Four Things To Read

The Parents Trying to Pass Down a Language They Hardly Speak, by Kat Chow: “Language facilitates many things: at its most basic, a transfer of information, and at its most complex, an exchange of emotion. But perhaps what I value above all else is that it grants intimacy.” A very interesting article about the value inherent in learning to speak a “heritage language,” the language, say, of your immigrant grandparents, which you never learned, or which you may have had when you were very young, but which you lost as you got older.

6 Iranians, 1 Year After the Iran Protests Began, by Alex Shams: “I live in a city where protests haven’t stopped since the beginning of the movement, not even for a week. Even after the Bloody Friday massacre where the government killed many people. They typically happen after Friday prayers when people gather outside the mosque to march. And they will keep going. Still, the government acted with so much brutality that it is unlikely we will hold a protest quite like last year to mark the movement’s anniversary, since they’re likely to crackdown.” Six Iranian perspectives on how the Women, Life, Freedom protests following the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini impacted and continue to impact both them in their personal lives and the nation as a whole. A follow up to this piece about what kept people in the streets during the protests.

What If Competition Isn’t As “Natural” As We Think, by John Favini: “The bobtail squid, for instance, is famous for its shimmering bioluminescent bottom, a trait that it is not born with but only develops thanks to a glowing bacteria called Vibrio fischeri that it invites into this productive collaboration. This critical trait, in other words, emerges not through genetic mutation selected by competition but skillful collaboration across difference. “ A fascinating article about findings that call the scientific and cultural edifice known as “survival of the fittest” into question.

A Professor’s Remarks on Sexual Consent Stir Controversy, by Vimal Patel: “[Stephen Kershnar] is still employed by the State University of New York at Fredonia, but he has not taught or even been allowed on campus for more than a year — fallout from remarks he made in a 2022 podcast about whether it is ever moral for an adult male to have sex with a ‘willing’ 12-year-old girl. ‘It’s not obvious to me that this is, in fact, wrong,’ he said on the philosophy podcast, as part of a wide-ranging thought experiment about ethics and consent. (As a matter of law, he has said that it should be criminalized.)” I think the quote is self-explanatory in terms of the controversy, but what I find most interesting about cases like this is the implication that, like certain kinds of research performed on living beings, there are also thought experiments that should be beyond the pale. It reminds me of the controversy surrounding this article on transracial identity.

Four Things To See

All by Vincent Van Gogh

Landscape from Saint-Rémy (1889)

Shoes (1888)

Stairway at Auvers (1890)

Head of a skeleton with a burning cigarette

Four Things To Listen To

Squirrel Nut Zippers - The Ghost of Stephen Foster

Miriam Makeba - Pata Pata (Live 1972)

Sir Tom Jones at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert

The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations

Four Things About Me

I hum “happy tunes” in my sleep: My wife was sitting in the next room as I was working on this issue, and I told her I needed four things about me. “This is something I know that no one else knows about you,” she said. “You hum happy tunes in your sleep and you’ve been doing it throughout the thirty years of our marriage.” I didn’t know this about my self until now, and now you know it, too.

When I was in high school, my basketball teammates gave me the nickname Lurch, after the character on the Addams Family, because I was taller than everyone else on the team. One of the rebbes thought that was my real name and, until someone—I don’t know whom--corrected him, he would greet me every morning with a very cheerful, “Good morning, Lurch!” I always got the feeling he thought everyone else was making fun of (what he thought of as) my name and he wanted me not to be ashamed of it. I don’t remember his name, but I have always appreciated him for that.

I just learned that the editors of Big City Lit have nominated my poem, “A Dream in Three Parts” for Best of The Net. The poem appears in my new book, T’shuvah, which you can pre-order here. I’d be lying if I said it wouldn’t be nice to win, but what’s really important to me is that editors—this is the second year in a row I’ve been nominated—think highly enough of my work to put it forward for these kinds of awards.

During 2020, I wrote just about every day in a yearly, page-per-day planner from Leuchtturm1917. I started the project before the pandemic shutdown and continued through January 1, 2021. I set myself a few rules:

• I could write as little as I wanted, but I would write no more than would fit on a single page—or double page on Sundays;
• Once I started typing up what I’d written, I wouldn’t go back and start revising until I finished the year;
• Then, once I started revising, I would do so only in chronological order, making a first pass through the material to see what would survive as a first draft and, again, waiting to make a second pass until I’d finished the entire year;
• I could travel as far back into the past as I wanted in these revisions, but I decided would not include anything that happened after the original date of composition.

Well, we’re about to enter the final quarter of 2023, and I am finally ready to start my second pass through this material, which means deciding which ones are worth moving towards publication and, possibly, my next book. I’ve been working on these poems, in other words, for three years, and I am eager to see what will happen with them next.

Image of Number 4 by rawpixel.com