I've spent most of the past ten months researching my new book and now, finally finally finally, I've started writing it. Well, okay, I've started writing the first chapter.

I've plunged into what I call my Quiet Zone. Or maybe I should call it my Shutting Out the World Zone.

I'm concentrating my mental energy on this book. Shaping the narrative. Working and re-working the prose. And, most important and most difficult, trying to figure out what the research adds up to. What do all those facts MEAN? What's the connection between this fact, that idea, and this event?

I know it will all come together; it always does. But only if I shut out the rest of the world.

So if there aren't many or any new blog entries, that's why: Book in process. Writer at work.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blogs filled with clutter but lacking essential information.

You know what I mean: the pages where you canNOT tell who owns the damn thing or what he/she does or is.

Blog pages where the blogger rambles on and on and on in loooooooooooooooooooong paragraphs, which of course are single-spaced so they're incredibly hard to read on a screen.

Plus there's usually fifty-five kinds of shit running down both sides: Links to other bloggers. Links to this. Links to that. Links to other sites.

None of which I give a rat's ass about because I don't know anything about the whys and wherefores of the blog itself!

Ugh. I cannot be bothered.

Not naming names, although I'd love to. But being a polite midwesterner, I'll keep my mouth shut. Plus, why generate traffic for ungainly, poorly designed and conceived bytes o' nuthin'?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so we already know that some beer styles are sublime when consumed with chocolate.

Turns out the connection is older than we knew! A piece in today's New York Times reports on new archaeological research about fermented cacoa in Mesoamerica.

Addendum two days later: As usual, Jay Brooks and Stan Hieronymus are MILES ahead of me on this. Check out their takes and links to lots more info.

Stan is here.

Jay is here.

What's NOT to love about those guys????? (Answer: Not much. They're two of my favorite people.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 06:22 PM | Permalink

The New York Times is running a three-part series on living with chronic pain. (The link is to Part Two, and from there you can also get to Part One. The series concludes next week.)

It's fairly basic stuff, but it's nice to see this acknowledgment of the issues involved.

For the past fourteen months, I've "enjoyed" a crash course in chronic pain. Torn rotator cuffs, the doctor told me. "Not much we can do for it," he said.

Bad news. And depressing, too, I discovered as the months wore by.

Because that's the nightmare of chronic pain: The body hurts, but the spirit hurts more.

I can't speak for others, but in my case, the pain transformed daily life into drudgery, and the "future" into a burden. Every day, I was just a little less interested in the world around me, less willing to engage with friends, family, work.

This story has a happy ending. In September, a different doctor provided a different diagnosis: bone spurs. Those can be fixed. Last week he operated to remove bone spurs on my right shoulder. He'll "fix" the left shoulder as soon as the right one heals.

But for millions of people, there won't be a happy ending. Either the physical issues can't be resolved, or they lack the funds needed to pay for good medical care.

So today I raise my glass in celebration of modern medicine -- and pray for all those who wake each morning knowing that their's will be a day of pain rather than pleasure.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had arthroscopy on my right shoulder on Wednesday and right now, a keyboard is NOT my friend, if you know what I mean.

So until the arm heals a bit (meaning: when I no longer have to use my left hand to move my right arm), I'm gonna lay low.

Thank god for good surgeons, modern medicine, and good drugs.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're my age (54), you probably grew up watching cartoons and developed an appreciation for and love of high-quality animation.

Rejoice! There are some new collections out on DVD. There's also a first-rate round-up of what's available in today's "Critic's Choice" column in the New York Times. (Tip for the day: every Tuesday, this Times column reviews new DVD releases, focusing on the off-beat, unexpected, and non-bestseller stuff. Great way to build your collection.)

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I support ANYONE who is willing to stand up to the lunacy of the neo-prohibitionists (who, in my opinion, aren't solving a problem. They ARE the problem.)

Problem is, few people are willing to, especially politicians. That's one of the most unnerving of the similarities between the anti-saloon campaign of a century ago and the prohibitionist crusade of today: Most Americans have been so brainwashed on the subject that they toss reason out the window and react with jerking knees instead of open minds.

As a result, it's tough for the voices of reason to be heard. I've written several op-ed pieces on the topic -- but none have made it to print. When I submitted one of them to the Des Moines Register's "Iowa View" column a few years back, the editors took a grand total of five minutes to reject it by email. Too incendiary - -or so I assume.

But hey, I've got this blog instead. And once in awhile, someone does break through the barricade of unreason. There's a terrific piece by David Harsanyi in this month's online issue of Reason Magazine.

Here's his website/blog. His new book is Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into A Nation of Children.

Right on, brother, right on.

ADDENDUM (posted about an hour after the original entry): Yikes! Someone's webcrawler is busy. I'm already getting spam from the L*iber*tar*ians (to which I add asterisks only as a way to slow the google-crawl).

So just to clarify: I am not a L*iber*tar*ian. Indeed, I think government is one of the best ideas human beings have had since they learned to walk upright.

