86-year-old WWII vet on gay marriage: “what do you think I fought for in Omaha Beach?” – Boing Boing

via boingboing.net

This should just settle it, shouldn’t it? Really?

Posted via web from JuJu

“Fresh Water Voices”? Yeah right. The local clan of Selkies is what they are. Don’t miss them!

Fresh Water Voices 

Book Reading & Signing

Wednesday, November 4, 7 – 8:30 pm

Goodwill donation/All book sales benefit the SCA

 

With so much buzz around Saugatuck/Douglas’ environmental treasures, this very special book reading & signing event could not be more timely!

 

Join host Alison Swan, and the remarkable group of area poets and novelists who created the celebrated Michigan book, Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes, for an evening of inspiring writing and conversation.  Reading from their newest works the women will share their art and vision, and tales from the paths leading from Fresh Water to their current projects.  

 

Then join the group for a reception and signing of new books and Fresh Water – plus the exciting art book, The Saugatuck Dunes: Artists Respond to a Freshwater Landscape, released in July.  A portion from each book sold at the event will go to the SCA to support programming!   

 

Remember: the holidays are coming and books are gifts friends open again and again.

 

This is a wonderful opportunity to hear – and meet – some of the Midwest’s most creative voices in an intimate setting.

Authors reading:

Jackie Bartley

Mary Blocksma

Gayle Boss

Linda Nemec Foster

Gail Griffin

Lisa Lenzo

Judith Minty

Anne-Marie Oomen

Sue William Silverman

Alison Swan

Beth Trembley

 

Posted via email from JuJu

Wow. Jack’s Losing Season is 22nd on the Poetry Foundation list!

via poetryfoundation.org

 (Okay, novelists, wipe that collective smirk off your faces… it’s a real list: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/bestsellers.Contemporary.html )

Posted via web from JuJu

Book Review: Losing Season by Jack Ridl – Books – Blogcritics

Article Author: Derek Emerson

Derek Emerson is a college administrator who also teaches entry-level English. He has his Masters in Professional Writing from Western Michigan University and has been involved in freelance writing, editing, layout, and design work for over ten years. …

Visit Derek Emerson’s author page — Derek Emerson’s Blog

via blogcritics.org

Posted via web from JuJu

Watching a very large GB heron fishing on the stream, and a female wood duck swim all around him. And steeking another knit coat, without the aid of vodka.

Posted via web from JuJu

Losing Season on NPR’s Only A Game, Saturday, October 3!!

See Bill Littlefield’s writeup here: onlyagame.org

Hey there! If you’ll be near a radio on Saturday, Jack’s being interviewed by Bill Littlefield for the NPR show, Only a Game out of WBUR in Boston. It’s syndicated to many, many public radio stations, perhaps one near you! Here are some local times for stations near our home towns, and links to find more, or to find the show link after Saturday. Only a Game is also available by podcast, if you’re an iTunes listener!

Only a Game webpage for the October 3 show. A day or two after it airs, this link will include a link to the audio of the show
http://www.onlyagame.org/2009/10/saturday-october-3-2009/

Here are some air times near our home towns:

WVGR, Grand Rapids 104.1 FM at 4pm
WUOM 91.7 FM, Ann Arbor, 4pm
WICA, Interlochen 91.5 FM, 7pm
WCPN Cleveland, 90.3 FM 7am
WCBE Columbus, 90.5 FM 7am
WYSU Youngstown, 88.5 FM 2pm
WPSU 2 HD State College 2pm

Find more stations and times:
http://tinyurl.com/y9hmv4c

Past shows:
http://www.onlyagame.org/past-shows

Posted via web from JuJu

Mom and Dad

This past weekend we visited with my mom, the “coach’s wife.”  She has a room in assisted living at Sherwood Oaks Retirement Village just outside Pittsburgh. It’s almost basketball season and she’s gearing up for it. Coach Calipari, now at Kentucky, has been in touch with her, sent her a promise to take her to The Final Four if the Wildcats make it, sent her the Kentucky press guide, and a sweet note. Whenever he’s around Pittsburgh, he always stops to see her, goes to lunch with her in the patients’ dining room. You can imagine the gawks the two of them gather in from the others living there and from the staff.

