Elation (Restrained)
Bibliographicaless in Richmond


Image: The Sportsfrog.com, August 3, 2004

Billion-eyed audience, I have logged so many hours in front of this computer that I am really content not to be here for a while; except that I have to, but tomorrow.

Suffice to say, the bloated manuscript for Richmond In Rag-time was shipped via electricity and binary code to the History Press in Charleston, S.C. I've not even printed out the thing to read it for the entire view. Too busy writing. At some intervals, I felt a bit like Jack Kerouac and that epic typewritten spool (which I've actually seen at an exhibit in San Francisco, in a class case, like the holy relic it is). Except I had no paper, really, and this isn't fiction.

I am saving my elation until the bibliography is finally done, and I feel confident about my rights and permissions of images, which I've started the pursuit of. I've just scanned my eye over certain sections and I'm already wincing: gotta fix this and that and that.

Maybe tomorrow night we'll go see the No BS Brass Band at The Camel. Sort of a pre-celebration. It is First Friday, and there are some things going on--- Ghostprint, Artspace-- but not in the usual fashion, so those girls who frequently appear here to announce the First Fridayness are communing with their Freya-selves elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the house is a wreck as though we'd had a party of reckless guests, and our live have sort of been on hold, and there is much, much to do.

Then, this afternoon, while with Amie driving in the new to us/old to the world Subaru wagon we have now, we were on the Boulevard. Standing there in the median waiting for her chance to cross the street, in front of the Virginia Historical Society, was the Mona Lisa. Or our version of her. She was wearing a black, arm-baring dress, and her hair down, and the vision reminded me that art begins in a glance, a chance intersection of irreproducible moments.

And questions to solve. Like, why does Firefox all the sudden now fail to load on my eMac? What have I done wrong that blogs in my links aren't showing up?

You know, important stuff.

Then around the office today I hear this strange story about the guy going nuts on a bus in Manitoba, Canada, stabbing a fellow passenger on a bus and cutting off his head while apparently nobody did anything to prevent the horror.

I think this is an Internet rumor; except a few clicks of the button present a reality far worse than I could have imagined. The description sounds like the opening teaser of a very bloody X-Files episode. I would link to it, but, you're adults. You can do that for yourself if you really feel the need.

Leading to the inevitable question: Were I in this position, and could do something, would I have tried? Would this have spurred others to action -- or caused just more injury and possibly more death?

And in Canada? Canada?

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A Book * An Exhibit * A Megaphone

New work by Amie Oliver, above, from the forthcoming exhibit "Walk The Walk" opening September 28, 2007, at the Plant Zero Art Center, in beautiful downtown Manchester, of Richmond, Va.


Here's an invite. Come one, come all. A moving foretaste of what you'll see is here.



[The Plant Zero Cafe exterior: imagine us all gathered there with our coffees of variable mix, chatting it up about all that we've just seen, oh so clever, via Venture Richmnd.]


The entire central gallery will be occupied by her mixed media marvels. At one point, during the three-month duration, a man with a megaphone will appear. Will he know what to say? He resembles this shady character below as assayed by Ms. Oliver.


See more of her endeavors here.

[The Pyramid in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. From Amie Oliver's Sketchbooks.]




But wait, there's more!

Harry Kollatz Jr.--that would be me, your ob't savant-- is on the verge of getting between covers, courtesy of the good offices of the History Press, Charleston, South Carolina. Go here, and scroll all the way down, or here, and do the same.

The slender 128-page volume, priced to move at $19.99, is titled True Richmond Stories, and its cover will look very much like what is reproduced below.

The book will be getting its own website, too, and more of that anon. True Richmond is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and, beginning in October, at fine bookstores throughout greater Rich'mun, Vee-ay. Like: Fountain Books, Chop Suey and Chop Suey Tuey , Black Swan Books and Café Gutenberg.

The in-store appearances I know of at this date are Fountain, Oct. 7 and Gutenberg, Oct. 15. Mo' to come.


You see? I do do other things than sit here in front of his box sending out my cyber- messages in bottles blown from the faux glass of ones-and-zeroes.