http://kenlayne.com/

What is Greenfriar? This is Greenfriar.

Sun, 13 May 2012 09:28:49 -0700

"But anyone who has seen footage of high-ranking police officers pepper-spraying peacefully assembled..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:28:00 -0700

“But anyone who has seen footage of high-ranking police officers pepper-spraying peacefully assembled Occupy Wall Street protesters will recognize that his beef with bone-headed authority is hardly overdramatized. In fact, it was only a few months after Dignity was published that Occupy Wall Street and its decentralized offshoots sprang into existence.”

- Open Letters Monthly

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Mon, 02 Apr 2012 08:21:32 -0700

Sunday is Bake Bread Day. The little bakery in Joshua Tree was the only place around to get fresh...

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:58:00 -0700

Sunday is Bake Bread Day.

The little bakery in Joshua Tree was the only place around to get fresh baked bread. It closed down about a year and a half ago, and that’s when I had to learn to bake it myself. This is the basic rustic boule, adapted from the Sullivan Street Bakery/Mark Bittman method and made with organic whole wheat flour (and a little unbleached all purpose flour), sea salt, water and a little yeast from the small bag of Fleischmann’s that has been in the fridge since late 2010.

The Great River Organic Milling Company flour comes every three months from Amazon Prime, about $25 per delivery. Other than the $30 Lodge cast-iron dutch oven I got on sale and now use for all campfire cooking and many other things, it costs around a hundred bucks a year to have a big fresh rustic loaf of bread every week — after Sunday dinner and school lunches and general toasting duties, it is usually gone by Wednesday morning.

People do not generally think of early 1990s Eastern Europe as a place to have food revelations, but living in post-revolutionary Prague was the first time I had cheap and plentiful fresh baked chléb. Every corner potraviny had baskets of rustic whole wheat loaves. With a pocketful of coins you could come home with enough bread and cheese and beer to last the week — and then you brought the beer bottles back to the same shop, and exchanged them for more coins, to buy more bread and beer. It was a kind of magic, meaning “subsidized food staples and mindful re-use of bottles.” And it was excellent bread, delicious with anything, hearty and filling.

Anyway, now I have fresh crusty bread that’s also full of protein and minerals and fiber and flavor, for about 27 cents a day plus the 20 minutes of enjoyable labor spread over two days: a few minutes to mix the dough, a few minutes the next day to set up the rising, pre-heating with the dutch oven inside, etc. Baking and eating a rustic bouleevery week is guaranteed to make you happy and satisfied every time.

"The powerful women disciples follow Jesus to the cross and beyond the cross to the empty tomb. The..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:18:03 -0700

“The powerful women disciples follow Jesus to the cross and beyond the cross to the empty tomb. The women disciples are courageous, compassionate and faithful, but the male disciples are fearful, hard-hearted and disillusioned. They deny, desert and sell Jesus out to the rich and powerful for money. We have often heard that the Gospels display a ‘preferential option for the poor,’ but the Gospels display a preferential option for women as well.”

- From Broken and Shared, a remarkable new book by Jeff Dietrich of the LA Catholic Worker soup kitchen on Skid Row.

Interview: Ken Layne, Author and Blogger | The Oculus Online

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 09:23:57 -0700

Interview: Ken Layne, Author and Blogger | The Oculus Online:

Here’s something by Joshua Goldfond from the news arts/culture site, The Oculus Online.

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Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:43:26 -0800

News About Your New Wonkette

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 20:30:00 -0800

So much nice press today, about Rebecca Schoenkopf becoming the new owner and editor of Wonkette, that politics/insanity online publication I’ve been editing for SIX YEARS. I am very much ready to do very different things, but I also love this site and have spent a good chunk of my life writing for it.

Anyway, here’s my comrade Martin Wisckol in the Orange County Register, writing about “Commie Girl” taking over Wonkette. He also includes this strange scene I just barely remember:

My favorite memory of Ken was catching a smoke outside Encinitas’ Daily Double Saloon with him and the incomparably talented Terry Wells. One of the other smokers asked what we did, then asked if it the government allowed us to write what we wanted. Ken explained at length the sophisticated network of censors that guided all journalism in America.

“Wow, that’s incredible,” our new friend kept saying as Layne took it deeper and deeper. “I would have never imagined that could happen.”

And here’s a wonderful Q&A with Becca at the SF Weekly. And the Romenesko thing today was a delightful surprise.

Choire Sicha sent a wise and brief note today. It said “Your Freedom: Embrace It.”

Happy Internet Sabbath Eve. I’ve got 10 iBooks promotional copies of my novel Dignity free for...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 14:24:00 -0800

Happy Internet Sabbath Eve. I’ve got 10 iBooks promotional copies of my novel Dignity free for the asking. First 10 to click the “Contact Me” email button will get the free download code.

Read a review or two, first, to see if you actually want such a book on your iPhone/iPad.

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Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:56:10 -0800

We should probably quit employing Death Eaters in our military...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:51:27 -0800

We should probably quit employing Death Eaters in our military … although that would probably defeat the purpose of having an Imperial Military.

occupyallstreets:

Marine gets no jail time in killing of 24 Iraqi civilians

Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich will not serve a jail sentence following his guilty plea in the killing of 24 Iraqis in 2005, a military judge said Tuesday.

The announcement by Lt. Col. David Jones came after Wuterich took responsibility during his sentencing hearing at Camp Pendleton for the killings in the Euphrates River town of Haditha and expressed remorse to the victims’ families.

Jones said he had planned to recommend 90 days in the brig — the maximum as requested by the prosecution — but that the plea bargain approved by Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser had called for no jail time.

Wuterich, 31, was the last of eight Marines charged in the Haditha killings to have his case resolved. Six had the charges against them dropped, and one Marine was acquitted.

