sparkle hayter

Happy New Year

2011-12-30T05:53:00.000-08:00

For a limited time, my first book, What's a Girl Gotta Do, which came out in January 1994, is available as an ebook, absolutely free, here.

Happy Diwali

2011-10-26T21:30:00.000-07:00

(Satellite photo of India at night via NASA)India celebrates Diwali, the festival of lights.

Josephine and Grace

2011-10-12T22:09:00.000-07:00

A friend posted this on Facebook, The Five Most Bad Ass Teams of Famous People to Ever Join Forces.......which made me think of one of my favorite famous teams, Princess Grace of Monaco and Josephine Baker, who fought racism together--not as dramatic as the other examples, but much more epic.In 1951, back when racism was still wildly popular, Josephine was refused service at the Stork Club

The Way the World Works

2011-10-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

A rich man in Europe owes me a small fortune.I will never see this money. The European artists he exploited, and then completely screwed over, took him to court. It was an arduous, expensive and painful process. Even though they won the case, in the end the artists got very little because the lawyers took almost all of it. It made no sense for the foreign artists to then sue. Between

Eye Candy: Pan American Airways Posters

2011-10-02T21:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen the TV show yet. Is it any good? I'm a big Pan Am history fan, since I was a kid in landlocked Northern Alberta clutching my atlas to my heart. Their posters were the stuff of dreams. Pan Am represented adventure in far-flung places, made less distant by jet travel. The show is set in 1963 so (SPOILER ALERT), this flight, Pan Am 214, is likely to figure into the plot and

Radical Abundance by K. Eric Drexler

2011-10-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is the book I'm most looking forward to reading, when it comes out next year. Drexler, who wrote Nanosystems and Engines of Creation, is controversial and maybe 50 years ahead of his time on some things (he's "active in space politics," and was involved with the Moon Treaty of 1980). But he's also extremely perceptive about the ways the world economy and political landscape are changing

The Cynic of Sinope

2011-09-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

This Smithsonian Magazine piece, the Top Ten Books Lost to Time, made me think of Diogenes, whose writings were lost (many in the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria IIRC). We know of him only through a handful of other writers whose works survived.Fascinating guy. Would have been right at home in the Hotel Chelsea."Diogenes was knee deep in a stream washing vegetables. Coming up to

Fasting to Stop Gratuitous Fasts

2011-09-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

After the success of Anna Hazare anti-corruption fast, all sorts of people are jumping on the bandwagon. Some have done it for a long time, and for good reasons.Some are.. dubious.In which category does this guy fall, you think? My, he does look saintly in those photos.In other news: A Chennai girl writes an open letter to a "Delhi Boy" and unleashes a brouhaha.That long-dreamed for "pie-fax" may

Reflection

2011-09-07T21:28:00.000-07:00

via Azmat Zahra

Return to Iron Mountain

2011-09-02T18:50:00.001-07:00

While researching conspiracies that turned out to be true, I kept stumbling across Iron Mountain. Apparently, 40-plus years after the Iron Mountain report was published, it remains controversial, and many people still believe Iron Mountain happened. In a journalism class in college, we were assigned to read this and write a report about it. The book is written in such a detailed, realistic and

The Dirty Picture

2011-08-30T21:21:00.001-07:00

I'm eager to see this.

Membership

2011-08-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

...because I am thinking today about the idea of "membership," how powerful the human need to "belong" is, and how exploited that need is by popular people and movements. This comes from researching Anna Hazare and the anti-corruption movement, but encompasses so much human interaction. One tweeter noted that Britons rioted for ten days, but Indians changed their world with steadfast

Incredible India

2011-08-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've been reading up on the Hazare protest in India and talking about it to various people, trying to get a handle on it all. So much to learn about India, so little time. As I'm not Indian, it's not my fight per se, except in the global sense because corruption in one form or other is endemic everywhere. In India, it's blatant, vicious and vampiric, though much less so than in other

The London Riots, Zombie Turtle Boy and Shoes, more Shoes

2011-08-18T22:11:00.000-07:00

This is the best analysis I've read on the London riots.

