[A milkweed beetle on a milkweed plant]

This was another busy week, leading up to a couple of weeks off (more or less) from work. Whether or not I have any actual down-time during my break remains to be seen…

Reading

I randomly pulled Wolfgang Hilbig’s novella Old Rendering Plant off the shelf and read it in a couple of days. It wasn’t bad. Mostly atmosphere, and some very good writing which, purposefully or no, strongly echoes Lovecraft. So a good but light read.

Writing

Having been inspired by this past week’s Grand Rapids LitFest, and specifically by the all-day Grand River Poetry Collective event at the Wealthy Street Theater Annex, I have begun to assemble the many poems I have written over the past decade, to see if enough of them are competent (or even “good”) enough to turn into a manuscript. I expect this project will take at least the rest of this year, and likely a good chunk of the next.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Music, Economics
Setting: Frontier
Genre: Magic Realism

Listening

“Horses” by Rickie Lee Jones, from her 1989 album Flying Cowboys. Until recently the only RLJ song with which I was familiar was “Chuck E.’s in Love.” Someone made a post about Jones on Metafilter and that put me on something of a deep dive, as much as an hour on YouTube is a deep dive. I really like this song.

Interesting Links

• “US Attacks Iran: Start of a Long War? Update: Iran Parliament Votes to Close Strait of Hormuz” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)