Hell yes: my Banana Slug Cookies shall return!

Not to get you overly excited but I just heard that my big claim to fame -- the Super-sweet Extra-Crunchy Banana Slug Cookie with gloppy yellow frosting-- is going to be resurrected soon. Apparently, the Buttery Bakery in Santa Cruz is going to bake up another limited run of these cookies (which I invented and designed all by myself, including the cookie cutter, not to brag or anything like that)  in honor of the upcoming UCSC commencement ceremonies.

The fact is, you won't meet many author types who dabble in baked-goods design. A few of them treat baked items with outright contempt. (I was shocked and upset to read that my favorite fiction writer, Junot Diaz, doesn't like cookies at all.) Anyhow, I'm amped up about this and ready to take on the big corporate cookie producers. Watch your back, Entenmann's.

Save the Capitola Book Cafe

Please read this story and do what you can to preserve one of my favorite bookstores anywhere.

Friday night at the Capitola Book Cafe

Wow!!! Thanks everyone. Our place-writing class could very well sell out. Really looking forward to this.

Scrambled, out-of-order version of The Cactus Eaters appears in book store

I just heard from a reader who said she purchased a hard-copy version of The Cactus Eaters that begins on page 361.  I am assuming that one of two things took place. 1. Your book contains a printing error, which means it is a rarity, which means you can try to sell it online for $$$$, or 2. HarperCollins has printed a scrambled-up, surreal, non-linear version of the book to attract a more experimental demographic. I'm making inquiries and will try to get to the bottom of this soon. And keep those cards and letters coming. (by the way, I'm not making this up.)

My upcoming writing class

Here are a couple of recent blurb/announcements for the upcoming writing class on May 11 at the Capitola Book Cafe, one in SantaCruzWrites.org and another in SF Station.com. And here is the feature story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.  I've fiddled with the list of authors just a little bit, and I've created some activities that should be fun for you, while creating food for thought for your place writings in progress. The Book Cafe has been sending out free mini-anthologies of place/travel writings and a couple of preliminary exercises for everyone who signs up.

My hideous lawn

I now, officially, have the most hideous front lawn in America. Basically, the owner chopped down the shady pretty tree in front of our house and replaced it with a huge pile of jagged stones -- hundreds and hundreds of them lying beside my driveway like a midden of broken teeth. Personally, I don't know what we're supposed to do with all these (expletive) rocks. Unless Goliath attacks our house.  In that case, I'll be well-prepared.

Cactuseaters reader photo of the week

A Cactus Eaters reader in Carmel Valley sent in this alarming photo of gefilte fish in reference to my  comparison between the mountains along the Southern California section of the Pacific Crest Trail and a certain cold and slimy soul food, purchased in jars and consumed at Passover with mountains of horseradish to cover up the nasty taste. Quite a photo. You can see the gelatinous brine shining on every little dumpling. Thank you, and keep those cards and letters coming.

Elizabeth McKenzie and the Post-War Life. Plus, the photography of Carolyn Lagatutta

Read this engaging story in the Santa Cruz Sentinel about my writing friend Elizabeth McKenzie and her new book in progress. If you're one of my two blog readers out there, and this name sounds familiar to you, she's the one who wrote a funny, edgy fiction story for the Atlantic Monthly some months back. Also I want to congratulate my colleague Carolyn Lagatutta, a talented photographer who just got written up for her Flickr work.

Amy Ettinger's essays and articles: Huffington Post and beyond

So far Amy has received 313 comments on the article in the Huffington Post not including Facebook messages and emails. I guess she hit a nerve. And I'm not kidding when I say the comments continue to pile in, every other second, on the web. If you'd like to read more, here is another great one: Memoir Horror: Can You Break Up With Your Life's Narrative? which tells you all you need to know about being married to someone who is obsessively writing a warts-and-all memoir concerning a previous phase in his life. Writers and writer's spouses, you may wish to clip and save her essay. Also, here is her cautionary tale, which appeared in the New York Times, concerning those lovely but lead-infested Victorians of San Francisco. If you've got a little kid and you're living in one of those beautiful Princess Anne confections, take our advice and get out right away. Just for fun, here's her take on pursuing vintage finds in San Francisco for New York magazine. She also has a thought-provoking essay about what it's like to live in a two-writer household. The title is "It's not a competition." The essay cannot be found anywhere online but it is available in an anthology called the Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives, also including a Cheryl Strayed piece you won't find anywhere else (as far as I know). Stay tuned for more Amy stories.

Those who sign up for my writing class ...

