Talking Trauma

It just occurred to me that, while I shared a few more of the New York Society for General Semantics sessions that I've organized, I have not recently extended an invitation to subscribe and attend.

So, you don't have to be local to subscribe, although it certainly does help if you want to attend the sessions. But you can subscribe to get updates and stay in the loop, no matter where you are. The subscription form is on the home page to the New York Society for General Semantics website.

And whether you live in the New York Metropolitan Area of within shouting distance of Manhattan, or maybe are visiting, you are cordially invited to attend whenever a NYSGS program is being held. All that we ask is that you register online, via the New York Society for General Semantics website, so you'll be on the list given to the person at the door. Because the events are held at a private club.

Now, on to this particular post, about a very meaningful session we held over a year ago, on February 21st, 2018. The title of the session was Trauma: Semantics Reactions, Reflections, Retentions, and here is the write up:

General semantics is concerned with how events translate to perceptions, how they are further modified by the names and labels we apply to them, and how we might gain a measure of control over our own responses, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral.

Trauma can be defined as an event that is experienced as deeply disturbing and distressing. Typically, psychological trauma is distinguished from physical trauma which involves some kind of bodily injury, wound, or harm, although psychological trauma can lead to somatic effects, and physical trauma is often accompanied by its psychological counterpart.

How can we better understand the experience of trauma? What are the roles played by perception, language, and memory in our experience of traumatic events, and their aftereffects? How is trauma recognized, and repressed? What are the therapeutic approaches to coping with trauma? Is it possible for us, as human beings, to prepare ourselves for the possibilities of traumatic encounters?

These and other questions will be taken up by our panelists as we discuss a topic that deserves serious consideration.

As for the participants on this panel, there were listed as follows:

Michelle S. Kramisen has her MA in Literature with a concentration in war literature and trauma theory from State University of New York, New Paltz. Currently based out of New York City, she teaches college writing and research courses including a course this semester on zombies and trauma, at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her chapter, “Confronting Trauma in the Zombie Apocalypse: Witnessing, Survivor Guilt, and Postmemory,” was recently published in a collection on media studies. She has presented on trauma, war literature, and media studies at conferences around the country.

Lori Ramos earned her PhD in Media Ecology from New York University. Her early research and scholarship explored the role of media in shaping conceptions of and attitudes toward literacy. More recently, her interests in communication have evolved to include psychotherapy and the impact of trauma. She has received an MSW from Fordham University with a focus on clinical social work and also completed EMDR training for trauma therapy. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at William Paterson University in New Jersey and a staff therapist at Blanton-Peale Institute and Counseling Center in New York City.

Matthew Butler enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1994, was assigned as a Combat Correspondent and attended the Defense Information School studying basic journalism, photojournalism, and military public relations. He is a combat veteran with deployments to Fallujah, Iraq, Helmond Province, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa and South America. Matt's decorations include two Meritorious Service Medals, Joint Commendation Medal, three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals and two Humanitarian Assistance Medals for response to humanitarian crisis in Djibouti and Kenya on two separate occasions. After retiring from the Marines in 2014, Matt completed his undergraduate degree in Organizational Leadership and is now the Director of Military and Veterans' Services at Fordham University where he assists service members and veterans with transitioning from the military to higher education, supports academic integration, career preparation and planning, health and wellness support, and connecting veterans with mentors, both student veteran mentors, and corporate partners. Matt has hosted panel discussions about PTS and Moral Injuries and continuous to be a strong advocate for veterans. Matt works closely with New York City's Department of Veterans' Services and is Executive Member of Veterans on Campus NYC, a public-private venture to support service members and veterans making the transition to colleges and universities in New York City.

The discussion will be moderated by Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, President of the New York Society for General Semantics, member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics, author of several books including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017), and On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011), and co-editor of several anthologies including Korzybski And... (2012).

And here it is:






It was a program that tackled a topic of profound significance and concern!  

The Prophet Einstein

So, it's about time I shared my op-ed which was published on March 9th in the Jewish Standard. This was one I had in mind to do for a long time now, and finally got around to do it. Significantly, and appropriately, it finally turned out that the timing was right. The title it was published under was, Seven Reasons Why Albert Einstein is a Prophet, and as you may recall, I have been willing to include Einstein within the field of media ecology, which is to say as a media ecologist, notably in my book Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study.

