1.

“Tremont Exchange,” said Hazel. “Yes, sir. Tremont.” A pause. “Yes, sir.” And the k-junk of the jack.

She grabbed her coffee and took a sip. It was cold and stale, but she didn’t care. The bitter black of the bean was her friend. It would keep her going.

K-junk.

“Tremont Exchange,” she said. “Excuse me? No, this is Tremont. Yes, sir. I can patch you through.”

She was full of the doldrums today but on automatic so she’d make it through. Only three more hours and she could skedaddle to Mick’s for a glass of beer and a Special. Ham-steak today. Her favorite.

~ ~ ~

As my grandfather always said, “I’m not a fast blogger. I’m not a slow blogger. I’m just a half-fast blogger.” (Tee-hee.) Actually he didn’t use the word “blogger”, which wasn’t coined until after he died. And he didn’t actually say it out loud; it was on an old taproom sign hanging in his den, and the word in question was “bartender”. Same thing, really tho. So thinking of him, this month you get a tale that comes out of his era (or part of one, anyway), and in a traditional Loranger half-fast manner, I give you:

UPCOMING EVENTS  ::  I’ve got a few things coming up and they’re not all the same!  ::  First, on Saturday, August 9 I’ll be reading with fabulous poets Keith Gaboury, Kazue Watanabe, and Natasha Dennerstein at Live Worms Gallery in North Beach, San Francisco.  We’ll read from 8-9, followed by a classical duet then a jazz duet. Sounds 4×4 to me!  ::  Quickly following, I’m leading two writing workshops this month, each for all levels and all genres, despite the scary descriptions you’re about to read. The first, on Sunday, August 10, is ULTRA-GENERATIVE, three hours of focused and challenging language generation utilizing my patented, um, intimidation? The second is a week later on Sunday, August 17, and will focus on CONCENTRIC CRITIQUE, designed to elicit incisive and effective comments on your work. I’d tell you more but it’s patented (hahahaha). Write to me at info@PowerUnit17.com for more info or to register.  ::  On August 20-24, I’ll be in Mesa (Phoenix), Arizona for the Mesa International Film Festival. Force Drift, the film that I co-wrote with Graham Green a few years back and starring Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura in the Star Trek universe) and Andrew Walker (more recently of Lifetime and Hallmark notoriety), will be showing that Saturday, August 23, and Graham and I will be there. If you want to tag along, you’ll need to bring your own electolytes. Looking forward to experiencing temps over 110°, if briefly.  ::  And lastly, as a bit of foreshadowing (so welcome after all that sun), on Saturday, September 20 on the Autumn Equinox, I’ll be part of a large art and performance action taking place at San Francisco Civic Center Plaza. Keep eyes open for more about that. Art resistance, y’all! ::  As always, you can find deets on all this on the Events page right smack here.

~ ~ ~

2.

At the counter, Hazel pushed the neatly cut squares of pink meat around her plate listlessly. After such a long day of work her appetite usually came racing along, but today she couldn’t find it. Not even the raisin sauce was helping.

“How you doin’, Haze?” asked the proprietor on his way by. “Special okay tonight?”

“Oh, it’s good as ever, Mick,” she told him, concerned she might have offended him and putting on a smile. “I’m just a little in the dumps today.”

“Gosh, hope you ain’t comin’ down with something,” he said.

“Nah, it’s nothing, really. Nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”

“Well you lemme know if you need an aspirin,” he said, knocking twice on the counter for luck as he scooted away.

“Thanks,” she said, but thought, Nothing that an aspirin can fix, or a good night’s sleep for that matter. ‘Cause nothing is the problem. Nothing happening and going nowhere.

~ ~ ~

NEW PUBLICATION  ::  I’m so very glad to have my poem “My Glass of Water” selected for the latest and powerful Colossus Press anthology, Colossus: Current. As mundane as the title of the poem may sound, it’s one of my ecstatic odes and favorite poems, and takes you literally, figuratively, and molecularly down to what you are. If you pick up a copy, please let me known what you think!

This fairly recent press has produced four anthologies in the last several years with intense and seminal work addressing urgent social issues — Home, An Anthology of Lives In and Out of Place; Freedom, An Anthology of Voices across the Carceral Wasteland; Body, An Anthology on the Sovereignty of the Self; and now Current: The Ways and Workings of Water. What, water doesn’t seem like a social issue to you? Try not drinking it — ever. Even better, all proceeds from sales of the books go directly to targeted non-profits on the front lines of these issues. In case you’re curious, those non-profits are, respectively, Moms4Housing, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, Keep our Clinics, and Wholly H2O. In case you can’t think of another reason to pick up a copy of these books immediately.

Maybe you should take a sip yourself and see what you think.

