How’s that for a title? Yesterday was, in fact, my first time setting foot inside a gynecologist’s exam room. Suzy has surgery scheduled for Tuesday and the doc wanted to consult with both of us beforehand. Well, I don’t think he really gave a shit if I was there or not, but Suzy wanted me there, so there I was. This isn’t the first time Suzy’s had surgery on her woman parts, as we tend to refer to them here in the South, but hopefully it will be the last. She’s scheduled for a hysterectomy, which we’re having done to take care of some issues she’s had with uterine fibroids for several years. Apparently there’s a certain level of discomfort that folks experience when there are benign tumors the size of baseballs and golf balls growing on random internal organs. So that, along with our decision to not have kids, has led us to this point. And not without some discussion, and some fear to boot.
It took us a while to decide that we didn’t want kids, or maybe more to realize it. We’d both always thought we wanted kids when we were growing up, and even when we were married we thought we wanted kids. But over time our priorities shifted, and there was always something more important to work on, or plan for, or enjoy, and kids moved further and further into the rear-view. so now that option is going away, and it’s not without a little twinge on both our parts, but we know it’s the right decision for both of us. At this point I think we’re too old to start, even with the trend towards older parents that I’ve noticed over recent years. But Suzy’s a few years older than me, and the risks outweigh the potential at this point, and her health is paramount, so we’re moving ahead with it. And let’s face it – I’m a selfish bastard and enjoy living my life the way I want to live it, not the way some ankle-biter requires me to. And that’s not likely to change anytime in the near (or distant) future. But I will admit that it took a little while to adjust to the finality of the decision. It’s one thing when you make the decision yourself, it’s something else entirely when heath concerns take the decision away from you.
But the gene testing we did to see if she had the breast cancer gene mutation came back negative, so we’re looking at only removing the uterus, not the ovaries as well. So hopefully that will be able to be done via laproscopy, which would be much less invasive and have a significantly shorter recovery period. If they run into too much scar tissue from a myomectomy that was performed six years ago (remember the baseballs growing on internal organs? I was serious.) then they’ll have to do a full incision and that will make things more uncomfortable. We told the doc yesterday to take a look at the ovaries while he was in there, and as long as they looked normal, to leave them alone. He seemed to really want to remove them, but had no compelling arguments other than the fact that there isn’t great screening for ovarian cancer right now. I thought we should take the chance that Suzy won’t be the one woman in 80 that develops ovarian cancer, at least as long as it meant leaving as many factory-issued parts in place as possible. But I’m a non-surgery kinda guy, I don’t even like to go to the dentist, so my biases lean toward the least possible amount of cutting and removal.
The gene test coming back negative was a huge relief, because in addition to the ovary removal, he was recommending a preventative mastectomy if the test came back positive. Now on the bright side, what 40-year-old woman wouldn’t like to have a new set of boobs? But then we get back to my preference for original factory parts, and you see the conundrum. But the test says she’s no more likely to get breast cancer than anyone else, so that’s one for the win column.
But she’ll be laid up for a week or more, and unable to lift anything significant for several more, and that’s gonna seriously crimp my style. I’ve managed to avoid housework of any type for so long that Suzy has forgotten that I even know how to load a dishwasher, much less do anything more mentally taxing. This whole convalescence could screw up a good arrangement that we’ve had going. Because the last thing I want is for her to get back to full health and then still want me to do more around the house than sit on my fat ass hogging the remote. Yeah, I wanted to be Archie Bunker when I grew up, just without the racism. I pretty much got there, too. But seriously, I’ll be taking care of her while she’s recovering, and Bonnie (my sis) is coming up next weekend to stay with us and help out, so that’ll be good. I’ll be glad to have this in the rear-view, as it were, so we can get on to our Great Southeastern Tour 2010.
Yeah, that’s coming up faster than I expected. The Southeastern Theatre Conference is in Lexington, KY this year, and since Suzy has friends in Kentucky from childhood, she’s going with me. Then after the conference ends on Saturday afternoon, we’re going to take the next week to tour through the South taking pictures, seeing sights, seeing friends and generally hanging out. Our current plan is to be in Nashville Saturday night and Sunday (Spacefolks? Wanna see you!) then over to Memphis on Monday, tour Graceland and Sun Records and go to Tunica on Monday night. Tuesday we plan to drive south through Mississippi down to New Orleans and spend a couple days there. The nice folks at Harrah’s New Orleans would like for me to donate more to the local poker economy, so they’ve invited me to spend three nights at their lovely establishment. After that we’ll loop up through Alabama and Georgia and head home, hopefully getting home in time to do some laundry Sunday and get to work Monday, two weeks after we last saw our cat. This will be by far the longest road trip we’ve ever taken together, and it should be entertaining, to say the least. Adding vacation onto the end of a work trip is something I do a lot, but typically not this much. If our marriage can survive that much togetherness in a Nissan Versa, it’ll be a true testament to love. Or proof that I married a saint. One of those.
