Apart from the talent of the celebrity it is usually the dedication and perhaps the hurdles that he/she overcame in life that touch and light us.

Although it seems contemptible to be judgmental, there is one thing which was favorable for the celebrities, which is the presence of Lady Luck. There are understandably millions of people in the world who are equally capable and competent in their respective fields to whom fame and opportunities have always eluded because of some unfavorable circumstances. And in this world of proofs and references, we do not care for them.

My question: What is it that still inspires such people to go on?

Well, undoubtedly their passion for a given area and it is these who make the perfect package for inspiration. Instead of focusing on the already focused, if we look closely there is always someone around us who has it in him/her. Behold, there is one lurking around the corner.

Getting inspired,
Manjit

⁽¹⁾

The earth’s fossil record makes it clear that the earth has cycled back and forth between warmer epochs and colder throughout its history. At certain times the earth has been tropical to the poles.

There is no doubt that we are in a significant warming stage and that the human role in this is critical, by releasing to the atmosphere enormous amounts of carbon locked up by trees and plants eons ago into oil and coal. Not only the burning of fossil fuels, but the destruction of forests also disturbs the carbon balance, on the other side. Forests are carbon “sinks,” reabsorbing carbon from the atmosphere and locking it up again into wood and leaves, cellulose and lignin. The energy in wood is the sunlight of past summers, but the substance is carbon from the air.

Global warming means not only more marked heat waves and melting glaciers and ice caps, but also increased variation in the weather. There is more energy in the atmosphere and hydrosphere not only for high temperatures, but also for more air movement, more wind, more storms, and greater swings between warm and cold, as air masses replace each other quickly and vigorously.

But wind generation is not the solution, even in a gustier world.

The reason? Wind energy can only provide a tiny and insignificant fraction of the electric capacity or load demanded by our dense and energy-hungry population. Wind energy is a random dusting of sugar on the cake of the real energy producers, which are hydro, nuclear, and, currently, coal.

Why? Air has little mass, so it has little power, little energy in it, even when it is moving fast. Contrast wind to the power of moving water. Water has lots of mass – it’s heavy. You need mass to get momentum to get power and energy. Basic physics.

Why else? You can’t store air, pile it up behind a dam and let it flow through a turbine when energy is needed – unlike water. Wind power is the only form of generation that comes on-line when it wants to (when it blows), not when it is needed. Unlike small-scale wind generators, there’s no battery storage for big wind turbines, for power produced at times when power is not needed. Supply and demand have to be matched at all times.

Wind is a power grid operator’s nightmare, because of the way the wind comes up and dies down on a minute-to-minute basis. The power grids of North America, Europe, and elsewhere need steady, predictable power that can be geared up and down according to the known and predicted energy needs of homes, businesses, and industry.

We need to do a lot about global warming, but things that will help.

The federal and state governments in the US are pouring huge amounts of money into tax subsidies for wind energy development. Let us use tax payer money for projects that will help global warming, rather than just helping Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, General Electric, Florida Power and Light, and others to improve their bottom line.

First, conservation: of electricity, heating oil and gas, and fuel for transportation. I live in rural, cold, poor northern NY State. In whatever way people heat their houses here – fuel oil, bio fuel, natural gas, wood, wood pellets, or electricity– carbon is released (except for the electricity that comes from a power dam – but try separating those electrons from the fossil-fuel-generated ones). How sensible it would be to insulate all the fine, old 19th-century houses here, which people live in. There’s no money for it, though; it’s all going to wind developers and their financiers.

With regard to transportation: How about a subsidy to allow people to replace their gas-guzzling pick-ups and SUV’s with fuel-efficient cars? How about a hefty tax on those who don’t avail themselves of the subsidy? How about a good national and regional rail system, to get all those diesel belching tractor-trailers off the highways? And what would be saved carbon-wise for road construction, if all that freight ran on steel rails?

With regard to electricity, a similar subsidy-and-tax arrangement could encourage the use of efficient appliances, such as air conditioners and lights. And perhaps, one of these years, we’ll turn off the orange glow over our cities and towns.

With regard to carbon-free electric power generation, we are going to have to build new nuclear plants in the next several decades whether or not we first waste money and land on the wind energy fiasco. People don’t like the idea of nuclear – it seems to give them the willies. But nuclear plants have an excellent safety record in North America and Europe (not, however, the former Soviet Union, which we now know built reactors without containment). And they produce lots of electricity, steadily and on demand. People tend not to notice when they live right near them.

