Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 38

Stranded on Saturn: An Open Letter to GM

Dear GM:

I don’t understand a thing about bankruptcy, or what it means to file for Chapter 11 versus Chapter 7, so I can’t comment on your actual financial status.  Nor would I presume to tell you about business practices or pretend to understand whether you are truly worth the huge amount of tax dollars that we — make that I – am investing in you.

But hear me out here for a moment.  I’ve bought American cars my entire life, starting with a 1978 white Trans Am with a gas guzzling 434 horses under

“My Beloved Island of Manna-hata!”

The Wildlife Conservation Society has created a neat project on a topic near and dear to Washington Irving’s heart, and to mine.  It’s a history of New York, but with a twist — unlike Irving’s History of New York, which traced the rise and fall of the Dutch settlers, this one traces Manhattan’s ecological history.

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Mannahatta Project imagines what Manhattan Island was like only hours before Henry Hudson and his men set foot on the island 400 years ago, in 1609. 

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend starts early in the Jones house, as we head north this afternoon for our now-annual three-day volleyball tournament at Penn State.  It’s a great experience for all the girls — over 700 teams, I think, from all over the East Coast — as they get to stay in the dorms and live like college students for three days.  God help them.

Enjoy your weekend — but while you’ve got the grill fired up, take a moment to remember what this holiday is all about.  A bit of context, you ask?  You

Dear Abbey

Abbey came to us as a stray puppy back in March of 2001. From what we could tell, she had been running with a pack of stray dogs — which probably included her mother — and after one of those famously impressive Phoenix monsoons that come rolling in on Spring evenings, she had somehow gotten separated from her pack.  A group of neighborhood kids found her and brought her to us, having heard that Barb’s Golden Retriever had died several months before.  At 30 pounds, the dog looked like a puffy Ger

Impeached!

It’s not quite Happy Launch Day — the book’s been Officially Out for a week now — but I attended the Launch Party last night in Georgetown, so I’ll say it anyway:  Happy Launch Day to David O. Stewart, whose Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy is already burning up the shelves and earning great reviews.  Here’s the feared Kirkus, for instance, which gave David one of those highly-coveted starred reviews:

“A riveting look at one of American history’s

Institutional Memories: Gentleman Jim

It’s a bit old news now, but the party shift of Senator Arlen Specter last month got me thinking about the last U.S. Senator to change parties – an old boss of mine, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont.

In late 1997, I left the office of my home state’s U.S. Senator, Pete V. Domenici, to take a position with the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now the HELP Committee), which Jeffords had just started chairing.  I knew the Jeffords staff fairly well—I had worked closely with several of t

Reviews in Brief: Columbine (Dave Cullen)

On April 20, 1999—the day all hell broke loose at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado—I was working as an assistant state education chief in Arizona. We had a close relationship with our counterparts in Colorado, and as the Columbine story was breaking on national television, we were on the phone with officials in Denver, asking what they knew. Their answer was always the same. “Not much,” they kept telling us. 

Not much.  That would remain the case most of the days and weeks to come.

I Love This Place

We live in a small town about 45 miles northwest of Washington, DC. We’re still considered part of what they call the Greater Washington DC Metro Area, but we’re far enough removed from a lot of the hustle and bustle that goes with living in the city or the typical suburbs.

Our town straddles the intersection of three state highways — all three of which are really just two-lane country roads maintained by the State of Maryland — and horse farms and orchards line the roads approaching town. We hav

Within A Budding Grove

Once again, my apologies for the lack of posts here lately, but things have been rather hectic.  Apart from sheer scheduling issues, Spring weather — even when it rains — is never terribly conducive to my pen.  There’s too much to look at, too many pots to fill, too many holes to dig.

But there is some progress being made; in fact,  I just shipped something off to Agent J for comments and further discussion.

In the meantime, for your literary enjoyment, let’s take a peek in on the “Summarize Prous

Hollywood Shuffle

My pal Scott Phillips wrote a great piece in his “Hollywood and Whine” column for the Eye Crave Network  about life in Hollywood as a spec screenplay writer, script polisher, and project pitcher.  As Scott puts it:

There’s no doubt about it — it’s exciting as hell: you, the struggling screenwriter, finally get lucky enough to have somehow stumbled onto the right combination of spec screenplay and hard-working manager or agent, and you find yourself “taking meetings” all over Tinsel Town. That’s w