check out this note to writer carol emshwiller:

http://www.nightshadebooks.com/discus/messages/24/1441.html?1067027915

so hey listen, my story "the mystery of our baraboo lands" (a shaky first draft written on the road after wiscon two years ago) is now available for purchase on the wheatland press website. i'm pretty star-struck to be in the company of great writers like robert wexler, jack dann, jeffrey ford, nina kiriki hoffman, ray vukcevich, to name a few. i'm also VERY jazzed about the presence of new writer sally carteret in this TOC. "carlos manson lives" in polyphony #2 ran through me like two bourbons and a line of coke.

now. whip out your credit card and follow the link:

http://www.wheatlandpress.com/order.html

on a side note, the acknowledgement for P3 is very touching. heather shaw, celia marsh, and alan deniro are superb company indeed:

http://www.wheatlandpress.com/polyphony/foreword3.html

On Thursday October 23, The Today Show might be running a spot on genetically modified organisms in the food supply. NBC sent cameras to my store, The Wedge (www.wedge.coop), for some grocery footage. Tune in if you can, though I can't imagine that the issue will be covered in the depth it deserves. So keep your expectations low.

But hey! Pretty pictures of our award-winning produce section would be tres groovy, no?

The Environmental Working Group has issued a new "Dirty Dozen" list. For those of us in the organic food trade, this list, which was first compiled some 10 years ago, sharpens the argument for a chemical-free agricultural system. Check it out at www.ewg.org and see what you think.

Ten years ago, the EWG claimed that strawberries were the worst culprit because they had the "most pesticides" - without really describing what that meant. But this updated list is an even more jaundice-eyed exam, delineating which fresh foods are most likely to have multiple doses of pesticides. This is an important distinction since, sure, the USDA and FDA do in fact test all pesticides before approving them for human consumption. But these agencies don't test all the possible combinations of pesticides and what synergies might develop. That would take a lot of money and we don't raise taxes for such frivolity.

How important is it to study chemical synergy in pesticides? Ask the Department of Defense. The US military now suspects that Gulf War Syndrome might be traceable to the combination of whatever-it-was-that-sufferers-were-exposed-to-in-Iraq-12-years -ago with organichloride pesticides ingested by fruit-eating soldiers upon returning to the States. We are a thoroughly toxified nation. We have to have a better understanding of what synergies are developing right in front of us on our dinner plates.

The big difference in this Dirty Dozen list over the previous one is the discovery that so many items might carry both higher doses AND a greater variety of pesticides than strawberries (the previous dirtiest of the dozen). Nectarines had the highest chance of carrying two or more pesticides. Peaches carried the greatest array of pesticides overall, with 45 different pesticides found in the total samples tested. Interestingly, spinach, celery, and bell peppers beat out strawberries in all these categories, too. O, how the mighty have fallen.

But let me provide a counterpoint to this hysteria. As we currently understand it, the greatest danger posed by pesticides is to developing fetuses and children up to the age of seven, according to studies conducted at the Universities of Washington and Wisconsin last year. The heavy metals in pesticides are proven to fuck with synaptic growth and are probably responsible for autism, ADD, and other childhood mental disorders that have boomed in the last 25 years, right in stride with "advances" in pesticide use.

In other words, if you're old, go ahead and eat all the chemically-laced spinach you want. You're safe...

...until the next damning study.

Lew on Rocky, the mob connection at the record store where Lew got his first job:

[Lew starts to figure what's up at this store...]

Lew: What do you *do* here, Rocky?

Rocky: [thick Brooklyn accent - thicker than Lew's] What do I do? Well, I sorta grease the wheels ["greeze da wheelz"]. Something gets stuck? Me, I get it movin' again.

[Later, a young delivery guy doesn't show up with a load of stolen records from Philadelphia. Kid doesn't know what kind of record store this is. Pre-cell phone era.]

R: What the hell happened, kid? Why didn't you call me? I'm sitting here with shit on my shoes and you don't call me?

Kid: Rock, I got a flat. I got a flat, ok?

R: What? You got a flat in Argentina? They don't have phones in Phillie? Gonna be very *difficult* for you to drive with no thumbs, kid.