The cost of large scale wind energy development is the destruction and fragmentation of untold amounts of animal and human habitat – woods, wetlands, forests, fields, and air. The air of the bird flying, the bat hunting, the quiet air of rural homes. And after all that – still no impact on emissions. But a great tax shelter, and a great way for power companies to get “carbon credits” to start their coal-burning stinkers back up again.

If you thought a coalition of government, industry, Wall Street, environmentalists, and the rural poor was too good to be true — you were right. It’s the perfect storm, conjured up by Enron.

Originally published in http://ninapierpont.com. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

Part of that reconnection is with food. Although many of us quickly scarf down whatever's convenient as we rush about our daily lives, eating food is one of the most intimate experiences we can have. The food we eat is broken down by our bodies at a molecular level and absorbed into our cells. It becomes part of us. We quite literally are what we eat.

That's why it disturbs me to see the kind of food many people consume on a daily basis. I admit, I'm guilty of less-healthy choices myself sometimes. I try to be vigilant about food, but I travel a fair bit and it can be hard to find the time to slow down and eat right. People think that being on a TV show is glamorous, but after a long day of filming, my dinner might well consist of a veggie dog from the street vendor outside my hotel before turning in for the night.

When I get to the family cabin, food stops being a mere necessity to provide energy for another hour of shooting. It becomes something to celebrate. Summertime provides us with a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and our oceans can still serve up a veritable feast of shellfish and other seafood. As the Coastal First Nations' saying goes: "When the tide is out, the table is set."

Most Canadians - in fact, the vast majority of us - now live in urban centres where we are often completely removed from the sources of our food. Much of what we buy is pre-packaged, frozen, chopped-and-formed, or otherwise processed before we even pick it up from the nearest warehouse club store. Yet there's something truly special about digging up your own clams and mussels for dinner. Or catching a fish for breakfast. Or picking your own fruits and vegetables. Not only is the food fresh, the experience makes it taste better and feel more satisfying.

For the past 27 years, part of my family’s summer ritual is to go cherry picking because I wanted my children to celebrate food's seasonality. We stuff ourselves silly with the juicy red fruits and bring back pallets of cherries to share with friends. It’s actually pretty hard work. But that's part of the fun and the satisfaction. You can't buy that experience from a big-box store.

In fact, it drives me nuts to go into a supermarket in the summer and see it loaded with imported fruits and vegetables when local gardens and farms are overflowing with food. Farmer’s markets are where I prefer to get my produce in the summer, when local farmers and some industrious city gardeners make their harvests available directly to the rest of us.

There are plenty of reasons to support farmer's markets and local food, besides the experience. Eating locally grown food helps reduce the pollution caused through transportation. Apples from New Zealand, for example, are a pet peeve of mine. Many local farms often also have organic certification, which is less intensive and more sustainable in the long term - and organic produce is grown without using chemical pesticides.

Some proponents of organic food also say that it's better for you, although the research is inconclusive. One recently completed 10-year study to be published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that levels of certain cancer-fighting antioxidant chemicals were almost twice as high in organic tomatoes as they were in conventionally grown tomatoes.

Researchers surmise that the availability of nitrogen in the soil is the reason for the difference. But other studies on wheat and carrots have found little nutritional differences between conventional and organic crops.

Regardless of your reasons for eating locally, summer is a great time to slow down and reconnect with food. Few things are as fundamental to our personal health and well-being. And few things have a bigger impact on the health of the planet either.

Originally published on July 27, 2007

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

⁽⁰⁾

Or will we?

If new technologies don't account for human behaviors and needs, they may not succeed. Or worse, they may bring even more chaos in our already overloaded lives. Complete digital navigability can only happen if people are actually able to navigate the information spaces we create.

Peter Morville's latest book, Ambient Findability, is an eye-opener into the perils and potential of ubiquitous connectivity. The book's central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are all critical components of this new world order.

Morville invented the word "findability", which he defines as follows:

a. The quality of being locatable or navigable
b. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate
c. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation and retrieval

While the word "findability" may have a great deal of "buzzability" in English, its connotation certainly makes sense. For instance, it already exists in German: "Auffindbarkeit", which has essentially the same meaning. "Usability" is a neologism, so why not have the concept of "findability?" I'm all for it. But be warned: there are lots of other trendy catchphrases in this book.

