performing. According to Ray Routhier’s piece, they intend to play a bit more, as their daughter gets older, so that’s a good thing, as their recent gigging has been sporadic, at best.

Life's realities affect one's writing

2006-08-17T20:44:00.000-04:00

Writing is what I love to do. It’s what I’ve used to eke out a living for nearly three years, give and take some part-time contract work to even out the income troughs endemic to the writing life.

While plenty of writers make a living from their craft, with some living quite well (think Stephen King, Tess Gerritsen, or J.K. Rowling), many make considerably less and most don’t make a living at all. The writing community is populated by a considerable number who pay their bills by waitressing, driving a cab, working in a bookstore, or several other varieties of gainful employment.

For much of the past six months, I knew that I had to make some major changes if I had any hope of keeping a roof over my head, or the repo man from my dooryard. As much as I hated to admit it, the money coming in from writing, was less and sometimes, considerably less than my monthly bills. Finally, When Towns Had Teams had reached the break-even point and the summer’s steady sales were a welcome addition to the income stream. Unfortunately, a leaky roof, various car repairs, as well as other household improvements that I couldn’t bear to put off any longer were staring me in the face. As supportive as my loving wife and soulmate remained, I realized it was no longer fair to continue placing such a financial burden on squarely on her back.

Compounding the income difficulties was a recent buyout of the company where I was deriving steady part-time income. In the beginning, getting paid required invoicing and a wait of two weeks for payment—not an issue, really, at all. However, the new company, a newspaper chain, based in New Jersey, began paying its contractors like we were vendors. What used to take two weeks, now turned into a torturous four and five week wait for payment—totally unacceptable and disastrous from a cash flow standpoint

My publishing goal for RiverVision Press was a non-fiction anthology of Maine writers, focusing on life in the land of pine trees, persistence and in too many places, poverty. With high hopes for writing that would paint a more realistic picture of the Pine Tree State, I anticipated the types of writing that my call for contributions would bring.

As manuscripts began toppling in, choking my post office box, occasionally, some very good and even outstanding material would come across the transom. More times than not, however, the materials wasn’t worthy of the time, expense and energy of producing another small press offering on my own diminishing dime.

I spent three to four months reading material, editing it, even going as far as bring on a summer intern to help with the project. As I neared the printing deadline that I had set to send my project to the printer, with an eye towards an early fall release, it was becoming apparent that the material wasn’t substantial enough, or possessing enough strong talent to warrant the light of day. You see, RiverVision Press isn’t in the business of publishing material for the sake of merely having a title on the shelf. I’m limited in what I can produce and throwing funding behind a project that wasn’t igniting my passion was a red flag for me.

For several weeks, I agonized over what to do. Could I make an appeal to the five or six big names I had originally contacted when my project was in the formative stages? Obviously, for some, they were too busy. Others were too self-important to help a new publisher get a second title on the shelves. I finally decided to pull the plug.

I spent a couple of weeks sending out emails and mailings, notifying writers of my decision. Honestly, it made me feel like shit, having to go back on my word. Almost all of the writers were very understanding. A couple of writers were obviously pissed, but at that point, I didn’t really give rat’s ass about what they thought.

I'm now back in the work-a-day world, holding down a Monday through Friday gig. I actually really like what I’m doing, as I’m using a lot of the marketing and networking skills that I fine-tuned during my freelance period. The lessons learned over the past year, marketing When Towns Had Teams were invaluable and impossible to duplicate in another environment. The book received a prestigious regional award, from a national trade association. I continue to receive positive feedback and my sales remain steady.

I continue to work on ideas for upcoming projects and hope to have some funding available, possibly in the spring, for another title for RiverVision Press.

This past Sunday, in the Maine Sunday Telegram, there was an article on Mark Kleinhaut, a jazz guitarist from Maine. Kleinhaut tried to make a career of supporting himself from his music. After about a year, he decided to take his finance degree and enter the world of banking to support his music. He continued to play evenings and weekends, but for the first time, he had some income and no longer depended on his music for monetary gain. Kleinhaut has been playing music for nearly 25 years and only recently has his passion been rewarded with some national acclaim and recognition in jazz circles.

The article was inspiring for me, as I realized that just because I was working during the day, earning my keep, didn’t mean that I still couldn’t spend time in the evenings and weekends, doing what I love to do, which is to write.

I’ll continue to operate RiverVision Press and freelance articles when I can. I’ll also no longer feel the crushing pressure to make money off everything I do pertaining to my writing. Rather than a disappointment, I actually feel liberated. Now I can write for the pure joy of plying my craft, rather than having to compromise and shill it out to pay my bills.

Baseball in my blood

2006-07-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

For those of you who have been following my blogging for any length of time, or are familiar with my book, When Towns Had Teams, you know of my interest in local baseball. In fact, not only am I interested in the grass-roots version of our national pastime, but I remain directly connected with the Twilight League, the oldest league of its type in the U.S.

For the past three years, I coached a team, while adding the title of league president to my involvement with the league. I also have done what I can to publicize the league and drum up interest from our local media, who generally aren't friendly to anything that smacks of local, at least not the Portland Press Herald and other dailies.

On the other hand, weekly papers, like the The Forecaster, have allowed me to write articles on the league for the past two summers. This gives us some publicity and also allows me to write about something dear to my heart--local baseball.

Here is my latest article in The Forecaster, on two players who continue to play the great game of baseball for all the right reasons.

For the love of the game
Twilight League veterans lead the way for Patriot Mutual
(The Forecaster, July 26, 2006)
By, Jim Baumer

For much of its history, the 104-year-old Twilight League has been a baseball way station for veterans still craving top-notch competition. Unlike the more recreational Men’s Senior Baseball League, Portland’s Twilight League requires a greater commitment from its players and provides a reliable yardstick for anyone wanting a gauge on whether they still have it.

Over the past few seasons, fewer and fewer players continue to play after leaving college. For whatever reason, many have decided to forego the four-day-per-week commitment of semi-pro leagues, like the Twilight League. Two veteran Patriot Mutual pitchers, Luke Myers and John Carriero, have continued to play long after many of their peers have hung up their spikes, or have drifted to over-30 baseball. Both continue to relish the opportunity to ply their stuff against the best young talent in the area. The need to compete at a higher level continues to be a motivating factor for each, as they spend summer evenings on local diamonds, more than holding their own against younger foes.

When asked about why he keeps coming back, Myers indicated that the competition was one of the reasons. Now in his thirteenth season of playing in a town team, or semi-pro league, the 31-year-old Myers has been with the Patriot Mutual club for the past three summers.

“There’s nothing like the competition of playing in the Twilight League,” said Myers. “I love the time I get to spend at the ballpark. The grass, the dirt, the camaraderie of the dugout; all these things make it special.”

Like many older players who’ve come before him, it’s tough to walk away from a game that you begin playing during your formative years.

“I’ve been playing baseball since I was five or six,” said Myers. “When I was younger, my dad was a big part of my baseball experience—coaching, running the local Little League (in Auburn, where he grew up), so family is a big part of the experience for me.”

Myers graduated from Edward Little High School and went on to play baseball at Skidmore College, in upstate New York, graduating in 1997.

“We were a fairly new program when I got there. It was exciting to be part of a young program and see it grow,” he said.

While at Skidmore, he played summers in the old Pine Tree League, which folded in 2001. Originally founded in 1923, the league was one of many that were once active in Maine and allowed players of all ages and abilities to compete against neighboring towns.

After the Pine Tree folded and now working in the Portland area, Myers was anxious to see if he had the talent to play at the next level.

“I’d always heard about the Twilight League and was aware of its reputation,” said Myers. “I wondered if I was good enough to compete in this league.”

In 2003, he was picked up late in the season by the old Yankee Ford club and got his feet wet as a Twilighter. In 2004, he was drafted by Patriot Mutual and has been a key member of its pitching staff since.

At the age of 31, Myers might be having his best year ever. The right-handed hurler has filled a number of roles over his three years with Patriot Mutual. This year, as in previous seasons, Myers has pitched relief, as well as making spot starts. This season, he’s started four times in eight appearances and has posted a record of 3-1, with an ERA under two runs a game.

Always a gamer, Myers continues to appreciate what it takes to play the game he loves at a high level.

“Every year, I have to fight for my spot on a talented team. There’s never a guarantee that I’ll automatically have a place,” he said. “I’m enjoying the opportunity and hope to continue to play as long as my ability allows me to compete at this level.”

