Hi Friends,
I’m late—life has overtaken my best intentions, but in California, it’s still (late) morning, so I’m finishing up and recording. There will probably be some noises like barking dogs and people coming in the house because we’re gathering to go to an organ concert later.
I’ve been hiding out a bit for a few weeks. I finished up a two-week course of Fluorouracil, a sort of chemotherapy cream, for pre-cancers/basal cell carcinoma on my chest. Fluorouracil has an interesting quality: if there are no cancers or pre-cancers, it will not affect the skin. If there are, it will burn the skin into hot, stinging, itching red spots. I knew a had a patch of trouble that would light up, but was quite surprised to have my chest and lower neck turn into a solid boiled lobster.
My theory for why my dermatologist is now regularly prescribing Fluorouracil to me is that I burned the hell out of my face, neck, arms and chest while on the numerous backpacking trips I took as a teen. I loved being in nature with only a few friends. It’s an experience of the numinous, the stars, the evergreens, the I-Thou in near solitude. In inland Southern California, such trips mostly meant boulder hopping on black-flecked white granite, the summer sun reflecting off them, reaching under our hats and burning our skin in the days before sunscreen was available.
So, I’ve spent most of my time inside in the last two weeks. Since I’m in a semi-permanent writer’s block situation, I worked on a sewing/quilt project that includes some embroidery. I’m quite the novice embroiderer, but I just need to do simple stitches—back stitch, stem stitch, satin and lazy daisy stitches. But in starting, I realized that I will be at this for many months. I decided to catch up on some podcasts and audiobooks while I was working. I caught up on some episodes of TSNOTYAWThe S**t About Writing Team (how to query agents) and listened to Allison Lane’s Author Edge, which is full of hints on pitching your book to agents and publishers as well as creating a platform/reader connections. A lot of it is for nonfiction book authors (generally not me), but there is crossover to fiction. Lastly, I listened to all of E. Jean Carroll’s Not My Type (discussion below in “What I’m Reading”).
I Venture Out
I bought a few very high-neck shirts to hide my chest and went out to Riverside, CA last weekend to man a table (Woman a table? Hang out at a table and answer questions.) for the Inlandia Institute at the Riverside County Office of Education’s Arts Conference. I had fun chatting with visual and performing arts teachers. I bought a picture book from a delightful young man, Ezra Edmond, who, as a child, had met LeVar Burton and decided to write about it. I sent it to my niece, who teaches elementary students. I figured she either could use it or would know another teacher who could. Here a bit about it:
“It’s in a book” — How Levar Burton inspired this children’s book author to write his own story.
I even attended a culinary arts session on how to make tortillas and relate the lesson to STEM classes at the same time. My mother-in-law used to make delicious flour tortillas. Those I made in the session were pretty yummy, but not quite as good as hers because she used lard (manteca) and this was a healthier recipe that used avocado oil.
The Cheech
I also had the chance to go to the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts and Culture. I got to tag along with Cati Porter, who is a museum member and the Executive Director of Inlandia. The museum is housed in the former main library, so I’d been in the building many times, but this was my first chance to view the art. I loved the sculpture next to the founders wall. It’s in the top photo, above. I wish it could be my Be a Cactus banner! A heart birthing a cactus. Perfect! Here are a few other paintings and pieces I enjoyed. Afterwards, I went to Tio’s Tacos, famous for its metal scrap art (and yummy tacos).
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Tio’s Tacos
Riverside Public Art—Cesar Chavez
Don’t forget positive news
Reasons to be Cheerful lost some grant funding and is coming to the end of a fundraiser. I’ve mentioned how I like to receive their emails because there’s always something good happening in the world, even in dark times. I want it to continue, so I made a small donation. This is a recent article I liked:
“How Norway Is Proving That Homelessness Is a Solvable Problem”
If you need some good news regularly, this is a great place to get it.
AI
I’ve shared some wacky AI results of mine in the past. Humorist Dave Barry had a strange ‘conversation’ with Google’s AI results about himself and his supposed death. Very funny, but also, not.
The things I’ve ever curious about
I recently subscribed to Deirdre Sugiuchi. She has a past as a public school librarian (as have I) and, as a teen, she was sent to a Christian reform school for troubled teens, which overlaps with my interest in spiritual abuse. She has a book about the experience coming out in 2027, and, in this post, links to many articles she’s written on her experience.
What I’m Reading
A Public Space is having a free discussion of The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. I read the novel about five years ago when my son recommended it to me. He read it in Spanish, but my Spanish is pretty elementary, so I had to read it in English. I found it very good. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.