Sing More

2011-08-17T03:08:00.001-07:00

People sing while working in India more than any country I've visited, and in these hills more than anywhere else I've been in India. They sing unabashed. Every morning a Tibetan farmer sings a beautiful song as he passes below my window, herding three cows. He has a good voice. The song sounds old. Many popular songs in India have ancient roots. I wonder who wrote it and if the writer

Cloud Eats Mountain

2011-08-14T21:35:00.001-07:00

Cry of Jazz

2011-08-13T03:43:00.000-07:00

1959. Incredible.

Delayed Dawn

2011-08-13T03:06:00.000-07:00

Three writers look at India, 64 years after Independence.

Ed and Debbie and the Chelsea Hotel

2011-08-12T03:57:00.001-07:00

If you want to follow the continuing story of the battle for the Chelsea Hotel, follow Ed and Debbie's blog, Living with Legends. That's Debbie (L) and Ed (R) after the three of us bent the elbow and shared Chelsea stories at El Quijote a few years back. Ed has written a very good contemporary memoir of the hotel as well.

Dengue Fever: Tiger Phone Card

2011-08-12T01:12:00.000-07:00

We Are Stardust

2011-08-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

"Building blocks of life can originate in space." "The idea isn’t that these building blocks are just passengers aboard meteorites, but that the chemistry inside asteroids and comets can actually manufacture the essential building blocks of biology. And a liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis of sample meteorites and the environments where they were found seems to confirm this. "

Swiss Army

2011-08-08T00:59:00.000-07:00

I love my Swiss Army Knife. This is the one I have now, and I've had this model since 1986. You can crack a coconut or a bottle of wine with this mother. This is the deluxe model.

Fools

2011-08-04T07:09:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare understood fools -- all his characters are fools , fools for love, or power, or money, except of course for the Fools, who are wise enough to see that we are all fools.

View from My Window

2011-08-03T22:54:00.001-07:00

The Last Stage of Grief

2011-08-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

The Chelsea Hotel sale has reportedly gone through. (Go about 4:25 in for the Joe Bidewell song, unless you want to see the birth of Warhol Superstar Viva's daughter first.)It was incredible the Chelsea Hotel was ever created, and a miracle it survived into the 21st century with its soul intact. That miracle was due largely to Stanley Bard and the people he brought together there. He was the

Bits

2011-08-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

The Hotel Chelsea Guest Who Wouldn't Leave.A Dorothy Parker telegram.God's Blog.Stretching.

Obama in the Middle

2011-07-31T05:53:00.000-07:00

Listening to the criticism of Obama from both sides reminds me (again) of the classic Onion headline after his election: "Black man hired for worst job in the world." The criticism from his base is hardest to hear, those who claim he has become--gasp--centrist-right. Meanwhile, those on the right see him as a Maoist Kenyan usurper. I wish they would at least acknowledge that he is making

2011-07-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

"As Jehangir, the red Mohawk-ed Sufi puts it: "Allah is too big, and too open, for my Islam to be small and closed.'"

Monkey at my Window

2011-07-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

He is watching me write. Our eyes meet and he squeals quietly. The rains have let up, briefly, and the monkeys are everywhere, looking for food. Yesterday, I took my trash to the dumpster up the hill and when I threw it in a large monkey jumped out the other side. I put potatoes and cucumbers out on the road for them, away from the building so as not to tame them or get too close. Wild monkeys,

All This Ado Over One Sweet Old Man

2011-07-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

Obama defies China by meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington.What China says.What the Dalai Lama says.

Good News Bad News

2011-07-15T12:37:00.000-07:00

Upside: so many different and beautiful birds here. Downside: So many big, scary insects here. I saw the biggest motherbleeping spider today, and there's something that seems to be a cross between a bat, a bee and a buzzsaw that growls at my windows screens every night.

Travel to Live

2011-07-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

I ran into a French artist hiking with a monk. She said: "It is cheaper to travel than to rent an apartment in Paris, so I travel." A horde of other European backpackers have the same idea, many more than I've encountered before on the road, outside of Europe bien sur. European backpackers are a different breed from the more upscale tourists-- not as fussy or standoffish, generally speaking1

Good-Bye

2011-07-11T20:33:00.000-07:00

I lost a friend this week. That's Brandy on the right. She was a great dog, a loving friend, and a fierce mother and hunter. Her puppies are in homes all over India.On the left is her mate, Ceaser.

