The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 140, January 15, 2023 (V3 #35)
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. —Martin Luther King, Jr.
In that dive, in that all-night blues and soul club, we feel the full weight of our fate, we taste the nothingness at the heart of our being, we are simultaneously wretched and happy, we spit on it all, we want to weep and raise hell, because the blues, in the end, is about a sadness older than the world, and there’s no cure for that.—Charles Simic
Books and Culture
Three Domestic Fowl Tragedies: While I recover from the dreaded Norovirus, gather my thoughts about dictatorships and health care, and contemplate the Wheel of Fortune and revolutions, here’s a little time travel, Margaret Atwood, In the Writing Burrow, 1/11/23: “In the seventies, Graeme Gibson and I lived on a hundred-acre farm in Mulmur Township, Ontario. Why? We didn’t have much money, it was a lot cheaper, and the theory was that we would be free from the distractions of city life and have more time to write. No one mentioned the distractions of country life, which turned out to be many.”
Olentangy Schools official cuts off reading of Dr. Seuss book during NPR podcast, Megan Henry, Columbus Dispatch, 1/9/23. The book they censored: The Sneetches
The Problem With Silent Spring Environmentalism: A new history of the environmental movement places too much emphasis on famous figures like Rachel Carson and shies away from confronting failures, Scott W. Stern, New Republic, 1/10/23. Book: Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, Douglas Brinkley
4 Euphemisms Our Media Uses to Avoid Talking About the Rightwing Incitement Campaign Against Trans People: We cannot name the hate campaign against LGBTQ people, because to do this we would have to acknowledge it’s not simply a “gender issue”—but a campaign of extermination, Adam Johnson, The Column, 1/9/23
William Morris, Anti-Capitalist Publisher: By drawing on traditional typefaces for Kelmscott Press, Morris showed that he was unwilling to yield to capitalism’s demands for speed and efficiency, May Wang, JSTOR Daily, 1/12/23: “The strong, parallel vertical lines of modern typefaces produced a blurring effect across a dense page of text—quaintly called “dazzle”—that Morris explicitly disavowed.”
A New Flame for Black Fire: What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed, NY Review of Books, 1/14/23: “Perhaps that is the greatest legacy of the BAM—attitude. Along with the other activists of the era, Black artists worked hard to insinuate a strong sense of self among rising Black people, that we are beautiful and strong and capable of creating things that our progenitors would have thought to be miraculous. That we shine to the point of illumination. That we need tolerate no inhibiting forces. Yes, Say it loud…as the song goes.” (quoting A.B. Spellman).
America’s Biggest Museums Fail to Return Native American Human Remains, Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz, Ash Ngu, Graham Lee Brewer, ProPublica, 1/11/23
The Sioux Chef’s Owamni restaurant wows critics – and decolonizes cuisine: ‘We need to reclaim our Indigenous foods,’ says Sean Sherman, the founding chef and co-owner of the award-winning Minneapolis eatery, Isabel Slone, The Guradian, 1/10/23
Fuck the Poetry Police: On the Index of Major Literary Prizes in the United States, Dan Sinykin, LA Review of Books, 1/9/23: “Learn from others. Think collectively. Make an aesthetic of your own. “Poets, descend,” writes Ferlinghetti, “to the street of the world once more.” Out from the shadows, into the light.
‘The right to own a gun in the US is seen as a kind of holy grail:’ In their new book, the novelist and his photographer son-in-law document the sites of mass shootings in the US and argue for urgent change in the relationship between Americans and guns, Interview with Paul Auster, The Guardian, 1/15/23. Book: Bloodbath Nation
Russell Banks on the Time He Fled Bread Loaf with Nelson Algren: Algren Got Fired, Banks Made a Friend, Adam Colman, Lithub, 1/11/23: “It was the kind of writing you could only do if you identified with people who were completely unlike you—which was the case with him.”
Russell Banks died last week. He was a terrific writer and a person whose work and ideas I always admired. Here is my Writerscast interview with him from 2018.
Charles Simic, 84: Pulitzer Prize winner, U.S. Poet Laureate, Wednesday Journal, 1/10/23
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death’s side of the bed.
