new york city!

Yahoo!

I'll be reading at the Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem on October 11.

Here are the other dates so far:

October 7
The Big Read
St. Louis (Clayton, MO, actually)

October 26
Prairie Lights Bookstore
Iowa City

November 1
Tattered Cover
Denver

November 7
Unity Temple / Rainy Day Books
Kansas City

November 15-16
UofL Malcolm X Debate Program &
Carmichael's Bookstore
Louisville, KY

Still working on DC, Baltimore, Chicago and Seattle.

garden update

As usual, the gardening season has been triumphant and disappointing.

I let the tomato plants nearly dry out, and most of them haven't recovered, even with last week's massive rain. I think I put too much nitrogen on the peppers, so I got a lot of leaves but not enough peppers. And I got done in by the zucc and cuc killing bugs again, though I managed to get a few decent zuccs before the droopy end. Eggplant died, bigtime died. And I just plain ignored beans, which was stupid because I have seeds for purple ones.

But then, I done real good on the colorful annuals. They's pretty. And the new rose bush settled in and made itself at home -- it's now on it's third bloom. My thyme-and-stepping-stone experiment's going nicely. And, most amazing, I had a rosemary plant survive the winter, which is something my grandpa couldn't manage to do in his slightly more northern climate (I talked about his battles with rosemary at his funeral).

Oh yeah, the habaneros have been the culinary surprise of the summer. Hot fire! I'm a salsa-making freak (more on that later).

I'd like to spend the better part of every day out there. But I need some more plants or money or both. And maybe a little more time. The yard's getting there. But there are still a loy of areas that need filling in.

Well, signing off until the season-end report (unless those lettuses and turnips get me all inspired, which they probably will, I hope)

Click that picture up there for a flickr documentary.

elle review

My book is going to be among Elle magazine's "Must Read" selections in November. I'm not allowed to post the whole thing, but the highlight when they say:

it’s a rambunctious, irresistible 500-page doozy.

Pretty sweet!

library journal

The Library Journal review is out:

Miller, Joe. Cross-X. Farrar. Oct. 2006. c.496p. ISBN 0-374-13194-5 [ISBN 978-0-374-13194-4]. $26. SOC SCI Journalist Miller's engrossing first book considers in depth the lives and competitions of Kansas City Central High's debate team. While nondebaters might want to dog-ear early pages that explain techniques and terminology, the technical bits are subsidiary to a provocative underdog tale. Jane Rinehart, the devoted, beleaguered coach, champions her students without support from the school administration or the debate community. Her debaters, dominantly senior Marcus and sophomore Ebony, are keen-witted kids who thrive in debate largely because their environment doesn't afford them anywhere else to thrive. Central typifies poorly cared for, predominantly black schools in disintegrating neighborhoods. Tournament encounters with teams from wealthy prep schools demonstrate a hard truth: intelligent, high-capacity students rise up in the inner city just as in the suburbs, but few are as fortunate even as Marcus and Ebony. Miller begins as a reporter and becomes an actor, increasingly fascinated by debate, attached to the kids on Central's debate team, and dismayed by the injustice of their situation. He takes a formal role as assistant debate coach and works with Ebony and debate partner Geoffery on a novel, race-conscious strategy that reverberates across the debate community. Recommended for most libraries.-Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH

survivor

I'm a bit behind on the news (not paying attention). I didn't find out until yesterday that Survivor will have four teams -- one white, one black, one Hispanic, one Asian -- competing against each other on a deserted island for a big prize. Reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. The show's producers are stoking the racism fire for the sake of good ratings. Shame on them.

I have to disagree on this one. For one, it's pretty much an accurate representative of our world. We're divided by race. (Actually, it would be more accurate if the whites were given a bunch of tools and food that the other contests don't have, and if the others were shackled in some way.)

Second, this format will actually increase the so-called minority representation on a reality show. Unlike every other reality show that's ever aired, the cast won't be limited to one token black. In my book, that's way, way worse.

Lastly, it's provocative. And, on matters of race, I think we need to be continually provoked.

Put simply, we need to face this stuff and talk about it. Ignoring the fact that we're already divided, throwing token blacks and Hispanics and Asians into our favorite TV shows -- that does no good. But if sagging ratings can motivate the folks at Survivor to do the unthinkable, to display the reality of who we are for all of us to see, and that sparks a dialogue, then that's a good thing.

My fear, though, is that the PC finger-waggers have already cut off the conversation. So far, the debate is framed like this:

SEGREGATION IS WRONG!

Oh, that's nice. I feel so much better.

