Monthly Newsletter: Dancing on the Ashes for June, 2020

Dear Dashing Devotees of Dependable Newsletters,

In an effort to keep this one short, I will resist the temptation to start with a sentence about my desire to keep it short.

Dammit. 

Lotsa’ Good Stuff:

At the end of May, William Schreiber’s Someone to Watch Over hit digital store shelves, and then Claudine Griggs’ LGBTQ crime thriller Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell launched on June 1st, the first day of Pride Month. To celebrate Pride this year, not just because of Claudine’s book, but to honor my LGBTQ family, friends, and students, I did this:

So that was fun. 

On the flip-side, there’s still a global pandemic raging, and I’m back to being single, and while those are by no means equivalent, neither is pleasant.

I have been heartened by white America’s newfound recognition of 400 years of systemic racism. The problems aren’t new. The murders aren’t new. But the levels of support for Black Lives Matter and other civil rights activism is higher than it has ever been. I tend to be overly optimistic and it frequently bites me in the ass (see above: Back to being single), but in this case I’m really hopeful that we will see more than cosmetic changes which not only reduce the likelihood that an innocent Black man will be murdered by police on any given night, but that we’ll continue to work to address other forms of systemic racism in housing, employment, and within the institution wherein I am most complicit in producing racially disparate impacts: public education. We have a looooooong way to go, but I think America may just defy its traditionally short attention span and do something truly meaningful this time. And maybe those efforts, in concert with our rediscovery that we are inextricably linked by our shared susceptibility to a deadly virus, will inspire us to tackle the looming existential threat of climate change.

If not, I take pictures of my roses each day to remind myself that life and beauty will persist even if our species decides we can’t. 

Speaking of which, last month I shared the second chapter of one of the books I’m writing, tentatively titled Ellipsis Between Worlds. I posted Chapter 3 today. Check it out and let me know what you think. 

Tweet from someone you should consider following

I encourage you to follow Sara Benincasa (@SaraJBenincasa). I had a short conversation with her on twitter a few years ago, and now she’s famous (because she’s amazing, not because she exchanged some tweets with me), and that’s why I love twitter: It allows you to connect with these great people you might never get to meet in the meatspace. Check out here whole thread about Josephine Baker:

I was today years old when I found out that after years of spying for France, Josephine Baker went to Germany to perform for sick and dying former inmates at Buchenwald concentration camp after the camp was liberated. She apparently never spoke about it publicly.

— Sara Benincasa (@SaraJBenincasa) June 29, 2020

Monthly Poem

This year has had a bit of a 1968 vibe, so I’ve been thinking about a song written in 1967, then covered by another artist, which then became a huge hit in 1968 when it seemed to a lot of Americans that the world was falling apart. We’re not in a year like that because we’re not even in a year yet. So here’s my reflection on that:

Mid-Year

Standing on the watchtower

one turned to the other.

“I’m enjoying this

Far less than I expected.”

“There’s not much fun in it, is there?”

the trickster god agreed.

“I’d hoped for more laughs.”

“Yes, and more sex and gore,”

the fallen angel said.

“A year of choking and coughing?

Not very romantic or dramatic.

There’s too much confusion.

Not enough fear.

Most don’t even know it’s happening.”

They watched the horsemen

gallop across the plains

leaping playfully

over new mass graves.

“We shouldn’t give up so soon,”

the glowing one said.

“I didn't plan on these two arriving first.

But there are still two left

before the end.”

Book recommendation

And since it can’t get more depressing than that, if you decide you want to escape into laughter, I recommend Shakespeare for Squirrels. It’s the third novel of Christopher Moore’s starring Pocket, the fool from King Leer. The trilogy (I hope it’s more than a trilogy) started with Fool, a novel that’s one of my all time favorites, continued in Serpent of Venice. Moore doesn’t just retell Leer. At this point he’s covered Merchant of Venice, Othello, Midsummer Night's Dream, and bits of Troilus and Cressida, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, along with Poe’s "Cask of Amontillado" and Moore's own additions of monsters in the canals of Venice and (sorry for the spoiler) magic squirrels. Why squirrels? Because Christopher Moore watches squirrels frolic out the window while he writes. So the novels are a messy mish-mash, right? Nope. They’re brilliantly constructed, deliciously filthy, and satisfying in more ways than I am comfortable describing. 

Announcements/reminders

Last month I encouraged you to sign up for our Writing Against the Darkness Team. We crushed it this year! The team wrote 86,799 words in a single day. For those of you wanting a conversion, that’s a solid novel worth of words. We’ve also raised $4,440 of our team’s $5,000 goal. It’s not too late to contribute, so if you can pitch in a couple bucks to help find a cure for Alzheimers and provide care for families suffering through this disease, every dollar helps! You can donate HERE.

Sign off

I’ll keep sending you flowers every day (digitally, through Instagram and twitter and FB) to try to bring some added beauty into your life. Stay healthy, keep protesting and demanding change, and find time to read some good books.

-Ben

Sponsored section

No sponsors yet, so if you have a friend who wants to reach a few hundred of the very best people, tell them to contact me. I think I’ll do the first one free just so folks can see that I really do post them. Got something you want to advertise for free?

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