The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces: Issue 210, May 19, 2024 (V5 #2)
Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.—C. S. Lewis
Books, Music, Art, Culture
Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92: Her stories were widely considered to be without equal, a mixture of ordinary people and extraordinary themes, Anthony DePalma, NY Times, 5/14/24: “She achieved such compactness through exquisite craftsmanship and a degree of precision that did not waste words.”
Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, In the Writing Burrow, 5/15/24: “Alice had a horror of being misquoted, thus appearing to say things she didn’t think. She hated leading questions….Alice could be quite mischievous, and not only in her writing.”
A Better World: The science fiction of Joanna Russ, Stephanie Burt, The Nation, 5/13/24: “From her 1968 novel Picnic on Paradise, about a time-traveling, take-no-prisoners female assassin named Alyx, to her 1975 pathbreaking lesbian and feminist novel The Female Man, to her collection of essays on feminism, What Are We Fighting For?, in 1997, Russ wrote unsparingly, if also elegantly, against those elements in society that keep women, especially lesbians, from becoming our best selves.”
B-Sides: The Poems of John Rollin Ridge, or Yellow Bird (Chees-quat-a-law-ny), Justin C. Tackett, Public Books, 5/14/24: “Ridge himself was a roiling amalgam of everything the US comprised in the 19th century, and Poems documents that story. Acknowledging “the beauty and the brutality” in this book therefore means acknowledging them in ourselves.”
‘Acid humour was a big part’: the life and legacy of Flannery O’Connor: A new biopic, starring Maya Hawke, sheds more light on the short but impressive life of the American writer, David Smith, Guardian, 5/8/24: “All of her life she had a sense that it was her writing that she was living for.”
‘Give Me Joy:’ Madonna’s genius is not just for controversy, or for pressing on the fissures in femininity, or for her bold support of once-unpopular causes. It is for doing it all with no apology, Joanna Biggs, NY Review of Books, 5/23/24 issue: “One of Madonna’s greatest talents as a performer has been to understand, and play with, the contradictions of womanhood.”
‘My time has come!’ feminist artist Judy Chicago on a tidal wave of recognition at 84: On the eve of her UK retrospective Revelations, the veteran US feminist artist known for her large collaborative art installation pieces such as The Dinner Party – and for dividing the critics – is in celebratory mood, Rachel Cooke, The Guardian, 5/19/24
Death metal, Schubert, nudity: opera about Ukraine dam destruction premieres in Kyiv: Gaia-24 explores human and environmental disaster caused by Russian attack on Kakhovka dam, Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, 5/15/24
Reading Radically: A Reading List of the 1960s and 70s Protest Movements to Understand Activism Today, Jessica Shattuck, LitHub, 5/13/24: “Cathy Wilkerson, James Kunen, Abe Peck, and More.”
The myth of "woke" indoctrination at American universities, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 5/16/24: “It can appear that colleges are indoctrinating students with left-wing dogma ‘because left-leaning students are more likely to enroll in the first place.’ A peer-reviewed study published in January 2023 found that, accounting for this self-selection, attending college today does not have a ‘liberalizing tendency.’”
A Leading Free Expression Group Is Roiled by Dissent Over Gaza: As it cancels events amid criticism of its response to the Israel-Hamas war, PEN America faces questions about when an organization devoted to free speech for all should take sides, Jennifer Schuessler, NY Times, 5/15/24
Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures: Wiley to shutter 19 more journals, some tainted by fraud, Neddi Subbaraman, Wall Street Journal, 5/14/24: “Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue.”
What Does A Healthy Culture Look Like? Manifesto(es), Sam Kahn, Castalia, 5/13/24: “The healthy artistic culture is more democratic than what we have. It looks for interesting, honest, risk-taking work wherever that can be found. It is highly suspicious of any work that slots too neatly into existing power structures. And, maybe most importantly, it is never satisfied with itself: it believes that there is always more of lived life that can be depicted and ‘captured,’ always fresh realms of fantasy and deeper layers of the subconscious that can be explored, always more voices that can be heard from. The healthy culture is looking, constantly, to best itself.”
Why You Ought to Know About Linda Martell: Long before Beyoncé brought her back into the spotlight, the South Carolina country singer was breaking records and charting her own path, Melanie Haiken, Garden & Gun, 5/14/24: “If we can get beyond some of the things that held her back, like race, maybe someone like her could have been celebrated at a time when she had more of her youth to experience that.”
