It was nice that we left the aerie of The Domain for a lunch down in Tennessee proper. Being up there is being in a Xanadu as it disappears in the clouds. I could never see it from below and in all directions it is separated from the rest of the state some mountain road.

For me, however, it renewed the interest in driving back ignoring the interstates. I had hoped to do as much but didn’t dare think about it or plan it for fear of it not happening due to my hyperactive caffeinated state kicking in and for some reason having to make time heading back.

Eating in Cowan and seeing a part of the state that was so different from the Domain that I wasn’t even sure that it existed, had me wanting to go further.

I did finally place Sewanee when I saw the memorial cross on the return trip..

So after an evening at the concert with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and getting my free tea from Stirling’s. I packed said good bye to the P.M. – heard champagne corks popping - as I said that I would be off at first light.

First light brought the coldest day so far, frost on the machine, this car had been everywhere now, which I had to chip away. Then a back way through town, stopped at Shenanigan’s as I saw a nice formal arrangement then down the mountain stopping along the way in the hopes that I could look back at Sewanee – nope – and down into the rest of the state – no problem.

I had not to rush, I had plenty of time, but soon became overwhelmed with things that I wanted to photograph knowing that if I stopped everyplace, the trip would take a month.

At the same time it seemed that all the towns were running together, I could not get up to any speed and was getting impatient. Thanks to the interstate I was alone more or less on the road but seeing the distance I had to travel, felt that I should choose my stops wisely and make notes for some future time when I could return and make more snaps.

I had wanted to do this with US 12 to Minneapolis knowing that I would rather go through towns than bypass them and interstates are made to bypass everything. This could be like spring training US 41.

US 41 as it goes through Peasants Pissoir meaning I could stay on the road and be not six miles from the house.

This was the reason that I packed Joãozão even in its extreme delicate state. I wanted rectangles I wanted building that would be centred nicely in the frame, I wanted them to refer to older photographs of trips.

A great cinema in Winchester, the downtown looked interesting also but thought about making it home.

Stopped a few places before Nashville. Since I haven’t seen the snaps, the places are a blur. Normally when I stop I pull out the map and make an annotation marking where I stopped and what I saw. This time I raced out without the maps needed – the one in the machine for New Brunswick didn’t seem to help at all – and there was a paucity of free maps along the way in the welcome centres entering the states. On the back roads they don’t make such a fuss crossing over. Wanted to stop in Nashville but it was too big it seemed though like a big northern city – bought my New York Times Atlanta edition at a Starbucks just outside of town – surrounded by the South.

Was more interested in the strips along 41 than I was in the town itself. Made a diversion to see where the Nashville Sounds play – pretty dilapidated for a class AAA ball park. Was taken by the flea markets, the local businesses that were along the road but the trip really didn’t start until Kentucky.

In Guthrie I stopped to make a few snaps of the Kentucky/Tennessee border, then kept stopping. A drive in, a pink elephant – one of many, playing tag with the railway, lone outbuildings. It was here that Joãozão caught the cold and started acting up. It was noon and about -28C.

Ah then I remember the time on the ice of Geneva Lake when the shutter wouldn’t open.
Ubaldo is pressed into service but then in a moment of lucidity think of warming Joãozão and seeing if that will help.

So between outings away from the machine, I would place the camera on the dashboard in plain sun warming it until it was needed. When needed I would race from the machine camera under my sweatshirt until I was near where I wanted to make a snap, and then hurry. Joãozão would allow four snaps maximum before wanting to be back in the warmth.

I realised in Kentuky that I had slowed down one time circling the block to photograph the Paradise Cinema. The only people I ran into were those piling out of church and driving away. Trenton, Pembroke, Hopkinsville, Madisonville.

“Trapped on the wrong side of a long train while photographing a ball park in Sebree.

My fear of going too slowly was modified as I realised that this being winter it wasn’t that the pace would keep up until Chicago but I would run out of daylight. That freed me some bit as I modified the route to staying on 41 until dark then heading back via the Interstate.

Tennessee’s talk Stopped in a town with a great ball park complex just in time to be cut off from the road by a lengthy coal train, Joãozão under the sweatshirt while I was making dashes hither and yon.

NPR kept me company into Indiana.

Progress hit Indiana in a bad way. I was alone on the roads in Kentucky – I realised that there was a four carriageway bypass – a parkway - that most motorists were using leaving the US routes to us northern gawkers. Crossing the Ohio was impressive again this time I could see it. Evansville looked a right pit but with promise photographically but US41 from then on was an interstate wannabee fast not really bypassing anything but everything on both sides cleared far enough away that it might as well be.

