With his appearance in the respected "Foley collection," the impending publication of "Near Klamath" by the English Club of Sacramento State College, and the death of his father, 1967 was a landmark year for Carver. That was also the year that he moved his family to Palo Alto, California, so that he could take a job as a textbook editor for Science Research Associates. He worked there until he was fired in 1970 for his inappropriate writing style. In the 1970s and 1980s as his writing career began to take off, Carver taught for several years at universities throughout the United States.
During his years of working different jobs, rearing children, and trying to write, Carver started to drink heavily. He said that he eventually more or less gave up writing and started drinking all of the time. In the fall semester of 1973, Carver was a teacher in the Iowa Writers' Workshop with John Cheever, but Carver said that they did less teaching than drinking and almost no writing. The next year, after leaving Iowa City, Cheever went to a treatment center to try to overcome his alcoholism, but Carver continued drinking for three years. After going in the hospital three times (between June 1976 and February or March 1977), Carver began his 'second life' and stopped drinking on June 2, 1977, with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Carver met the poet Tess Gallagher at a writers' conference in Dallas, Texas in November, 1977. Beginning in January, 1979, Carver and Gallagher lived together in El Paso, Texas, in a borrowed cabin near Port Angeles, in western Washington state, and in Tucson, Arizona. In 1980, they moved to Syracuse. Gallagher was the coordinator of the creative writing program at Syracuse University. Carver was a professor in the English department. He and Gallagher bought a house in Syracuse, at 832 Maryland Avenue. Later, the house became so popular that the couple had to hang a sign outside that read "Writers At Work" so that people would leave them alone. In 1982, Carver and first wife, Maryann, were divorced. He married Gallagher in 1988 in Reno, Nevada. Six weeks later, on August 2, 1988, Carver died in Port Angeles, Washington, from lung cancer at the age of 50. In the same year, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Raymond Carver is buried at Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, WA. The words on his grave are:
"LATE FRAGMENT"
"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?"
"I did."
"And what did you want?"
"To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth."
Carver's career was dedicated to short stories and poetry. He often wrote about blue-collar experiences. These were similar to his own life. In the same way, he often included themes of alcoholism and recovery from his life.
His first published story appeared in 1960, titled "The Furious Seasons." His first collection, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?", was published in 1976. The story with the same name had already appeared in the collection, "Best American Short Stories 1967".
Tess Gallagher published five Carver stories after he died in a book called "Call If You Need Me". One of the stories, "Kindling", won an O. Henry Award in 1999. Throughout his lifetime Carver won six O. Henry Awards: the winning stories were: "Are These Actual Miles" (originally titled "What is it?") (1972), "Put Yourself in My Shoes" (1974), "Are You A Doctor?" (1975), "A Small, Good Thing" (1983), and "Errand" (1988).
Carver believed he would have died of alcoholism at the age of 40 if he had not found a way to stop drinking. When he knew the cancer would kill him, he wrote a poem about that bonus of 10 years, called "Gravy."
Ayale Dahir (2009) - Skidz My Friend
Oscar Hijuelos
Oscar Jerome Hijuelos (August 24, 1951 – October 12, 2013) was an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Hijuelos was born in New York City, in Morningside Heights, Manhattan. His parents were Cuban immigrants. He studied at the Corpus Christi School in Morningside Heights. Later, he attended Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Manhattan Community College. He studied writing at the City College of New York and earned two degrees in Creative Writing there: his B.A. in1975 and M.A. in 1976. He had several jobs before becoming a full-time writer.
His first novel, "Our House in the Last World", was published in 1983 and received the 1985 Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome. His second novel, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love", received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was adapted for the film "The Mambo Kings" in 1992 and as a Broadway musical in 2005.
Hijuelos has taught at Hofstra University. He is a faculty member in the Department of English at Duke University.
Hijuelos collapsed due to a heart attack while playing tennis in Manhattan and never regained consciousness. He was 62 and is survived by his wife Lori Marie Carlson.
Roman consul
A Roman consul was the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.
Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month.
The consuls were usually patricians, though after 367 BC plebs (common people; plebeians) could stand for election as consul.
Consuls had extensive power in peacetime (administrative, legislative and judicial), and in wartime often held the highest military command. They conducted some religious rites which could only be done by the highest state officials. Consuls also read auguries, an essential step before leading armies into the field.
The consuls could convene the Senate, and presided over its meetings. Each consul served as president of the Senate for a month. They could also summon any of the Roman assemblies and preside over them. Thus, the consuls conducted the elections and put legislative measures to the vote. When neither consul was within the city, their civic duties were assumed by the "praetor urbanus" (city prefect).
Each consul was accompanied in every public appearance by twelve "lictors", who displayed the magnificence of the office and served as his bodyguards. Each lictor held a "fasces", a bundle of rods that contained an axe. The rods symbolized the power of scourging, and the axe the power of capital punishment. When inside the city, the lictors removed the axes from the fasces to show that a citizen could not be executed without a trial. Upon entering the democratic assembly, the lictors would lower the fasces to show that the powers of the consuls derive from the people (populus romanus).
Outside the walls of Rome, the powers of the consuls were far greater in their role as commanders-in-chief of all Roman legions. It was in this function that the consuls were vested with full imperium (power).
When legions were ordered by a decree of the Senate, the consuls conducted the conscription. Upon entering the army, all soldiers had to take their oath of allegiance to the consuls. The consuls also oversaw the gathering of troops provided by Rome’s allies.
Within the city a consul could punish and arrest a citizen, but had no power to inflict capital punishment. When on campaign, however, a consul could inflict any punishment he saw fit on any soldier, officer, citizen or ally.
Each consul commanded an army, usually two legions strong, with the help of military tribunes and a quaestor who had financial duties. In the rare case that both consuls marched together, each one held the command for a day in turn. A typical consular army was about 20,000 men strong and consisted of two citizen and two allied legions. In the early years of the republic, Rome's enemies were in central Italy, so campaigns lasted a few months.