The narrator is a fugitive who has escaped to a deserted island. And then he realizes he isn’t alone. He spies on the few inhabitants and is intrigued by the repetitions of their behaviors. Eventually, he understands that they can’t see him. He wonders about his own existence, whether he is simply a hallucination, all while he is falling in love with a woman named Faustine. Morel contends with many literary themes (love, reality, loneliness), but of them the most intriguing to me was ‘consciousness.’ At the time I read it, my mother was dying after about a dozen years of increasing dementia. I always puzzle over the disappearance of her consciousness, of her cruel fate. In the foreword to Morel, Jorge Luis Borges says it’s a “perfect” novel. It’s short, intriguing, and as my son says, it has one of the best first lines in all of fiction: “Today, on the island, a miracle happened: summer came ahead of time.”
If you have read Morel, you might want to attend the discussion tomorrow, July 21.
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares: A Conversation with Antoine Wilson and A Public Space
I got The Grace Paley Reader for a birthday gift. It was lost in the mail room at my son’s apartment building for a while, but I have it now! Moves to the top of the TBR pile!
Books on Religion
I read Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels and will discuss it soon. I have been reading Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch for a while. It’s 650 dense pages, 500 of which are the text of the book and 150 of which are recommended reading, endnotes and an index. I don’t know if you also do this, but when another one of my library holds comes in, I put aside the tome I’m reading in order to finish the popular book that I won’t be able to renew because others are waiting for it. This is what I’ve been doing with Lower than the Angels. I’m less than half finished.
Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
I wanted to hear the story of someone who had a win over Trump. I listened to Not My Type while embroidering. You probably know this is a memoir about the civil trial against Trump for the damage to Carroll's reputation when he called her a liar over her statement that he raped her. And all that play-by-play trial testimony is a pretty rough go. The recounting of the behavior of the various lawyers is worth the price of the book. What is a surprise is Carroll’s wit and good humor. And her understanding of the importance of fashion in getting people to take her seriously. I am a fashion/style dunderhead, so this was educational for me.
In winning two trials against Trump, Carroll was awarded a lot of money—$5 million in one, $83 million in the second—which compounds at 9% interest as Trump appeals, so he owes her more than $100 million and counting. Carroll’s plan is to spend the money on good causes that Trump hates and then make those donations public through her Substack E. Jean Carroll. So—I had to subscribe. 😊
Although Trump is also a convicted felon, he didn’t have to pay any consequences for that, so Carroll’s win appeared to be the only one that matters. It’s a thing I need right now. I do know that Trump is finally getting blowback from some of his MAGA cult members over Jeffrey Epstein and child trafficking, but that may simply disappear. And I find it extremely weird that this is the thing that is that tipping point for some.
As Hopium Chronicles By Simon Rosenberg says, “Trump is a uniquely dark figure in American history. A felon, an abuser of women (and perhaps children too), a betrayer of our Constitution, an ally and enabler of Putin, an unprecedentedly corrupt President, a serial criminal who has even this year broken dozens and dozens of law since returning to the White House, and a deeply venal man who has become comfortable with millions of the poorest people in the world dying due to his actions, and who is right now overseeing extraordinary levels of cruelty aimed at people and families living and working here in the US.”
I don’t get why those things don’t matter. Writing for the LA Times, Matt K. Lewis has some thoughts on this. Just FYI in case you are, like me, wondering about this.
So why has the Epstein scandal — of all things — threatened civil war on the right? I have some thoughts.
First: It speaks to where the passions of MAGA really lie. For some percentage of Trump supporters, exposing the satanic, blood-drinking pedophile cabal was supposed to be the deliverable — his raison d’être — the payoff.
Instead they got, what, corporate tax cuts?
Second: The Epstein narrative is too lurid and concrete to be handwaved away. Epstein really was a sex trafficker. There really are those photographs of him palling around with Trump. He really was on “suicide watch.” Minutes really are missing from the surveillance video near Epstein’s cell. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi really did say on Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” You don’t need to be in a tin-foil hat to notice the fishiness here.
And third: The incentives have changed for MAGA influencers. Trump finally feels like a lame duck, and the knives are out, not just to inherit the throne, but for the whole spoils system of the MAGA sham.
(Link to the full article: Trump’s spell over the MAGA base has been broken. They can see he’s now a lame duck)
As the beat goes on, I hope you have opportunities to view and to make art and to read (and listen to) some good books.
Take care and thanks for reading.