NPR lost out to Jesus Stations and I turned into the football playoffs.

The last image of the day was a giant illuminated JESUS SAVES cross outside Terre Haute.

Being a man I forgot to pack a map since the Pilot gas bar had none I made the mistake in thinking that heading into Illinois for I-57 would be faster in the dark – in truth I should have stayed on 41.

The mistake added 30 miles to the return trip, 25¢ a gallon to the price of fuel and a slower maximum speed.

I did forget out flat Illinois is around Champaign-Urbana. There were always lights on the horizon and no modulation in the land at all. Chicago was more pleasant coming in this way than via Indiana but it was still Chicago.

The Packers Giants game ran out just as the state did.

I was supposed to leave on Saturday, this would have given me time to wander back north along US 41 but asked the Deep of the deep south if I could stay another night in the studio.

Reluctantly he took the valises back inside.

I needed to wander a bit and photograph and needed to do so without having to be someplace. I was finally calming down and while my work was wanting some sort of book of wander to come from the time here.

I realised that being in a place where there is work all over that I didn’t want to look like a non producing slug. Up north it is easy to seem to be productive – an image a year will do it if your vocal chords are up to snuff. I also know that every morning I would head out and photograph objects along the property but that felt more like an exercise. I needed time for a walk and a think.

It would be a wander out a road that I hadn’t been on making large circles back to the house to see when deep and the nance would awaken.

Took Ubirajara and a lightmeter as I wanted to lose objects in a shallow space rather than have the deep space that I usually work with. I also thought that in homage to Sewanee aesthetics, if a book of wander did come from the time here it would be a mélange of styles.

Was up at seven, thought that they were up also as the dog had been let out. He was awaiting me at the invisible fence jumping and turning 360 degrees in the air many times as I headed toward the boundary. He would also be my assistant when trying to photograph on the property – cleaning the lens with his tongue, adjusting the objects that I was photographing.

Again a nice winter day overcast bright, warm – even though people down there were worrying about frostbite – no deep shadows and dark enough exposure wise to leave the lens wide open.

Wasn’t thinking too much about what I was photographing, I was lookinig for things that I could isolate, and trying to balance objects that reek of farm life and southern loss but wanted rural southern iconography. I seem to remember a lot of toppled bird houses. The allotments, the rears of horses, the prepubescent scarecrow, and time at the Sewanee Tigers ballpark where the formal came into play.

Tried to remember things from the time here in 1998 when I walked to Lake Cheston and again found myself there.

Made the first circle and was heading back to the house when I saw a potential snap. Reached in my back pocket to get the lightmeter and…

Checked my bag it wasn’t there, checked again. Emptied my bag to make sure. It had fallen out someplace along the way and now I would have to retrace my steps.

Instead I did the circle again much to the chagrin of the dog who thought I was coming back, and found it near the beginning of the walk on the shore of Lake Cheston in some leaves about a foot from the lake.

This deserved a trip to Stirling’s for a coffee and bagel – finding a student who seems to be constantly working ( what is wrong with these people!!!!) . A chat before heading back to see what was planned for the day.

A medley of talks…

In two movements.

It seems that it was Sewanee’s gallery afternoon as while I was opening in the Nabit Gallery, there was also an opening in the more prestigious – but oh so dark and and dreary – University Gallery. I knew it was more prestigious as they had hot dishes – butternut squash dip, mini quiche - to nosh on while looking at the work while over in the Nabit there were chips, and Oreos.

We both where to give a talk about our work and once again I realise that my fate is doomed to places like the WGAS.

I went first as my opening was first. I didn’t stick to what I was going to say as I forgot it and didn’t really know who was coming to the talk. I also found it strange to go into ao darkened room to show slides when the actual work was on the walls.

I was also clueless as to why I had done what I did – not true simply couldn’t put my reasoning into any rational order.

Started with the usual, that I am not an artist for the word art and all it derivations are about as useful as the word “the” it says nothing it is used mainly by those who are too insecure to actually think about what they are doing.

I also pointed to the sign made saying that these were photographic works. They are photographs not photographic works and harangued the sign maker. Again stated that if one has to go just this side of noun verbs to justify things don’t bother.

Then stated that I liked the medium because it was so weak, how shockingly bad it was to convey anything but what was exactly in the photograph, that it like language needed a bunch of them strung together to get any sort of idea from them and even then it is usually wrong.