Chapter 1 "Lost and Found" - The book begins with the big picture on findability. While focusing on finding information on the web in particular, Morville expands far beyond that. Indeed, findability is about locating anything we seek, not just information.

Morville also couches pro-findability arguments within a business context. He reminds us that "in a world where it's getting harder to reach consumers, shouldn't businesses make it easier for consumers to reach them? Yet, when it comes to findability, most business web sites have major problems." Right on. You can't buy something you can't find.

Keywords are a chief problem in today's information age. "In physical environments, size, shape, color, and location set objects apart. In the digital realm, we rely heavily on words. Words as labels. Words as links. Keywords."

Chapter 2 "A Brief History of Wayfinding" - This chapter is particularly educational. From African ants to navigating around a city, Morville exposes some of the fundamental strategies in wayfinding. Triangulation is a key concept here: "It's the sophisticated combination of strategies that allows for error correction and ultimate wayfinding success."

I find this notion particularly revealing, but does it apply to navigating information spaces? Probably so, I believe. Through genre, shape, metaphor and visualization, we give information multiple navigation dimensions.

Chapter 3 "Information Interaction" - Morville covers two important principles in information science: 1.) Moore's law - technology accelerates exponentially and we will be increasingly overwhelmed with information, and 2.) Mooer's law: people will not use an information system if it is more painful and troublesome to have the information than not to have it. Therefore, "we cannot assume people will want our information, even if we know they need our information."

Language is messy. Words can be imprecise, ambiguous, indeterminate, and vague. Controlled languages can help manage this and describe the aboutness of documents and content. Further, psychological dimensions of information seeking are also unpredictable. It's therefore critical to understand how people interact with information when designing an information system.

Chapter 4 "Intertwingled" - Findability is becoming more urgent as our environment becomes more complex, with information about the real world being imported into cyberspace. RFID, GPS, and the geospatial web: the convergence of systems creates new challenges in findability.

Chapter 5 "Push and Pull" - This finally starts getting into the "ambient" parts of findability. Ideally, we want to increase our signal-to-noise ratio to pull what we need, while reducing the push of unwanted messages and experiences. Ultimately, through devices and techniques such as personalization, we won't find information: it will find us.

Chapter 6 "The Sociosemantic Web" - This chapter puts findability in a social context. After all, information does have a social life. Morville is critical of social classification, but ultimately a supporter. He realizes that "ontologies, taxonomies, and folksonomies are not mutually exclusive." Whew. Finally,"our ability to make information decisions will depend on how we allocate attention and trust, how we define authority, and how we employ metaphor."

Chapter 7 "Inspired Decisions" - Morville concludes with a look towards the future. How will we make decisions in an information-overloaded world? One thing is for sure: we'll have to find new and better ways to deal with information on all sides of the equation. And the systems we design need take real human behavior into account, such as people’s satisfaction or their erratic behavior. "Findability is at the center of a fundamental shift in the way we define authority, allocate trust, make decisions and learn independently."

This is a very well-written book that reads like a novel. I was turning the pages waiting to see what will happen next. Take the author's advice: don't skip around. Read the book from beginning to end. At times it is simply mesmerizing.

But it is not necessarily light reading, and non-native English speakers might have difficulty with some of the references. The heavy use of jargon doesn't help either. For the most part, though, Morville writes direct and from the heart.

This is not a "how to" book. Don't expect the same hands-on, practicability found in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. In fact, you may be left with more questions than answers. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Though Ambient Findabilty probably won't help you at work the next day, it will stir your creativity.

The book is well researched and supported. Interestingly, Morville cites free, online resources more than not, including blog entries and Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia have the same authority as a printed source of similar format? Maybe more so? Tip: read this article on authority, also from Morville.

The overall argument in Ambient Findability puts common design problems in a broad, forward-looking context. It looks beyond any single discipline, such as librarianship, information science, IA, and even experience design. Yes, Morville mostly relies on existing ideas, but he artfully weaves them together into a new thesis. Therein lies the innovation and value of this book. It's definitely worth a read. Find it now.