Like Myers, John Carriero is a veteran playing in a league that is primarily comprised of college players. At 37, Carriero finds himself as the elder statesman of the league, or “the old man” as he sees it.”

Hailing from the Camden, New Jersey area, Carriero brings a solid baseball pedigree with him to the Pine Tree State. He played his college ball for Rider University, a solid Division I program. During his freshman season in 1987, the club advanced to the regionals where Carriero pitched against a strong Georgia club and future major leaguer, Derek Lilliquist, who later pitched for Atlanta.

Carriero moved to Maine last summer, having fallen in love with the state during previous vacation trips to Old Orchard.

“My wife and I loved the area and we thought it would be a great place for the kids to grow up,” said Carriero.

With the assorted priorities that accompany family and other adult responsibilities, Carriero was asked why he continues to make the commitment necessary to pitch at this higher level, rather than play with his peers in the over-30 circuit.

“I tried the over-30 experience back in Jersey. I didn’t think enough of the players had respect for the game, the way I thought it should be played,” he said.

He found himself back playing against younger players and seeing if his talent was still good enough for the Rancocus Valley League in South Jersey.

“We were a solid league; I played for several years for the Vincentville team down there,” said Carriero. “When I knew I was moving to Maine, I wanted to hook up with the Twilight League and see how I’d do up here.”

Carriero was a key second-half edition for Patriot Mutual in 2005 and almost pitched them into the playoffs.

This summer, the 37-year-old Carriero has been nearly perfect on the hill, posting a 4-0 record in five starts, with 36 strikeouts in 27 innings. No slouch with the bat, either, he’s provided the potent Patriot Mutual offense with another right-handed bat, primarily as a DH, batting .297, with a homer and six RBI.

“This summer’s been a lot of fun. We have a great club, with a very deep pitching staff,” said Carriero. “I played for a club a few years back in Vincentville that was 36-3 and this year’s club reminds me of them; we always find a way to win.”

Both Myers and Carriero are throwbacks to a time when local players often played well into their 30s, 40s and a few, into their 50s. Both are examples of how, when you are serious about the game, take care of yourself and avoid injury, you often get better, the older you get.

“I’ve learned so much about the game, having pitched for so long,” said Carriero.

You can be sure that once playoff time rolls around, veteran players like Myers and Carriero will be filling key roles in Patriot Mutual’s march towards their first league championship.

Portland's Best

2006-06-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

Great ideas often come in small packages. Take for instance, the latest installment of Portland’s Best, by Warren Machine Company. Clocking in at just over 100 pages (112, to be exact), this pocket-sized guide to greater-Portland is a must if you have any hope of avoiding another summer of participating in, “what are we going to do tonight.”

Ari Meil and crew over at Warren Machine give you Portland (and other Maine gems) in a handy guidebook that will have you impressing the hell out of your friends, family and possibly, your co-workers, with your knowledge of the places to go in and around Portland proper.

Take for instance when friends come in from out of town and you need a restaurant that shows your sophistication and great taste in food (even if those who know you best, know you don’t have any). How about Hugo’s (selected as Portland’s best upscale dining establishment)? Chef Rob Evans, voted Food & Wine’s Best Chef in 2004, will dazzle with his creative French cuisine.

If your guests are of the liberty-loving variety and French food might ignite an argument, then how about Cinque Terre, or Fore Street (coming in at #16 on Gourmet’s top 50 restaurants list)? But, without Portland’s Best, you wouldn’t have known that, would you?

In addition to helping navigate the jungle of eating establishments in and around the city, you’ll also learn the best places to shop, drink, or enjoy your morning donut served topless. Need pet supplies? Then head over to Bark and Roll for homemade doggie treats, high-fashion doggie accessories, or to use their walk-in dog wash. Don’t forget to say “hi” to Frannie, Bark and Roll’s resident pug.

While warm summer sunshine has been hard to come by so far, don’t be a slave to the weather. Pick up Portland’s Best and make the summer of ’06 your most interesting yet and put a little cash in the coffers of one of Maine's unique small presses.

Writer's block

2006-06-14T19:39:00.000-04:00

In writer’s circles, the term “writer’s block” is a dreaded phrase. Occasionally, in an interview, you’ll hear a well-known writer make reference to a time in his/her career when the words dried up, like a hand dug well in the middle of an August drought.

For new writers, or even those writers who have been at their craft for a number of years and haven’t gone through their first dry spell, the phrase has an enigmatic quality to it. I’m sure there are writers who assume that even though it happens to others, even best-selling writers who turn out a new title every year, the fountain will never run dry for them.

For me, the term “writer’s block” always conjured up the idea of a cessation of words, or the lack of new ideas that lead to stories, articles and even book-length works. As I’ve grown in experience, I’ve come to understand that this phenomenon can take on a variety of manifestations, all of which diminish productivity and leave you in writer’s “limbo.”

After having turned out my first book, which was released last September, I have been experiencing my own writing “black out” period, which isn’t necessarily that I’ve stopped writing, or been unable to write, but I’ve been experiencing a disruption of routine that has prevented me from moving on to my next major project of my own.

Granted, I’m currently in the process of compiling non-fiction essays, vignettes and other works by Maine authors for the next RiverVision project, which will have the tentative title of Pine Trees, Potato Fields and Lobster Traps: Writer’s Views of Maine. This is scheduled for a late summer/early fall release. Additionally, I’ve tried to capitalize on baseball’s summer run of popularity to continue a marketing push for When Towns Had Teams. On top of all of this writing busyness, I have also seen an increase in responsibilities in my part-time job, which I use to pay some of my bills. Did I mention that I’m also president of the Portland Twilight League?

This disruption of routine and never-ending list of things to do, all important and most being necessary, has robbed me of the time, as well as focus that I need to begin preliminary work for my next major project that I hope will lead to book number two.

For me, the problem hasn’t been lack of solid ideas for a book that has a kind of unique focus that I look for in choosing a project. I’ve even gone as far as sitting down and outlining two fairly detailed mockups of ideas that with time, research and patience, would undoubtedly lead to a 300+ page book that I might be able to sell to a national company, or at least start getting out some proposals to agents.

Based on my own personal experience of the past few months, I think another form of writer’s block is being paralyzed by fear of failing to be able to follow through with a viable second book. Rather than choosing an idea and running with it, I’m currently struggling with having an idea and then, two weeks later, deciding that the idea wasn’t as good as it sounded and going off on another scouting expedition for a new idea to work with.

They say that everyone (at least every writer) has one book in them. Maybe, rather than the problem being a lack of ideas, writers (at least the non-fiction variety) get bogged down by not being able to “pull the trigger” and choosing one idea from several good ones and getting at the real work of writing, which is ultimately, research, more research and then, assembling it into a coherent format and order that readers want to buy and read.

I guess sometimes a writer needs to trust their instincts and fish, or cut bait. I’m in that place right now. Whether I succeed, or not, will be determined if I have enough faith in my abilities to pick a subject and do the hard work of pulling the ideas and stories together for a readable book. I think that based on my first foray, I need to trust my own skills and abilities and kick doubt to the curb.

Staying Alive

2006-05-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

What started with eight is now down to four. Wheaton College, on the strength of their heart-stopping, 5-4 win over Wisconsin-Stevens Point, is left standing with three others, in the 2006 College World Series, held in Appleton, Wisconsin.

With mid-summer temperatures hovering near 90 degrees, sophomore right-hander, Louis Bernadini, pitched into the ninth, leaving with a 5-1 lead. With the lead and one of the nation’s top closers in Division III, Jamie Baker, brought in to drive the final two nails in the Pointers’ coffin, it looked like the Lyons’ faithful could collectively take a cleansing breath and stop gripping. As happens so often in tournament play, Wisconsin-Stevens Point refused to go quietly. Senior Chuck Brehm blasted a two-run homer over the wall in left center to make it a two-run margin. A walk and an RBI single made it 5-4 and the partisan crowd was whooping it up for their home state team. With hearts in throats, the Lyons’ contingent of parents, friends and assorted family members screamed and hollered support, as Baker flung a 2-2 slider by the lunging WSP hitter and the Lyons lived to play for another day.

Wheaton has a chance to test its mettle again, this time against Montclair State College, of New Jersey. The Red Hawks advanced in an improbable fashion, with their dramatic 5-4 win over Eastern Connecticut State.

