Alex Kudera's Blog, page 142
September 8, 2012
rest in peace
Only the good die young? Of course, it's only an expression, part of a song, and possibly, at this point, a cliche, but it seems to apply here in the sense that a good man, a "stand-up guy," was killed at age 33.
This father worked second and third jobs to make ends meet, bought gifts for the children of coworkers, and saved a local business from robbery.
And now, nothing.
This father worked second and third jobs to make ends meet, bought gifts for the children of coworkers, and saved a local business from robbery.
And now, nothing.
September 7, 2012
worker participation
"The result is that the percentage of working-age Americans with a job or looking for one has dropped to 63.5 percent, a 31-year low."
Maybe it's too easy to blame it all on the Koch Brothers, the "Food Stamp President," Republican blocking and tackling in Congress, technological advancement, global warming, American obesity or generalized sluggishness, alleged worker abuses by apple in China, amazon.com's monopoly on everything, the unusually hot summer, a global earthquake pandemic, or the Wal-Mart in Central, SC raising the price of gallon of milk to $3.87 soon after all "permanent" state employees received a 3 percent raise?
Yes, yahoo, why did unemployment fall?[image error]
Maybe it's too easy to blame it all on the Koch Brothers, the "Food Stamp President," Republican blocking and tackling in Congress, technological advancement, global warming, American obesity or generalized sluggishness, alleged worker abuses by apple in China, amazon.com's monopoly on everything, the unusually hot summer, a global earthquake pandemic, or the Wal-Mart in Central, SC raising the price of gallon of milk to $3.87 soon after all "permanent" state employees received a 3 percent raise?
Yes, yahoo, why did unemployment fall?[image error]
Robin Hoods Around the Web
In honor of the "grim" jobs report, I found myself back in shelter for the poor.
A facebook friend shared with me a Robin Hood in Spain, and then within the comments of that video I chanced upon a URL link to an older blog about Cheri Honkala, a protest leader from Philly with a long history of activitism. In 2011, Honkala ran and lost for Sheriff of Philadelphia so that she could have worked as an official power against the banks and use selective enforcement of the law to help poor people facing foreclosure remain in their homes. Regardless of one's political orientation, it is difficult not to be moved by the first video or the concerns expressed in the blog.
An excerpt from the blog, This Can't Be Happening, dated April 27, 2011:
Acting Sheriff Barbara Deeley, who is not running, has said, “We have to follow court orders, and that’s what sheriff’s sales are.” But what Deeley doesn't understand is Honkala is not running for the same Sheriff's job Deeley is currently holding. While Kromer wants to eliminate the office, Honkala wants to transform it into an ombudsman for the poor in the city of Philadelphia.
In this sense, Honkala’s campaign revolves around one of the most un-reported realities of American governance, something as American as apple pie, something seen throughout American history and something that always will be with us: The willful selective enforcement of our laws.
It ranges from George W. Bush's notorious “signing statements” concerning laws passed by Congress to the 55 mile per hour speed limit. Historically, you saw it in things like “vagrancy” laws used to selectively snare certain poor people for chain gang labor; you saw it in literacy tests in the south where a black man would be asked to read a line of Greek but a white man would get a “Hello, right this way” to the ballot box. In general, it’s the ugly, prejudicial backside of police and judicial discretion.
It’s often such a taken-for-granted part of American governance that no one really notices it. The wealthy, the powerful, the popular and the white tend to get the breaks, which come in the form of mitigating circumstances, good character reports and assurances the individual is sorry and didn’t really mean it. On the other hand, the poor, the powerless, the unattractive, the mentally ill and the darker races tend – and statistics back this up – to get the opposite: the assumption of laziness or evil intent, projections of fear and just flat-out prejudice.[image error]
A facebook friend shared with me a Robin Hood in Spain, and then within the comments of that video I chanced upon a URL link to an older blog about Cheri Honkala, a protest leader from Philly with a long history of activitism. In 2011, Honkala ran and lost for Sheriff of Philadelphia so that she could have worked as an official power against the banks and use selective enforcement of the law to help poor people facing foreclosure remain in their homes. Regardless of one's political orientation, it is difficult not to be moved by the first video or the concerns expressed in the blog.
