Supreme Court Takes Up Anna Nicole Case:

The Supreme Court shed its staid image Tuesday, giving stripper-turned Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith a new chance at a piece of the fortune of her 90-year-old late husband.

The court said it would hear arguments early next year as part of Smith’s effort to collect as much as $474 million from the estate of J. Howard Marshall II. The oil tycoon married her in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26.

The case promises to be the sexiest of the nine-month term which begins next week.

Had a dream that I was on the island where I used to live, walking on the beach. It was cold–winter, late fall. The sky was all cloud, blue-gray with a white tinge around the edges. The wind was blowing in off the water.

Up the beach near the jetty I saw a structure. As I got closer I saw that it was a house in progress. Someone (couldn’t even see this person, sort of behind me and leaning forward to talk to me) standing next to me on my right side told me that the person building the house was breaking the law. And I said, well, yes and it’s going to get wrecked by the tide anyway.

As I got closer I could see that the cement foundation was in place and on top there were several puzzle-piece shapes of clapboard hastily shoved together to make up the first floor. On the side of the house closest to the shoreline, there were several bags of cement and some sheet rock leaning up against the wall.

I was angry that the house was being built. I was worried about it.

Then when I woke up from that dream and tried to shut my eyes, all I could see was white. It was as though my head were a white cardboard box inside. I opened my eyes again in the darkness of the room and shut them to the same thing–white, boxed. It was the oddest sensation and I wondered what if there was a condition where all you saw was brightness? How would you ever get rest?

Eventually, the dark came back and I fell asleep and dreamed of another house on another beach. This time it was a cottage my family used to rent. On a lake–my favorite place–on a sandbar. My mother and my sisters were there and it was cold. My mother told us we would stay there for Christmas and when I asked her how we could do that (the walls are not insulated and winters there are 30 below) she told me that we would light a candle in the fireplace.

We lit a candle and huddled around it.

And then I slept.

Hurrah! JIM HENSON, MUPPETS, GET STAMPS OF APPROVAL:

Jim Henson and his beloved Muppets were immortalized on United States postage stamps today in Los Angeles at the Academy of the Television Arts & Sciences (http://www.emmys.tv), the same organization that bestowed several Emmy Awards upon the extraordinary artist and visionary, and also inducted him into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. The first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony for the Jim Henson: The Man Behind the Muppets commemorative stamp sheet coincides with the 50th anniversary of Henson’s most famous Muppet, Kermit the Frog, who emceed the event.

Swivel issues #1, 2, & 3 are available for order or you can now order a subscription for $18. Swivel has featured the worker of such writers as Aimee Bender, Vendela Vida, Hannah Tinti, Lisa Glatt, Lauren Weedman, and yours truly (also, in Issue #3 there’s an interview with Melissa Bank). It’s a beautiful journal–one which I read cover to cover. So if you have some extra cash kicking around, maybe you’ll order a copy?

If you are polishing up that story that you think is going to be the ONE that does it this year–that gets you an acceptance from StoryQuarterly, think again:

StoryQuarterly42, already underway, will be guest edited by Stegner Fellows at Stanford. They have wonderful plans for some new approaches to exploring contemporary literature, and are actively seeking manuscripts for that issue, on their own. To give them free rein, StoryQuarterly will not be accepting submissions during this reading period, 2005-6. We will resume reading October 1, 2006 through March 31, 2007.

Me Three issue #2 is now available for order. I just got my copies the other day and think it’s great. So, again, if you have some spare cash, maybe you can use it to support a small lit journal.

For those of you in Seattle or thereabouts:

Cranky will host a reading from its sixth issue on Saturday, October 1 at the Miller Community Center (330 19th Ave E, on Capitol Hill). Issue six includes an interview with the poet Olena Kalytiak Davis, who will be flying down from Anchorage to join us. Visiting from New York is poet (and Verse Press editor) Matthew Zapruder (the issue five interview!). Local contributors reading are John Olson, Martha Silano, J.W. Marshall, Molly Tenenbaum, Scott Tucker, Anna Maria Hong, Sierra Nelson, and Rebecca Loudon. The evening starts with a reception at 6:30 p.m., followed by the reading at 7:15. Please join us. Admission is $4 or the price of a Cranky ($8).