Now we can all go back to our little segregated worlds and feel good about the progress we've made.

snack time

i'm there

I haven't been to a protest for a long, long time. Not since college, I think. But I'm definitely going to this one.

Not so much to protest the president. He's an obvious target. No, I'll be there to protest Ward Parkway.

In fact, I think I'll ask a bunch of students if they'd like to join me. We could make picket signs with pointed messages about Kansas City's de facto segregation. (And, of course, one that says simply, WARD PARKWAY SUCKS!)

Yes!

c-span

I wish that the good folks at C-SPAN would maintain an online archive of every minute of video they air. I wish they'd make it all searchable and downloadable. It drives me crazy when I catch a really good talk on Book TV, and I get totally absorbed in it, but it's so dense with information and wisdom I feel the need to go back and listen again (or, better still, I wish I could take it to Central and play it for the debate squad), but I can't, because it's vanished into the cable vapors.

Happened this weekend. Yesterday, I caught former CNN bureau chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault talking about her book New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance. And today I heard a blistering speech delivered by Michael Eric Dyson, to promote his recent Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster.

Wish I could have them both for keeps. But fragments are all I possess.

Hunter-Gault admonished the Western media for only focusing on the negative in Africa. She said we love to parachute into Africa when something horrible is happening. But then when Africans start to find solutions to their problems, we think the stories are done, and we pack up and go home. The problem with this, she said, is that we miss opportunities to learn from Africa. Case in point: in the years since apartheid, now that the journalists have mostly moved on, that country has been breaking a lot of ground in affirmative action and racial reconciliation -- ground we couldn't quite reach. Why aren't we following this story? Her answer seemed to be, at least in part, that we're letting our preconceptions guide us instead of "coming in straight." In other words, we already know what the story is on Africa: It's a place of misery and turmoil. Stories that don't fit this framework simply aren't seen.

And Dyson's speech was a tour de force. Man, I wish I had an Mpeg of it so I could play it for the debate squad. He would be such a great debater, the way he rattles off such dense prose without a script. He covered so much territory it was impossible to remember all but the tiniest pieces of it. I got the main thrust, of course -- its message of rage at the racism that mires our nation. For a while I had my laptop on my lap, hoping to type quotes to share with you all, but he spoke so fast, and I was so mesmerized, I couldn't really get anything down. I was hoping I could find a link onlinr, to share it all with you, but...

Come on, Mr. Lamb! Let us search and download.

super dog

Gobo is officially one of the cutest dogs in the literary world!

Kansas Citians may recall his first (and only)published article. Now he's gone global, having been deemed one of the literary world's cutest dogs by mediabistro.com's Galleycat!

Here's the proof!!

(The writer, Ron Hogan, also said some very kind words about Cross-X. As in, he throws in a few acronyms that are very, very flattering. They refer to some pretty well-known awards, in case you're scratching your heads.)

schooled

Earlier today I asked one of my teacher friends, "So did you read the Star today?"

"Yeah," she said. "So they spent $90,000 to find out that the district sucks. I could've told them that."

"I think it was a brilliant move," I countered. "David Smith is a shroud dude."

I laid out my theory: The board swallowed hard and lived through five miserable years with Bernard Taylor for the sake of bringing a semblence of stability at the top of the command chain. This establishes -- God willing -- a tradition of keeping superintendents around for more than a school year. It makes superintendent staying power a priority.

With this ethos in place, they brought in a ball-buster -- Anthony Amato. Hopefully he won't be easy to fire after he comes in and takes a flamethrower to 12th and McGee (and I've heard he's already got it turned up full blast, and folks at central office are fuh-reaking out).

And finally, just to add a little extra juice, to fan the flames of the revolution, they commission a study that declares in no uncertain terms what everyone knows, but which the previous administration worked so diligently to hide: The district sucks.

They ain't learnin' them kids nuthin, so to speak.

And it's not just Dave Smith who deserves praise. I think the current board might well be the best since Brown v. Board, and I've studied pretty near all of them. It's my sense that every single member sincerely cares about this city's kids, and wants to do what's right. They disagree from time to time. But, for the most part, they've kept things stable. And, more than anything, we've needed a stable foundation.

For the first time ever I actually feel some hope for this district. And this $90,000 failing report card is an important early step.

You can't get well if you refuse to accept that you're not well.

history

For the past few weeks I've been listening to an unabridged recording of Truman while I work in the garden -- an interesting experience after having read Sherry Schirmer's brilliant A City Divided.

