text:
Benjamin Hale
I have to admit it wasn't easy. Pitching an interview of an as yet unknown author, in fact an author who wasn't even technically published two weeks ago when I interviewed him, is a challenge. But the book, oh the book... THE EVOLUTION OF BRUNO LITTLEMORE came to me via such high recommendations (Dave Cullen, author of COLUMBINE under Twelve, and Cary Goldstein, now the EIC of Twelve), well, you read the book. Never mind what Jonathan Ames[1] had to say about the author[2].
Almost 580 pages? This book flies in the face of the incredible shrinking fiction phenomenon many (even the great Cormac McCarthy prophesied as much) hailed as one of the final blips before the flat-line of books. But I've had to choke down books a third this size, whereas this book, in all its bulk, went down easily. I'll leave the reviews to the professionals (or rather those bent on quantifying the subjective), but I can tell you that when you read this book, you're left with that Chinese-food hunger: as soon as you are done, you want more. So for me, that was tracking down and talking with the creator of Bruno Littlemore, Benjamin Hale.
This is one of the most beautifully written books I've read in the past year. I'm smitten, I'm biased, and while I love minimalism, sometimes a vocabulary buffet is the perfect indulgence. Language isn't dead just yet. And an original idea that began as a riff on Kafka, or rather a riff on Roth's riff on Kafka, proves to be an entertaining vehicle with which to give us a truly memorable character. Bruno, the narrator, is unique among his kind, in fact, in the world, as he is the first chimpanzee to make the leap from simple (this is a relative term) sign language to fully articulated speech. But as Bruno learns, this newfound skill/gift comes with crippling side-effects such as alienation, forbidden love, loss, murder, incarceration and so much more.[3] But that's the book. You'll soon read it and soon read about it. For now, I'd like to introduce you to the author, Benjamin Hale.
KC: So, how does it feel? The due date is what, eight, nine days away? (The book dropped officially on 2/2/2011)
BH: Oh you know, (laughs) I'm just kind of hands off right now. And I think unless you're Jay-Z or Sarah Palin, those drop dates are pretty much ignored. I've got some friends of mine back in Iowa and Colorado telling me they've seen it for sale already. My dad sent me a picture the other day he took of my book displayed in a bookstore in Boulder. Then I thought, it must be out already, so I started walking around NYC to see if it was up, and none of them had it. So I'm just waiting. It's a pretty cool thing though. I've been waiting for this for, I don't know, about a year? And at this point, as it edges up closer and closer, I'm just sitting around twiddling my thumbs. It's really hard to think about anything else.
KC: I can't imagine. I was thinking about this on the flight up here because we've never interviewed an author BEFORE his book was published. I actually had to do some begging and creative pitching to sell the idea of interviewing you. But I felt pretty strongly about the book, and it was recommended highly. Anyhow, I was really thinking about what it must be like, sitting here, waiting for the inevitable, whatever it may be. So you just sit and wait?
BH: Well, I start teaching at my alma mater[4] in a couple of days, which is a really cool thing, but the classes start just days before this drops. So I want to do a good job, hoping that they might offer me a more permanent gig. But on the other hand, I'm going to really have to fight with my mind being preoccupied with this book.
KC: Class, turn to page six, start reading, and leave me alone.
BH: Exactly, so I need to figure out a way to teach this class...
KC: I don't know how you could focus. How long has this book been in the making?
BH: Sum total about four years. Three years from when I started writing and I came to a draft that made me say I want to sell this book now. Then another year between drafts via my agent and editor. So in reality, it was a relatively short period of time...
KC: I was gonna say, given what you have here, and who you're with, that's a pretty compressed timeline.
BH: I think when people say, oh it took me ten years to write this, what that means is – it took them ten years to write it while they worked around their day job, working evenings, etc... whereas...
KC: If you condense it down to a 40 hour workweek, it'd be a couple of years.
BH: Yeah, that and, well, I had this godsend of a fellowship in Iowa.
KC: That's the Provost?
BH: Right, the Provost. It'd only been around for two years before I got there. Prior to my arrival, there was a former director of the program who died, and gave his house to the university. It was this big, Tudor-style house[5], right on the campus, and it had been sitting empty for a few years after the guy died and the sons took all the furniture. He said they could use the house for anything they want, but the university couldn't use it for anything because the house wasn't ADA compliant, so the director at the time, had this idea to start this fellowship where writers could move in there and live and have a whole year free to write. So I lived with a poet, a nonfiction writer, and a translator in this old style mansion, with dark paneling, a smoking room straight out of Masterpiece Theater...[6]
KC: Were you compelled to buy a smoking jacket?[7]
BH: I was... I didn't though. I got that fellowship at a perfect time. I knew what I wanted to do with the book, I just needed the time to get it. If I had still been waffling on where to take the book, it would have been wasted. Prior to that it was like that scene in AMADEUS[8] where they ask him, Mozart, where's that symphony...
KC: It's all in here, relax, I just gotta write it.
BH: Exactly. Writing it down is the easy part. (laughs)
KC: Speaking of, with the book, which was first, the voice or the message? I mean, did you create the voice to carry the message of the book, or did you create this message as a vehicle to deliver us Bruno?[9]
BH: Um, well they were both pretty simultaneous. I don't know if there really is a message, per se. There certainly are some distinct themes. I don't know that I'd call it a message, what is all that? (referring to the notes in the margins[10] and questions in the back pages[11] of my copy of his book)
KC: Oh, sorry, I'm one of those guys. I write all over a book when I read it, making little notes here and there, and using the end pages for questions I have.
BH: Oh wow.
KC: Yeah. Well, I just received the final copy a few days ago, but all my notes and questions and such are in here.
BH: Cool. So the voice, to me, is really important. When I started writing, I was reading a lot of Roth and Bellows. When I first started writing this book, it was my first year in Iowa and I had a girlfriend living in Chicago, which was only like 3 hours away. So I was in Chicago half the time, and she was a grad student in architecture, so she actually had to work, while I was in an MFA, where you know, they give you just enough rope to hang yourself.
KC: Ah MFAs – we'll get into that – I had a great conversation with Shteyngart[12] in this same coffee shop a few months ago about MFA programs. He was brutally honest and cracked me up – not what I was expecting from someone who teaches an MFA program at Columbia. Did you see that article in Slate about the MFA versus NYC schools of thought?[13]
BH: I did. And it was so true.
KC: A lot of it seemed like creating distinctions that don't need to be.
BH: Yeah, it reminds me of that time someone asked Flannery O'Conner if universities stifle writers, and she said "They don't stifle enough of them." (laughs)
KC: Nice.
BH: So, my girlfriend lived in a basement apartment by Lincoln Park, and while she was working, I would walk across the street to the Lincoln Park Zoo[14] and watch the chimps all day. You see, I have this lifelong fascination with chimpanzees.
KC: How did that start?
BH: Jane Goodall.[15] I saw a documentary of hers entitled "People of the Forest" where this one particular chimp was this neurotic momma's boy – he had the chimp equivalent of an Oedipus complex.[16] He clung to his mother far longer than the average chimp, and the other chimps thought he was this weirdo, they wouldn't associate with him, he was the absolute omega male of this group. Well, in his adolescence, his mother died, of natural causes, nothing traumatic in her death per se. And he just couldn't handle it. He was dragging her corpse around for weeks and then he just wasted away from grief, and Jane found him dead, by the river, still holding onto his mother's body.[17] And I remember being just haunted by that, and what really scared me was the idea that a chimpanzee could be just as irrational and crazy as a human being. I mean, this chimp basically committed suicide. And I thought, if it is possible for a chimp to let his emotions stand in the way of his own desire to live, that says something really interesting and profound about animal consciousness, and especially how liquid the border between human and animal really is.
KC: It's not as high of a wall as we think it is.
BH: Right, right. Traditionally, you know, human beings have a tendency to philosophically draw a circle around themselves and say, this is what separates us from the animals. Have you seen the Great Chain of Beings?[18]
KC: The Scala Natura?
BH: Yes. It's this linear column where Satan is at the bottom, and God is at the top, ordered in terms of perfection. The weird thing about it was the order - the closer the animals got towards human beings, the more perfect they were. Then there was a line, then angels and then God. So a main message of this book was an effort to do away with that, that there was not as much of a difference between man and animal as we might think.
KC: Do you think that, I mean people will always cling to certain ideas I suppose, but do you think there are still people who think that animal consciousness is not a reality? I mean, to me, if you were to witness that scene that you just described, then it's a done issue for me. Would I equate it to human consciousness, not necessarily, but again, that wall is lower than we've previously thought. When you are allowed to affect your own outcome, you aren't just running on instinct, or hardwired behavior...
BH: Well, it's a big deal in the science of animal consciousness. One of the interesting things about this whole story when I was doing all this research for it, the studies of animal language, particularly ape language, have been embattled within the scientific community...
KC: A pseudo-science then?
BH: Yeah, they have to fight this perception...
KC: Because there is some ambiguity in their findings?
BH: Because there is a LOT of ambiguity. The kind of research they do, because of the structure of it doesn't conform to traditional scientific methodology, they are subject to all kinds of doubt. For instance, back when they first started this type of research, the arguments was how do you know a chimp is using the proper sign language sign in the proper context? In the proper lexicon of sign language. If you are seeing it, you know without a doubt something is going on, but it is a very difficult thing to translate into hard data, and there's the issue.
KC: Makes sense.
BH: Public enemy number one to animal linguists is Noam Chompsky.[19]
KC: I love that reference in the book by the way.
BH: (laughs) Thank you. When Noam was developing his theory of universal grammar, the language box, etc... he had some flawed distinctions I think, one of which was that language is an exclusively human trait.
KC: But the issue there is that you have to define your iteration of "language" – I mean look at dolphins, there are some who suggest, through years of observation and interaction, that their language may be as complex, if not more complex, than our own. But he's discussing more grammatical language.