The Mississippi Review has extended its contest deadline to November 1. Read all about it here.

WOW–Jury indicts top US congressman:

The Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives Tom DeLay has been indicted with criminal conspiracy by a grand jury in Texas.

and this one–DeLay indicted in Texas campaign finance probe:

The charge carries a potential two-year sentence, which forces DeLay to step down under House Republican rules.

“The defendants entered into an agreement with each other or with TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee) to make a political contribution in violation of the Texas election code,” says the four-page indictment. “The contribution was made directly to the Republican National Committee within 60 days of a general election.”

I loved the show Get Smart when I was growing up and am sad to hear that Don Adams has died:

The former standup comic who donned a trench coat, launched a catch phrase (“Would you believe…?”) and won three Emmys as blundering, yet self-assured spy Maxwell Smart on the 1960s TV comedy died late Sunday of a lung infection. He was 82.

Yikes. First I’ve heard of this–Dog Flu Spreads Worry Nationwide:

Vets stress that the flu is no reason for pet owners to panic, but they should take some precautions. If you take your dog to a dog park, bring the dog’s own water dish and toys, they say.

Apparently, this is mainly a concern at kennels and race tracks (bah! Race tracks! Shut the evil things down!).

Meanwhile, my friends just added a new greyhound to their home (they have adopted greyhounds for years). His name is Dexter and isn’t he lovely?

New link added to my resources: libraryspot.com, where you can find out such critical information as what your phone number spells

I love good news, especially when it happens to someone cool like Pia Z. Erhardt who just won the Narrative Prize for her story “Famous Fathers”. Way to go, Pia!

How is it that it has taken me until now to read Martha McPhee’s brilliant novel, Bright Angel Time? It is a gorgeous, heartbreaking book following the lives of one family torn apart by divorce (The Coopers–of which the protagonist, eight-year-old Kate, is the youngerst) and broken nearly beyond recognition when they merge with The Furey’s. Anton Furey is Kate’s mother’s boyfriend and it is to him that Kate, her two sisters, and their mother run one summer (the father left them long ago to live with another woman). He is not traveling alone, however. With him are his five children and then whatever other stragglers they pick up along the way, drinking, drugging, and running workshops about romantic love, etc.

It is Jane, Kate’s oldest sister, who is the hero. At twelve going on thirteen, she is wise beyond her years (likely from a lifetime of taking care of her mother) and eager to get things back to normal. And in the end, it is her actions which seem to snap her mother just a tiny bit out of her oblivian and set the families on a course home.

This book took my breath away. It is a beautifully written and fascinating tale, yes, but it was the personal connections I made to it that left me bereft and unable to read for several days after I finished it. It wasn’t just that the Coopers are three daughters who feel responsible for their mother and try to keep her safe (especially from her love interests) but that this book so captures that feeling of drifting, of being a child thrust seemingly parentless into the world that my sisters and I experienced. I was also struck by Kate’s fascination with the Grand Canyon (as evidenced in the title), which has been one of mine since childhood (and one I was able to satisfy nearly four years ago to the day when I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon for the first time). Finally, I have been dreaming of my favorite cousins since I finished reading this book as they so resembled the wild, free-spirited, yet loving Furey’s.

Putting all of the personal connections aside, this book has enough universal appeal to carry any reader forward. If you have not read it, I hope you will.

New stuff:

Bad Sex with Steve Almond: Chestfro Agonistes by Steve Almond

She Was Always Right, by Antonios Maltezos

A bunch of wonderful stuff at Ray Collins’s QUICTIONonline

Fisher update: We have had another visit–this morning, 2AM, outside bedroom window in the front lawn somewhere (impossible to say where exactly but sounded very close, as though it had climbed the oak tree so that it could put itself as near the window as possible), the fisher let out its scream. A chilling sound, several high-pitched yells and then a growl.

I’m finding the fisher not so charming today.