SneezingCow.com

Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

Cart:

Loading...

Archive for June, 2009

Gimme Shelter

Just pulled into Kansas City.  Stuck the car in an underground parking garage, because:

KC weather right now

As for me, I’m tucked inside a brick coffee shop, catchin’ up on some things.  Outside the blacktop is a river.

Peep-Peep

I have received word from home that another box of chicks has arrived.  We already have a slew of meat chicks and several ducks just sprouting their first feathers, now another batch of fuzzballs.  This new batch is destined for a life of laying eggs.  Theoretically.  They’re in the house right now.  My nine-year-old gave me a full report, and I could hear her grinning over the phone.

celebrichicks

The chicks in this photo were actually last year’s batch.  Several of them grew up to be featured on a book cover.

The COOP Photos: Chapter 1

COOP photo Chapter One - Woodpile

Each chapter of Coop features a photograph taken by my friends John and Julie.  This is the photo at the head of Chapter One.  That’s our actual firewood, the stuff I was splitting in Chapter One.  The tall plants between the firewood and the oak trees are nettles.  Big old honkers.  The pigs love nettles.  I was worried that this photo wouldn’t make sense in the book since the chapter is set in the dead of winter, but maybe it works to see the firewood drying in the sun for the winter to come.  What you see there is a fraction of what we need to make it through the winter.  I never did catch up that year.  Had to buy some firewood.  A real humiliation.  I did a video essay about the experience for Wisconsin Public Television.  Hoping one day they’ll make it available as a Clodhopper Report on YouTube so we can have a look.

This year I am happy to report that the woodpile is five times this size and growing.

Miscellaneous Coop Linkage

- A recent podcast interview.  We went off in some directions I don’t ordinarily go.  I did the interview in the basement underneath my favorite coffee shop, and right at the end there, the battery on my phone went out.

- A nice review on www.feastofbooks.com.

- Friendly blogwords here.

- Nice words in Lincoln (I’ll be reading there today).

- Bookloons.

- Christian Science Monitor.

And as a reminder, here is the freshly-calibrated Official Sneezing Cow Policy on the Posting of Reviews.

The Official Sneezing Cow Policy on Reviews

I’ve never quite known what to do about linking to reviews.  When I get a bad review, I’m usually content to let folks discover it without my help.  (One hardly feels compelled to provide coordinates pinpointing the site of one’s personal literary grundie.)  On the other hand, linking to a good review can look a bit, um, self-loving.  I once heard the singer Greg Brown say the only thing worse than agonizing over bad reviews is spending too much time reading your good reviews.

Still, if someone gives of their time to consider and review your work (and these days many reviewers are unpaid), and that person then kindly forwards the review to your attention, it seems an act of snooty disingenuity to feign ignorance. So now and then we’ll link to some reviews, trusting that ultimately you’ll read the books or not read the books, and you will decide for yourself.

This being an Official Policy, it could change at any time.