About the reviewer
James Kalbach holds a degree in library science from Rutgers University, as well as a master's in music theory and composition. He is currently a Human Factors Engineer with LexisNexis and previously served as head of information architecture with Razorfish Germany. He is an active speaker and author on information architecture and usability in Germany, where he helped co-found an IA community. He is the author of the book Designing Web Navigation (O'Reilly, 2007) and blogs at www.experiencinginformation.com.

Ambient Findability
by Peter Morville
2005, O'Reilly. 188 pp.
ISBN 0596007655

Originally published in SCILS. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popular hopes for a new era of technological achievement and commercial abundance. From the 1920s to the 1950s, neon-lit streets pulsed with visual excitement from Vancouver to Miami. Large-scale spectaculars—tropical fish up to forty-three feet long hypnotically swimming past the Wrigley Spearman, or acrobatic Little Lulu lighting up each letter of a giant Kleenex box as she tumbled across it—provided free entertainment, while the humblest shop signs turned the urban night into well-lighted public space.

Neon’s glowing colors and sinuous shapes haven’t changed significantly since the 1920s, but the medium’s meanings, and its fortunes, have shifted dramatically over the decades. The history of neon signs suggests how thoroughly entangled memory, identity, and hope are with even the purest sensory pleasures—and how truly subjective are the clashing tastes that shape aesthetic regulations.

In their heyday, neon signs “were very much a symbol of modernism,” says Adolfo Nodal, the former general manager of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. “They became a symbol of the new age, the Jazz Age, the new era that was sweeping the country.” Nodal spearheaded a campaign that over the past decade has restored about 130 of the city’s historic signs, mostly the long-neglected rooftop markers of apartment buildings and hotels. “They’re beautiful objects in their own right,” says Nodal, “and lighting them brings back … a more beautiful time.”

Neon inspires passion. It still exists today largely because of the efforts of enthusiasts, mostly older baby boomers with fond memories of roadside America. They nurtured the craft back to life and preserved the “garish” signs that zealous civic beautifiers had tried to wipe out. In the late 1970s, neon “was a little bit like the last buffalo tied up outside the Indian gift store somewhere—almost extinct, certainly thirsty and hungry,” recalls the artist Rudi Stern, whom many neon lovers credit with saving the medium. In 1972, Stern founded Let There Be Neon, a gallery and workshop in New York, which trained artists to use neon and promoted it as an artistic medium. “I wanted to turn people on to the beauty of it, to the creative, expressive possibilities of it.”

Today, neon signs are treasured by collectors, displayed in museums, and encouraged, even subsidized, by towns hoping to add zip to districts that go dark at 5 p.m. When the automotive specialist RM Auctions held a memorabilia sale this past June, a Thunderbird Motel neon sign fetched $27,600, one for the Cloud 9 Motel went for $21,275, and just the star from atop an old Holiday Inn neon sign brought $3,220. “These things that formerly had no value are now seen as folk art,” says Len Davidson, a sign maker and the author of Vintage Neon.

In 1983, Davidson gave up an academic career in sociology to pursue his love of neon. He has turned his vintage-sign collection into the Neon Museum of Philadelphia, which displays signs in businesses around the city. Elsewhere, neon has found permanent quarters, notably in the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, founded in 1999, and Los Angeles’s Museum of Neon Art, founded in 1981 to preserve old signs and exhibit fine art that incorporates neon. All this neon appreciation represents a major change in attitudes. Beginning in the 1960s, neon signs were persecuted throughout the United States and Canada—torn down and outlawed by city officials determined to avoid the “carnival atmosphere” and “visual clutter” of such blatant commercialism. “The signs and the billboards are bullying you thousands of times a day,” Alderman Warnett Kennedy told the residents of Vancouver, calling on “the more thoughtful citizens” to “become nuisances on the subject of ugliness.” Soon enough, Vancouver’s streets, formerly awash in color, started to go dark. The anti-neon movement reflected both elite taste and consensus ideology. The bright colors and pulsing animation of the signs defied the formal geometry of aristocratic modernism and the tidied-up corporatism of the Galbraithian “New Industrial State.”

Dan Holzschuh, a Dallas-area sign maker and collector, remembers a trade-magazine article from the early 1970s documenting the trend with photos of a crane “cleaning up” a downtown street by removing all the neon signs. Then “it shows trailers going to the landfill and dumping, dumping all these neon signs.”