BH: Right. Then you have biologists and linguists. The linguist wants to emphasize the structural and grammatical components of language, whereas the biologist looks at language as part of communication...
KC: But then you go from language to communication. I mean two moths can communicate via pheromones,[20] that's a sort of biochemical language, right?
BH: Right. And it seems kind of arbitrary to find a certain point and then draw the line and say, this is language. Of course it makes sense that linguists want to do that, because that is what they do... Where were we?
KC: I'm sorry; we've gone all over the map already. I'm a horrible interviewer in the traditional sense, I promise I'll go back and quilt this together into a nice warm blanket...
BH: Ha, no no, this is fun. So, I was in Chicago sitting in the Lincoln Park Zoo.
KC: There we go.
BH: (laughs) Which as zoos go, is a pretty sad zoo, but they have a cool primate house. They have a decent set up there. And I would go there and watch the chimps all day. There was this one time when I was sitting there, and I was just hanging out waiting for her to finish working, and the book that I was reading at the time was PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT[21]...
KC: Ah.
BH: Yeah. (laughs) So I'm there alternately reading and watching. I was there long enough for them to stop worrying about me, that guy on the bench, versus when a three year old slams against the glass. Sometimes they interact with humans, sometimes they don't. It was just fascinating to watch. And there I am reading about this guy who has this claustrophobic life, and then I got to thinking about a class in Iowa where we were reading Kafka, and I loved him as a teenager...
KC: That's an important point in life to find Kafka.
BH: Very. But I remember this short story A REPORT TO AN ACADEMY[22] and the first line was something like "You show me the honor of calling upon me to submit a report to the Academy concerning my previous life as an ape. In this sense, unfortunately, I cannot comply with your request." And then he goes on about how he was captured in the jungle, and he learned to speak while in a cage on this ship. Then he became this member of learned society, yet never quite one of them, always being considered a freak. So I'm reading Roth at this time as well, and came across a novella he wrote called "The Breast" about this literature professor who one day wakes up and has been transformed into this enormous human breast, a parody of THE METAMORPHOSIS.
KC: Ah.
BH: Which makes sense since Roth was obsessed with sex. So I thought, what if Kafka could write a parody of Roth?
KC: Of course. (laughs)
BH: Right? So it was the voice in PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT, but narrated by a chimpanzee. A neurotic, perverted – perverted, not perverse – chimpanzee who was delivering the whole book as a monologue to his therapist. The original title was Bonzo's[23] Complaint. I started writing it as a joke, purely for my own amusement...
KC: Which is where the best stories come from...
BH: I hope so. It was just fun to write, and I arrived at this voice that was like a mask - it was so much fun to put on. Then it got bigger and I changed the name to Bruno from Bonzo because rhythmically, I needed a two-syllable name that started with "B" and ended with a long "O" – but I learned that one of the original chimpanzees used in the sign language experiments was named Bruno...
KC: So there you go.
BH: Yup. So that's how the book started. I wrote the first fifty pages in about a week, the first fifty have pretty much been the same the whole life of the book.
KC: What were some of the models for the voice?
BH: Portnoy, definitely. You can see in the book what I was reading at the time. It's funny now to go back and be able to see, "oh here is where I was reading Great Expectations"...
KC: Which happens to everyone, except maybe those who refuse to read while they write, but by and large, you can see what influenced a writer as he was writing, it shows up in the narrative, of its own accord.
BH: Very true, but other than Portnoy, there was Augie March[24], and then Oskar Matzerath from THE TIN DRUM[25] – those books really influenced the voice of Bruno. Nabokov and Kafka as well, obviously.
KC: And not to dumb this conversation down, but about fifty pages into this, I got hit with this Lecter/Starling vibe.[26]
BH: (laughs) Yeah, I definitely thought about that.
KC: I'm so glad to hear you say that... but it was very overt, to me, this narcissistic self-deluding intellect in Bruno's simian contempt that mirrors Lecter's refusal to be labeled a "criminal" along with the other garden-variety killers. And then Bruno places his deliverer/weakness Lily on this pedestal, much the way Lecter did with Starling.
BH: Totally. I'm very happy you got that.
KC: Well it is written as plain as day, to me anyways.
BH: I love those kinds of complex characters.
KC: Well they're fun because they present you with a dilemma, they're villains, but they also aren't the antagonists of the story per se – Hannibal is never the guy, until the book Hannibal, which was little more than a money grab at that point. But he's this guy on the periphery that you shouldn't root for, but you want to.
BH: Exactly. You're happy when he gets away. Or how devilishly smart he is, like peeling the guard's face off to wear it as a mask – that was clever. (laughs)
KC: We need more from Mr. Harris. But back to Bruno. You talk a lot about spiritual need versus religion.
BH: What do you mean by spiritual need?
KC: Well, you use the actual phrase at one point in the book, but there are several instances where you allude to that, such as when Leon is reading poetry to the subway-goers to satisfy their spiritual hunger, and then Bruno, despite his experience at the hands of the worst aspect of religion, he still has this tugging from within...
BH: Well that has been, for me, a central obsession of my life.
KC: Yeah I noticed your Facebook status on religious views was "none: aggressively so"
BH: (laughs) Yeah... there are two parts at play. On one hand, in my totally rational mind I'm like totally Christopher Hitchens on the subject. But on the other hand I think that stuff that basically makes life worth living like art and music are really closely related to religion. The creation of art and music comes from that same irrationality that religion comes from in a lot of people. The same place that moves that chimp to drag his mother's corpse around for weeks until he himself dies.
KC: You're aware that this mirrors the linguist versus the biologist conversation we had earlier...
BH: Yes. Very much so. It is a really fascinating thing. It gets even more fascinating to me when you think of evolutionary writers like Richard Dawkins - the scientists who study animal consciousness - those guys really don't like Richard Dawkins – and it doesn't have anything to do with religion, but the way that we understand evolution.
KC: Are you a fan of Johnny Cash?
BH: I am, yeah.
KC: Is that a Folsom Prison Blues reference[29] I read there, on page 315?
BH: Yeah, where Bruno sees the train going by?
KC: ...and he feels sorry for the chimps that have to watch it going by?
BH: (laughs) Okay, so my whole family is from Arkansas, and Cash is an Arkansan. And that part where the train goes by, there used to be a line that read "and when I hear the whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry" but I figured that was too much. But the pun is there, I wanted people to catch it.
KC: Caught. Also there was an ending to another chapter that reminded me of the infamous Hemingway short story of six words.[30]
BH: Yeah, that's it.
KC: Okay, good. Sometimes when we read we project our own worldview and agendas.[31] I loved the frustration you wrote into Bruno, how we see all these macro and micro level things that would annoy and haunt him, being a singularity as he is, a chimp who can speak, in fact speak with a vocabulary miles beyond the average hu-man.
BH: I read this article recently about a scientist who wants to clone a wooly mammoth, they have enough DNA, and they would use an elephant as the surrogate etc... but once you get that mammoth here, that is going to be the loneliest creature on the planet. The only one of his or her species. With Bruno there were a lot of things going on, but there is that sense of isolation one would feel, that you can never fit into human society, but you can never go back to your simian roots. I wrote into his character that he would have this massive chip on his shoulder, that he would forever be measured not by his words but by what he is – having to prove his intelligence.
KC: You can't be a dumb talking chimp, you have to be articulate, well-spoken.
BH: He'd have this combination of arrogance and insecurity that goes along with someone who is an autodidact[32], one who constantly has to prove himself because he doesn't have skins on the wall to point to.
KC: I didn't hit on that until later, but it made sense, Bruno would have to spend an inordinate amount of time having to explain why he can speak before he can even get to the words he wishes to share. And the frustration that must comes with that burden.
BH: Yeah, (laughs) it's a weird little autobiographical book...
KC: All good books are in one way or another. So how is this autobiographical?
BH: When I was younger, I was born in California, then we moved to Colorado which is essentially where I grew up, but when I was a kid I had all these strange issues, I had this awful stutter in the second or third grade, I couldn't talk. I had this really great speech therapist who broke me out of it to where I was able to speak long enough to communicate.
KC: So she was your Lydia?
BH: Well, I don't think it went quite that far (laughs) but yes she did break me out of my non-communicative shell. But I also had this weird behavioral thing about not wanting to eat around other people. So I'd take my lunch behind the tennis courts at school and hide while I ate. I was an awful student, and later in life I realized I had face blindness[33], prosopagnosia, I have a terrible time trying to recognize faces – like if someone gets a really dramatic haircut, I have to re-remember them. I lived through this battery of psychoanalytic testing, from the classic stuff like Rorschach tests on up. So there's a part in the book where they're doing EEG tests on Bruno and they tell him to lie absolutely still and he learns that if he clenches his jaw muscles, the needles jump, but those administering the test cannot tell that Bruno is manipulating the data. I used to do the same thing[34].
KC: So you messed up their baselines?
BH: Exactly. And it was a weird thing for me, to be able to move my finger and see a needle jump on a graph across from me.
KC: Did you adversely affect your diagnosis (laughs)
BH: (laughs) I don't know, I don't even know what the results were.
KC: But again, we're back to the narrative and the fallibility of science, if the data can be corrupted – data they see as gospel.
BH: And the dilemma of observation of another creature. Like anthropologists who are observing a member of a primitive society, say a jungle tribe, someone they deem as an intellectual inferior...
KC: Yet is probably a genius in his own right, and conversely if the scientist was placed in his environment, he'd fare worse than the kids.
BH: Exactly, so there's that inherent bias but also, the observer can never really know for sure if what he's observing is legit, or if the subject is just messing with him, you know? Like what if the tribesman has a wicked sense of humor?[35]
KC: Well there is that. And you present that well with Bruno and his assigned observers. Can I ask you about Ignatius J. Riley?
