Howdy folks:
Welcome to Michael Perry’s Voice Mail, episode 321. This one’s available to free and paid subscribers alike. Click the player above to listen.
In this episode I share how the lingering scent of smoke in my car got me to reflecting on the powerful part fire and emergency services have played in my life far beyond the calls themselves.
Thank you for listening. Scroll down for photos related to this episode, MARGINALIA section, and subscription info.
Mike
If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):
You can share this episode with a friend:
You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:
MARGINALIA
(Annotations from books Mike is reading, or annotations related to the episode)
Back in January of 2025, I covered similar themes in the “Ambulance Karma” episode, including this and other photos:
I continue to buy more books than I can read, and continue to skip back and forth between several at once.
Yesterday I read another batch of 1960s-era letters from this one:
I enjoy New York for the exact reasons Lucia Berlin did not:
(A few paragraphs later she says New York is “pretty groovy” and “We’re relaxing with all the excitement,” which sounds counterintuitive but is exactly how I feel when I’m there—the anonymity of a teeming city refreshes me.
I don’t relate to the misery or fear in these paragraphs, but I do relate to the impostor syndrome, and relate (although with more a wry grin than drama) to the part about “Oh crap, I sold a book idea, now I gotta write it!”
Unless I’m researching a specific project, I tend to read via random selection, and that’s how I wound up reading Lucia Berlin’s letters. Regular subscribers know I read a lot of Joan Didion in the past year, which led to me discovering and reading Eve Babitz. Recently I began reading (and very much enjoying) Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip (currently on pause because my copy had pagination issues and a replacement is on the way) and she offered up Berlin as counterpoint/antidote to Babitz, and so here we are.
You can order Lucia Berlin’s Welcome Home at BookShop.org or Amazon.
I’m reading Berlin’s letters as a prequel to reading her short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women, available at BookShop.org or Amazon.
The book Didion and Babitz is available on Bookshop.org or Amazon.
Meaghan Garvey’s Midwestern Death Trip is available at BookShop.org or Amazon).
Those are all affilliate links, we get a penny in the jar.
All my books including Population 485 are available at the Sneezing Cow store, as well as T-shirts, recordings, the PBS specials, sneezing cow koozies, and shirts including this one:
The Sneezing Cow TikTok is here and the Instagram is here.
If you’d like to receive all episodes of Michael Perry’s Voice Mail (paying subscribers get advance reads, advance news, and materials not shared on social media), click on the button below (it says “Subscribe Now” but you won’t actually be subscribed until you review your options and confirm):
You can share this episode with a friend:
You can give a Voice Mail gift subscription:
Above all, as ever: Thank you.
