Kurt R.A. Giambastiani's Blog, page 40

Perfectionism is Shown the Door

The epiphany hit me when I finished Wednesday’s New York Times crossword puzzle. Epiphanies are like that, showing up at odd times, all unexpected-like. I finished the puzzle in about nine minutes, a third faster than average. I didn’t take pride in that fact, though, and felt no sense of achievement. Instead, I said to […]

Cui Bono? Jill Stein’s Green Calculation

Long post ahead, but I was asked, so I’m answering… To those struggling with what Trump’s America looks like, I’m not shouting “Get over it!”— How long did it take some folks to “get over” Obama’s election? About nine years, it seems.— but Iam getting tired of all the memes and posts from the left […]

Post-Mortem

I’ve lost friends because of this election. Ironically, none were from the “red” contingent; losses came from my own“blue” cohort.Some partings were my choice. Others were silent retreats taken by the other party, discovered well after the fact. Either way, the losses were not a surprise, given the level of internecine warfare exhibited during the […]

And the World Held Its Breath

Vote, dammit!!!

Returning Focus: Back to Words

Four years ago my ninth novel, Beneath a Wounded Sky,hit the shelves. It was the final volume in my Fallen Cloud Saga, and it was a hard book to write for several reasons. The years since then haven’t been kind, and my writing was relegated not to the back seat, but to theway back (those […]

Games, Figurines, and Painting by Numbers

My father was a painter. Oils, acrylics, pastels, charcoal, pen and ink, on canvas and on paper. By trade, he was a lithographer, but at home, he was a painter, and that’s how I always thought of him: as an artist. His basement atelier was a cluttered chaos of books and bottles, half-squeezed-out tubes of […]

Salmon à la Troisgros

Pierre Troisgros is a giant in the world of cooking. This dish — one of his masterpieces— was said to have changed the face of French cookery back in the ’60s, when he and his brother Jean won theirthird Michelin star. Like most culinary masterpieces, it is a thing of elegant simplicity…if you have what […]

When the Dark Trees Sizzle

I walk to work The same hour each day And make a time-lapse film Frame by frame To capture the passing year. Buildings fall into vacant lots, Rise from the rubble. Storms flash overhead. Cars blur past Dreary commuters Taking dreary steps Toward dreary jobs. But along the sidewalk, Sweetgums grow Tall, stately, serene, Life […]

Listen to Them

Locker room talk. Harmless braggadocio.Boys will be boys. If you’re a hetero male like me, you might feel that we’re getting a bad rap, that we’re being slandered and libeled, being painted with a big stinking brush. We don’t talk that way. We don’t eventhink that way. OK, sure, we like looking at women and […]

Storm’s A-Comin’

The Pacific Northwest is in a tizzy today. Why? It’s gonna rain. [I’ll just wait here until the laughter dies down… Okay… Finished? Good. Onward.] Yes, it’s gonna rain, and it’s gonna raingood. We have a series ofdeep low-pressure cyclones heading our way, one of which is the remnants of Typhoon Songda, and the gradients […]