Thursday was bad. The last thing I had to do at work was to empty the trash. I decided to lift the bag weighted down with some sort of chicken-flavored gravy instead of tipping over the whole trash bin. The bag burst, covering me with the gravy from my waist down. I had about 90 minutes before I was to start looking at apartments. I got so angry at myself for being stupid, for being stubborn, for being in too much of a hurry.
Maybe it was the Zoloft, maybe I am getting smarter, and I did not turn my anger onto myself. It might have been CC telling me if that was the worst thing that happened to me, I should be happy.
CC did show up. She brought me back here to change, and then we went to lunch at Casa del Sol, and then she went along with me on the apartment tours. I do not know what got into her. She had opinions, and she expressed them; she engaged in conversation with the woman from the management company. Anyone not knowing any better might think we were married. At least, they would have thought she had a stake in my well-being.
She thinks she will be going away - bad urine screen. I put it to her that she didn't want to be around me because I would not enable her addiction. She pretty much admitted that by saying she was all about money right now. I learned, too, that she had never had any ideas about what to do with her life. I think that is a hell of a thing for a 57-year-old. I do not understand how one can live like that. Not seeing any use for my life enraged me; which is not the same as not knowing any possible use for one's life.
I finished Thursday by destroying the motel's washing machine trying to clean my clothes of all that chickeny goo. My night went to that. I went so late with my laundry, that they shut down the dryer.
I turned in a bit earlier than usual and without doing a lick of writing.
As bad as Thursday was, Friday was worse. I woke up several times during the night. I woke around 4 am, felt fine, and went back to sleep. The alarm was set for 5 AM. The clothes were not yet dry. The only thing was when I did awake at 5, my back, arms and knees were aching and cramped, and I could not move. I was 2 hours late getting to work. I got out at 2 pm, got a ride down to the bus stop, and came home. I stopped first at McClure's.
I went late to Walmart. I used CC's birthday gift but forgot cat food. I caught the last bus home.
Still, no writing done. I did get some reading completed yesterday. Notes on that follow.
1 big thing - a podcast on Indianapolis cultural stuff.
DEVOUR INDY - it's about an upcoming eating experience around Indy, not watching Godzilla emerge from the White River and munching on the Crossroads of America.
I Made Rock 'N' Roll Festival - I think it's cool this is happening, even cooler that it is happening in Indy. I would go just to see the headliners - Janelle Monáe, Gary Clark Jr., Robert Randolph Band. I do not recognize these names: Joy Oladokun, Meet Me @ The Altar, and Inner Peace. The time and place is Saturday, May 18, 2024, 1:00pm; 700 N Pennsylvania St, Indianapolis, IN.
Oh, now let's get to the "good" news about Indiana:
Study: Indiana one of the worst 10 states to work
The study analyzed the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Census Bureau, the Tax Foundation, and information from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Then eight metrics were used to determine overall scores including job and GDP growth, union representation, weekly hours worked, commute times, remote work, and earnings ratio.
Earnings ratio measures the living wage needed to support a family against the median wage.
The rankings listed all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia and gave each state an overall score called the Z-score.
The Hoosier state came in at #42 overall with a Z-score of -0.272, in comparison to the top-ranked state Oregon, which had a Z-score of 0.918.
Hoosiers have put and kept the Republicans in power. At the same time, it seems there is all the blame on Biden on the economy for all of its good points. What seems to me is the tunnel vision of Hoosiers - they who think conservatism is a sign of virtue and not a con job for the very powers that keep their lives from improving. Too much Fox News?
Capital City Chronicle is keeping up with what is going on at the Statehouse.
First, I will note Report card: Grading the legislative agendas. Who knew third-graders were having such trouble being able to read? I knew how to read by first grade, but then I had a mother who took a hand in my education. She pushed books at me, she was not for banning them.
Holcomb also wants to improve reading rates for Indiana’s third graders. His idea to require the IREAD-3 test to be taken first in second grade is a shockingly simple change that could make a real difference. The earlier we have data, the more remediation can happen. Remediating on the front end is far better than the other option: making children repeat third grade. It’s clear some children are being promoted to fourth grade when they are not ready. But holding back nearly 8,000 children seems a bit extreme. Doing so might well result in them being able to read. But studies show these children are more likely to drop out of school due to the social impacts.