While we were visiting, she got out a scrapbook she had kept about my dad when he was in college, playing basketball at little Westminster College. Page after page had articles with his name in the headline. He was one of the greatest players in the country, the era being from 1938-1942. Greatest meaning he averaged around ten points a game and was a fantastic ball handler. Little Westminster with an enrollment under 800 was in the top ten. And at that time, all the schools were ranked together. Throughout the 1942 season, the Titans were at or near the top of the rankings and ended up being one of the eight teams selected to play for the national championship in NYC at Madison Square Garden where they lost to the eventual champion Long Island University. Back then the NCAA tourney was what the NIT is today. We turned page after page and I kept shaking my head thinking both of what it was like back then and thinking about how enormous the changes have been in the game. Here was my father on one of the best teams in the country and working his way through school serving tables and doing clean-up duty after dorm meals.

After wandering through that scrapbook, my mom pulled out an old shoe box full of letters, letters I had never seen before. And she began reading them. They were love letters from my father to her, love letters that began with shy phrasings hoping she would come up to Westminster and “maybe go to a dance with me” and evolved into extravagant descriptions of how he was so lonely without her, how he ached to hold her, how he was the luckiest guy in the world that she cared about him, all strung together with intermittent cascades of X’s. She read them, one after another in chronological order, sometimes adding, “Can you imagine?!” About half way through, came a letter talking about how he couldn’t believe she had said yes to his asking her to marry him. By now he had graduated and was in the Army awaiting whatever came next. It was startling to hear him say “Hitler . . .” and “Himmler . . .”, to hear him worrying and unable to sleep. And then the letters that came after they married, how he was trying to endure separation from her and “all because of this war.” At several points, she looked up and said, “It was awful. Can you even imagine how awful it was. I just went to work and went home. It was awful.” Part way through one letter, he wrote that he had been taken by surprise to be named the captain of a black company. It was clear that he was very apprehensive, was afraid he would not be able to fulfill this assignment successfully. Like most, he had grown up in a segregated world not only by law but also by “the way it was.” As it turned out, his men loved him, especially because he fought for them to have equipment the equal of the white units. The next few letters were about her pregnancy and how he couldn’t be there with her and for her and would even not be permitted to be there when the baby, me, arrived. He wrote over and over how terrible her felt, how he could not get the awful feeling out of his stomach. And once again, she looked up and said, “It was awful.” He did get to see me a few weeks after I was born, but then he and his men were sent to France to “clean up after” and then after VE Day, he and his company were sent to the Philippines. By then he was convinced “This war will never end.”

“I can’t believe I saved all these,” she said as she put the box back into the drawer beside her bed.

Hope College makes Mother Jones’ list of cool-but-not-too-costly schools.

Hope College (Holland, Michigan)
Best value for: Artists with a spiritual side
Tuition: $25,500
This creative Christian college is known for its dance, theater, art, music, and visiting writers programs. Indie rocker Sufjan Stevens is an alum.

via motherjones.com

Posted via web from JuJu

G.R. Press

Nice piece in today’s Grand Rapids Press

Nice piece in G.R. Press by Patti Eddington, Mark Copier

about the new book. The Press team (Patti Eddington, Mark Copier, and Cory Olsen were all so great to work with. The online edition includes a slide show and audio of a few of my poems. Wow.

Gearing up for Losing Season

We’ve spent much of the day working on getting the word out about Losing Season, Jack’s new book from CavanKerry Press. It’ll be out in September.

Check out the book page for a downloadable press kit and book sample. And why not send it to all of your favorite editors and sports writers!

Of course, you can pre-order the book at Hope College’s bookstore or at Amazon.com.

Follow book news on Twitter.com: @Losing_Season