By the 1970s, neon was almost dead. The skilled craftsmen who could wire signs and bend glass were retiring without successors. “They were hardly even training anyone anymore,” says Tama Starr, an old friend of mine and the president of Artkraft Strauss in New York, the company that for three generations built the neon spectaculars of Times Square. In the 1970s, the main demand for her family’s wares came from porn merchants—like the red neon curtains of the Pussycat Theater façade—a relationship that made neon seem even less reputable. The signs also fell victim to the symbolic politics of the energy crisis. With Americans turning down thermostats and sitting in gas lines, big blinking signs seemed wasteful—even though they weren’t. Neon signs don’t consume much power, but they look like they do. A cousin of fluorescent lighting, neon is actually quite energy efficient. A neon tube glows coolly when high-voltage, low-amperage electrical power excites the gas within it. The color depends on which inert gas the tube contains—neon for red, argon for blue—and whether additives like mercury are present. For more variety, the glass itself can be colored or a fluorescent coating added.

The low point for neon came in 1982, when Holiday Inn did away with its signature “Great Sign,” replacing the neon extravaganza with a forgettable green plastic box. Of the thousands of Holiday Inn signs that once shone on America’s highways, only one remains to be seen, in the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan. What good taste and aggressive regulation couldn’t squelch, corporate image making did. Out went lighted tubes, and in came bright plastic signs or, a bit later, individual plastic letters discreetly illuminated by internal neon tubes.

Neon had a resurgence in the 1980s. Cities including Vancouver and San Diego reversed their anti-neon ordinances, and the Times Square spectaculars reclaimed their dignity when Japanese electronics companies reimported the medium from Tokyo. But today neon is threatened by a new technology: low-maintenance, easily programmed light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which often use even less power than neon and glow more sharply. A year ago, one of the country’s most famous neon signs, the pulsing Citgo logo near Boston’s Fenway Park, was replaced with an LED copy—not quite as elegant, perhaps, but able to survive a Boston winter without repairs. Advertisers prefer LEDs and video screens, which are visible even in the daytime. Instead of wooing customers with mesmerizing signs of identity and presence, these new media display constantly changing information, from brand announcements to recycled television commercials. With neon, “you were looking at a piece of art, and now you’re looking at a manufactured object,” says Starr. Most of those artworks are long gone, carted to the dump to be crushed into compact cubes of glass and steel. Storage problems make neon signs the most ephemeral of commercial arts.

Bob Jackowitz, the vice president of Artkraft Strauss, recalls one of his favorite creations—four nine-foot-high vertical sine waves, each a different color, that danced in and out of one another, perfectly synchronized so they never collided. “If it was at MOMA, it would be a piece of sculpture,” he says. “If it was in front of an office building, it would be functional art. But it was in a disco, so it was a lighting fixture.” When the disco was torn down, Jackowitz was asked if he wanted to reclaim the piece. “I did want it,” he says, “but where was I going to put it?”

Artkraft Strauss itself preserved largely what the workers in its factory happened to find amusing and portable enough to hang on the wall. These remnants—mostly individual letters or small pieces from bakeries and bandstands—went on the auction block in May of this year after Starr sold Artkraft’s sign-construction and -maintenance operation to Clear Channel (which hired the workers but won’t be building new neon signs). As bidders were paying $8,365 for the nearly six-foot-high i from the A&E Biography sign that hung high over Columbus Circle from 1998 to 2005, and $1,793 for a restaurant’s neon caricature of Bob Hope, a crew was dismantling the glass-bending room at the Artkraft factory.

Starr believes that neon had a good run but has no future in the sign business. “There’s no way neon is going to come back,” she says. “It’s very high voltage. It’s dangerous. It involves gases. You’ve got mercury. To dispose of it is a big pain in the neck. It’s expensive. It’s all handmade.” Artkraft Strauss’s business now consists only of designing signs, making deals, and maintaining a huge archive of photos and other historic materials. Of neon, she says: “I like it a lot, but I just can’t see it.”

But a medium as beloved as neon doesn’t disappear—it becomes an art form, justifying special materials and high prices. “We’re up 30 percent for the year, and 90 percent of what we do has neon in it,” says Jay Blazek, owner of Western Neon in Seattle. Blazek grew up in the business—his father ran a neon school in Wisconsin—but, unlike the traditional sign maker, he takes a decidedly contemporary, upscale approach. Western Neon not only makes signs but also designs subtle interior lighting, using neon in curved ceiling recesses, for restaurants and other businesses. Two of Blazek’s fifteen employees are full-time designers, and the shop includes gallery space. “The only way that I can forge my destiny in this business is by creating really interesting things,” says Blazek. “If we just make square boxes and channel letters, other things will come along that are new and improved.”

