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Pineda’s ‘gathering’ chapters are all about the epic destruction of Katrina. I come away from this reading feeling some sense of relief that many people are decent human beings who will help others in times of need, including Pineda herself. Pineda talks a lot about the strong sense of community in New Orleans before the hurricane and that during the hurricane the effected people were repeatedly “helping one another, sharing what they had.”  But the sense of relief at the humanity between individual people, gave way very quickly to disgust at the negligence of the organizations meant to help. Starting with the callous government officials who actually seem to have viewed Katrina as an opportunity to ‘clean up’ the “public housing” of New Orleans in favor of “urban renewal.” Rep. Richard Baker actually said as much, adding, “We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Apparently, they blew up the levees intentionally to sacrifice the poorer parts of town, in order to save the richer areas and tour

In the remainder of the “Emptying” segment of Three Tides, Chapter 2: Hip, Hip, But Not Hurrah, Chapter 3: Love and War, and Chapter 4: Summing Up; Pineda covers her battle with her HMO to receive treatment for her mystery ailment, the course of a new relationship against the backdrop of the upcoming war in Iraq, and a brief summation of her general feelings about the state of the world. Every time I read Pineda I am always struck by the poetic beauty of her word choices. She can write these amazingly constructed, evocative, insightful, impactful sentences which seem to want to stick with me forever, and I hope they do.   When she describes a glacial melt during an Alaskan cruise she says, “they yield up the air they may have held for hundreds of millennia.” And when she speaks of the return of romance in her life she describes love as, “momentary consolation for the enduring pain of living.” And even in describing people milling about while talking on their cellphones her sentences ha

In my creative writing class we read a selection from House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid. In Chapter 9 “ Mr. Chaya Appears”, we are treated to a vivid rendering of a time and place that doesn’t exist the same way anymore. Shadid says of it, “in the time of the Levant there was freedom to savor the worlds of others” and that it was “a realm where imagination, artistry, and craftsmanship were not only appreciated but given free reign.” The story told in the selection is a quest to locate antique floor tiles which are routinely being stripped from houses that are being demolished. The author goes through a long process of hunting down and haggling over the original tiles, including some more ‘back alley’ routes. Eventually though he must resort to buying some handmade reproductions to stretch his supply. I found the mixing of the original richly patterned antiques with the plainer reproductions to be a very smart and practical decision, b

I find it difficult to sum up the first chapter of Three Tides ; Limping Through Europe. I think, to be honest, it’s mostly because of the jumping around through places and times. By the end of the chapter, the jumping makes some sense. You can see more clearly at that point the threads that run through, mentally, and tie the tales together. But during the read, I think it can seem confusing – though it didn’t help that I had a headache while trying to read the first half of the chapter. Pineda tells about a trip through Europe, planned to attend a couple conferences, with the intervening weeks needing to be filled. Pineda fills those weeks by visiting old friends and seeing sites, most of which are places she has seen before and have meaning for her. More than once she notes that she has a feeling this might be the last time she gets to visit a certain beloved locale. But there is also, interspersed, tales from her childhood, about previous times she had been in one of the locations

In my creative writing class we are also reading selections from various other publications. This week our selection was Chapter 1 from Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat. In the chapter, she talks about certain parts of her Haitian background. She describes disturbing political incidents which occurred during the dictatorship of Papa Doc Duvalier, particularly the executions of Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin. She explains the significance of the event for her by saying, "All artists, writers among them, have several stories - one might call them creation myths - that haunt and obsess them. This is one of mine." She discusses, in depth, the chilling effect such times had on art, artists, and the sharing of stories. She describes a sort of cultural oppression that went hand in hand with the physical political tyranny of the regime. On oppression which vilified such accepted classics as Camus and Sophocles. She talks about how plays would be pu

In the Creative Writing class I'm taking at the moment We've just started reading Three Tides: Writing at the Edge of Being by Cecile Pineda . I decided I'd review it, serially, as we read it. This week, we read the Introduction and Forward only. So far, Pineda has described her writing process as encompassing 3 basic parts: Emptying, Gathering, and Making Something. She apparently intends to expound on these concepts in the ensuing sections, mostly, or partly, through memoir, I believe. Certain phrases stood out enough for me to highlight them, mostly because I loved them.  Phrases like, "No one can teach anyone how to write. Someone can teach you how to spell ..." "Writing takes forgiveness ... At first, it just needs to be allowed to do what it's doing ..." and "The how of what artists do is never easily explained. Even artists themselves find the alchemy of their art inexplicable." stand out as some of my favorites.

In a bid to get some eyes on my new book, Freaky Shitty Things, and Men I decided to try a few of the paid promotional sites I've encountered online. I chose these three on the basis of liking the services they offered and the prices they were asking. Seeing as how I am just dipping my toe in with paying for promotional services I didn't want to spend an arm and a leg. Digital Book Today | Promote My New Free Book program - I'll be having a free weekend soon on Amazon. So, this seemed like a good thing to try to get some attention during that time frame. They have an option for promoting your book if it's a certain length and has a certain number of reviews on Amazon, but I didn't meet either requirement, so I did THIS VERSION . Cost: $15 - I will let you know how it goes after the promo is over. Books & the Bear | Social Media Promotion - It's a basic social media blast, designed and implemented by them, and sent to their audience of 210,000+ . Average