We changed the WordPress theme. You noticed? Also:

Cary Tennis is writing a new, different Since You Asked column:

• More questions
• Shorter answers
• Mostly about writing and ideas but also other things
• Basically: It’s way differenter!

Why?

• Who’s got the time?
• Long sentences: hard to read on phone
• The kid just wants to do new things

The “Since You Asked” advice column ran on Salon.com for 12 years. It was a rare and beautiful thing. Like all rare things, it arose from rare circumstances. Circumstances change. Really: That’s done.

Now stimulate Cary’s intellectual and literary interests by writing letters to him about the most interesting things you are doing and the practical obstacles you encounter and how you overcome them.

Write about writing and books and poems and technology and the business of publishing and also about:

• Urban Planning and Traffic
• Real Estate Prices in San Francisco
• New poetry
• The Ocean Beach/Outer Sunset neighborhood
• Paris
• Tuscany
• Great short story collections
• Fiction and poetry readings
• Cool bicycles
• Alternative energy sources
• Other things I might not know anything about but am still interested in, like … shoes!

See, Cary  grew up reading Faulkner and Henry James. So long sentences come naturally. But he always thought, I’ll never become a stodgy old guy. I’ll always try to adapt and participate.

Who knew culture would change so much so fast? But it did. So stay nimble, big guy. Stay interested. This is an amazing time to be alive.

Sure, some changes suck. Feel free to write about changes that suck.

But life is short. There’s always breakfast at Outerlands.

What else was great this morning:

• Charlie Parker on the house stereo at Java Beach.