We’re right in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, but this is also the time of year when I have a bit of nostalgia for New England. The early fall has a fair number of clear blue skies, the mosquitoes and other flying pests of summer are mostly gone, and the leaves are changing color. Our old house:
A few weeks ago, I was over at a friend’s house here in Jupiter, Florida. He and his family were also escapees from Lincoln, Maskachusetts. The very same day, I noticed an email from our old town’s email discussion group. It is about an online workshop that is perhaps organized by some folks farther west, but in which at least some people in Massachusetts are interested:
Writing Workshop for Women, Nonbinary, and Gender-nonconforming Writers & Aspiring Writers
.. a new online and print magazine dedicated to giving voice to women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming storytellers in mountain literature. They are offering a thought-provoking, two-hour online writers’ workshop for women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming outdoor writers (and aspiring writers) on September 16 at 4 p.m. Mountain Time (3 p.m. Pacific Time, and 6 p.m. East Coast Time) taught by esteemed nature writer and poet, CMarie Fuhrman. Beginners, as well as experienced authors, are welcome.
“A,” “The,” and Nothing: Articles, Attention, and the More-Than-Human World
Poet, nature writer, and part-time fire lookout CMarie Fuhrman (author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, director of the Elk River Writers Workshop, and founder of the Confluence Writing Community) will lead this workshop exploring how some of the smallest words in the English language — “a,” “the,” and their absence—carry enormous weight in nature and place-based writing and social justice writing. Through close reading and writing exercises, participants will discover how article choice shapes relationships, intimacy, and the way the more-than-human world is rendered on the page. They’ll move from attention to language to craft, and leave with new tools for listening to what their writing is actually doing.
Could Graham Platner spend part of his retirement trolling for progressive females at this event? The registration page:
Desire Lines Collective is dedicated to elevating women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming writers of mountain literature. The majority of our workshops are limited to self-identified members of these communities, including this one. We trust participants to honor this space and to uphold our value of fostering communities where women, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people feel safe taking imaginative risks.
Confusingly, though,
We encourage applications from Black and Indigenous writers, writers of color, writers with disabilities, writers from LGBTQIA+ communities, and writers whose voices have been historically underrepresented in the outdoor publishing world.
Could a disabled Black writer who identified as a cisgender male attend?
Speaking of Hispanic Heritage Month, JetBlue got an early start on it (photo from September 8 and the holy month does not begin until September 15), which is great, but then chose to feature a film by Jared Bush and Byron Howard as part of Latinx “heritage”.
Loosely related…
I don’t know why you are so filled with hatred. With millions in the bank and living in the greatest country in the world, you mostly post about things that you hate and that annoy you. Yes, there are crazy people in this country. Yes, there are people who believe unbelievable things. That’s what makes it great, the open-mindedness of this country.
Why not focus on the joy and great beauty all around you? Similar to the beauty of New England. It does not care whether someone is holding a non-binary writers workshop. It just exists. If you leave your computer and walk outside you will see just this beauty and nothing else and that’s all that matters.
Sure, it’s sensible to leave Massachussetts because you don’t like the additional taxes. That directly affects you. But if some crazy people want to be crazy, why let that spoil your appreciation of the beauty all around you?
“ Taxes weren’t a factor in our decision to relocate to Florida” — https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2021/07/14/effect-on-childrens-wealth-when-parents-move-to-florida/
@Anonymous, I can’t speak for Philip, but I try very hard to be non-hateful. That said, here in Maskachu$etts, where we pride ourselves on being inclusive, there are some pretty striking examples of the opposite.
Take the recent situation at Montano’s Restaurant on Cape Cod. The owner hosted a private Republican fundraiser, and afterward the restaurant faced a wave of online harassment, threats, calls for a boycott, and even a hoax 911 call [1].
I would expect Democrats to rally behind the owner and visit the restaurant, with the media cameras there, to publicly condemn the threats and harassment. Yet, so far, there has been no such response from Democratic politicians or media figures defending the restaurant owner.
[1] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/politics/cape-cod-restaurant-owner-says-he-received-threats-after-hosting-gop-fundraiser/4023065/
Anon, I’m not sure if Phil is filled with hatred, but I can tell you I certainly am. I’m on the record that America is drenched in Evil of all sorts, and that is why I hate America. There is no “joy and great beauty all around” America. Have you ever heard me or my friends say anything positive about America? Why is it that I wear a scowl all day every day? You are sadly a part of the problem. Get with the program. Here’s a short list of things you might want to start paying attention to:
1) America was built on Racism and this continues unabated today. Have you not been paying attention to the nearly dozen lynchings of Black folks in recent weeks? Have you not watched as Blacks are murdered by the dozens in Chicago every month?
2) Capitalism has destroyed what little good there was in America. That is why living standards here are low and declining and why Black folks are disproportionately destitute (aside from being victims of Whiteness). Barack did his best to take from takers to Equalize wealth, but sadly this has been undone. Fortunately, Obamacare continues, and this has led to a dramatic reduction in healthcare costs since then.
3) Beyond the shameful situation here in America, Americans have worked to perpetuate Western Civilization throughout the world, and this has oppressed billions worldwide through Colonization, Slavery and other evil methods. Just look at what is happening in Somalia and so many other places. Are you completely blind?
