From the Mailbag: Joseph Bednarik, June Jordan, W. S. Merwin, Dan Wilcox, Lyn Lifshin.

The following two letters may be of interest. First, Joseph Bednarik, of Copper Canyon Press, sends word of tributes to June Jordan and W. S. Merwin:


Dear Friend,

Please join us for--and help spread the word about--two extraordinary tributes that will take place in early October:


A Tribute to the Work of June Jordan
Thursday, October 6, 7:30 pm

With special guests Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Cornelius Eady,
Laura Flanders, Bob Holman, Joy Harjo, and others; emcees are Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles, the editors of June Jordan’s new collected poems, Directed by Desire.

Hunter College, New York City
The Kaye Playhouse
695 Park Avenue
(68th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues)
Admission is $12 ($7 for Poetry Society of America members and
students)

Tickets available at The Kaye Playhouse Box Office: 212-772-4448


* * *

A Tribute to W. S. Merwin
Monday, October 10, 8:00 pm

With special guests Lucille Clifton, Edward Hirsch, Naomi Shihab Nye,
Gerald Stern and W. S. Merwin

92nd Street Y, New York City
Kaufmann Concert Hall
(Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street)
General admission $17

Tickets available through the 92nd Street Y: www.92y.org or
212-415-5500


* * *

We encourage you to forward this email to those who may be interested.


Next, Dan Wilcox sends an announcement, via his Topica list, regarding Lyn Lifshin, who, it would appear, has returned once again to live in New York's Capitol District:


LYN LIFSHIN TO READ AND SIGN HER NEW BOOK: THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MY YEAR WITH RUFFIAN AT OPEN DOOR BOOK STORE, 128 JAY STREET (DOWNTOWN) SCHENECTADY OCTOBER 6 AT 7:00 PM

Lyn Lifshin, prolific poet and award winning poet and editor and Niskayuna resident, will read and sign copies of her new book about the famous, tragic race horse, THE LICORICE DAUGHTER: MY YEAR WITH RUFFIAN, prize winning manuscript from Texas Review Press at The Open Door Book Store, 128 Jay Street, October 6 at 7 pm.


This one reminds me that I have an old piece about an Open Door reading, some years ago, that I've considered on and off for the pages of VGS. Anyway, the events all sound like they will be well worth the time and money.

Dan's Topica list can be subscribed to by contacting him at dwlcx@topica.com.

From the Mailbag: 18th Annual Jack Kerouac Festival.

The following forwarded message recently arrived in my mail box from Dan Wilcox's Topica list:

From: teresa costa
Date: September 13, 2005 9:42:14 AM EDT
To: teresa costa
Subject: [poetrybay] lowell celebrates kerouac/check this out:


The 18th Annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Festival will occur October 6-9, 2005 in Lowell, Massachusetts. This year the theme is 'Jack's Roots.' The festival will examine the rich multi-ethnic, and literary heritage that influenced his work as well as his association with classical culture and contemporary events.

This year the festival coincides with the biennial University of Massachusetts Jack Kerouac Conference on Beat Literature.

The keynote speaker is Sam Kashner, author of the book, 'When I was Cool,' his account of being the first poetry student at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. Kashner will speak on Friday afternoon at the O'Leary building, room 222, South Campus, which is located on Wilder Street.

Kerouac was a track and field athlete and a preliminary lead-in event that will occur the preceding Sunday, October 2, is the third annual running of the Kerouac 5K road race beginning near Kerouac Park and ending on Worthen Street.

On Thursday, October 6, Lowell's, Destination World will feature food, film, music, and readings in cooperation with Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! and the University of Massachusetts, with a focus on Franco-American culture with origins in Canada.

Numerous non-conference related events are happening in a number locations. Please check listings and schedules available from the Lowell National Historical Park and the Greater Merrimack Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau for times and locations.

--Saturday will feature tributes to Hunter S. Thompson, Lucien Carr, Robert Creeley, and Philip Lamantia. Poetrybay editor George Wallace is among those who will speak at the Lamantia tribute.

--There will be a talk on Allen Ginsberg by Bill Morgan as part of the Parker Lecture Series, following David Amram's Cairo to Kerouac music extravaganza at the Pollard Library.

--John Ventimiglia, widely known for his role in the film Jesus' Son and the character Artie Bucco on The Soprano's will be joining Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! with David Amram on Saturday night for an evening of Jazz in Jack's Town. Neil Cassady's son, John Allen Cassady, named after Jack (John) Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg will be joining Ventamiglia for an evening of Jazz that also celebrates the DVD release of a performance done by Cassady, Amram, and Steve Edington, at the 2004 LCK! Festival in Lowell. There will also be a raffle at the event for one (possibly two) of the now Baseball Hall of Fame famous Kerouac Bobbleheads!