... will get a mini-anthology consisting of three travel essays (actually, two essays and an excerpt) that I would like you to read before May 11. You will get these things in an email along with a brief place writing assignment that should not take too long ... Looking forward to meeting everyone. Anyhow, that message will be sent out on or before April 28th.

Kids overcoming shyness: Amy Ettinger's Huffington Post debut

Congratulations to my wife, Amy Ettinger, for this beautifully written story about learning from our initially shy daughter (who, I am glad to say, is becoming less shy by the minute) This is Amy's first story for the Huffington Post. Enjoy.

The Cactus Eaters and upcoming class featured in Santa Cruz Sentinel

The Sentinel published this article today, featuring that picture of me on the left, dining al fresco at Joshua Tree with my least-favorite snack in the background. The author, Christa Martin, who writes for O, the Oprah Magazine and many other places, worked with me at the Sentinel some years back. This piece mentions my first book, The Cactus Eaters, the 36 Hours anthology featuring two of my travel pieces, and my upcoming place-writing class, which will be held May 11 at the Capitola Book Cafe.

In other news, one of my blog's devoted readers let me borrow an alarmingly good book by Adam Johnson called The Orphan Master's Son. The bummer is that I have to give it back to this particular reader tonight -- and I've got 301 pages to go!!!! Drat. I don't know how I'm going to pull that off. And, finally, in closing, I find myself inexplicably disappointed that unhappy Axl won't go through with the rumored Guns N' Roses reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies. At least I can take comfort in the fact that UCSC's very own Grateful Dead Archive is going to have a big presence at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that week.

Passover macaroons that actually taste good

For the past few years, every time I baked up a batch of homemade macaroons for my family during Passover, a precise -- and deeply disturbing -- description from Steve Almond's bestselling nonfiction book Candyfreak (a classic, by the way, if you haven't read it) would always come to mind. At one point in the text, he shudders at the "creepy dead-skin texture of shredded coconut." Every time I would bake up a batch, I would worry about their chitinous consistency. How could I serve authentic macaroons without subjecting loved ones to the 'dead skin' problem? Finally, I figured out that if you simply divide up parts of the wet and dry ingredients and place them separately in a food processor and whir the living daylights out of them, you will have a macaroon that tastes creamy, decadent, and nothing at all like dead skin.

So here's what you need:

three cups dried coconut, unsweetened
one teaspoon Tahitian vanilla
one cup of sugar
two egg whites
a few little crumbs of salt

preheat oven to 350 degrees

combine the sugar and the coconut, then scoop out a cup of the sugar/coconut mixture and set it aside

combine all remaining ingredients (remaining coconut/sugar combo, along with vanilla and egg whites), place them in a food processor and process the hell out of them for at least three minutes.

clean and dry food processor, and dump the set-aside sugar/coconut combination in the food processor until it is totally pulverized and has the consistency of flour

combine dry and wet ingredients in bowl, mix thoroughly with a spatula or large wooden spoon, then shape into thumb-sized balls with slightly pointed tops and place on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. It doesn't matter if you put them very close to one another. They pretty much hold their shape throughout the baking process. Bake for about 15 minutes until brown on the top. Let them set for at least 20 minutes. At this point you can turn some of them into 'black and white' macaroons by slathering them with a holiday-appropriate melted chocolate.

I suggest you try this. It's actually quite good, and infinitely better than those hideous macaroons that come in oversized cans.

Fuzzy baby falcons on live "Nestcam"

I have about 10,000 things to do, but I can't stop looking at the live "Nestcam" camera feed of the cute fuzzy baby falcons up in San Francisco. Get a load of this:

A Cactuseaters writing class: "A sense of place" at the Capitola Book Cafe

Hello everyone. I want to start getting the word out that I will be teaching a one-night class called "A Sense Of Place" over at the Capitola Book Cafe here in Capitola, CA., on , Friday May 11, from 630 to 830 pm.

We will talk about capturing the idea of places (from your own backyard to the Pacific Crest Trail.) We will compose on-the-spot place sketches, discuss strategies and approaches for travel and place writing and have a chance to discuss some of my very favorite place writing selections, featuring samples from Joan Didion, Edward Hoagland, Jonathan Raban and more. Place writing can help you bring to life most any kind of writing you do, from creative nonfiction to fiction and poetry.

The class size is limited so reserve a space soon.

I will share more details in the coming weeks.

Kim Tingley's Whisper of the Wild: both of you should read this

I wanted you to check out this story by my former classmate Kim Tingley about soundscapes and silence. Fascinating stuff. I wanted to send her a message congratulating her on this but she isn't on Facebook (good for her.)