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It seems like the Senate plan doesn’t materially change Indiana’s retention policy because it generally codifies what is already in a State Board of Education rule while adding another exception. There is no enforcement and schools will still make the decision, but leaders clearly hope the bill’s emphasis spurs a change.
They also want to give the state test in second grade for assessment and to provide more remediation opportunities. But again, the bill stops short of meaningful change in that it doesn’t require the students who are struggling to actually go to summer school.
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I think the best Democrat proposal is expanding access to pre-kindergarten. The program has been around now for almost 10 years but has become stagnant. It would be an obvious way to strengthen literacy. GOP lawmakers raised the income threshold to 400% of the federal free and reduced-price lunch threshold for private school vouchers. Yet, pre-kindergarten vouchers are still limited to 150% of the federal poverty level.
I do not understand why private schools would get more of a break than public schools. If I were cynical, I would say Indiana Republicans were either trying to undermine public schools and their students or were just trying to create a class of better-educated Hoosiers.
But about those low-paying jobs and the Republican-dominated Indiana government, the following from the same article seems to me to be about helping families get ahead (starting with Governor Holcomb's legislative agenda):
He starts with a variety of regulatory changes that could make it easier for child care providers to find staff. More staff means more seats that Hoosier parents desperately need. The lack of seats — and high prices — keep some parents out of the workforce. The changes must be balanced, though, to make sure child safety is not compromised.
The Senate Republicans are proposing the following:
And a bill on child care likely doesn’t go far enough. It aims to reduce bureaucracy and red tape to create additional child care seats. That red tape, though, is part of making sure the children are safe. It will be an interesting balancing act. Because it’s a non-budget year, there are no incentives or subsidies to help ease the problem.
I do find the following has its good points for a state without a culture of higher education and a political party that leans heavily on white males without a college education:
House Republicans have a small but interesting agenda. The first is a simple idea that could help fill the tens of thousands of empty jobs in the state. It would allow Hoosiers to receive financial aid from the Frank O’Bannon Grant and 21st Century Scholarship to include job training and not just traditional college coursework. Many youth aren’t interested in college anymore and don’t believe it’s worth the money. But some kind of training, credentials and postsecondary education is necessary to make a living. This could be a nice move with the one caution that it could increase the costs of an already-expensive program.
From the same source, Bicameral Democrat agenda targets child care, drug prices and more:
Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, said that Democrats had repeatedly attempted to address the child care crisis with little impact as superminority members. Yoder noted the extent of the crisis, saying that 45% of children live in a child care desert and hundreds of thousands of Hoosier parents had no options for child care in their communities.
“Even when child care is available, costs continue to be a barrier. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average monthly cost of infant care in Indiana is over $1,000 per month,” Yoder said. “This state needs a child care system — not a Band-Aid, not micro(-center) pilots. We need a system and we need a plan.”
Is it only gerrymandering that keeps the Republicans in power, or is there also ignorance induced by the lack of media and gerrymandering that keeps the Democrats from gaining more power?
Saturday has been cold, very windy, and into which I do not want to go to, but will need to do so. I am out of caffeine.
The cat had been in all night, and he did not want to go out until I put him out. He has not returned. Either, he has frozen to death or is shacked up with whoever else he has adopted.
Food is cooking in the slow cooker, I need lunch.
The Rumpus publishes a weekly interview of writers under The First Book. Being a lazy sod this freezing morning, I picked on The First Book: Vanessa Chan. Only to get a blank screen. My monitoring software, again? Second choice - still being lazy - The First Book: Soraya Palmer. Ooh, I may have gotten lucky - or found another example of serendipity, It is reassuring to hear what went into the creation and the selling of one's first book. I am still working on that.Rumpus: Is this the first book you’ve written? If not, what made it the first to be published?
Palmer: It is! Considering how long it took me to get it published, I definitely could have given up and moved onto another project, but I was pretty determined.
Hummel: I was interested in creating a novel that had an allegorical Western feel. The stranger comes back to this city for the first time in forty-four years; “the stranger comes to town.” That’s the beginning of the classic Western, and Westerns play an important role throughout the story, as both subject and backdrop, especially in regard to gender. Because in the classic Western, the “stranger” is male, right? But here, it’s Edith, an old woman in a wrinkled skirt and sneaker boots.