BH: Yes. Leon.
KC: Was it? Because again, I don't want to project myself onto the book, but I haven't read THE CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES in a decade or more, but that character jumped out at me.
BH: Leon was a combination of people, and Ignatius was a component, plus a history professor I had at Sarah Lawrence named Fred Smoler – I took a class in which we read the Henry acts...
KC: Funny because I had a moment today when I saw an eccentric looking man reading Henry the Third on the subway...
BH: Nice. Fred was really funny and really fat, and he was this Falstaffian figure to me, and I taught those plays to my students at the University of Iowa, and Ignatius J. Riley, and in particular Orson Welles personification of Falstaff, and so he's kind of a blend of those characters.
KC: Bruno has been described as "literary fiction". What does the term "literary fiction" mean today?
BH: Well...
KC: Because, and this is just me, but I think it's become little more than a tagline to sell a book. I know it is indeed a genre of its own, but it seems like many, many books get thrown under that blanket for the sake of appealing to the pseudo intellectual who is enamored with the fact that he/she is reading a book from that particular shelf.
BH: Absolutely.
KC: Which gets a little catty, because then you develop this myopia that cuts out entire armies of writers, just because you don't read Crichton, or Grisham, or Patterson – which all have merit in their own right.
BH: It reminds me of the way pulp writers from the 30's 40's and 50's like Raymond Chandler and people like that were considered commercial pulp in America at the time, were rediscovered by French intellectuals in the 60's and they took it seriously as art and fed it back to America as something to be taken seriously.[36]
KC: Outside credibility.
BH: These are the same people who elevated the view of Hitchcock above blockbuster director to genius.
KC: I always love to cite Crichton as a litmus test for this.
BH: Or Stephen King.
KC: Yeah, but at least King has his short stories outside the horror genre that garnered him some "literary" cred – Crichton never had that, he has his genre stuff, his TV work, and that was it. But I always find it funny that people flinch at the thought of putting him in the literary category, when, to me, if you don't you're losing the very definition of it, subjective though it may be.
BH: I'm a fan of really well-done police procedurals, and there are many that jump the line into literary per se, but ultimately it's a marketing thing, a dumb distinction. I heard Chabon interviewed on this and he put eloquently: "I would love to see a day when we walk into a book store and we see one section called fiction, all the stuff that's made up put 'here' – so while you're looking for your sci-fi title, god forbid you stumble over a romance title that might intrigue you."
KC: Yup. Our need to compartmentalize everything down to a molecular level.[37]
BH: It's an interesting thing, being slotted as literary. Obviously it's a good problem to have. I'm working on another novel now, a totally straightforward and realistic novel, and I'm thinking: what are people going to expect of me after Bruno? (laughs)
KC: But you don't want to get too caught up in that, right? Otherwise it might cloud what you write...
BH: Yeah...
KC: I mean, if I'm an introvert by nature, or I really live for validation, will I pander? Will I dilute my story to fit a preconceived expectation? Yikes.
BH: Those are the fears. But I'll worry about those later.
KC: Yeah because right now you've got a bigger problem... you brought out the big guns on the first try.
BH: Well, the second novel will be in another year, and I have a collection of short stories, finished and ready to go, but I should wait until I get some traction with Bruno, because, you know, they're short stories.
KC: Yeah I'm sure your agent loves to hear those two words. No living on those, unless your Hempel, or say, you teach at Sarah Lawrence.
BH: Exactly.
KC: Okay, so let's get into the whole MFA thing.
BH: Sure.
KC: So obviously you are a product of that.
BH: Well, yes. I think with most, an interviewer from Kirkus asked me a question, well made a statement, he said you are from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, but this book doesn't feel "workshoppy" – on the one hand that was a little bit of backhanded compliment. And on the other hand it's like, what does that even mean?
KC: Was he able to define it?
BH: Yeah. I thought about it. I know what workshoppy fiction looks like, its fiction that gets eroded. It's really more of a feeling. There was a major moment, I was really into Saul Bellows, and I had these thoughts about it, how there is something different in the feeling and texture of this prose, and I was like, what is it that separates his work from everyone else?
KC: He was alone locked in his room?
BH: Well, you're always alone when you write, you and the page, but the feeling was that this was basically told, not shown.
KC: Which is the opposite of contemporary fiction.
BH: Exactly. I think the whole show versus tell thing was supposedly from a Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald correspondence.
KC: It's pretty much mantra these days.
BH: Right, it's something that everyone tells you. Fiction has in a way been reverse-engineered by way of film, so anyone who has written in the last fifty years is going to be heavily influenced by that medium.
KC: He'll write cinematically.
BH: Exactly. They show versus tell. But Bellows tells. His treatment of time and recollection is very oral versus visual. How language advances time, the metaphysics of his prose really speaks to that. And I really tried to emulate his style in Bruno, in a non-visual, theme-based, non-moment-to-moment basis. There are many successful examples of highly cinematic fiction. Part of the difficulty of MFA or workshops are that they are tilted to work best with short stories. This is due to the constraints of the timeframe of the class – a short story allows you to get into the structure and the levels and theories behind them, but you cannot get that deep into a novel in the time span of the course. You can certainly workshop sections of a novel, but it doesn't really work that well. I think there are two branches of literature in the true sense, FSG once said, there are two types of writers: "taker-outers and putter-inners" and taker-outers tend to be better at short stories, and putter-inners tend to be better at novels, and workshops tend to favor taker-outers, which is totally fine, but that's just not me. And that's really the difficult thing about MFA programs. Which is really the issue at heart in that MFA versus NYC lit article in Slate and n+1.
KC: What I did agree with was the distinction that an MFA career makes the most sense when you are looking to ultimately end up in academia, whereas you don't go the NYC route for a teaching career.
BH: Right. Look at poets. You're gonna have to teach or wait tables. The audience for contemporary poetry is so tiny, and mostly consists of other poets, to where it makes sense that teaching is their refuge. Whereas contemporary fiction, there is the ability to make a living in the simple act of publishing your work. A poet friend of mine and I were talking about the numerous translations that Bruno is being published in, and my friend was dumbfounded – he said to me, as a poet, I'd have to have ten books and a MacArthur prize under my belt before anyone would want to translate my work into ONE language. But that's the way it is.
KC: Fiction is the popular vehicle today. There was a time when it was the other way around.
BH: Indeed. But the thing about the MFA programs is this, and this is an issue that I think about a lot. In two days I'm going to be teaching at one. 99% of the act of teaching yourself to write, you do by yourself. External workshops and classes – those are all going to help, sure, but the most important thing by far that an MFA program gives you is the time to write. And Iowa was really good about that. And a writer who is insecure about their writing, to the point of allowing a workshop to tell them what to do, he isn't going anywhere anyway.
KC: I'm glad to hear you say that. I love minimalism, and most of our readers are fans of minimalism, obviously, but I cannot write that way, I just can't.
BH: I remember a student who was at Iowa, she worked up the same story over and over again, and it got worse and worse...
KC: I've seen it happen with stories in workshop where you had a decent sculpture and then in an effort to appease everyone, the thing gets chiseled down to a pile of dust.
BH: Exactly. You have to learn how to take criticism, and how far to take it, before you get the too many cooks in the kitchen scenario[38], and the piece becomes over-revised. She lost the original energy that comes from a first draft. And that is a danger from MFA programs. Writers who realize that a workshop can help you in your career and to get a snapshot of your audience are best off. I'm a few years out of Iowa right now, which is kind of cool so I can look back and see that the four or five of us who are being successful are the people who were the most confident and who worked the hardest.
KC: Funny how that works.
BH: (laughs) The people who had this singular vision of what they wanted to do, and did it. I got to be good friends with Jonathan Ames, he was my thesis advisor, which means he read my book once and we spent the rest of the time drinking[39]. I actually didn't get a lot done that semester, but it was a lot of fun. So I picked him up from the airport - he was coming back from this literary festival from Italy, and he had a really early draft of my book. And he was wiped out from this long plane ride, and he had literally just finished reading it right before he got off the plane. So I was driving him back to his place in Iowa City, prodding him for information the whole way, and when we got back into town, he said, "Don't worry about my advice or anyone else's advice, you're a writer, you'll figure this stuff out."
KC: Nice.
BH: Yeah it was sort of this coming of age thing, telling Dumbo he doesn't need his magic feather to fly[40] – it was a real vote of confidence, and it was just what I needed.
KC: I'm a stickler for validation myself, to a fault maybe, but we all need that, especially when we get so tangled up in the world of our own design. I noticed that Bruno's relationships were very stair-stepped. He had his original family at the zoo, then the first person to really care for him in the form of the night janitor, then there was the nurturer in Lydia, then the benefactors, then Leon the rescuer. Can you speak to that progression?
BH: Sure, well one of the books I was reading at the time was David Copperfield, and he was interesting in his structure – he has this typical Dickensian family of evil that he has to flee, but over the course of his life, he has this interesting series of surrogate fathers that take care of him – so there was that, with the janitor, Griph Morgan...
KC: And it was keeping in form with his character, not to beat the Lecter comparison to death, but he had this self-preserving, narcissistic thing, not that he views these people simply as throwaway people, but that he sees these people, in a lot of ways, as a means to an end. I mean he is very fond of them to a degree, perhaps he places great value on them is a better way to say it, but there is this sense of "you're this. And when I don't need this, you're gone" – and that is human nature, which makes the whole thing work in Bruno's quest for "humanity"
BH: Well again, back to "The Tin Drum" there is this Oskar Matzerath quality to him, where he goes through these people one at a time who help him out. There is this heartbreaking moment when they have all the POWs lined up, where Oskar gives up his grandfather to save his own skin, and he does it again with his own father. It's a horrible personality trait, but it also comes from my desire to make it difficult for the reader to ascertain just how self-aware Bruno was.
