What I Did On This Miserable Wednesday

After falling asleep with the lights and TV on, I exchanged emails with E about my doings with CC.

From that exchange, I want to share a bit of reading on repentance:

Excerpts from the Evergetinos On Repentance

Repentance and Confession, by Hieromonk Gregorios

I did a post on Neglected Writers and Books that will see the light of day on December 23 at noon.

I started Write Stuff: A Conversation with Kavita Das several days ago. It prodded at me, so I might as well share the prodding:

Craft and Conscience’s release comes at a time when writers are having long-overdue conversations about some of the perils of storytelling, such as the possibility that stories can cause immeasurable harm to some of our most marginalized communities. Are you optimistic that writers are finally beginning to view their own writing through a more rigorous and introspective lens?

I do think there is growing awareness of the harm that problematic stories can and have caused. There is more of a willingness to reevaluate some literature from the past, which contained damaging stereotypes or erased whole communities. Some people are bristling at this and calling it “wokeness” or “cancel culture.” However, I don’t think the aim of reevaluating these works should be to “cancel” them but to discuss them holistically. As we’ve understood, books can be masterpieces in terms of some aspects of craft while espousing harmful stereotypes. Authors can be masterful at their craft while being problematic in their lives. Speaking about them in their totality helps us understand how craft and conscience are linked.

I have heard the statement often over the years that art is a form of activism. I have trouble grappling with this pronouncement, particularly when I think of all the art that upholds white supremacy. What’s your take?

First, I believe art is a powerful tool. It can be wielded to promote hatred and discrimination, or it can be used to promote equity and justice.

Second, I do believe art can be a powerful form of activism. It might not be the most immediate means to social change, but I think it can reach hearts and minds in ways that traditional means of protest might not. The evidence for writing being a powerful form of activism lies in the number of writers who are imperiled because of the ways they resist injustice through their work. The recent brutal attack on author Salman Rushdie only underscores the power of writing and the risk to writers who engage fraught social issues on the page. More evidence can be found in all the attempts at banning books underway in our country. As scary as the rise in book bans is, it also suggests that there is a widespread belief in the power of the written word to inspire change.

I fear being didactic - that is the telling that is always bad - but too much has gone in my life and world not to think honesty in writing must include the good and bad of one's world. I do not like Trumpism, but I must be fair when writing about Trumpists. Even if that fairness includes my bewilderment at their attachment to the man and his ideas.

Ibuprofen got my leg better before noon. My lungs still hurt from choking on ice cream. More annoying right this moment is how I cannot get my feet warm. The chill does work its way up.

Also, from a few days ago, and the Muncie Star-Press: Hicks: READI grant is great for most of Indiana  touts the benefits of Indiana’s Stellar Community Grants and Regional Cities Program. Professor Hicks even calls them innovative.

Communities that did the difficult grassroots planning mostly developed solid plans that would survive change in political leadership. It is the ability to craft a long-term investment plan that made these cities successful. We know that because OCRA worked with many of these cities for years, helping them climb the ladder of success, starting with MainStreet plans and capacity-building programs, then ending with Stellar Community designations.

No mention of specific communities, but I suspect Muncie does grassroots planning. Wither Anderson?

I kept putting off Counterpunch's The Predictable Resurgence of Fascism and Nazism On Both Sides of the North Atlantic and Its Consequences. Well, I wish I had not. It has an interesting examination of neo-liberalism as the cause of rising fascism:

The growth of fascism in the United States was equally predictable. The Reagan neoliberalism that began in the 1980s was expanding, and President Bill Clinton fully incorporated it into the Democratic Party and his government. While running for office in 1992, Clinton offered relatively progressive proposals, even adopting the establishment of a national health program that had made the left-wing candidacy of Jesse Jackson in the 1988 Democratic Party primaries and would have guaranteed the right of Americans to receive health care. As advisor to Jesse Jackson in 1988, I had worked on that proposal.

Clinton, however, changed after he was elected. In addition to approving the highly unpopular free trade agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, he renounced many of his proposals, including the establishment of a national health program. Later his wife, Hillary Clinton, who served as Secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s administration, promoted the process of globalization with an increase in the mobility of industries to what is called the Global South.

The consequences of this neoliberal globalization were devastating for the working class in the industrial sectors. There are thousands of examples: For many years in Baltimore (where Johns Hopkins University, where I have been teaching for more than half-a-century, is located), the steel industry was one of the city’s most important sources of employment. The largest steel company left the city, and the neighborhoods of the steel workers (mostly white, blue-collar, and well paid) changed dramatically and are now desolate. Mortality in such areas has significantly increased due to disease of despair (suicide and drug addictions). The overwhelming majority of residents in these neighborhoods voted for Trump.