And more memoirs (and other books) that I loved: expanded and updated

Here are a few memoirs that I've read and can't stop re-reading. Sigrid Nunez: Sempre Susan. OK, I've got to quibble with that title, which sounds a bit too much like that Brooke Shields show from the mid-1990s -- Suddenly Susan -- but the book captivated me completely. I read it twice in one sitting, and you will see, from the book's admirable svelteness, that this is possible. Not to ruin anything, but the book is a memoir of Susan Sontag -- not a biography, not 'a life of,' but a memoir in the Vivian Gornick sense, a tale about a point of engagement between two friends/antagonists.

I loved the things that fill this book, those scraps of dialogue, the way Nunez captures Sontag's entrancing/seductive/condescending/cajoling/encouraging ways with all of the people around her, not just friends and confidantes but total strangers.

I can't stop talking about Stephen Elliott's the Adderall Diaries. Let me be clear: there is a lot of tsuris in this book, but I'm convinced that Elliott could have turned around something brilliant even if he had a nice, ordinary, uneventful, yawn-worthy childhood. However, he has a lot of trouble to work with, and he capitalizes on it in ways that you won't expect. Elliott anchors the book -- or is that the metaphor I'm looking for? -- with a murder case that illuminates his own life in unexpected ways as the book progresses. The prudish and squeamish -- those who shut the book because of the subject matter -- are missing out, I think.

I want to mention Frank Kermode's book Not Entitled again, just because that's the one you've probably never heard of; I'm completely enraptured by it. See below.

Other books? I just started Tupelo Hassman's Girlchild, and I'm under its spell. Reading it brings back memories of seeing her read from the work in progress in New York City a few years ago, wrapping up her reading with a hypnotic chant: "I am a heaven and hellflower," repeated several dozen times. The book is helping me to address the mystery of that closing chant. Right now I am under the spell of another iconoclast -- Ralph Eugene Meatyard, whose best photos can be found in a newly published volume called Dolls and Masks; some of the most haunting images I've ever seen, and with special resonance for anyone in the process of writing a family memoir (as I am.)

I finally had a chance to read Cheryl Strayed's Wild. I just loved this. After finishing this, I kept thinking about all these potential problems and solutions: how to create a journey for the reader, always situating them physically on the trail, how to convey heartache so a reader can feel it, too, and how to flag the importance of each section and the related dangers (snow, sun, various creatures, and, in this case, the territory of men) while never losing sight of the separate but related larger narrative -- the psychic journey, relating to her family, the loss of her mother and her flight from her marriage)

As I read this, I was never anxious for her to cut back to either the trail material or the memoir material. The book kept the momentum going as it followed both threads. She also conveys menace incredibly well, in the bow-hunting scene among others. The book keeps up a headlong pace without sacrificing meaning; we never lose sight of what was going on in her head at that time and what the journey means to her now. Quite an accomplishment; add me to the cheering section. Oh, and this just in: I just read, in a Santa Cruz Sentinel article, that she will be speaking at the Capitola Book Cafe on June 21.

Another great one that I just read: Liz Moore's Heft. Yes, it's an act of ventriloquism -- a young female writer channeling the voice and physical presence of a housebound morbidly obese former professor and a young neglected student athlete, but Moore goes beyond mere channeling to create a work of beauty and depth; you never think about the channeling, only the lives on the page and the story.

up next: Lsyley Tenorio's Monstress. Eager to read this. I was a Steinbeck Fellow with him a couple of years ago, along with Peter Malae, whose gripping and vividly written first novel is also now available.

On a totally unrelated note, one of my two eagle-eyed readers just emailed me a link to a Cheryl Strayed interview in which she mentions the Cactus Eaters as part of a hypothetical book display built around Wild. Cool.

Congratulations are in order -- Santa Cruz author Elizabeth McKenzie and the Gail Rich Awards

I returned to the Rio Theatre on Wednesday for the first time since that historic Lucinda gig. The big event was the Gail Rich Awards, honoring outstanding community builders and artists. For me, the standout moment was the fine speech/short story excerpt by my friend Elizabeth McKenzie, a fantastic writer whose fiction has appeared recently in the Atlantic Monthly and who has a piece up in the Saturday Evening Post (did you know that was still being published?? I'm very glad to hear it.) She read an excerpt from her story cycle, Stop That Girl, which should be on your reading list along with McGregor Tells the World. I was unfamiliar with most of the other award recipients except for the talented sign maker Steve Hosmer of Stokes Signs, whose funny and profane acceptance speech was one of the evening's real highlights. He explains that his parents told him he could do anything he ever wanted in life "if I had enough ham and perseverance."

