April 7, 2008
Sports Illustrated Opens the Vault...
... and produces gems like this, a 1988 article that relates a story about how Larry Bird viewed an earlier Boston legend, and one of the heroes of my youth, Bobby Orr.
At the Boston Garden when the national anthem is played, Bird gazes to the heavens. Everyone assumes that he's looking at the Celtics banners, but ironically, he began to fix his eyes on only one banner—the retired No. 4. But not retired by the Celtics. The No. 4 belonged to the Bruins' Bobby Orr. Bird has stared at the black and gold banner so many times, he can see it in his mind's eye. He knows every stitch, how many lines pierce the circle around the capital B. "Eight. Don't bet me," he says.
Bird had met Orr only once and had never seen him play, but he had heard how great he was as a player and had learned how much Boston admired Orr as a person. Bird had been too bashful ever to tell Orr this, though, and revealed it only last month in his speech at the Sports Museum dinner, where Orr was on hand for the unveiling of Bird's statue. When Orr heard Bird speak of him, the breath went out of him in a whoosh, and there were tears in his eyes.
"My god," Orr whispered in the dark. "My god."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 6:55 PM | Comments (1)
March 26, 2008
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly...
... , "has been one of the dark places of the earth."
I am reviewing an eBook device and decided to see what it would like to re-read Heart of Darkness on it. The verdict? I think I am sold on eBook devices, and Conrad is still brilliant.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2008
Pint and Pen
My friend Paul Evenson writes with the happy news that he won second prize in the Pint and Pen writing contest sponsored by Bukowski's tavern in Cambridge. His story, "Vincenco's Mistake," is very clever.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:07 AM
William Butler Yeats
It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916. There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie).
Not surprisingly, the Web is full of terrific Yeats resources. The Wikipedia article is excellent and chock full of citations and outbound links. I also found a voice recording of Yeats reading Innisfree, and you can find a wonderful short video about the genesis of "Byzantium."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:31 AM | Comments (1)
February 23, 2008
Frank O'Connor
One of the great things about the Internet is that, very often, if you just happen to think of something, you can then go out and find it. The other day I was thinking about the great Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor, and, sure and begorrah, there was one of my favorite stories of his, "First Confession", and a Paris Review interview (PDF file). (Note that the typesetting on the short story is a little off, but it still reads well.)
Somehow, I didn't discover O'Connor until graduate school. By then I considered myself a pretty serious student of the short story, and I soon realized that O'Connor had created many of the best ones, including "First Confession," but also including "My Oedipus Complex." Then my advisor recommended O'Connor's book on the craft of short stories, The Lonely Voice, and I was hooked. By that point in graduate school I was overwhelmed with books on the craft of writing. Along with maybe two or three others, I still pick up and read The Lonely Voice when I need a little wisdom.
Wikipedia has an article about O'Connor, but it is pretty thin. There's a reprint of a book chapter here--a nice introduction to the 1998 book, Frank O'Connor: New Perspectives. If you like these stories, I recommend his Collected Stories.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 AM
February 13, 2008
We're Moving!
Well, sort of.
What I am actually doing is launching a new blog and practice as part of the Gilbane Group (press release here and the new blog, XML Technologies and Content Strategies, here). The new blog and practice are collaborations with my long-time Gilbane colleagues Mary Laplante and Leonor Ciarlone.
As we launch the new blog at Gilbane, I am transitioning this one to a personal blog, much like the one I had before, A Thousand Furnished Rooms. I will be discussing writing, literature, baseball, and life, not necessarily in that order.
I have been at this blog thing for more than four years, and it has always been an evolution. I started with a technology blog, Ideas in Technology and Publishing, then started A Thousand Furnished Rooms. Somewhere in there I briefly had a politics blog (an ugly undertaking in a nasty little world). Also somewhere in there, I began blogging at Gilbane's primary blog, folded the politics blog (oh, happy day!) and combined Ideas in Technology and Publishing and A Thousand Furnished Rooms into this blog.
So now I evolve again. If you want to read about content management, XML, and publishing technologies and strategies, check out the new Gilbane blog (Atom feed here). If you want to hear about more nebulous topics, stick around here. You are more than welcome.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:37 PM
Currently Reading
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. The book is even better than the title, and it will soon be on the big screen. A nice review of the book is here. The author has a terrific website with a lot of original material, though it's a little heavy on the pop-ups.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:32 AM
December 19, 2006
Quote of the Day
I am a writer and therefore an explorer. My immediate tribe remains the tribe of explorers.
-- Wole Soyinka
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:01 AM
