Goucher Days Are Here Again

For the past two years, right around the first couple weeks of August, I have been attending an MFA residency at Goucher College in Baltimore.

In the past two years I have done lots of reading and writing and have had four mentor professors who have offered advice about my writing: Kevin Kerrane, Lisa Knopp, Joe Mackall, and Dick Todd.

And over the course of two years I have attended many lectures and lunches and late-night chats. I have met many new friends. Even got a girlfriend out of the deal. Heck, that's ALMOST worth what I've paid for private school tuition! At any rate, my Goucher days are quickly coming to a close.

I will attend Goucher College Aug. 3-6, graduating on Aug. 6 with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. After that? Who knows? I will be back in Radford, Va., working hard for another academic year at RU. With any luck, some side projects will start to take shape, and I can perhaps use my MFA in some way--preferably to make money to start paying back student loans!! So, all you agents and publishers who read my blog, my manuscript is finished. Now is the time to get into that bidding war to see who wants to publish this literary masterpiece!

So I will probably not be posting to this blog for a while. But check back sometime after Aug. 7 to see if I actually made it across the stage to accept my diploma.

To keep you occupied while I'm away, feel free to visit the Web site for Fellowship of Reconciliation. In such crazy times around the world, FOR still envisions a world of justice, peace, and freedom.

Is Coulter Just Plain Crazy?

I keep promising myself that I will ignore Ann Coulter, that she doesn't deserve the attention, that everyone knows she's totally insane and I'm wasting my time bringing attention to her craziness. But then I scan various Web sites and see how she just keeps going.

So while MSNBC was falling all over itself praising "the one and only" (thank God!) Ann Coulter, Ann was saying that Bill Clinton is a "latent homosexual." See MSNBC promoting Coulter's appearances here!

It is good, at least, to see that newspapers are continuing to realize that the woman is vile and are therefore pulling her from their pages. A few more have joined the movement, according to Editor & Publisher.

Seen a Good Movie Lately?

OK, so I've been promising to start posting some less political stuff, and I was just sitting here wondering what good movies are on these days. I've seen An Inconvenient Truth and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. Not sure how much time I'll have this weekend, but just in case, I'm wondering what good movies YOU may have seen lateley. Let me know! And if you see Lady in the Water, definitely give me a review!

Have a good weekend!

Three Words: Worst. President. Ever.

Wow, the G8 Summit. A chance for Bush to shine and show he's not the complete idiot most of us think he is. So much for changing our perception. The man has been a constant embarrassment to himself and our country for the past week.

First there was his totally bizarre obsession with the pig he was going to eat for dinner. Then we had Bush caught on tape using an expletive. Not really a big deal for most of us, but then again we don't claim to be chosen by God to lead this country and we aren't the de facto leader of extreme Christian conservatives.

And now we have Bush groping the female leader of Germany! Seriously, can you believe this?

Remember when people were outraged that Natalie Maines of The Dixie Chicks said "We're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas?" Well, now aren't we all ashamed that Bush is even from the same planet as the rest of us?

Isn't She Hilarious?

Just ran across a posting about this little prank by our friend Ann Coulter. Isn't she a peach?

But perhaps people are starting to catch on to what a vile subhuman Coulter is. Seems like some newspapers are rethinking their decisions to run her column. At least one paper has already decided to pull the plug on Coulter.

Hot Enough For Ya?

It's been a while since my last blog entry. I was out of town for more than a week and am just now settling into a normal schedule. And since my last post, I saw a movie that everyone should see: An Inconvenient Truth.

The movie, as you probably know, is based on a slide show that Al Gore has been showing for quite some time. In fact, in the movie he says he's shown it 1,000 times or more. Intermittedly, the filmmakers cut to more personal clips of Gore as he explains why he is so interested in this topic of the environment and global warming.

Overall, the movie acts as a sobering alarm that we all should heed. It is unfortunate that this movie is only appearing in just more than 500 theaters, as opposed to the 4,133 that are showing Pirates of the Caribbean. But for what essentially amounts to the filming of a slide show, An Inconvenient Truth has done fairly well thus far. If you haven't seen it yet, make your plans to go now.

Check here to see if it's playing at a theater near you!

And whether it is or isn't playing near you, check to see if there might be local or regional associations in which you can get involved. While at Roanoke's lovely Grandin Theatre to watch the movie, we picked up information for this group: CCAN.

As an aside, I was impressed that Al Gore was always shown in the movie working on his Apple Macintosh laptop. Being a longtime Mac user, I was happy to see a Mac getting some pub. Turns out, there's a reason for it. Gore sits on Apple's board.