Laws are good. Taxes are fine. Dumbass ideas about "protecting" me from alcohol (and pate and butter and frency fries....) are not.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, speaking of the marvels of the human brain (see previous post) -- I expended part of yesterday musing about "guilty pleasures."

You know. The stuff we wallow in, resishing every second of trashy delight -- and believe, in our guilty minds, to be a total waste of time.

For me it’s things like “Survivor." Anything by Penny Vincenzi (that's likely what prompted my musings: I'm in the thick of one of her novels right now).

What fascinates me about guilty pleasures is not that I’m apt to conceal them. (Of course! That’s the guilty part.)

What’s more interesting is what happens when I confess them. People who know me are visibly startled to learn that I’m a devoted, die-hard, watch-every-minute fan of "Survivor" (okay, "Top Chef," too). (Well, alright. You can add “Project Runway” to the list.)

Those things seems so .... not me. For reasons that are lost on me, other people see me as an agressive, brainiac intellectual who devotes hours to reading "The New York Review of Books," thinks great thoughts, and watches no TV at all (and when I do it's public television or nothing).

Wrong. All of it. If someone wants to know me, really KNOW me, they need to know that I watch "Survivor" and devour Vincenzi's tales of the rich and neurotic.

Put another way, guilty pleasures are a sparking-clean, uncurtained picture window into our personalities. They tell us and others more about "who we are" than our street faces.

Not, mind you, that I understand WHAT our GPs tell us about ourselves. Do they reveal our child selves, now buried in adult worries? Do they hint at how we’d spend our time if left to our own devices in a perfect world where food and shelter were provided worry-free?

I dunno. But I do know that if you want to know me, know my guilty pleasures first.

So. What's your guilty pleasure? And what does it tell me about you?

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, in a million years I would not have thought of or about this. But now I have, and I must say: the human brain never ceases to amaze me.

Start here with W. Blake Gray's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Then read Stan Hieronymus's take on the topic. I love knowing that Vinnie Cilurzo is a believer (and that his dad loved Sinatra).

It's, well, just too marvelous. Too marvelous for words. Etc.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my former life -- okay, one of my former lives -- I wrote a book about plumbing, and the subject still intrigues me.

So imagine my delight: A World Toilet Summit. In New Delhi, no less. (God, I'd love to know the number of flush toilets per capita in that city!).

My virtual pal Dave Praeger is there, no surprise, and, even less surprising, is blogging about the event.

All kidding aside, it's a serious subject and I love that someone besides me thinks so.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The folks at The Splendid Table are conducting a survey of people's concerns about and interest in sustainable foods.

You may already have a strong opinion about this. You may not have any opinion. But the survey is worth taking if only because it forces the issue: by which I mean, you'll find out real fast just how much you do or don't care, and how much you're willing to to do buy and eat "sustainable" foods.

I was, um, a bit surprised by my responses.

Note: the survey does not ask about "liquid" foods such as beer or wine. Which is itself an interesting point.

Anyway, the survey is here and it's worth look.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A few months back, an acquaintance told me that she was visiting New York City for the first time.

She wondered about how to spend her time there, so I offered up some ideas. Walk through Central Park and its zoo. Enjoy the Met.

And stop at Gramercy Tavern for a drink. Gramercy boasts the nation's finest bar, I told her. The selection of imbibeables is astounding, and the bartenders possess an extraordinary depth and breadth of knowledge about spirits, wine, and beer. (In my opinion, Gramercy's bar ought to be declared a national treasure.)

"Oh," she replied. "I'll be visiting a friend and her 14-year-old son. I wouldn't want to have a drink in front of him. It would set a bad example."

A mere heartbeat elapse before I seized the moment to spread my particular gospel.

"That's precisely why you SHOULD stop at Gramercy for a drink. It's a civilized and pleasant setting. The bar is full of comfortable chairs and there will be all kinds of people there, including families, enjoying time together. You and your friend can enjoy a fabulous drink and chat with each other and her son. It'll be the perfect opportunity for him to get a positive message about alcohol and drinking."

I pointed out to her that right now, the only message the boy gets is a negative one, and mostly from his peers. They all know about alcohol, right? It's that evil, demonic, forbidden stuff that they have to lie and steal to obtain. And when they do have some, they slug it down without thinking about what it is, what they're doing, or the consequences.

That's all that young man knows -- because no one wants to provide an alternative view.

But if she and her friend took him to Gramercy Tavern, he'd see and experience an alternative. He could sit down with two adults, watch them talk and enjoy their drinks, sharing each other's company and his.

He'd see that adults can drink without getting drunk (there's no rule that says imbibing equals intoxication or that drinking inevitably leads to drunkenness). He'd experience a place where alcohol is treated with respect and dignity.

He'd have the chance, in other words, to see the other side of alcohol, the one he's not learning with his buddies at school.

End of lecture. Spread the word.

Posted by Maureen Ogle at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)