Yes, Still Here

 Just as soon as I think things are going well, the ground gives way.

Okay, I got obsessed with a bit of writing. That is now done - for now.

Not much going on here.

Today, I got the laundry done.

Yesterday, it was work and napping and writing.

Sunday, it was church and napping and writing.

Saturday, it was a political meeting for the Democrats, grocery shopping at Payless on McGalliard, writing and napping.

I learned a couple of things at the meeting. Indiana is now like third in the country for receiving federal money; the last I knew, we sent more to DC than we got. Muncie's unemployment is around 30%. The new state chairman sounds like she means to put up a fight.

Friday was group therapy and napping and writing.

Right now, I am only barely holding myself upright.

There is just so much email for to read with my eyes getting tired. I have made it only through the following:

Where to start with: Virginia Woolf (The Guardian) - I started with The Common reader and then To The Lighthouse. I think she needs to be read; nothing to be afraid of, really.

“Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power” the 85-year-old novelist said in her acceptance speech for the freedom to publish prize at the British Book awards.

“Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade,” she added. “The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

While you are thinking about that, listen to this:

And consider Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher wins Dylan Thomas prize with ‘audacious’ novel The Coin  (The Guardian)

A novel about a Palestinian woman who participates in a pyramid scheme reselling Birkin bags has won this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas prize.

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The Coin, chosen in a unanimous decision by judges, “is a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour”, said writer and judging chair Namita Gokhale. “It fizzes with electric energy”, with Zaher bringing “complexity and intensity to the page through her elegantly concise writing”.

Born in 1991 in Jerusalem, Zaher studied biomedical engineering at Yale University and creative writing at the New School, where she was advised by the novelist Katie Kitamura.

Kitamura described The Coin as a “brilliant, audacious, powerhouse of a novel. A story of obsession and appetite, politics and class, it is deliciously unruly. An exceptional debut by an outrageous new talent.”

The novel follows a wealthy Palestinian woman as she tries to set down roots in New York, teaching in a school for underprivileged boys. However, she begins to feel stifled in the US, and develops an obsession with cleanliness and purity. 

Another voice calling for solar power in and for Indiana: Op-ed: Delaware County should embrace solar energy before time runs out (NewsBreak)

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