With runners at seoncs and third, in the bottom of the 11th inning, Eastern Connecticut State head coach Bill Holowaty brought in senior pitcher Alex Narus - the seventh Warrior pitcher used in the game - to face Brian Butler. On his first pitch of an intentional-walk attempt, the high lob ricocheted off of the top of catcher Matt Cooney's glove and slowly went back to the wall. Michael Nunes sprinted to the plate with the game-winning run. I can only imagine the anguish experienced by the fans from Connecticut.

Today, Wheaton will play at noon. If they can get by the Red Hawks, they will have the opportunity for a rematch against Chapman University, which fell to the undefeated Marietta College Pioneers, 10-4, in Sunday night action.

Both Mary and I are enjoying ourselves, along with the other members of the Wheaton entourage. The Appleton area has rolled out the red carpet to the teams and their fans and the weather, save for a few showers on Saturday, has been gorgeous.

I hope to be back to report on two victories with my next post.

Elimination Game

2006-05-28T10:02:00.000-04:00

Baseball, more than any other sport, can make for an unforgiving place to reside, at times. The good and very good are measured more by how they deal with adversity and failure, than how they relate to their times of success.

The Wheaton College Lyons, have come to their defining moment of the 2006 season, facing elimination, for the first time all year. Last night’s tough loss to Chapman University and their All-American pitcher, Devin Drag, was one of those moments when adversity blocks out all the other accomplishments in this spring’s high water mark of a season. Take away the 39 wins up to this point, a school record, the remarkable 24 game winning streak, their first regional title and their first appearance in the College World Series here in Appleton. Without a win today against a tough Wisconsin-Stevens Point club and the accolades and awards of 2006 will ring hollow. Granted, time will help all the players, coaches and fans place it in the proper perspective, but for the short-term, today’s game is the biggest one to date and the biggest one in the Lyons’ brief nine year history. Without a win and all will seem for naught.

As a former player, now relegated to the role of parent and spectator, it breaks your heart to see your son and his teammates looking so crushed and dejected, streaming through the Fox Cities Stadium concourse, last night. At a loss for words and just wanting to get on the bus, they obviously didn’t come here thinking about losing. Even parents and supporters, used to gregarious mingling and basking in the vicarious post-game rush of victory seemed ill-prepared for losing.

This morning, the sun came up and it’s a new day. Elimination games are what the latter stages of double-elimination tournaments are about. While Wisconsin Stevens-Point is 10-0 in their history of playing in elimination games, Wheaton as a program has never been here. Will history run true to form, or will the Lyons begin writing their own script of post-season miracles, with backs to the wall.

We’ll have to wait until early afternoon (1:15 CST) to know how things will shake out.

Travel is hell

2006-05-26T08:07:00.000-04:00

Travel is hell, at least when you’re tall and fly coach. Seeing that I didn’t win the lottery at birth and was born of working-class folk, I imagine that I’ll always end up subjected to having my knees pressed into the back of the seat in front of me, whenever I have to fly.

We left Logan at noon and flew two hours to Detroit. After a three hour layover at Detroit Metro , the rudeness (to go along with murder) capital of the U.S., our second leg of the journey to Green Bay was short and sweet—47 minutes.

The Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay is small, similar in size to the Portland Jetport. What you notice immediately when you touch down in the Midwest, is both the flatness of the terrain and the genuine friendliness of the airport staff. Unlike Detroit, where I think airport staff are trained to exhibit rudeness, regardless of what kiosk you stop at, the folks at Austin Straubel ask about your trip, where you are headed, is this your first time here, etc.

The drive from Green Bay to Appleton is about 30 miles and couldn’t have been easier to navigate. Much of the drive took place via U.S. 41 where we passed mile after mile of farms and pastures. In fact, flying into Green Bay revealed that this area is still farming country, as the grid work of farms flanking the metro area was especially evident from the air.

Once we checked in at the hotel, where we freshened up and unpacked our luggage, we then headed next door to the Texas Roadhouse, for dinner. After a piece of dry toast for breakfast, a lousy burrito at the Detroit airport and some stale pretzels on the plane, I was ready for a few beers and some Texas barbeque.

When you are on the road, you are always at the mercy of recommendations, whims and a few online recommendations, or the word of locals about eating establishments. We were not disappointed with our dinner. Not only was the food wonderful, but our waitress, Sam, went out of her way to be accommodating and added to the enjoyment of our ample portions of great-tasting, stick-to-your-ribs type of fare. After a couple of beers and a great meal, we made the short walk back to the hotel where we made it an early night.

Today is the beginning of the tournament and we’ll be headed out to Fox Cities Stadium to catch the Wheaton/North Carolina Wesleyan game.

A remarkable season that still has legs

2006-05-22T06:02:00.000-04:00

In America (and countries like the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba and other baseball-playing nations), little boys learn the game from their fathers. Most begin acquiring the knowledge and a working understanding of it at an early age.

My son, Mark, was introduced to baseball around the age of three, via a plastic Wiffle ball bat. With the care common with dads passing on their love of something, we spent many an evening in the backyard of our rented duplex in Indiana (we'd be moving back to the Pine Tree State the next year), bonding around a plastic bat and ball.

It might be naïve on my part, but I swear that Mark exhibited precocity towards hitting a ball. Even at three, he’d swing so hard that he’d fall down, trying to hit the ball. He probably only made contact three out of ten times I pitched the ball his way, but when he did hit it, it would sail over my head and I’d think, “maybe I’ve got a ballplayer for a son.”

As soon as he was eight (the earliest Mark could enter any organized aspect of baseball), my wife and I signed him up for t-ball. While this is usually a good first introduction to baseball, with youngster hitting the ball off a stationary, rubber tube, affixed to home plate, for Mark, it was not “real” baseball because they didn’t keep score. He has always been a competitor and the excessive nods to “fairness” of t-ball drained this youthful version of baseball of any meaning for Mark.

His four years playing Little League were very enjoyable and he began to show his considerable talent. I coached and our teams began to dominate the league. I spent many hours teaching the game and the proper way to play it, to Mark, as well as the other 14 or 15 young men (and occasionally, young ladies) on the team. By his 12-year-old year, we had an undefeated team and I began to receive some of the ire commonly directed at coaches by overbearing parents of Little Leaguers. Most often this would be coming from people that knew next to nothing about sports and the proper way to coach them.

While I had a one year stint coaching my son in middle school, I no longer coached Mark as he began to mature and exhibit an ability to launch baseballs up and out towards outfield fences. We still spent many hours on deserted ball fields, emptying buckets of baseballs, with me throwing batting practice until my arm was jelly, or hitting countless fungoed ground balls to a budding young first baseman.

It is in high school when fathers of talented youngsters begin to receive some validation for their efforts. After successful junior and senior years of high school, as well as his final summer American Legion campaign where it seemed like he hit a homer most nights, my son had grown to a lanky 6’3” and was off to play baseball at Wheaton College, a Division III baseball program on the move. The year before Mark arrived, the Lyons had their first player taken in the Major League baseball draft. Chris Denorfia, an immensely talented outfielder was drafted in the 19th round by the Cincinnati Reds. In three years, Denorfia would make his major league debut in September and hit his first home run. His time at Wheaton saw the Lyons become one of the top Division III programs in New England, often attracting players who were talented and should have been given a shot at much larger, Division I schools. Instead, these blue chip players opted for the more rigorous academic opportunities, the smaller school size and still had an opportunity to have a rigorous college baseball experience.

My wife and I got used to three hour drives each weekend to watch our son mostly ride the pine during his freshman year. While it’s hard to watch your son not play, especially when you’ve had high hopes for him since three and spend hours teaching him the finer points of the game, my wife Mary also struggled with Mark’s lack of playing time.

It’s a good thing for parents to learn to let go of their children and allow them the space they need to mature. Mark continued to work hard and his sophomore year yielded his first significant playing time.

By his junior year, Mark had become a hulking 6’3” and 225 pounds of lean muscle. He put up phenomenal numbers over the 2005 campaign and was selected to the all-New England team, as their first-team designated hitter. He had the third best offensive season in school history. With a strong showing in the 2005 Northeast Regional, where they bowed out to a strong Trinity club in the regional finals, the team seemed poised for bigger and better things in 2006.

While baseball is a game that focuses on individual statistics and more than any other major sport, it truly is a game driven by numbers, it is first and foremost, a team game. Regardless of how well individuals do, the performance of the club, as far as winning or losing goes, is dependent on the efforts of nine or more players. A player can hit home runs, or pitch brilliantly and still come out on the losing end if everyone isn’t hitting on all cylinders.

