the highest form of wealth

"The bills, with their colored pictures, seemed more significant, the nickel-based coins jingled merrily as we juggled them in our hands. It's a fact, the money we acquired through trickery seemed more subtle and rare, the highest form of wealth. It seemed to whisper in our ears words of smiling praise and mischievous provocation. It was not the vile, hateful money that must be earned by hard work, but rather easy money, a silver disc with two gnomes' legs and a dwarf's beard, a clowning, dancing money whose smell carried us, like a good wine, to orgiastic thoughts."

~~ from Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt

a few articles

In 2025, I had a chance to read Anne Applebaum's "Russia and China Are Winning the Propaganda War" from The Atlantic, Samuel Moyn's "Casus Belli: The origins of the war in Ukraine" in Harper's, Jon Lee Anderson's recent New Yorker reporting from the Congo region of Africa, and other pieces primarily from Harper's Magazine and The Atlantic's 2024 and '25 print issues. Goodreads says I read twenty-one books. A strong majority were under 250 pages.

Dad II

"One day my daughter came back from C.'s apartment and told me about a plastic cupcake she'd accidentally flushed down the toilet. She'd been very sad, she explained, but then Daddy had gotten a letter from the cupcake. It was having an adventure at the bottom of the ocean! It was happy down there. Turns out the cupcake was making friends with a seahorse, a starfish, and a shark. It was probably going to send another letter soon."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison

Dad

"On the days when I dropped our daughter at his apartment, C was usually waiting for us on his stoop. As soon as we reached his block, she would run to him grinning, her tiny feet pattering along the sidewalk. He leaned down to swoop her up, then held her aloft and spun her around. He was delighted to see her. She was delighted to see him."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison

The Art of Memoir

"Most memoirs fail because of voice. It's not distinct enough to sound alive and compelling. Or there are staunch limits to emotional tone, so it emits a single register. Being too cool or too shrill can ruin the read. The sentences are boring and predictable, or it's so inconsistent you don't know who's speaking or what place they come from. You don't believe or trust the voice. You're not curious about the inner or outer lives of the writer. The author's dead in the water."

~~ from The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Los Angeles

"In Los Angeles, it was easier to breathe. It always was. My hometown made me feel at ease in a way no other landscape ever would: the strip malls and cloverleaf freeway exits, the rush of salt wind of the Pacific Coast Highway, the dark silhouettes of palm trees against those startling, smog-brightened sunsets."

~~ from Splinters by Leslie Jamison