• I hope everyone had a happy Soltice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Black Friday, Black Friday 2, or Boxing Day–which is probably most relevant to a magazine…especially one that’s 200 pages and almost a full pound to carry around in your postal sack. Or one that receives a two-foot-high stack of submissions every day.  Wow, we should really tip our mail carrier.
  • About a month ago I signed up with Goodreads, which is the first social networking site I’ve been able to maintain an interest in.  You can view my profile here.  If you have an account, add me as a friend!  If you don’t, think about signing up.  It’s a great place to find new books and meet other people who like them, and it turns out that writing mini-reviews and keeping track of what you read is pretty fun.  It’s like MySpace, only useful, and not annoying.  But be warned: if you have a book, and I read it, I’m going to be completely honest about my reaction to it.  It’s just my opinion, after all, and that’s what makes it fun.
  • Speaking of good reads, there are a few notable posts on Rattle.com this week that seem to be getting lost on this holiday shuffle.  On Tuesday we published Kevin Clark’s poem “Class Politics” from last summer’s issue, along with an audio recording of him reading it. And just yesterday we added a long excerpt from that issue’s interview with Marvin Bell.  The audio clip is over 20 minutes of the 90-minute interview, and includes some wonderful storytelling and humor, along with insights into the mind of one of the most influential poets of our time (his former students include Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Norman Dubie, James Galvin, Jorie Graham, Joy Harjo, David St. John, and James Tate). Bell is one of the most compassionate and thoughtful people I’ve ever met, and he’s led a very interesting life.  Go give it a listen.
  • Eighteen months ago I wrote that Alan Fox and his father were on a trip to the North Pole.  As a follow up, I should mention now that Alan and his family are on their way to Antarctica, so they can say they’ve set foot on every continent. When I was 20 I had a chance to spend my summer (a full winter) in Antarctica, working with a sociologist studying the effects of isolation on human interaction, with an eye toward colonizing space.  McMurdo Station is full of freaky people who fall together to the bottom of the globe.  I keep thinking about how my life might be different if I’d spent 4 months snowed in with them. Like an idiot, I turned it down.  My lame excuse was that I didn’t want to miss the baseball season, or alternately that I didn’t want to lose my job at the group home. But the truth is I’m just too lazy for adventure.  Alan, obviously, is not.
  • Parting shot: I don’t know what we’re doing for New Year’s Eve, but I want to do something.  We’re not party people–what else is there to do?  Any suggestions?
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