I'm at the part in the book where Truman goes to the Senate, so I've just listened for an hour or two about his ascent by way of the Pendergast Machine. It's interesting. At times I find myself actually admiring Boss Tom because, unlike the club-members who now run our city, he managed to break more than a few crumbs off the corruption cake for the poor. (Can you picture someone like Steve Glorioso helping down-and-out neighborhood schlubs score decent jobs? Those days are long gone, my friend.)

On the other hand, I'm irritated with how cavalierly McCullough deals with the issue of race in his Pulitzer-winning biography. He throws in a few sentences about how the Pendergast crew -- the Goats, as they were known -- deigned to dole out a favor or two to Negroes every so often, which was apparently unprecedented in this old Jim Crow town. But other than that the historian pretty much ignores the racism that has shaped the landscape of this city more than any other force.

McCullough writes almost adoringly of the wildness of this city in the early 20th Century -- the gambling and prostitution and drug dealing that was so accessible. Meanwhile, Schirmer bears down on this with cutting insight. She shows that Pendergast and his cronies calculated the availability of these nefarious delights so as to contain them to the black part of town, which was itself detained by racist covenents, as well as straight-up terrorism (when blacks dared move to white neighborhoods, their homes were bombed). No mention of this by McCullough. Indeed, he reports that Kansas City was safer than ever during the Pendergast years.

And when recounting the brief ascent of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, he focuses on their anti-Catholic nature, not their lynching ways. He scolds Truman for paying $10 bucks to join the group, and then lauds him a paragraph later for backing out.

And when reporting Truman's liberal use of the N-word as a young man, McCollough so refrains from judgement that he seems to almost adore of his subject's a quaint country ways. When I heard those parts I found myself wondering, How will we get from here to the integration of the armed forces?

We're divided in so many ways. We even have different histories.

But, as Truman himself liked to say -- quoting Andrew Jackson, I think -- to the victor go the spoils.

(And, of course, it helps to cheat.)

johnny appleseed

clash u.s. tv debut

i'm on a joe strummer kick

I'll probably be posting a few more things like this...

snakes on a plane

Attention all KC Blogosperians!

Would one of you please tell me if there's anywhere in Kansas City to experience this:

Should you see Snakes on a Plane? Yes, but if you weren’t in Theater 16 on Thursday night you’ve already missed the greatest showing there will ever be of this movie. I invited my friend Mike to the show, and he brought a printout of the Snakes on a Plane Participation Script. Well before showtime, he helped the audience learn the key lines: anytime the asian bad guy finishes a sentence, yell “…in bed!”; anytime a sentence ends in “snakes,” yell “motherfucking snakes!”; anytime Samuel L Jackson yells at someone, add “...bitch!” for emphasis; etc. It was a little like a Rocky Horror Screening, except that nobody had seen the movie yet. So when the entire theater found out that adding “in bed” actually works for damn near everything the asian guy says, it was hilarity topped with the joy of discovery.

I wouldn’t trust any reviewer who wasn’t in a theater with the electric atmosphere and audience participation I experienced last night. The story of SoaP’s development and production has been one of collaboration between the filmmakers, the fans, and especially Sam himself. For this movie to work that collaboration must extend to the screenings as well. Putting the burden of the entertainment on the film itself is a dereliction of duty by the audience. So print out the wiki, bring some rubber snakes, and do your part!

Via Owen

the waning days bachelorhood

This one is for the benefit of the giddy folks back home: Today I went shopping for wedding dresses with Allie. The one that I really liked only came in black or blue. No, I don't think that's a sign.

At one point I found myself waiting while Allie tried on dresses. I was sitting in a little chair beside a mirror, with my little baseball hat on, watching women shop. It reminded me of when I was a little boy and my mom dragged me to shopping malls and forced me to wait while she shopped and tried stuff on. To bide the time I used to fantasize about owning the mall and turning it into the coolest house in the world. Today I passed the time by wondering what it would have been like to be at the corporate board meeting when they gave the go-ahead for mannequins with hardened nipples. What a moment that must have been.

cold case

Last night, Allie and I watched the ABC Primetime JonBenet sensationalism special. I don't believe this John Mark Karr guy did it. It just doesn't add up. I still stand behind what I've said all along: The Silver Fox did it. True. He died a year before the murder. But still.

Anyway, this seems as good an occasion as any to truck out my Patsy Ramsey story.

In 1996, a few months before the crime, I was in a continuing education painting class at the University of Colorado with the soon-to-be-famous mom. I didn't know who she was at the time, but she left a lasting impression on me.

This was a beginning painting class, and my fellow students and I were so unskilled all we could manage were some muddy streaks across our canvases.