© Virginia Postrel, 2006. Reproduced with permission. Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly.

⁽⁰⁾

Of those organisms which compete for the same food or space or mates, the better adapted tend to increase in number, while the more poorly adapted tend to die out. If members of the same species are slightly different, those better adapted to the environment will tend to replace those that are less well adapted.

A common (and more or less valid) description of natural selection is "survival of the fittest." The fit survive; the unfit die out. The term "unfit" is not some moral judgement; it just means that these organisms are relatively unfit for their environment. When we look at the results of evolution (change over time), it is usually easy to deduce why one organism died out and another survived. This one is larger; this one had more children; this one is quicker or faster; this one is more intelligent; etc. But if we try to predict beforehand, which organisms will survive, we sometimes come upon unexpected problems.

Let's say that we have two birds of the same species; one is large; one is small. Which one will survive? Obviously the one that is more fit will be more likely to survive. Which one is fit? That's hard to predict. Sometimes larger size is an advantage; at other times it is a disadvantage. The easiest way to tell which bird is fit is to wait and see which one survives. We can state this situation like this:

1. The fit survive.
2. Which one is fit?
3. The one that survives.

That list of three "sentences" is circular, and is a tautology. A tautology is a logical statement that is always true, no matter what. An example is "A rose is a rose." Logically, it states a truth so simple that it does not need to be stated. It cannot ever be disproved. And it conveys no logical information; it is logically meaningless. On a subjective philosophical level, it may convey a great deal of meaning, but logically it does not.

If those three sentences were the definition of natural selection, then it would be a tautology. It could never be proved wrong. And it could never predict who will survive or thrive, and who will die out. But those three sentences are not the definition, are they? Those three sentences express this subjective philosophical truth: It is often difficult to know beforehand which organisms are fit and which are not. This does not mean that natural selection does not have predictive power; it only means that it is often difficult to predict. Creationists and even biologists have expressed dissatisfaction with natural selection because of this difficulty. In fact, some biologists have called natural selection a tautology.

But natural selection is not a tautology, because "fit" is much more complicated than those three sentences would suggest. "Fit" means "fit within a certain environment." An environment is difficult to describe. An environment is not just a living space with food. An environment includes other organisms (predators, competing organisms, members of the opposite sex, etc.) and their interactions. This vast web of interactions may be too complicated for scientists or computers to describe, especially with inadequate data. Predictions can be made, often with great success. But there is always uncertainty, probable error of varying amounts, as there always is in science. Biologists would like the uncertainty to be as tiny as it is in physics, but it is not.

Is natural selection a tautology? Well, it can certainly be stated as a tautology, but the tautology is a simplification. The tautology is food for thought. But natural selection is not a tautology.

Originally published on Jim Loy.com. Reproduced here with permission.

⁽⁰⁾

We all speak in pronouncements. Everything is either black or white. The result, of course, is that we frequently contradict ourselves. In fact, I was informed recently by one of my son’s friends that listening to me talk was like riding on a verbal roller coaster. “You say one thing,” he said, “and then you say the exact opposite.” I thanked him for the compliment. “There’s a reason for that,” I said. “It’s because I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

John Berbrich: Bill, your stories are a little bit different from the usual. When you sit down to write, do you have a pretty good idea where the story will end up, or do you just start off and go?
William Michaelian: I’m glad you asked that question. When I start a story, I have no idea where I’m headed. But I don’t want to know. I want to find out. That’s what writing is to me. Finding out. Being surprised. Being surprised, and waiting for that feeling of luck to come over me as I work. Really, I’m a great believer in luck — which, in this case, is another word for receptivity. You know? The stories are out there, floating around. If I’m open to them, I’ll catch one. But I won’t control it, or own it. It will own me. That’s why writing is so much fun. And that’s where variety comes from. God — when I think of some of the stories I’ve written — it’s crazy. Some are traditional and very straightforward, and others are, well, you know. You’ve seen them. I’ve subjected you to enough of them. In fact, I really should apologize. I should apologize first for abusing your editorial kindness, and then for going on and on, which is something I always do. May I have a glass of water?

