Straight To Hot

Not even a chance
To more than glance
At gentle Spring
Before Summer Heat
Settled in.

E-Trash Elimination

Up early and out with 20 years' worth of electronic accumulation, now happily delivered for recycling:

11 computers (9 desktop, 2 laptop)

5 printers

18 phones and 11 answering machines (the farm was prey to power surges when we first moved here)

1 stereo

3 boom boxes

1 scanner

4 VCRs

14 keyboards (occupational hazard)

7 remote controls

1 DVD player

3 USB hubs

2 ZIP drives and an external CD-ROM drive (2x! A speed demon!)

all now deposited at our county's first (of many, one hopes) e-trash collection day.

Felt good.

Electronics are lighter today than most of boat-anchors I hauled to the recycling station.

And now my house is lighter than it was just yesterday.

A bit lighter, anyway.

No Stopping That Man Dan

Dan Smith is at it again, and we're the better for it.

Having gone on at some length about his sterling qualities as writer, editor, and man (qualities absolutely undetectable at first and maybe even second glance at his... time-honored features) I'll spare the personal praise now, and say simply that if you're not reading his blog, fromtheeditr, you are missing one of the liveliest soapboxes around.

Dan's always a good writer, but I think he's as surprised as anyone at what a natural blogger he's turned out to be.

Actually, I'm not all that surprised: Blogs are just right for holding forth, and work best when you've got something to hold forth with (and do so forthwith!)

Dan's got plenty of somethings: experience, attitude, insight, opinion (and how!) and a well-developed sense of both justice and service.

He's also funny as hell.

Check out Dan Smith's fromtheeditr when you get the chance. You'll enjoy yourself and you'll make Dan's blog a regular stopping-place.

And don't miss Valley Business Front, the business (and much more) magazine that Dan and Tom Field started a few months back, and which has gone, in those same few months, from being an ambitious approach to regional business (and more) publication to being a must-read ambitious regional magazine.

There's no stopping Dan Smith, and it's fun to watch the irritation experienced by those who've tried.

Beginning Bellow

As the great generation of post World War II American novelists inevitably and inexorably dwindles, the opportunity to consider careers in toto exerts its own inexorable and (for me anyway) probably inevitable appeal.

And the appeal for me at the moment is to view those careers from the inside, by starting at the beginning and working my way, book-by-book through works first read long ago, and almost undoubtedly read out of sequence of publication.

This winter I turned to Saul Bellow, and began where, in print at least, his novelistic career did, with Dangling Man.

With Bellow, the begin-at-the-beginning reader is fortunate to have the first couple of decades of his career in two Library of America volumes. Beautifully printed and bound, conveniently sized, the volumes also reflect Library of America's commitment to producing the most accurate versions of the books themselves.

With the first of its (so far, but only so far, one hopes) Saul Bellow volumes, Novels 1944-1953, I was reminded by the volume title itself that while Bellow is (rightly) considered one of the half dozen or so key American postwar novelists, his career began while the war was still being waged.

That beginning, Dangling Man, is set in the United Sates (Chicago, of course) during the war. During, in fact, the narrator's wait for induction into the army: The arc of the novel is that wait; the novel is written in the form of diary entries.

It's an effective form both for the philosophical explorations Bellow pursued throughout his career -- the narrator, Joseph, is well-read; books, their promise and their limitations (as well as Joseph's), inform many of the entries -- and for propelling a narrative that isn't driven by plot. The book is essentially plotless (like life).

Casting the novel as a diary frees Bellow from building a cohesively plotted architecture of incidents and scenes (though there are plenty of each, some memorable) and enables the focus of the book to be Joseph's exploration of his identity, personally and philosophically.

The approach works well, though some entries demand some lenience of disbelief from the reader: though Joseph is not a novelist some entries run for several pages, complete with dialogue (in a party scene, dialogue from a fairly large number of characters) and novelistic descriptions.

Re-reading Dangling Man forty years after my first (and previously only) time with it offers certain pleasures of perspective. When I first read it, late in the Sixties, Bellow's most recent novel was Herzog (1964). At least two other major novels, Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) and Humboldt's Gift (1975) and several close to major novels, not to mention nonfiction, stories and novellas and a Nobel Prize lay ahead.

That first reading of this first novel, though, came when the only other Bellow I knew was Herzog. Seize The Day (1957) and Henderson The Rain King (1959). The Adventures of Augie March (1953) and The Victim (1947) lay in my future, as they had in Bellow's when writing Dangling Man.

But even then and knowing only a few of his works I could see, nascent, many of Bellow's preoccupations, themes, and tones: Isolation, dialogues with the past and with one's self, troubles with women, engagement with and rejection of classical literature and philosophy, the costs (on many levels) of urban life, and others (though not Bellow's lively comic side: Dangling Man is, like its diarist/narrator, essentially humorless).

Looking at the book now, almost four years after Bellow's death, I find Dangling Man to be more compelling than I recalled, the diarist's wait -- not quite anticipation -- for induction and his emergence (sic) into a larger world giving a sense, wholly exclusive of the novel itself, of Bellow's own steady, day-by-day, page-by-page wait for his own emergence.

That emergence came with Augie March close to a decade after Dangling Man, and the third novel in the Library of America's first volume of Bellow. If I stick to my plan of reading may way through Bellow I will get to Augie...

Sometime. Rereading an author's work, all of it, in order of composition, is itself the work of a fair amount of a lifetime, and there are other writers I wish to approach the same way.

For now, though, I've begun Bellow, and recommend Dangling Man and its author to you, as well.

Woods, Snow, Silence, Love

It's been years since our last real snow here, but the wait was worth it. I don't know that I've ever seen a prettier snow.

