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ABOUTBlack Lamb was created to offer the discerning reader a stimulating selection of excellent original writing. Published monthly. (more) FREE SAMPLE COPYClick here to receive a free sample issue via U.S. mail. There is absolutely no obligation. SUBSCRIBESupport this independently published journal of fine essays. Annual subscriptions are $15 in the USA, $25 in Canada, $30 in the UK, or $35 elsewhere (all prices in US $). Click here to subscribe online via paypal or send a check to Black Lamb, 1759 View Drive, San Leandro CA 94577. QUESTIONSIf you have questions or comments regarding Black Lamb, please email us. |
Archive for March, 2007Partners in crimeMarch 1st, 2007 BY CATE GARRISON CHAPTER 17 OF THE JJ CHRONICLES Geographically orphaned by my rattish parents’ abrupt departure from the sinking ship of my marital home, a disaster occasioned by our dog JJ’s consumption of my car’s internal organs, I had no one to consult about my next move, and, namely, the relation of the above events to my increasingly absent American husband. Clearly a phone call had to be made to his office, where he seemed to live. Once my children, my dog, and I had returned home from depositing the Aged Ps at the airport, delaying tactics were in short supply, though I still hadn’t finished mentally writing the script of my story. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t intend to tell the truth (though whether the whole truth and nothing but was a matter of some internal debate). My hesitation was more to do with who to blame. The dog for actually eating the car? My mother for insisting on leaving him inside it while she slaked her hunger? Myself for acquiescing despite my better judgment? And then there was the matter of repair costs. “Could be a fair amount,” might sound more acceptable than “over three thousand dollars,” for example, though I was doubtful he’d consider any amount as “fair.” To protect youth and innocence from anything that might sound like equivocation, I sent my two live-in lads off to their bedrooms. I’m not sure why I pointed the dog in the direction of his bat cave. I suppose youth, rather than innocence, was still on his side.
Posted by: The Editors Back in BloomsburyMarch 1st, 2007 BY GILLIAN WILCE I am leaning on the railings in Queen Square in the cool dusk, staring at the building opposite me and thinking how different a place can look according to why you’re there. The building is the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and six years ago I spent some stifling summer weeks driving regularly and anxiously round the oblong “square” looking for a parking space en route to visit a friend who had just had two lots of emergency brain surgery. If I’d been asked to draw the area during that time, I’d have sketched a huge hospital with a small undistinguished patch of greenery outside it. Now, though, my friend’s recovery long established, the shrunken building opposite, its legend obscured by the dusk, is not even distinguishable as a hospital (ambulances come and go out of sight behind it). It’s just one of the buildings round a rather festive London square with people criss-crossing it as they head home from work or seek out the warm interior of one of the nearby homely Italian restaurants, while others can be glimpsed eddying and animated in the lit windows of the adult education centre to my right.
Posted by: The Editors Family dog: take threeMarch 1st, 2007 BY BUD GARDNER
Posted by: The Editors Les neiges d’antanMarch 1st, 2007 BY DAN PETERSON Snow in Italy is a must in the mountains, which depend on the ski industry for survival, but is a no-no further down the peninsula, where the tourist trade is geared toward “Sunny Italy.” Now, living in Milan, I find myself halfway between those two realities. Still, snow in Milan is rare. Fog is common. Rain is common. Snow is rare. But, as happens in life, when it decided to snow in Milan in January of 1985, the elements did not go halfway. The basketball team I was coaching, Olympia Milan, had a European Korac Cup game one Tuesday night with Stade Français of Paris. That day it snowed like it often does in my home town of Chicago. Well, Evanston, but right next to Chicago. When I say the snow banks were well over one meter high, I am not kidding. The town was paralyzed. Traffic in Milan is a hassle any time, as Milan has more cars per kilometer of street, some 750+, that I don’t even have a car. As I’ve said before here, you can’t drive in Milan and you can’t park here. So why should I bother with a car?
