I just ordered a copy of Vivian Maier: Street Photography and am counting the minutes until it gets here. Maier was a photographer who passed away in 2009. I had never heard of her or seen her work until this week’s New Yorker showed up. But then, many people hadn’t. She supported herself by working as a nanny in Chicago and New York. She took photos, and when she died, left a collection of more than 100,000 negatives and more than 3,000 prints. None were published or exhibited during her lifetime. Two shows are up now in New York, exhibiting her work: one at the Howard Greenberg Gallery and one at the Steven Kasher Gallery.

It thrills me that her work is getting the recognition it deserves. Finally.

Another under-appreciated artist is Carol Shields, an American-born Canadian author, and winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Stone Diaries.” (Carol Shields’s friend, Margaret Atwood, agrees that Shields is not as well-known as she deserves to be.) I know, I know. “Pulitzer Prize” does not equal “under-appreciated,” and plenty of people read “The Stone Diaries” for various book groups after it won. But whenever I’m asked who my favorite authors are, I always mention her and usually people are unfamiliar with her work.

Her final book was “Unless.” It’s fantastic. And oh, how I love “The Republic of Love.” But my favorite is “Swann,” a creepy, gripping, provocative book about a rural Canadian poet who is “discovered” just hours before she is killed.

Enjoy your books!

— wm

Man, I loved Tori Spelling’s memoir, “sTORI Telling.” Yes, she had a writer help her with it, but it’s her voice, her stories, all Tori, all the time. I love that girl. Yes, I was a big 90210 and Melrose Place fan, back in the olden days before there was high-def TV. Her dad was just a crazy writing, producing, Hollywood machine gun of a guy, and her mom is named Candy and loves to buy shit and… The Spellings are as close as we have to royalty in this country we call the U.S. of A., no? Steve and I think her husband, Dean McDermott, is funny as hell, too, cuz he played Stan Ryckman in one of our favorite TV shows ever, The Tournament. (It’s a Canadian show about hockey, it’s as if they designed it just for us.) I love those two, and their kids, and their other kids (their goats) and that’s all. xoxoxoxoxox to you and your family, Tori. Next?

Oh, yes. Next is the bad news. I tried to read Jeffrey Eugenides’s (“The Virgin Suicides”) latest, “The Marriage Plot.” Made it through the first 71 pages. Yeah, you “take a pee.” “One takes a pee.” “One uses the bathroom.” Whatever. (This is an “adult” book.) You do not “pee with taurine force” (p. 59.) (Yeah, your guess is correct. “Like a bull.”) You have breasts. You may even have pale breasts. But a “pale, quiet, Episcopalian breast”? (p. 71.) Now you’re just trying to show off wif your writing, boy. Eh.

Next? “Wildwood,” by Colin Meloy (from the band the Decemberists, and that one episode of the TV show “Portlandia”) and his lovely wolf, Carson Ellis. Was it named for Wildwood restaurant, the fancy-shmancy place in Northwest Portland? Maybe they like to eat there or something. I do not know. Oh! It’s named for the Wildwood Trail in Forest Park, no doubt. There you go.

I do love Ellis’s art — she has done illustrations for Lemony Snicket and Florence Parry Heide and (one of my favorites) Trenton Lee Stewart (“The Mysterious Benedict Society”). She, Meloy and their kid, who is, I’m sure, adorable, as kids usually are, live in Portland, Ore. They are referred to as “hipsters.” (Ellis-Meloy, that is.) Their young adult novel has been getting rave reviews and lots o’ press and wow, what a book, etc. Babies, all I could think about was “Portlandia,” and a ways into the book, I became convinced that Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, who I know, I know, a lot of you find as adorable as the Ellis-Meloy kid is, no doubt… I started thinking that they wrote the book, even though of course they didn’t, it’s Mr. Meloy and Ms. Ellis’s book and chicken people, no, crows, crow people and St. Johns in North Portland oh-my-gawd it’s so hip I could die, and gah…

I’m telling you. Hell hath no fury like a native-born and -grown Portland girl who can’t live there anymore cuz it’s not her people anymore and…

Where was I? Oh, yeah. “What right do you have to even review books? Who are you, anyway, Little Miss Astor Butt?” That’s what my granny would say. Lotta nerve, you, thinking you’re a writer and book reviewer. I. Love. Books. I have a B.A. in English, I write and edit, my kids and husband are all big readers, I come from a family of big readers on both sides, mom’s and dad’s, and… right. I’m a librarian, too, in my free time. You know what a book needs to do? Move me. And these last two just didn’t, fancy words, gushing accolades, pretty covers, what have you. So gimme Tori Spelling. She’s funny, she’s real, and she’s not trying to impress me. She’s self-deprecating as hell. She does something kooky, things don’t turn out well, and she says, Surprise, surprise…

You can keep your hip references and wordy-wordiness, alright? Please, for the love of Mike, don’t be pretentious.