Outsourced

2011-07-11T07:31:00.000-07:00

I sympathize with people who have been outsourced because much of the bread-and-butter work writers did to survive has been outsourced to English-speaking students in Asia and Africa at rates around $1.00-$1.50 per 300 words. I'm not going to begrudge them. In the long run, this is good for the world. But it makes my survival more challenging.Much of the anger against India I've encountered in

Bloggage

2011-07-11T00:36:00.000-07:00

Now that I know how to do static pages on blogger, I have reconfigured this site so some topics have their own pages. Conversion of books to e-book form is underway.

New India

2011-07-04T22:06:00.001-07:00

"There are so many ‘caste no bar’ ads in the matrimonials now," I said to my friend Pramod."Yeah, ‘Caste no bar. Must make minimum six figures a month,’" he said.(100,000 rupees=1 lakh=$2275 approx.)

Delhi Belly

2011-07-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

The Censor Board must have been drunk.

2 “Flaky on the outside and concrete on the inside.”

2011-07-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } Deepak1, a friend's cook, made the most delicious parathas. They were light but chewy, flaky but not too, with just the right hint of butter. I watched him carefully, did everything he did, and mine turned out like paving stones. This is not a joke, but a fact, and you could ask my American friend Commander who tried to eat one of my parathas.2 I think it has

Some of us Are Destined to be the Good Guys...

2011-06-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

... and some of us are destined to be the Psycho Sidekicks who support the Good Guys.

A Brahmin on a Train

2011-06-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } I met this auto executive on a train in Tamil Nadu, where he sought me out to ask my opinion1 about raising the prices of commodities in India. It was a highly controversial topic and I gathered he’d taken some flak for it with colleagues and other members of his own class, the “they” in his story. The big arguments against a rise were that it would make food more

Gallieni Station

2011-06-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } It’s 2 a.m. and because of a perfect storm of bad luck and a bad gamble I find myself broke and stranded in the outer reaches of Paris after missing the Eurolines bus to Rotterdam, where a guest room and meals awaited. The driver had absentmindedly put the wrong bus card in his front window, and I waited for bus 7 long after “bus 8” pulled away. The station closed,

Poor Europe

2011-06-29T07:01:00.000-07:00

People who go from the middle class to poverty go with a sense of expectation, entitlement and self-esteem the born and bred poor have to fight to develop against insane odds and obstacles.Most of the time when I was homeless for long periods, it was Boho poverty1, sometimes even Bobo poverty2. When I had my own places, I was lucky, with cheap or reasonable rents, even at the Chelsea Hotel,

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been

2011-06-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

One of the first people I thought about when I heard New York had passed the Marriage Equality bill was Storme Delarverie. It is said she threw the first punch in the Stonewall Riots. Some dispute that, but knowing Storme, I believe it. She was definitely there, and she was definitely a strong, cross-dressing lesbian who took no crap from anyone. I once saw her throw a young guy up against a

Because Deepak Spoke English...

2011-06-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

When I was working in Mumbai, I hired a bazaar tout named Deepak to do some work for me. Touts are hustlers who make their living getting tourists to the most expensive stores and on the most expensive tours so they get a cut. But Deepak took one look at my clothes and knew I couldn't afford it. (Compared to him, however, I was rich.) He helped me find a bookstore a fair distance from the

Great Moments in Female Empowerment Films

2011-06-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

"Look, you, maybe you've got everyone around here fooled with this saint act you have going, but do not ever speak to me again like we don't know what really happened! You got me?"Tess McGill to Katherine Parker, Working Girl

Buy This Book

2011-06-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

This one.

Al Gore: Omega Man?

2011-06-13T16:27:00.001-07:00

Despite Al's troubles of late, I still really like this piece I did for The Nation in 1999.