Went to the large image and used someone’s comment earlier on how bleak the places looked where to me they were rife with life. Also mentioned on how one student seeing the wall o’snaps only saw the ones dealing with sex.

People immediately gravitated to that wall.

I then open the floor up to questions and when there weren’t any I started answering the ones that were brought up the night before in Shenanigan’s – ah if any school wants to engender debate have a bar either on campus or close by.

Then the questions started – the size the randomness what was the difference between the triptychs and the more loosely linked snaps. I mentioned that this arrangement was valid for what I was thinking when I put it up but if I had to do it again other arrangements would most probably happen.

Iconography questioned, specifics shown. Abuse hurled. Polite clapping. Wine poured. Oreos downed – they go well with white wine - and we headed to the second movement.

These images were digital works, there was a screen and a laptop blocking some of the works on the wall in preparation for the talk. The work looked like someone had vomited Photoshop using 80’s iconography – but wanting it to be art made them on ripped canvas.

The lights lowered. She got up, thanked more people than there are credits on a Hollywood movie, and started the talk with endless anecdotes about her life, constantly referring to her hubbie in the front row. She then proceeded to show us all the images that were in the show – case me had missed them on the wall.

The key words were thrown in – iconography, meaning, - but never show in specifics. We got to know the names of all her pets and that they keep lizards I the house in winter. The talk orbited the work at about the same distance Pluto orbits the Sun.

The highlight came after a lab like hinting at her knowledge of things digital but showing us how she put together an image, layers and all, her thought process and what the image meant which when finished took up about one tenth of the actual piece.

Students seemed unimpressed.

In the end relieved as a decade ago this type of talk would have been given by a photographer – cameras would have been brought up, film debated, zone system hinted at ignoring what the images were about completely. It was nice to see that this had moved on to things digital.

I was thinking of what is a real winter day as I was wandering about Sewanee. I restarted my True North habits of getting up and out to make some snaps before getting down to work that was hanging the show.

While most people there drove, how else to show off the Range Rover, I was offered a lift, the Domain is small enough to walk everywhere, and I did so. Nothing is more than 30 minutes away walking, the roads are crooked enough to make it interesting.

The first morning walk was through the mauze, for a coffee at Stirling’s before heading to the gallery. The damp but warm – 5C – the mist heightened the surrealist of the area – community gardens with brightly coloured, electrified fences, chairs left out on porches and fields, a stone gazebo with a prepubescent naked life size doll that is supposedly a scarecrow. Thoughts went to the Rock except – no one was walking. There was no one to greet. Even the dogs that last time I was here would accompany me everywhere weren’t interested in a stroll.

The following morning’s walk was a bit colder but the sky was crisply blue. Deep shadows, I wandered by the Eastern Star Cemetery – bypassed all cemeteries as I deemed them too Southern, too gothic - on my way to downtown Sewanee.

The cameras of choice were Joãozão and the Diana. One would have thought that after the fiasco with aging cameras that I would have chosen more reliable ones but I wanted a rectangle if I got up the nerve and could slow down enough to take US 41 back. Proving that I never learn I also brought Ubirajara which caused all the trouble with the fogged film over the summer, hoping that I had fixed the light leak.

The walk downtown was for things passed rather than anything formal. Was more cautious than on the Rock, didn’t enter anyone’s property although I wanted to photograph the way that people use clothes lines – quite a few people had them on their front porches over the door. One property had over a dozen bird feeders.

These strolls were needed, I could see myself trapped in a gallery hanging a show – which was I was all afternoons worse my watch stopped and thought that it was earlier than it was wondering why all these students were hanging about when I was to meet them in a couple of hours. Winter days like these when I can be out without worrying about frostbite and windchill cannot be missed – although this being the South, the campus police were warning people about the impending snow – 2cm – and the possibility of icy conditions.

True North habits continued with tea and reading late into the night.

I try to help but at times it seems hopeless.

The Deep of the Domain is taking us out to lunch down in Cowen when, after parking the motor he races out, pulls out a camera, a camera in public and makes some photographs… in the street… and he makes more than one.

Thinking that I shall have plenty of time to explain to him over the meal, that if he wants to even come close to the standards of the WGAS that all lesser mortals aspire to, there are certain things that simply aren’t done and, if seen, will forever condemn one to a life surrounded by people who make things rather than talk about making things. There will be no chance whatsoever of calling those who talk about the concept of making things one’s peers.

When he then proceeds to photograph people, unknown people, and then talks to them, I realise there is more work here than I had anticipated.