Except for Patsy. She painted a picture of flowers on a porch that was not spectacular but it was good enough to prove that she had some painting experience.

Yet she walked around at the end of class holding up her painting for all to see, asking each one of us, "What do you think of my painting? It's the first one I ever did."

So odd, I thought. Here's this woman in an expensive sweater, the kind with 3D embroidered flowers, lying to me, a $12-an-hour-twenty-something stranger, for approval.

In the ensuing weeks I would abandon any hope of mastering realistic oil painting. I began smearing the luscious colors all over the canvas with my fingers and with paper towels. Meantime, the guy at the next easel started coming to terms with his sexuality by way of a paint brush. One week he painted an optimistic picture of a landscape in Spain -- site of his honeymoon. The next week he came in with the same picture, only now with a man's leg spread across it and a giant red cock dangling down. For the rest of the time all he did was paint penises, and all I did was smear paint. His marriage eventually fell apart, I eventually started smoking pot again, and we became pretty good friends.

But I'll always remember that first night when he and I let go and embraced our paint therapy. Patsy sidled up beside us and regarded our work. She forced a smile and nodded. "Interesting," she said. She didn't show up for the next class, nor any thereafter.

Months later it was the class's teacher who informed me this was the now-famous mom. And still more months later that her painting of flowers on a porch made the news.

Larry Schiller's ponderous, disorganized book about the case was released, and I read in it that there was a painting of flowers on a porch among the things in the basement room where JonBenet's body was found. I was working at the Boulder Weekly at the time, so I wrote up a short little bit about the story I've just shared with you. Apparently, the cops read it, because within hours the class's teacher got a call from the homicide detectives, and she answered questions about whether or not Mrs. Ramsey used duck tape, or something like that.

And the point of all this, I suppose, is only to prove, unequivocally, that Charlie Rich killed JonBenet.

my odds

The Lulu Titlescorer says "The title cross-x has a 31.7% chance of being a bestselling title!"

Considering the number of books that are released each year, those are pretty good odds.

book meme

3 O'Clock in the Morning tagged me with a meme. So, here goes:

1. One book that changed your life.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, because it inspired me to buy a watch, among other things.

2. One book you have read more than once.
Franny and Zooey. Which reminds me, I think I owe Memyi an e-mail. Sorry, let that one slip. Oh well,m good reason to select her for the obligatory tag-you're-it.

3. One book you would want on a desert island
Survive on a Desert Island

4. One book that made you laugh
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

5. One book that made you cry
No book has made me cry, I don't think. Only movies. I did feel a bit weepy, though, when my favorite character in The Corner died.

6. One book you wish you had written
Mountains Beyond Mountains.

7. One book you wish had never been written
I'm not like that.

8. One book you are currently reading
None, honestly. I'm between.

9. One book you have been meaning to read
Dream Boogie

10. Tag five people.
Pom, Sheri, Mark, Leena, Jessi

let's rock again

It was a bit disconcerting to watch the scenes in Let's Rock Again where Joe Strummer doggedly promotes his band, the Mescalero's, as if he were just another hack trying to earn a couple of bucks. We see him knocking on doors at a radio station somewhere in New Jersey, almost begging to be let in, and for the dimwitted DJ to play a song off of his brilliant new album, Global a Go-Go. We see him on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, handing out flyers that he made himself with a Sharpie. Only one person recognizes him, and they don't seem to care.

It's like, Good God! He's one of the most important people in the history of rock, and he's forced to hustle like a windshield washer in Manhattan!!

Still, Joe's ever in good spirits. The film's website says it's "a story about never giving up." Strummer proudly claims to be nothing more than a hack. He says he's played to an empty room. He says he's been from the bottom to the top and to the bottom again, and he's grateful for the ride. His goal is for his album to break even.

But then the tour winds up in New York, and all the arty dignitaries show up backstage -- Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Matt Dillon, and a bunch of other cool-looking important people whose names I don't know. You need a city that big, it seems, to get enough people together to make it seem as though quality translates into popularity, to find a few hundred people who agree with you on the things that make life just a little more than worthwhile.

At one point, Strummer says all he wants is for people to go out and buy one thing that's weird, do one thing to break out of the routine. And in the film's closing minutes Strummer manages to persuade the New Jersey DJ to deviate from the computerized playlist and spin one of his new tracks, one of my favorites, "Johnny Appleseed." He gets another station to do this as well, despite the DJ's protests.

"It's a toe-tapper," he exclaims as the song is playing. He opens the studio door, sticks his head out and yells across the station's office, "You've got a toe-tapper playing now!"