4) The Racist, Evil government we now have has closed our border, which has denied entry to Peaceful Islamic family men, who brought with them many Cherished traditions, which bring some small element of Joy to America. Among these traditions: Child Rape, Enslavement of Women (including, of course, clothing them in head-to-toe black rags), Eradication of Jews. You may have seen the situation with Jocelyn Nungary, who was brutally raped and murdered by two of these Peaceful young men because she objected to child rape (a good lesson to all-start behaving!). Now, many of these Wonderful New Americans are being deported.
Dear Michelle, what happened to that wonderful, optimistic speech where you said, “When they go low, we go high”? I hope you haven’t had a change of heart about that principle, or have you?
Stop bitching about MA and other liberal states. Just move to the great state of Mississippi, it is almost Utopia there.
Anon: Indeed, for people of means Mississippi has “The Best Small College Town in the U.S.”.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/guide-to-oxford-mississippi-12033282
Oxford, MS is so elite that it even attracted Joe Biden’s younger brother, Jim Biden, to harvest some money from trial lawyers. See this Washington Post article for the FBI’s investigation into the Biden family’s activities there: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/17/james-bidens-dealmaking-caught-fbi-tapes-unrelated-bribery-probe/
Plenty of private jets at the local airport. 5600′ runway. https://www.airnav.com/airport/KUOX
MS is on track to eliminate its state income tax as well. https://governorreeves.ms.gov/gov-reeves-signs-historic-legislation-eliminating-mississippis-individual-income-tax/
@phil great. Hope you will keep this in mind when you wish to move again. All the people on this blog we live in MA/liberal states and bitch this looks like a good place to move.
I am appalled, but not surprised, by this blog’s continued erasure of female and Latine voices. Charise Castro Smith and Yvett Merino served as co-director, co-writer, and producer of “Encanto”. Their (admittedly belated) addition was vital to its cultural representation.
Merino also helped form “The Familia,” a group of Latino Disney employees that met monthly for lunch to discuss the concept of family.
Anyway, what is the big deal about directing? A “Polish” director and criminal, Roman Polanski, directed the classic “The Fearless Vampire Killers” despite being none of those things. Any schmuck can direct nowadays, if you ask me.
Editor Phil: if possible, could you please append my prior comment to the “Reply” section of the original comment by Anonymous where I meant it to be? Eternal thanks.
Michelle: I didn’t think that this was possible in the WordPress admin interface, but ChatGPT as usual says that I’m wrong. Let me try.
———————
Yes — in current WordPress, an administrator can re-parent an existing comment, so that it becomes a threaded reply beneath a different comment. WordPress stores this relationship in the comment’s comment_parent field. WordPress Developer Resources
In WordPress 7.1, this is available directly on the Edit Comment screen: the parent comment can be changed there. WordPress 7.1 specifically added support for updating comment_parent through the normal comment-edit process.
…
If you’re running an older WordPress version, the standard admin interface historically did not expose the parent field. That’s why plugins such as Modify Comment Parent existed; they added a “Comment Parent” field to the edit screen.
It worked! I had to change the settings to allow 3-level nesting!
3-level nesting seems to good to be true in America, but what do I know?
Oh, Mo-Mo, you so craaazy. One finger snap from you and it’s “Hope and Change”. Bless your heart. 3 damn levels now.
Oh, and Phil, while you have your “Michele O.’s Web Servant” hat on, could you either add a fourth level or add “Sheeit, girl!” onto my last comment? You earned your reparation points today, even though your people were historically slaves too.
Is Greenspun ever not nostalgic for the homeland? The strong heroine lifting heavy objects was the highlight of Encanto. The 100 minutes of mariachi music might remind generation X of getting married to the tunes of Carlos Santana & Ricky Martin.
> The town is Galloway. The Merrimac River, broad and placid, flows down to it from the New Hampshire hills, broken at the falls to make frothy havoc on the rocks, foaming on over ancient stone towards a place where the river suddenly swings about in a wide and peaceful basin, moving on now around the flank of the town, on to places know as Lawrence and Haverhill, through a wooded valley, and on to the sea at Plum Island, where the river enters and infinity of waters and is gone.
> The Town and the City, Jack Kerouac
So goes the first sentence of a sentimental style Kerouac (semi-autobiographically about his boyhood home in Lowell, Massachusetts) abandoned after this first major novel. I lived in New England for 9 years as a boy. I haven’t been back since then. I don’t really miss it, other than the natural beauty — the Fall there is an amazing experience, where they haven’t paved over the tree stumps from the olde wooden turnpikes. The small town, closed-to-strangers mentality I guess is OK for the townies. It’s too much like “Old England” for me, as a Western American. Yankees have their good points, but weird as hell to know. I never could figure girls out there, even back in the days when girls were still sort-of-girls, boys sort-of-boys in the 1970s.
“mountain literature”
Seems like they’re gearing up to take down WVa once and for all. Don’t you know there is a vital culture of genderqueer Blackness in Appalachia that has been violently suppressed by racist patriarchal white men of toothlessness? etc etc.
No mountains in Florida. Ron DeSantis should ban mountain literature.