Category: Life

Weekly Round-up, March 15, 2025

John Winkelman

Red maple buds on a twig, seen against a hazy blue sky.

[Red maple buds on a twig, seen against a hazy blue sky.]

It’s been an interesting week. The slide into an official, full-blown Christofascist ethno-state continues. I say “continues” because all of American conservatism has been heading in this direction for about the past 248 years, and REALLY the last 532 years.

The most clear-eyed theory states that, rather than 1930s Weimar Germany, we are seeing the USA mimic the late-1990s, post-Soviet Russia. The oligarchs are stripping the country for parts, and already the damage done in last than two months will take years to correct. The only real solution will be to purge the entirety of MAGA and DOGE, and all similar ideologies, from the world, and tax the wealthy until none of them have the financial resources to get involved in politics at any meaningful level, ever again.

In happier news, I just received the first book published by the Grand River Poetry Collective, Melissa Wray‘s Small Gestures. The Collective has about ten more books in various stages in the publishing queue, and more author inquiries are coming in every day.\

Grand Rapids Poet Laureate Christine Stephens-Krieger has been hard at work setting up opportunities and events for Grand Rapids poets. Two coming up in the near future are:

  • Sunday, April 6, 2:00 – 4:00 pm: The Power of Poetry Showcase at the Grand Rapids Public Library
  • Thursday, April 4, 6:00 – 7:30 pm: Grand River Poetry Collective Panel Discussion at the Grand Rapids Art Museum

Reading

I finished The Evergreen Review Reader, which was magnificent, and now I’m on to the next book – Minor Feelings, by Cathy Park Hong, on the recommendation of my partner.

Writing

I have a large pile of old poetry and short stories to investigate to see if any have merit, so that I may edit them. I feel cautiously optimistic and vaguely pessimistic in equal measure.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Portals, Cyborgs
Setting: Virtual Reality
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Five years ago this week the COVID lockdowns commenced. That five years has been a very long couple of decades.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, March 8, 2025

John Winkelman

Pepper and Poe relaxing on the couch.

[Poe and Pepper, relaxing on the couch.]

Oh, we do live in interesting times. Trump and Musk are very efficiently dismantling the American Empire, which is a good thing, but they are doing so by dismantling America, which is a very bad thing. In the event that we ever have elections again, with candidates who are meaningfully distinct from one another and from the current ball of hagfish slime inhabiting the halls of power, I will vote from anyone who dedicates their career to overturning Citizens United, and putting strict caps on all campaign donations and all campaign spending. Spending is not free speech, has never been free speech, and must never be considered free speech. Free speech is only that which is enjoyed, both in principle and in practice, by all Americans equally. So any laws which act as de facto aggregators of power rather than dispersers of power are per se anti-free speech, and therefore pro-fascism.

Reading

Samuel Beckett. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Patsy Southgate. Paul Blackburn. Gary Snyder. Carlos Fuentes. Denise Levertov. Boris Pasternak. All of these writers and dozens more besides, in The Evergreen Review Reader, 1957 – 1966. This book is keeping me sane, for what it’s worth.

Writing

I felt particularly burned out over the past week and so accomplished very little, writing-wise.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Espionage, Super Powers
Setting: Border Town
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Otis Taylor and his band with an amazing cover of “Hey Joe”, performed at the Kitchener Blues Festival in August of 2014. I have been a fan of Taylor since I first heard one of his songs on local station WYCE back in the early 2000s.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, March 1, 2025

John Winkelman

The view east from Draper Cemetery in Jackson County, Michigan.

[The view east from Draper Cemetery in Jackson County.]

After last week’s whirlwind project, which I can’t discuss but during which I learned a LOT of Python, I am completely exhausted and took the last two days of the week off as sick days, for the sake of my mental and emotional health. Twenty years ago I could have recovered from a 70+ hours-in-eight-days marathon of work by getting a single night of sleep. That simply is not the case any more. I need down time.

This past Tuesday we laid my aunt Judy to rest. She was my Mom’s older sister, and the third of the four siblings to pass. I saw many relatives who I had not seen since Mom’s funeral back in the fall of 2021. The family just keeps getting smaller.

Reading

I am about a third of the way through The Evergreen Review Reader, 1957 – 1966. So much good stuff here!

