According to hard-working Heal the Bay activist Mark Gold, the Southern California Regional Water Quality Board this month committed Ventura County development projects to capturing stormwater and using it to replenish local aquifers. This means avoiding pollution and saving water — the best of possible solutions to two problems simultaneously. Most remarkably, the ruling commitsContinue reading “VC to Set the Bar for Nation in Recycling Stormwater”
Author Archives: Kit Stolz
Jay Bennett is in the stars now…
Sad news: Jay Bennett, who played with Jeff Tweedy in the band known as Wilco, died over the weekend. Although Wilco became a big rock band sometime between Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, for many fans their high watermark remains the epochal Mermaid Avenue project. For this record, Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora asked WilcoContinue reading “Jay Bennett is in the stars now…”
How Lovely Wetness Makes the Flesh
This holiday weekend some swimming may have happened. We all know how beautiful people can be emerging from the water, but it takes a poet to see the bigger picture… By Tennessee Williams, in the fall issue of Southwest Review. Written on the stationery of the Hotel Woodstock, the poem dates from 1939, when WilliamsContinue reading “How Lovely Wetness Makes the Flesh”
Holiday for Rock Fans: Wilco Streams New Record
In response to an unauthorized release, Wilco does the generous thing and streams their new record — to be released at the end of next month — on their site. Sounds damn good, but you have to be tough to listen to it…"One Wing" might break your heart. "You and I" will touch it, forContinue reading “Holiday for Rock Fans: Wilco Streams New Record”
where I am today…in the middle of San Francisco bay….
On Angel Island with my family, camping out…something one couldn't do not so long ago. Where is Angel Island? In San Francisco Bay…a lovely, wooded island, with a few buildings from a century ago, and a few new campsites. Will report soon. Here's a woodcut print from the inimitable Tom Killion, from a perspective atopContinue reading “where I am today…in the middle of San Francisco bay….”
Why Can’t Agnosticism Get a Break? Part II
Why can't agnosticism get a break? Is it our culture's insistence on certainty, either pro or con? Who knows, but here's another example of the obnoxiousness of so many atheists. As Charlotte Harris writes for the Los Angeles Times, atheists all too often turn off those they claim to want to convince with the obnoxiousnessContinue reading “Why Can’t Agnosticism Get a Break? Part II”
The Supreme Court Justice/Hiker
Tough Timothy Egan of The New York Times reveals what the right-wing D.C. establishment really thinks of retiring Chief Justice David Souter…that he's weird because he likes to walk in the mountains. Souter’s been painted as a strange, little man stranded in the wrong century…. At his 200-year-old family farmhouse — badly in need ofContinue reading “The Supreme Court Justice/Hiker”
Misreading (and Misunderstanding) Cheever
The reviews of the first major biography of this country's greatest short story writer, Cheever: A Life, by Blake Bailey, have been a bit glum. The late John Updike, who greatly admired his work, and knew Cheever about as well as Cheever would allow him to, called the book "a heavy, dispiriting read." The ChristianContinue reading “Misreading (and Misunderstanding) Cheever”
How to Communicate with Anyone
Yours truly has become convinced that John Cheever, the short story writer often called "the American Chekhov," is vastly underappreciated as a wit, and even (much like Chekhov himself) as a thinker: Here's an example of his thinking…more to follow soon from Blake Bailey's spectacular biography: You can't expect to communicate with anyone if you'reContinue reading “How to Communicate with Anyone”
Threat Against Americans Issued by Major Power
BURBANK, CA—Telling the movie-going public that it had "better start falling in line," executives at Touchstone Pictures announced Monday that if they do not immediately see a significant increase in box-office receipts they will not hesitate to produce a sequel to the 2000 film Coyote Ugly. The original movie—which follows a small-town girl who supportsContinue reading “Threat Against Americans Issued by Major Power”
Kit Stolz 