RANDA JARRAR

I’ll be attending the taco-eating, Lone Star beer-swilling fiesta that is Austin Texas Book Festival this weekend. I’m on a panel ridiculously titled Removing the Veil. I’ll be discussing how annoying that title is and other subjects at 1PM in room E2.028. All events are in the Capitol Building, which Ang and I used to visit for free Saturday fun sometimes (he’d repeatedly climb the top of the grassy hill and roll down, and I’d read).

When Jefferson Market, our beloved neighborhood cafe, closed its doors last year, we all cried.  Literally.  My son and I mourned especially that their french fries would be forever gone.  Jefferson Maket has since re-opened under new ownership, and yet our grief continues: the new owners don’t make fries.

But this morning, I found out that all that’s changed, thanks to a petition signed by over 60 kids.  The petition is pinned to the wall, and over it, the announcement that on one Tuesday every month, fries will be on sale all day for two bucks.  The first of these magical Tuesdays?  This one coming up: election day.

I don’t want to get to carried away here, but I probably will.  I’m thrilled, and not just because there’ll be fries, but because the democratic system worked for those kids.  They were told that they had the right to ask, and that those on the other end had a right to either approve or not.

I am excited about those kids and their future. Let them eat fries. And vote.

Go here for my donation page. Once you click donate, please type my name in the “purpose” button. It’s all fairly simple and it’s for a good cause!

Thank you.

More about the Write-A-Thon:

The morning of the 15th, [Dzanc Books] will send out a prompt or topic, and [they] will post it on their website.  Writers will then spend the day writing stories, poems, or essays, using that prompt or topic.

Those donating will be sent proof of [writers'] participation via email. [Dzanc Books] will send out the proof of participation notices beginning on Monday the 17th.

Those donating can then either complete their donation via Paypal (see the button to the right), or by sending a check made out to Dzanc Books. [Their] goal for this event is $20,000. To put this in a proper context, that would pay for just under 3 full Dzanc Writer in Residence Programs.

News has emerged that Obama attended a party for-gasp!- a Palestinian “PLO” activist, also knows as intellectual Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times has refused to release the video of Obama’s speech from the party, in case his support of justice, civil rights, and humanity appear too anti-Israeli. Here is the LAT interview. And here is the straight-up ignorant Fox News “report.”

Tomorrow, be sure to listen to Talk of the Nation. They’ll have a segment on the Arab-American vote. If you’re familiar with this blog, then you know that I’m voting for Obama. Now, I know that lots of Arab-Americans are disappointed with how he’s ignored them, and with his stance on Israel. But guys: let’s elect the guy first, shall we? I don’t think there’s room for idealism this time around.

UPDATE: Here’s the story; they changed the title to “Muslim-American vote.” I’m getting really tired of the conflation of Arab and Muslim. The majority of Arab-Americans are NOT Muslims…

The super-hot Palestinian soccer team will be playing its first international at the newly-built West Bank stadium!  I’m so excited.  Go here for more, including an awesome clip showing the team and some really cool Ramallahns at a Ramallah bar.

Galvanize, featuring Q-tip and Najat Aatabou.

This article about the Jack Kerouac Residency in Florida left only one piece of info tattooed on my brain: that Kerouac wrote The Dharma Bums in 11 days.

As a Solution to the previous post, the Mr. suggested I get a –gasp!– typewriter. One trip to Staples and less than half an hour later, I was the owner of a new “Brother,” now sitting proudly in my office.

I’ll let you know how it goes…but so far, so very good.

I’m having a hard time writing fiction on my laptop, which has transformed into an emailing, scheduling, Amazon rank checking, grade-inputer.

Plus, with a full teaching load, I find myself sneaking off to my study in between grading, going to campus, and unplugging (which you need to do a lot of when you have 54 undergraduate students). And lately I’ve been writing in a notebook, something I haven’t done in years.

I thought it was the fact that my laptop is ancient. So yesterday, I went with Mini-Rockslinga to the Apple store, where he lovingly caressed an iPod Touch (there’s a joke going around his school that it’s Michael Jackson’s favorite iPod. Get it? “Touch”) and played several rounds of Tap Tap revolution, and where I cynically and critically examined the new MacBooks. They’re beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something about a plain notebook: the fact that my writing is pretty much illegible; the fact that after I finish a page, I can turn it and not look critically at what I just wrote; the fact that I don’t have the pressure of writing something polished. “It’s just notes!” I tell myself when I sit down to write, and inevitably, lots flows out.

So, one way I’ve thought of achieving this on the laptop is to turn the screen off and plug in a keyboard I can cradle in my lap like a notebook. I wrote A Map of Home on a desktop (which was later lovingly donated to the Goodwill on South Lamar in Austin), and so a desktop is another option. Yet another is to buy an iPhone and do all my emailing that way, and make the laptop completely internet-free.

I don’t know. Anyone out there know some good tricks?