JB: Sure. Nancy’ll get it. So — do you write poetry from the same part of your brain that you write prose? Pass the hummus, please.
WM: Oops. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep it all to myself. There you go. It’s excellent, by the way. It has just the right amount of lemon juice. Anyhow — to answer your question, I think my stories and poems come from the same place. They’re different forms, but a byproduct of the same twisted mind. I do tend to write poems in clumps, though. Sometimes I even write them two or three at a time, simultaneously, on the same piece of paper. It’s sort of like my brain is a sponge, and I have to wring it out occasionally. Granted, it’s messy. And smelly. Not as smelly as Nancy’s hummus, but almost. Ah, water. Bless you. We were just talking about your wonderful hummus. You have a way with garlic, my dear.

Nancy Berbrich: You’re so sweet. Here, try some of these.
WM: You know, if you keep feeding me like this, you’re going to have to wheel me out of here. Umm. That is good. Whatever it is.

JB: So Bill — who are a few of your favorite authors?
WM: Huh? Oh. Well, mostly, I like the dead ones. Let’s see. Saroyan is way up on my list. In fact, it’s my humble opinion that America is missing the boat right now as far as he’s concerned. He had a great storytelling ability and a genuine sense of humor. By that I mean, he knew that laughter and tears walk hand in hand. His later autobiographical work is also tremendous. Then, well, there’s Dostoevsky. I would truly hate to live in a world without Crime and Punishment and The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. I could do it, but I’d probably develop a nervous twitch. — All right, what’re you looking at? — Anyway. Let’s see. Who else? Maupassant is a favorite. And I admire Balzac, for his endless blather and coffee drinking. But I know there are several others I’m forgetting. I like a lot of writers. A few years ago I read a couple of novels by Yasunari Kawabata that were good. At a sale in the library basement, I picked up a nice hardbound novel for fifty cents called Not as a Stranger, by a guy named Morton Thompson, who was a doctor. In fact, they tried to make a movie out of that one. Hey, how about Kerouac? Ha! I almost said Kesey, but he’s still alive, so I don’t like him.

JB: Do you think something is missing in today’s literature?
WM: Of course. No self-respecting writer is satisfied with today’s literature, as you put it. Or ever will be. Now, assuming we still have something that can be called literature, as to what might be missing from it, that’s a bit more complex. Not that it should be, but it is. What’s missing is risk. These days, by and large, we are slaughtering what trees we have left in order to print tons of juvenile, prefab drivel written by people who are afraid to get out there and live. In fact I wrote a poem on this very subject, called “The Literary Awakening of America.” If I ever get home I’ll send you a copy. I’d recite it now, but I’m not very good at memorizing poems. Which reminds me — in the sixth grade I had a heck of a time with “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” — poems I love to this day, but that I have to dig out and read every so often because I can’t remember them. And they’re worth remembering — which is exactly my point. If you’re afraid to live, your writing’s not going to be remembered. It might be temporarily satisfying to people who buy cars to match their hairstyle, but that’s about it. It might even make a lot of money, but money is not worth remembering either. Although I do wish I had some. That’s something I can’t forget. Jeez. But there’s one other thing I want to say. Then I’ll shut up. In my opinion, there is some wonderful stuff being written today. The hard part is finding it. The Yawp is a perfect example. Your publication routinely includes writing that is fresh. To me, that’s encouraging. Inspiring, even. And I’m convinced there are many more people out there who would love reading your magazine, if they had the chance. Just think how nice it would be if high school students could be exposed to the stuff you’re publishing — and how upsetting and confusing it would be to most teachers, and certainly the administrative staff. The very idea makes my mouth water. Then again, it might be these fantastic hors d’oeuvres.