Hollywood also helped characterize how we see the twentieth century, especially in its iconography, and this book is a look back at the twentieth century and how it changed life for American women. I don’t think women’s lives, at least in this country, changed more radically than in the twentieth century, and Lacey and Edith are as caught up in who they’re supposed to be, who they’re supposed to admire, as anyone.
Genre’s defenders sometimes argue that the concerns of the literary novel are fatally narrow, confined to the drawing room and the university library, while detective novels and policiers draw their oxygen from “real life.” Perhaps such books do benefit by not casting professors of English as their protagonists. We should not conflate this single virtue with a broader engagement with reality, however. The tough talk in Michael Connolly is derived not from today’s LAPD but from the tough talk in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. Genre conventions bear away reality—which is one of their chief sources of pleasure.
Perhaps the most defensible thing we can say about the literary novel is that it seeks a dialogue with the canon. This is an odd formulation—is Alan Hollinghurst really in dialogue with Henry James, who has been dead for more than a century?—but it is at the heart of the literary novel’s motives. “When I write,” Jonathan Franzen has said, “I don’t feel like a craftsman influenced by earlier craftsmen who were themselves influenced by earlier craftsmen. I feel like a member of a single, large virtual community in which I have dynamic relationships with other members of the community, most of whom are no longer living.” Such dialogues can seem hierarchical and exclusionary, which inevitably breeds resentment. But your local lending library is open; if you want to read Tristram Shandy, all you need is a copy of your phone bill. And what a pleasure it can be to eavesdrop.
Ultimately, the only distinction that matters is between work that lasts and work that doesn’t. The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Hound of the Baskervilles have outlasted season after season of “serious” fiction. While we wait for time to do its work, though, we need a way to talk about books, and putting them into categories is a logical place to start, even if those categories are permeable and, in a sense, indefensible.
I would quibble about Robert B. Parker - who I did first read as a teenager and then in my fifties - and found him hiding ethical issues under the rubric of detective fiction and a writer of interesting dialog. I think some of the melding between genre and literary is also due to film. It seems film can be both high-minded and genre. Another source of blame: Crime and Punishment. Is this not a blending of the literary and genre fiction?
Maria Muldaur is a long way from the oasis, Naughty, Bawdy and Blue.
I could not resist the idea of a secret tunnel, so I clicked on The Guardian's I thought 2024 would be grim and predictable, then I saw the words ‘secret illegal tunnel under Brooklyn’, an dit was worth the humor of the thing:
But back to 770 Eastern Parkway, referred to locally simply as 770 and the Chabad global headquarters, and the mysterious tunnel. According to some reports, the students in question were engaged in a power grab designed to “expand” the synagogue, which – it would be hard to love the logic more – they saw fit to express via the medium of tunnelling. Accounts vary as to whether it was a men’s or a women’s mikvah that the tunnel emerged in. If the latter, it suggests some unexplored American Pie-type subplot that could lift the whole episode into legend.
Humor seems the point of today's Guardian - Knives, guns, poison: the bizarre catastrophes that befell hit TV shows
I applied for the duplex I looked at on Thursday. It asked if I had ever been convicted of a felony, and I said I was in 2010. I paid $55 for the application and expect a rejection.
It is 1:06, and the next bus comes by around 1:58. I have gotten through some of my emails. The Times Literary Supplement awaits.
I remain entranced by the Elizabethans, and if you are likewise, I suggest Stolen elegy: Why did Thomas Kyd use someone else’s poem, and where did he find it? by Nick Moschovakis.
I managed to read an Amos Oz novel while in prison, The TLS reviews a biography of him: The great Oz; An Israeli writer who fought fanaticism by Linda Grant.
In his final public appearances, weakened by cancer, he still came alive in front of an audience, still had something to say. If one expects a novelist to be chained perennially to the desk, introspective, suffering, aloof, solitary, then it is worth remembering that Amos Oz’s argument against fanaticism is that it mandates the submerging of individuality into a single collective self. The artist, however, recognizes that “We are each of us … very different from each other and respect for those differences, and an abiding curiosity about those differences, is necessary for a viable politics”. And for a viable literature. The novelist must from time to time leave the house.
Ice-cold femme fatale: Bite-sized essays on one of the biggest stars of Golden Age Hollywood - Barbara Stanwyck!
And I close out here for now
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