—from “Eyes Fastened with Pins,” Charles Simic
Kevin McCarthy would burn down the House to be King of the Ashes.—Ellie Mystal
Do we need to appoint a special counsel to investigate the scourge of false equivalence? —Dave Pell
Politicks
‘Our democratic process’: Truman, Eisenhower and the peaceful transfer of power: Seventy years ago today, 20 years of Democrats in the White House ended with simple formality. In the shadow of Trump and 6 January 2021, we would do well to heed the example, Frederick J. Frommer, The Guardian, 1/15/23
Rightwing group pours millions in ‘dark money’ into US voter suppression bid: Tax filings reveal advocacy arm of Heritage Foundation spent $5m on lobbying in 2021 to block voting rights in battleground states, Brendan Fischer, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 1/13/23
America’s Coming Age of Instability: Why Constitutional Crises and Political Violence Could Soon Be the Norm, Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, Foreign Affairs, January 20th issue
Geopolitics and geostrategic competition in 2023: Unfortunately, this is now a thing we need to think about regularly, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 12/19/22
In Politics, Is Older Better? Franklin Foer argues that youthful vigor is no match for hard-won experience, Kelli María Korducki, The Atlantic, 1/5/23
How to Prosecute a Former President: Trump must be charged. But here’s why Biden should rule out prison, Jonathan Rauch, Persuasion, 1/13/23: “Should he be found guilty of crimes, accountability should come in the form of the judgment against him.”
A Chicago Attorney Is Getting Justice For Hundreds Of Wrongfully Convicted People All At Once: Josh Tepfer has helped exonerate 288 people, many of whom were convicted based on patterns of misconduct by corrupt police or officials, Melissa Segura, Buzzfeed, 1/11/23
Is the Fed hiking too fast? Your December inflation update, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 1/13/23: “One way or another, the conquest of the post-pandemic inflation is underway.”
Why The Right Is Losing The Young: And what the woke actually get right, Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish, 1/13/23
Wokeness as prairie fire: How I think America's crusading social justice movement will evolve in the 2020s, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 1/11/23: “As Eric Hoffer pointed out in The True Believer, any crusading ideology has a tendency to go overboard, and yet without those ideologies it’s very difficult for society move forward. And if you like American civilization, then wokeness is something that you pretty much have to accept to some degree, because it’s a deep and fundamental part of that civilization.”
Academic Freedom Is Not a Matter of Opinion: Students should not decide a college’s curriculum, Tom Nichols, Atlantic, 1/12/23: “Academic freedom is not an open invitation to be a jerk. It is not a license for faculty to harass students or to impose their will on them. But if all it means is that professors keep their jobs only at the sufferance of students, then it means nothing at all.”
How Walgreens manufactured a media frenzy about shoplifting, Tesnim Zekeria, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 1/12/23
How the Brasília violence has its roots in Bolsonaro’s war on nature: The unrest came after President Lula unveiled ambitious environmental plans that threaten interest groups who rely on exploiting the Amazon, Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, 1/10/23
What the January 6th Report Is Missing: The investigative committee singles out Trump for his role in the Capitol attack. As prosecution, the report is thorough. But as historical explanation it’s a mess, Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 1/9/23
Reconstructing Ukraine: Optimists and pessimists alike have anxiously begun to weigh the country’s prospects after the war is over, Tim Judah, NY Review of Books, 1/11/23
And rain makes us sad
because it reminds us of the time when we were fish
—Anselm Hollo
In saying that hope cushions the shock of experience, that one trait balances the directionalism of another, a teleology is implied, unless one know or feel or think that we are here, and that without this balance, hope, our species in its blind mutation might have joined many, many others in extinction.—John Steinbeck (from The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
Science and Environment
Three Climate Reports: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Some progress was made in 2022, but the forecast still looks bleak, Elizabeth Kolbert, New Yorker, 1/12/23
Rediscovered 19th-century records help show impact of climate change on plants: Some plants in New York state are flowering an average of 10 days earlier and leafing out 19 days earlier in the spring than they did in the 1800s, YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, 1/10/23
