Nancy Rommelmann

Coffeehouse Chronicles

15.

Amelia pulled her fingers through her hair, which was damp from the shower down the hall. The building did not lock it, and judging from the bike racks mounted to the wall, she figured it for cyclists to get clean. 

Amelia had no bike. She'd had a car but sold it three months for $300. It was once her mother's car. Her mother lived in Saskatchewan. She might have been trying to phone Amelia, but the phone was off. So was the electricity as of yesterday.

The cafe was walking distance from the punk house, the one by Fremont Bridge. Amelia had stayed at the one on Glisan for a while, but left after that night the guy with dreds started cutting himself in the chest with a big knife. The new house was cool, there were a few more girls. Amelia had liked that chick Monika, until she hooked up and told Amelia she needed the bed for her "business," whatever that meant. The living room had a hole burnt in the floor; it wasn't solid. Amelia found a sleeping loft in a walk-in closet. It felt a little like a coffin, the ceiling a foot above Amelia's face, and there was a bare electrical wire sticking out of the wall that Amelia covered with a shoebox. But it was private.

This morning she had a five-dollar bill, and forty cents. She did not want to break the five. She noticed the customers here bussed their plates and cups, sometimes dumping half their toast and jam. Man. And the toast smelled good. 

Katie wiped the counter and watched the girl the short pink hair. There was no possibility she wasn't hungry, she was spindly as a fawn. And, Katie thought, would probably spook as easy.

"Hey, kid," Katie said, and nodded the girl over.

Amelia looked but did not move. What, was she going to tell her to leave? It was a free fucking country.

"Come here," the woman said.

"What?" 

Katie smiled. "I have a favor to ask."

Amelia watched the woman take a pastry out of the case, put it on a plate.

"The baker brought us some new things today," the woman said, reaching for a ceramic mug. "We're trying to find out if people like them, so try it, with some coffee."

Amelia approached the counter. She held mug. It was heavy. 

Dr. Helen Reads "The Bad Mother"

Ya, ya, I realize it's The Bad Mother all the time around here, well, what can you do? My pal Amy Alkon said, "Send you book to Dr. Helen, she works with troubled kids. " I did. Five days later, she'd not only received it, she'd read it, and blogged it. A snip:

Maybe the street kid angle caught my interest as a psychologist or, more likely, it may be that I just got back from LA and Hollywood last week and I kind of missed it and figured the book would let me know more about the area from a different perspective. A cab driver told me about the kids and characters that hung around in Hollywood who were sometimes on drugs and sometimes lost. I wanted to know more. I was not disappointed. Rommelmann's skillful portrayal of the characters shows their unattractive side in a way that is realistic, shady and pulls the reader into a world they may never otherwise encounter.

Thank you for the thoughtful read, Dr. Helen.

"Tough-Ass Reporter"

I'll take it.

Michael Totten, Libya, and "The Road to Fatima Gate"

When I moved to Portland from Los Angeles, in 2004, I knew no other writers here. I had, however, been given an introduction, by Matt Welch, to Michael Totten, a blogger writing about the Middle East. Michael and I were not covering the same terrain, but nevertheless, met for a coffee at the then-rather wonderful Gotham Building Tavern, and made what might be considered small shop-talk. It was not until we were walking to our respective cars that we really got going, about how serious each of us was about the work we do; about sharing opportunities, and about what it was like to be a very ambitious journalist in a town that preferred its news within a 20-mile radius (or from wire service). A friendship was born.

Over the years, I have watched, in awe, Michael make his career: beholden to no one, on his own terms, and on his own dime, often with money donated by his loyal, many-thousands fan-base. We have, at least a half-dozen times, spoken of the books we are working on, how we want to publish them, how we don't, and when the hell was all this going to happen?

It is happening in March 2011, for each of us. My novel, The Bad Mother, is being released March 1. Michael's book, The Road to Fatima Gate: The Beirut Spring, the Rise of Hezbollah, and the Iranian War Against Israel, is now available for pre-order. You can read a sample chapter here.

Or, you can read one of the very finest pieces of journalism you will encounter, "In the Land of the Brother Leader," a piece Michael orginally wrote for the LA Weekly, about his time in Libya, a piece with special resonance right now.

Congratulations, Michael x 

Five Cool Things

Sunday morning, one of the best times of the week. Have my coffee, the New York Times... but lately, before either of these, I find myself scrolling through Five Cool Things, put together each week by Richard Pelletier at Lucid Content, which lands in my email around 7. Reading what Richard has gathered each week is like sitting at the breakfast table with a friend, a friend who doesn't care if your hair is rumpled and you're still in your jammies, who with humor and enthusiasm has to tell you about the cool art and architecture and music and letterpresss and food he's found this week, and created links to, so that even before eight o'clock in the morning, you are checking out photos of Mamikia the Superhero and listening to Donny Hathaway sing A Song for You, and thinking  about what this song means, in relation to everyone's life as well as your own, and especially in regard to your husband, who has just brought you coffee in bed because your foot is in a cast, but you're cruising the world anyway.

You can get Five Cool Things, too xx

Andrew Sullivan's Best Practices for Bloggers: Honesty, Integrity, Corrections, the F-Word

via Thompson on Hollywood

The Inextricable Marriage of Grief and Love

The first time I saw a mother learn her child had died, I was making cookies. It was in the freshman dining hall's massive kitchen, where I worked several hours a week alongside two late middle-aged ladies from Middletown, CT, all of us in pink smocks and hairnets. It was at the end of our shift, early afternoon. A man in a plaid shirt, stocky and bow-legged, walked past and toward the two ladies, who were friends and always chattering. He came in right close to them, he said something, and then hands were grabbing at air; the man's face crumpled, and there started a sound I at first took for joy; I instantly thought, a baby has been born, and then right on the heels of that: someone has died. The shorter of the two women was keening, the man, her husband, was trying to hold her up by the shoulders, and the other woman was wailing, running her hands in an outline of air around the couple's bodies. I learned later, the man in that moment told his wife, their daughter had been killed in a car accident. I return sometimes in my mind to that moment, that kitchen, a moment when the entire world changed for these parents, this mother.

I stood on the porch yesterday evening, listening  to the wind in the trees, feeling the warm air, seeing the grasshopper green of the leaves, and knew I have it very easy. My child is safe. I am allowed the luxury of listening to the the wind without also thinking, but my child is dead. Then I started to cry (again, more crying). I had just spent an hour reading Katie Granju, who blogs as Mama Pundit, and her account of losing her 18-year-old son. I am not going to attach the words "grueling" or "brutal" or "unbearable" here, because they cannot support the weight of Granju's loss, made more terrible because it was slow, with spikes of hope, and in some ways, long in coming. It will take you an hour to read the account. I suggest you start here and work forward. But if you go right to her homepage, you will also see that yesterday, Granju had a baby girl. (More crying.) 

Last week, I started to put into folders all my digital photos. Naming the folders was easy -- "Tafv Fashion" "Wedding" "SF Boys in PDX." But then I came across images that I have downloaded and kept for my own reasons, and for them I created two folders, entitled "Grief" and "Love/Beauty." There were times when I could not decide which folder an image belonged in. This made me know what everyone who has ever loved knows: you do not get one without the eventuality of the other. And there they go to the prom, Grief in her widow's weeds, Love with stars in his eyes; they will always be together.

For Henry

the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotes

I cannot stop laughing. Below one of many, many examples, sans the fabulous commentary