Here I am looking at the results for Muncie's City Council races, and I see a problem. About 10% of the population voted. Muncie Democrats win six of nine city council seats. The same is true for the mayoral election: Ridenour re-elected as Muncie mayor. My math may be off this early, but that only makes my point sharper. There are large numbers who did not vote. Yes, off year elections are notorious for low turnout. Yes, I am one who did not vote, but I am a recent addition to the city and may not be staying.
Venezuela interests me - it drives the asylum seekers on the southern border, and we cannot get at its oil. Those are two big concerns in this country right now. The Bulwark published Biden's Venezuela Policy Contradicts Itself does a good job of explaining an issue I hear little about. In these paragraphs are several points we need to think about:
Not everyone who shows up at our southern border has a legitimate claim to asylum, which is why under existing law migrants must provide evidence of credible fear of persecution to an immigration judge’s satisfaction. But the backlog of immigration cases is horrendous—2.8 million were pending as of the end of September. Perhaps we need to modify existing law—but those lawmakers screaming loudest about abuses are the very ones who’ve stood in the way of changing immigration laws for almost 20 years. Yes, we need an orderly process for those fleeing persecution to seek refuge here. But even when the administration comes up with such a plan—as it did with humanitarian parole for Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians—Republicans try to shoot it down.
Negotiating with dictators will bear little fruit for the administration. And Republicans would rather have a red-meat issue to feed their MAGA voters than to solve the crisis at the border. Meanwhile, hundreds, maybe thousands, of Venezuelans who sought refuge from persecution will find their hopes dashed on a tarmac in south Texas or Florida as they board planes taking them back to Maduro’s Venezuela.
I have got to find and red Marguerite Young's Miss Macintosh, My Darling. I have mentioned this novel before, now Lit Hub has published Drew Johnson's Liquid Repetition: Drew Johnson on the Experience of Reading Marguerite Young’s Miss Macintosh, My Darling. Here is an Indiana novel getting attention. It sounds very audacious, it sounds very strange. Proof that the Midwest can breed literature?
I looked at Document details Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, Volume 30, but I think I am putting off submissions to work on the blog and get ready for returning to my novel, "Love Stinks".
Is style still a thing? I know I am being very much anti-style in how I am living (much to CC's annoyance), so I may not be the best observer of the subject. Frankly, the style I see in Muncie is borderline homeless. 10 Snappy Words for Style; I am certainly no longer rakish.
For those trying to find that particular word to characterize my verbosity: You Talk Too Much: 8 Words for the Wordy.
When I was much younger, I was on my law school's law review. We had to edit a professor paper; he liked to use colons. When I started writing fiction again, I started using them for their abruptness. One of my readers said the colon was no longer to be used this way. I had my doubts. A Guide to Using Colons makes me think I am not wrong.
A friend sent me To Lead a Meaningful Life, Become Your Own Hero from Scientific American. It sounds good; too bad I have become the villain in my life.
Our research reveals that the hero’s journey is not just for legends and superheroes. In a recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we show that people who frame their own life as a hero’s journey find more meaning in it. This insight led us to develop a “restorying” intervention to enrich individuals’ sense of meaning and well-being. When people start to see their own lives as heroic quests, we discovered, they also report less depression and can cope better with life’s challenges.
The human brain seems hardwired to make sense of the world through stories. Homo sapiens evolved over millennia of sitting around the fire and telling tales of challenge and triumph. Our interest in storytelling explains why we read magazine articles that open with an anecdote and why we naturally frame our life in story form. These life stories stitch together different events into an overarching narrative, with the storyteller as the protagonist. These tales help people define who they are and make the experience of life more coherent.
Of course, some stories are better than others—some evoke awe and excitement, while others make people yawn. We wondered whether the hero’s journey provides a template for telling a more compelling version of one’s own life story. After all, the hero’s journey lies at the heart of the most culturally significant stories around the world.
***
We then examined these stories for the seven elements of the hero’s journey. We found that people who had more hero’s journey elements in their life stories reported more meaning in life, more flourishing and less depression. These “heroic” people (men and women were equally likely to see their life as a hero’s journey) reported a clearer sense of themselves than other participants did and more new adventures, strong goals, good friends, and so on.
We also found that hero’s journey narratives provided more benefits than other ones, including a basic “redemptive” narrative, where a person’s life story goes from defeat to triumph. Of course, redemption is often a part of the “transformation” part of the hero’s journey, but compared with people whose life story contained only the redemptive narrative, those with a full hero’s journey reported more meaning in life.
I have gnawed through a lot of my email - what I did not set off to later!
This makes me feel better: Every novel feels like an impossibly tall mountain. Thank you, Nathan Bransford!
Every novel I’ve ever started has felt like something I could scarcely imagine finishing. It doesn’t matter how many I write! And when I reach the finish line, I’m just as confused as ever about how I ever got there. When I start the next one, it feels just as impossible as the last.
Sure, I chip away and chip away and chip away. I block out my weekly time for writing and creativity. I keep putting one front in front of the other.
And I have learned a few things along the way, such as knowing I’ll feel utterly stuck in the middle and struggle to imagine why anyone would possibly care about this book. So at least now I can go, “Oh yeah you always feel this way.” (Which doesn’t help very much).
I am not sure if I would include Toni Morrison, she was not Southern and Beloved is set in Cincinnati. But whatever gets you to read Morrison, is okay with me. Check out Southern Gothic: Ten Essentials Books.
I will leave off with this interview of Salman Rushdie: ‘The good guys don’t always win’: Salman Rushdie on peace, Barbie and what freedom cost him
To quote Cavafy, “the barbarians are coming today”, and what I do know is that the answer to philistinism is art, the answer to barbarianism is civilisation, and in a culture war it may be that artists of all sorts – film-makers, actors, singers, writers – can still, together, turn the barbarians away from the gates.
And now I will play with some music, get dressed for work and be back this afternoon.
sch
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment