by Mary Hrovat

I wrote the first draft of this post on my typewriter. Like much of my other writing, this piece began as handwritten notes and drafts typed on a nice little portable typewriter, which is a little younger than I am and which I expect to use for the rest of my life.

I first thought about using a typewriter because I wanted fewer distractions when I write. One of the beauties of the typewriter is that it does just one thing. You can’t check your email or anything else; you can’t multitask. You can’t follow any of the myriad paths that the Internet opens up. You can write whatever you want to, but all you can do is write.

Another reason I chose to do some of my work on a typewriter is that the computer has become associated in my mind with various types of paid online work—office jobs that were ultimately tedious, and more recently, my current editing work. These days when I face a piece of text on the computer and have to interact with it (rather than read it), my default attitude is finicky, and I always have an eye to the ways that others will evaluate my work. This makes it harder to move out of editor mode and into writing mode when I’m working on the computer. I thought a typewriter might provide a more friendly environment for writing, especially in the early stages, when ideas are often at their most nebulous and easily scattered, and when I’m most easily discouraged or overwhelmed. Read more »

by Adele A Wilby

Although we know bias and racism exists in most societies, when put into coherent terms in the form of research the impact is stark and exposes just how much a part of life racism is for so many people. Booth and Mohdin’s (The Guardian 2018) article ‘Revealed: the stark evidence of everyday bias in Britain’ setting out the findings of a poll on the levels of negative experience, more often associated with racism, by Black, Asian and minority and ethnic groups in the United Kingdom(UK) does just that. Thus, for example, from amongst its many findings the survey revealed that 43% of those from a minority background had been overlooked for work promotion in the last five years in comparison with only 18% of white people who reported the same experience. Likewise, 38% of people from ethnic minorities said they had been wrongly suspected of shop lifting in the last five years, in comparison with 14% of white people. Significantly, 53% of people from a minority background believed they had been treated differently because of their hair, clothes and appearance, in comparison with 29% of white people. In the work-place also 57% of minorities said they felt they had to work harder to succeed in Britain because of their ethnicity, and 40% said they earned less.

That racism, and indeed anti-Semitism, should be relegated to the dustbin of history is an aspiration shared by many. Of course, it is doubtful that there has ever been a society where racism has not been present. Nevertheless, that is not an excuse for it to become an acceptable phenomenon; it is a scourge on humanity, and has been the source of barbarity and brutality, cruelty and humiliation amongst fellow human beings. Its perpetual presence also serves to remind us of just how little we have learned from its devastating and harmful impact on peoples and societies throughout history. Thus, the recent research and reports of racism in the UK evoked reflection, and reminded me of my personal experience of racism in the United Kingdom, and how I realised the full weight of the phenomenon after the death of my husband. Read more »

THE VALE OF SAINTS

I drove up the Himalayan foothills
to Baba’s shrine
with my friend Masood

in a tired white Gypsy
with dodgy brakes,
urged on by my 94-year-old

mother at Hebrew Home
The Bronx
who said her father,

a wealthy ring-shawl merchant
patronized by the Maharajah,
had married three times

hoping to produce an heir,
but his wives proved barren.
Perhaps it was him,

Mother said.
Yet, he rode his Tonga
to the foothills, then trekked

to the thatched-roof shrine
where he tied a thread
to carved wooden roses,

prayed for a son.
Faith in Sufi mysticism
defined Islam in Kashmir,

commanding awe & respect
never shock & suspicion. Read more »

by Gabrielle C. Durham

In the immortal words of Prince Rogers Nelson’s party gem from 1982:

“But life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last . . .

“So tonight I’m gonna party like it’s 1999.”

So much fun stuff happened in 1999: rampant concern about Y2K; the movie “The Matrix” came out; Bill Clinton’s ongoing inability to keep his dick in his pants and subsequent impeachment and acquittal; former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota; U.S. military college The Citadel graduated its first female cadet; the Elian Gonzalez controversy raged in the States; and Cher’s single “Believe” was released.