Of course, that's a minor point here, my argument being more theological and philosophical. For what it's worth, here it is:



The number 139 is not one we are likely to pay attention to, so this anniversary may not get a great deal of attention. We tend to sit up and take notice when the anniversary is a multiple of 100, or 50, or 10, or even 5.


At the very least, we have a psychological bent toward even numbers, and 139 is decidedly odd. But if Einstein were still with us, he might point out that 139 is more than odd; that it is, in fact, a prime number, which makes it quite significant in its own right. He also no doubt would point to the arbitrary nature of anniversaries, and of calendars for that matter. Einstein’s date of birth on the Hebrew calendar was the 19th of Adar in the year 5639. This year, Adar 19 corresponded to March 6, last year it was March 17, next year is a leap year so it will be February 24 for Adar 1, and March 26 for Adar 2.

I suspect that the differences between the solar calendar of secular society and the lunar calendar of Jewish tradition had some influence on Einstein’s thinking. After all, when we say, for example, that Chanukah is coming late in a given year, it is just as true to say that Christmas and New Year’s are early. The experience of living with two so very different calendars could not help but point to the relativity of time.

And as we remember Einstein, we do so, along with the rest of the world, for his contributions to science, as the recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, and the person named in 1999 as Time magazine’s Person of the Century. More than anyone else, Einstein was the person responsible for the paradigm shift in science that replaced Newton’s mechanistic view of the universe with a relativistic understanding of space and time.

And we also remember him as an especially noteworthy member of the Jewish people, one of our many gifts to the world, a prime example of what we sometimes refer to as yiddishe kop, intelligence born out of a tradition of literacy and learning, one in which teachers and sages are seen as heroic. And we may also recall that as a Jew, Einstein was forced to flee Nazi Germany as a refugee, and that he was a supporter of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel.


 

We do not remember Einstein in a religious context, however; he was not a rabbi or talmudic scholar or theologian. I want to suggest, however, that we should remember him as a prophet. Admittedly, in our tradition we consider the age of the prophets to have ended long ago, but we cannot rule out the possibility of modern prophets altogether. And while we would tend to be suspicious of anyone claiming to be a prophet today, Einstein never made any such claim, so he cannot be rejected as a false prophet.

But I do think a case can be made, and I hope you will consider the possibility as I put forth seven reasons for naming Albert Einstein as a modern-day prophet.

1. Einstein’s name has become synonymous with genius. We typically say that a given individual “is” a genius, but everyone who truly fits the description will more accurately refer to “a stroke of genius” in the sense of something coming from outside of themselves. The word “genius” originates from ancient Rome, and refers to a guiding spirit or deity, a supernatural source, like a guardian angel. (Prophets are the recipients of divine revelation, some form of communication, or we may call it inspiration, which literally means, “to breathe into,” which is how God brings Adam to life in the Book of Genesis.)

2. As a teenager, Einstein imagined himself chasing after a beam of light, which led to his understanding that light cannot be slowed or stopped, that the speed of light is constant, and that it is time, instead, that must vary. This thought experiment was the foundation that led to his special theory of relativity. Other thought experiments followed, notably the difference in what we  would observe when standing on a train vs. standing on a platform as bolts of lightning strike the train. (Prophets are known to receive revelation via visions, as in Jacob’s ladder, Joseph’s dreams, the chariot of fire that appeared to Elijah, and Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel.)

 


3. One of Einstein’s most significant achievements was determining the nature of light as consisting of quanta, aka photons, and that light has a dual nature, as both waves and particles. Clearly, he had a unique relationship to the phenomenon of light. (Prophets are closely associated with light and enlightenment, Genesis famously says that light was the first of God’s creations, Moses has a halo when he descends from Mount Sinai after speaking to God face-to- face, a direct encounter with the divine countenance that we pray may shine upon us.)

4. Einstein gave us a new way of understanding the universe, of space and time as a single phenomenon, spacetime. (Prophets teach us about the nature of Creation to better understand the Creator, and our place in the world.)