KC: I got the sense that Bruno didn't get the ramifications of his actions, and maybe that is kind of a tell to his developmental stage, but I thought that was well written, it wasn't overt like he was stepping all over people to get what he wanted, but that he was new to these dynamics, these social contracts that we take for granted. And his behavior really mirrors behavior that we have all done to some extent at some point.
BH: Well I wanted his consciousness to expand over the course of the book.
KC: You succeeded. Tell us about Bill Lemmon.
BH: Okay, he's this wildly eccentric guy who raised chimps, he was Freudian research psychologist who raised chimps in Oklahoma.
KC: Which in and of itself carries a weird asterisk[41].
BH: (laughs) No doubt.
BH: He taught at the University of Oklahoma. Research psychologists are almost never Freudian. So he had this land with a small lake and an island he'd raise these chimps on, since chimps can't swim, this was a natural barrier for them. And he had all of these weird cross-fostering projects amongst his graduate students where he'd have them take a chimp and raise them as human children and see what would happen. Roger Fouts wrote about this in his book "Next of Kin". He said in the book that in the 70's Norman, Oklahoma must have had some sort of weird world record for the highest number of chimps reared in human homes. Anyway, there was this woman who raised a chimp in her home as a Catholic. She took him to mass, took him to church. This lady wasn't all there[42], in fact there is speculation that she may have actually had sex with this chimp.
KC: Oh dear.
BH: Yeah. Yeah. So, these grad students would raise these chimps until they were five or six years old and then they'd get too big, too unruly...
KC: They start ripping faces off.
BH: Exactly, so they'd ship them back to the farm with all sorts of deranged and messed up traits they learned from their human caretakers.
KC: The Island of Dr. Moreau[43].
BH: Right! Messed up chimps all living on an island. All these neurotic chimps. And the chimp that was raised by this woman, years later would still do the station of the cross. So when I read about this, it hit me as something so disturbing, something pretty compelling, and it comes across in the story. It really freaked me out when I learned about this kind of behavior.
KC: Nice to know we can mess up more than just our own kids. Let's talk your landing an agent, and then "dying and going to publishing heaven" as Betsy Lerner put it to Dave Cullen when he landed at Twelve.
BH: Well I actually had a hard time finding an agent. I was rejected by a couple dozen agents. In the beginning I would query those that came to the workshop. There was this one agent, a super-agent who had this rockstar client list, and I asked him about it, but he rejected it because it was "hard to categorize." After he passed on it, I got frustrated and went back to the Big Blue Book of False Hopes[44] as we called it back in Iowa...
KC: The Big Blue Book of False Hopes? I love that.
BH: (laughs) Yeah. So I went to the agent section and just picked fifty agents and emailed queries, the equivalent of query napalm. And I got a couple of offers a few weeks later, one of them was Brian (DeFiore)[45] which helped my self-esteem issues quite a bit. So I ultimately went with him, and I worked on the draft for Brian somewhat, and then... Let me just say the entire process or writing and pitching and getting representation is sooo looong. So I expected finding a publisher to be also, but once Cary[46] got a hold of a copy, he got it one day, read it the next, and made an offer the following – so in three days from being sent out, I had an offer. This was really, really good, more money than I had ever seen in one place, and in like seventy-two hours. And then Brian said, "No, don't take it, we're going to auction." Mind you, I was at this very strange point in my life where I just moved to New York from Iowa, and I was absolutely dead broke, working at this wine store, living out of a suitcase, student loans looming, etc... I was broke.
KC: This doesn't seem like such a strange point in the life of a writer.
BH: Well, true, but still, I had this money offered, and my agent said no, so I trusted him and we went to auction, and ultimately there were six publishers interested in it. So after being rejected by more than 20 agents, I was in this auction amongst all the big houses in New York! It was a psychotic week in my life, an amazing thing, but insane. In the morning I would take the train into Manhattan to meet with editors at these powerhouse publishers, and then in the afternoon go to my job hauling cases of wine around and the reality of retail. It was surreal.
KC: Weird time to know it's coming but be unable to act on it.
BH: Yeah, I was still broke. It was a very, very strange week. From initial offer to auction to final, it was a week, a week and a half.
KC: So Twelve won out, obviously.
BH: Yeah. Cary really wanted the book, and I'm glad I wound up there.
KC: So what have they got planned for you?
BH: I'm doing a few readings, a tour. I'll be in San Francisco in the beginning of March. But I'm also teaching at Sarah Lawrence, so I've cut up this tour to work around my teaching schedule – I'll be in a blur until June.
KC: Well, you should be proud of it and I feel that you've created a great foundation on which to build a career on. No pressure...
BH: (laughs) Well, thanks, I hope so.
Benjamin Hale can be found:
Buy The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore.


text:
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Iran military units have fled the facilities the Islamic regime established near the Damascus airport due to fears of an Israeli attack, according to reports in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
"According to the source, the evacuated positions included more than nine large depots of weapons, ammunition, and long-range missiles. Additionally, an intelligence center near the airport, facing Eastern Ghouta, was evacuated, as were a center spying on wireless communications and an operational command center," reported the Lebanese publication Al-Modon.
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Germany has started repatriating the children of jailed "Islamic State" fighters from conflict zones the Middle East. European countries are grappling with how to handle returning foreign fighters and their families.
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Estonian populists sealed a coalition deal with two other political parties Saturday in a bid to take power, more than a month after the general election.
The Estonian Conservative People's Party, or EKRE, which has gained increasing popularity since its establishment in 2012, said it will form a three-way majority government with the centrist Center Party and the conservative Fatherland.
The 15-member Cabinet, where each party is to hold five ministerial portfolios, would be led by Center's leader, ex-Prime Minister Juri Ratas, who has held the top government post in the nation of 1.3 million since November 2016.
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Is it possible that President Trump actually has no intention of winning re-election in 2020?
That's the question that was posed on Thursday by a surprising voice: Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who in a segment on his show wondered what it might look like if Trump had decided he didn't want to be president anymore and was taking steps to ensure he didn't win another term, per The Washington Post.
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- Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, February 2012
The allegations of 'Russian meddling' only make sense if they're put into a broader geopolitical context.
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My original title for this article was going to be 30 Blocks of Potholes, Shitholes, and Assholes, but I didn't want to offend the sensibilities of my highbrow readership. The trigger for that title was my morning commute on 34th Street in West Philly near the Philadelphia Zoo. This extremely well-traveled four lane highway resembles a moonscape of craters capable of blowing a tire (which I did a few years ago while turning onto Girard Avenue).
As I swerved through this obstacle course of government incompetence, I reflected upon how Philadelphia was a real shithole city run by Democrat asshole politicians (those not in prison yet). I've written dozens of articles about the 30 Blocks of Squalor over the last decade and one thing remains constant – West Philly is still a shithole, occupied by low income, low IQ, low morality, welfare state slaves who continue to vote for the same assholes who have enslaved them in squalor.
In recent days Sweden's largest mortgage bank, Swedbank, fired its CEO amid charges she was involved in a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation. Swedbank now joins Denmark's largest bank, Danske Bank, and several other European Union banks implicated in laundering what has been claimed amounts to more than $1 trillion in funds of Russian or Ukraine or other origin in recent years. As impressive as the scandal appears, equally interesting is the curious man triggering the scandals .
US President Donald Trump said on Saturday he made the controversial decision to recognise Israel's 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights after getting a quick history lesson during a conversation on a different subject, reported Reuters.
Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas, Trump said he made the snap decision during a discussion with his top Middle East peace advisers, including the US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
"I said, 'Fellows, do me a favor. Give me a little history, quick. Want to go fast. I got a lot of things I'm working on: China, North Korea. Give me a quickie," Trump said to laughter from the Las Vegas crowd.
"'How do you like the idea of me recognising exactly what we're discussing?'" said Trump, recounting the conversation.
Sirhan did not kill Robert Kennedy, yet he remains in jail to this very day. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who was 14 years old at the time of his father's death, has visited Sirhan in prison, claims he is innocent, and believes there was another gunman. Paul Schrade, an aide to the senator and the first person shot that night, also says Sirhan didn't do it. Both have plenty of evidence. And they are not alone.
There is a vast body of documented evidence to prove this, an indisputably logical case marshalled by serious writers and researchers. Lisa Pease is the latest. It is a reason why a group of 60 prominent Americans has recently called for a reopening of, not just this case, but those of JFK, MLK, and Malcom X. The blood of these men cries out for the revelation of the truth that the United States national security state and its media accomplices have fought so mightily to keep hidden for so many years.
Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General's International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get visas from the U.S. embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to Washington.
"We were supposed to share this information during a working trip to the United States," Kulyk told me in a wide-ranging interview. "However, the (U.S.) ambassador blocked us from obtaining a visa. She didn't explicitly deny our visa, but also didn't give it to us."
Facing down a Democratic-controlled Congress in a time of mounting budget deficits, President George. H. W. Bush made it clear that he wanted the power of the line-item veto to strike down elements of left-leaning spending bills.
In public addresses, Bush asked the American people "to demand" that he gain the tool through legislation or a constitutional amendment. Behind the scenes, his administration explored the possibility that a president held the power inherently -- a theory pushed at the time by some conservative legal commentators.
William Barr, then Bush's assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel, led the research effort. "I had my monks in the Office of Legal Counsel going back into hoary antiquity looking for any kind of precedent we could use," he recalled in a 2001 interview with the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he would annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins another term in office, a last-minute pre-election promise likely to enrage Palestinians and the Arab world.
In an interview with Israeli Channel 12 News three days ahead of the 9 April poll, Netanyahu was asked why he had not extended sovereignty to large West Bank settlements, as Israel did without international recognition in east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, both captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
"Who says that we won't do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it," Netanyahu said.
"You are asking whether we are moving on to the next stage – the answer is yes, we will move to the next stage. I am going to extend (Israeli) sovereignty and I don't distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements."
