Dan White

The Sentinel published this article today, featuring that picture of me on the left, dining al fresco at Joshua Tree with my least-favorite snack in the background. The author, Christa Martin, who writes for O, the Oprah Magazine and many other places, worked with me at the Sentinel some years back. This piece mentions my first book, The Cactus Eaters, the 36 Hours anthology featuring two of my travel pieces, and my upcoming place-writing class, which will be held May 11 at the Capitola Book Cafe. In other news, one of my blog’s devoted readers let me borrow an alarmingly good book by Adam Johnson called The Orphan Master’s Son. The bummer is that I have to give it back to this particular reader tonight — and I’ve got 301 pages to go!!!! Drat. I don’t know how I’m going to pull that off. And, finally, in closing, I find…

For the past few years, every time I baked up a batch of homemade macaroons for my family during Passover, a precise — and deeply disturbing — description from Steve Almond’s bestselling nonfiction book Candyfreak (a classic, by the way, if you haven’t read it) would always come to mind. At one point in the text, he shudders at the “creepy dead-skin texture of shredded coconut.” Every time I would bake up a batch, I would worry about their chitinous consistency. How could I serve authentic macaroons without subjecting loved ones to the ‘dead skin’ problem? Finally, I figured out that if you simply divide up parts of the wet and dry ingredients and place them separately in a food processor and whir the living daylights out of them, you will have a macaroon that tastes creamy, decadent, and nothing at all like dead skin. So here’s what you need:…

I have about 10,000 things to do, but I can’t stop looking at the live “Nestcam” camera feed of the cute fuzzy baby falcons up in San Francisco. Get a load of this: http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Hello everyone. I want to start getting the word out that I will be teaching a one-night class called “A Sense Of Place” over at the Capitola Book Cafe here in Capitola, CA., on , Friday May 11, from 630 to 830 pm. We will talk about capturing the idea of places (from your own backyard to the Pacific Crest Trail.) We will compose on-the-spot place sketches, discuss strategies and approaches for travel and place writing and have a chance to discuss some of my very favorite place writing selections, featuring samples from Joan Didion, Edward Hoagland, Jonathan Raban and more. Place writing can help you bring to life most any kind of writing you do, from creative nonfiction to fiction and poetry. The class size is limited so reserve a space soon. I will share more details in the coming weeks. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I wanted you to check out this story by my former classmate Kim Tingley about soundscapes and silence. Fascinating stuff. I wanted to send her a message congratulating her on this but she isn’t on Facebook (good for her.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Here are a few memoirs that I’ve read and can’t stop re-reading. Sigrid Nunez: Sempre Susan. OK, I’ve got to quibble with that title, which sounds a bit too much like that Brooke Shields show from the mid-1990s — Suddenly Susan — but the book captivated me completely. I read it twice in one sitting, and you will see, from the book’s admirable svelteness, that this is possible. Not to ruin anything, but the book is a memoir of Susan Sontag — not a biography, not ‘a life of,’ but a memoir in the Vivian Gornick sense, a tale about a point of engagement between two friends/antagonists. I loved the things that fill this book, those scraps of dialogue, the way Nunez captures Sontag’s entrancing/seductive/condescending/cajoling/encouraging ways with all of the people around her, not just friends and confidantes but total strangers. I can’t stop talking about Stephen Elliott’s the Adderall…

I returned to the Rio Theatre on Wednesday for the first time since that historic Lucinda gig. The big event was the Gail Rich Awards, honoring outstanding community builders and artists. For me, the standout moment was the fine speech/short story excerpt by my friend Elizabeth McKenzie, a fantastic writer whose fiction has appeared recently in the Atlantic Monthly and who has a piece up in the Saturday Evening Post (did you know that was still being published?? I’m very glad to hear it.) She read an excerpt from her story cycle, Stop That Girl, which should be on your reading list along with McGregor Tells the World. I was unfamiliar with most of the other award recipients except for the talented sign maker Steve Hosmer of Stokes Signs, whose funny and profane acceptance speech was one of the evening’s real highlights. He explains that his parents told him he…

Looks like I’m not the only one who thinks it may well have been Lucinda’s best show ever. I’m hearing from lots of folks who have seen her upwards of 26 times and think that Rio show blew all the others away. Anyhow, let’s hope she rolls this way again very soon, and let’s hope she keeps on drinking that vitamin-fortified tangerine juice. Meanwhile, here are some of the other greatest shows ever in the Santa Cruz general area: Neil Young and Crazy Horse: 1996, the Catalyst. You should have been there. Neil didn’t say one freaking word for the entire set, but what a set it was, starting off with “Cowgirls in the Sand.” My sister kept telling me, you’d never even know he was famous. Neil and the band seemed like they were trying out for something. And it was so punk, and so damned loud. All that…

Best Lucinda Williams concert? Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz, 1/18/12 (sorry, I keep updating this danged thing. Little details keep incorporating themselves into the story. Scroll to the bottom for complete set list if you’re into that sort of thing.) Nothing against the Catalyst Club in downtown Santa Cruz but every time I go there’s some 250-pound, 7-foot tall drunk guy standing right in front of me, swaying to the music and stepping on my feet, while blocking my views of whatever band is playing that night. That’s why it was a special treat to see Lucinda Williams“in full soaring voice” (my sister’s description) at the historic Rio Theatre on Soquel Avenue in Santa Cruz. Imagine — seeing Lucinda in a place with crisp, clean acoustics, and being able to sit down. I’ve never seen Lucinda this good or this candid, and I’ve been going to her concerts since the days…

Tea Obreht on failing better and growing a novel “Any advice for young writers?” Tea Obreht handled that musty old question with grace at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Her response is good enough to clip and save. “You’re writing for a reason: you love it,” she said. “It gives you something. Your family may not be pleased with you for doing it but you have a need to write so write. Don’t write anything just because it’s trendy.Write what you love to read. If it fails, who cares! If it fails, learn from it and write the next one. It’s a lonely process but continue doing it because you love it.” During her talk, she spoke about the role of circumstance, having her early drafts shredded in a writer’s workshop, and the chance viewing of a television documentary. In her estimation, her book started out as a “very bad” short story…