August 17, 2021
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve posted anything on this blog. Instead of enjoying the chance to expound on current events in literature or politics, I’ve been working on writing two SCOs (SCO stands for “Standard Course Outline”) for new courses at CSULB: one for an upper division course in creative writing in poetry (English 306) and another in fiction (English 305). I’m not paid to work in the summer, but guess what?
In my absence, the most popular posts in terms of my readership seem to have been a piece I wrote on the late Bill Youmans, and another piece I wrote on one of the founding members of The Rolling Stones. That’s an odd pairing, but it reflects my variegated approach to blogging. Successful ones, as I have noted previously, tend to focus on a single narrow topic. Since I’m not interested in establishing a base for advertisers, I prefer to write whatever catches my attention.
Speaking of the lack of advertisers, though, I see no reason not to freely endorse products that I like. Here goes:
HARRY’S SHAVING EQUIPMENT.
https://www.harrys.com/en/us
The best razors I’ve ever used.
For sunglasses, you can’t do better in terms of an ecological gesture than to indulge in the spiffiest ones I know of: KYND EYEWEAR.
I’ve never met Ken Baumann, the owner of Kynd Eyewear, but I hope more people support his project.
www.kyndeyewear.com
Finally, for those of you who prefer athletic contests in which you are the only one who pretends to be in the slightest control of a very whimsical ball, here are Brooks Roddan’s golf club recommendations:
Ping, cavity back irons with steel shafts, including 3 wedges (48, 50, & 56 degree; Ping 19 & 22 degree hybrids; Titleist driver 10.5 degree; Taylor-Made ’Spyder’ putter. You can get all this pre-owned and pretty cheap, according to Brooks.
Ian Stewart, who played briefly with the Stones in their earliest line-up and then served as their road manager for the first couple decades as well as an occasional session musician with them, was dedicated to golf and chose the band’s lodgings on early tours based on their proximity to golf links, or so the story goes.
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The big news is that Linda and I have lost our studio space in the Loft in San Pedro. We sublet the space from Meeson Pae Yang three years ago, and had hoped to keep working there indefinitely, but Meeson has to move out of her current studio space and so she needs to reclaim the space we’ve been using. We have to be out by September 10th. Right now, we have a meeting scheduled on Friday to talk with an artist about subletting another studio space. It most certainly won’t be as lovely as our current space, but in some ways it was a dream too good to last.
At least, though, we will be able to take part in one more First Thursday open studio event (on September 2) with our work up in the space we have grown to love.
First, though, I have to do a better job of paying attention to where I’m walking.
After working on the SCOs all morning, I took a break in the early afternoon, but failed to notice a scooter that was poking its rear end out from behind a lamp post. Sprawl city. I barely got my hands up in front of my face as I fell forward to the sidewalk. Fortunately, I didn’t break any bones, but I am scuffed up and my shoulders hurt quite a bit from taking the force of the fall.
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