Today the neoliberal political and media establishments are deeply discredited among the popular classes, especially among the working class—and especially among Whites, who mostly abstain from voting. This situation is responsible for the growth of the ultraright that preceded Trump, and which he has used in a very astute way by presenting himself as an “anti-neoliberal establishment”. In another article I explained that such a movement has the characteristics of the fascist movement of southern Europe, a reality that I know well because I experienced that fascism firsthand in my youth. I had to leave Spain because I was a member of the anti-fascist underground in the 1960s. And the Spanish ultraright now, successors of the fascist party in the sixties, has an ideology very similar to Trumpism with whom they have a close relationship. Trumpism has many characteristics and ideological positions similar to the Spanish and many other European rightwing movements that present themselves as the defenders of the homeland and Christian civilization. Its leading ideologue is Steve Bannon, who is trying to structure a new international ultraright that includes Putin, Giorgia Meloni, Le Pen, Bolsonaro, and many others.

Do the people really think Trump will make their lives any better? What alternative do they have?

Lunch was macaroni and cheese. That was all that felt compatible with my stomach. 

A small confession: I read obituaries. Notable Literary Deaths in 2022.

Some news from Gary, Indiana: A Gary plant would make jet fuel from trash and plastic - which sounds good, but maybe too good:

But Latham and the group she co-founded, Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, along with some national environmental experts, smell a ruse.

They question the company’s claims of sustainability in what amounts to a complicated, high-energy production process, and the company’s ability to deploy a new combination of technology intended to turn the trash and plastic waste into a gas used to make aircraft fuel. They also say it’s unfair to locate the plant in an environmental justice community already burdened disproportionately by a century of pollution from heavy industry.

“We use the term greenwashing, where they make things seem like they’re green technologies when they’re really not,” said Latham, a Gary native who works in business development for an engineering firm and also is chairwoman of the environmental justice and climate committee of Gary’s branch of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. “I feel like Gary is being used based on its location, and also based on its demographics just to be a solution for where to put Chicago’s trash.”

The email brought me a link to The Many Faces of Felix Frankfurter: On Brad Snyder’s “Democratic Justice”. I have never been able to swallow Frankfurter; to me, he was the one New Dealer who turned sour, and I was surprised at a new biography. I skimmed the review and have seen nothing to change my mind. He was far more interesting before going on the Supreme Court.

By now it was 2:23 pm. I need to see if the phone is charged and make some calls.

I still have more catching up to do on here, but that will need to wait.

Back at 3:30.

I spoke with KH. Since I seem to be miscommunicating with him and E, I wanted to make sure he knew if I choked to death on ice cream, it was not a suicide. That has not been of interest to me in over a decade.

Now I am on hold, again, with food stamps, having gone through voice directory hell, disconnection, and another sojourn through voice directory hell. 

I have manged to read another rejection of "Colonel Tom":

Thank you for sending us "Colonel Tom". We appreciate the chance to read your submission. Unfortunately, we must decline it.

Thanks again. Best of luck with this, and with all your creative endeavors.
Sincerely,

Mount Hope Magazine

I am waiting on The Maine Review before I start thinking this is a complete failure with the magazines.  

And I read Russians and the Ukraine War: Few Think It Was a Good Idea, Fewer Want It to End in Defeat  which I think does not match up to the grandness of the headline. My reaction: yeah, is that surprising?

Thirty minutes on the phone with food stamps - on hold and with a person - but I do not think I have completely bollixed it up.

France beat Morocco; so says this message that just popped up on the screen.

I listened to the documentary attached to Documentary Film Celebrates History, Future of The White River in Muncie. Not a bad way to spend 8 minutes.

Uneasy Listening is coming through from WPRB. I plan to work on "Best of Intentions" and the music does not distract.

I need ice and I need smokes, and I may be going to McClure's. Nowhere else, I really still kind of tired in my lungs.

7:00

I am not leaving. No McClure's tonight. I have yet to get to my story; that is next. I wrote a long reply to an email while listening to Pawn Sacrifice on HBO. It is now over. Good performance by Toby McGuire.

I missed one submission of "Problem Solving." Guess it was a good thing getting this rejection:

Thank you for your submission to Route 7 Review. We appreciate the time and dedication spent in order to produce your work and are grateful that you considered publishing with us.

Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline your submission at this time. Route 7 Review receives hundreds of submissions for each issue, and we are unable to publish every work. However, we would be happy to receive more of your work in the future and invite you to submit again when we reopen submissions next September for our annual issue

11:49.

Spent the evening revising the story. Showered. Replied to one email. 

Wondering do I sound like I am giving myself a hard time, as in trying to martyr myself. If so, I am sorry.

The Cramps doing Roy Orbison seems the play to leave for the night:

Except YouTube put this next in rotation:

sch 10:53 pm