Kristin Ohlson Wants Us to Reimagine Collaboration on the Land: The author of ‘Sweet In Tooth And Claw’ challenges the notion that humans are meant to dominate and control their environment, and invites readers to see themselves as partners with nature instead, Lee van der Voo, Civil Eats, 1/11/23
Can This Beef Cooperative Become ‘the West’s Largest Climate-Smart Ranching Program’? In an industry dominated by a handful of large meatpacking companies, member-owned Country Natural Beef has plans to document its ranchers’ practices and encourage a shift toward more regenerative practices, Caroline Tracey, Civil Eats, 1/11/23
An Illustrated Tribute to the Sato’s Beaked Whale: These shy animals eluded humans for so long. This is the story of their discovery, Rozi Hathaway, Hakai, 12/29/22
Texas Project Will Use Wind to Make Fuel Out of Water: New subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act are powering the race to build the country’s first large-scale producer of “green hydrogen,” Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News, 1/9/23
The Steep Cost of Bio-Based Plastics: Growing crops to make plastic may theoretically reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but at an enormous environmental cost, Matt Simon, Undark, 1/3/23
Oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, analysis shows: Seas dominate global weather patterns and the climate crisis is causing profound and damaging changes, Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 1/11/23
Water pipe robots could stop billions of litres leaking, Victoria Gill, BBC News, 12/26/22
AI legal assistant will help defendant fight a speeding case in court: In February, an AI from DoNotPay is set to tell a defendant exactly what to say and when during an entire court case. It is likely to be the first ever case defended by an artificial intelligence, Matthew Sparkes, NewScientist, 1/4/23
Godalmighty, Exxon Knew Absolutely Everything: Especially exactly how much they were going to heat the earth, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 1/12/23: “These findings corroborate and and add quantitative precision to assertions by scholars, journalists, lawyers, politicians and others that ExxonMobil accurately foresaw the threat of human-caused global warming, both prior to and parallel to orchestrating lobbying and propaganda campaigns to delay climate action action.”
Toyota pushes zero-emission goals by converting old models, Yuri Kageyama, AP News, 1/13/23
‘A public health crisis in the making’: Agriculture pollutes underground drinking water in Minnesota. Well owners pay the price, Madison McVan, Investigate Midwest, 1/12/23
Just one meal of caught fish per year is a significant dose of PFAS: “These fish are incredibly contaminated,” Grace van Deelen, Environmental Health News, 1/12/23
Climate Startup Removes Carbon From Open Air in Industry First: Climeworks cashes in on new technology by selling carbon credits to Microsoft and others, Amrith Ramkumar, Wall Street Journal, 1/12/23 (gift article, no paywall)
Ants Live 10 Times Longer by Altering Their Insulin Responses: Queen ants live far longer than genetically identical workers. Researchers are learning what their longevity secrets could mean for aging in other species, Viviane Callier, Quanta, 1/10/23
Astronomers May Have Just Spotted the Universe’s First Galaxies: NASA’s new JWST space telescope has revealed some cosmic surprises, including galaxies that might have assembled earlier than previously thought, Ramin Skibba, Wired, 1/10/23
Daffodil Song
The horns of yellow
on this plain resound
and the twist on the air
of their brilliance
Say where
say where I will find find
a love
or an arabesque
of such rash fortune.
—Ed Dorn
Birds
Excitement from Irish birdwatchers as rare Penduline Tit is spotted in Cork, Fiona Frawley, Lovin, 1/5/23
Dazzling photographs of flocking flamingos: Travel and landscape photographer Raj Mohan has captured these stunning images of flamingos on Pulicat lake in Tamil Nadu, India. The birds occasionally travel there in response to changing conditions, Gege Li, New Scientist, 1/4/23
Birds bounced back in severely burned Appalachian forests, Erin Blakemore, Washington Post, 1/7/23
Legendary rock guitarist Jeff Beck dies aged 78: Beck rose to fame with the Yardbirds before fronting the Jeff Beck Group and making forays into the jazz-fusion sound he pioneered, Shaad D’Souza, The Guardian, 1/11/23
Of all dispossessed
It's so hard to digest
You've no right to sit down
If you're nobody's guest
—from “This is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr,” by Jeff Beck/Johnny Depp
It’s doubtless trite to say, but the days do seem to go by more quickly every day now. And there is so much going on, it’s no wonder we’re all exhausted by the news. But I know we will carry on, and whatever happens, we must share love and all the optimism we can muster.
“You know we've got to find a way to bring some lovin' here today” (Marvin Gaye)
Stay well, stay safe. Much love — David