First Look: Breakaway

2011-06-11T18:32:00.001-07:00

This looks really good:

India

2011-06-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

Just as Bollywood decamps from Mumbai for Toronto, which is hosting this year's International Indian Film Academy Awards, I have come back to India. I had a return ticket that had to be used or defaulted, so I made the choice, India over Toronto. I'll be tweeting and blogging a fair bit about India and Hindi cinema on my filmi blog.

An Yma Sumac Kind of Day

2011-05-26T05:57:00.001-07:00

Alaa Wardi A Capella

2011-05-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

Reason #8764 why I love the Internet...because a young Iranian gent working in Saudi Arabia can, with the help of a friend or two, create something beautiful like this, post it, and within a week get over 150,000 hits from around the world: It's a song he wrote about love, and a girl*. Previously, he sang about being in Saudi Arabia so long he hadn't seen a woman's face in nine months. He tried

Name that Genre

2011-05-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

More Impersonation

2011-04-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

I'm being impersonated/squatted at sparkle-hayter.com. This site has been used in the past to spread malicious software. The site is hosted by Staminus and linked to a gaming site called Mornia.

Nick Charles

2011-03-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

A sad writeup on Nick Charles in SI. Nick was one of the best, smartest and most fun broadcasters at CNN.

The Chinese Art of Cross Talk Comedy

2011-03-04T10:09:00.001-08:00

Here.

What a Dame

2011-02-28T18:33:00.001-08:00

Slackistan

2011-02-24T09:24:00.000-08:00

Banned in Pakistan.

New York in Decline/Detroit on the Rise

2011-01-03T02:35:00.000-08:00

Now that working people and artists have been all but driven out of New York, Paris and other great cities by insane rents, where can they go? Detroit.When I saw those photos, I thought first of the many artists and tradesmen I know who need space, how it made me think of the east Village in the 1980s and the European squatters' movement, and what an opportunity there is in Motown. A fellow

2011-01-01T12:06:00.000-08:00

Trinity

2010-11-26T02:09:00.000-08:00

I am following the story of Tim and Meaghan.

Running Eye

2010-11-23T16:17:00.000-08:00

The Kilometer Zero Running Eye Blog.

Fly You Fools: Your Dad's on Twitter

2010-10-24T06:16:00.000-07:00

"My advice to youngsters: Drugs are not the solution. Try Yoga." From November 2009.

Solomon Burke: None of Us is Free

2010-10-14T11:56:00.000-07:00

R&B granddaddy Solomon Burke, died in Amsterdam last weekend. He was 70.

Greene and Jones

2010-10-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Greene.Jones

David Thompson: 1971-2010

2010-09-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

David Thompson, a force-of-nature in indie publishing and bookselling and a great, great guy, died suddenly Monday. He was just 38. If you google for him you will see thousands of posts and tweets and other tributes from around the world. Someone else noted he is being honored as if he were a king, and deservedly so. I still can't believe it. I owe him a great deal and maybe will sort through all

Busby

2010-09-14T11:32:00.001-07:00

From 1934, when Hollywood still knew how to make a musical:

Harold Lloyd "Chaotic Silence"

2010-09-06T06:50:00.000-07:00

So good.

Paravion

2010-09-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Paravion Press: Simply Beautiful. Great tales, the size of a postcard,hand-made and packaged in an airmail envelope, from Atlantis Books which is one of the world's most magical book stores. They're reminiscent of the magazines that Kilometer Zero used to put out during its heyday--many of the same people are involved in both projects, both of which came out of the legendary Paris bookstore

Unexpected Delights

2010-09-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Do yourself an enormous favor and listen to this.Thanks to my sister-- ages ago she sent me a link to the show, Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein on CBC. I kept meaning to check it out and forgot until a search through my inbox for her cellphone number this week brought up an email with a link to the show, which started me on the podcasts and led me to this. A classic.

I am made of water....