The 2006 Wheaton season was a wonderful illustration of this to me and I don’t think it was lost on Mark. While the team didn’t get off to the kind of start that would indicate a season of historic proportions, there were obviously signs of tremendous talent. On the annual southern trip to Florida, to play 10 days of baseball in conditions more conducive to pitching and batting a ball, the team came back north with a mark of six wins and three losses, after having played some of the top Division III teams in the country. The pitching appeared especially strong and abundantly deep, but the bats showed inconsistency and the infield defense was porous. Mark, after hitting well in the first two games began to scuffle at the plate. In a pattern that would befuddle him much of the season, with games that seemed to indicate he had found the stroke that made him one of the most-feared players in the blue-and-white lineup in 2005, he inevitably would find himself back in the funk of a slump. As a father, I had stopped offering unsolicited advice to my son. While I had the privilege of coaching him for the past three summers, as well as other talented college players, I knew better than to be the overbearing dad of my earlier years.

After suffering a loss to Bridewater State College, the Lyons proceeded to win one and lose two during the first week back playing on the barren and brown fields of northern New England.

On Tuesday, March 28, Wheaton bussed over to Waltham for an afternoon game at Brandies. Once again, the Lyons were having trouble catching the ball. Finding themselves down by a 4-2 count, going into the ninth, the club rallied for three in their half of the ninth to go up, 5-4. With their closer, Jamie Baker shutting down the Judges’ bats, Wheaton ended up with a win and the beginning of an unbelievable streak of wins.

Over the next five weeks, the Lyons would not lose. On April 12th, they erased a 6-0 deficit on route to a 13-7 thrashing of Bridgwater State, tying the school record for consecutive wins, with their 11th consecutive victory. The following day, once again, the Lyons came from behind to against Worcester State, with a hard fought 8-7 win and set a new Wheaton record for wins in a row.

The Blue and White ended up winning 24 consecutive games during this unbelievable run of baseball. During this period, they would come from behind 16 times. Pitching and defense wins baseball games. For the Lyons, their staff became one of the best in the nation and the defense was solidified. The bats hit just enough day after day and the Lyons blew through their conference tournament on route to a top seed in their regional tournament.

While the Lyons had been to the regionals three out of the four years Mark has played, never before had they gone into this five day tournament with such high hopes and expectations. When you’ve been ranked as high as fourth, nationally, as well as being the top ranked team in New England all season, the expectations were high.

Wheaton didn’t disappoint, as they systematically eliminated their opponents. With this year’s field expanded to seven, the top seed was more important than previous years. By winning the opening night, Wheaton could put themselves in the driver’s seat.

Their 5-2 win over a strong Salem State team Wednesday night put them in a place they wanted to be. This gave them a day off and forced the remaining teams to chew up their pitching. On Friday, the Lyons dispensed with Western New England, a club that had beaten them on the final day of the regular season. Senior Chris Martin won his seventh game and shut down the potent bats of the Golden Bears.

Saturday would find Wheaton matched against the University of Southern Maine, a program with two national titles, the last one coming in 1997. Coached by the volatile Ed Flaherty, the Huskies were a club that received a surprising at-large invite. While not expected to do much, the young club surprised the rest of the field and found themselves with an opportunity to knock off the top club and make yet another appearance in the Division III World Series, in Appleton, Wisconsin.

When the Huskies jumped out to a 2-0 lead in their top of the first, it appeared that they had their sights on an upset. Wheaton however, never flustered by a deficit, put up a four spot in their bottom half. Mark, who showed signs of breaking out of a season-long slump, singled in a run during the early outburst.

The Huskies came right back in the top half of the second and loaded the bases with a walk and two hit batsmen. This brought Wheaton’s coach, Eric Podbelski out and sophomore Josh Moore into the game. The lefty managed to strike out the first two hitters he faced and induced a harmless grounder and the Lyons had dodged an early upset bullet. Before all the dust had settled, the club would end up pummeling the Huskies’ over-worked pitching staff for 17 hits and 16 runs—Mark added a double to the barrage, in addition to his first hit. For the first time in program history, the baseball team was advancing to the World Series.

This is an exciting time for the Baumers and many other Wheaton baseball parents. When Coach P was recruiting our son, he told my wife and I that Mark had an opportunity to play for a team that could possibly play for a national title. While it seemed hard to fathom at the time, four years later, we’ve booked our flights and are making our last-minute arrangements to journey westward, to Appleton, Wisconsin.

While this season has been a record-setting one for the team, for Mark, it’s been a struggle. Yet, he rarely, if ever, showed his disappointment, basking in the glow of victory and team and not the limelight of individual success. While we haven’t talked about it, I’m sure there are times that this season has been difficult. Having struggled with my own issues around baseball success at a similar age, I empathize with what he goes through and as a dad, wish there was some way I could save him from the hard lessons that sports and life can teach us. However, knowing that there is always light at the end of the tunnel and that baseball, while fun to play, is merely a game, helps to put it in the proper perspective.

I don’t know where this season will take us and if Wheaton has enough to overcome the other seven teams from their respective regions of the country. Regardless of the outcomes of the game, this has been a fitting finale to Mark’s four years at Wheaton. Not only has he played for a topnotch team and a classy coach, but he also has excelled academically and is well-prepared to go out into the world and hopefully, make his mark. And on top of all of this, we are still playing and my wife and I will get to visit a new area of the country.

The "buzz" continues

2006-05-09T20:17:00.000-04:00

I released When Towns Had Teams last September. Many books have a short "window of opportunity," particularly those that are tied to trends and popular culture. Thankfully, a book like mine, with its historical arc, from a time rapidly fading from memory, continues to captivate those with an appreciation for Maine's unique heritage from bygone days.

Harry Gratwick reviewed When Towns Had Teams for The Working Waterfront, one of our state's more interesting and pertinent publications. Gratwick obviously understands what I tried to convey by writing this book. Not only does the baseball captivate this reviewer, but as he writes, "Baumer uses Maine to illustrate the changes that were occurring in American society in the 1950s. 'High school graduates from all over the country,' he writes, 'were now deciding on college as an option to jumpstart their careers.' One result of this influx of manpower was the development of a more competitive brand of college baseball. This in turn improved the level of summer ball played at the semi-pro and town team level in Maine. The result was that spectators of the sport were treated to a high level of baseball from early summer until the last major league team had barnstormed through the state in the fall."

I was aware of putting Maine's unique brand of baseball into the proper context and reviewers like Gratwick obviously appreciate my efforts. As a writer, this is very gratifying.

Thanks to Gratwick for his great review and hopefully, this will bring the book to the attention of many of the former town team players and others, who probably still don't know about the book.

In Hadlock's Shadow, part III

2006-05-08T05:42:00.000-04:00

[This is the final installment of an article I wrote in 2004, on the effects of professional baseball on the city of Portland, Maine]

Impact on the neighborhood

Within walking distance of Hadlock Field are a several businesses that might be of interest to baseball fans coming and going from a Sea Dogs game. Neighborhood markets, restaurants, a gas station—all of these businesses would likely see some benefit with an average of 5 to 6,000 fans attending games at Hadlock and spending money in the neighborhood surrounding the stadium.

Terroni’s Market has been serving the Park Street neighborhood for years. Selling the usual small store fare of soda, chips, candy, and pizza, as well as one of the city’s better Italian sandwiches, the store’s location makes it a convenient and inexpensive place for fans to sate some pre or post-game hunger or thirst.

Ron Hamilton, store manager told me that he hasn’t noticed much of an increase in cash receipts on the day of a Sea Dogs game.

“We don’t get a lot of customers from the Sea Dogs because they can’t bring food into the game,” said Hamilton. “There has been some increase after games this year, but prior to this year, I haven’t noticed a difference.”

Across the street, Mark Gibson of Hamilton’s Service Station told me that the Sea Dogs aren’t a benefit to the station’s business.

“The fans keep us from being able to do our job,” said Gibson. “We can’t road test cars because we can’t get out of the lot due to the traffic being backed up. Also, we lose business as people don’t stop for gas because they know it will be a hassle getting out.” When asked if the Sea Dogs have done anything to compensate the station for their inconvenience. “We get free tickets to one of the games each year,” he said. “We also get some business from the Sea Dogs employees, like Charlie Eshbach (Sea Dogs General Manager); he’s a real nice guy.”

Sonny’s Variety on lower Congress Street has been in the Brichetto family since 1986. Sonny Brichetto has been proprietor of the store for the past six years. When asked his thoughts on the Sea Dogs and whether there are benefits to him, as a business owner, he offered the following.

