Reading Roundup: May 2024

I’ve been wanting to reread Middlemarch by George Eliot since I read The Marriage Question back in February, and the month of my birthday seemed like a great time to revisit this book for grown-up people. I believe it is my third read of this 785-page saga, so I suppose it’s not surprising that I’d forgotten some elements (for example, how deliciously mean Mrs. Cadwallader is, and how she and Celia hilariously read their neighbors for filth) and misremembered some others (I thought Ladislaw’s flirtatious friendship with Rosamund happened much earlier), yet I still experienced the delight of discovery in revisiting these characters and these little towns. The fates of these characters do hit different, now that I am solidly in my 40s. In particular, I found myself feeling closest to Dr. Lydgate, although I’m closer in age to Causabon (unflattering though that might be). Lydgate is a hard-working man with intellectual ambitions and a desire to serve the public good, ground down by debt and creatively blocked by the necessity of earning money…. ah, touché. Yet I found more sympathy for Rosamund, too, seeing some of my own youthful selfishness and vanity in her choices, although superficially we don’t care about the same things at all.

Calamities by Renee Gladman is a collection of short, lyrical prose fragments that all begin with “I began the day” followed by scenes of the author’s life as a middle-aged Black lesbian professor and creative: writer’s block, conversations with friends, vacation with family, professional impasses and microaggressions, picking up a new art form (line drawing)…. The accumulation of days begun create a sense of time ticking away. The prose is very elevated and finely crafted, yet as intimate as reading someone’s journal.

My spring semester class was assigned an excerpt from Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and though we didn’t really get to talk about it as a class, I was taken by the intense quality of attention and poetic inquiry the author applies to the lives of marine mammals. I bought a copy and found a lot of beauty and comfort in it during a difficult month. Each chapter centers around a different principle of Black feminist praxis, such as “listen” and “breathe” and “collaborate.” The author looks at what we know (and what we don’t know) about seals, whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals, and considers what we can learn from these (frequently endangered) species and apply to human lives endangered by climate change, extractive capitalism, and anti-Black violence. For example, what can a species that uses echolocation teach us about listening? What stablizes us, as a dorsal fin stabilizes dolphins? The segments frequently end with reflection and prayer-like invocation, which I found really lovely and wanted to read out loud.

I am still plugging along with I Want a Better Catastrophe by Andrew Boyd. I do find it interesting and useful for reflection, but I really have to be in the right headspace for it. I also started reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau, because I’ve actually never read it. I got an edition annotated by climate writer Bill McKibben, because I wanted to pay particular attention to the record of the natural world in this book… I know Thoreau’s bird journals are useful to contemporary phenologists studying how seasons have changed over time, for example.

Elsewhere

The Freelance Solidarity Project has been tracking cases of freelance journalists who experience retaliation for supporting Palestinians under siege.

The Black people who lived in Walden Woods long before Henry David Thoreau (gift link)

This was so funny to me: Have you seen a cybertruck yet?
(I have, and it was so much more absurd than I imagined!)

I loved this well-written, thoughtful perspective on the man vs. bear debate from a solo hiker.

Lovely and interesting: The Thoughts of a Spiderweb

I appreciated not only this thoughtful reflection on AI, but on the purpose of feedback in writing education: What Does Automating Feedback Mean for Learning?

And, as always, AI in the news:
Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry (Futurism, May 8, 2024)
Google pitches its vision for AI everywhere, from search to your phone (Washington Post, May 14, 2024, gift link)
Press Pause on the Silicon Valley Hype Machine (New York Times, May 15, 2024, gift link)
Sam Altman’s Scarlett Johansson Whoopsie Is The True Future Of AI (Defector, May 26, 2024)
Are your internet habits killing the planet? (HEATED, May 28, 2024)

Minutiae

In the beginning of May, I completed the first class in my current graduate program. It was a strange experience, both more and less demanding than the 8-week online classes I’ve been doing for years. We had more reading, some of which was fantastic, but we did less with it. We spent 5 weeks planning one project, which meant I spent 3 weeks coming up with bad ideas and 2 weeks pulling something plausible together. Still, I liked getting familiar with the StoryMaps platform, and I think this work will contribute to my final project on Philadelphia waterways.
Ebb || Flow: Join me for a walk along the interim Delaware River Trail

In mid-May, I turned 43. I feel good about that. My 40s so far have been a time of discovery. On the only warm and sunny day during the week of my birthday, I went to my favorite park with a few friends and spent a couple hours weeding, then a few more hours feasting on treats from the Southeast Asian market in the park: sesame balls, bamboo and banana leaves stuffed with sticky rice, fried things, grilled things on sticks, and elaborate fruit drinks.

On other days this month, I toured a water treatment plant and mapped out a native planting in the rain garden at a school in my neighborhood. I went to New Hope for brunch and a production of Noises Off! and laughed until my sides split. I started a new class for the summer–another writing workshop. I started a communications committee for my local volunteer group.

At the end of of May, I said goodbye to my beautiful old cat Ascher. She was my companion for about 18 years–a lifetime, in which apartments and jobs and romances came and went. Everything is temporary but I lived with this loving and mysterious little creature for almost two decades, and she had several close calls in her old age, so it was hard for me to accept that she would not have a miraculous recovery this time. It’s so hard to type these sentences. I may have more to say eventually–to honor her and her long life, to voice the specific weight of this sadness–but for now, the words won’t come.