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I’m not exactly sure what happened in this photo, but I like it! 📷
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I’m glad I got to see my friend Amy Lovera’s show at the Anderson Gallery! On top of being an active and passionate teacher and photographer, she makes artwork like this: dreamlike, whimsical, and with a story you can tease out. 🎨 📷
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I gotta admit, this kind of branding does add to a clean public image! 📷 🧼
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Flow (2024) 📽️🐈⬛
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I expected an academy award winner and a visual treat. I was blown away by the perfect editing, stunning music and cinematography, and the soft, gentle fable of dealing with one’s fears.
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The little kid inside me is pleased! 🧩🎮
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Two poems
I’m finding poetry everywhere, these days, like flowers poking up from corners of concrete and asphalt in parking lots, reminding me to look and pay attention. 💬📝
Two that have come up in just the past twenty four hours:
What War Is, Ostap Slyvynsky:
i know you’re afraid of blood so we’ll write it with water
the water the wounded man asked for when he could no longer swallow and just
looked at it
water that seeps through a shelled-out roof
water that can replace tears
Library, Alvy Carragher, from “What Remains the Same”:
Maybe all some people can give you is a way out. / Maybe forgiveness is understanding that’s enough.
(I can’t find Carragher’s poem or the wonderful Centre anywhere else but Facebook, but I promise you the piece is worth it!)
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See on my errands while recovering from illness: 💬
“Why do you permit this autocrat to rob you of one sphere of your rights after another, little by little, both overtly and in secret? One day there will be nothing left, nothing at all, except for a mechanized national engine that has been commandeered by criminals and drunks.
Has your spirit been so devastated that you forget that it is not only your right, but your moral duty to put an end to this system?”
White Rose leaflet by Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell, 1942
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They’ve found a new Robert Frost! “Nothing New” 📝
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Fascism vs. liberalism
John Ganz, in his Unpopular Front post Gold and Brown, in a long but exceptionally well put quote (emphases mine):
[T]he fascist ego and the radical, “anarchist” libertarian ego are identical on a structural level, that is to say, they are the same form of subjectivity in different moments. That is not to say that every single fascist is a libertarian or vice versa, or that they exactly have the same psychological origin story. What they both share is a fundamental misrecognition of the Other: the other is just a thing, some material for exploitation or domination. As such, they cannot understand and fundamentally distrust anything that doesn’t openly declare a relation between self and others that is non-exploitative or based on non-domination. They both cannot recognize any universal interest, only the wars and temporary alliances of particular interests, be they individuals, nations, or races. … Libertarians like to say, “Well, we hate the state, while fascists worship the state.” But this is merely a semantic game. The state as fascists understand it is not the state as liberals and socialists understand it: as the sphere where pluralistic, particular interests are reconciled for the general good. They have no such ideal. They view the state instead as a crude vehicle or weapon for the movement or the race. And neither have any conception of “citizenship” as conventionally understood, a set of inalienable rights: citizenship is a mutable and revocable thing like employment, based on the notion of one’s productive contribution to the whole.
The next time someone asks me to explain why fascism is evil, and why some forms of libertarianism approach this evil, this is what I’m pointing them to. 💬
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A little surprise joy left in a corner of my local bakery. I like to think it was accidentally left behind, and when the owner realized this, let it go with the wish that it would bring some whimsy to everyone’s life. 📸 🎨
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Emily Jane White - Hole In The Middle
This song is echoing in my skull these days, in reaction to the fallout of Trump regaining power.
Everybody’s got a little hole in the middle Everybody does a little dance with the devil And you know I’m evil now, And you shout it loud and proud Singing born in the U.S.A
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The entrance to the Revival Cafe in Somerville. 📸
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Well, after weeks of artfully evading the holiday crud, it surprised and tackled me. Damnit.
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It’s 2025!
I have no hopes for the new year. I’m trying to keep in mind Merton’s advice from Letters to a Young Activist:
[D]o not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on […], you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, as you yourself mention in passing, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.
Merton was talking about sustaining one’s focus and resolve in the face of apathy towards the Vietnam War, not facing down what I will do in this new year. The advice rings true, all the same: “Do not depend on hope of results.” Whether or not I achieve my goals, I will wake up and try my best to live by my principles. The specific people I work for are my friends, my loved ones, and myself.
My only advice to you all this year is: plan your work, make your resolutions, but only devote yourself each day to doing your best by what you value. Good luck out there!
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It’s the little details that make morning routines so pleasant. 🧩☕️
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Currently reading: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Senator Bernie Sanders 📚
Our economic debates should not revolve around questions of resources. They should revolve around questions of intent, of will.
A-bloody-men.
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Finally, 30 years later, watched The Crow. I can see why it’s a cult favorite and why my goth friends adore it. It certainly has pathos and a 90s sense of style. If this is the best in the series, though, I think I’m good stopping here. 🎬🐦⬛
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My bluetooth keyboard died, and I don’t have any spare batteries in my house. Instead, I’m using a huge wired keyboard kept just for emergencies like this. It’s… annoying. ⌨️
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A calm, comforting indie folk tune for your Tuesday. 🎵
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Currently reading: It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Senator Bernie Sanders
Got this as part of a donation, then completely forgot it was coming. 20 pages in and it sounds like an extended stump speech, but it’s early yet, so we’ll see. 📚
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Finished reading: He/She/They by Schuyler Bailar
If you need to hand a relative a book on trans issues and why respecting their identities and pronouns are important, this is an excellent option. It’s thorough and empathic. He might need a better copy editor for his next book, though. 📚🏳️🌈
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Are you a music person or a lyrics person? I’m definitely a music person, but the literature and poetry loving part of me considers lyrics so essential that inanity can kill a song no matter how banger the rhythm is. 🎵
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To whoever did today’s Strands puzzle, well done. Very well done. 👏🧩
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I could smell this lilac bush a block away! 🌸📷
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Obsessing Over Trees in the Forest
Peter K.G. Williams writes about The Small Web and Science. It’s more an overview of the small web movement as a scientist for other scientists, but it echoes a lot of what many have been saying for a while.
This paragraph stuck out to me, though, and I think it bears repeating (emphasis mine):
We can’t, however, take for granted that the architecture of the web will always be quite so friendly to independent operators – protocols and expectations are always evolving. The proverbial “someone” needs to apply pressure to keep the infrastructure of the web friendly to small operators. … My worry here is that the small-web ethos is definitely susceptible to the tendency that you can get in environmentalism and other underdog movements: hoping if enough people just display enough personal virtue, the large-scale problem will solve itself. I doubt that many people would seriously argue that there’s no role for public policy or other forceful efforts in trying to achieve these goals, but I worry the DIY approach can easily become a trap. _Small-scale effort is much easier and yields rewards on much shorter timelines than large-scale action. From what I’ve seen it easily soaks up all of people’s time and energy, leaving nothing left for the big stuff._
It’s good to keep in mind that, just like productivity systems and writing systems and anything that involves upkeep and passion, we can get wrapped up in the details and not pay attention to the larger point of doing it. Like an organizer getting wrapped up in the latest todo app or sorting scheme, and missing the point of doing the work and having the time to do what one wants, that the organization was supposed to enable.
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