 

5. Einstein invoked the philosophy of the Enlightenment founder Baruch Spinoza in explaining his own view of a pantheistic God. That is a view that traditionally has been seen as heretical, but is consistent with some approaches to Kabbalah, God as the Ein Sof, and certainly is acceptable within Reform Judaism. Above all, it is a view consistent with science; as Einstein famously remarked, “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” His resistance to the uncertainty principle of quantum theory was famously expressed in the quote, “God does not play dice with the universe,” asserts that Creation is governed by laws that are rational and ultimately discernible, as well as based on an underlying monotheism, as God would have no one to play dice with. (Prophets often have been critics of established religious authority, in favor of a direct encounter with God via nature.)

6. Einstein spoke out for social justice. He did so on behalf of his own people, in opposition to Nazi Germany, and in favor of Zionism and the State of Israel, but also as a strong critic of racism and supporter of the civil rights movement in the United States. He also was quite critical of capitalism, arguing on behalf of socialism and advocating for a democratic world government and pacifism after the conclusion of World War II. (Social justice is one of the primary themes of the Prophets section of the Tanach.)




 
 

7. Einstein warned President Roosevelt of the danger of Nazi research into the development of the atomic bomb, leading to the Manhattan Project. He later became an outspoken critic of nuclear weapons. His warnings largely have fallen on deaf ears, at least as far as governments are concerned. In 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists introduced the image of the Doomsday Clock, setting it to seven minutes before midnight. On January 25 of this year, the minute hand was moved up to two minutes before midnight, the closest it has ever been, mainly because of North Korea and our president’s threatening remarks, and not taking into account Putin’s recent statements about Russian nuclear missile capability, and his animated image of the bombardment of Florida. (The biblical prophets issued warnings about the destruction of Israel and Judea, and the name Jeremiah has become synonymous with pronouncements of doom.)




 

Einstein’s predictions in the realm of physics continue to be supported by astronomical observation and experimental evidence. Perhaps his predictions about society and politics ought to be taken seriously as well?

Why bother arguing for Einstein as a prophet?

• Because American culture always has had a strain of anti-intellectualism, one that includes resistance to many aspects of science, notably Darwinian evolution.

• Because climate change is at least as great a threat as nuclear war, and is being met with denial, dismissal, or disinterest from significant portions of the population, and all too many in leadership positions.

• Because facts and logic are under assault by religious fundamentalists, cynical political opportunists, and corporate executives with eyes only for short term profits.

As Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz makes clear in his recently published book, Paths of the Prophets: The Ethics-Driven Life, our prophetic tradition is of vital importance, one that always has and always will be relevant for us.

 
Naming Albert Einstein a prophet should not detract from this tradition, but rather enhance it, by adding a dimension that we need now more than ever: the truth that ethics cannot be divorced from an understanding of the world, of reality, in all its complexity, and glory.

Communication and Disruption

So, how about another post about one of our New York Society for General Semantics sessions from last year? Interested? Of course, you are!

This one is a little different from some of the others, as it involves one extended address, followed by a few shorter responses. And it features my colleague from Manhattan College and co-founder of the Media Ecology Association, as well as fellow trustee of the Institute of General Semantics, not to mention NYSGS board member, Thom Gencarelli.

I should also mention that Thom is a fellow past president of the New York State Communication Association, as well as the MEA, and this all starts with him being selected as a fellow Wilson  Fellow at NYSCA in 2016, which obligated him to deliver a Wilson Scholar Address at our last meeting, this past October. Which he did, and it was outstanding, which was why I asked him to give it again as part of a NYSGS program.

So, anyway, here's the write up for it:

Last year, Thom Gencarelli received NYSCA's John F. Wilson Fellow Award, based on his record of scholarship and service. Other scholars previously named as John F. Wilson Fellows include Neil Postman, Gary Gumpert, Dan Hahn, Deborah Borisoff, Susan Drucker, James W. Carey, Lance Strate, Susan B. Barnes, and Brian Cogan. In conjunction with his selection, he delivered this year's John F. Wilson Fellow Lecture on October 13th, at the 75th anniversary meeting of the New York State Communication Association:
"Dark Nets and Disruptive Practices"

All too often, people outside the academic discipline of communication and media studies consider what we do to be little more than a special interest, rather than the study of something that is central to, and one of the primary defining features of, the human experience. As a case in point, the Presidential election of 2016, the most disruptive event of all disruptive events in our contemporary experience in the U.S., can be explained from a media perspective, and an historical one at that. Beginning from Gutenberg’s invention of the mechanical, movable-type printing press and through our contemporary innovations in mobility, social media, and Tor, this presentation argues that all inventions and innovations in media are a disruption, and that the evolution of media by which the citizenry in a democratic society inform themselves can explain, in full, exactly what happened to us in 2016.