Turkey on Sunday criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "irresponsible" for saying he would annex Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank if he wins Tuesday's election.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war, was Palestinian territory and Israel's occupation violated international law.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu's irresponsible statement to seek votes just before the Israeli general elections cannot and will not change this fact," Cavusoglu tweeted.
Netanyahu, asked why he had not declared Israeli sovereignty over large West Bank settlements as Israel has already done in the occupied Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, said he was already discussing the move.
The Nazis suffered a crushing defeat in this election.
By "Nazis" I primarily mean their main figurehead – Petro Poroshenko (the rest of the "minor Nazis" did so poorly that they don't matter anymore). Think of it: in spite of his immense wealth (he outspent everybody else and even spent more that twice what the next big spender – Tymoshenko – doled out for each vote), in spite of his immense "administrative resource" (that is the Russian expression for the ability to use the power of the state for your personal benefit), in spite of his "victory" with the Tomos, in spite of triggering the Kerch bridge incident, in spite of breaking all the remaining treaties with Russia, in spite of his control of the media and in spite of the (now admittedly lukewarm) support of the West, Poroshenko suffered a crushing defeat.
Turkish troops and armored units are massed along Turkey's southern border awaiting orders to invade northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to clear a ten mile-deep swath of land east of the Euphrates River in order to remove terrorist-linked militants (YPG) currently occupying the territory. The proposed offensive would put US Special Forces in the line of fire which significantly increases the likelihood of US casualties. If American troops are killed or wounded by the Turkish operation, Washington will respond in force leading to a potentially catastrophic face-off between the two NATO allies. The possibility of a violent clash between Turkey and the United States has never been greater than it is today.
To be clear, Washington 3% is tired of watching other gun groups and so-called conservatives negotiate with inalienable birthrights of the people. The government does not have the authority to grant or restrict our birthrights. The constitution does not grant us these rights, it forbids the government from taking them from us. Yet the government is taking away our rights. And the People have been letting them.
There has been too much fence-sitting. Too much complacency. We are taking action to protect our constitution and we will defend our Constitutional Republic against these domestic enemies.
We are not anti-government. We are very pro-constitutional government, but our government is no longer following their own rules. We have out-of-control federal bureaucracies with weaponized District Attorneys.
Just before the polls open in the Israeli general election, Prime Minister Netanyahu will do or say anything to remain in office - including promising to annex large parts of the West Bank. PLUS: Why Israel could face weeks of political stalemate.
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text:
Man gets 35 years for fatal Ohio sleepover fire
CLEVELAND -- Late Friday, convicted arsonist Antun Lewis, 30, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for setting a house fire that killed 9 people, including a woman and eight children.
It was the deadliest fire in Cleveland's history.
The prosecutors and the the victims' families had asked for life in prison.
Lewis was found guilty twice by federal juries.
Medeia Carter, 33, four of her children and four other children attending a 14th-birthday sleepover died on May 21, 2005 at an East 87th Street home.
Carter's mother, Evelyn Martin, spoke at the hearing, recounting the horrific events of that late night and early morning. Six of the eight children who died were Martin's grandchildren. She said she rushed to the house when she learned of the fire, pushed through a crowd and screamed one question over and over: "Where are my babies?"
"I had to stand there and watch them bring them out one by one," Martin said.
She recalled seeing some of her grandchildren zipped in body bags and the horrible sight of skin falling off one of her grandsons, who later died.
"I hope you live long enough so all the skin falls off your damned body," she said, glaring at Lewis, who did not look at her.
There was powerful and graphic testimony from Battallion Fire Chief Patrick Mangan who described the hellish sights, sounds and smells of the deadly inferno.
In that house fire, killed were: Fakih Jones, age 7; Malee'ya Williams, age 12; Shauntavia Mitchell, age 12; Earnest Tate, Jr., age 13; Miles Golden Cockfield, age 13; Antwon Jackson, Jr., age 14; Moses Williams Jr., age 14; Devonte Carter, age 15, and Medeia Carter, 33.
Lewis will get credit for time already served so his sentence will be less than 35 years.
One victim's father said Lewis should be placed in a giant and oil-filled skilled and suffer excruciating burns.
Rosalind Golden, whose 13-year-old grandson, Miles Cockfield, was killed in the fire, looked at Lewis and told him he had deprived the world of a wonderful person.
"I don't mean to cry every day," she said, fighting back tears. "I pray to God just not to cry today."
"This defendant is responsible for taking nine innocent lives. A coward in the night, he also stole the hopes and dreams of these families, who will never get to experience high school graduations, weddings, or the other things they had a right to enjoy. Nothing can ever erase the pain this defendant caused, and our hearts go to them all. Their grace and dignity in the face of this tragedy is humbling," said U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach.
"This sentence brings some closure to a horrific and senseless crime," said Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent in Charge Michael Boxler.
"It is my hope that this sentencing will bring some comfort to the families of the victims. I also want to compliment the United States Attorney's Office for their leadership in the prosecution of this difficult case, and I want to thank the Cleveland Fire Department, the Cleveland Division of Police, the Ohio State Fire Marshal's Office, and the ATF personnel who worked jointly to perfect this investigation."
Lewis has always said he didn't do it but prosecutors never established a clear motive. There were suggestions he may have set the to settle a drug debt or because he was angry with a woman who kept some of his clothing.
Lewis offered condolences to the victim's family but repeated his innocence. Lewis has long maintained he was at home, several blocks away, when the fire started. His attorneys have said that there was no drug debt and that he passed two polygraph tests.
U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver had already removed the death penalty as a sentence because of Lewis's low IQ.
Judge Oliver called this his "most difficult case." He said he made the lesser sentence because of Lewis's intellectual disability. Oliver said he had trouble believing Lewis set the fire over a drug debt and called the case the toughest he has heard in 20 years on the federal bench. He said he had to weigh various factors, including the public's safety and Lewis' disabilities, in deciding on an appropriate sentence.
"This will keep him off the streets for a very long time," he said.
Outside the court, Golden said she did not understand how Lewis sentence could be only five years per victim.
The judge presided over Lewis' first trial, in early 2011. While a jury convicted Lewis of a count of arson, the judge overturned the verdict because of concerns about the reliability of jailhouse informants who testified against him. The defense portrayed the jailhouse snitches as witnesses willing to say anything in return for lighter sentences.
The 6th U.S. District Court of Appeals upheld the judge's ruling in February 2012 and ordered that Lewis be given a new trial.
The appellate judges pointed out that one witness had a 30-year criminal record and a sixth-grade education, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder and had spent half his life between state hospitals and prisons. That witness also gave numerous inconsistent and contradictory statements about the night of the fire to investigators and at trial, and phone records showed some of them were inaccurate, the judges said.
Prosecutors used some of the witnesses during the second trial, in December 2013, and a jury returned another guilty verdict. Lewis testified in his own defense at the second trial.
Lewis's defense team members said they would continue to stand by him.
Contributing: Associated Press


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The Year's Best Producers (Part One)
Ca' del Bosco winery, Erbusco, Franciacorta (Photo ©Tom Hyland) It's time to reveal a partial list of some of the year's best Italian producers in my opinion. In this post, I'll include a mix of estates from various regions, producing an array of wines from sparkling to white to red. The complete list of the year's … Continue reading The Year's Best Producers (Part One)


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Craig Wright's "Blind" spells bad news for a modern age in desperate need of heroes. In his deconstruction of "Oedipus Rex," scribe becomes a fly on the wall in the palace bedchamber of a quasi-contemporary kingdom, observing the king's reaction to the damning revelation that he has unknowingly killed his father and married his own mother. Robbed of the heroic stature Sophocles gave them to shoulder their guilt and accept the responsibilities of their actions, Wright's royal couple sink into denial, flinging recriminations at one another and cravenly leaving their kingdom to rot. And where does that leave us?
Despite the hectoring tone of this shrill piece, it's hard to know what Wright ("Dirty Sexy Money") wants us to take away from his play. Revulsion at the selfishness of royal figures? Pity for a man and woman robbed of their innocence? Anger at civic leaders who desert their subjects in a crisis?
Sophocles wrote a message play and the message was harsh but clear: in a fatalistic society, man has no choice but to act according to the cycles of nature, achieving heroism only by accepting and rising above his pre-determined role in this cruel universe.
Wright's message is anyone's guess, unless it's that everyone behaves selfishly in the bedroom.
That bedroom, by the way, is handsomely realized in Takeshi Kata's elaborate set design of rich fabrics and regal colors — a shockingly stylish piece of stagecraft for the normally scruffy Rattlestick.For that matter, even the play's heightened language — not classical, but so carefully grammatical as to sound a bit foreign to modern ears — seems out of place in a house normally given to rougher accents and thicker tongues.
Despite being obliged to go from total nakedness to a drab wrap-dress, Veanne Cox ("Caroline, or Change") presents herself as a regal Jocasta, ferociously determined to hang onto what's hers, even as plagues and pestilence stalk the land. More insightful than Sophocles conceived of her, she is also far less admirable, fiercely demanding that her son-and-husband ignore his duty, deny their unnatural alliance, and enforce his will — her will — on their blighted kingdom.
Seth Numrich has a much harder time of it as Oedipus, stripped of his nobility and reduced to an immature youth. In full retreat from Sophocles' portrayal of him as an excessively kind and conscientious ruler who takes full responsibility for crimes committed in blind ignorance, Wright's much diminished hero responds to the collapse of his kingdom with petulant tantrums.
Under Lucie Tiberghien's helming, the performances have a strong athletic component. More mother and son than husband and wife in their verbal skirmishes, Oedipus and Jocasta address their identity confusion in sexual encounters that leave them both bloody — but not cleansed.
And not much enlightened, either, since neither one of them spares much thought for their subjects, wracked by disease and starving to death beyond the palace walls. Which leaves the rest of us wondering what we're supposed to take away from this fruitless exercise.