An excerpt from the blog, This Can't Be Happening, dated April 27, 2011:
Acting Sheriff Barbara Deeley, who is not running, has said, “We have to follow court orders, and that’s what sheriff’s sales are.” But what Deeley doesn't understand is Honkala is not running for the same Sheriff's job Deeley is currently holding. While Kromer wants to eliminate the office, Honkala wants to transform it into an ombudsman for the poor in the city of Philadelphia.
In this sense, Honkala’s campaign revolves around one of the most un-reported realities of American governance, something as American as apple pie, something seen throughout American history and something that always will be with us: The willful selective enforcement of our laws.
It ranges from George W. Bush's notorious “signing statements” concerning laws passed by Congress to the 55 mile per hour speed limit. Historically, you saw it in things like “vagrancy” laws used to selectively snare certain poor people for chain gang labor; you saw it in literacy tests in the south where a black man would be asked to read a line of Greek but a white man would get a “Hello, right this way” to the ballot box. In general, it’s the ugly, prejudicial backside of police and judicial discretion.
It’s often such a taken-for-granted part of American governance that no one really notices it. The wealthy, the powerful, the popular and the white tend to get the breaks, which come in the form of mitigating circumstances, good character reports and assurances the individual is sorry and didn’t really mean it. On the other hand, the poor, the powerless, the unattractive, the mentally ill and the darker races tend – and statistics back this up – to get the opposite: the assumption of laziness or evil intent, projections of fear and just flat-out prejudice.[image error]
September 6, 2012
Steve Almond for POTUS
While one Wesleyan writer carts her son off to college, another brings the heavy metal back to the Oval Office. As usual, Steve Almond is passionate and funny, if in a somber way, but as for the former, I found her NYTimes Op-Ed to be interesting writing but also couldn't help contrast how her life experiences with her partner have differed so greatly from the women filmed in this CNN video on food insecurity and hunger. It seems as if Americans are still voting for lifestyle issues and between competing "moralities" and yet the issues of economic injustice remain, at least to me, so much more significant. Of course, the two sets of issues should not be forced to compete with each other.
And in other news, hundreds of thousands of jobs were reportedly added to the economy and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared higher today, so to an extent, I'm drawn to doubt all this downer talk of downturns and economic despair. My students though, at least the ones who expressed a view, are under the impression it is extremely difficult to get a career-type position, and almost all the jobs we see advertised are the ones college students don't want.
So we did the whole "except for nursing and engineering" thing and then moved on to the stories.
[image error]
And in other news, hundreds of thousands of jobs were reportedly added to the economy and the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared higher today, so to an extent, I'm drawn to doubt all this downer talk of downturns and economic despair. My students though, at least the ones who expressed a view, are under the impression it is extremely difficult to get a career-type position, and almost all the jobs we see advertised are the ones college students don't want.
So we did the whole "except for nursing and engineering" thing and then moved on to the stories.
[image error]
September 4, 2012
CCLaP
The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography has a new 12-part serialized audiobook coming this fall. By chance, it features two former Ultimate Frisbee players, Ben Tanzer and Kevin Haworth along with ten other writers, music by Ken Kase, and "cliffhangers at the end of each chapter and a dark, weird tone throughout."
Who said weird tones weren't alive and well in this unusually austere age?
My favorite CCLaP read so far has been Ben Tanzer's 99 Problems , a memoir written just after a series of runs in various parts of the U.S. (The other other runs, dude.)
Who said weird tones weren't alive and well in this unusually austere age?
My favorite CCLaP read so far has been Ben Tanzer's 99 Problems , a memoir written just after a series of runs in various parts of the U.S. (The other other runs, dude.)
August 30, 2012
The Rag[e] in Brooklyn
The Rag and Canteen Magazine are hosting a free party on Friday, September 21 at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, NY. The party starts at 8:30 following Canteen's Outwrite event at 7:00. This is a subscription party, where joint annual subscriptions to The Rag and Canteen will be available at a discounted price. An open bar will be provided, courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery and The Noble Experiment. Yes, free booze. And bands (to be announced). You must be 21 or older to attend. You can RSVP through Facebook but please also email Dan (dan@raglitmag.com). Remember, this is a free event and occupancy is limited. It will fill up fast, so sign up today. We'll see you in September.
August 29, 2012
michael james rizza
L.U.S.K. continues to be the hot spot for blog titles that include the middle name (no mere middle initial here, party people), so I'm excited to announce that Michael James Rizza has won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction for his first published novel, Cartilage and Skin. The contest judge was Wesleyan writing professor Deb Olin Unferth.
