January 25, 2017 Correspondence Shut up in the Dark By Dan Piepenbring Woolf, ca. 1902. In July 1910, after she had attempted to kill herself by defenestration, Virginia Woolf (then Virginia Stephen) was institutionalized at Burley House, “a nursing home for women with nervous disorder.” She wrote the letter below to her sister, Vanessa Bell. Read more of Woolf’s correspondence in the five-volume Letters of Virginia Woolf. I meant to write several days ago, although you do say you dont care a damn. But in that too I was hoodwinked by Miss Thomas. I gather that some great conspiracy is going on behind my back. What a mercy we cant have at each other! or we should quarrel till midnight, and Clarissas (the coming ‘neice’) deformities, inherited from generations of hard drinking Bells, would be laid at my door. She-(Miss T.) wont read me or quote your letters. But I gather that you want me to stay on here. She is in a highly wrought state, as the lunatic upstairs has somehow brought her case into court; and I cant make her speak calmly. Do write and explain. Having read your last letter at least 10 times—so that Miss Bradbury (nurse) is sure it is a love letter and looks very arch—I cant find a word about my future … I really dont think I can stand much more of this. Miss T. is charming, and Miss Bradbury is a good woman, but you cant conceive how I want intelligent conversation—even yours. Religion seems to me to have ruined them all. Miss T. is always culminating in silent prayer. Miss Somerville (patient), the absent minded one with the deaf dog, wears two crucifixes. Miss B. says Church Bells are the sweetest sound on earth. She also says that the old Queen the Queen Mother and the present Queen represent the highest womanhood. They reverence my gifts, although God has left me in the dark. They are always wondering what God is up to. The religious mind is quite amazing. Read More
January 25, 2017 Our Correspondents Zonies, Part 4: Lullaby By Mike Powell Mike Powell’s column is about living in Arizona. Bryan Olson, Dream Catcher, collage. Driving around for groceries one afternoon I encountered an interesting AM radio announcement for homeschooling. Not any particular method or approach to homeschooling, but for homeschooling in general. Curious about what other forms of isolation such a station might advertise, I listened further. Following the announcement came a string of foggy, sentimental music that the station, 690 KCEE, refers to as “pop classics.” On AM 690, you might hear a teen idol like Perry Como followed by early-seventies soft rock, or “Earth Angel” followed by a highly polished country ballad—Don Williams singing “I Believe in You” or “I’m Just a Country Boy,” maybe—music unified not by style or time but by the internal suggestion that hardship was over and the rest was dream. This was September or October, months that in most parts of the country signal the turn from summer to fall but in Southern Arizona mean continued triple-digit temperatures paired with the collective fatigue of things having been this way since May. I had recently moved to Arizona from New York, an interesting place I always hated. I was nesting, staying in more, reconciling myself happily to a city where there wasn’t much to do. Read More
January 25, 2017 Notes from a Biographer The Making of a Comics Biography, Part 2 By Joe Ollmann Read More
January 25, 2017 On the Shelf Stay Humble, and Other News By Dan Piepenbring Hans Memling, Vanité (detail), ca. 1490. Our contributor Ben Nugent appears on Selected Shorts’ “Too Hot for Radio” podcast this week to discuss his short story “God,” which appeared in our Fall 2013 issue. Here’s how it all started, he says: “One of my best creative-writing students, Megan Kidder, a well mannered girl from rural Maine with dyed black hair, a silver nose ring, and a studded belt dropped by my office and informed me, I wrote a poem about how this one guy prematurely ejaculated … ” Here’s Carina Chocano to remind you that you’re probably misusing the word humbled, you misinformed braggart, you duplicitous self-promoter, you smarmy pretender to humility: “To be humbled is to be brought low or somehow diminished in standing or stature. Sometimes we’re humbled by humiliation or failure or some other calamity. And sometimes we’re humbled by encountering something so grand, meaningful or sublime that our own small selves are thrown into stark contrast—things like history, or the cosmos, or the divine … To be humbled is to find yourself in the embarrassing position of having to shimmy awkwardly off your pedestal, or your high horse—or some other elevated place that would not have seemed so elevated had you not been so lowly to begin with—muttering apologies and cringing, with your skirt riding up past your granny pants.” Read More
January 24, 2017 Look The Fiestas Are Over By Dan Piepenbring An exhibition of Beatrice Mandelman’s sixties-era work is showing through April 1 at Rosenberg & Co., in New York. Mandelman, who died in 1998, was among the modernists of Taos, New Mexico, who moved to the city in the forties to found the Taos Valley Art School. Mandelman favored what she called the “calm” of geometry as a reaction to the tumult of the sixties. “The work IS hard edged because the world is hard edged now,” she said. “It’s not a soft feminine period. The fiestas are over. The celebrants have gone home. It is time to face reality.” Beatrice Mandelman, Collage No. 9, 1960s, mixed-media collage on mat board, 15.63″ x 19.63″. Untitled, c. 1960s, acrylic and collage on paper, 24.88″ x 38″. The Man, c. 1965, collage with acrylic on canvas, 19.74″ x 13.75″. Untitled, c. 1960s, acrylic and collage on paper, 25.5″ x 19.63″. Sea Shapes (#2), 1960s, oil on fiberboard, 60″ x 48″. Untitled (Freaks), c. 1960s, mixed-media collage on paper, 19.44″ x 12.19″. Beatrice Mandelman at a swimming pool in Llano, date unknown.
January 24, 2017 Our Correspondents Sending Springer Home By Elena Passarello Elena Passarello’s column is about famous animals from history. This week: Springer the Orca. Design by Kristen Radtke. Shit, it’s A-73! —The biologist Graeme Ellis Her calls were so loud they practically blew our earphones off. —Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard, Vancouver Aquarium And now, months later, after forming all these groups to help fund this—working with NMFS and DFO, which has not always been easy, and people on both sides of the border—it’s like delivering a baby, and we’re about ready to pass out cigars. —Michael Harris, the Orca Conservancy Name: Springer Species: Orcinus Orca Years Active: 2000–present Distinguishing Features: An “open” white saddle mark; several faint scratches, perhaps from propellers, on dorsal fin Skills: Resilience, a northern accent, an ability to disarm various mammalian species Habitat: Puget Sound, Washington; Telegraph Cove, British Columbia; the open water Additional Notes: The ferry worker called her Boo. Shortly before Christmas 2001, a Department of Transportation employee noticed a very young orca hanging around the docks of Vashon Island, a residential swath of land in Puget Sound between Tacoma and Seattle. Every day as the Evergreen State ferry floated in its slip, the orca would swim beside its bow, disappearing only when the engines started. While orcas in the waters of the Pacific Northwest aren’t unusual, a solo baby orphaned orca was a reason to call the authorities. It turned out that Boo already had a name. Two, actually. Her official catalogue moniker was A73—“A” for the matrilineal pod with which she should be traveling, and “73” because she was the seventy-third birth in A-pod since humans started tracking them. Unlike the transient pods that swim up and down the Pacific coast all year, the orcas in A-pod are resident orcas, and they spend the summer-salmon runs near the shores of Washington and British Columbia. They have their own practices, bonds, and even dialects. A northern resident A-clan orca produces calls never made by, for instance, a southern resident from J-pod. Read More