2010-07-29T08:50:00.000-07:00

"I am made of water. You wouldn’t know it, because I have it bound in. My friends are made out of water, too: all of them. The problem for us is that not only do we have to walk around without being absorbed by the ground but we also have to earn our livings." Philip K. Dick

Right to Education

2010-07-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

A landmark education bill, the Right to Education Act, was passed not long ago. Free education is now a right for all children in India. Implementation will be tricky (once again, depending on the state). Luckily, NGOs, individuals and the private sector have done much of the work while the government dithered all these years, creating a foundation for education the public sector can now build

Kitchen Symphony by Ernie Kovacs

2010-07-08T14:36:00.000-07:00

RIP Ernie Kovacs. Happy weekend everyone else.

FAQ: Bollywood Part 1

2010-07-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

How I ended up in Bollywood, Bollywood vs. Hindi cinema, dancing around trees, etc., here.

Good News for Writers of Spy Novels

2010-06-29T23:42:00.001-07:00

The Russians are back.

My new 'Happy Place.'

2010-06-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

Here.

Fly You Fools

2010-06-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Indian web comics. :D

FAQ

2010-06-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

The Name1. What is your real name?Sparkle Vera Lynnette Hayter.2. No, seriously, what is your real name?This is the name my parents gave me when I was born. Seriously. No, they weren't hippies and they weren't on drugs. They were young -- my mom was just 17, and I was the first-born. 3. Were you named after a character in Dick Tracy?Apparently not, though Sparkle Plenty existed before I did. My

The Altruism Gene

2010-06-14T02:36:00.000-07:00

How red squirrels might exemplify the evolution of altruism, here.

Saturday Ramble

2010-06-12T04:24:00.000-07:00

I’m just a terrible blogger, aren’t I? I manage to update my Bollywood blog on a semi-regular basis, because I am doing some writing about the industry, but this one is so neglected the readership must have dwindled to surfers who have lost their way and tumbled here by accident. The blog needs a revival, a bit of fresh blood. So, today, a ramble about gossip. The issue of gossip came up

Karan Calling Karan

2010-04-08T00:13:00.000-07:00

Liked this thoughtful,funny column by Karan Johar, and the whole concept behind it too.

Childish Creativity

2010-03-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

"You are 7 years old. School is canceled, and you have the entire day to yourself. What would you do? Where would you go? Who would you see?"

Thanks

2010-03-19T16:04:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Randa Mills for helping me out and getting links to some short-form writing up on the right-side of the blog. I hope we'll be able to put more up in coming weeks -- I don't have copies of most things I write so there is some serious retrieval involved for some magazine pieces and short stories.

Deadline

2010-03-10T15:53:00.000-08:00

I have a deadline coming up (doing the work-to-eat portion of my life at the moment), so am a very bad blogger. But I still tweet a little and have put together a blip playlist for my current writing project which I hope you'll enjoy as much as I did.

Impersonation

2010-01-31T15:02:00.000-08:00

I am being impersonated on the web, and by more than one person. I am not Sparkle Hayter on Facebook -- someone else had that name when I signed up, just as happened with Gmail, forcing me to add my middle initial in both places. Is that not strange? In a separate case, I interviewed a young cinematographer I had worked with in Mumbai, and he later posted the interview in a few places, from which

"Maturity - to recover the seriousness one had as a child at play."

2010-01-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

The subject heading is a quote from W.H. Auden (paraphrasing Nietszche). It comes from this excellent article about arts education:"Finally, I think arts education, and the self-expression it encourages, can give children a tiny taste of an essential mental state: flow. First proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, flow is a condition of complete and effortless focus, characterized by total

Free Time, Play, A Chance to Meander

2009-12-26T00:11:00.000-08:00

An art teacher I met Christmas Eve noted that the real value of a good art education is not that it will lead to better engineers, lawyers or scientists, though it will, but that children need time and space to be creatively free and have fun. All the schools I have visited so far embody this philosophy. There's also an appreciation for what one principal described as a "healthy naughtiness."

The Annual Christmas Letter: Greetings from India, Country of Miracles

2009-12-23T20:25:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,There are so many things I want to write about, personal and global (the developing situation in Iran for instance). I won't miss most of 2009, which seems to be the case for a lot of people, although personally it is ending on a positive note as a very good project has come to me, and so I decided to focus on that.The project, which came about serendipitously for the most part,

Montazeri Dead

2009-12-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, champion of reform and the Green movement, has died at 87.