Speaking of books that should be on your reading list -- it was a real thrill to get a copy of Lise Pearlman's brand new book The Sky's The Limit, a fascinating nonfiction book that gives you a grand comparative tour of America's 'trials of the century' with a special emphasis on Huey P. Newton and the Black Panthers. It was a real kick for me because I, along with the author Sara Houghteling took a look at early drafts of the work-in-progress. I hope to be there for one of the book-launch parties. Incidentally, Lise is a retired Superior Court judge and an absolutely tireless researcher, writer and interviewer. All for now.

Corroboration from hard-core Lucinda Williams fans -- and some words about the best shows ever in Santa Cruz

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks it may well have been Lucinda's best show ever. I'm hearing from lots of folks who have seen her upwards of 26 times and think that Rio show blew all the others away. Anyhow, let's hope she rolls this way again very soon, and let's hope she keeps on drinking that vitamin-fortified tangerine juice.

Meanwhile, here are some of the other greatest shows ever in the Santa Cruz general area:

Neil Young and Crazy Horse: 1996, the Catalyst. You should have been there. Neil didn't say one freaking word for the entire set, but what a set it was, starting off with "Cowgirls in the Sand." My sister kept telling me, you'd never even know he was famous. Neil and the band seemed like they were trying out for something. And it was so punk, and so damned loud. All that feedback, and Neil with his bangs in his eyes, just shredding away. My ears are ringing even now. By the way, the four-hour wait for the wristband was a concert in and of itself. I met one of my best pals in Santa Cruz in that endless line. And the crazy thing is, the Catalyst didn't even try to fill the place. I think they capped the sales at 500 people, so we were watching Neil Young, and there was tons of room to dance and jump around. By the way, someone told me that Neil Young shopped solo at Bookshop Santa Cruz before that show. And no one recognized him. No one!

Midnight Oil, 1994 (?) The Catalyst. Do I have the date right for this one? One of the greatest rock bands in the world, able to fill sports arenas but playing at this little teeny Santa Cruz club? Peter Garrett, the band's left-leaning, skin-headed giant, started things off with "That's Progress," and from then on it was a full-on two-hour assault of the smartest, hardest pop music in creation. It was like hearing "The Dead Heart," "Read About It," "Only the Strong" and "Now or Neverland" in your own living room. Garrett at one point lost patience with a fan who was flying and shaking an Australian flag. "Now, would you put that thing away already?" he asked. I had to buy my ticket from a scalper at a severe mark-up. It ended up costing me a grand total of twenty bucks. I believe this was part of their last full-fledged U.S. tour ever. Correct me if I've got that wrong.

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 2003: So haunting and soulful and spare -- and, just to give you a little context, the Kuumbwa is probably smaller than your living room. Do you ever find yourself having one of those transcendent musical moments, and there's always someone sitting next to you who just doesn't get it? There was someone behind me that night who kept muttering "This is just like old-time church music." And I kept thinking, "Well, what's the matter with old-time church music?"

John Prine at the KPIG Fat Fry, 1994. There's a great little story that keeps circulating about this legendary concert, and who knows if it's true? John Prine was headlining that day, and the crowd was packed in there pretty tight in the Aptos fairgrounds. A fan was hanging back in the shade, and suddenly this guy with a thick gray-brown mustache and a bit of a beerbelly taps him on the shoulder and asks if he might bum a light from him. And when the fan looked up, guess who was asking for that cigarette? Anyhow, believe it or not, but this was the first time I'd ever heard "Sam Stone," "Big Old Goofy World," "You Got Gold" and all the rest. Haiku and three chords. Can't stop talking about it even now.

Doc Watson and David Grisman at the Mello Center, 1998. Not one of those pairings you see every day. At one point, Doc turned to Grisman and ordered him to make his mandolin bark like a dog.

Lucinda Williams's best concert ever? Live in Santa Cruz at the Rio Theatre

Best Lucinda Williams concert? Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz, 1/18/12

(sorry, I keep updating this danged thing. Little details keep incorporating themselves into the story. Scroll to the bottom for complete set list if you're into that sort of thing.)

Nothing against the Catalyst Club in downtown Santa Cruz but every time I go there's some 250-pound, 7-foot tall drunk guy standing right in front of me, swaying to the music and stepping on my feet, while blocking my views of whatever band is playing that night.

That's why it was a special treat to see Lucinda Williams"in full soaring voice" (my sister's description) at the historic Rio Theatre on Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz. Imagine -- seeing Lucinda in a place with crisp, clean acoustics, and being able to sit down.