--In addition to several Lowell National Historical Park (LNHP) hosted Kerouac-related walking tours and a boat tour, LNHP will host a bus tour and an evening walking tour led by Roger Brunelle. Also, there will be a Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! hosted tour of local establishments where Jack socialized with friends and family while living in Lowell during the mid-1960's.

--There will be open mics, a high school poetry contest, book signings, film showings, including one on Michael McClure and one on Charles Olson, nearly 30 events over four days. Admission is free to the vast majority of these events and minimal, or a small suggested donation, at the few that are not free.

For more information see the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! website http://lckorg.tripod.com/, or dial 877-Kerouac. You may also contact Lawrence Carradini, President of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! by email at lcarradini@earthlink.net.


If you would like to subscribe to Dan's (largely Albany, N.Y.) literary mailing list, you can contact him at dwlcx@topica.com.

In the Mailbag: Zack Rogow Replaces Shevi Berlinger.

The following notice has been floating around in the mailbag for a few days and seems worth passing along to those interested in Virtual Grub Street's literary side.


Dear Friends:

I am pleased to announce that Zack Rogow is the new editor and artisticdirector of TWO LINES.

Zack is taking over for our previous managing editor, Shevi Berlinger, whois returning to her native New York to begin her graduate career and becomeinvolved in the literary community there. Zack is also taking on theeditorial duties and many of the artistic functions that I have served sinceI co-founded TWO LINES in 1993. I will continue to serve as editor emerituson the TWO LINES editorial board and as president of the board of the Centerfor the Art of Translation (CAT), and will retain the lead role in planningthe Center's future. I will be working in close partnership with Zack onartistic and editorial matters and will continue to help out on many TWOLINES and CAT projects.

Zack Rogow is a poet and translator of French literature. He was a recentfinalist for the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize and theNorthern California Book Award for his new translation of Colette’s GreenWheat. He is also a past recipient of the PEN/Book-of-the-Month ClubTranslation Prize and the BABRA award for translation. At the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, he founded the Lunch Poems Reading Series with RobertHass. He teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the California College ofthe Arts.

We feel very fortunate to have found someone with decades of experience inthe literary community as a writer, translator, editor, and reading seriescoordinator who has also contributed to TWO LINES several times over theyears and served as a Board Director of the Center.

We wish Shevi all the best in New York and we are thrilled to welcome Zackto the Center. You can reach him at zrogow@catranslation.org.

Olivia E. Sears, President and Founder
Center for the Art of Translation
35 Stillman Street, Suite 201San Francisco, CA 94107
ph: (415) 512-8812
fx: (415) 512-8824
e-mail: osears@catranslation.org
web: www.catranslation.org

The Center for the Art of Translation is a non-profit organization thatpromotes international literature and translation through programs in thearts, education, and community outreach.

More from the Mailbag: David Eisenman and Terry Walton.

David Eisenman, Director of The Fred S. Bailey Scholarship Fund, and somehow member of The Finial Press, saw VGS's Guy Davenport's Memorial Service Was Held This Morning and posted a comment part of which I import to the "From the Mailbag" feature:

Mr. Purdy-- The memorial service came off beautifully. Perfect weather -- 70 degrees and a breeze. For 90 minutes, people famous and obscure spoke of Guy's erudition (a word once or twice pronounced correctly) but primarily of Guy's kindnesses. His prodigious letter writing, to hundreds of correspondents, was alluded to often. Highlights for this attendee were (1) Paul Prather's piece from the Lexington paper, written at the time of Davenport's death, read in his absence (a death in his family kept him away) by Bonnie Jean Cox. It's a beautiful piece centering on how Guy saw promise in the young Prather, and gave him the sort of encouragement that lasts a lifetime; and (2) Nikky Finney's eloquent poem about preparing to live in Guy's house, a case of a poet feeling the presence of her poet predecessor in these digs. It was perfect; look for it to be published somewhere.

Kenneth Haynes, presently of Brown University, also attended the service and read Greek and Latin passages from the classics. The Fessor was highly complimentary of Haynes's classical scholarship. Following his compliments, he would sometimes add, with a tone indicating the profoundest irony, that Haynes was a Baptist!

The Fessor was not at all pleased with the cuts to the story "Wo es War, Soll ich Werden" that he had been called upon to provide for The Death of Picasso : New & Selected Writing (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2003). The Finial Press, manned by aficionados Eisenman and A. Doyle Moore, offered to do a handmade limited edition of the original version of the story. The book was finished shortly before his death. Copies may still be available.