But do you remember what you said? Do you remember when something made you laugh, not LOL? It was not actually all that long ago, TBH. Back in 1999, reading a text typically meant applying a highlighter, most likely in neon yellow, to the testable information in a book or handout that the teacher assigned. It has a very different meaning from today’s pithier text message. In a score of years, English has changed. Duh, language is always changing; that’s how it stays alive. But if we think about it at all, we think of language change as being in evolutionary terms – something that takes generations, but it actually happens much more quickly. Read more »

by Joshua Wilbur

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”  —Annie Dillard

According to a July 2018 report from Nielsen, American adults now spend more than 11 hours a day on average consuming some form of media. The study considered time spent on television, radio, apps on smartphones, apps on tablets, internet on a computer, game consoles, and other devices.  The study excluded print formats, such as books, magazines, and newspapers.

Eleven hours per day is a lot of time. Even if we add print formats to the mix—with the  implicit judgement that “book hours” are superior to those dedicated to Netflix or Instagram—the fact remains that the majority of our waking lives is spent in engagement with the creations of other people. More than ever before, we are socially-hungry, story-obsessed, entertainment-seeking creatures.  

It’s easy enough to decry this state of affairs. Postmodernists on the Left have long cast a critical glance at consumer culture, commodity fetishism, and the struggle between greedy hoarders of capital and passive wage-earners, who, like the singing Prole woman in Orwell’s 1984, are free to amuse themselves to death. In the 1960s, Guy Debord characterized the modern West as a “Society of the Spectacle” in a book of the same name. According to Debord, “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation.” We prefer action shows to real adventure, rom-coms to actual romance, hi-def images to genuine experiences.  Will Self, who just months ago wrote an essay called “The Printed Word in Peril” for Harper’s Magazine, described his impressions of Debord’s treatise in a 2013 article for the Guardian: “Rereading The Society of the Spectacle, I was struck yet again […] by Debord’s astonishing prescience – for what other text from the late 1960s so accurately describes the shit we’re still in?”

And yet, for all the well-placed critique, I can’t help but feel that Debord’s picture of people as ideology-drugged spectators reflects our reality in the worst possible light and, in any case, bemoaning it doesn’t get one very far. Read more »

by Holly A. Case

There is a nice neighborhood in Istanbul called Kadıköy, which means “village of the kadı,” or “judge.” One might as well call it Kediköy, however: “village of the cat.” There are a lot of stray cats there, as there are throughout the city. Once I saw a poster with a photo of a cat that said “Lost” at the bottom, then a phone number (rather like seeing a sign on the beach with a picture of a shell reading “Lost,” then a phone number). The sign was taped to a utility box on the street. On top of the box was a stray cat, lounging. It looked a lot like the one in the photo.

A few years ago, I met a retired architect who came down to the promenade along the reinforced shoreline every morning to feed the stray cats. “If there is a heaven and hell, which I don’t believe there is, but if there is, I will go to heaven on their prayers,” he told me.

In a different part of the city, my friend Kerim—a tailor—begins his two-hour commute to work at 6 a.m. Six days a week he pets the stray dogs on one side of the highway, then crosses to the other side to catch the bus where he meets a second pack of strays and pets them. Recently he constructed a luxury home for a stray cat who had taken up residence at the bus stop. It’s a cardboard box wrapped in plastic (to keep it dry), with a styrofoam roof (for insulation), a bubble-wrap subfloor (also for insulation), cardboard flooring, and an interior wall-to-wall rag (for extra comfort). He proudly showed me a photo of it with the occupant just visible inside. Read more »

by Emrys Westacott

Like millions of other people in the US, I often begin the day by listening to ‘Morning Edition,’ the early morning news program on National Public Radio. Sometimes, though, I get so disgusted by the rubbish spewed by the politicians being interviewed, or so infuriated by the flimsiness of the questions put to them, that I just can’t stand it and have to take myself out of earshot. Friday was a case in point.