I've never seen Lucinda this good or this candid, and I've been going to her concerts since the days of Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (she started off Wednesday night's concert with the title song from that breakthrough LP before launching straight into "The Night's Too Long" from the Lucinda Williams album. The night was full of meditations about her literary influences, from Carson McCullers to Mary Karr, along with a lot of juicy deep cuts, a nice, swampy version of "Concrete and Barbed Wire," "Side of the Road" and "Greenville." A chilling solo version of Woody Guthrie's "I Aint Got No Home" was part of her hard-times/recession theme, along with Skip James' "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues" and her own "Memphis Pearl," inspired by a woman she saw rifling through a trash can in Los Angeles many years ago.

Let's give some credit to the talented Blake Mills (not to be confused with Lake Mills, a city in Wisconsin), who played beside her, and was much too good -- too precise -- for me to call him a mere "accompanist." Mills, a Venice, California-based singer/songwriter, was bold enough to include a cover of a Lucinda song -- "I Just Wanted To See You So Bad" -- in his solo opening set, along with some of his own standouts like "Hey, Lover." Mills is a thoughtful, flexible interpreter of Lucinda's songs. All the arrangements were faithful to the material but he never overpowered it, like some of Lucinda's overenthusiastic pickers from the distant past. His playing and singing always heightened the emotional impact of her voice and lyrics without ever gumming up the works, whether he was charging through . "Honey Bee" and "Change The Locks," or plucking a 10-string tiple for songs like "Well, Well, Well."

Lucinda responded with a combination of tact and mischief to shouted-out audience requests. When someone bellowed for "Lake Charles," she smiled, raised her eyebrows, and said, "Another song about a beautiful loser. Here's another one." Then she launched into "Pineola," her tribute to the Frank Sanford, "a brilliant young poet" who committed suicide in 1978. Once, during his rave-up at the end of "Pineola," I heard someone in the audience grumble that Blake Mills was "too blaring and loud" toward the end of that song-- but if you know "Pineola," you know that it has to be there; some painful truths require a lot of feedback and amplification. (At the end of Mills' solo, Lucinda laughed and said, "You're trying to blow me off the stage with that thing!"


Besides, in past Lucinda concerts, the band, if anything, was too faithful to the records. Sometimes they sounded like a note-for-note mock-up of the records, only breaking out of their little boxes during the long, overly noisy solos. I think the 'duo' format gave Mills and Williams a lot more leeway. Last night they could get a little loosey-goosey with the arrangements in a way that made the songs surprising and more powerful than the full-on rock-band treatment ever could.

The stripped-down arrangements brought out song shadings I'd never noticed before. The drawn-out, repeated vocal at the end of Randy Weeks' "Can't Let Go" seemed desperate and pathetic and funny at the same time, with Lucinda playing the role of a jilted lover who couldn't acknowledge defeat. She ramped up the laughs by turning the song into a commentary on GOP candidates squaring off against one another, falling and rising with Whack-A-Mole regularity: "Come on, Newt! It's over but I can't let go. Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, it's over but I can't let go." The arrangements also let you focus on the sorrowful objects that make up "Bus To Baton Rouge" -- a song about a pilgrimage to a strange old family house with a "piano nobody played," and a locked room where no kids could set foot. The song made her so emotional that she had to pause and catch herself before she could launch into it. Afterward, she cryptically explained that the song came from "the side of the family where the mental illness came from. Look for them in my memoirs. I'll have to wait until everyone's dead so it doesn't hurt everybody's feelings."

There was only one drag about the concert, and that was the almost total lack of young-ish folks. At one point in the lobby just before the set, someone shouted out, "Is there anybody here who is under 45.' "I am!" I replied, but I noticed only two 20-somethings anywhere in the crowd. Young folks, you're missing out.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Lucinda could seem distant and grumpy in those old late 1990s shows. Here it was like hanging out in her living room. Why the change? Who knows. I think she must be living right and drinking a lot of tangerine juice.

"Thanks for digging into your pockets and buying a ticket to see me during these tough economic times," she said. "I really appreciate it. I hope I gave you a little something to take home with you."

Set list at the Rio:

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

The Night’s Too Long

Side of the Road

Memphis Pearl

Bus to Baton Rouge

Greenville

Words Fell

I Didn’t Know

Stowaway in your heart

Concrete and Barbed Wire

People Talking

Well well well

Can’t Let Go

Drunken Angel

Don't Let the Devil Ride

Pineola

Changed the Locks

My Little Honeybee

I Aint Got No Home

Blessed

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

Get Right With God