I took myself out to the country to see my mother
She said, “What no-good man has got my lovin' little child’s heart sore”
I said, “Momma, he tells me that he loves me, and then he's out with another
And he's got me right down to the last square on the checkerboard”
—“Bad Case of the Blues,” Written and sung by Linda Martell
Politics, Economics, Technology
There's Always a Reason Nothing Can Change and Nothing You Do Matters: Our media produces a nonstop torrent of ready-made takes and reporting justifying inaction and indifference, Adam Johnson, The Column, 5/16/24: “Legacy media, partisan media, media funded by the rich is—with notable exception—animated not by a desire to expose wrongdoing or produce useful information, but to manufacture talking points, nuggets of superficially-sounding truisms and thought memes about why politics is best left to the professionals.”
How the right is weaponizing pro-Palestinian campus protests in the US: Republicans are using a narrative of chaos and ‘philosophical divisions on Israel’ among Democrats to sink Biden’s campaign, Robert Tait, The Guardian, 5/13/24: “With nearly six months until election day, Biden has time to assert control.”
The World as it Should Be: Reflections on the DePaul Student Encampment, Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav, 5/17/24: “…Jewish tradition views Shabbat as a foretaste of Olam Haba – the World to Come. I added that this is exactly what the students were creating in their encampment. The students of DePaul created for themselves the World-As-It-Should-Be in real time.”
The Real Cancel Culture, Judd Legum, Popular Information, 5/13/24: “There is a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries. Some, like Rufo, are the political equivalent of street brawlers, willing to say or do anything to achieve their objective. Others, like Weiss and The Free Press, give the movement a more journalistic and professional sheen. But no one involved is a supporter of free expression or an opponent of cancel culture. Rather, they are the cultural force aggressively pursuing cancellation.”
The Funding Crisis Behind Teacher Layoffs: A looming deadline is already causing cuts in school budgets, Lora Kelley, The Atlantic, 5/16/24: “Inflation, falling school enrollments, and recent state-tax cuts are all exacerbated by the imminent expiration of a huge tranche of COVID-era federal funds, known as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), which is set to end in September.”
Red flag? Samuel Alito scandal casts further doubt on supreme court’s impartiality: The court will play a crucial role in November’s election. Alito’s pro-Trump flag adds fuel to an already raging ethics debate, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, 5/18/24
That Stench of Corruption You Smell is Coming from the Supreme Court, Jim Hightower, Lowdown, 5/14/24: “Yes, with a straight face, these finaglers claim that if the payment comes after an official delivers the goods, it’s not a bribe, but simply a “gratuity.” Like tipping a waiter for good service.”
Trump’s War on Government Will Take Public Health Back a Century: He and his allies are planning to “deconstruct” the administrative state by stripping its power and forcing out tens of thousands of workers. That will put all of our lives at risk, Abdullah Shihipar, The New Republic, 5/15/24
The Last Time Oligarchs Tried to Take Over America It Led to Civil War: Is America in the final stage of the 40-year transition from a forward-looking & still-evolving democratic republic into a white supremacist ethnostate ruled by a small group of fascist oligarchs? Thom Hartmann, Hartmann Report, 5/17/24
The “Day One” Dictatorship: On the law in a fascist America, Federico Finchelstein, Emmanuel Guerisoli, The New Republic, 5/16/24: “Trump’s claim of ultra-brief dictatorial powers can easily morph into indefinite ones.”
J.D. Vance wasn’t just some hillbilly after all: His journey from author to Trumpist senator is a fable for the GOP’s devolution, Matt Bai, Washington Post, 5/17/24: “Vance isn’t just another wiseguy wannabe, however. He’s the walking embodiment of a Republican Party that has devolved into full-on farce.” (Gift article)
Former Far-Right Hard-Liner Says Billionaires Are Using School Board Races to Sow Distrust in Public Education: The largesse from billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks has made its way into local politics across Texas. Courtney Gore, a Republican school board member in Granbury, says it’s part of their strategy to build support for vouchers, Jeremy Schwartz, ProPublica, 5/15/24
Inflation, Misguided Economics, and the Fed, Robert Kuttner, American Prospect, 5/15/24: “In short, the Fed needs a more realistic target and the BLS needs better indicators, especially when it comes to housing costs. Economists and commentators need to start looking at the structural factors behind many price hikes.”
Extravagances of Neoliberalism: A conversation with Melinda Cooper, Benjamin Kunkel, The Baffler, 5/13/24: “How do we work “in and against the state” when we are dealing with a neoliberal state that is so deliberately antisocial?”
The Rise of Mesoeconomics, William H. Janeway, Project Syndicate, 5/17/24: “The digitalization of economic life and real-world data has opened up new possibilities for the study of the economic networks, regions, and sectors that ultimately determine how economic policies play out in the real world. Such modes of thinking will be crucial for economic policymaking in a new age of geopolitical risk.”