Kid: [laughs] Yeah, Rock? Well, I know karate. [Strikes a stupid Bruce Lee pose]. Karate. Ok?

R: Karate? You know karate? [Voice drops, looks at kid over the tops of his glasses] You think you can karate a bullet?

... that was pretty much the end of Lew's first job.

these stupid bastards...

"Discussing a U.S. Army battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia in 1993, [new deputy undersecretary of defense] Boykin told one audience, 'I knew my god was bigger than his.'"

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/10/16/rumsfeld.boykin.ap/index.html

i'm still culling through boxes and boxes of stuff after moving into the new house, trying to decide what stays in the study and what goes in my basement (!) or my attic (?!). inevitably, too many hours whisk by when i get snagged by a box of old letters and journals. there was a time when i really believed in journaling, so i have lots. for the record, it didn't do much for my writing, but it's great for getting the flavor of times past and friends who now live far away.

April, 1989 (Playing Pool at the Wagon Wheel in Madison)

Barth: You're going to miss this shot!
Carrie: There isn't a god BIG enough to make me miss this shot!

December 1988 (At the End of a Beautifully Written and Heartbreaking Note from My Roommate Melissa)

"PS. 1235 AM: Greg and Don called from a Milwaukee bar and told me to tell you that that they were drunk and making phone calls from the bathroom."

May, 1990 (Greg's epitaph for Don, on bar napkin)

HERE LIES DON. THANK GOD.

most of this just gets repackaged and mercifully put in the "get-it-out-of-here" pile. though, i'd like to have some of my dad's old articles from The News handy. his reporting on the military group "the posse comitatus" and sandinista nicaragua was top notch. and i want to figure out what to do with his unpublished novel about the trial of the 19th century, involving republican party founder sherman booth raping a young woman.

if we'd moved into an apartment all this stuff would just go in whatever meager storage was supplied to us. now that i have storage galore? decisons, decisions...

i'm not one to simplify ANY drug problem into black and white terms, but here's a limbaugh quote from '95 that's making the rounds:

"And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up."

since the uber-gasbag has already admitted to abusing prescriptions drugs, it must be hoosegow time, right?

oh. wait. he has a "problem." he needs our "understanding." because he's an "addict." hope all you ditto heads are squirming in your hummers now that such wishy-washy, liberal terms have entered your brainless War on Drugs rhetoric.

I really agonized over giving my kid vaccinations. The incidence of reactions to vaccines almost outnumbers incidence of the diseases themselves, and new vaccines are routinely "tested," then foisted on a guinea-pig populace (of children!), only to determine after tens of thousands of negative reactions that the vaccine sucked.

But after researching viruses and the CDC for my novel, I have a deep appreciation for the importance of immunization, and my usual paranoia about western medicine, in this case is instead a paranoia about infectious diseases. That, and reading about the whooping cough outbreaks in NY and OR, and that they're probably due to parents foregoing immunizations, well, I have to grudgingly admit that this is an arena where the medico-industrial complex excels.

No wild polio? That's a good thing, hippies.

Still, try telling that to the Animal Daddy in your gut of guts when you're holding your kid down and letting a nurse put a needle in him 4 times. His look was nothing short of shocked betrayal. Who's the prick? Me. That's who.

I'm built for guilt. This I know.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/10/08/siegfried.roy/index.html

from the sunday new york times review of books:

''The Fortress of Solitude'' is crowded beyond my powers of summary with lessons, insights, facts, dates, song titles and minor characters. ... The fictional (Barrett Rude, Abraham Ebdus) is squeezed in alongside the actual (Marvin Gaye, Stan Brakhage), and the naturalistic geography of a borough Lethem knows like the back of his hand is illuminated by a daub of magic realism, when Dylan and Mingus come into possession of a ring that gives them super powers.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE1D6103BF932A1575AC0A9659C8B63

think of the Island as a maoist model of a post-revolution state: rural, not industrial, as lenin predicted. the revolution has just gone down, and the populace is slowly being enlightened to the brutal fact that hard work is the real coin of the realm, not dollars or dividends. the goal of this revolution is survival for all, not the aggrandizement of a few. all the people must build huts. they must gather food or perish. an ocean separates the castaways from all things "american" and "modern," but these are still longed for: the ease of life where others do the hard work for them, for restaurants with menu items that don't have cocoanut or bananas in them.

