David Bowie – Ecce Signum

Weekly Round-up, September 13, 2025

2025-09-132025-09-13 John Winkelman

An abandoned trucker hat in a concrete stairwell. The hat is black, with the word HUMBLE embroidered in yellow.

[Found in a stairwell in a downtown Grand Rapids parking garage.]

This past week was crazy. Both not enough and too much work. And the world took a decided turn for the chaotic a couple of days ago.

Master Yen Hoa Lee, my instructor of tai chi and kung fu for the past 35 years, passed away on September 1. His obituary is here. I will write more about him when I have the emotional energy to do so.

Reading

I am re-reading Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth, which I tend to do when someone close to me dies.

Writing

Nothing new to report. Thinking about what I will do in November.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Mutants, Kaiju
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Noir

Listening

David Bowie, “Ricochet”, from Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance.

Interesting Links

“Stablecoins could crash our economy” (Richard Murphy, Funding the Future)
“The Alliance Among Washington, Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley” (Stefano Ali Azali, Naked Capitalism) – Originally published at The Muslim Faculty, but also posted at Naked Capitalism due to likely DDOS attacks on the original site.
“The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security” (Eli Hager, ProPublica)
“You Can’t Worship God and Money: Theological Abominations in Trump’s America” (Liz Theoharis, Tom’s Dispatch)

Weekly Round-up, April 12, 2025

2025-04-122025-04-12 John Winkelman

Poe, enjoying herself in the spring sunshine.

[Poe, enjoying herself in the spring sunshine.]

While it may be a stretch to say that warm weather has arrived, seasonably-appropriate weather has arrived, and compared to the recent cold snap, it feels warm. In other words, we are getting historically-average weather which, compared to the past years of excessive heat, feels unseasonably cold.

My partner and I just finished starting several dozen seeds. We were a couple of weeks late in this task, but given the extended growing season, thanks to the aforementioned global warming, it shouldn’t affect our yield.

Work landed on me with both feet this past week, and I ended up working some extremely long days, and as this post goes live late Saturday afternoon, I am still working. Thus my creative output was much diminished.

Reading

I am more than halfway through The City and the City, which I am still quite enjoying. I haven’t made much progress in Trout Fishing In America or The Wretched of the Earth, but I hope to change that in the upcoming week.

Writing

Nothing to report. This has been a busy week.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Robots, Music
Setting: Ruins
Genre: Romance

Listening

David Bowie, “The Man Who Sold the World”, from the album The Man Who Sold the World.

Interesting Links

“Pluralistic: Tariffs and monopolies” (Cory Doctorow)
“Trump Administration Debuts Legal Blueprint for Disappearing Anyone It Wants” (Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, via Portside)

Weekly Round-up, March 15, 2025

2025-03-152025-03-15 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

“Neoliberalism and a Healthy Population Are Incompatible” (Richard Murphy, Naked Capitalism)
“If Successful, I Would Call It a Coup: A Retired Judge’s Warning About Elon Musk’s Abuse of Power” (Democracy Now)

Weekly Round-up, July 13, 2024

2024-07-132024-07-13 John Winkelman

The bloom at the top of a six foot tall thistle plant in our back yard.

[The bloom at the top of a six foot tall thistle plant in our back yard.]

This past week was, like so many of the previous weeks, too busy to do much beyond working, working out, and the myriad maintenance projects which come with owning a house.

Reading

I am well on my way through M. John Harrison’s Viriconium, and loving every page of it. The writing therein is difficult to read quickly, and Harrison’s prose worth lingering over, so this might be another month-long read.

Writing

My world-building documents grow in size and number, and I have taken up, as a writing exercise, writing and re-writing the first paragraph or page of Cacophonous. I think of it as revving my engine, in the hopes that one of the revs will turn into a launch. If nothing else, I will have a SMASHING first paragraph.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Cyborgs, Apocalypse
Setting: Wilderness
Genre: Science Fiction

Listening

This song came up in a Metafilter thread discussing an article on the use of ChatGPT in religious institutions. Given the writing prompt I generated for the upcoming week, this seems particularly appropriate.

Interesting Links

Book Marks – A new review aggregator site (think Rotten Tomatoes) for books. A project of Literary Hub. Browsing through here brought to my attention a new book called Black Pill by Elle Reeve. A quick search of “black pill” brought me to the following link:
“Misogynist Incels and Male Supremacism” (Megan Kelly, Alex DiBranco, Dr. Julia R. DeCook, New America) – Because it needs to be repeated ad infinitum, any time a member of an in-group thinks their problems are caused by members of the corresponding out-group: Never in the history of the USA have men been systematically oppressed or marginalized for being men. To believe otherwise is ignorant. To act in support of that belief is cowardly.

Weekly Round-up, April 20, 2024

2024-04-202024-04-20 John Winkelman

Pear Tree Flowers In Our Back Yard

[The above photos is of a blossom on one of the pear trees we planted in our back yard last summer.]

It’s been an even crazier week than usual, which for this year is really saying something. In the coming days I might make a long post about the intersection of homelessness, carceral capitalism, and West Michigan Nice. But for now I need to keep my focus narrow.

Reading

Back in October I bought Jean Daive’s book Under the Dome, which was a memoir of sorts of Daive’s friendship with the poet Paul Celan.

Last week I finished Celan’s Selected Poetry and Prose, and found it…underwhelming. Perhaps my mind was not in the right place to appreciate his work, or perhaps I am simply not the target audience for his poetry.

A few days ago I finished Daive’s A Woman With Many Lives, and also found it not to my taste. I’m not saying the poetry was bad. Daive is a talented writer. I just…didn’t vibe with it.

All of this is a little confusing for me, because Under the Dome was one of my favorite reads of the past several years.

Now I am reading All that is Evident is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963 – 2018, which I purchased from McSweeney’s a few years ago.

Writing

This Week’s Writing Prompt

Subject: Super Powers, Fae
Setting: Ship
Genre: Slipstream

Listening

I picked up Bowie’s album Never Let Me Down on cassette tape, and listened to it A LOT on the ride to and from the Eaton Rapids pickle factory during the summer of 1987. This was my holding pattern between the end of high school and the start of my extended stay at Grand Valley State University. This is the first time I have seen the video for “Time Will Crawl”, despite having listened to the song for literally decades.

Interesting Links