“They don’t help my business,” said Brichetto. “A lot of people park right in front of the store and my customers can’t pull up. They can’t stop for milk or a six pack of beer. It hurts my business.”

Do fans stop in for food prior to the game or on the way back to their cars?

“A lot of the fans are older and they don’t spend money,” he said. “They leave the game, go to their cars, and drive off. One thing I did notice is the other night, during the high school playoff game; I had my best night in a long time. We did $150 of extra business because it was mostly high school kids and the concessions at the ballpark weren’t open.”

Around the corner from Hadlock, Dave and Alice Emery operate Emery Window Shade Company on St. John Street. Within the past couple of years, they’ve begun operating a small eatery and ice cream stand also out of the same building. When Dave Emery was asked how he viewed the Sea Dogs as a neighbor he had this to say.

“They take up all of your parking and they don’t give you any business,” said Emery. His wife Alice added, “People that live here come home from work and they have no place to park. Fans going to the games take their spaces on the street. We’ve had to call parking control several times because people were parked in one of our few spaces for customers.”

Reaping the benefits

The Sea Dogs are an unqualified business success. During each of the past 10 seasons, the team has made a profit, with obvious benefit to the ownership of the team. Indications are that the new affiliation with the Red Sox is sure to be even more lucrative for the team.

A casual glance around the confines of Hadlock Field illustrates the success of the team’s advertising program. With billboards plastered on the outfield wall, and signage displayed prominently throughout the entire ballpark, it is clear that the team is receiving ample support from the local business community. Businesses also cash in from their affiliation with the Sea Dogs.

For a business like Sullivan Tire, there are obvious benefits from the advertising they do via baseball and the Sea Dogs. Paul Sullivan, owner of Sullivan Tire recognizes that baseball advertising works for his business.

The company advertises with the Sea Dogs, as well as other New England professional teams, including the Boston Red Sox. Sullivan, articulate and possessing a keen understanding of communication and the connection between baseball, tradition, and the role these play in advertising, spoke passionately about why he chooses to advertise with professional teams like the Sea Dogs.

“Sullivan Tire began in a barn in Rockland, Massachusetts in 1955—this is our 49th year in business,” said Sullivan. “In 1978, we decided to use baseball as a stage to reach the New England baseball audience. We recognized that baseball as a vehicle crossed barriers of age, demographics, gender and racial makeup like no other opportunity. We know that New Englanders love baseball and as a result, we’ve committed a good portion of our communications budget towards baseball advertising.”

Reaching a conclusion

Is there economic benefit to the city of Portland from professional baseball? To those residents and businesses in the neighborhood around Hadlock, the benefit is negligible at best and the inconveniences of game days may negate any.

The city benefits from the image that they’ve been able to create by piggy-backing on the Sea Dogs. Many people looking to relocate to Portland obviously find entertainment options like the Sea Dogs attractive. An argument can be made that fans coming to Hadlock spend additional money in Portland, if not in the immediate vicinity of the field, then in other parts of the city. The capital improvements made to Hadlock have certainly improved the overall value of the park.

As far as the Sea Dogs organization is concerned, they are only doing what any profitable business does—maximizing assets while minimizing liabilities—for that, it is impossible to fault them as a business. They also provide some outreach to the community through a variety of service programs.

Yet, there are nagging questions about the entire relationship between the City and the Sea Dogs. There are obvious issues that should be addressed between the Sea Dogs and nearby businesses. While trying to be a good neighbor by offering perks such as complimentary tickets to those in the neighborhood is commendable and an obvious good faith gesture, it is obvious that more could be done to try to deal with some of the problem areas, particularly in regards to parking and the inconveniences caused by game days.

Increasing concerns about property taxes, school funding issues, and the possible loss of needed services throughout the city beg the question whether Portlanders want to continue to subsidize a profitable local business like the Sea Dogs without any hard numbers to indicating actual economic benefits to the people of the city.

The Sea Dogs organization should look for ways to cultivate partnerships with local amateur leagues in the city. Rather than seeking to be the only game in town, the team should recognize that amateur baseball was alive and well in Portland before the team arrived and do more to support and promote the health of those leagues. By encouraging more people to play the game at the local level, the Sea Dogs are investing in their long-term success by creating lifelong fans for the sport of baseball.

Portlanders should also be willing to ask the hard questions and demand that their elected leaders take a look at ways to improve the current financial relationship between the Sea Dogs and the City. One improvement might be a renegotiation of the lease agreement, making it more favorable for all residents of the city.

With the Sea Dogs set to cash in on their lucrative affiliation with the Red Sox, residents who live, work, and pay taxes in Portland should be getting quantifiable benefits from this relationship.

Author's note:

It's been nearly two years since I wrote, "In Hadlock's Shadow," and in that time, not one journalist has bothered to look at any of the issues or concerns that I raised. The assumption continues to be that a professional baseball team, privately owned, but subsidized with public dollars, isn't an area for concern, or worthy of something other than a "rubber-stamped" approval. Professional sports, despite rocketing salaries, franchises that continue to appreciate and sweetheart deals in city after city across the country building ballparks and arenas that benefit private business interests, rather than tax-paying citizens, continues to receive little, if any, journalistic scrutiny.

Our own state of Maine continues to lack a statewide journalistic vehicle that reports on similar issues that affect the citizens of the state. Rarely do the state's daily newspapers tackle investigative journalism any longer, particularly if it must go toe-to-toe with business, or wealthy ownership, like the Sea Dog's owner, Dan Burke. Instead, we are treated to a continual torrent of fluff pieces and news-lite in daily doses.

I have little hope that my article will make much of a difference regarding professional baseball. However, I know that I wrote an honest piece that looked at issues that should matter to the people of Portland and to citizens beyond Maine's largest city. It's a template for other writers who might want to look at other similar issues, particularly at a time when tax dollars are being stretched tightly and often come up short in meeting many essential services in communities across the Pine Tree State.

Lastly, another city in Maine, Lewiston, has invested substantial public monies into the refurbishing of a historic arena. This was done to attract a professional hockey team, the Lewiston Mainiacs, to the city. While the improvements to the building have transformed a former eyesore, I've yet to read one article that questions any aspects of this project. Interestingly, at least one local business seems to have benefitted substantially from the renovations and their relationship with the Mainiacs.

But the issue remains, even if someone wanted to investigate this issue in Lewiston, concerning professional hockey and whether the city's involvement is reaping economic benefits for all citizens, what publication would be willing to stand behind it? I doubt the Lewiston Sun Journal would tackle this. Based on their track record with the Sea Dogs, I have reservations that Mainebiz would print any type of expose.

As I've written before, without a statewide publication the likes of the former Maine Times, there is no publication that is willing, or courageous enough, to publish the kind of articles that true journalism calls for. As a result, the light of truth is diminished and Mainers are poorer because of this.

In Hadlock's Shadow, part II

2006-05-02T07:44:00.000-04:00

[This is part two of an article I wrote in 2004, on the affects of professional baseball on the city of Portland, Maine]

Cost vs. Benefit

The consensus of many people in Portland is that the Sea Dogs bring multiple benefits to the community, particularly economic perks. While some advantages to the community seem obvious, these are difficult to quantify. Several studies have examined the impact of professional sports teams on the economic health of their communities. Much of the data indicates that public support of professional sports franchises can actually be a detriment to communities. Money spent on building and renovating sports stadiums could be used for local residents and programs that benefit a greater number of people. Also, money spent on sporting events takes money away from other forms of entertainment, some of it community-based.

A study conducted by Dennis C. Coates and Brad R. Humphreys of the University of Maryland demonstrated that publicly financed stadiums actually drag down local economies. In 37 cities between 1969 and 1996, minor and major league baseball franchises with new ballparks reduced overall income in the cities where they were built. The study concluded that “while bringing a new team to a town does have some economic benefits, the net value is usually negative if a new stadium must be built with public money.”

Hadlock Field is certainly a jewel of a ballpark. A ten-minute walk around the neighborhood bordering the ballpark however, lends evidence that not a lot of money leaves the comfortable confines of Hadlock Field. Most of the businesses that exist within ¼ mile of Hadlock Field were there prior to the arrival of the Sea Dogs. There are few if any new businesses nearby that are directly attributable to the Sea Dogs presence in the neighborhood.

When asked how many dollars the Sea Dogs pump into the local economy, Liz Darling, marketing director for the City of Portland was unable to provide specific statistics quantifying the benefits.

“We don’t track that information,” said Darling. “If you come to a game however, you’ll see the benefits to the local businesses. The Sea Dogs are one of the leading teams in the Eastern League and provide great family entertainment,” she said.