The following arrived in one of my e-mail boxes from another friend of some eight or nine years, Terry Walton. We have shared crying towels after each of the previous two presidential elections. Actually, we spent election night of 2000 simultaneously surfing the channels of two televisions and following the Internet coverage at Terry and Kathy's house. Terry and his wife Kathy moved up to Gainsville, Florida, several years ago now.

Terry has a dedicated mailing list which he keeps informed and entertained -- most recently, as follows:

We certainly learned a lesson from 9/11 -- right?

The following was excerpted from the Washington Post blog:

That's an image that isn't easy to forget: As official Washington bugged out Wednesday in the face of a possible terrorist attack, President Bush was on a bike ride and wasn't told a thing. See yesterday's column for background. John Roberts reports on the CBS Evening News: "The fact no one informed him that the first lady had been whisked to a bunker, the vice president moved and the government's emergency plan launched, would seem extraordinary. The White House insists the president didn't need to know."

FROM TERRY:

Possible reasons they did not tell Bush:

(1) They were worried he would fly out to Omaha again.
(2) Without "My Pet Goat," this president cannot cope with a crisis.
(3) In case of national emergency, only essential personnel should be informed.
(4) Bush had gotten so used to manipulating the alert status of this country for cynical political purposes that he had forgotten that there might be a real threat.
(5) Bush and Rove don't worry because "the more damage done to the country,the more chances for us to seize control."
(6) Bush was busy interviewing his top choices for the next seat on the Supreme Court, John Bolton and Kenneth Lay, and did not want to be disturbed.
(7) Condy Rice decided that the warning of imminent attack was an "historical document."
(8) Dick Cheney is the most arrogant president we've ever had.
(9) They thought Bush would demand that we invade another country -- probably France, because it's so close.
(10) They figured God would tell him.

He is, of course, a moderate Democrat.



Also See:

• Guy Davenport's Memorial Service Was Held This Morning. "The Fessor, for his part, seemed to be fascinated by my marginal, clapped-together existence and entertained by my etymologies and observations on colorful locals."
• Het Nieuve Wereldbeeld: the Magical World of Guy Davenport. "There is not a Puritan molecule in this perpetual universe that isn't instantly and gloriously made at least curious."

More from the Mailbag re Startpage.sj and SearchMiracle/EliteBar

Well, my most recent post has certainly attracted attention. I had intended to write a follow up piece with further (and I hope) helpful information -- and now even moreso. For the moment, however, I will present a couple of items by way of a mailbag piece replying to the comments posted to "Elite Bar Adventures".

First I would like to point out that I have not said, nor should anyone understand, that the Blogspot "Next Blog" button has a virus. The point is only that the random blog approach loads-up blogs, into one's browser, that one might otherwise choose not to visit for reasons of system safety. Presumably, we all try to steer clear of sites that are, for one reason or another, questionable. Regardless (for example) what one might think of sex sites, etc., they tend to purvey much more adware and many more viruses.

Next, many thanks to Timothy Klein for doing a bit of research of his own that I was not able to do. According to Timothy:

from looking at the source for the web-page in question, and downloading the Javascripts it downloads with wget and reading them, this is both specific to Windows AND Internet Explorer.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is my only real choice for the time being , regardless of the fact that I understand it as being the target of virtually every virus or bit of adware presently being designed.

Timothy's comments about the blog "owners" in question are also worth considering:

the author of the blog in question may not even realize their page
is doing this. IOW, they may not be malicious. It appears that the "cover"
action is a bit of Javascript to play music. The author of the blog MAY have
just cut-and-pasted that bit of code, hoping to snaz up their blog with sound.
Or not.

I had no wish to imply that the blog owner was intentionally malicious. In fact, I would be pleased to learn that they were totally unaware and just a little chastened.

I'll quote Rob Thomas's comment in full:

It's really sad you struggled with all those other, wierd,
programs, when the two best ones, hijackthis and spybot are free, small, and
easily downloaded. Also, 'defragging' and 'registry cleanups' do absolutely
nothing to remove adware or virus infestations. Don't waste your time next time 8)

I do not defrag in order to get rid of a virus. Whenever I suspect a virus, or other form of malicious code, is generating new files, perhaps with vital data strings, I alternate anti-virus/virus-removal attempts with defrags -- hoping the latter will maximize computer speed and either 1) alter a data transmission or 2) cause the virus to have to search a bit for where its data has gone. How likely this is, I can not say with certainty, but it seems to help. As for registry clean-up, I'm sorry but I have to disagree there.

