it has been awhile. i wish it was otherwise. but i thought i'd just post a blurb i just wrote on Goodreads about the The Book of Life, Volume 1 by Kate White: although there were times when i was lost - which may have been the point - as well as put off by some of the rawer images, i suggest checking out White's work. I read Volume 1 from Cate's The Book of Life. This volume reflexes very well what it is like to be profoundly lost and troubled. That this part of women's lives is documented (in a short form with text and images) is important. Most of us must live alone and isolated with our pain. Not White. additionally, any book that start with a quote by Genet always begins with my approval.

Southern Thoughts ala Andrew Sullivan

This photo from U.S. 80: Exotic Country
reminded me of the South where I was born and, for part of my life, raised. It also got me thinking about the first Editor's Note I wrote when I was the editor of the leftist journal Socialist Review
Red Book
Editor’s Note
I was a shy and bookish child. Soon, I became a bothered child. I remember riding with my family through the South — where I’m from—to stay with my father. As we crossed over into North Carolina, there was a large billboard sitting in the middle of a green pasture. “Welcome to the Land of the Ku Klux Klan,” it read. I knew what it meant and was not surprised it was there. It was the South and was as much a fact of life as the wood-framed gas stations with the Dr. Pepper pop machines out front.
I knew what it meant, was not surprised it was there. But I also knew it was wrong. As wrong as the signs on those quaint gas stations that said “white” on the front of the wooden buildings and “colored” on the back.
I cannot honestly say if it was this sense of wrongness or my bookish curiosity that years later drew me to the sidewalk across the street from Red Book bookstore, a battered red-painted corner commie bookstore — complete with a big yellow star in Cambridge Massachusetts. I know I had not stopped kicking myself for not having had the courage to at least pick up a copy of Old Mole, a leftie hippie fuck-you publication that had folded years before.
I don’t know how many weeks (or months) I went on passing Red Book, feigning casual interest, or stood across the way screwing up my nerve. Even after all these years, there may still be footprints worn in the concrete there, size 7 and a half girls, that I would be hard pressed to say were not mine.
There came a day when I had enough of a reprieve from my shyness that I slipped through the doors of Red Book. I don’t know how long I stayed, probably long enough to figure out a way to slip around the friendly desk clerk. But I can guarantee you that, even if I only had fifty cents, I would have walked out with some piece of literature to read.
It was been 25 years since I mustered up my nerve and walked into the Red Bookstore. But I am still shy. So, I stood for a while outside the Socialist Review wearing out the pavement. But I am still bookish and bothered by that sign I saw 42 years ago. So, I screwed up my nerve, kicked myself in the butt, opened the door and walked into my interview for the editor position at Socialist Review.
As Socialist Review goes to print, Austria’s nazi-praising Freedom Party is now a part of the country’s ruling coalition, the death watch for Mumia Abu-Jamal continues, and prisoners tortured under the hand of New York state governor Nelson A. Rockefeller during the 1971 Attica revolt for it was that, not a riot have been tossed a few bucks as “compensation.”
That old Klan sign may be down but its politics are alive and well...
Published in Volume 27 #3&4, Socialist Review, 2000.