You can only feel pity.

We are sitting in Shenanigans – The P.M. of the Domain, his students and me - discussing things photographic when I realise how backward this place is.

IT seems that in their intro to photography class they still use film – poor dears don’t they know what century this is? It is no wonder they have such a hard time trying to compete with those more advantaged students who not only get to use digital but are allowed to use any digital camera whatsoever. How can one possibly grasp photography not only using some outdated method of image making but being restricted to one camera that everyone is required to use.

They were speechless in awe when I announced that our Photo I was all digital even more so when they saw the new Photo I syllabus and found more to do with word than pictures. One asked what do we actually look at?

Poor things.

It seems that here in the deep south where people cannot afford the latest gigapixeled camera, the poor students are all required to use only a plastic camera in photo I. How sad, I thought as I heard the choice being justified by forcing the students to see and be aware not only of their surroundings but of light and their framing choices. I simply nodded my head as we all know now that any art making process has little to do with actually making anything but more on how one talks about the theoretical implications of the act if one actually made a photograph.

I felt sorry for the time these poor students were spending on trying to control the medium when if they are only read more and photographed less they would know that control is out of their hands and in that of dead and near dead nounverb using French philosophers – who probably only used a camera during their August holidays in Deauville.

And besides a well made photograph is so passé.

It gets worse. I found out that many of these students actually believe that the medium is useful for something beyond their own navel and have just returned from Haiti where with other non art students tried to come to understand the culture and society. What’s more they make photographs, write papers, and in following years go back and share this with those they met while down there. It seems that this is has been going on for quite a few years now.

Don’t they know that they should be going to “designer” tourism countries? We of the more enlightened send our students off to Vietnam, Cambodia and China so that they can condescendingly look at what is being made there and pretend it is of equal value of Western Art.

This trip has been quite an eye opener and cannot wait to get back North where people are less anal and in 15 weeks we have to cover more than one subject in our Intro to Photo so that our demanding students don’t get bored.

When there is no line to cross how do you know you are in the south? Out east I cross the Mason Dixon line and lo and behold, I am in great great great grandad’s land but travelling south from Peasants Pissoir I was sure when I had entered the land of myth, nostalgia and loss. I wouldn’t know exactly when the Civil War became the War of Northern Aggression.

The contemporary stereotypes hit before I was anywhere close. Entering Indiana which in my opinion is a limbo state – no one really wants it – I ran into “In god we trust” number plates. Of course god is from the states if he is not an actual Hoosier. Ah Christian jihadists… the NPR channels were overwhelmed by the god channels

Crossing the Ohio – quite impressive – into Kentucky could be the line and I would guess that as the attendant at the Speedway gasbar just outside of town was Missy but Louisville looked better and more modern than Milwaukee – even Indianapolis made Milwaukee look like reconstruction had left it behind. In Kentucky I could drive listening to NPR the entire state.

There was more of a problem with what time zone I was in. without knowing it I had entered the Eastern Time Zone someplace in Indiana - I am now sure that the state exists so that Ohio has someone to make fun of – and I only realised that when I saw a sign saying that I was entering the Central Time Zone.

The drive was great Indiana while painful went by quickly, Kentucky with its hills and architecture and interstates that curve was a driving pleasure. Nashville – would have put on some John Hiatt if the Saturn had anything more than a wireless – now I knew that I was south, proof of that was the NHL Team that all southern cities where ice is only found in drinks of any repute have. Gave up NPR for country music, the biggest traffic tail back since Chicago and Waffle Houses competing with Walmarts. Along the trip strained to see the usual – Louisville Slugger Field, The Tennessee Titans home and anticipated the climb to the domain stopping at a Stuckey’s on the way

a pile of yamamotos

The P.M. of The Domain is wanting that I give a talk after the reception. I thought of brining down a power point presentation of the work in a room adjacent to the show then realised that while that may be expected, it is pretty strange. Why look at reproductions when there are the real things in the next room. Taking countless classes to Edelman gallery and watching students race for the books ignoring the work on the wall, I know that people some how feel reassured but the levelling effect of slides wouldn’t work at all.

An advanced version of the talk so they can be prepared.

So I thought I would talk about my rationale for doing what I did in the spaces. Not knowing what to expect and being nervous I went to the generic white box as the space. I feel that shows should be as much an essay as the books etc. The show would be an anti JB>PC as there I was trying to make a large room intimate. Here I am not trying to show how intelligent I am by editing the work into a tight piece but showing how clueless I am. As I stated I was going to explode my books of wander and since there would be four walls they would be the four directions.