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- Home
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Poet's Corner Contest
The Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department and the City of Modesto's Poets' Corner Committee are pleased to offer an Annual Poets' Corner Contest.
Poems will not be returned after the contest, so entrants should keep copies of their work.
Entries must be postmarked by Saturday, March 7, 2020 or submitted electronically by 11:59 pm on Saturday, March 7, 2020.
Online Submissions
Entries may be submitted online until 11:59 PM on Saturday, March 7, 2020.
Electronic Submissions
- Include one cover page with poet's name, address, email and title(s) of poem(s). If poet is a student, then indicate grade, school and name of teacher on the cover page.
- Submit cover page and one copy of each poem in .doc, .docx or .pdf format to this Poets Corner contest submission email.
Mailed Submissions
Submit one copy of each poem entered along with one entry form for each poet to one of the following locations:
- Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department Office, C/O Poet's Corner Contest, PO Box 642, Modesto, CA, 95353
- McHenry Museum, C/O Poet's Corner Contest,1402 I Street, Modesto, CA, 95354
The contest is open to all Stanislaus County residents and offers two categories for poetry entries:
- Any kind of poetry on any subject, rhymed or unrhymed. Free verse and form welcome. Group of three haiku accepted as one entry.
- Special Kindness and Connection" How do we help to heal the divisions between people, ideas and beliefs? How can we be kind, or make connections with each other, even when being compassionate is inconvenient, uncomfortable or even dangerous?"
Entry Limitations
- Two poems per person
- May not exceed 32 lines
- All entries must be typed on standard 8.5" x 11" paper, double-spaced, in standard font
- Entries must be unpublished at the time of submission
- Entries may be two of one category or one of each category
- At the top of each poem, indicate contest category and, if under the age of 18, grade in school
- Do not put name of poet on any submitted poem: put name on cover page or entry form only
- No plagiarism or offensive language
Contest Winners
Contest winners will be notified by email (or mail, when email is unavailable). Poets will be invited to read their winning poems on Sunday, May 3, 2020, at 1:00 PM at the McHenry Museum, followed by light refreshments.
Winning poems will be printed in a booklet that will be placed in the Poets' Bookshelf, which contains published works by local writers and will be kept at the McHenry Museum. Each winner will receive a copy of the booklet.
Printed Entry Form and Contest Rules
May be picked up at the following locations:
- Parks, Recreation & Neighborhoods Department Office - 1010 Tenth Street Place, Suite 4400
- McHenry Museum - 1402 I Street
- McHenry Mansion Visitor's Center and Gift Shop - 924 15th Street
- Stanislaus County Library - 1500 I Street
- Maddox Youth Center - 615 Sierra Drive
- King Kennedy Memorial Center - 601 S Martin Luther King Drive


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For some time now I could not find a comfortable walking groove with a large camera and lens. I am 64 and hauling a large camera and a bag of lenses is no longer an easy task. I find that the less I carry the more photos I usually take. More important to me is what happens to my "head space" or state of mind when I carry a camera and keep it simple. When I have my camera at my side I feel differently because the camera triggers my visual attention and diverts my attention to all the other issues that roll around in my head. When I am taking photographs of a subject I become totally engrossed.
I recently purchased the Fuji X-E1. It takes great images and has some functions that my Nikon D7000 does not have. To be fair the D7000 has a few functions the X-E1 does not. To me it is very important to imbed in the metadata of my © and contact information. The Nikon does but the Fuji does not. I do like the images and the simplicity of the Fuji. I am comfortable with having it by my side so I tend to carry it more often. The X-E1 has become part of who I am and is part of my walking meditation or dare I say… prayer. I have finally learned the freedom when I keep it as simple as I can. I've heard this before from the old pros but never did really understand it. If you carry a camera often you will usually find one camera and lens that fits your needs and that is what you will most often. Many of us have more bodies, lenses, flashes, filters, bags and other "stuff" at home or in the car.
Some photographers say that if you have a 50mm lens you can always walk closer to the subject rather than carry a 70-200 2.8 and "reach out". No matter how close you get a 50mm looks different than a 70-200 2.8. They are expressing what is "less is more" for them and the photographs they enjoy making. What is less is more for them and less is more for you may be different. With a 50mm there is the issue of getting in close proximity to the subject and perhaps making them self conscious or even rattling their cage in the process. Second is the issue that the moment you are trying to capture may be gone by the time you walk 60 feet. I love my 70-200 2.8 and I like my 50mm but my knees and wrists don't enjoy the weight of the big lens. If your in the process of picking a camera, you might want to consider renting the cameras and lenses for a few weeks and work with them. You may be able to do both with a small professional photography store that knows the products. If they are selling and renting to the working professionals they have the great advantage of daily feedback from the pros. I have found Jeff Hirsch and the professionals at Fotocare in NYC to be very helpful and that's who I buy from. I don't get any commission from Fotocare but I thank Jeff for keeping me on the right track.
Hope this helps. I'm going for a walk.


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Say, I have many documents in my computer and I just want to find one document which contains some specific word(s) in it. I can't even remember the type or name of the document.
I tried to achieve this with Unity (Documents & folders) lenses, but it seems Ubuntu only looking for the names (of files and folders) but not looking inside of the documents.
Please advise whether I can achieve my goal using Ubuntu or not.


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#21 Alex Kelly
|Kansas City, Mo. (Park Hill HS)
2010:Member of Atlantic Sun Preseason All-Conference Team. ...MVP of South Carolina Gamecock Invitational (9/11). ...Member of Bluejay Invitational All-Tournament team with a tournament record 63 kills 8/28). ...A-Sun Player of the Week (8/30). ...One of 30 candidates for Lowe's first ever CLASS Award for volleyball. ...Member of Pittsburgh Invitational All-Tournament Team.
2009:Atlantic Sun Player of the Year. …Atlantic Sun All-Conference First Team. …Atlantic Sun All-Tournament Team. …College Volleyball Update (CVU) "Stellar" Spikers First Team. …American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) NCAA Division I South Region Team. ...Preseason A-Sun Player of the Year. …Ranked 12th nationally in the NCAA in points per set (5.07). …Rated 21st in the nation in kills per set (4.35). …Ranked 38th in hitting percentage in NCAA Division I (.355). CVU "Top Performers" List (11/5). …Three-time A-Sun Player of the Week (10/5, 10/12, 11/9). …First overall in the A-Sun in kills (452) and kills per set (4.35). First overall in A-Sun in points (527) and points per set (5.07). …Second overall in A-Sun in hitting percentage (.355). First in A-Sun matches only in hitting percentage (.360). …First in A-Sun matches only in kills per set (4.32) and second in total kills (281). …First in A-Sun matches only in points (333) and points per set (5.12). All-Tournament team at Lady Vols Classic (8/30). …Posted a .581 attack percentage at USC Upstate in three sets (11/7), seventh best in the A-Sun. …Recorded a .556 attack percentage vs. Stetson in three sets (10/24), ninth highest in the A-Sun. …Season high 25 kills in a four-set match at Campbell (10/3), fifth best in the A-Sun overall and first in a four-set match. …Finished with 22 kills in a four-set match at Creighton (9/4, second best in a four-set match in the A-Sun. …Also had 20 kills in a three-set match at USC Upstate (11/7). …Conference-high 28.5 points in a four-set match at Campbell (10/3). …Tied for second in A-Sun in points in a four-set match with 24 at Creighton (9/4). …in a three-set match at Murray State she had 21 points (10/6) and in a three-set match at Tennessee she finished with 20 points. …Season-high 19 digs in a five-set match at ETSU (10/2). …Double-doubles in kills and digs 21 times. Made five blocks in a match three times. …Atlantic Sun All-Academic Team.
2008:Atlantic Sun Conference Player of the Year. ...Atlantic Sun First Team All-Conference. ...Atlantic Sun All-Tournament Team. ...First Lady Bison to earn three A-Sun Player of the Week awards (9/22. 9/29, 10/13). Only player in the A-Sun to win "Player of the Week" three times during the season. ...CVU "Stellar Spiker" Team honorable mention. ...Ranked 31st in the NCAA in kills per set (4.09). ...Ranked 79th in NCAA in hit percentage (.332). ...Led A-Sun overall in kills (499), points (586, 4.80 per set) and hitting percentage (.332). .Second in A-Sun matches only in points (366.5, 5.02) ...Second in A-Sun matches only in hitting percentage (.362) and kills (315, 4.32). ...Averaged 4.09 kills per game. ...Sixth in A-Sun overall in blocks (105, .86 per set). ...Fifth in A-Sun matches only in blocks (65, .89 per set) ...Posted a .500 or higher hitting percentage sevem times. ...Twice set a team season-high hitting percentage of .571 (at Morehead St., 8/30; at ETSU, 11/8)., the third highest total in the A-Sun. ....Finished with 21 or more kills in a match four times with a team season-high 28 in four-set match at USC-Upstate (11/7). The 28 kills at USC Upstate (11/7) are also a career high. ...Team season-high 18 kills in three-set match vs. Belmont (9/9). ...Posted 21 kills in five-set match vs. UT-Martin (10/7). ...Double figures in kills in 29 matches, including the last 23 straight matches. ...Led Lady Bisons in total attempts in a match with 59 in five sets vs. UT-Martin (10/7). Finished with 20 or more kills in a match four times. ...Team-high 29.5 points at USC-Upstate (11/7). ...Second on team in digs (285), 2.34 per set. ....Second on team in service aces (22). ...Tied for second on team in service aces in a match at Austin Peay (9/2). ...Led team with nine blocks in a match at Austin Peay (9/2). ...Posted double figures in digs 12 times. ...Finished in double figures in both kills and digs 12 times. ...Atlantic Sun All-Academic Team.