August 28, 2012
john henry fleming
Well, the university seems to have shown amazing resilience and survived since my last post, but here's a relevant one, no doubt, for the gazillions of desperate-to-be-published folks in the hallowed halls of our English departments. In a best case scenario, it will take the edge off all of our own literary rejections snailed, emailed, or otherwise sent.
I much prefer the one where the agent declines by landing on my brain and proceeding to smash with a tiny steel hammer while insisting that not only do I have no commercial potential, but I'm also a bad person.
And by the way, John Henry Fleming's serial novel-in-emails is funny.
So check it out.
As usual, then.
I much prefer the one where the agent declines by landing on my brain and proceeding to smash with a tiny steel hammer while insisting that not only do I have no commercial potential, but I'm also a bad person.
And by the way, John Henry Fleming's serial novel-in-emails is funny.
So check it out.
As usual, then.
August 21, 2012
debra leigh scott
Debra Leigh Scott's "insightful article" on "How The American University was Killed in Five Easy Steps" flew around the web and was just recently picked up by Forbes Magazine. 
August 19, 2012
bad review
"Every mind lives or dies by its ideas; every book lives or dies by its language."
So this is the last sentence of the now almost famous bad-meanie review of Alix Somebody's new novel. I could only skim the review, saw he cared enough to name-drop half the canon, and I'm almost positive I'll never have time to read the book, but the sentence is rather compelling, and I like it and am almost left wishing it were true. But I'm also reminded of Philip K. Dick and other writers who very rarely crafted a beautiful sentence but had other things going for them that have kept them in print. One of my favorite creative-writing guides, title escapes me, at one point tries to give the languageless writer a boost by reminding us of how many famous writers didn't write such poetic prose and how some were paid by the word and not the pretty sentence. Dickens. Balzac. Yeah, I agree, it's wrong to name Hemingway here, but in 2012, Bukowski is as loved and in print than anyone from his generation. Some would say language was a strength of Kerouac's writing although most of these folks weren't critics. James Wood once wrote of Paul Auster in The New Yorker, "Although there are things to admire in Auster’s fiction, the prose is never one of them."
No one path to literature, and at the end the day, I suppose that this Alix Somebody or Nobody or Youtellme (and I'll admit I now remember her last name is Ohlin) has to be grateful for this Jerk Reviewer and the NYTimes just for running any review of her work. A lot of great books don't get close to being reviewed by such a major publication. And now I've been to the amazon page for the book, and it looks like The New Yorker and everyone else, customers and critics, loves the darn thing silly. My final impression is that the author will survive the scathing pen of Giraldi.
Fight for Your Long Day, Alix Ohlin and William Giraldi! And the rest of literature, too.
(I must confess that I liked the part of the review where he addresses the importance of a book's title.)
So this is the last sentence of the now almost famous bad-meanie review of Alix Somebody's new novel. I could only skim the review, saw he cared enough to name-drop half the canon, and I'm almost positive I'll never have time to read the book, but the sentence is rather compelling, and I like it and am almost left wishing it were true. But I'm also reminded of Philip K. Dick and other writers who very rarely crafted a beautiful sentence but had other things going for them that have kept them in print. One of my favorite creative-writing guides, title escapes me, at one point tries to give the languageless writer a boost by reminding us of how many famous writers didn't write such poetic prose and how some were paid by the word and not the pretty sentence. Dickens. Balzac. Yeah, I agree, it's wrong to name Hemingway here, but in 2012, Bukowski is as loved and in print than anyone from his generation. Some would say language was a strength of Kerouac's writing although most of these folks weren't critics. James Wood once wrote of Paul Auster in The New Yorker, "Although there are things to admire in Auster’s fiction, the prose is never one of them."
No one path to literature, and at the end the day, I suppose that this Alix Somebody or Nobody or Youtellme (and I'll admit I now remember her last name is Ohlin) has to be grateful for this Jerk Reviewer and the NYTimes just for running any review of her work. A lot of great books don't get close to being reviewed by such a major publication. And now I've been to the amazon page for the book, and it looks like The New Yorker and everyone else, customers and critics, loves the darn thing silly. My final impression is that the author will survive the scathing pen of Giraldi.
Fight for Your Long Day, Alix Ohlin and William Giraldi! And the rest of literature, too.
(I must confess that I liked the part of the review where he addresses the importance of a book's title.)