Why is China producing so many export goods, anyway? Six theories, Noah Smith, Noahpinion, 5/17/24: “…the export boom might be incidental — an accidental side effect of China’s creation of the greatest military production machine the world has ever known.”
AP Investigation: In hundreds of deadly police encounters, officers broke multiple safety guidelines, John Seewer et al, AP News, 5/14/24: “Most violations involved pinning people facedown in ways that could restrict their breathing or stunning them repeatedly with Tasers.”
The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel: After 50 years of failure to stop violence and terrorism against Palestinians by Jewish ultranationalists, lawlessness has become the law, Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti, NY Times, 5/16/24: “…how a radical ideology moved from the fringes to the heart of Israeli political power.” (Gift Article)
50 Completely True Things, Mo Husseini, Medium, 5/2/24: “FACT No. 49. Yes, an amazing one-state liberal democracy where Palestinian boys & girls could fuck Israeli boys & girls & make cute babies, & everybody spoke Hebrew & Arabic & we all agreed that hummus and falafel are delicious and Palestinian and sufganiyot are delicious and Israeli would be awesome. But this wonderful future has about as much chance of happening in the near term as this 5'8" 53-year-old Palestinian has being a starter for the Golden State Warriors. A two-state solution is the only workable one.
Here, you said and say, is
where we are. Give back
what we are, these people you made,
us, and nowhere but you to be.—from “America,” Robert Creeley
Science, Environment
The beginning of a new era: How the "global" energy transition is happening in China, Adam Tooze, Chartbook, 5/19/24: “China in the three decades between 1990 and 2020 enacted a planetary scale industrial revolution in one country with such intensity that it entirely dominated global energy growth. Now, since 2015 it has also embarked on the most gigantic green energy push, dwarfing anything seen in the rest of the world.”
How fungi could help clean up our biggest toxic messes: Fungi are nature’s decomposers, using enzymes to break apart organic material. Emerging results suggest they can clean up polluted soils, too, Lori Younshajekian, Environmental Health News, 5/13/24
Forgotten Keepers of the Rio Grande Delta: a Native Elder Fights Fossil Fuel Companies in Texas: An industrial buildout is erasing the last traces of an ancient world, but the Carrizo/Comecrudo, unrecognized and unknown, continue to resist, Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News, 5/14/24: “He knows about the old river with ancient forests and enormous, teeming marshlands of which only glimpses remain. He knows how much was lost and how quickly it happened.”
Rain Comes to the Arctic, With a Cascade of Troubling Changes: Rain used to be rare in the Arctic, but as the region warms, so-called rain-on-snow events are becoming more common. The rains accelerate ice loss, trigger flooding, landslides, and avalanches, and create problems for wildlife and the Indigenous people who depend on them, Ed Struzik, Eos, 5/14/24
A mountainous country loses its last glacier: The demise of La Corona makes Venezuela the first nation in the Andes without a glacier. It won’t be the last, Ana Vanessa Herrero, Matthew Hay Brown, Washington Post, 5/15/24: “The last of Venezuela’s glaciers has disappeared, scientists say, despite an unusual government effort to save it.”
Ancient trees offer clues about how hot Earth is getting. Very hot, they say, Rick Doyle. USA Today, 5/14/24: “Based on an analysis of ancient tree rings that date back to the year 1, last summer was the hottest in the past 2,000 years.”
Wildfires may be emitting more carbon and toxic chemicals than assumed, by changing soil composition: Study, Sharon Udasin, The Hill, 5/14/24: “One way a wildfire can contaminate a watershed is by altering metals into more dangerous forms that can move through the environment and then end up in the water supply.”
Not Too Wet To Burn: Amid an uptick in wildfires, scientists search for lessons on how to save old-growth rainforests from a fiery future, Madeline Ostrander, Hakai, 5/14/24: “While some kinds of forests are adapted to frequent fires—full of species that can survive or resprout after a moderate blaze (like a garden after an enthusiastic pruning)—a damp forest like this historically only saw fire every few centuries.”
Should the Hawthorn Be Saved? These trees once proliferated wildly across eastern North America, but now they’re dying out, Robert Langellier, The Atlantic, 5/13/24: “A small group of prominent southeastern botanists in North Carolina are now trying to set up an official hawthorn consortium to protect the genus, which would formalize and fund special research and conservation efforts for hawthorns.”
How Old Am I? Ask My Poop: By adapting a DNA-based age estimation technique, scientists have a new way to figure out the ages of wild dolphins, Jason Bittel, Hakai, 5/17/24
Solving the Mystery of the Dancing Honey Bees: Thomas D. Seeley Demystifies the Way Bees Collect Nectar For Their Hives, Thomas D. Seeley, LitHub, 5/17/24: “I discovered that the strange-looking tremble was actually a signal that plays an important role in the nectar collection process of a honey bee colony.”
