Earthblog

Join the Old Town Writing Group on the lustiest night of the year for a reading filled with savage desires, irregular heartbeats, and uncooperative body parts.

Kimberly Fields, Leslie Patterson, Molly Reid, Sarah Ryan, Laura Resau and Carrie Visintainer will read their stories and essays.

Lovers, friends, and misanthropes are all welcome.

Sunday, February 14th, 7pm

The Bean Cycle/ Matter Bookstore
144 N. College Ave.
Fort Collins, CO 80524
970.472.4284

Written by Elliott Johnston

Bret Bertholf (aka Halden Wofford) lends his playful take on Americana to children’s books.

Honky tonk music is primarily concerned with adult problems. Kids don’t really have to worry about losing all those things that people lose in dusty old country songs (jobs, vehicles, lovers, houses, minds). And, because they are too short for barstools, children can’t fully relate to the omnipresent solution said songs offer (the drinking of mythological amounts of booze). So it might be assumed that honky tonk – post-WW2 blue-collar American roadhouse sounds popularized in the ‘50s by bummed-out heroes like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell – isn’t kid territory, because most kids aren’t up to speed on the gross variety of life’s collected drama.

But, as Bret Bertholf asserts in his goofy and informative children’s book The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music, classic country music isn’t just about gloomy grown-ups; it’s about a long line of strange, gloomy grown-ups who dress, talk, and act real funny. For The Long Gone Lonesome History, Bertholf uses colored-pencil illustrations, ropey, handwritten text, bright block letters, and an authentic love of “real” country music (not that country-pop malarkey that’s been staining up the charts for years). The book takes kids through eighty years of country music history, having fun with country nicknames, country hair (from ‘60s Countrypolitan gals with monster beehives, to mean-lookin’, greasy-haired Outlaws), country food, country pets, and more. In one spread, a yodeling primer: “First, pretend you’re swallowing a monkey. Now, sing a high note and get your best friend to pinch you in your posterior. A healthy YELP will get you yodeling. (Now do it louder! NO, louder than that! You gotta scare some dogs.)”

 Published in Matter 12: Press

“I am an exile from newspapers because of the most grievous sin of all—I have lost my belief. I no longer believe that the front page, the business page, the sports page, the arts page can tell a story that matters.”
— Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid

“Remember what I told you a long time ago?” my grandmother asked me over the phone. My ears perked, thinking she was on the verge of revealing some sage advice that she earned through her long years. “There’s no future in the papers.”

Grandma Sue’s hint of ancient wisdom was actually a warning, a taunt of sorts, that she likes to repeat to me quite regularly when I see her in person back East or occasionally when we talk over the phone: Newspapers are a dead end for a smart fellow like her youngest grandson.

My grandmother wasn’t disclosing some lesson gained from a career as an editor at the Washington Post or a beat reporter for Newsweek. I presume her shared insight was something she picked up watching Fox News.

Eating homegrown vegetables year-round without expensive equipment or sophisticated technology seems impossible. Diving into Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest will send you running for your seed packets no matter what the temperature is outside, and will turn most of your old thoughts on gardening upside down.