On November 3rd, Professor Gencarelli reprised his Wilson Lecture as the main event of our NYSGS program, and following the lecture, as an added bonus, additional reflections, comments, and responses were delivered by

MJ Robinson, Professor of New Media and Journalism and Media Studies, Bernard N. Stern Professor of Humor, and Graduate Deputy Chair for the Media Studies MS program in the Department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York;

Michael Plugh, Professor of Communication at Manhattan College, Immediate Past President of the New York State Communication Association, and Internet Officer and Executive Board member of the Media Ecology Association;

and Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, Past President of the New York State Communication Association, Editor of Explorations in Media Ecology and Executive Board member of the Media Ecology Association, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics, and President of the New York Society for General Semantics.

Thom Gencarelli, Ph.D. (NYU, 1993) is Professor and the founding Chair of the Communication Department at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. He is a Past President of the New York State Communication Association, the Media Ecology Association, and New Jersey Communication Association (twice), and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics. He researches and writes about media literacy/media education, media ecology, and popular media and culture with an emphasis on popular music. He is co-editor (with Brian Cogan) of Baby Boomers and Popular Culture: An Inquiry into America’s Most Powerful Generation (ABC-Clio/ Praeger, 2014), and is currently at work on a book about language acquisition and cognitive development. Thom is also a songwriter, musician, and music producer, and has released two album-length works with his ensemble bluerace, World is Ready and Beautiful Sky. The group’s third, as yet untitled effort is due out in 2018.

It was a program that most certainly shed light on our contemporary semantic environment!

A Call to Disarms

When it came time to write my latest op-ed for the Jewish Standard, I was preparing to write on another topic when the Las Vegas shooting occurred on the night of October 1st. After reading many other news articles and opinion pieces on the subject, I decided to add my voice to the chorus, albeit without much specific reference to this particular incident, because I want the arguments to be independent of any one event, to apply to all of the mass shootings that have occurred in the past, and will continue to occur in the future, until something is finally done about the gun culture in the United States.

I also wanted to get to the root of the problem, the reason why efforts at curbing gun violence are blocked time and time again, and that's the Second Amendment. I am far from the first to call for that Amendment to be abolished, but I do think it's time to stop acting as if the idea of a "right to bear arms" is somehow okay, normal, immune from any questioning or criticism.

If we were drawing up the Bill of Rights today, instead of the late 18th century, we would certainly include First Amendment protections, maybe even strengthen them, as well as the right to a trial by jury, and habeas corpus, and we might even add a right to privacy, which is absent from the original ten amendments. We would probably include amendments prohibiting discrimination based race, gender, religion, creed, etc., and protections regarding voting rights. But would we include anything like the Second Amendment? Would we list packing a gun as a basic human right?

Sure, there would be a vocal minority who would say yes, but I think most American citizens would agree that guns are no more deserving of special protection than automobiles. And that's the point. The abolition of the Second Amendment would clear the way to setting up licensing and restrictions on firearms in the same way that we do so for cars, and trucks, and ships, and airplanes.

And yes, of course, this cannot happen quickly. But nothing is happening anyway. Nothing. At all. So it's time to start playing a long game, and working for a constitutional amendment, one of the longest games in American politics. But it's worth it. It may seem insurmountable today, but if folks keep working at it steadily over time, it can be done. And then, even though we have to live with the omnipresent threat of gun violence, maybe our children, or maybe their children, won't have to.

So, anyway, here is my op-ed, originally published on Oct. 13th, entitled, A Call to Disarm:


Let me begin with a thought that might sound like heresy to some citizens of the United States: The Second Amendment to our Constitution is not scripture.