2007:Atlantic Sun All-Tournament Team. ...Atlantic Sun Conference All-Freshman Team. ...Tied for first in blocks in A-Sun Tournament with 1.36 per game (15 total). ...Twice posted an attack percentage of .500 or more with a team season-high .526 percentage vs Kennesaw State (10/20) and a .500 percentage vs Lehigh (9/8). ...Finished with a .462 attack percentage at Campbell (10/2) and a .440 mark vs McNeese State (9/15). ...Twice made 18 kills in five-game matches with ETSU (9/28) and Murray State (10/9). ...Double-figures in kills 20 times. ....Double-figures in kills in final four matches of the season and 11 of the last 12 regular season matches. ...Season-high 48 attempts in five-game match with Murray State (10/9). ...Team leader in blocks with 115, an average of 1.01 per game. ...Second overall on team in attack percentage (.261). ...Second on team in kills with 341 in 114 games, an average of 2.99 per game. ..Made seven blocks four times in matches with Belmont (11/16), Murray State (10/9), Evansville (9/11) and Arizona (8/31). ...All-Tournament Team at ASICS Pepperdine Tournament. ...A-Sun All-Academic Team.
High School: Also a soccer standout at Park Hill High School. ...In volleyball she was All-District and All-Region as a junior and senior and second team All-State. ...Also captain and Most Valuable Player on her high school volleyball team as a senior. ...Lettered two years in volleyball and three years in both soccer and basketball. ...Lettered three years in academics. ...Named to Who's Who Among American High School Students.
Why she chose Lipscomb: "I loved the coaches and players. They were all amazing. Plus, I get four more years to play on the same team with Jake Pease."


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Some years ago a friend of mine told me that the Linux based operating systems were like arthouse films Iranians unintelligible, boring and only for freaks.
Today, fortunately Iranian cinema has been open to the world and it is not uncommon to find people who have enjoyed the film by Samira Makhmalbaf for example.
What about the Linux?
As has also evolved, and therefore has gone from Iranian cinema pelicua class hero Steven Seagal.
I refer to the evidence: adventure games list ded essential open source Linux.
- Alexei: Part IX
Alexei: Part IX is a Free Software graphical adventure game in the style of the Rob Blanc and Arthur Yahtzee trilogies.
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent
(commercial) Amnesia is an exploration-based adventure horror game played from a first-person perspective. The game retains the physical object interaction used in the Penumbra series, allowing for advanced physics based puzzles and interactions such as opening doors and fixing machinery. It is a game that focuses on immersion, discovery, and living through a nightmare.
- Armadillo's adventure
Armadillo's adventure is an adventure game set within a fantasy world. It also includes a toolkit for making your own adventures.
- Beneath a Steel Sky
Beneath a Steel Sky is a science fiction adventure game. Read more
- Bocfel
Bocfel is an interpreter for the Z-machine, which means that it can be used to play Infocom games as well as other games based on the Z-machine.
- Catch the Furball
Catch the Furball is an icebreaker-like game for friends to play around a computer. It is partly based on Generica, which has received kind comments from players.
- Choerbaerts Suche nach dem Roenk
Choerbaerts Suche nach dem Rönk (Choerbaerts search for the Rönk, or CSNDR for short) is the name of a 2d adventure. Its code is based on SDL and OpenGL.
- Crown and Cutlass
Crown and Cutlass is a 3d pirate action/adventure game in the spirit of the old Pirates! game. It is simultaneously being developed in Linux and Windows, with a strong emphasis on cross-platform compatability.
- Cute Knight Deluxe
(commercial) In Cute Knight Deluxe, an orphan girl searches for her destiny. Train in jobs and classes to raise skills, make friends, and find romance, then use those skills to conquer the monsters in the dungeon. Design and dress your unique character to reach one of fifty storybook endings.
Dave's AGI Interpreter ("DAGII") is a reimplementation of Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter ("AGI"). In short, it allows you to play some old-school adventure games such as King's Quest and Space Quest on modern computer systems.
EGSL is a small interpreter written in Pascal which can execute Lua scripts.
- EQEmu
EQEmu is an attempt to recreate the Everquest server software runnable from a Windows or Linux machine. Content is stored in a MySQL database, and allows you to create custom creatures, items, and quest content in game.
- FreeSCI
FreeSCI is an attempt to create a portable interpreter for games written for Sierra On-Line's SCI system.
- FrobTADS
FrobTADS is a complete rewrite of the Unix console-version of TADS ("Text Adventure Development System"). It uses curses (or ncurses) and provides an interpreter to play games developed with TADS as well as the TADS 2 and 3 development tools. It adds support for a number of relatively recent user interface features including full support for text and background colors, TADS 3 banner windows, and timed input. It's also much more portable and more easily maintainable, as it's built to modern Unix standards.
- Frotz
Frotz is an interpreter for all Infocom games that has been ported to many operating systems including Linux. Released as freeware.
- Future Boy!
(commercial) Future Boy! is an adventure game that bills itself more than interactive fiction?it's an interactive comic book.
- Gnome Inform
GNOME Inform 7 is a GNOME port of the Inform 7 IDE for creating interactive fiction or text adventures.
- Heart of The Alien Redux
Heart of The Alien Redux is the sequel for the undoubtably the best adventure of all times, Another World. Developed back in 1994 by Interplay exclusively for the Sega CD console. This is an open-source project which aims to bring this highly-addictive game to all modern consoles and computer platforms.
- HLA Adventure
HLA Adventure is an open-source adventure game that features Mippy, a cute dragon.
- Humm and Strumm
Humm and Strumm is a 3D adventure game in which two players must collaboratively solve puzzles and fight enemies in order to stop the evil Dr. Geoff from taking over the world.
- Hyperplay
Hyperplay is a multimedia authoring engine designed for graphical adventure-style game.
- Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb
(commercial) Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb is a classic adventure game tells the tale of Rif the Fox and his attempt to prove his innocence in the theft of the Orb of Storms, a relic of the ancient Humans. The player guides Rif and his companions/guards Okk the Boar and Eeah the Elk in discovering clues, overcoming challenges, and exploring a land of intelligent, humanoid animals. Available for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
- Kwest
Kwest is a port of the popular Unix Frotz interpreter to KDE.
- Labyrinth of Worlds
Labyrinth of Worlds is a rewrite of the first-person role-playing game Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds that came out in the early 1990s.
- Narcissu
Narcissu is a conversion of a Japanese "visual novel" game released by Stage-Nana, which tells the story of a road trip taken by a boy and a girl who are both terminally ill.
- QTads
QTads is a GUI interpreter for Tads games, running under Unix-based X11 systems (like Linux and FreeBSD).
- Sarien
Sarien is a Sierra AGI interpreter that enables you to play Sierra AGI version 2 and version 3 games, as well as AGI games written by other people.
- Soviet Unterzögersdorf
Soviet Unterzögersdorf is the last existing appanage republic of the USSR. The enclave maintains no diplomatic relationship with the surrounding so-called «Republic of Austria» or with the Fortress «European Union». The downfall of her motherland -- the Soviet Union -- in the early 1990s had a particularly bad effect on the country's economic situation.
- Stendhal
Stendhal is a multiplayer online adventures game inspired in Acorn with the 90's Zelda look. Your task is to talk with other people in the village and find jobs to do that will drive to interesting quests that will reveal the hidden plot behind the world of stendhal
- Super Star Trek
Super Star Trek is a port of the classic Star Trek game with a text-based window interface.
- The Guild
The Guild is a fully rendered/raytraced first-person interactive adventure. It will contain fully rendered animations, digitized speech and a soundtrack.
- The Journey Down
(commercial) The Journey Down is a classic point-and-click saga with a black African twist.
- Troll Bridge
Troll Bridge is an adventure in the style of the original Legend of Zelda. The main character is a troll who has escaped from slavery. By finding clues and collecting items, the character works to free his people.
- Undead Invasion
Undead Invasion is an adventure based game with an extensible format.
- Underworld Adventures
Underworld Adventures is a project to recreate Ultima Underworld 1 on modern operating systems (e.g. Win32, Linux or MacOS), using the original game files. It uses OpenGL for 3D graphics, the SDL library for platform specific tasks and Lua for scripting.
- XZip
XZip is a clean X Windows interface to games written in Infocom's Z-code game format. It handles Z-code versions 1 through 5 and version 8.


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Visual C++ 2005 IDE Enhancements, Part 2
Desktop-as-a-Service Designed for Any Cloud ? Nutanix Frame
In a continued examination of the new Visual C++ 2005 IDE Enhancements, this article looks at the code definition window, editor enhancements, changes to class view, and finally, one of the big new additions to Visual C++: the class diagram.
IntelliSense Revisited (Briefly)
Part 1 of this series on the Visual C++ 2005 IDE covered enhancements to IntelliSense as they relate to macros and displayed a screen shot of the IntelliSense tool-tips for the MAX macro. Zobiuk posted a comment on the article, stating that the particular example I chose to illustrate IntelliSense support for macros has actually worked in Visual C++ for a couple of versions. Zobiuk is correct. I simplified the point in that section to such an extent that it was no longer entirely correct. Thanks to Zobiuk for pointing this out. I appreciate all feedback and act upon it if needed.
The full story on C++ macro IntelliSense is it has been around for a while, but it suffered from bugs related to the way it tracked macro state. These bugs could cause serious problems in the IDE when macro IntelliSense was triggered (this post on microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vc describes an occurrence of this problem). Visual C++ 2005 fixes this problem, making macro IntelliSense much more useful in this version. Developers who turned off IntelliSense to avoid problems like this should give the improved IntelliSense a try once Visual C++ 2005 hits the streets.