John Rague is currently the Customer Service and Programs Manager for Portland Public Works. When the Hadlock construction project began in 1993, Rague was Director of Engineering. Rague said, “The project broke ground in March of 1993. The city was the general contractor, doing as much of the work as we could and then subcontracting the work out that we couldn’t handle. We completed this ambitious project in one year and one month to have it ready for opening day, 1994.”

When asked about costs, Rague said, “That’s a long time ago. I believe the costs were somewhere around $1.5 -$2 million. I know we had a major soils issue that added numbers to the project.” Did he think the money spent on Hadlock has been beneficial to the city of Portland? “Definitely,” he said. “I don’t personally go to many games—I spent every day there during the project for a year and a half—but I believe that the stadium benefits the city. The Sea Dogs provide family entertainment, and the benefits far exceed the money spent on it. When we were in the planning stage, several city officials visited the various cities of the Eastern League [the league the Sea Dogs play in] and city officials in places like Reading, Pennsylvania, told us that having a team in your city can easily bring in $5 million or more to the local economy.”

Ellen Sanborn, assistant finance director for the City, confirmed that the city is actually losing money on the lease agreement in excess of $170,000 per annum. The annual revenue received from Hadlock totals $252,000. Annual facility expenses are $275,000 (of which $100,000 is yearly capital improvements) and another $150,000 is required for field maintenance each year. Sanborn also put the total cost of the project at somewhere between $2 and $2.5 million dollars, with funding coming from a combination of city issued bonds, some capital improvement funds solicited, and some surplus money that the city had. These numbers indicate that the City has spent and continues to spend considerable funds to subsidize a private enterprise, namely, a professional baseball team.

When asked where the annual shortfall is being made up, Sanborn said, “Basically, the taxpayer is footing the bill. To be fair however, other city teams use the field, such as local high school baseball teams,” she said.

Chris Cameron is the director of media relations for the Portland Sea Dogs. He was asked what activities the Sea Dogs are involved in beyond the games to benefit the community and to be a good neighbor.

“Once per year we promote ‘Good Neighbors Night’ where we give away 1,000 complimentary tickets to our neighbors and businesses near Hadlock Field, said Cameron. “We also promote an adopt-a-school program where a local school has the option of having a Sea Dogs player come and speak on a particular subject, or we offer them discounted tickets that they can sell to raise money for the school.”

When asked about ticket giveaways to those who might not be able to afford tickets, Cameron said, “Fleet Bank provides a block of 500 tickets that they purchase at $1 per ticket. We then have the discretion of giving these away to groups and organizations that request them.”

Additionally, Cameron told me that the team mascots Slugger and Trash Monster were available for a fee to groups and individual parties. The Sea Dogs charge $50 per hour for them to appear, as well as offering them to non-profit groups for $25 per hour. Cameron said this is one of the more popular features that the Sea Dogs offer and that both Slugger and Trash Monster are usually booked for the summer.

[The final installment will look at the direct impact that the Portland Sea Dogs have on the neighborhood surrounding their home park, Hadlock Field]

In Hadlock's Shadow

2006-04-24T15:35:00.000-04:00

Back in the summer of 2004, a year before I had completed my manuscript for When Towns Had Teams, I was writing for the provocative Portland Pigeon, a free monthly publication, seeking to uphold the city’s longstanding tradition of alternative, free newspapers.

After having been subjected to 10 years of fluff pieces, puff stories and a general lack of any real journalism on the team’s minor league baseball team, the Portland Sea Dogs, most often gracing the pages of the decaying Portland Press Herald, I began to wonder why no one ever wrote a nary word about professional baseball in Maine’s largest city. The final straw, was a Mainebiz piece lauding the recent agreement between the Sea Dogs and the Boston Red Sox and all the economic development gold that would now pave the streets of the city by the bay.

Having come across some research by a team of professors from the University of Maryland, I decided the time was ripe for me and The Portland Pigeon to find out just what it was that professional baseball lent to the city. (Here's another article link related to the research done by Dennis Coates and Brad Humphreys.)

My 3,300 word investigative tour-de-force was met with the usual deafening silence that any free publication, distributing 5,000 copies haphazardly throughout a city of 50,000, would be met with. However, I’m particularly proud of my investigative work and for trying to at least put professional baseball into some sort of investigative journalistic context. If nothing else, it was this article that became the genesis for When Towns Had Teams. (Actually, it did cause a bit of a stir, enough so that I received a handful of semi-angry emails, decrying my "attack" on the benign Portland Sea Dogs.)

Sadly, The Portland Pigeon is no more. By late 2004, most of the former Salt Institute students who had launched this cutting edge monthly broadside, had left for greener pastures. A few of us kept it going for several months more, but like the many other free pubs that paved the way before us, our lack of sales acumen and an activist community that never felt led to lend its support with real dollars$$, instead of lip service, was our undoing. We all wanted to write and no one wanted to sell, or be businesspeople.

I’ve archived copies of my first foray into journalism, but sadly, there is no online record of the stories that breathed some fresh air into Portland’s stodgy journalistic fraternity.

Seeing that it's baseball season again, and the Sea Dogs are still drawing record crowds to quaint Hadlock Field, I’ve decided to post the In Hadlock's Shadow, here at Write in Maine, in several parts. My hope is that some people might read it, as well as finally creating some online record of an article that made an attempt to present another side to professional sports and their effect on local communities. If nothing else, it provides a needed historical context to the recent phenomenom of professional baseball, particularly in smaller cities, like Portland and other minor league towns throughout the Eastern League, and elsewhere.

In Hadlock’s Shadow
by, Jim Baumer
(The Portland Pigeon, June 2004)

On April 18, 1994, baseball changed forever in Portland. Beginning their maiden season with 11 games on the road, Portland’s newest sports heroes returned to a refurbished Hadlock Field for their home opener. On a typically cold Maine spring day, more than 6,000 fans were regaled by America’s famous couple, Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford. With Kathie Lee singing the national anthem and Frank throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, Portland had entered the world of professional baseball.

The Sea Dogs are the darlings of Portland’s summer baseball stage, garnering record crowds, regular features in the local press and the lion’s share of attention from local and state baseball fans. Yet, with all the hoopla surrounding professional baseball in Portland, there are signs that local baseball, from Little League up through the semi-professional ranks, has lost some of its former luster and vitality. From decreases in participation at the youth level, to the lack of business support for semi-professional baseball, this is part of a larger trend away from supporting that which is local, to lending support to corporate interests. 30 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for 500 fans to attend a Twilight League game in Portland. There were an abundance of similar leagues around the state, with hundreds people of people coming out to the games. Some teams even charged admission. The local amateur town team was the focal point of the summer for many. [In the effort of full disclosure, it should be noted that this writer has been involved in various leagues including the Twilight League, as a player, and now as a coach.]

With the Sea Dogs taking over Hadlock Field in the summer, Twilight League teams scramble to find suitable area fields to play their 30-game summer schedule. As the league enters its 101st year of existence, many games are played at Deering Oaks Park, on an over-used, inadequately lighted field, in front of fans often numbering less than 50. Composed almost entirely of college-age players from Maine, this long-time amateur league is the flipside of Portland baseball. Most Twilight League players have few illusions of playing professionally. For them, the league offers them an opportunity to hone their skills and have a place to play competitively each summer.

Throughout its existence, the league has evolved in its makeup of players. At one time, teams were composed of older players, many with families and full-time jobs, who wanted a competitive place to continue to play baseball. In order to accommodate work schedules, the league began its games at 7 o’clock, making lighted fields a necessity. Currently, the league consists of six teams—four in Portland, sponsored by various businesses—as well as a team in Biddeford-Saco, and one in Sanford.

Prior to the Sea Dogs, the Twilight League was the elite league in and around Portland. Over its storied lifetime, a number of former professional players have graced the various team rosters; players such as Billy Swift and Mike Bordick played in the league. Former major leaguer Jim Bouton, author of Ball Four, once stopped to pitch a game while vacationing in the state. The league has been featured in Sports Illustrated and well-known baseball columnist Peter Gammons wrote an article rhapsodizing the league and the beauty of local baseball.

Commissioner Al Livingston believes that the league is on sound footing for the short-term, but there are always concerns about its long-term future. During the past few seasons, similar leagues have disbanded in Central and Eastern Maine. Rising costs coupled with less support from the business community makes it increasingly difficult for semi-pro leagues like the Twilight League to continue to operate.