JB: Yeah, Nancy’s pretty handy in the kitchen. Well, considering the lousy literary scene we’re mired in now, do you see any modifications in say the next twenty years. Can we expect writers to start living, or must we be content with Virtual Literature and E-books?
WM: Ah. The question is, what do writers expect of themselves? How far are they willing to go? And when the going gets tough, will they suffer for their work, or will they give it up? Of course that can only be answered one writer at a time. But I’ll tell you what really bothers me. These days, everybody wants to be a writer. And, by some strange coincidence, there’s this cute little “how to get published” industry that’s ready to help. There are schools, retreats, workshops, books, magazines — it’s ridiculous. Everywhere you turn, there are these sappy little discussion groups designed for people who are afraid to go it alone. I get this junk in the mail, and I can’t believe it. “Tired of the solitude?” “Want to be part of a real writing community?“ Give me a break! Solitude is a blessing! If you need someone to hold your hand, don’t write. Do something else. Writing, by its very nature, is an outrage and a gamble. That’s what makes it so powerful, and so appealing. If you’re unable to recognize this opportunity, then you’re not a writer. Not yet, anyway. Because, really, the formula is simple. To be a writer, you have to write. And then you have to keep writing. No matter what. When you stop writing, you’re finished. You slam the door on possibility, and on yourself. And when that happens, you enter the realm of excuses. To put it another way, death comes soon enough. Why hurry it along? Things will get better only when you decide to make them better. If enough of us decide, and then act on our decision, the literary scene will really be a literary scene, instead of a nationwide support group for crybabies and pretenders. And what we write will be vital — too vital to be treated as electronic styrofoam.

JB: Electronic styrofoam. In your opinion, is the internet a positive or negative factor in today’s scene, literary or otherwise?
WM: When used as an encyclopedia or means of essential communication, the internet is fine. Beyond that, I don’t think human beings can possibly benefit from spending more time slumped in front of screens. Especially if we’re seeking entertainment. We need to be doing things — not having them done for us, or to us. In terms of literature, the reading of books is a mind-body experience that I’ve always treasured, and have no plans to sacrifice. Printed matter is sacred to me. It has a life of its own, a life not strictly limited to its content. Just as a library is a place, so is a book or magazine. And you can’t pull the plug on a book. You can put it away, or sell it, or give it to someone. You can even burn it. But the very act of burning a book makes it unforgettable. The burner is also burned, so to speak. As I see it, the internet is our latest technological mirage. When we finally get there, it will look an awful lot like here, and we will be just as bored and dissatisfied.

JB: So you’re suggesting that the answer, if there is one, lies
within . . .
WM: Am I? That sounds awfully profound. I don’t know. All I’m really suggesting is, life is too wondrous a thing to treat it the way we do. Otherwise, I plead complete ignorance. I pretend to know it all, but when it comes right down to it, I’m an idiot and a blowhard. I guess that’s obvious by now. On the bright side, I’m fairly certain my intentions are good. Of course, that could be something I’ve talked myself into in order to survive — in order to preserve the preposterous notion that I am who I think I am. As if it mattered. As if the universe was interested in such things. Hell, I don’t know. What do you think? Do you think there’s an answer? Do you think there even needs to be one? . . . John. . . . John? . . . Are you still there? Johnny — baby — talk to me. Don’t stare at my forehead. You know how self-conscious I am. My god, I think he’s dead.

JB: Uhh. . . . yeah. Drink some of this. By the way, Willie, have you had much success writing in altered states?
WM: No. None whatsoever. Wait a minute. I take that back. Once many years ago, I did write a story while driving tractor in a vineyard in 100-plus-degree heat. Does that count? The strange thing is, ever since then, I’ve heard voices. I suspect the extreme heat and noise opened a passage in my brain, and . . . hey, what kind of hooch is this, anyway? You know, I’m feeling rather, shall we say, enlightened . . . that is . . . these voices, you understand . . . and there have been unexplained footprints . . . I love that story. It’s called “The Bishop’s Right Eye,” and is all about this bishop whose right eye has been removed by a band of fire worshippers in a cruel public ceremony. The eye takes on a life of its own, and turns up in the strangest places — on the trunks of trees, for instance, and at the bottom of clear pools. This spooks the fire worshippers something awful, and to atone for their crime they remove their right eyes and convert to Christianity. Shortly thereafter, the bishop falls in love with a little one-eyed beauty, thus upsetting the elders in Antioch, who respond by exchanging a rash of letters. You know how elders are. Anyway, after a wild year together in a cave in the mountains, the one-eyed beauty flies the coop, leaving the bishop bereft, bewildered, and babbling. Ah. Yes. Yes, indeed. This is good stuff. May I have another glass?

Originally published in Barbaric Yawp. Reproduced here with permission. For more on the poet, go to WilliamMichaelian.com

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