The topic, of course, was the partial shutdown of the federal government. Congressman Gary Palmer, a Republican from Alabama, came on to be interviewed. Here was the first question

“Both sides have to give in any kind of compromise deal… Where should the Republicans and the president be willing to compromise?”

Right there was where I’d had enough. It is simply nonsense that in every negotiation both sides have to compromise, moving toward some sort of shared middle ground. This is not the received wisdom when it comes to dealing with hostage takers. And that is exactly the situation the House of Representatives is currently in. Read more »

by Tamuira Reid

I met Arnie at a Cocaine Anonymous meeting the year before I got sober for the first time. I was high as fuck, eyes lit and hands fidgeting in my lap, then my jacket pockets, then my lap again. Maybe I thought being in a room full of non-high people would help even my scorecard with God. I had a lot of interesting thoughts back then, but I was usually smart enough to keep them to myself.

Arnie was wearing a neon orange trucker hat with the word “Grandma” scrawled above the brim in what looked like sharpie. His long, sixty-something body stretched out from beneath a threadbare track suit, and his sneakers were both untied. I remember being distracted by this, the laces calling my name, Tamuira, Tamuira! Come tie me! I would later learn, over our decade of friendship, that he was claustrophobic, and his feet needed so be able to “breathe better”.

And this was what I found most comforting about about Arnie; his weirdness, his eccentricities. He didn’t need drugs to take him into an altered state because he was already in one.

“Wanna get coffee?”

I rolled my eyes and lifted up my Styrofoam cup, thinking he was just another gross  old-timer in the program,  picking-up on a newbie.

“I have a sponsor already.”

“I’m not hitting on you, honey. I’m gay,” he said, grabbing a cookie off the table and breaking it in half. “Straight guys don’t do neon.”

“I’m not really sober right now,” I confided. Partly to get rid of him, partly to ease my guilty conscious.

“I can tell. Your jaw is like a goddamn meat grinder.” Read more »

by Samia Altaf

In October of 2014, a bunch of young men and women did their university proud. A couple of engineers, two finance graduates, a biology major, some finishing accounting and business degrees, and a clutch from the school of humanities and social sciences; Muslims mostly, two Christians, a lone Hindu, one Buddhist wannabe, and two oblivious to religion though aware of its place in other folks’ lives. They came together from Sahiwal, Karachi, Gilgit, Swat, Peshawar, Gujranwala, one from Quetta (non-Baluchi), and two from Delhi via the University of Texas. Though the majority of students and faculty stayed away, these young men and women with similar features and skin tones, in colorful flowing kurtas, chooridars, skinny jeans, funky T-shirts, and hijabs, got together to celebrate Diwali, a festival that celebrates Ram’s return from exile.

Diwali, along with Holi, if not officially banned, have been marginalized in Pakistan as “Hindu” festivals although in the multi-religious society of the colonial period they were celebrated with as much enthusiasm as Eid and Christmas. The largest Diwali celebration in Lahore was held at the famous Laxmi Chowk, home to the Laxmi building, a marvel of Indo-European architecture and once the throbbing heart of the local film industry. All citizens, men, women, children, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and Parsis gathered to celebrate the return of Ram to Ayodhya at Chowk with the adjoining building lit bright with lamps.

Almost seventy years on, these young people united in defiance to mark this heritage of their plural past. Ignoring looks of puzzlement and disapproval, they lighted the little lamps—diyas—fired with mustard oil as in the past, each lighted lovingly, one at a time, coaxing the hand-rolled cotton wick to sputter and then hold its own—quite like the event—knowing in their hearts that nurturing the flame symbolized a larger, more tenuous, goal. So they celebrated Diwali, and, I suppose, their own lives for the evening was mellow and they are young and alive and still hopeful. (Wordsworth: what a joy it was to be alive). They shared Mithai, music, poetry, thoughts, laughter, tears, and hopes and dreams for this land and its people wondering about their own place in it. They worried about the shape of tomorrow’s world and asked what they could do to make it better. It was a celebration of hope and harmony arrayed against a background of doom and despair—would there really be a return from the long exile? Read more »