We finally redesigned joelschalit.com. We’re still in the middle of fixing things, but this is what it’s going to look like, with the addition of new images at the top of the landing page. Still, the emphasis is upon spare. Check back later this week, as things fill out. There’ll be major content updates across the board.
Imagine being able to think about history the way we want it to be imagined. That is, interpreted, reacted to, summed up in ways that make it all better. Compiling lists of favorite books, music and literature at the end of every year is one way to do this. Hence my eleventh annual editor’s top ten.
Two weeks before the beginning of my book tour, I discovered that Amos Oz would be reading in San Francisco. Not just on any night, but the exact same evening that I’d be reading at my favorite local bookstore, City Lights Books. ”There goes that event,” I remember telling Jennifer, as I braced myself for what I was convinced would be the single worst-attended event of my trip to the US.
No such luck. The room was filled to near-capacity. Even better, it was a repeat of the previous night, when I’d read to an equal number of people in Berkeley. Granted, Oz was reading at the JCC, and I was at an indie shop, but still. Even in the Bay Area, the readership for such Israel-focused work tends to be fairly specific. Watching folks take their seats, I was overcome by an enormous sense of relief.
Indeed, everything about the Bay Area leg of my trip proved to be positive. I’ll be the first to admit I was apprehensive, not just because of my fear of having to compete with much better-known writers, but because the most significant parts of Israel vs. Utopia‘s treatment of the Diaspora is based upon my experience of San Francisco. I really wanted to be able to talk about it, in the city that defined it all for me.
To that end, I’ve been recording nearly every night of the tour so far. I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and edit the recordings yet. However, this interview, conducted on San Francisco’s KALW last Wednesday, does a great job of summing it all up. Wait until you get to the part where we start taking callers, and the show’s host, Sandip Roy, brings up the issue of food.
The lack of complexity with which I explain that I approach the subject is precisely because of the intensity with which Americans have grown accustomed to relating to the Mideast conflict. Hence the rather unfortunate juxtaposition of adverts above, which I noticed as I waited for the train back to San Francisco following my first local reading, at Pegasus Books, in Berkeley. It’s very Bay Area.
Elliot Bay Book Co, 6;45 PM on Saturday. Twenty minutes before the first reading of my US tour gets underway.
Check out the review of the event posted this morning by Seattle’s Unlikely Outsider. Its a really thoughtful piece.
National Public Radio affiliate KUOW recorded the gig. I’ll post the date when I hear its scheduled for broadcast.
Last Monday, the visual design of the new Zeek website was completed. Now in the hands of developers, it will be a couple of weeks before we can begin usability testing, and start migrating Zeek‘s archives. The handiwork of Richard Winchell, its an elegant and simple platform that will prove easy to build on. This snapshot, though tiny, ought to give you a reasonable sense of what it will look like.
We already have a new editorial schedule in place to follow the site’s relaunch. Regular readers of the periodical will find the content familiar, but all the same, the new site design will help enhance the magazine’s traditional literary strengths. I am particularly anxious to use this opportunity to demonstrate the difference in our cultural sensibilities, in ways that we presently cannot show.
The completion of the site also allows me to return to writing projects I had to push to the side these last three months, as I’ve helped prepare this and the print edition, in addition to editing the old site. A fractured wrist notwithstanding (I fell off my skateboard in late June), I’ve only just gotten full use of my left hand back. I finished my first article in two months, a 2400 word essay, last week.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve done a mediocre job of keeping track of my clips. Though I’ve kept copies of nearly all of the magazine articles I’ve written, most of the book reviews and all of the travel pieces I wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian between 2000 and 2004 vaporized when SFBG revamped it’s website.
In the midst of putting the finishing touches on a brand new personal site (including a Word Press replacement for this blog) I came across a PDF version of this collection of micro-reviews, Sikkum: Tikkun Recommends, that I wrote for the September/October edition in 2005.
Traditionally the domain of the magazine’s publisher, I ended up writing most of these interior back page book reviews my last year and a half as Tikkun’s managing editor. I’ll be posting a couple of more of these, including the color version we debuted with the magazine’s re-design in 2006, shortly.
Click on the image for greater detail.
During the late 1970s, I can’t remember how many times my siblings and I would hear a song on the radio–most often English-language pop and disco–and try to sing along. We’d mimic the lyrics, switching back and forth between English and Hebrew as we unsuccessfully attempted to master particularly difficult American-sounding turns of phrase. Boney M‘s 1978 mega-hit “Rasputin,” and Earth, Wind and Fire’s 1979 smash “Boogie Wonderland” were particular sources of amusement, as friends and family would struggle to properly enunciate “R” and “W,” sounding, in the case of “Vonderland,” like Israeli caricatures of Bela Lugosi.
To read the rest of my review of Soul Messages From Dimona, click here.
On July 1st, I stepped down from my editorial position at Allvoices. With two months to pack up our home and move to the United Kingdom, I couldn’t have had a better reason to punch out. I’ll be spending the next eight weeks at home writing and editing a couple of terrific books while we get everything ready. To make the transition back to book editing, after being immersed in the world of blogs and online periodicals is interesting to note, (as a format exercise), given the direction that this kind of work now moves.
Leaving my office in San Francisco’s financial district (pictured above) for the very last time, I couldn’t resist capturing the signage of the cylinder shaped newsstand that sits at the building’s front entrance. Housing not only my ex-employer, but also a Reuters office, and the headquarters of the local Jewish weekly, The J, my former firm’s new abode hosts an above average number of news publishers for such a small, albeit significant, American city.
Just before I left, however, I received a call from the very first periodical I ever worked for, in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, in 1982. Serving as a summer intern for the legendary Mother Jones (whose building, pictured above, is three blocks west of my former office) has earned me a semi-annual email or phone call from what sounds like another MoJo intern, keeping tabs on alumni. “You’re a writer, right?” asked the young man who called me. “Yes,” I told him. “And an editor, too.”
Now closed, San Bruno’s Golden Gate National Cemetery lives on 161 acres of land. Boasting 138, 352 interments, this enormous military graveyard sits at the northernmost end of Silicon Valley.
I pass by this spot every day on my way home from work. Yesterday, I got out of the car to take this picture. Looking north towards San Francisco, the city was invisible. All I could see were tombstones.
Amongst the photos we received from Reuters today, this remarkable shot of a young Hezbollah supporter chanting slogans in front of the UN headquarters in Beirut really stood out. Between the teddy bears, fake blood and barbed wire, Banksy has finally found his local match.
Originally published at Allvoices
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