(PS — I purchased “Wildwood” for my kids. They do like Portlandia, but refuse to read this book that I plunked down $17.99 for. The other two I checked out from the library. No disclaimer needed. Although I did get hungry for apple pie, reading “The Marriage Plot.” Two of the characters are discussing when pie used to arrive with a slice of cheddar on top, yeah, I remember that, one of the characters says, followed by no, actually I don’t. So I put the books aside and baked a pie. It was delicious. So there’s my disclaimer.)

all for now,

wm

Lynda Barry, how I love thee. Let me count the ways:

1) In the beginning, there was Poodle with a Mohawk. (“He knew what people thought of his kind: ‘High Strung. ‘Spoiled Rotten.’ ‘French.'”)

2) Then there were Marlys and Maybonne, who always managed to comfort me as they comforted themselves.

3) There was the time I caught a special about Lynda Barry on cable TV. She was introducing an audience to some of her big paintings, and she was amazing, the way she talked about her art. “See? In this one, she’s saying, ‘Perdon?'” She was cracking herself up and I thought, You can be an artist and really have some fun with it. And if people don’t like your stuff, or say it doesn’t count, well, screw ’em. (Honestly, I was already getting that reaction from a lot of people about my writing. Too domestic, too much cussing, and then there was my complete and total refusal to re-write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and claim it as my own. I do love Coleridge, Wordsworth and Donne, but my style is… my own style.)

4) I just really liked the way she put art + words together, and I loved how gritty her work was.

5) Lynda Barry is the best combination of fearless + goofy.

6) Her essay, “The Sanctuary of School,” is one of the finest essays I have ever read.

7) Just fyi: She went to the Evergreen State College. Their mascot is the geoduck. (Pronounced “gooey-duck,” for those of you not from these parts.)

8) She is friends with cartoonist Matt Groening.

9) My old friend Nina and I used to clip Lynda Barry’s cartoons out of the papers and mail them to each other, from the west coast to the east coast and vice-a versa-a.

10) You can pre-order her book, “Blabber Blabber Blabber.”

11) “Well, you little bad asses. How about that?” — Lynda Barry

Wacky Mommy, out.

“She flies with her own wings.”

“I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.” — Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

(“Tears Dry on Their Own” is my favorite song of hers, but I like them all.)

So… so, so, so. Better to write about something bad that happens right after it happens? When you’re all raw and miserable? And you maybe can’t find the words to express what you’re really saying.

Or wait until it’s dulled a little, and you don’t look like some kind of Johnny-Come-Lately? And you can be maybe a little more eloquent?

Who knows.

Russell Brand wrote a really moving piece about the (late) great Amy Winehouse. That one says it all. He’s a talented writer, in addition to being an extremely funny dude.

“Suchawaste” and “whatdidyouexpect?” and “hahashebombedonstageherlastshow” and all kinds of unkindness out there, especially now that we’re all connected with our stupid Facebook accounts, Internet, Iphones and Ipads and blah blah blah. People who would have never had access to you before can tear you apart now, from thousands of miles away. I’ve had a little taste of that myself, but nothing on the scale that Ms. Winehouse faced. I have been guilty, myself, of calling names and pointing fingers.

Being kind is easier, I have found.

The most recent concert and movie I went to, at both shows I couldn’t even see properly because everyone had their fucking phones and devices out and were recording away, sending text messages, thumbing through family photos because they were bored. At the concert, no one stood up to dance. They would have dropped their phones, I guess.

“Am recording myself dancing! Look!”

If you want to watch TV, talk on your phone or surf the web, stay home. I have also had the sad experience of sitting/waiting next to someone (at coffee, once, and waiting for the kids to get out of class, several times), “Oh, hello, how’s your day?” (I’m sociable. Yeah, that’s a bad thing) and they have looked at me like I was going to rob them. Serious looks of horror. Then they pull out the Device and click, click, click:

“Crazy lady just sat next to me. Apparently wants to make conversation WTF???”