Indeed, neither the Bill of Rights nor the US Constitution itself were handed down to us by God. Nor are they said to have been dictated from on high, or be the product of divine inspiration. Rather, they are the product of human beings, subject to human flaws and human error. And they are a product of a particular time and set of circumstances, some of which are no longer in effect, such as slavery, and some of which have changed radically, such as the likelihood of a solider being quartered in a private home, an infringement that is the subject of the Third Amendment.

The founders of our republic clearly were aware of their own limitations by including Article Five of our Constitution, which allows for the possibility of amending our governmental framework, and lists the procedures to be followed in order to propose and ratify a constitutional amendment.

Famously, new amendments have abolished slavery, granted voting rights to women, and lowered the voting age from 21 to 18. Infamously, the 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacture, importing, transportation, and sale of alcohol in the United States. Thirteen years after it was established, this amendment was repealed by the 21st Amendment, ending the period characterized by crime and violence known as Prohibition.

We the people can amend the US Constitution, and we can amend our amendments. In theory, we can amend our amendments to our amendments, and so on ad infinitum, but the important point is that amendments can be repealed. And I want to join the chorus of sane and concerned voices calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment.

Bret Stephens, in a recent New York Times op-ed arguing for repeal, concluded with the following: “The true foundation of American exceptionalism should be our capacity for moral and constitutional renewal, not our instinct for self-destruction” ("Repeal the Second Amendment").

Everybody knows that the Second Amendment is written in a torturous manner that makes it impossible to determine its precise meaning: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Historians tell us that the first clause is the main point, to guarantee the right of individual states to maintain their own armed forces, as a matter of collective defense. In part, the motivation had much to do with skepticism about maintaining a standing army on the federal level. The idea that the Second Amendment refers to individual rights is a later interpretation, with its roots in the aftermath of the Civil War, and largely a 20th century innovation.

The Second Amendment is not scripture, and therefore should not have to undergo talmudic exegesis, just so that it can serve as a pretext for preventing any and all regulation of firearms. The initials NRA do not stand for the National Rabbinic Association, so that organization does not have the moral or intellectual authority to dictate its interpretation of the amendment to the American citizenry.

And what about scripture itself? Of course, there were no firearms in the ancient world, but there are references to other weapons. Look at the famous words of the prophet Isaiah: “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks,” in reference to warfare; in another Jewish context, the Christian Bible’s Gospel of Matthew has Jesus admonish one of his followers by saying: “all who take up the sword, will die by the sword.”

Of course, we would expect to find messages of nonviolence dominating the sacred texts of our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage. And we might well wonder how it is that so many people of faith in our country can resist any efforts to reduce gun violence so zealously. In another New York Times op-ed, David Brooks argues that “guns are a proxy for larger issues,” for “a much larger conflict over values and identity” ("Guns and the Soul of America").

In other words, it’s the culture war, stupid.

And let us make no mistake about it. Resistance to gun safety legislation is linked to the populist movement that gave us the Trump presidency, it is linked to the alt-right, to white supremacy and neo-Nazi movements, to anti-immigration sentiment, to Islamophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. It should be pretty clear which side we ought to be on.

If there is a passage in scripture that might be the ancient equivalent of the Second Amendment, it might be found in the Holiness Code in the Book of Leviticus, in the commandment “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” This suggests a right to self-defense that might translate to a right to bear arms. But it also implies a collective right to be safe and secure, the right implied by the prophet Micah, and alluded to by George Washington in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, that “they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

Psalm 115 incorporates a polemic against idol worship, characterized as “the work of men’s hands,” concluding that “they that make them shall be like unto them, yea, everyone who trusts in them.” If people treat the Second Amendment as scripture, are they not in effect worshiping firearms as their idols? And consequently, doesn’t that transform them into instruments of violence, molded into the image of their molten gods, tools of their own invention?

This summer I published a book called Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition. One of my central arguments in that book is that our tools and technologies are never neutral, that they have inherent characteristics and tendencies that influence how they are used. Just as objects tend to roll down rather than up a hill, and stones are hard not soft, so guns are inherently designed as instruments of violence. This is a tendency, not an absolute. In some instances, the presence of guns may deter violence, it is true, but on the whole, the more guns in a situation, the greater the potential for violence, and the greater the frequency and harm of violent events.