Posted by: The Editors Brokeback chasmMarch 1st, 2007 BY EVELYN BARTLETT I’ve never considered my strong back to be my strongest qualification for employment. That is, not until I had the dubious distinction of being trained as a holiday mail clerk at a large postal transfer station near my apartment. Having endured unemployment for far too long to mention, I simply wanted someone, anyone, to offer me a job. So when I saw their recruitment banner for the Christmas rush, I made a dash for HR, where I was handed reams of paperwork to complete and instructed to return at a later date. As the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Posted by: The Editors SunsetMarch 1st, 2007 BY ALAN ALBRIGHT
That was during Dad’s last years with Alzheimer’s — although my brother might as well have been talking about all of us old fogeys down here in Florida, where the theme song is “What’s next?” While our friends up north get all excited about the latest symptoms of global warming, we listen to ambulances race by, wondering where, exactly, they are going to stop. Florida may well submerge again, but we’re not worried about it.
Posted by: The Editors Living below the radarMarch 1st, 2007 BY SAGE COHEN When I was a little girl facing one of the endless Important events du jour that inevitably went Terribly Wrong, my father would say to me, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” My father knows many things. I have collected his gifts of wisdom as a kind of spiritual dowry. He has much to say about pain, truth, energy, healing, love, and kindness. But it is this aphorism about experience that has been my little lifeboat of truth, helping me navigate the farthest waters of disappointment, the darkest hours of alone.
Posted by: The Editors Honorary Black LambsMarch 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB As always in this space, we present new entries to the The Ultimate Literary Calendar, which will appear later this year. Here, then, is your handy thumbnail guide, with a selected bibliography, to another preeminent figure of literary history. Ada Louise Huxtable, b. March 14, 1921 The architecture critic of The New York Times for twenty years, Huxtable is a rare, clear voice against the appropriation of the American cityscape by modern schools of architectural practice. Her Pulitzer Prize for “distinguished criticism” was the first such award, and she subsequently enjoyed a MacArthur “genius” grant. She has been simply the best we’ve ever had in her field, and her cautionary books repay careful rereading. Books Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard? 1970. Kicked a Building Lately? 1976. The Tall Building Artistically Considered: The Search for a Skyscraper Style, 1984. Architecture, Anyone? 1986. Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger, 1986. The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, 1997. Frank Lloyd Wright, 2004. Other March Birhdays & Events of Note 1st Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849), American novelist William Dean Howells (1837-1920), English biographer Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), American novelist Ralph Ellison (1914-1994), and American poets Robert Lowell (1917-1977) and Howard Nemerov (1920-1991). 2nd Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), Yiddish writer Shalom Aleichem (1859-1916), German composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), brilliant children’s book writer Theodor (Dr. Seuss) Geisl (1904-1991), and American novelist and journalist Tom Wolfe (b. 1931); D.H. Lawrence dies in 1930 at age forty-five of tuberculosis.
Posted by: The Editors Consumerism run amokMarch 1st, 2007 BY BLACK LAMB Again we present an unparalelled opportunity for Black Lamb readers and would-be consumers: exclusive access to a superb gift cornucopia, the Whole Whog Catalog, first published in 1980. Take advantage of the original catalog prices by ordering today. Here’s a fashion idea that somehow didn’t catch on, but it’s never too late! Leisure Wet Suit
Only $89.95 Order today, with check enclosed (shipping is free!), through Black Lamb, P.O. Box 4531, Portland OR 97208-4531, USA. Please allow six to eight weeks for delivery. All entries are from the Whole Whog Catalog, by Victor Langer, Leslie Anderson, and Bob Ross, with a preface by Chevy Chase (New York, Times Books, 1980). •
Posted by: The Editors Doggy dog worldMarch 1st, 2007 BY MILLICENT MARSHALL
We recently installed a small “dog door” for our six-year-old terrier. We have succeeded in teaching him to open it with his nose and go in and out without being pushed. The only problem is, he waits patiently for a signal from us — either a verbal command such as “come on in” or “go on out,” or a hand signal pointing him the way — before either entering or exiting. This rather defeats the purpose of the whole thing, which is to enable him to use the back yard facilities when we are away from home and, having done his business, to be able to return to his warm, dry bed. I seem to remember that you have dog training experience. Do you have any suggestions? Doorkeeper in Duluth
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