Then with my mind on The Rock and knowing that the Flat Earth Society has one of its four corners of the world someplace on Fogo Island, I thought that I would base the work in the corners of the gallery bunching them there then having them filter out to almost nothing in the middle of the wall. The work now wouldn’t be based as much on where it was made but how it fit with other work.

I wanted a lot of work and mixed in size and type. I wanted the wall to look like how people keep my mailings – a pile if a pile could defy gravity.

Then I saw the floor plans. The gallery seems to be a T shape there really didn’t seem to be corners but instead six wall spaces. I also became a bit nervous about pulling this off as there was a lack of time and what I seemed to be planning may take more time to hang that there was allotted. With what I initially wanted to do I really couldn’t layout the work until I was in the space – I have a hard time visualising spaces and tend to see them as bigger than they are but in this case I feared the opposite. I thought that not only should I make a lot of images but also a few different sizes for these images.

This clearly was impossible for I had no reason for changing the sizes, outside of whimsy, but I did fear that the size I would choose would be either too large or small. I wanted an intimacy with the work and wanted viewers to get close but I didn’t want the images to be lost. I also realise that no one would know any of this. As on

Seeing the shape and the walls I backtracked. To calm myself I broke the space down into four walls – two of the four had doors in the middle of them. I thought that the show would be this trip from confusion to clarification – or what seems confused to what a more simple space. The initial gallery room would be the mini prints the gallery that one goes into afterwards would have murals on both walls, one would be ikons – wonder if one will ask of what – the one across from it a wall of blockage, chose 11 prints sent them off to the service bureau and I could breathe a big easier – but remembering that I had said that I would never make big prints again…

Backtracked again as I also found that the main gallery was the one that had the high ceilings and thus the one that had the murals so the idea of a path to enlightenment would have to be a backwards

I think that it was a mixing of laziness and fear that had me turning to the triptychs for the other extremely long wall. Most come from so far so good but I added other that could be used for the show in St. John’s this summer. I found that I cannot force the triptychs their arrangement arrives the way these entries do – in a flash and if I am not close to anything to write them down, they’ll feel stiff. I made too many and am not sure that this point how they will be arranged as I don’t want a straight line. I also want to hint at the fixed relationship versus the moveable one I know that some will be polyptychs but by having some abut the others. I also want to hint at the fact that this is the arrangement now but come back in 15 minutes and it all could change as what is important in the image changes. Made too many so that again I can edit when I am hanging.



Just fingered some Masao Yamamoto snaps am terribly jealous. They are here beside me as I write this… fully pocketable…who would know…maldito!!!


For the last two walls I went to make slews of plastic camera prints, I wanted more than that and in truth started with 35mm as I didn’t want any regularity working though I realised that the best work for what I had in mind came from the plastics. The images are mostly 12x12 cm.

Printed in a stream of consciousness method, one image would lead to another – more or less the way that I pick slides for my classes. I hope that there are too many and also will place them on the wall with the same mindless association. What I don’t want is there to be a division from the passage to the other gallery.

Not wanting this segregation of black and white and colour realising that colour was making only a cursory appearance, I went to the snaps made with the digital in the hopes of having some incorporated into the walls of confusion.

To hedge my bet even more I brought 54 standard sized prints but now seeing the Yamamotos I shall sink or swim with the original idea afterall I don’t want to show how intelligent – read clever – I am. Ironically the work is based on his installations.

This could be a disaster but there are disasters and then there are disasters. If I come away learning something it will be great if I come away with a complete mess well…

So in asking how I like the new Dayanita Singh, “Amy” Bowbeens mentions that she has just purchased the Zoë Leonard book Analogue. Intrigued – and not going to have a girl buy a book that I know nothing about – head over to addall.com and buy it. In truth bought it as she mentioned that the work was like mine but not a good.

Head swelling, I await the package from a bookseller in Florida.

Opening the high tech packing, and leafing through the book, I like the images, I think Atget, I think Friedlander, I like that she mixes black and white and colour but I also don’t feel so bad about my lulu and blurb books as the printing of this isn’t all that much better - blacks on top of the other colours, whites leaving a bare page and the colours are quite brittle.

Since the comparison was made I look and realise what I do wrong and realise I am not anal enough. The approach that she has taken borders on the obsessive – let me say now that all that I am saying is not a dig on the artist as I don’t know how she works I have only seen the finished product. I am talking about editing and marketing.