As the squad leader, Wuterich ordered his Marines “to shoot first, ask questions later” as they stormed two houses on Nov. 19, 2005, after a roadside bomb had killed one Marine and injured two others.

Source

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Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:04:40 -0800

Happy new … uhh, never mind. Everybody watch out, for...

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 15:38:03 -0800

Happy new … uhh, never mind. Everybody watch out, for everything!

blog-soup:

This sums it up well.

"TERRY: Because I think what is killing us is the level of comfort, this of complacency. What you..."

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:24:48 -0800

“TERRY: Because I think what is killing us is the level of comfort, this of complacency. What you have said repeatedly is one person can make a difference, we are powerful, we can disrupt the status quo, right? Even at a multimillion-dollar oil and gas auction. And if the government isn’t going to do it for us, if our nonprofits aren’t going to do it, if the environmental movement isn’t going to do it, who’s going to do it? We can no longer look for leadership beyond ourselves. TIM: Yeah, exactly. And I think our current power structures only have power over us because of what they can take away from us. That’s where their power comes from—their ability to take things away. And so if we have a lot that we’re afraid of losing, or that we’re not willing to lose, they have a lot of power over us.”

- Interview: Tim DeChristopher and Terry Tempest Williams | Terry Tempest Williams | Orion Magazine

2012: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy As the Human World Breaks Apart

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:07:53 -0800

2012: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy As the Human World Breaks Apart:

So I wrote my year-end piece for Wonkette, and it’s basically a very long Mayan Apocalypse/2012 rant that ends up yelling at Radiohead for being frauds, because they wouldn’t go play their guitars for 10 minutes at Occupy Wall Street.

(via weather.com US: Departure from Normal-Highs)

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:53:33 -0800

(via weather.com US: Departure from Normal-Highs)

It is never easy to write books. I have less trouble with the...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:48:00 -0800

Spindrift Point.

Evidence of actual work being done.

Sleeping quarters, end of room.

It is never easy to write books. I have less trouble with the actual writing than finding a quiet place to concentrate on the task at hand. Not being rich and usually being poor, there’s also the whole working problem, and it is generally useless for me to try to write anything consequential after a day of typing newspaper pieces or political insults for a website. A long time ago, coming back from a (domestic) Balkan war zone and taking a breather in Budapest, I got in the habit of seizing some quiet place and writing in complete solitude for as long as I could stand, a couple of weeks or a month or whatever was possible.

Smarter people just build a shack behind their house and do the writing there, but I never live anyplace long enough to construct a hut. And so, when deadlines real or imagined make their appearance, I run off to a lair somewhere. A decade ago, I rented a beach house south of Ensenada in the off season, $450 for the whole month. The result was a ridiculous parody of the 1990s humorous detective thriller. But it got published (in Australia), and with the $5,000 I bought an old Jeep that lasted for many years and ended my novelty existence as a Los Angeles resident without a car.

And so I’m up in this one-room cabin on the cliffs near Muir Beach. It belonged to a sailor and writer named Charles Borden, author of many swashbuckling tales of the seas and a great lover of wild places. When he died in 1968, he willed the four-acre ragged point of rock and pine to a conservation group in San Francisco. It is absolutely quiet, except for the low roar of the waves far below, and the entire cabin is built of glass panels with redwood beams and planks. Inside is outside, as it should be, and it feels like a narrow sailboat was stranded on this rock fifty years ago and grew into a house of sorts. From the glass walls, I look down on the backs of pelicans and turkey buzzards drifting by on the air below. A big freighter appears on the horizon once or twice a day, and slowly moves through the Golden Gate.

The West Coast ports will be shut down by the Occupations next week; the Sunday paper had a full-page ad from the Port of Oakland arguing against this, using the language of Occupy Wall Street. (“We are the 99%,” etc.)

Right now I’m working on a non-fiction book that should’ve been finished long ago, but it’s better that there’s a two-year gap between the events and the writing. It is almost always better to think about things for a couple of years. There are so many books, and so many are unnecessary.

Weirdly enough, the only book I’ve written that I’ve been satisfied with is Dignity, and I wrote that in spare hours here and there over about six months. But I could only write when my house was empty, when there was a rare day off work, when everyone else was gone, and some of my favorite chapters were written in my car on windy winter days in the desert, after a hike with the dog.

(It is time to sleep now, after a couple thousand words today. That’s why I am allowed to post nonsense on my own website. Also, as seen in the picture, there’s a history book to read before bed, because it’s always good to have a brain-clearing non-fiction book to look at after a long day of trying to be smart.)

This is from the 30s. What’s that old saying about not learning...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 09:27:27 -0800

This is from the 30s. What’s that old saying about not learning from history?

maxistentialist: Barrett

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 12:05:26 -0800

maxistentialist:

Barrett

Worth another, slow read: @Xeni's Q&A with #OWS Bat Signal Team

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:48:44 -0800

Worth another, slow read: @Xeni's Q&A with #OWS Bat Signal Team:

Mark Read on Boing Boing:

“It’s the beginning of the beginning.” I loved that one. So frequently, things happen in the world that make it feel like we’re at the beginning of the end. But—”the beginning of the beginning,” what a radically optimistic statement that is.

The scale of the environmental and economic crisis we are facing, it’s extraordinary. This movement is a response to that crisis. Our leaders aren’t responding to any of that in a way that is commensurate to the crises we face. And that one sign has always spoken to me. We have to throw off our despair about the future world we might be facing, because if we come together as people and humanity, we can change it. And what Occupy Wall Street makes me feel is that for the first time in a long time that might be possible.

That means a lot to me. This is choosing hope over despair. This is actively and resolutely making that choice. It’s not going to be easy. It’s not going to be over in two months. It’s not going to be just the result of conversation.