More importantly, about Hijackthis and Spybot: In researching the connection between SearchMiracle/EliteBar and StartPage.sj I have come by enough information to say that they were working in tandem much earlier than February 10, 2005, when Panda Software first detected StartPage. A brief check shows desperate forum members crying out for help, to defend against StartPage symptoms at least as early as September of last year. The following forum-post gives some very helpful information, including, it would seem, the fact that neither SpyBot nor Hijackthis worked, at that time, against StartPage: http://www.techsupportnewsletter.com/showthread.php?t=29990

My piece was intended, actually, to be a piece alerting everyone to the fact that StartPage.sj (/sk) was the source of the problems people were having getting rid of their SearchMiracle/EliteBar. I have since learned that it showed up in all scans, of all commercial anti-virus software, prior to February 10th, as quasi-harmless "adware.elitebar". It is designed to overcome resident anti-virus software, as its first task, such that scans indicate it is adware. Instead it is a very sophisticated, voracious and destructive virus. After protecting itself and its Search/Miracle component from detection or removal, it apparently harvests site information and transmits it back to a remote data base.

If Timothy Klein discovered only adware, he is absolutely correct. The initial injection is just that. The adware then pings the data bank and alters the IE browser such that the next software download or information placard that arrives at the subject computer has all of its button-urls replaced with the destination-url of the StartPage trojan. Click! It's all over!

The following free online virus scan and information links have recently been added to the Gilbert Wesley Purdy Online Bibliography: Bit Defender; Free Country; Freedom; House Call; Panda; and Symantec. As I pointed out in the previous post, the Panda Software online scan can also remove StartPage.sj.

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** Have you checked out the Online Bibliography yet? **
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Two from the Mail Bag

One of the interesting aspects of publishing on the Internet is reading the mail. The address gwpurdy@yahoo.com has been spread around the web for several years now. Of course, that means I receive vast amounts of spam. Yahoo has kindly created a “Bulk Mail” folder which keeps it out of sight until I can delete it at my leisure.

It also means that I receive feedback of one sort or another on a regular basis. I’ve decided to pass along some of the more interesting and/or informative items in a “Mailbag” feature. The first item looks bland enough:


From: "MOUN"
To: gwpurdy@yahoo.com
Subject: Congratulations for your nice article
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 13:50:17 -0500

Gibert, Congratulations for your wonderful article. As a matter of fact it is in the english forum. Georges Saati

Email: http://us.f503.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=simi@mrsimi.com - Website: http://www.mrsimi.com/We suggest http://www.moun.com/ for the latest news in 4 different languages!!!Email: http://us.f503.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=moun@moun.com


Bland enough, that is, if it weren’t for the fact that the article referred to is “The Theater of Coup: Who is Guy Philippe.” which appeared in The Catalyzer Journal during March of last year. George Saati appears prominently in the article as “the co-founder of the extreme right-wing Haitian party Movement for National Unity, known by its acronym MOUN,” and a member of “The Opposition” which eventually overthrew Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with scads of U.S. consulting help. Whether or not the letter is actually from Mr. Saati, who can say?


I’m removing all identifying marks, as it were, from the second letter in order to save the correspondent embarrassment. Many of you out there have undoubtedly received letters in your e-mail boxes asking you to help free-up money trapped in a foreign bank. Generally the sender claims to live in an impoverished African country. The family patriarch has died in a political purge, or some such thing, leaving the family account in limbo. The amount is in the millions (US$$) and the money is allegedly trapped due to a legal technicality. The recipient is requested to help to circumvent the technicality by acting as an agent for the sender. The recipient will be entrusted with large sums of money for transfer to a US bank where it will then be safe and will be generously remunerated for his or her kindness. The following letter gives a somewhat vague (but nonetheless recognizable) description of the transaction and a very specific description of the results:


From: XXXXX@XXXXXX.com
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 07:59:54 EST
Subject: XXXXX news
To: XXXXXX@XXXXX.com, XXXXXX@XXXXX.com, gwpurdy@yahoo.com

Here's another important piece of news which everyone in the US should know about.Nov. 28 brought Xxxxx Xxxx an e-mail, which as result, brought the FBI saying for the first time that this scam's check for $55,290.10, which cleared the sender's and our bank, should've been kept by the church. Xxxxxx Xxxxx had sent $6,000 of those monies to cover the supposed costs of the exchange, which was to bring $7.3 million to this poor ministry, along with an authenticate certificate and power of attorney from Europe. After sending the money, he checked upon the company who was supposed to have sent the check. The check was forged. Our secret service and FBI said they had never heard of a scam which the perpatrators sent money in advance, and that Xxxxxx Xxxxx should've kept the money. This loss is not covered by FDIC, and now we are responsible for the repayment of the $6,000. Thanks again for your support, but this is an issue of the attack we find ourselves, which the rest of the nation should be aware. G-d bless.
Rev. Xxxxx Xxxxxxx, Associate Pastor

I receive at least a half-dozen such “requests” each week. Be advised: they are all scams and they must be pretty successful scams if someone is spending all that time and money putting out e-mail and snail-mail letters in vast quantities.