On one hand I don’t take anything to it conclusion – in my case it would be say photographing every ball park that I come across – which I don’t and showing them in some as if it were a ball park catalogue. While I am interested in ball parks I am interested in them on what they are socially. I wouldn’t never – well not never but… - want to show them together but would incorporate them with work that deals with meeting places, places for rituals etc.

This is one of the problems with Clarke’s Beach, I want the people to be individuals and while I do try to photograph everyone who speaks to me it is more about the people I run into and why more than some strange urge to photograph everyone from Cape Spear to L’Anse aux Meadows and Channel Port-aux-Basques.

So I realise that I don’t follow through in a contemporary sense. And lo and behold reading the introduction, I am correct. I liked the fact that she uses film, that it is an old twin lens – but in reality this is all irrelevant. What I realise is that I don’t go far enough in the opposite direction either I am too engaged don’t distance myself at all and pass geekdom when I am curious about something.

In the introduction, the Bechers are mentioned, those ikons of detachment. All of a sudden I see some editor turning work that shows an engagement – to the point that she heads to Africa to continue the project – into a 21st century detachment as if engagement with what one does is somehow gauche. The passage made sure that a distance was maintained cooling off what I saw as an obsessive investigation – an overused art word that is rapidly becoming meaningless – which would have made earlier photographers – not artists who use photography – jealous weakened by placing it in a 21st century context.

Normally i don’t have a problem with preparing vegetarian meals I don’t make meat substituted versions of meat dishes - no facon, no mock roast, and of course no tofurky - don’t understand why carnivores think that herbivores want something that refers to meat. Remember a British Airways flight - when there were meals - poking my fork into a nut cutlet. The passenger beside me acting as my taster ventured in and assured me with ‘I don’t know what that is but it ain’t meat.’I prefer cuisine where meat is naturally lacking not where it has to be replaced.

Two times during the year, however, that isn’t the case - Yanksgiving and Christmas. In both cases I feel that those who are over for dinner would feel left out if there wasn’t some sort of vegetarian food coma after the big meal.

It never works. There was the year of the peanut butter soup - more like soupy peanut butter, the braised seitan bar-be-que that was preserved in the freezer for over a year. Didn’t bother to thaw it when it was finally consigned to the garbage bin.

This year was no exception. A deep mushroom pie made with mixed nuts and an whole wheat crust. It looked great. However, it has gone through many incarnations in an attempt to finish the left overs.

The initial crust could have been used as a foundation for any new construction in the area. Needless to say a lot was left. No one starved there was curried butternut squash soup and home made ciabatta but the coma wasn’t there.

Scraping out the interior and making a new crust - white this time and a short crust - only proved mushroom and nut filling resembled sawdust.

The third incarnation which included a sauce - wanted a mushroom in vegetable gravy but settled for a tomato sauce - made it edible.

The dish was finished to-day

Feeling inferior and wanting to better myself in the eyes of my peers, when a solicitation for The New Yorker with an educator’s discount came in the post, I jumped on it. Finally I would be conversant in what is happening in the world.

I thought that they would be perfect for the train ride into the WGAS. I would now be able to alternate among long pieces of writing - called books, GRANTA and The New Yorker I have now given up. Even though my subscription runs until sometime mid century, I simply cannot keep up. I have tried everything - took the dozen issues up with me to wander the Rock and came back with ten. I found out that it is not that I don’t have the time, I cannot seem to finish the articles.

Stopping to catch up on my Can Lit - well Newf Lit - I picked up Wayne Johnston’s The Custodian of Paradise. 500 pages and finished it in a week. I am an incredibly slow reader, I manage about 30 pages an hour but all I needed was my trips in and out of Chicago.

Thought that it had something to do with the piece concentrating on one theme. So I tried an issue of Granta, wanting to see if somewhat lengthy but separate pieces by different writers would show some signs of the New Yorker syndrome. Again I read it through - and I think that i remember what I read.

I took the magazine for the writers, I kept hearing about them - mainly on Fresh Air and other NPR Programming - what I have read I like and will help me with my social skills. I never miss, Pamuk, Gopnick, Schjeldahl, et al and the fiction. It is an effort, though. I keep checking to see how many pages are left is this reverse A.D.D?

It seems from most of the articles, that the writers are paid by the word. If it can be said in ten words use 50. I now know the role models for the Chicago Reader.

Having finished The Custodian of Paradise feel that it is time to try to attack the stack of New Yorkers but maybe I’ll pick up Crummey’s The Wreckage first.