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You may notice that I have made no reference to the specifics of the most recent mass shooting, and that is because the details do not matter. As of this writing, journalists covering the story are obsessed with the question of why it happened. In this instance, that question is proving to be harder to answer than usual. But in my view, the why is irrelevant. The why will always be different, individual, personal. Taking a media ecology approach, what matters is not why, but how. And the how remains consistent across the 131 mass shootings that have occurred over the past 50 years.

It’s the guns, stupid. It’s the firearms.

The answer to why often is some form of insanity, as if there were ever a sane reason to commit mass murder. But allowing for that, the same side of the culture war that defends the Second Amendment also opposes funding for research into the causes of gun violence, and funding for mental health in general, and funding for universal health care, which would aid the victims of gun violence. There is no moral equivalence between the two sides.

And while one side argues for the Second Amendment in absolute or near absolute terms, the other asks, you might say begs, for modest modifications that might not make more than a modicum of difference. Is there any wonder that the outcome is more of the same, over and over again?

It is time for a new abolition movement, one dedicated to the repeal of the Second Amendment, because that in turn would open the door to substantial Federal gun safety legislation. This is not a call for a prohibition on firearms, but rather to open the door for reasonable safety measures, so that we all can sit under our vines and fig trees, in our concert halls and movie theaters and night clubs and malls, and in baseball fields and schools and houses of worship, and in our streets and homes, and none shall make us afraid ever again.

Summer Reading for Roy Part 2

So, to follow up on my previous post, Summer Reading for Roy Part 1, I am now prepared to share with you this year's summer reading list, which was included in Roy Christopher's blog post of June 20th, Summer Reading List, 2017, where it appeared along with selections from other academics and intellectuals, including my Fordham University colleague Paul Levinson, and former colleague Alice Marwick.

If you read this post right after the last one, you'll notice certain resonances or connections, even more so than among the previous years. In any event, here it is:

Summer Reading List 2017

I don’t mean to brag, but I was very fortunate to be able to see the musical Hamilton on Broadway this spring, and that has wet my appetite for the biography that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow (New York: Penguin, 2004). And from a different era of American history, I plan on reading American Gothic: The Story of America’s Legendary Theatrical Family—Junius, Edwin, and John Wilkes Booth by Gene Smith (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992). In case you’re wondering why, Edwin Booth, who was the most famous stage actor of the 19th century, was the founder of the Players Club in Manhattan (Mark Twain was a co-founder), and over the past year I’ve been organizing events for the New York Society for General Semantics at the club, a historic building that once serve as Edwin Booth’s home (and still preserves the room that he lived, and died in).

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Reading biographical and historical accounts is one method of time travel, and I also intend to read up on the subject more generally by diving into James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History (New York: Pantheon, 2016). Time being a topic of great interest to me, another book on my summer stack is Now: The Physics of Time by Richard A. Muller (New York: W.W. Norton).

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Two books on language also have caught my eye and are on my pile, The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2016), and Words on the Move by John McWhorter (New York: Henry Holt, 2016).

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Some years ago, I read the first few books in the A Series of Unfortunate Events collection (New York: HarperCollins) by Lemony Snicket, and was unable to continue for reasons that had nothing to do with the books. I was very impressed with the originality and inventiveness of what I had read, especially the self-conscious, often self-reflexive play with language and literary conventions, really quite brilliant all in all. And with the recent adaption of the books as a Netflix series, I intend to go back to the beginning and read the entire set of 13 volumes: The Bad Beginning (1999), The Reptile Room (1999), The Wide Window (2000), The Miserable Mill (2000), The Austere Academy (2000), The Ersatz Elevator (2001), The Vile Village (2001), The Hostile Hospital (2001), The Carnivorous Carnival (2002), The Slippery Slope (2003), The Grim Grotto (2004), The Penultimate Peril (2005), and The End (2006).

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Lastly, I look forward to savoring the recently published collections from two of my favorite poets, Mata Hari’s Lost Words by John Oughton (Seattle: Neopoiesis, 2017), and Ego to Earthschool by Stephen Roxborough (Seattle: Neopoiesis, 2017).

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And that is that, at least until next year...