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Welcome to 2009! This blog of a Mad Writer persists through rain, sleet, snow, hail, and sleety rain mixed with snow after a hail storm. No really, that’s weather in Oregon. Whether you’re shivering in a garage office like I am, or sliding into a seat down at the sunny Rose Bowl, welcome to 2009!
( The OSU Beavers had a shot at the Rose Bowl, but after two consecutive Civil War victories, the U of O Ducks finally beat us. )
Tags: fiction, holidays, reviewing, welcome, writing
Current Location: Garage Office
Current Mood:  artistic
Current Music: Michael Franti and Spearhead *Everyone Deserves Music* (2003)
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-Or- An Irish-Italian Ex-Catholic Visits a Muslim House of Worship By Brian Ranzoni I used to be Irish-Catholic, as the George Carlin routine goes, and for twelve years all I knew of worship was the cavernous house known as St Mary’s Catholic Church. An elder of faith in Linn County, St Mary’s stood—from a small chapel at the close of the 19th Century to a rather larger building by 1989—for much of the existence of the town. Albany had a reckoning with Catholics, or so I’m told. During the 1920’s the Ku Klux Klan managed to seize the imagination—perhaps just the political ambitions—of Oregon state lobbyists. Foreshadowing the behavior of a certain European country ten years later, the Klan-struck public shut down parochial schools and turned on our churches. In Albany, some of the most powerful families stood as St Mary’s parishioners, and they raised resistance too formidable for the anti-Catholics to succeed. ( Pray, do go on... )Tags: biography, religion
Current Location: Office
Current Mood:  busy
Current Music: Nine Inch Nails *Things Falling Apart* 2000
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In the dream, I’m walking along the barkdust running trail in the late afternoon. The summer sun spills across the forest: Oregon white oak, the dogwood, the thorn bushes, and the poison oak. Fuzzy green mountain peaks loom over the treetops. Gray and brown ridges run between the wooded slopes like pleats in a skirt. I’m in love with this valley. Jeremy and I follow the barkdust around the perimeter of the park itself, and suddenly find ourselves behind wooden bleachers. Some sort of concert is going on, and event staff runs plastic flags between steel stakes to cordon off the site. Workers set up their concession stands as security SUVs park along the highway. The cops watch over the ticket takers who watch the families as they trickle in. I check my pockets—yup, I have my ticket. I tell Jeremy to go on and stake us out a good spot. I’m heading back to the house to get us some food. There’ no need to pay when the event lets the neighborhood bring our own picnic, and my house is just down the street. And my eyes open from the dream to the real sunlight shining through my curtains. I woke in that house this morning, my back muscles stiff.
Tags: childhood, dreams, writing
Current Location: Office
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: John Coltrane, *The Ultimate Blue Train* 1997
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If it feels like you've dropped into the middle of a conversation, don't worry--you have. If on the other hand you feel something else, chalk it up to the limits of rhetorical writing, the troubled times we live in, or perhaps that phatty caffeine rush through your blood.
This blog is a mid-stream entry into my life. Long before I sipped my first cup of caffeine and cream, I grew up with the aroma of my father's coffee. I grew up under the clouds and rain of western Oregon. I grew up with Richard Scarry and the Bernstein Bears...
Surprise, surprise! I'm a writer. Been so before I could read, when I tried to copy the letters in my Little Golden Books. Let’s see… “The” is spelled Z-h-e… well that’s how it sounds! And it looks good too—especially in black permanent marker. Those Golden Books are Long Gone, but the black marker remains--on the freezer, beneath several coats of paint in my mother’s living room, hell I’ve got a Sharpie in reach right now. Ballpoints never really did it for me, even though I could appreciate the fine lines. My writing career wasn’t my only premature occupation. Look-out—I drew too! Especially in colored pencil, crayons, and fine-tipped felt pens. Crayola brands, naturally. All of these implements of creation currently nestle on a shelf on my desk, and I can reach them as surely as I can that black marker. But the pen—that shit-kicking ballpoint pen--that was for writing. I was born with a pen in my hand, so to speak, and I’ll die with a pen in my hand. Or at least a keyboard, maybe a palm pilot—I try not to put too much stock in rituals and literary devices in my own life. It’s tempting to bookend myself, to imagine lying on my deathbed surrounded by Beverly Cleary paperbacks, Mad magazines, and Stephen King hardcovers. But that’s just it folks—experiences happen. New information enters the catalog. Technology changes. Dreams suddenly look like they could become careers after all. Hence this blog. Tags: childhood, writing
Current Location: Office
Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Frank Zappa and MOI: *Freak Out* (1966)
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brianranzoni's journal
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