We’re nasty with each other, in public and in private. With people we know; with people we don’t know. People don’t introduce themselves anymore, either, have you noticed? We’d rather look at gossip columns on the Internet than turn to someone before the show starts and say hey. “I’ve been looking forward to this show for a long time, I can’t believe we got tickets!” or “It isn’t really my thing, but my kids wanted to come” or “Nice shoes.”

Anything. Anything that doesn’t involve turning away.

I’ve got a lot of sadness in my heart right now because one of the most talented women in the world is dead. You know how I found out? I was surfing the web, and my homepage is a news page. Up pops Amy Winehouse’s photo, and right away I snapped, Why doesn’t the media leave her the hell alone? and I flipped to another site as fast as I could.

Steve says, She’s dead. She died today.

And that’s how I found out.

So. The world is not kind to the addicted, the mentally ill, to those of us who are wired differently. To those of us who say, “Hello, my name is…” Here’s what I learned from my late Daddy, who was schizophrenic: Compassion.

I’m a hell of a long way from being an angel. But every time I see the media going after people, running crappy, ugly photos, making fun of them (“Here she is! Back in court again, are we surprised?” “He lost custody! And it’s about time…” etc.) I just… flinch. Times when people have asked me (and I’ve been asked these kinds of questions, and had to listen to this bullshit many, many, many goddamn times, believe me) re: my Dad:

“Why didn’t he…?”
“Couldn’t he have just…?”
“I would never kill myself, would you? It’s just selfish…” etc.

My favorite is when they use the words “coward” or “weak.” That thrills me all to pieces. Argh.

What I finally came up with (decades too late, but it will serve me for the rest of my life) is this: “Pretend he had brain cancer. Would you still say that?”

Mental illness and addiction and other so-called “weaknesses” need to be treated the same way as any other medical conditions.

Please, don’t ever feel that you have the right to accuse anyone else of not being “strong” enough.

“Well, I would never…”
“She should just…”
“Weak…”

Don’t ever feel that it’s okay to make a laughingstock out of someone, because you just don’t know, do you, how it feels to be inside their skin?

Peace.

— WM

“I saw the book — didn’t read it at all — didn’t think it worth reading — fingered it a little. Mother thought as I did.” — George Whitman, brother of Walt, on “Leaves of Grass”

just remember, when you’re doing your art, you need no one’s approval but your own. thank you. — wm

John was a big flirt and a funny, wicked talented artist. RIP, Big Guy.

“Conscience is a man’s compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one’s course by it, one must still try to follow its direction.” — Vincent van Gogh, painter (1853-1890)

i’d forgotten what it was like living with a musician, Steve has been into the politics and out of music for so long. however, the main reason for our getting the hell out of Portland was so we could say buh-bye to the politics and, “Hey, you! You still love me? Sorry I’ve been ignoring you” to writing, reading and music.

yes, we moved to the suburbs so we could get back to being artists. The Only 2 People in the History of the World to pull that one. People, it’s working. The kids have friends over all the time, or they’re at their friends’ houses. There are parks, schools and empty lots within walking distance. They both are into taekwondo (i read while they kick and yowl). I have never spent so little time with my children in… almost 12 years.

Steve’s got the music studio set up now, it’s pretty cool. and i say this as someone who has nary a musical bone in her body. i like to sing, but I don’t think anyone else enjoys it as much as I do. when i sing with my students, I get them started and they take over on “Chicka-Chicka Boom-Boom,” “Down By the Bay” or whatever else ties in with the book we’re reading for story time. (We mainly sing variations on “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” ie — “The Big Fat Spider,” where you clap your hands and make your voice go deep, and the “teensy-weensy spider,” where you make your voice as tiny and squeaky as possible. No, the 7th and 8th graders won’t sing with me. Come to think of it, they won’t do story time, either. Why???)

So when I heard car brakes screeching (no the boys didn’t get run over, they were on the sidewalk, allegedly), when the girls were slamming the door in the neighbor’s face (sweet. sweet, sweet girls. I made them take over brownies and apologize) and when I heard, “ewwwwww you can see the dead snake from the front window” (in the front flower bed, where Steve left him. next to the dead salamander. neighbor’s cattle dog is a good little hunter)…

i’m thinking, Steve? Where the hell…?

Oh. In his studio. Headphones on.

Guys are so smart.