This here newsletter is one year old! This was not a project I planned on keeping up for this long but it seems to have gained a momentum of its own. I’ve loved giving myself a regular writing deadline. Sending out a weekly missive has been a solid rhythm to keep the digital ink flowing. One year of showing up, of dutifully collecting little snippets in my Notes app and at the end of the week rounding it all up and trying to string it together.
Some of my favorite items that have lodged themselves into my brain (and possibly into yours?) include snowballs for sale, bones under the subway, awards as a union-busting tactic, the waggle dance of bees and being in the clutches of Stevie Nicks. Today’s bits and bobs are all loosely about the passage of time. Fitting, although this wasn’t my intention until I started peering into the flotsam the fishing net had collected and a theme of sorts emerged. Happy birthday to us, here we go and thanks for sticking around.
For forty years, Tim Goldrainer has been a rock-and-roll musician, as the lead singer of the Menus, a cover band based in Cincinnati, Ohio. He recently started giving the same exuberant concerts at his local nursing homes.
Bette Adriaanse on wealth, inequality and what’s on the other side of capitalism: “In the African law Ubuntu, or Bantoe-law, according to Professor Mogobe Ramose, there is no statute of limitations. Everything that causes an imbalance in the community can be brought before trial, regardless of when this imbalance was originally caused. The approval of the living, the living dead, and the not-yet-born are all considered within this legal concept, which unites the past, the present and the future. It’s a way of looking at the world that considers restoring balance in the longterm to be important, even crucial.”
Delighted by the automatic candle snuffer, a 19th century device that automatically extinguishes a candle after it’s burned down to a certain point in case you forget to blow it out.
In 1968, at the height of the Free Love movement, but when abortions were illegal and the pill was only available by prescription to married women, a group of McGill university students wrote, printed and distributed the first birth control handbook. In addition to information on sexual health and birth control, it also included content about racism, colonialism, and the women’s liberation movement. It became so popular they started receiving calls and letters from women who needed advice about their unwanted pregnancies. They then set up an abortion referral service out of their apartment. In total, twelve editions were printed and millions of copies sold. “We joked that after the Bible, we were probably one of the most widely distributed publications in Canada,” recalled Donna Cherniak, one of the Handbook’s two original authors.
“Virtually all land is “stolen land” if one rolls the tape back far enough.”
A city built to handle extreme heat “shows how much work is needed to adapt to the extremes of climate change, but it also shows how much more humane and people-oriented our cities can be.”
On a whim, we went to watch Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme and it was one of the most joyous movie theater experiences I’ve ever had. The film was shot over four nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre in December 1983 and recently restored and re-released by A24. Seeing David Byrne electric presence and really hearing the sheer poetry of his wacky lyrics was a delight. The theater we saw it in was half-full at best but as the screening progressed, people started humming from their seats, getting louder and louder, till the end where it just became a full blown singalong dance party.
New York Film Festival in full swing and Poor Things completely rocked me yesterday - a black comedy maximalist sci-fi romantic fairy tale adventure film I didn’t know I needed. Cailin saw Catherine Breillat’s new film Last Summer and shared this nugget from the Q&A: she said characters are either telling the truth, lying to someone, or lying to themselves. A great writing tidbit I’m tucking away as I embark on my first biopic.
Red Sea by Aurora Levins Morales
This Passover, who reclines?
Only the dead, their cupped hands filling slowly
with the red wine of war. We are not free.
The blood on the doorposts does not protect anyone.
They say that other country over there
dim blue in the twilight
farther than the orange stars exploding over our roofs
is called peace.
The bread of affliction snaps in our hands like bones,
is dust in our mouths. This bitterness brings tears to our eyes.
The figs and apples are sour. We have many more
than four questions. We dip and dip,
salt stinging our fingers.
Unbearable griefs braided into a rope so tight
we can hardly breathe,
Whether we bless or curse,
this is captivity.
We would cross the water if we knew how.
Everyone blames everyone else for barring the way.
Listen, they say there is honey swelling in golden combs, over there,
dates as sweet and brown as lovers' cheekbones,
bread as fragrant as rest,
but the turbulent water will not part for us.
We've lost the trick of it.
Back then, one man's faith opened the way.
He stepped in, we were released, our enemies drowned.
This time we're tied at the ankles.
We cannot cross until we carry each other,
all of us refugees, all of us prophets.
No more taking turns on history's wheel,
trying to collect old debts no-one can pay.
The sea will not open that way.
This time that country
is what we promise each other,
our rage pressed cheek to cheek
until tears flood the space between,
until there are no enemies left,
because this time no one will be left to drown
and all of us must be chosen.
This time it's all of us or none.
Emergency action TODAY Friday October 13th, at 6pm to Grand Army Plaza with Jewish Voice for Peace NYC against genocide of Palestinians.
Till next time,
ASK
🙏