Three days later and the ground remains covered, though tomorrow's temperatures will see to that. Until then, though, it's lovely, and enough snow remains to muffle even the sounds of its falling from the trees.

The drive, steep and shaded, remains covered as well, which means the car remains parked at the top of the ridge that runs along the edge of the farm

Walking to and from it through the woods that cover the slope of the ridge reminds me, every time, of just how much I love these woods, this land, and just how deeply that love can be renewed by seeing the land and the forest through new eyes.

Eyes squinting, just a bit, against the glare rising from the snow.

Editor Retiring -- But Not Shy!

My friend Dan Smith retired yesterday, and celebrated his birthday at the same time.

Then he got right to work on a brand-new project.

Considering how hard and constantly Dan's worked as a journalist and editor over the last four decades -- and then some -- there isn't a lot of surprise to this. He's spent the last twenty years editing the Blue Ridge Business Journal, a publication serving southwest Virginia, each page reflecting Dan's standards and integrity, providing its readers with news, features, opinion and attitude that equaled any such publication anywhere.

Every two weeks Dan produced a paper that was always lively, that took stands, that shared insights, and that reminded us that business is only part of life: Dan's book reviews ranged across everything from ancient history to contemporary fiction and most categories in-between. Rare enough for a business paper -- and increasingly, alas, any paper -- to carry book reviews, the Journal under Dan was absolutely committed to them.

He's just as committed to helping young writers become better writers. I've watched him work with dozens over the years, making the best of them better and then helping them get better still.

Dan always goes out of his way to credit the freelancers who provided the bulk of the Journal's copy; those young writers are a big part of his legacy.

Not that he'd use a word like legacy. Dan is not one to rest on his laurels, or to rest much, period. He's always looking for the next story, the next book to read, the next person to tell about that story, or that just-read book.

He's a fine writer, too; his memoir, Burning The Furniture, gives good picture of a life that in many ways promised not to last nearly as long as it has. (Dan learns from his mistakes; some of those, well-recounted in the book, were large and long-lived: Dan's ability to learn large lessons is at the heart of his own long-livedness.)

Dan's also one of the funniest people on earth. Presenting me with an award a few years back he remarked that, "Keith Ferrell is like a Marseilles whore: he comes in on time and his work's always clean." I laughed as hard as anybody -- and have taken the opportunity, more than once, to repay the favor. Dan can laugh hard at himself, too.

And he's nowhere near done with any of it. A mite too early to talk about that new project Dan's got in mind, but when the time's right I'll let you know -- if Dan hasn't gotten to you first.

And if you're in the Rocky Mount, Virginia area next Friday evening, August 8, stop by Edible Vibe ( a terrific restaurant/coffee shop in downtown Rocky Mount) come here Dan read -- he does that well, too -- as part of our 4th Annual Franklin County Library Book Festival. There willl be half a dozen writers sharing their work. You'll know which one's Dan because he's the one I'll be making the most fun of. The balloon goes up at at 6:30.

It's been my pleasure and, no exaggeration, my privilege to write a number of pieces for Dan over the past four years.

I was pretty well full-formed as a writer by the time I met Dan, but I still learned a few things from him, not least of them what a fine, fine man Dan Smith is.

I'm glad I know him.

Overview Institute Unveiled

A long day in DC yesterday, making the formal public announcement of The Overview Institute, an organization aimed exploring the ramifications, implications, and the possibilities for changes in perceptual and consciousness that arise (as it were) from our ability to rise from our planet.

The Institute is named, and its concerns and avenues of inquiry and speculation flow from, the exemplary work of Frank White, whose The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution marked, upon its publication in 1987, the first sustained and consistent attempt to examine how human perception is altered (and perhaps transformed) by off-Earth experience.

Frank's book was of (groundbreaking) necessity anecdotal -- reminiscences, accounts, insights from individuals who'd been to space, all of them at the time astronauts or cosmonauts. To those anecdotes Frank brought and brings his sharp analytical intelligence and clear, focused thinking.

An indispensable book, and one that has refused to release its hold upon the imaginations and scientific curiosity of those who've read it.

Twenty-one years later and the handful of people who's been off-planet in 1987 has now swelled to more than 500, a number that will itself grow dramatically as various private-enterprise human space transport enterprises come on-line over the next few years.

At yesterday's event we unveiled our Institute's Declaration of Vision and Principles as well the other members of the Institute's Core Overview Group.

Most importantly, we called for others to sign our declaration, and join us in exploring the issues, opportunities, and areas of scientific, cultural, artistic, spiritual, philosophical inquiry raised by the Effect's effects.

As Frank pointed out in his eloquent remarks, the Overview Institute doesn't have an ideology or agenda -- the implication of his work and findings is that 500, or 500,000, or 500,000,00 people experiencing the effect in orbit might well manifest 500,000,000 different personal responses to and manifestations of the experience.

What we're hoping to apply quantitative scientific methodology to is whether or not the Effect itself exerts measurable neurophysiological/cognitive effects on the brain.

But we're also quite deliberately seeking to engage the vision of artists from all media, cultural and thought leaders, activists, and above all interested individuals of whatever stripe and profession in exploring the question of just what space means -- and can mean -- to and for us here on Earth.

In my remarks I noted that it's now close to forty years since Norman Mailer launched his magnificent (if magnificently underrated) Of A Fire On The Moon with the words:

"Are we poised for a philosophical launch?"

As I said yesterday, and believe, "Now we are."

Take a look at our Declaration and, if it appeals, sign up for The Overview Institute (it's free.)

And tell others about it.