Not that you care, really, what I think about Haiti, but it’s my blog, and you get what I give you. I watched the benefit concert Friday night, and thought it was very well-executed, with some great performances and great arrangements of classic songs by contemporary artists. My niece Audrey was in town taking her ordination exams and she crashed with us Friday night, so we watched it together. We were both impressed by Christina Aguilera and her longevity, and the arrangement that Justin Timberlake performed of one of my all-time favorite songs, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, was good enough to make me ignore the fact that it was Justin Timberlake.
And then I bought the album off Amazon, and I’ve listened to it a couple times since then. It’s pretty solid, and I love the fact that less than 24 hours after the concert was aired, I had already downloaded it and was listening to it in my car. But I didn’t give anything to the Hope for Haiti charities, and I probably won’t.
I know, all of a sudden I’m Pat Robertson. That’s not it, really. I think it’s great that we’ve raised $58 million off that concert. And I think it’s great that the Red Cross raised $20 million via text messages. And I agree that it’s not enough. It’s going to take billions of dollars to rebuild (or in some cases build for the first time), and I don’t know where that money’s going to come from. I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to help out and give their cash to the charities that are providing disaster-specific relief, but in my conversations with Audrey I wanted to work on the infrastructure of the country, not just a band-aid. I know that the Red Cross needs money, and that there will be people on the ground with those organizations for months, but I wanted my money to go to something that would be left behind and be working for the greater good for a long time after Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta were back home safe.
By the way, both of those guys rose in my estimation through through their actions during this crisis. Sometimes you have to remember that you’re a human being first and a journalist second, and I applaud both of them for putting down the reporter’s shield of dissociation when lives were at stake.
So after some research, and looking over the financials of the organization, I decided to give money to Water Missions International. This is a Charleston-based non-profit that provides water filtration systems to developing nations, and you can well imagine that there’s very little clean water in Haiti now that what rudimentary facilities that existed there two weeks ago have been flattened. The folks at WMI have already provided eight water filtration systems into Haiti since the quake, and they’re working to get more. These filtration systems can provide the daily clean water needs for up to 200 people per hour of operation, and once the systems are set up, maintenance chemicals are cheap and readily available. As a non-profit, their financials are readily available, and the vast majority of money taken in goes to program expenses (i.e. doing the actual work of the charity) as opposed to overhead or fundraising expenses. So their money flow looks good to me, and having run a non-profit back in the dark ages, I know a little about what those things are supposed to look like.
So that’s where my money is going – to bring clean water to the Haitian people not just today, but for years to come. I urge you, if you have not already given to the charity of your choice, to join me in supporting the work done by Water Missions International. Yes, they are a Christian organization. Yes, they may very well be a little preachy. No, I have not suddenly gotten all Bible-thumpy. but I think if you have to get a little preaching to go with your shit-free water, it’s a reasonable trade-off.
Yeah, I know, I’m a big whore. Deal with it. Last night I went to see Our Lady of 121st Street at Carolina Actor’s Studio Theatre. I liked it. For more details, I’ll let you know when my review is posted at Charlotte Viewpoint, which is an online magazine that I’m doing a little writing for. So that’s a gig, albeit one that is in its infancy right now. And I’m still writing for the PokerStars blog every other week, which is about all I can handle with my day job given the hours that are required to cover major online tournaments.
But I also have a couple of other irons in the fire. I am trying, once again, to post new content to Lighting for Worship, another website that I own. That site with practically no activity gets about 40% as much traffic as I do here writing every day, which kinda goes to show how many people are interested in lighting design and technology for churches, and how few people are interested in redneck poets. But that’s no huge surprise. I have a plan to monetize that site later in the year, but I have to get it more consistent with content before I can make that happen. Currently it’s a good resource for information, but I need to keep it current and update some of the technology on there to make it really good. I think one post per week there will be enough, if I can squeeze it in.
And I’ve decided to start an online literary magazine, called Red Dirt Review. The focus will be on Southern literature, but I’m going to use a pretty loose definition of what is Southern. If you can find Greenville, SC on a map, then I’ll accept submissions from ya. If you’ve ever spent any time outside of an airport in any Southern state (and despite its status as a sovereign nation, we’ll count Texas, too), you’re Southern enough for me. If you’ve ever read anything by Tennessee Williams, Pat Controy or William Faulkner, good enough. I’m just looking for stuff that feels a little like you’d read it (or sing it, or say it) while sitting on a porch drinking moonshine. So if you want to submit, email me at reddirtreview@gmail.com. There’s gonna be a contest, too, hopefully the contest will bring in enough entrants to pay for the prizes and printing of the journal later in the year.
But in the meantime, I’m still available for hire as a freelance writer, either on poker or theatre, or about anything else I might have any experience in. So let a brother know if you need anything scribbled, I’m available.
So I got an iPhone a few months ago. Yes, I love it. No, I don’t have any problems with AT&T’s coverage. Yes, I had Verizon before. No, I had no problems with their coverage, either. Yes, I think the commercials are witty, and no, I don’t like Luke Wilson any better.
