Dan White

I’ve been hearing from readers asking for more information about the Lost Rights nonfiction book and David Howard’s Lost Rights book tour. Here is all the info you need. Also, make sure to get your hands on Daniel Okrent’s highly entertaining portrait of Prohibition, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, another book that has been making the rounds this month. Amy and I did a bit of research work on Last Call, and it was very exciting to see it arrive in bookstores. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Who stole the Bill of Rights? I’m not speaking metaphorically here. One of General Sherman’s infantrymen pilfered one of the fourteen original copies of the Bill of Rights in the North Carolina statehouse. The stolen relic (a real-life National Treasure) changed hands again and again as it made its way across America. The longtime journalist and author David Howard received a rave from Publishers Weekly for this highly anticipated book, which hits stores this summer. I had the privilege of reading this one in an early form, and I can tell you that it’s a jaw dropping combination of investigative reporting and narrative, with memorable characters and so-strange-it-could-only-be-true situations. PW gave it a starred review and named it as the nonfiction pick of the week. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Tim Cahill will be speaking at SJSU on Wednesday night, (April 28th) and it should be a great event. By the way, I was once at a San Jose gathering where he was present, and I can attest to the fact that he is exactly like his writing persona: the life of the party, funny, self-effacing and smart, roaming from room to room with an endless supply of stories. Currently he’s the Lurie Professor at SJSU, teaching adventure writing to graduate students and undergrads here on campus. It’s pretty unusual when you meet an author and find that he or she squares with the voice that you ‘hear’ on the page and the persona that comes across in the stories. Alas, I’ve met a couple of my other adventure/outdoor writing heroes and found that one of them in particular was … well, let’s just leave it at that. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Thanks to all the many, many people who wished me a happy birthday yesterday. I’m glad to report that my entire family has now recovered from the horrible, horrible stomach flu that had us all out of commission and off-blog for a long while. (I’m telling you, it’s nasty stuff, this bug that’s been going around. Don’t even think about going to Babies R Us or the doctor’s office without lathering up with hand sanitizer. Preferably something non-toxic like CleanWell. Lots of folks are asking where I moved. Not to be cryptic, but here’s a riddle. Suppose you were to drive south from San Francisco for roughly an hour and thought you were leaving behind all the slow food, weirdly high housing prices, Victorians with fishscale shingles and mansard roofs, lovely vistas, hippies and pot smoke of SF, only to find all these things waiting for you upon arrival? http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Darn. I should have seen this when it was playing at the Berkeley Rep, but I got sticker shock when I saw the ticket prices. Oh well. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Why do I always see a small army of beady-eyed, scuzzily dressed drug dealers hanging around the sign that says “DRUG-FREE ZONE” at the park’s eastern entrance? (Maybe they think the sign says “FREE DRUG ZONE.”) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

This won’t affect you, my readers, (both of you. Hi, Mom!) but I want to let you know that the Cactuseaters blog is relocating out of San Francisco. I’ve been bracing myself for this moment by eating thousands of English muffins from Arizmendi bakery every day. And playing that Journey song over and over. Just kidding about the second thing. I will miss this city. On the good side, the endless dumb jokes about my name will (probably?) cease. In honor of my move, Lynn Gentry, the Street Poet of Haight-Ashbury, wrote a farewell-oriented poem. I will blog it soon, verbatim. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

It’s the 50th anniversary (more or less) of Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King. I can see how elements of this book would rub people the wrong way, but what a voice. It’s like an undertow. I can imagine Wes Anderson making a risky movie out of this, with Gene Hackman in the title role. He’d be perfect. You read that here first. Don’t be put off by the morbid title of David Shields’ memoir/meditation, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead. Yes, it’s about mortality and decrepitude, but mostly it’s about living well. I read the first part of Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask at my friendly neighborhood Burgermeister but I had to switch to something else because it was making me laugh too hard for public appearances. At the risk of oversharing, I was worried that my happy-hour pint of Prohibition Pale Ale might pour…

I have no idea why this is so — but this is my most popular blog entry of all time. which is weird because it has nothing to do with succulent plants, weirdoes smoking pot in Golden Gate Park, or New York City’s famous rats. I will repost it here. Ugly glasses When I was a kid, if you wore big goofy angular frames like the ones worn by Elvis Costello on his first record, or Oscar Wao, or Piggy from Lord of the Flies, you would get beaten up or stuffed into a Dumpster. Today, these are your only options! I wonder what poor old Piggy would think, to know that he has been reborn as a fashion icon. Today’s trendiest glasses are all awkward, expensive and absolutely enormous, with huge black bug-eyed frames with weird jagged edges. Anyhow, I was at the eyeglass store in Noe Valley yesterday….

I am humbled and grateful about winning the first annual MPORB (Most Profanity in Outdoor-related Book) Award, given bi-annually to the author of an outdoors or hiking-related book with the most relentless and gratuitous use of profanity. The judges declared that there were “certainly other hiking books with large numbers of very bad words, but a search through the pages of the Kindle and eBook version of the Cactus Eaters revealed that Dan White’s book had more expletives per page than any of the competition.” Thank you, judges. I am &@$&!$%& grateful for this honor. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default