And the Canon Rap Got Played

It made me happy to see that an early story posted in an obscure place had almost a thousand views.

Swartz had skipped out

"[Aaron] Swartz had skipped out on the lessons taught by the American high school--the lessons in cynical acquiescence, conformity, and obedience to the powers that be. He was right to think these lessons injure people's innate sense of curiosity and morality and inure them to mediocrity. He was right to credit his 'arrogance' for the excellence of the life he had lived."

~~ from "The Life and Afterlives of Aaron Swartz" in The Souls of Yellow Folk by Wesley Yang

Lockdown Mike

Contribute to a food charity by listening to Passenger's Patchwork.

Autumn spiral

"Autumn spiraled downward, every day a little more. One morning, after my usual walk down the tree-lined street, I entered the schoolyard to find a kind of flower whose name I didn't know, blooming in the beds inside the gate. Round blossoms with giant petals of light pink and white, popping up like carefree afterthoughts from a surface of dry algae.

"It must have been some kind of flower that only grows in fall. But captivated as I was, I realized this was just another marvel from a world that would never accept me."

~~ from Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Working-Class Studies

I don't believe that I've previously noticed this Fight for Your Long Day mention in the Fall 2020 Book Notes from the Working-Class Studies Association. See page 3, lower right corner.

Salman Rushdie

On August 12, 2022 a 24-year-old from New Jersey nearly murdered Salman Rushdie although it appears as if the author will survive.

walleye pollock roe

"After hopping off the train, I walked for such a long time that my legs became stiff as boards. But finally, I got to Hyesan. I hadn't eaten for two days, so I headed for the market. It was huge, and there were so many products, I felt dizzy. Rice . . . flour . . . walleye pollock roe . . . you name it. Some people were clearly shopping for something to buy, while others looked like homeless people, unable to do anything but look on enviously.

"I had no money, of course, so I tried to find something on the ground. I eventually spotted some abandoned corncobs. There were no kernels on them, but I fastened my teeth on the cobs and ate what I could."

~~ from A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa

to free me from their grief

"The summer that my brother died, I moved home to be with my parents, until one day in August my mother told me to leave, to 'go and live your life.' What a gift that was, to free me from their grief. A few weeks later, I boarded an Amtrak train to New York City, my clothes and manuscript in a Hefty trash bag, $1,000 in my front jeans pocket."

~~ from Morningstar: Growing Up with Books by Ann Hood

always be knocking

Tad Friend's "Sam Taggart's Hard Sell" has me thinking about sales and my own efforts writing about it.

Hitchens in Harper's

Christian Lorentzen is good on Christopher Hitchens in the London Review of Books and elsewhere.

however hard I worked

"Seeing my baby's face as she slept so peacefully made me determined to work harder than ever. But the reality hit home late that night. I had a wife. And now two children. And however hard I worked, I would always be poor. I would never be allowed to better  myself, no matter how much effort I put in. My children would be faced with a life of hardship regardless of what I did."

~~ from A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea by Masaji Ishikawa

he alone managed to crawl here

"The rumors about him are mysterious and mundane. Before he was my father, he was a skinny kid in the South Vietnamese army. He was a heroin addict. He was a gangster. He sold American cigarettes on the black market. He cruised girls. He ran away from home. He was part of a select unit trained by the Americans. He jumped out of airplanes and disappeared for weeks into the jungles and hill towns. His friends fell around him, first during the war and then after the war, but somehow he alone managed to crawl here, on his hands and knees, to this life."

~~ from The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Lê Thi Diem Thúy