Writing

I have had neither time nor energy to put pen to paper this week, other than minimal journaling and some light note-taking and list-making.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Portals
Setting: Ship
Genre: Western

Listening

“Ghostwriter” by RJD2, from the album Deadringer. I listened to this song a lot during my first few years as a web developer, on a compilation album someone gave me back in the early 2000s. The whole album is quite good.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, February 22, 2025

John Winkelman

The ears of an orange cat visible over a rumpled pile of bed covers, also orange. In the background a window through which snow-covered houses are visible.

[Pepper, hiding.]

I am in the middle of another insane work week, so light updates here.

Reading

The Evergreen Review Reader, 1957 – 1966. Amazing stuff here.

Writing

Code. Lots of code.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Colonization, Fae
Setting: Mountains
Genre: Fantasy

Listening

Hannah Waddingham and Brendan Hunt singing the B-52’s “Love Shack” This video will live in my head, rent-free, FOREVER!

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, February 15, 2025

John Winkelman

A trail of cat footprints in a light covering of snow.

[A trail of cat footprints in a light covering of snow.]

This past week was hectic, but not overwhelming. We are already making plans for ConFusion 2026, and I am excited to be part of that process. ConFusion 2025 was a tremendous experience and I am grateful that we are able to keep that momentum up as we plan for next year.

Reading

I finally finished Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. In any other year I would have completed it sometime around the holidays, but surviving in a cyberpunk dystopia takes a lot of mental energy, and is quite psychologically draining. And classic Russian literature requires a lot of focus and attention to detail.

Immediately upon closing the Pasternak, I opened The Evergreen Review Reader, 1957-1966. I believe I picked this book up as a remainder when I worked at Schuler Books & Music back in the mid-1990s. So this book has been in my possession for between 25 and 30 years. And now I am finally reading it. The first two short stories therein are by Samuel Beckett and Jack Kerouac.

Writing

While at Monumental ConFusion a couple of weeks ago, my partner bought me an unlined journal with paper thick enough to allow me to use a fountain pen without bleed-through or blotching. I have written a couple of poems in it, one a sort of “welcome to the journal” piece, and the other a response to finishing Doctor Zhivago here in the mid-21st century. Feels good to have my head in that space again.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Environment, Precursors
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

“Careless Whisper” by Wham!

While looking for a song to include in this post, I found a list of the top 40 songs of this date 40 years ago. “Careless Whisper” was at the top of an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING collection of music. 1985 was a hell of a year to be a teenager listening to the radio.

Interesting Links

 

Weekly Round-up, February 8, 2025

John Winkelman

For the first time in many months, I had a week which wasn’t particularly busy. Or rather, not busy by my usual standards. And I celebrated by being completely brain-dead for the entire week. I managed to accomplish what work was sent my way, and I attended all of the martial arts classes as usual, but other than when working out, I spent the entire week on autopilot.

Reading

I made minimal progress in Doctor Zhivago, due to my brain simply not working. And also by sleeping through what is usually my reading time in the mornings. I really shouldn’t let myself get so exhausted.

Writing

I barely even wrote in my journal this week, though I plan to ramp that up significantly, if for no other reason than that between the tidal wave of LLM-generated content, and the capture of all of the online platforms by billionaire fascists of various flavors, handwritten creative work is the only writing which is guaranteed to be “real.”

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Super Powers, Precursors
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: War

Listening

“I Hate You” by Kirk Thatcher and his band The Edge of Etiquette. Recorded for That Scene in Star Trek IV.

Weekly Round-up, February 1, 2025

John Winkelman

I am back home and in blissed-put recovery mode after four days of Monumental ConFusion. I will post a write-up in the near future.

Reading

I finished Speculative Whiteness, and am in the final stretch of Doctor Zhivago. Zhivago has been a very long project, due in large part to chaos in my day job and also chaos in the world at large. Concentration and focus have been in very short supply this year.

Writing

My brain is recovering from the past three months of *gestures at everything*, so not much writing this week.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Undead, Genius Loci
Setting: Library
Genre: Solarpunk

Listening

Marianne Faithfull and The Chieftains, “Love is Teasin'”, from the magnificent album The Long Black Veil.

