Paul and Dan on The Craftsman (Richard Sennett). We discuss:
Planned obsolescence in construction
Other people’s reaction to our work and the world’s reaction to our work
What’s the world coming to?
Fulfilment Hikaru no Go
We have no idea what our children are doing (and that’s good)
Paul and Dan on The Craftsman (Richard Sennett). We discuss:
"Thoreau is the expression of a certain romance that we have.“
Appreciating the practice of living
"How do we stay in touch with one another?"
In taiko, the ensemble plays the audience
"You’re going to get something that’s bigger than what you put out there."
"Big Calvinists, were they, at IBM??”
A diagram of the Chimborazo and Cotopaxi volcanoes in Ecuador, including descriptions of microclimates at different elevations such as the “Region of Figs and Olives”, the “Region of Grasses”, the “Region of Lichens”, and an area labeled “Perpetual Snow” from Mrs. Lincoln Phelps’s Familiar Lectures on Botany (c1860).
Full text available here.
So there was my younger daughter, caught in an epistemological crisis. She’s five. Let’s call her Mikhaela.
It was one of those early summer days in western Bulgaria, when the clouds pile like surf over the mountains. Over the course of the day, the air gets hazier, the pressure and humidity rise until you feel like you’re carrying a sea in your sinuses. The breaking point always comes in the afternoon, when the steel blue sky finally cracks. Then it pours and thunders for fifteen minutes.
We weren’t yet at that breaking point. It was still just heavy and blue when I took Mishi and her older sister (let’s call her Juli), to the playground in our village. We spent a happy hour looking at bugs and trying to turn off the water fountain, and then this other little girl showed up with her grandpa. She was three.
We came out of Lockdown in Sofia in the spring of 2021. Mishi went to daycare for about four weeks, but even then we didn’t play with other kids in parks because Pavlina and I didn’t get fully vaccinated until the beginning of June. So that three-year old was the first time in a year I’d seen Mishi play with a younger kid in over a year. It was illuminating.
The three-year-old had a stuffed kitty and a T-shirt with a doggy on it. So far, so good. Everyone loves a carnivorous mammal. But she kept calling her stuffed toy “my dog.”
“That’s not a dog,” said Mishi, “that’s a cat.”
“No, it’s my doggy!”
Mishi, thinking she held the logical trump card, pointed at the dog on the girl’s shirt. “So what’s that on your shirt?”
“It’s a bear.”
“No,” said Mishi, still working hard. “That’s not a bear, it’s a dog.”
“No, it’s a bear.” The little girl rubbed the image on her shirt, thinking. “It’s a bear because it has long ears.”
Mishi’s fists bunched. Bears didn’t have long ears. And the ears of the thing on the other kid’s shirt weren’t long, because it wasn’t a bear, it was a goddamn dog.
“All right,” said Mishi, “let’s play a new game. It’s called ‘What is the Right Name for this Animal?‘”
I’m serializing a new short story on The Kingdoms of Evil.
Come on over every Friday in July for the tale of Ruth Hunter, a teenager whose version of 1930 has recently been invaded by the future.
The taser fits right in my hand: light as a pack of cigarettes and cool as a sleeping beetle.
“Press the button,” says the man from the future.
I press it and the taser spits a fat blue spark. Pigeons flee over the bazaar at Future Pier and I laugh out loud.
It’s the spring of 1930, with grass blades peeking out of the mud and the kind of Chicago air that you might like to swim up into.
“Rudolf’ll be sore when he finds us,” Billy frets.
I give my little brother a pat on his cap and glance around the bazaar for signs of the approach of any son of a meat-magnate. “You let me handle Rudolf, kid.”
“And he’ll tell Mother.”
“I’ll handle Mother too.”
Billy gives me a dubious look.
“I will,” I tell him.
Paul and Dan on The Craftsman (Richard Sennett). We discuss:
…the cello
The Suzuki Method
“Our mistakes can be powerfully informative."
"How many people are trapped in Google Translate?"
"There’s this living breathing thing that happens with habituation in language.”
Marked and un-marked surfaces.
Slip porcelain and the Sky Building.
Complete muscles (gamma draft) finished at 73,706 words
Begun (writing) at 9:09pm on Thursday, April 8th 2021 in the Parents’ Keep of Scenic Castle Cylon.
First line: “Kori Chthamali was 16 when she realized that the myth of Persephone was about her.”
Finished at 3:40pm on Wednesday, June 30th 2021, in the Grandparents’ Chamber of the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy.
Last line: “His laughter sped across the valley and echoed back, deeper.”
Finally, Wealthgiver is ready for beta-readers. Send me a message if you’re interested in reading it.
In case you wanted more information before agreeing to critique this story…
Wealthgiver is technically an alternate history. The Thracians did not die out in the 5th century, but stayed hidden in the Western Rhodope mountains, spying on the rest of us and assassinating anyone who got to close. Now, as the Russo-Turkish war ends and the next era of European politics takes shape, the cave-Thracians have decided to come out of the shadows and build a nation.
But that all happens in the background. The real story is the relationship between the Thracian prophetess, the high priest who interprets her visions, and a medic who defected from the Russian army and camped out on the wrong mountainside.
This is my most character-driven story yet. The credit goes to Pavlina, who (on Valentine’s day!) told me about a woman who is worshiped, but wants to be loved instead.
And there’s a made-up language!
Zazirieíute mondán mýdon = Mayen ye yet enjoyen mine mythos.
…or in the modern vernacular…
Tsiu ve ia zuavzirete mutumud.
I hope that you all enjoy my story.
If you’d like to critique Wealthgiver, please tell me so. I’ll send you the manuscript in whatever form you want.
And thank you,
Dan
PS: for more information about Wealthgiver, go here.
Complete muscles (gamma draft) finished at 73,706 words
Begun (writing) at 9:09pm on Thursday, April 8th 2021 in the Parents’ Keep of Scenic Castle Cylon.
First line: “Kori Chthamali was 16 when she realized that the myth of Persephone was about her.”
Finished at 3:40pm on Wednesday, June 30th 2021, in the Grandparents’ Chamber of the Balkan Tower of Matriarchy.
Last line: “His laughter sped across the valley and echoed back, deeper.”
Finally, Wealthgiver is ready for beta-readers. Send me a message if you’re interested in reading it.
Paul and Dan on The Craftsman (Richard Sennett). We discuss technology, doing a job well for its own sake, problem FINDING(!!), LINUX/the cello/writing/chess, and Henry David Thoreau.
coolbugs
Heard the first screaming cicadas of the season last Friday (dog day cicadas, Neotibicen spp.), and then had this one show up on my porch stairs that night. Always a little miffed when I go around to check all the bug lights I set up in the yard and then the best stuff is just at the porch light :-)
