ByGD
Now that I have read something by each of the Iceland Writers Retreat featured authors, I am moving on to the Icelandic authors who are involved in the event. Not all of them are available at my library, but of the ones that are, the first to arrive at my local branch after I placed a slew of holds was The Pets by Bragi Ólafsson, translated by Janice Balfour and published in English by the literary translation press Open Letter.
I have to say, I’m not sure what to make of it. Read More
ByGD
photo gratisography.com
In the past few months, I’ve been paying attention to blog statistics. Sometimes I learn something useful. I’m not sure what you readers get from these posts, but my statistics say a lot of you read them, so I’ll keep it up. Read More
ByGD
A while back I wrote a post about the erroneous perception that heavy metal has to be grim and angry and depressing. Even a lot of heavy metal fans fall into this way of thinking despite the fact that they have a lot of fun listening to heavy metal. Last weekend, Tales of Hoffmann at Seattle Opera reminded me that opera shares a similar image problem. Heavy metal and opera are both technically challenging styles of music that can seem inaccessible to the uninitiated, but both are actually a lot of fun. In fact, they can be quite silly.
ByGD
I was stopped at a red light while driving my daughter to preschool. Next to me was one of those public wastelands, a strip of land between roads that served no purpose but to host weeds and give a municipal gardener one more thing to mow twice a year. It was covered in bright green spring grass. Too coarse to be a proper lawn grass, it still seemed too lush to be a native meadow grass. I wondered, ‘Is there such a thing as a weed lawn grass?’ and then wondered that I wondered. Two weeks ago, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the grass. I would have been too absorbed in the inner monologue dictating my schedule for the day, and how the red light might affect it. But after Iceland Writers Retreat, the grass not only caught my attention, it piqued my curiosity. I blame Susan Orlean. Read More
ByGD
Good fortune can be more challenging than hardship.
Sometimes I wish I didn’t live in such a fabulous city. On any given day, there is not only some kind of art event going on, but usually a painful choice between events. When I was a child I never wanted to go to bed because I was afraid to miss something. I haven’t gotten any better as an adult. At Iceland Writers Retreat I overdid it so much that I completely lost my voice and had to communicate by handwritten notes. And yet I found myself at Showbox SoDo on Monday night, only two days after covering the sixth anniversary of Seattle Living Room Shows for Three Imaginary Girls, and still medicated for a cold that I’ve had for roughly six weeks. But… Mastodon! And Gojira!