“The League needs people who are willing to commit time and energy to making sure the league remains viable,” said Livingston.

“We obviously need sponsors each year, as the cost of operating continues to go up. From a competitive standpoint, the league seems to be getting younger. We seem to be a league that is made up of a lot of Division Three (small college) players, which is different from say, ten years ago when we’d have a lot more University of Maine players, mixed in with older players.”

When asked if local baseball has been hurt by the Sea Dogs coming to Portland, Livingston said, “When the Sea Dogs took over Hadlock Field, we were told that local teams would be given dates to play there, including the Twilight League. It’s now going on 11 years and we haven’t played any games at Hadlock. I’d love to see us be able to use the facility for some type of all-star game where we could charge admission and raise some needed funds for the league and promote some of the talented college kids who play in our league. It would help us to increase awareness of what we are doing in providing a place for local players to play each summer.”

One local business owner who supports the Twilight League with both his time and his resources is Frank Watson, owner of Lenders Network in Portland. Watson, who grew up in Portland, played in the league for more than 20 years after graduating from the University of Southern Maine.

Watson said, “I’ve seen a direct benefit from sponsoring a team in the league. I’d much rather spend the $2,200 it takes to sponsor a Twilight team because at some point, all of these college players will be wanting to buy a home and they’ll be looking for a lender. I’ve already had several customers who were former players who came to me because of my affiliation with the league.”

Watson, who says he’s past the playing stage, still stays involved by also acting as the team’s general manager and serving as the league’s president. When asked whether he’s advertised with the Sea Dogs, Watson said, “I haven’t because for the money I’d spend there, I’d be just another name in a sea of names. With my sponsorship of the Twilight League, I’m giving back to the league where I’ve played for years and I feel a need to give something back—plus, I’m supporting local baseball for local players.”

[Next; we look at the cost vs. the benefit of The Sea Dogs on the local community]

Living with war

2006-04-20T06:51:00.000-04:00

While my focus here at Write in Maine is, well, writing; occasionally, however, I’ll throw in some other material. If you’ve read my blogging at Words Matter, or even before that, at my now defunct site, JBIWFY, you know that music is an inspiration for me.

One of the musicians who has inspired and informed my consciousness since high school (a long, long time ago) is Neil Young. Last year, Young produced the movie, Greendale, as well as accompanying soundtrack. This generally unheralded work spoke to the theme of rural America--that place where old-time values and ethics still exist--a place where deals are still sealed with handshakes and residents can still make a successful life with hard work and an honest effort. Now, word is out that Young is about to come out with more powerful commentary on the state of our country, with the summer release of Living With War.

Unlike many of the current crop of manufactured pop divas and boy band wannabes, or the faux-angry poseurs forsaking any kind of melodic orientation, Young occupies a unique place in the rock pantheon. Older than all the other rock stars currently in vogue, Young is a dinosaur (who refuses to leave quietly), with roots from a time when music had something to say, rather than merely occupying another wrung in the consumer ladder.

According to Young from his website, Living With War is “…a metal version of Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan.”

Here are some others, weighing in on Young’s upcoming broadside against the Bush administration and our state of total war.

Down With Tyranny

Yahoo News (notice their dig against Young, for his supposed "inconsistency"?)

The Carpetbagger Report

Maine writers lose a friend

2006-04-07T07:46:00.000-04:00

The Maine writing community lost one of its shining lights on Wednesday, with the passing of Constance Hunting. The longtime University of Maine writing professor, who taught both creative writing and literature, was a champion of both the writers and the literature that captured Maine, without the jaundiced eye towards its people and places and the materialist revisionism that Down East and other similar publications specialize in.

What made Hunting special was her love of literature and writing that was uniquely Maine. While Maine’s small press community continues to contract, Hunting’s Puckerbrush Press (founded in 1971) turned out books about Maine, poetry and other regional works that mattered, for over 30 years.

When I was a student at UMaine in the 1980s, Hunting was a member of the faculty that exuded the intellectual integrity and passion that professors all used to possess, back before a college degree became just another commodity. Consequently, Hunting had the resepect of all the students, even those of us who weren't writers, at the time. I can remember attending poetry readings on campus she had organized and put on, because I wanted to familiarize myself with Maine writing and its practitioners.

UMaine president, Robert Kennedy, accurately captured Hunting’s place in the college’s community, as quoted in the college’s newspaper, the Maine Campus, “Her creativity was a gift to our community, and her positive influence on countless students is a wonderful legacy. My thoughts go out to her family and friends at this difficult time."

Hunting was someone who appreciated literature and its unique appeal and understood that books and writers didn’t necessarily need to be commercially viable, to matter. Hunting serves as a beacon and an inspiration to small press publishers, everywhere. For over three decades, Puckerbrush Press provided a place for writers to find support and a platform for their works. Like most publishers who care about the melody and cadence of the written word, irrespective of its inherent dollar value, Hunting labored in a small, but very important corner of the publishing universe.

Because of her tireless promotion of Maine and the literature that captured the Pine Tree State, many might be surprised to know that Hunting wasn't a native Mainer, but "from away," moving here from Rhode Island in 1968, at the age of 43. When she arrived in Maine, she immediately embraced and identified with Maine’s unique culture (a culture that continues to slip away and become a caricature, thanks to many of the current crop of publishers operating in the state). Hunting never sought to exploit her adopted state, nor its denizens. For Maine writers like Carolyn Chute, Sanford Phippen and James Kelman, Hunting helped provide a place that launched them to a wider audience. She also helped to introduce a new generation to the works of May Sarton. In addition, she continued to be a champion of first-time Maine writers.

Here is a good profile of Hunting and Puckerbrush Press, from the Maine Perspective. Here is another article on Hunting, from 2001, in UMaine Today.

The hope of opening day

2006-04-03T17:42:00.000-04:00

Baseball, more than any other major sport, cherishes the opening of its annual campaign. Whether it’s the sense that every team and player begins with a clean slate, or because baseball for much of its history had the hallowed reputation as America’s pastime, whatever the reason, opening day ushers in a sense of hope and a lessening of some of America’s omnipresent cynicism.

Unlike other sports that are ruled by the tick of the clock and governed by time, baseball always offers its fans the hope that no matter what the scoreboard might read, their team will always harbor the hope of redemption until the last out is recorded. Maybe it’s that redemption thread that imbues each new season with unbridled optimism.

Even U.S. presidents have gotten in on the act, with the sitting president being present to throw out the ceremonial first pitch, dating back to April 14, 1910, when baseball enthusiast William Howard Taft, attended Washington’s home opener and lent officialdom’s stamp to the nation’s game. Harry Truman is said to have showcased his ambidextrous talent in 1950, when he threw out first pitches, both right-handed and then, left-handed.

My own experience as a baseball fan came full circle, when back on a frigid day in 2000, my father and I shared a Red Sox opening day from high in the right field grandstand at hallowed Fenway Park. While the game would have been warmer viewed at home on the television, there was something special about being there, with nearly 34,000 other fans, many of them fully under the influence of a daylong parade to the beer tap. Nevertheless, we cheered ourselves hoarse, as newly-acquired Carl Everett, belted two home runs and the good guys prevailed, 13-4. Two years later, Everett would have worn out his welcome in Boston, as he had in New York and Houston before that. On that day, Red Sox nation didn’t care about his views about gays, God, or his penchant for blowing a gasket.

On opening day, 2006, baseball faces new challenges to its status as America’s game. With steroid allegations running rampant concerning Barry Bonds and his quest for the home run crown and current commissioner, Bud Selig, unable, or unwilling to address the issue with the kind of position that will put the issue to bed for good, baseball will struggle with the cloud of scandal floating over its boys of summer. In addition to steroids, the escalation of salaries, ticket prices in the stratosphere and owners caring more about their corporate cronies than the guy next door, baseball’s future remains clouded. In fact, any game that a fan views on television will have each aspect of the game wrapped neatly in the logo of some corporation.

As baseball struggles to maintain its base of fans in the early days of the 21st century, will youngsters of today, weaned on video games and five second sound bites, find the same comfort and solace in the pastoral pace of baseball that many of its older fans have learned to cherish. Even those of us who were drawn by the sounds of baseball, heard listening to scratchy transistor broadcasts, feel the tug of competing loyalties between the purer game of our youthful (and less cynical) memories and the polluted professional game we now follow, with pangs of ambivalence invading our consciences and crowding out the passions that once prevailed when we heard the crack of the bat and the smell of leather.

