Barry Graham's Blog, page 38

Portland’s reminder that it’s expensive to be poor—and why you should vote for Chloe Eudaly

I was walking in Northeast Portland, on Martin Luther King Blvd. The farther North of Rosa Parks I walked, the fewer stores I saw—I went at least three miles without seeing a supermarket, or anything but fast food chains and convenience stores. To live there and have enough food to eat, you either need a car, or to take frequent bus trips at $2.50 a trip.

I talked to someone who lives in an apartment in the Dekum neighborhood, but who won’t be there much longer. Rent on the apartment has...

Robert E. Howard, Texas, Cimmeria, Glasgow

Robert E. Howard was born in Texas 100 years ago today, and he killed himself there 30 years later. He never had a book published in his lifetime, but he let loose an avalanche of stories as varied as they were brilliant.

In the 1970s, the book with the Frank Frazetta cover shown above was displayed in the window of a bookshop in a Glasgow slum. A little boy looked in the window, saw it, and realized that there might be other stories than the ones he had been told, other worlds than the one he...

This is the cover of the French edition of The Book of Man,...

This is the cover of the French edition of The Book of Man, which will be published in March. The translation is by Laurence Viallet.

I’ve been haunted by this multimedia work by Hugh Hood since...

I’ve been haunted by this multimedia work by Hugh Hood since Tony Black brought it to my attention a few days ago.It perfectly depicts the Glasgow of my childhood. I was eight years old, and I remember these places well, especially Gerry’s Snack Bar. Anyone who’s read my Scottish books and would like to see how the setting looked should watch this.

I’ve Always Been Hungry | Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.

I’ve Always Been Hungry | Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.:

Memoir piece by me published in Narratively

Punishment precedes crime

I sometimes think everything comes out even in the end, but an end that arches beyond the horizon, beyond or capacity to perceive or measure, and that in many cases those who trespass against you do so out of a misery that means the punishment preceded and even precipitated the crime.

—Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

I agree with Solnit. As I argued in this piece some years ago, no matter how vile someone’s crime, the fact that they were able to commit it means they have already endure...

22 years ago today, I finished The Book of Man

I woke in the afternoon of the first day of 1994, having slept off the debaucheries of a Scottish New Year celebration. I thought I was a few weeks away from finishing The Book of Man, which I had been working on for two and a half years. I took a walk around Leith in the cold, went home, thawed out, ate dinner, brewed a pot of tea and decided to to do a bit of work on the book. When I went to bed, the book was finished. I couldn’t have imagined the doors it would open for me, and I&rsq...

Compassion does not get fatigued

In the zendo last night, someone asked me about “compassion fatigue.” I answered that such a feeling is not really about compassion, it’s about your self-centered dislike of the suffering that others are experiencing, and thus is a rejection of the other person and of life as it is in that moment.

This morning, reading Rebecca Solnit’s book The Faraway Nearby, I found this:

You haven’t only witnessed something but also translated it into your own experience; you ha...

Tanka

Who’s right? Who’s wrong?
Who’s good? Who’s bad?
The answer is written
on every gravestone
in every cemetery

from Love and Rain

Seasonal poem I wrote decades ago

On the floor, naked,

by the Christmas tree—

Christmas is coming

and so are we.