Dan White

Tobias Wolff wishes he could say that reading Thomas Mann started him out on the road to becoming an author. He remembers reading an interview with Susan Sontag in which she talked about reading Mann and Kierkegaard when she was still in grade school. “She was very precocious,” he said, drily, during his opening remarks at the first night of the Humanities Division’s Living Writers reading series, which drew a capacity crowd to the Humanities Lecture Hall on Thursday. Every one of us has an author like that, said Wolff, author of the novels The Barracks Thief and Old School, the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army, and the short story collections In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, and The Night in Question. “You look back and think about who it was that made you store up extra batteries in your flashlight…

Disturbing things are happening on the beach where I used to boogie-board and search for sea shells when I was a kid. Surreal and upsetting news. (and I bet it smells so bad there right now.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I just called one of my colleagues “Oprah” by accident. (Seriously. In an email, no less, as in “hi, Oprah.” And the thing is, it was a guy, and his name doesn’t look or sound anything like Oprah.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

This just in: the Board of Supervisors in Pima County, Ariz., have voted unanimously to rename an Arizona desert trailhead after Gabe Zimmerman, the hard-working, socially conscious UCSC grad who died in the Jan. 8 shootings at a “Congress On Your Corner” event in Tucson, Arizona. The trail travels from the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve to the Arizona Trail. The supervisors also voted to rename the Cañada del Oro linear river park for Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl who also died in the attack. Markers along the Zimmerman trailhead will also honor other victims of the attack. Read more here. [Photo courtesy of Ross Zimmerman.] http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Thanks to everyone who showed up for Saturday’s grand event. I couldn’t have hoped for more. Sorry I lied about serving chocolate cupcakes. Technically, it wasn’t a deliberate untruth; I just changed my mind at the last minute. (See previous blog entry about cupcake imbroglio.) Anyhow, we lucked out on the weather, the bench and everything else. Hope to see you all again soon. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

And meanwhile, here’s a really important news story you might have missed because it happened in Wales, a place where people take their baked goods seriously. . http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Thank you for all the “Yes” responses. Keep in mind that we’ll go indoors if the weather does not cooperate. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

One month and counting. I’ve booked my travel plans, made lodging arrangements and ordered the chicken. Everything is set in place. There is still time for you to register for Literary Orange… but you’d better do it quickly. The spots are starting to fill up. T. Jefferson Parker will speak there. So will Ron Hansen, me, and many other folks. The conference will, unfortunately, not take place in a building shaped like a giant orange. (see photo.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Problem solved. The robot shall rise again soon. I think I typed the wrong stuff into the “TEMPLATE” function on my blog. Somehow, stuff got scrambled. It is almost unscrambled now. Stay tuned for a Q and A with an award-winning fictioneer, a Literary Orange update … and more. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Having technical difficulties. Back soon. (I found this busted robot photo on zagart.com) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default