Andy Cowitt’s Brand New Blog

Having been impressed by “The Brief and Terrifying Reign of Phil” and Pastoralia, a novella and short story collection by George Saunders, I was wowed by Mr. Saunders’s In Persuasion Nation, which I read while on vacation in Tahoe this year. I finished his non-fiction collection, The Braindead Megaphone, and am now plowing through the gigantic, overwritten Eno bio Michael got me (On Some Faraway Beach).

I finished reading Temple Grandin’s Animals Make Us Human, months ago. It was yet another book that was not in the original pile of books I selected to be my funemployment reading. Here’s a brief review from the NYTimes.

The I read the breezy and amusing One Nation Under Dog, an examination of the ascendency of pets in American culture to the status of family members. The author, Michael Schaffer, describes how the role of the pet has evolved over the years, and he speculates that demographics play a key role. Empty nest baby boomers, and younger childless couples and singles, think of their dogs as their children.

There are chapters on upscale dog grooming, pet pharmacology (including Prozac for pups — guess reality has caught up to that vintage Saturday Night Live mock commercial about Puppy Uppers and Doggy Downers), the inventor of the mighty Kong, and more.

The chapter on dog park politics hit close to home. Schaffer profiles the bitter battles over Fort Funston, San Francisco’s off-leash playground. There, puppies trample off-limits bird nesting areas, while bird-lovers watch in anger and frustration. As a dog owner who understands how vital off-leash time is to dogs, I’ve experienced the disorientation of being on the “wrong” side of this particular environmental issue. Our former go-to off-leash area, the Albany Bulb, had a huge plateau, where Olive could run unencumbered. I don’t know all the details of what went on, but I know this: the plateau is largely fenced off now, in the hopes that a burrowing owl, displaced by the development of some soccer fields a short way down the coast, will find its way to the plateau.

So now we have to drive a little further, to Pt. Isabel, a large, hilly, grassy dog park on the coast in Richmond. Olive loves to chase the ball and dig for rodents there. Thank goodness for Pt. Isabel.

A.M. performed live at Diesel Books to celebrate the launch of A Curious Collection of Cats April 9th. Video available on Wertzateria’s YouTube: Shadow’s Dream and Lenny vs. Patch!

Más Música

Thanks to ICS, once a month I try to write songs. Here’s what has happened recently.

May
Here’s yet another litter of settings of concrete poetry by Betsy Franco, from the currently available volume, A Curious Collection of Cats. The mandate is to create songs Michael and I can sing live, with nothing but a ukulele for accompaniment. That doesn’t mean I can’t tart up the “studio” versions of the songs with keyboard or guitar overdubs, of course…

• Balancing Act
• Cat Haiku 2
• A Tree for Samantha

To hear the other cat tunes I made for that session, check out my Wiglodge page. All songs © 2009 Argyll Adventure Tree Music.

Finally finished David Simon’s excellent Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. I seem to have set aside temporarily The Best American Comics 2008, edited by goddess Lynda Barry, and begun reading Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s brief chronicle of stroke, brain surgery and recovery, My Stroke of Insight. The latter is one of four books I picked up at Walden Pond on Grand Ave. in the euphoria I experienced when I learned I’d have my paw in the door for a possible job at the SF/SPCA. Also purchased on a whim: the latest Temple Grandin, another book on brain injury/recovery, and a humorous look at dog culture in the good ol’ USA. More about those if ever I manage to read them…

One of my goals when I got laid off, in the event that my funemployment lasted any length of time, was to make a dent in the huge pile of books awaiting my attention. These are books I’ve accumulated over the last couple of years but not managed to find time to read. Full disclosure: I never planned to read all the unread books piled in front of the bookcase; that would be wildly ambitious, if not impossible. Rather, I made what seemed like a realistic pile, which included about half a dozen volumes I picked up on my last trip to The Strand in September 2008. So far, the expanded paperback edition of Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia is the only book from the “realisitic” pile that I’ve read.

In fact, neither of the two books I’m currently reading, David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets nor The Best American Comics 2008, edited by goddess Lynda Barry, is from that smaller pile.

Doh!

I recently launched a new site for designer/carpenter, Earl Flewellen (http://www.flewellendesign.com/). The site was designed, and beautifully at that, by Sonia at Area 22.

Once I’d completed work on the basic version of the site, I created a mobile device-ready version simply by adding a couple of lines of code to each page and creating a new stylesheet. What do you know? One of the promises of CSS-P realized!

I also updated Isabel Samaras’s site for her fabbo art opening May 9 at The Shooting Gallery in SF. Izzy was kind enough to give us a shoutout in her Juxtapoz online interview.

Lastly but not leastly, I continued to do sporadic maintenance on the Ann Dyer Yoga site, as well as helping Ann sort out various internet-related issues.

My goodness, what a busy five months that was…

• You can download my latest appearance on the UB Radio Salon (Episode #64, originally webcast on April Fools Day) at the Internet Archive site. Also featuring Univac, and of course your hosts dAS & Ninah.
• Remember The Pinecones?

It’s my new WordPress blog. I still gotta figure out some CSS stuff, so don’t look yet.