Now that we got that out of the way, the point of this is that the iPhone has a free app that mimics the Amazon Kindle. Now some folks have wondered to me about the size of the screen, but let’s face it, the words are the same size as a paperback book, you just have fewer on the screen at one time than on a page. No big deal. So I love the app, and have bought several books for the Kindle as a result. And it was during some of my shopping the other day that I thought “Am I actively devaluing the book by searching for passable free books for my phone?”
Because I have a limited budget, and a stack of books waist-high in my house that I haven’t read, I’m on a moratorium on book-buying. This doesn’t mean I haven’t bought any new books, it just means that I don’t buy nearly as many and have the good grace to feel bad about it when I do. So I finished the last book on my phone, and went looking for another. And I cruised the bestseller list and decided not to pay any real money for an e-book this week, then moved on to the free books. Now most of these books are like crack, one free sample in a series to get you hooked, which I think is a good marketing ploy, but some of the others are just books that people have written that are out there for free.
And some of these are free for a reason. Namely, they suck. I’m all for the idea of allowing the market to determine the relative worth of a product, and allowing consumers to even set pricing for things by their decisions to buy or not to buy something. But I wonder about the market for writing becoming so devalued by the presence of so much free content out there. Already I see freelancers talking about rate cuts, and there’s always another kid coming along willing to do the same work for 2/3 the money, and there’s always somebody willing to sacrifice a quality writer on the altar of the dollar, but I wonder if the same deal transfers.
So am I devaluing my own work by becoming a lowest common denominator consumer? Is this the same as a local store owner shopping at Wal-Mart and feeling guilty? Or am I just overthinking again? I do believe that as people try to survive in a challenging economy, we need to make choices on where our money goes. And we need to make conscious, personal decisions regarding our spending, and on what we value. So I’m pretty sure I’ve answered my own question, and justified buying more e-books instead of grabbing free ones, but what about the bigger picture?
On the smaller picture front, here’s another video from Returning the Favor.
Before I get into the real topic, here’s a question – am I insane for even considering publishing a literary journal? You know, the whole accept submissions, get subscribers, go to press kind of literary journal?
So more and more often I’m going to readings of things that people, myself included, have written. And more and more often I’m less than impressed with the way that writers present themselves when reading their work in public. I know, I know, it’s supposed to be a solitary pursuit full of staring out windows and empty whiskey bottles and perpetual gazing into navels, but folks, if you’re going to read your stuff in public, please take a little time to work on the craft of reading just like you worked on the craft of writing. It’s a set of skills – develop it! So I decided to put forth a few tips on how to improve your reading, based on my years in theatre and performance.
1) Stand up. Most untrained readers will benefit hugely just by standing up, or at least sitting upright on a stool. This opens the airways down to the lungs and diaphragm and allows you more access to air. More air = more volume with less strain. The chest is a big resonant cavity that serves as an amplifier to the voice, use it. Sitting, and especially sitting slouched over like a shy little mouse, compresses the esophagus and makes it harder to get to your Air Supply (and I don’t mean the “guilty pleasures” playlist on your iPod). So get off your ass, or at least, sit up straight like your mama told you.
2) If you don’t have much personality, don’t try to force it. You’ll know pretty quickly if you don’t have any personality, count how many time people look at their watch when they’re talking to you in a normal day. If the answer is EVER, then you’re probably boring. If you’re boring, don’t try to tell stories or jokes, just read your shit and get it over with! You might be the greatest writer since Shakespeare, but painful to converse with. Not necessarily your fault, but there’s no point in standing in front of a room full of people boring the crap out of them when they came to hear you read, rather than tell stories anyway. Now, if you’re a storyteller and still boring, then you’ve got bigger problems.
3) Pay attention to the guidelines of the show. If the producer/host tells you to keep it to five minutes, don’t read five pages of prose text. A page of prose takes several minutes to read, and even longer to read well, and that time is inflated by the size of the page, too. So don’t run long. If an audience is told to expect five minutes and you run fifteen, you’d better be brilliant. If they’re told to expect five minutes and you’re done in four, they feel like you’ve paid attention to the guidelines and have given their time some value.
4) Learn a little bit about technology. In some rooms there will be microphones. Sometimes, you’ll need them, sometimes you won’t. Either decide not to use them and move them aside, or learn enough to use them well. Standing in front of a room full of people fumbling with a mic just makes you look uncomfortable and stupid. It’s less high-tech than your TV remote, take a few minutes before the event begins to figure out height adjustments and how to tighten the mic on the stand. It will make you look like a pro, even if you’re not.
5) Practice. Really. I’m not kidding, practice. I have a very good friend who is an excellent actor, but can’t read in public worth a damn. He has a slight case of dyslexia, and even with text he’s very familiar with, this sometimes bites him in the ass. He has that excuse, and doesn’t read in public often, if ever. You don’t get that excuse, because you are choosing to read in public. So if you have a reading problem, memorize your text. If you stutter, get speech therapy. If James Earl Jones can get rid of his stutter and become who he became, so can you. And be familiar enough with your material to look up, meet someone’s eye in the crowd, and go back to the text without losing your place.
I don’t expect writers to turn into professional actors overnight, but these tips should help you present yourself better when you’re reading in public, and that should help you book more readings and sell more books.
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