The average Internet user spends 3,230 hours online every year. Here’s the carbon footprint of that: A new analysis suggests that decarbonizing the electric grid and keeping electronic devices in use longer could cut the environmental impact of digital activities, Sarah DeWeerdt, Anthropocene, 5/14/24
The 100-Year Quest to Make a Paper Bottle: Pepsi, Procter & Gamble and Diageo are among companies contending with how to keep drinks fizzy and products fresh while ensuring the bottles can be recycled, Saabira Chaudhuri, Wall Street Journal, 5/15/24: “Their holy grail is a paper bottle that is easy to recycle, avoids fossil fuel-based plastic and—ultimately—boosts sales.” (Gift Article)
Ancient Chesapeake site challenges timeline of humans in the Americas: An island eroding into the bay offers tantalizing clues about when and how humans first made their way into North America, Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post, 5/19/24
How Much is a Planet Worth? Some truly staggering numbers, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, 5/15/24: “Assuming the temperature increases 3 degrees Celsius—which is more or less the track we’re on, and I think pretty much guaranteed if Trump and his ilk succeed in slowing the transition to a clean energy economy—then there will be: ‘a 31% welfare loss in permanent consumption equivalent in 2024, that grows to nearly 52% by 2100. Our results also indicate that world GDP per capita would be 37% higher today had no warming occurred between 1960 and 2019 instead of the 0.75°C observed increase in global mean temperature.’ That is to say, we are buying ourselves, and everyone who comes after us, a life in endless wartime, all because we can’t be bothered to rapidly transform our energy system.”
Across the empty plain
an olive tree goes walking.
A single
olive tree.
— from “Landscape without Song,” Federico Garcia Lorca; trans. Philip Nikolayev
Health, Wellness
Rise of drug-resistant superbugs could make Covid pandemic look ‘minor’, expert warns: Common infections will kill millions if drug resistance through misuse of antibiotics is not curbed, says England’s ex-chief medical officer, Kat Lay, The Guardian, 5/13/24
The Complex Social Lives of Viruses: New research has uncovered a social world full of cheating, cooperation, and other intrigues, suggesting that viruses make sense only as members of a community, Carl Zimmer, Wired, 5/19/24: “Sociovirologists are now trying to figure out just how much cheating and cooperation are going on in the viral world.”
The bed on your side seemed
as wide and flat as Kansas;
your pillow plump, cool,
and allegorical. . . .
—from “Alone for a Week,” Jane Kenyon
Birds
Bird Flu May Be Driven By This Overlooked Factor: what happens when industrial animal operations encroach on wild waterfowl habitat, plus a new bill that supports wildlife on private lands, and gear that could protect farmworkers from avian flu, Grey Moran, Civil Eats, 5/15/24: “California’s Central Valley and the East Coast’s Delmarva Peninsula are both critical wintering grounds for waterfowl, along major North American bird migration routes, and epicenters of U.S. poultry production.”
Climate Change and Housing Adaptation: Owl Edition: After scores of barn owls died in overheated nest boxes, conservationists set out to give the birds less heat-prone homes, Larry Pynn, Hakai, 5/15/24
Kenn Kaufman's The Birds That Audubon Missed: A clear-eyed and exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well, Laura Erickson, For the Birds, 5/17/24: “… a clear-eyed and surprisingly exciting portrait of a time and place that have long ago disappeared, and an important and timely book as well.”
Birthdays:
Robert Creeley, May 21, 1926.
Jane Kenyon, May 23, 1947.
Book news: Cary Fowler, author of Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault: New and Updated Edition (Revised), has been awarded the 2024 World Food Prize for “extraordinary leadership in preserving and protecting the world’s heritage of crop biodiversity and mobilizing this critical resource to defend against threats to global food security.”
Every week, every day, I think about hope and love, family, friends — all of you — and how we must stand together, lean on each other—despite all that challenges us, all our struggles; and while the news is so often so terrible, I continue to believe that we will prevail.
These are crisis times, for sure. Too much of what is happening is on a macro scale in ways that none of us individually can affect.
But what we can do everyday still matters, and will continue to make a difference. We do have the power to make change, just as we have the power to transform experience into art, to make magic with our hearts and beings, and still to laugh and love.
So I will say again, as I do every week here, wherever you are, whoever you are with, whatever you are doing — thanks for who you are and what you do. Please continue to keep in touch. We can get through this. Send messages and news. Hearing from you makes this all worthwhile.
Above all, stay well; share love; work for good. We need each other, now more than ever.
Love from here—David