Still, all of this speculation and questioning can wait until tomorrow, because today is opening day. Each club is 0-0. Every hitter who comes out of the shoot with a vengeance will carry an average in the stratosphere until the at bats begin piling up and the days grow longer. Veteran pitchers, with questions about their aging arms, can cheat father time and quiet the critics for a short time, with that exemplary initial outing, fueled by adrenaline and guts.

In a matter of weeks, months, or during those dog days of the pennant race, when the posers will be exposed, the chaff will be seperated from the true contenders. Despite the contrariness fueled in some corners by Moneyball and its acolytes, the realities of low payrolls, poor draft choices and unwise trades will ultimately separate the contenders from the pretenders and that initial optimism will fade into the recognition that the preseason house of cards and expectations long overdue have come tumbling down.

Today, however, eternal hope is as real in Tampa Bay and Detroit, as it is in Boston and New York. The Cubs’ fan in Wrigleyville, believes that come September, his lovable losers will be basking in the glory that was stolen by those southside interlopers, the White Sox. For one day, at least, the fans of Mudville can dream of better things, and that’s a part of why opening day is special.

Taking time to read and write

2006-03-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

I’m glad that I’m a reader. Rather than provide its partakers with instant gratification that seems to be required of much of our 21st century techno-entertainment options, the pleasure of reading transports us back to a time that is more befitting of the rail car, rather than the transcontinental airliner. Rather than wired cyber-reality, with its circuits and microchips tucked away inside the cold, impersonal computer cabinet, time spent with a book smacks of a decadence befitting the luxury of time. In fact, to read means we’re willing to step outside of our self-imposed imprisonment of cell phones, palm pilots and other devices that seductively promise efficiency, but instead, end up enslaving.

Television, the most seductive time-waster, robs many of time that would be better spent with a book. With the average American watching 30 or more hours of television per week, just turning off the tube for half of that time would allow some time to promote the more healthy habit of reading.

As I get older, I find fewer activities give me the adrenaline rush that was common to my teens, or even early 20s. It may have to do with the aging process, but time spent with good books and discovering new authors, is a pleasure that I’ve come to appreciate (and one that seems resistant to the ravages of time). Rather than subscribing to the biblical adage that “there’s nothing new under the sun” (attributed to King Soloman, btw), books and new authors open up fresh springs of thought, ideas and perspective, or help to validate ideas that have formerly occupied shaky footing.

Before my recent vacation trip to Florida, I found myself making a frenetic visit to my local library. My objective was to score some books that would make good travel companions—if nothing else, pass some of the dullness of airport waiting and take the edge of the claustrophobic confines of budget air travel during my three hour flight.

From my amazing and seemingly random exercise in book browsing amongst the stacks, I haphazardly stumbled upon a book of essays by Jonathan Franzen. Knowing little about this author, the book jacket sounded interesting and with my penchant for well-written and entertaining essays, How To Be Alone (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) was selected with slight trepidation. At this point, I knew little about Franzen, the heralded writer of fiction and about his much-publicized un-invitation by Oprah.

How To Be Alone entertained, informed and proved to be one of those books that is read with a sense of foreboding, knowing that it just isn’t going to be long enough and portending its end sooner than you want it too.

Within the literary community, Franzen is apparently often linked to Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace. In fact, it was my chance association with Franzen’s work that introduced me to Wallace, a dynamic writer, possessing extraordinary talent in his own right. Like my introduction to Franzen, my first go-round with Wallace comes via his collection of essays, Consider The Lobster, which is the title of one of the essays, which finds him at Rockland’s Lobster Festival and writing about it.

With Franzen, his book of essays led me to purchase his fiction tour-de-force, The Corrections, winner of a National Book Award and apparently on many critics’ best of lists in 2001. All I know is that this novel, with its merciless, satirical look at contemporary life, made for a very readable 566 pages.

Foster’s book of essays is proving to be an enticing introduction to this writer’s work, which I anticipate will lead to my eventually reading his novel, Infinite Jest, which generated much acclaim for the then, 33-year-old writer, when released in 1996.

While somewhat dated, I found an interesting interview, conducted by Laurie Miller, for Salon, from 1996. At the time, Foster was teaching at the University of Indiana/Bloomington. In Consider The Lobster, he has an interesting essay about being in Bloomington, on September 11, 2001.

Life without television is a good thing—if nothing else, it provides time to read the type of writers who motivate me to write and improve my own craft.

Writer appreciation

2006-03-30T06:33:00.000-05:00

Writing is a solitary activity. Hours are spent in front of a computer screen, putting words up, without any assurance that anyone will be interested in reading them. For many who toil at the writing craft, they tell of being driven and almost willed to write, as if not setting their thoughts down might invoke some psychic harm.

Occasionally and depending on what kind of writer you are, you are given the opportunity to speak about your book and to meet those who’ve read your book and future readers, who are interested in purchasing a copy of your work.

For the wildly popular writers who make up the best sellers lists, they are sent out on lengthy book tours by their publisher and travel to major cities and book chains around the country. The second tier writers, those who tend to write subject-driven non-fiction, do book tours, but are more apt to get sent to smaller cities. From what I’ve read, both types of tours can be grueling. For elite writers, such as Stephen King, John Grisham and J.K. Rowling, their book signings are true events. These consist of long lines of fans, sho are willing to wait hours to catch a glimpse of their literary hero and have the chance to speak a few brief words and have their book officially signed by these mega-stars. These exemplify the best case scenario for authors.

The less popular writers often sit behind a table and have people wander up and they too, sign copies of their book, but usually in much smaller quantities. According to industry statistics, the average number of books sold at a book signing is five. I used to find that incredible, but having been subjected to the book signing of the second type, I now know that selling five books (or fewer) can be a reality, especially when you’re not a household name, or a visitor to Oprah’s book club.

As a writer of subject-driven non-fiction, which also happens to be of a regional orientation, I might inhabit a third tier of the writing pantheon. Out of necessity, writers like me self-schedule a haphazard book promotion tour, but without a major publisher behind the book, we do fewer stores and they tend to be concentrated around our base of operations. Occasionally, book signings become mini-events, such as my initial book launch signing in Auburn, last September, which resulted in a healthy turnout and solid sales. More often than not, however, you end up sitting behind your table, praying that book browsers will wander by and speak with you, so you don’t have to endure the awkward isolation of being ignored.

Yesterday, at the invitation of Portland High School librarian, Susie Wright, I was invited to the school for an author’s visit. An obvious fan of local literature and appreciative of the role of Maine-based regional writers, Wright organized a Baumer on Baseball Reading Promotion. Recognizing the imminence of the coming baseball season and utilizing the subject matter of When Towns Had Teams, Wright coordinated a school wide program of trivia and writing contests, culminating with my visit.

Some of the student essays, in particular the winning one, were very well-written. The winning student work, Baseball Dreams, was an evocative ode to a father, a long-time Yankees fan, growing up playing sandlot baseball and about his first chance to attend a game in person, at Yankee Stadium.

After presenting four talks on my book and town team and semi-pro baseball in Maine, a luncheon was held, with yours truly being the guest of honor. This was all very humbling, as writers like me are not used to receiving this kind of “star” treatment. At the same time, it felt great to have worked so hard on a unique book, one that captures a time and place from Maine’s past that has criminally been neglected.

Several teachers expressed their appreciation, including one of the school’s history teachers, who said that her class will be studying the period of the 1950s and 1960s, beginning next week. Apparently my presentations gave her some helpful material that she plans to tie in to her own materials. Another teacher, who teaches at one of the city's middle schools, drove across town, during her lunch break, to pick up copies of the book, because she found out I had mentioned her dad, a former town team player in Dixmont. She had his old uniform, from the late 1950s, or 1960s, which she brought along to show me. This was a real thrill for me, seeing an actual artifact from the time period I wrote about.

All-in-all yesterday was a special day in the life of this author. Regardless of what genre a writer works in and irrespective of their subject, all of us long to be appreciated for what we turn out. If the book is one that has a niche orientation, these days are few and far between and should be savored and treasured.

Portland High School is very fortunate to have a librarian like Susie Wright. Her creativity, passion for local books and her understanding of their importance in the educational environment has renewed in me some optimism about our education system. Rather than just biding her time in her position, as some educators do, she seized an opportunity and as a result, some high school kids in Maine got to hear about something local, from the past, with an application for the present, supplied by yours truly. I was also encouraged by other teachers, who obviously have a passion for local subject matter, like Toni Skillings. I had heard good things about Portland High School and I am thrilled to have been able to have experienced the type of educational setting that I wish was the norm in our schools.