Faithfull died this past Thursday, after a long, difficult, and beautiful life.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 25, 2025

John Winkelman

The view from the hotel window at ConFusion 2025. A parking lot, a frozen pond, and several roads are visible, as well as various evergreen and deciduous trees.

[The view from the hotel window at ConFusion 2025.]

This will be a brief update, as I am at Monumental ConFusion for the weekend.

Reading

With the crazy project finally mostly wrapped up, I finally have time and – more importantly – mental energy to dive back into reading. I am bouncing back and forth between Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, where I am well past the halfway point, and Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness, which is a short but infuriating read, though now that I am well past the halfway point it is becoming amusing. The alt-right, in all their various facets, are a bunch of pathetic losers.

Writing

Not much writing happening right now, thanks to the afore-mentioned Crazy Project.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Genius Loci
Setting: Wilderness
Genre: Dystopian

Listening

“Father & Son” by Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens. My partner and I have been watching Ted Lasso, with is remarkable and joyous, and the final scene of the final episode featured this song.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 18, 2025

John Winkelman

A sprig of purple kale peeking out of a pile of snow.

[A sprig of decorative purple kale peeking out of a pile of snow just outside of Martha’s Vineyard in Grand Rapids, Michigan.]

Another week in the hopper, and I am exhausted. This week I worked 51 hours and managed to avoid missing the evening classes by logging in between 6 and 7:00 in the morning. But we have two more days to go, though I am sure the project leads would love for me to work through this three-day weekend, that just ain’t gonna happen.

The next blog post – indeed, the next couple of hundred blog posts – will be sent from the newly-formed Fascist States of America, headed by several billionaires stuffed in a sagging, ugly, shit-stained Donald Trump costume.

This state of affairs became inevitable when the Supreme Court passed Citizens United, which codified into law the idea that money is exactly the same as speech, and that the richer a person (or corporation) was, the more deserving of free speech they were. It is no coincidence that these billionaire broligarchs consider themselves “free speech absolutists”, but only when it comes to the dissemination of white supremacist and other forms of hate speech. Note how quickly they close down any criticisms of themselves on their own platforms.

So in that sense, Donald J. Trump, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the other wealthy media outlet owners are the most cowardly men on the planet. They have gone to astonishing lengths to build up enough wealth to not only shield themselves from the consequences of any of their actions, but also to shut down most avenues of criticism of them and the members of their cohort. They are the living embodiment of Wilhoit’s Law: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

Reading

I have passed the halfway point of Doctor Zhivago, but it is still slow going. Maybe the long weekend will afford me time to get in some pages.

Writing

I am giving up on writing anything substantial until February. This month has been a total wash.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Artificial Intelligence, Cryptids
Setting: Ruins
Genre: War

Listening

Aphex Twin, “On”

Interesting Links

  • With the annual State of the World address wrapped up, a new conversation is ongoing at The Well: “State of the News 2025“
  • Have a couple of decades to kill? browse the Magazine Rack at the Internet Archive.

Weekly Round-up, January 11, 2025

John Winkelman

The Grand River, as seen at sunset from the Bridge Street bridge.

[The Grand River, as seen at sunset from the Bridge Street bridge.]

Another week gone, consumed by the crazy work project. The end is nigh, but it is a combination of an abrupt cliff and a brick wall toward which we are racing headlong. So kind of like life in general.

I am winding down my interactions with Facebook, as Zuck has joined Musk in licking MAGA boots, so Facebook will not stop even the pretense that it isn’t a Nazi bar. Thus it joins Twitter/X, Gab, Rumble, and Truth Social as a safe space for fascists.

Most of my social media presence will now be on BlueSky (until it, too, follows Xitter into the shitter) and Mastodon, which has so far mostly avoided the problem of being owned by billionaire tech bros. We will see how that plays out in the next four years.

Reading

I have finally reached the halfway point of Doctor Zhivago, a month later than I originally expected. It is very, very good.

Writing

While sitting at a cafe yesterday morning before work I knocked out a rough draft of a poem about the Los Angeles wildfires. I might leave it at that, as the subject is so fucking depressing.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Empire, Aliens
Setting: Bar
Genre: Technothriller

Listening

Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” has been bouncing around my head lately, for no particular reason, other than that, fifty-five years later, it is still a hell of a song.

Interesting Links