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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 the 'Ross' CategoryThe All-Psychology IssueIncluding a description of an insidious syndromeJuly 1st, 2008 BY TERRY ROSS This issue of Black Lamb surprised me a little, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. When, as editor, I assigned the topic of psychology, I rather expected more than a few articles dwelling on the complexities of various mental disorders, the ones that we all have — anxiety, uncertainty, phobias, and the like — with perhaps some reflections on the treatments for these afflictions. Instead I got a wide range of thoughtful essays on the field of psychology itself. These range from Gillian Wilce’s memories (p. 5) of how she became a psychological counselor to Greg Roberts’ characteristically straightforward argument (p. 3) that psychology is a load of nonsense; the other writers fall somewhere in between, but most, I think, side more with Greg than with Gillian. As my own contribution, I would like to describe a psychological syndrome that has been noticed but too little analyzed: the Lost World Syndrome.
Posted by: The Editors California dreamingCultures clash in the land of plenty.May 1st, 2007
Even when you’ve made up your mind to relax and take your mind off the workaday world, when you want nothing more challenging than a nice view, good meals, and no alarm clock — in short, when you go on vacation — the world and its issues have a way of insinuating themselves. The road trip to Los Angeles that Cervine and I made just after Christmas seemed like it would be about as weighty as an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. On our itinerary were stops at Hearst Castle, sightseeing in Santa Barbara and Ojai, meanderings in Hollywood, a visit to the Huntington complex in Pasadena with a tour of the (Procter &) Gamble house, as well as a detour south to see the Queen Mary and, finally, a ramble round J. Paul Getty’s villa in Malibu.
Posted by: The Editors The All Marriage IssueIncluding a modest proposalApril 1st, 2007 BY TERRY ROSS This issue of Black Lamb, among all the so-called “themed” issues that we’ve published — All Movies, All Mother, All Father, etc. — has inspired the most heartfelt reaction among this magazine’s writers. As editor, I expected the subject of marriage to give everyone, whether they had been married or not, something to write about. But I couldn’t have predicted the variety and depth of what came in. When I sat down, however, to write something about marriage, a subject I’d never tackled before, I understood. To write about marriage, whatever one’s opinion of it as an institution, is to write about love. And to write about one’s own marriage(s), as many of the Black Lamb writers did, is to write about one’s own need for love, one’s ability to love, or one’s failure to understand love. It’s a damned touchy and perilous undertaking, which I suppose explains my own reluctance to have taken it on before I blithely declared it the topic for this month’s issue.
Posted by: The Editors The All-Smoking & Drinking IssueIncluding a plea to remember the pleasure of our vicesNovember 1st, 2006 BY TERRY ROSS
By the same token, I am perhaps better qualified than some of the writers in this All-Smoking & Drinking Issue. Unlike, for example, Gillian Wilce (p. 4), I have smoked to excess, and although I gave up cigarettes some time ago, I still enjoy an occasional pipe or cigar. Unlike Cervine Kauffman (p. 11), I have in my time drunk to excess, and I look forward to occasionally doing so in the future.
Posted by: The Editors The All-Television IssueWas there (is there) a Golden Age for the Tube?March 1st, 2006 BY TERRY ROSS A few months ago, in late autumn, when I passed along to the Black Lamb contributors the subjects for the special themed issues of 2006, I received not a few queries, from both writers and subscribers, as to how these themes are chosen. The universal supposition seemed to be that I, as editor, selected the topics based entirely on my own interests. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Posted by: The Editors The All Christmas Issue... including one Christmas at the railroadDecember 1st, 2004
For this special end-of-the-year issue, the Black Lamb writers were asked to write on the subject of Christmas, and they responded eagerly. Everyone, it seems, has a Christmas story to tell, even those who don’t celebrate it. Not all the stories are happy ones, but taken together they give a pretty rounded (and vivid) picture of the meaning of this holiday. You’ll find Christmas in prison (Dean Seuss), Christmas in Norway (Lorentz Lossius), Christmas for Jews (Michele Gendelman, Ed Goldberg, and Joel Hess), Christmas in a monastery (Fr. Jeremy Driscoll), Christmas overseas in the military (Alan Albright), and many another nostaligic, hilarious, or woeful tale of Christmases past and present. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. My own Christmas story comes from an incident that occurred thirty-seven years ago:
Posted by: The Editors The All Movie IssueI didn't lose it at the moviesSeptember 1st, 2003 BY TERRY ROSS In June, loyal readers will remember, I asked Black Lamb’s occasional contributors and regular columnists to write on a book that had influenced them. This month, I’ve asked them to do the same for a film. The result is the All-Movie Issue. Thanks be to God, the writers didn’t repeat June’s prank. Back then, a mischievous subgroup of your favorite columnists played a nasty trick on their indulgent editor and sent in a passel of Mercifully, I was spared these indignities.
Posted by: The Editors The All Book Issue... and the incredibly cruel All-Book Issue hoaxJune 1st, 2003 BY TERRY ROSS This month’s edition of Black Lamb — which I call the All-Book Issue — is a departure from the norm, because this magazine was created as a reincarnation of the old-fashioned literary Miscellany. Most months, that’s what it is, with the writers checking in from wherever they are — geographically, professionally, psychically — on whatever subjects or anecdotes they choose. It becomes a potpourri of different (and sometimes differing) voices and lives. But for the June issue, the halfway point in our first year, I proposed that the writers choose a book and write about it in the context of their regular columns. Not book reviews, I said, but rather essays on how influential books had changed their lives. About a month before the copy deadline, I sent a mass email to most of the contributors (a few had already sent in their articles) to remind them of this assignment. That’s when the fun started. Noting the copy deadline of April 1, one of the writers, Bud Gardner (his column's calledCountry Lawyer) copied the others’ email addresses from my message and wrote to them all, suggesting a prank. Country apparently called to country, for Emily Emerson (En Campagne) in west-central France immediately proposed that everyone write about the same book. Too hard, someone else said, we have no book in common. How about the same author, then, piped in Rebecca Owen from Pittsburgh, Pa. And thus came into being, at least conceptually, Black Lamb’s first, and certainly its last, All James Michener Issue.
Posted by: The Editors Author profileDecember 1st, 2002 Terry Ross edits, designs, and publishes Black Lamb and The Ultimate Literary Calendar.
Posted by: The Editors
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