NEW WEBSITE PAGE!  ::  Announcing a new addition to the family…I mean website! I’ve just put up a new page, visible in the top menu above, for Film. Since I’ve ended up at a couple of festivals for a film that I co-wrote, and having done so before and am working with my writing partner on a third, I figured I should put it out there. Who knew! And since I couldn’t fit a page called “Screenwriting” in the already crowded menu, I chose “Film” to make it easy and have included both the writing and a (very minimal) section of Appearances, outside of filmed readings and performances, of course. Check it out!!

~ ~ ~

3.

Hazel found her gloom rudely interrupted by an unpleasant voice from the booth behind her. It was a man’s voice, low-toned, which was how she usually liked them but this one had a grating rasp almost like steel wool, which made her shiver. Worse than that, somehow while talking he made snuffling sounds like that of a pig. Then there were the words.

“You…are…such…a…wretch! Do you know that?”

His voice picked up volume as he spoke, which was likely what pierced Hazel’s bubble.

Then a pleading woman’s voice: “Please don’t.”

“Wretch, wretch, wretch,” he continued regardless. “I can’t believe I married such a wretch. I ought to put you out of your misery.”

This was too much. Hazel cut off her hearing at that point – a skill she’d learned from lingering too long on the listening key after making a connection – just in time to catch half a whimper from the woman. She turned back to her meal, but rather than not hungry, now she was just steamed. She gathered up her coat, rummaged through her purse, left a whole dollar on the counter, and skittered out.

~ ~ ~

REFLECT  ::  July felt fraught but was really furtively full. Maybe because I didn’t get in a lot of actual creation time, which after the year of the podcast makes me a little anxious.  But I had some paid work, thank dog, and some interesting work at that. A few amusing naming jobs (they’re not always amusing, I can tell you that), a couple of manuscript consultations for poets, and an ongoing bit of developmental editing for a colleague in the UK who is crafting a book about new ideas for addressing sustainability, but actually explores reasons that the decades-long movement has not produced noteworthy results, that battles they have fought, and most interestingly ways in which we all might generate new ideas toward that planet-saving (or at least species-saving) end, rather than just prescribing some himself. It’s super engaging and takes you many unexpected and sometimes challenging places, so of course I’m loving it. Hoping he can get it put to print sometime next year, the sooner the better actually. Also been doing a lot of org for myself (how thrilling, I know), including getting more old reading and performance flyers scanned. I have so many of them from shows I’ve been involved in over the years, and have been occasionally scanning but I’ve only gotten to 1991 so far (starting in 1984, so yikes). They’re cool to look at though and you can do so yourself in an album I have on Facebook that you can see here. Led a couple of writing workshops which were a blast (more coming up), and have done some organizing for The People vs. Project 2025, a new org that is planning and supporting art and performance resistance actions around the country over the next few years. Speaking of resistance, I could not resist participating in Beast Aid, a weekend of literary events that were actually a fundraiser for Oakland’s own Beast Crawl. Had a fab time co-hosting a zoom read with Lynn Alexander for Collapse Press, then in-person-and-everything reading and presenting new Pledges of Allegiance and listening to work from the brand new LGBTQ+ imprint Cherry Pie Press, along with El Martillo Press and Black Freighter Press, among others. Sweet are the sounds of solidarity.

~ ~ ~

4.

For a few weeks she was stuck in her slump, stuck in her day-to-day, stuck in her nothing. It was both bearable and unbearable. The job helped, or it didn’t; in any case she was glad to slip inside it.

K-junk.  

“Tremont Exchange. Number please…. Just a moment.”

K-junk.  

“Tremont Exchage. Oh yes, Mr. Schmidt. I’ll put you through.”

K-junk.  

“Tremont Exchange….”

Then one afternoon a caller startled her, or really the caller’s voice.

“Tremont Exchange. Number please.”

“Get me Baldwin at 394,” was all the man said, but even with that, she could hear the low tone and the snuffling.

Her next words were tremulous. “Who may I say is calling?”

“Just tell him it’s The Dog.”

“One moment please.”

K-junk, and a ringing. “Hello?”  

“Call for Mr. Baldwin.”

“I’m Doctor Baldwin.” Clearly he corrected that a lot.

“Excuse me, Doctor. You’ve got a call from…uh…The Dog.”

“Patch him through, please.”

And she did. She connected them, but somehow she couldn’t quite lift her finger from the listening key, really a first for her. She felt driven to hold it down.

“Well, have you decided?” Baldwin barked, not at all doctorly.

“I want it done,” the low one snuffled.

“Say it.”

“My wife – I want her gone.”

And Hazel sat, all hairs on end amidst the clamor of the switchboard, breathless and alert.

~ ~ ~

Okay! So this marks the first Home Page post to official have a cliffhanger. Sure there’s been a couple of two-parters, but nothing so dramatic as this. It seemed appropriate since pretty much every day these days feels like one. Or maybe I just wrote the beginning of a story and decided to post it anyway. I guess you’ll just have to wait until next month to find out, when (maybe) the next part of this story – or maybe the rest – will be revealed, along with (maybe)  next steps in some IRL cliffhangers as well!

Sincerely as ever,
Richard

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