the strata of society is simplistic, but succinct: you have the military (skipper), science and medicine (the professor), agriculture (mary ann), artists (ginger), and the hated capitalists (the howells) who are struggling with the new-found egalitarianism on the Island. their steamer trunks of money are either useless or highly valuable, depending on how close they might be to getting home.

all of them are comic versions of themselves because their roles have changed so dramatically and none of them are what they seem anymore. the professor must make do with more primitive means in this post-capitalist world (and his ingenuity is absurdly incredible and would get them off the Island a hundred times over, if it routinely weren't for gilligan - more on this below). the artist is a clownish version of herself with no hollywood mogul system or media to prop up her ego, and the military's power extends only as far as his blustering authority will go with gilligan.

meanwhile, gilligan is the maoist everyman. he is the dilligent worker who does whatever is asked of him, whether it's building a generator out of bamboo for the professor, or fanning mr howell for ten thousand dollars (inflation is exhorbitant on the post-revolutionary Island). he rarely complains and indeed approaches hard work with an exemplary, childlike glee. others see him as a dupe, especially TV viewers who are definitely "off the Island": they don't yet understand that gilligan's is true, human grace. eventually howell's money will run out, or he'll die, or, we hope, he'll realize that he has to work as hard as gilligan for the seven to survive on the Island.

moreover, gilligan is a hero of the shining maoist path, since, wittingly or unwittingly, he always drags the others back to the revolution. the professor's lofty scientific schemes to get them home are always undone. howell's ambitions are always exposed for their foolishness. gilligan is *always* responsible for bringing their little society back to the Island and the revolution's goals: survival for all. he is not a dupe. he is a zen hero.

the lesson here is simple: the wacky castaways' desires truly are wacky, since to "go back home" is a backwards, stunted motive in the maoist model. "going back" means returning to a world where mutual survival is an abstraction replaced by lust for riches, ego, vanity, and sloth.

gilligan has internalized what the other six don't yet understand. all that matters is the Island.

So we *finally* got everything into the new house this weekend. The moving company (and I use both of those words ironically) failed to get my gazillion-pound oak desk transported until Tuesday. I'll spare you the dorky anti-drama. What matters: The kitchen is coming together (thanks, Jen!), the heat is on with frost warnings galore, my bones are recovering from a brutal moving day, and the kid has a bouncy chair beneath south-facing windows.

Me, I haven't had south-facing windows since Arsenio was hot. Enjoy it while you can, boy.

Good news: I won a football pool this week! Fifty clams! That may not sound like much, but when you're living off the cash in your pocket after buying a house and the Amazing Lisa isn't working because she's home breastfeeding, well, it's a fortune. We've been eating a whole lot of free (read: overripe) fruit from the store where I work and making smoothies like crazy, so it was nice to convert that cash into a carbo-feast at Mercado Central. Pupusas revueltas from the Salvadoran restaurant there ROCK, and the owner fell in love with Isaiah ("Ai, que lindo!") so we'll be going there a lot now that we're in the neighborhood. And poor.

My story on the Lusty Lady in San Francisco finally appeared in The Co-op Business Journal, and it's funny how Jeannine, my editor, pitched it. She took out my lead attempting to legitimize the Lusty as a co-op business and showing that the co-op model works for any kind of economic endeavor. In place of that, she inserted, "Some might say, 'Only in California.'" Also, her kicker-headline reads "And now for something completely different…" I'm not mad or anything. It's funny to me, actually. The CBJ is mostly purchased by co-op farmers, so I just like the idea that they have to draw an equals sign between what they do and what the Lusty Lady does.

"We're both losing the shirts off our backs," my farming grandfather might have said after reading the article.

LEt's see. What else? I'm turning my attention back to the tarot book and realizing I need to do some research on dubious new age occult schools that take themselves way too seriously. Like this: http://www.eckankar.org/.