Code Definition Window
Presenting developers with information about the types that they are using to write their code is an ongoing challenge for the IDE. The information has to be relevant, presenting the information has to be non-intrusive, and retrieving the information has to be speedy. IntelliSense plays a major role in providing information on types that are currently available, the methods that these types expose, and the parameters that need to be passed to these methods. If a developer wants to see an overview of a type, he or she needs to locate and open the header file if the type is defined in a traditional C++ manner, or open the object browser if the type is expressed in a binary file like a COM type library or .NET assembly.
To support an easier model than the snakes-and-ladders hunt through nested includes and to end the disconnect between the text-centric editor and the graphic-centric object browser, Visual C++ 2005 introduced a new window called the Code Definition Window. The Code Definition Window automatically provides a header file-style view of the type that the text insertion point is currently within or near. If the type is defined in a header file, the IDE displays the header file in the Code Definition Window. Figure 1 shows the header file that defines std::vector automatically, displayed as code that uses the vector template is being written.
Figure 1: Code Definition Window from Header File
If the definition of the type is contained in a binary file such as a .NET assembly, the IDE generates an equivalent header file declaration for the Code Definition Window. This feature does not work in the current beta of Visual C++, but it works for C#. Figure 2 shows a generated C# file for System.String. The method implementations obviously are missing, but the generated code does include method- and parameter-level comments that are the same as those in the MSDN documentation.
Figure 2: C# Code Definition Window from .NET Assembly
Presenting all this in a single screen continues the trend toward converging all the information that a developer needs into a single view. The Code Definition Window eliminates the need to tab between the MSDN documentation, the object browser, and header files to find information about a type; it automatically locates and displays all the information as the code is being written.
Editor Enhancements
The code editor is the core of the IDE, and it is therefore not surprising that it has been enhanced in a number of ways. One of the more retro enhancements is the ability to emulate the Emacs and Brief editors. While this enhancement will hold little interest to those used to the Visual Studio editor short-cuts, for organizations where development teams have been reluctant to standardize on Visual Studio because of familiarity with these other editors, the emulation support will be a welcome addition.
To enable the emulation modes, choose Tools | Options, and configure as appropriate on the Text Editor dialog (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Configuring Emacs or Brief Emulation
One of the more mundane but useful editor enhancements is the margin coloring that indicates lines of code that have been modified since the source file was opened (shown in green) and lines of code that have been modified since the source file was saved (shown in gold). Figure 4 shows this change tracking.
Figure 4: Editor Change Tracking
While this change tracking does not in any way replace the need for a source control tool, it does enable a quick check before a save or a build to ensure that all the changes are correct and that inadvertent modifications have not been made.
The ability to customize the editor has been dramatically expanded in Visual Studio 2005. A setting that may have been represented by a single check-box or drop-down in Visual Studio 2003 may now have dozens of different options that allow the setting to be fully customized. For example, the number of items in the Fonts and Colors option dialog that can have separate settings applied has increased from eight in Visual Studio 2003 to 23 in the current November 2004 CTP release of Visual Studio 2005.
The final noteworthy editor enhancement is the enhanced ability to display Unicode text and to use it as variable names in a C++ project. An attempt to use a non-ASCII variable name in Visual C++ 2003 produces an error: error C3209: '????' : Unicode identifiers are not yet supported. In Visual C++ 2005, the code shown in Figure 5 saves, compiles, and runs correctly. The Simplified Chinese text shown is AltaVista.com's translation of Hello World.
Figure 5: Enhanced Unicode Support


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Langdon, Capps, Nobile, Arana Jr. Winners at Sonoma
Shawn Langdon (Top Fuel), Vincent Nobile (Pro Stock) and Hector Arana Jr. (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also were winners of the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series event, the 15th of 24 in the 2013 season.
Capps powered his NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger to his fourth win at the scenic Bay Area track with a holeshot performance of 4.085 seconds at 307.79 mph to hold off the Castrol GTX Ford Mustang of 15-time world champion John Force in the final round. It marked the 40th career win for the California native.
"You're not just racing any car in the final - you're racing John Force," said Capps, who has won at Sonoma Raceway three of the last four seasons. "It can be intimidating to a lot of people."
"This place has a lot of great memories," he added. "We have a big NAPA presence here and were the only Don Schumacher Racing car in the final. No pressure, right? I try to stay humble. I have a lot of great people behind me to keep me focused. I think we can accomplish that goal of getting to the top."
Capps outran Del Worsham, Jeff Arend, and Courtney Force to reach the final round. He leaves the event No. 2 in the Mello Yello points standings, his highest ranking since he left the Gainesville event tied for first in mid-March. Event top qualifier Matt Hagan, who was upset in the opening round by Alexis DeJoria, continues to lead the series standings by 27 points over Capps.
"This is a dream season," Langdon said. "To get four wins at this point in the season feels like we have a strong car. Racing Morgan was pretty cool because we grew up together and went to high school together. A lot of memories racing with friends."
With the win, his first at Sonoma, Langdon extends his series points lead to 102 over second place Spencer Massey. Langdon outran Houston winner Bob Vandergriff, veteran Doug Kalitta and defending world champion Antron Brown to advance to the final round.
"This was an interesting day for sure but we were long overdue for a win," Nobile said. "In the final, our engine was hurt in the water box and I thought I was a sitting duck. That's a helpless feeling. Jeg is someone I've always looked up to when I was little. He is still one of the best, if not the best driver out here."
The victory is Nobile's second of the season and seventh of his career, moving him to fifth in points. Nobile defeated Jason Line, points leader and event top qualifier Mike Edwards and Greg Anderson to reach the final round.
In Pro Stock Motorcycle, Arana Jr. claimed his fourth win of the season, riding his Lucas Oil Buell to a performance of 6.878 at 195.45 to beat event top qualifier and Viper Motorcycle Company Buell rider Matt Smith in the final round. It is Arana Jr.'s seventh career victory and first at Sonoma.
"It was nice to have a little momentum to get back to the top," Arana Jr. said. "It had been a while for us. After I won those three races, I started to think about winning the race before winning the first round. Not anymore."
Arana Jr. beat Scotty Pollacheck, Jerry Savoie and Katie Sullivan to reach the final round. With the victory, Arana Jr. remains the series points leader. With the runner-up finish Smith clinched a berth into the Countdown to the Championship, NHRA's six-race postseason playoffs that begin Sept. 13-15 at zMAX Dragway near Charlotte, N.C.
Feedback can be sent to email@example.com
Go to our forums to discuss this article


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Lamborghini Driving Experiences & Track Days,Make a loved one's day with an exhilarating, unforgettable Lamborghini driving experience – or treat yourself to a day out you will remember forever! Experience Days have a variety of electrifying Lamborghini driving experience that feature a selection of cars from these Italian masters, and also have a range of circuits to race on, including the world-famous Goodwood track.
You can take to the track at the iconic Goodwood venue and drive the spectacular 500bhp Lamborghini Gallardo during the Goodwood Lamborghini Gallardo Experience. Get behind the wheel of one of the world's most celebrated supercars at one of the world's premium circuits and discover precisely why this glorious car is so desirable. With expert tuition from the pros, you'll soon have the confidence to put pedal to metal and really push the Gallardo to its limits! This is an utterly unique driving experience that combines slick styling with outstanding performance.
Whether you're looking for the perfect experience gift for the car lover in your life or a brilliant activity to enjoy yourself, you can guarantee that these Lamborghini driving experiences will not disappoint … although the drive home just won't be the same!


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North Carolina considering banning people on welfare and in bankruptcy from buying lottery tickets
By GABRIELLE LEVY, UPI.com
Published: Jan. 25, 2013 at 12:38 PM
A North Carolina lawmaker wants to stop 'deceptive' practices by the state lottery, who he says targets poor people who don't understand the odds.
A North Carolina lawmaker is pushing to ban lottery ticket sales for those on welfare or in bankruptcy, a proposal that would affect more than 1.7 million people in the Tar Heel State.
According to the Raleigh News Observer, State Rep. Paul "Skip" Stam, a Republican from Wake, said he hopes to bring the proposal during the upcoming legislative session.
"We're giving them welfare to help them live, and yet by selling them a ticket, we're taking away their money that is there to provide them the barest of necessities," Stam said.
Stam acknowledged that there were concerns over how the ban might be enforced, especially because lottery clerks may not always be able to tell if lottery players are on government assistance. But in obvious cases, such as when customers use food stamps to buy groceries, they should not be permitted.
Stam said the purpose of the ban was for the protection of consumers, whom he says fall prey to deceptive advertising by the lottery, which tends to attract lower-income people who don't understand that their chances of winning are slim.
"What they are talking about is making it a more honest lottery," Stam said. He argued that the lottery advertises large cash payouts, but fails to explain the odds of winning big prizes and that even big wins are ultimately slashed by taxes and deductions.
According to North Carolina Policy watch, sales of lottery tickets are concentrated in impoverished counties, and that all but two of the 20 poorest counties have above-average ticket sales per capita.
Census data from the most recent American Community survey (2011) shows 28 percent of African American North residents fall below the poverty level (compared to 18 percent statewide). Nearly half of the families on food stamps in the state are African American, even though they make up less than 12 percent of the state's population.
The NAACP has historically been opposed to lottery bans, and Stam's proposed changes are no different.
"The NAACP didn't agree with the lottery to start with," said North Carolina NAACP president the Rev. William Barber. "Rather than Mr. Stam having a side argument, ask him to stop blocking labor rights for poor people and working people. Ask him to have a real conversation about real wage."
The North Carolina Education Lottery, which was established in 2005 over opposition from Republicans and even some progressive Democrats who called the lottery a regressive tax on the poor, helps pay for the reduction of class sizes, supplements school constructions costs and college scholarships.
North Carolina has an estimated population of 9.7 million, with 2.3 million (nearly a quarter) people on some kind of supplemental income.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/01/25/Welfare-lottery-ban-considered-in-North-Carolina/4701359134058/#ixzz2JC7jyvit