Betsy Phillips's Blog, page 534
September 12, 2010
My Overwhelming True Blood Finale Thought
What kind of waitress doesn't know you have to run water while you're using the garbage disposal?
Christ. I don't even have a garbage disposal and I am going to have to disinvite Sookie from my house over that nonsense.
My Mom's Birthday
It's my mom's birthday today so we drove to Vincennes to have lunch with her and my dad and my cousin, A. My dad bought my mom two copies of my book–one for reading and one for bragging. And then my mom wanted me to sign them! As if she doesn't have a million things that I have written. And what do you say in a note in a book to your mom that she's going to show all her friends?
I wrote "Mom–Eat your vegetables. Love, Betsy."
My dad was busy making the case that the book should have been...
A Conversation with My Republican Uncle
My dear Uncle B., with the signed framed picture of President and Mrs. Bush hanging right in the entrance-way called me to ask where his free signed copy of my book was and I said, "Like you, I'm a capitalist. No free rides for anyone. Buy it on Amazon."
"Not even for family?"
"Especially not for family. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."
He said, "Well, I hope it's not like your cousin's books. I couldn't get through either one."
"Well, my book has a lot of short stories full of cussing and g...
The Park Review I Just Wrote
Whew, it's a weird one. Tore my fucking heart right out without me quite realizing it. I was going to do an analysis of the Battle of Nashville Memorial and talk about this idea that the blood of the World War One dead should somehow cleanse the nation of the wounds of the Civil War. It's interesting because, one the one hand, there's this stated desire for the past to be the past and for us to come together as Americans.
On the other hand, it was 1927, also not a stellar year to be a black...
September 11, 2010
September 10, 2010
That Place
I have been practicing getting to that place where I feel joy and peace. Like, now, whenever I feel joy and peace or joy and excitement, I try to carry it along a little farther than necessary and practice feeling like that, for no reason.
I know it's corny. But I have been meditating before bed for years and I found, as an interesting side effect, that it helps when I go to the doctor, because I can wait patiently.
I don't know what the side effect from practicing feeling joy will be, but I...
A Weird, Cool Thing
I'm off this morning to go be on a panel for the Americana Music Association meeting. I don't know Wes Yoder, but I can only assume that he's Amish, based on the last name. I'm a little excited about Eileen Sisk and Tommy Womack, but I'm trying to get it out of my system before I get downtown.
The thing I keep thinking is that we're still talking about electronic publishing like we're just seeing the rumblings of a huge earthquake about to hit. But I think the earthquake has hit. I think it...
September 9, 2010
Book Things Are Happening
–I put the book for sale at GoodReads, if you want to buy an electronic copy there.
–You can Look Inside the Book at Amazon!
–And you can watch information about the book slowly trickle out to other outlets here. If you want to see what kinds of headaches publishers have, that will give you a clue. All of those places got all the same information at the same time and yet what they have up varies a great deal and it will take it another few weeks for everything to trickle to every place. The...
