Elinor Nauen

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.

~ Ted Chiang

I found this in Austin Kleon's essential substack. He goes on to say, "To be fair, I think we'd been doing a pretty good job at lowering our cultural expectations prior to the popularization of A.I.! In fact, I think one of the reasons the results of A.I. are so acceptable if not exciting to so many people is because they've been trained on the never-ending slop of online 'content' and the homogenous output of, say, mainstream Hollywood or reality television."

I have artist friends who love playing with AI to create images to accompany their words, & vice versa. The results look to me like adult coloring books, quite honestly, but I have my own time wasters so who am I to judge. 

One great thing about having visitors is seeing the city through their eyes. Even when I'm looking at the same things on our walks, I don't see what Steve sees. He's here frequently, knows the city well, & relishes its endless offerings: the heirloom tomatoes of the Union Square Greenmarket; the county-fair crush of the San Gennaro festival on Mulberry Street in Little Italy; the musicians, students, potheads, & old folks enjoying a late summer day in Washington Square Park. I feel like I did when I saw all for the first time, years ago: as full of excitement, wonder, pleasure & gratitude. There's a lot more country in the city than city in the country, isn't there? 

Today being Friday the 13th reminds me of my (late) sister Edie, who was born on March 13 (a Wednesday that year). She felt how special it was to be born on the 13th, & 13 was her lucky number. A favorite remark of hers: 

"I got married three times in Las Vegas. Vegas is lucky for me!"

We called it a play: We were ourselves, reading speeches & declaiming, with Rachel singing (which is worth the whole half hour). It was Public Access Poetry! We had guys playing Tree, Cloud, Stream: nonspeaking parts. I didn't rewatch the whole thing ~ hard to get past seeing yourself when she is no longer you. 

It wasn't a debate as much as a rout. She baited & he went for it every time. 

He claimed some states allow post-birth abortion, which is of course not true. (He lied, as he does.)

He never said her name or looked her way. 

She sliced him six ways to Sunday. Did he even know? 

But. 

Maggie & I are going on a trip in December to see the Northern Lights in Swedish Lapland, through my group the Cloud Appreciation Society. 

Yay. 

But. 

Then comes a million decisions, hotels, flights to Europe, flights within Europe, insurance, even meals on the plane. Why don't I have an assistant to figure all this out??

Every day I do a little & then I ask for help. My ignorance annoys me.  

There's a confidence in not hating or pitying the region that birthed you, a joy in maintaining the strong ties you choose, and a peace in not hierarchically ranking the cultures that compose your identity. It's possible to love a place from afar and never really leave it.

Ann Friedman on being a "joyfully displaced midwesterner" 

I agree and at the same time, I will say that I've noticed that midwesterners tend to love the midwest in inverse proportion to how long they've lived elsewhere & how far away from home they are. 

It's satisfying to have caught up with every single thing on my to-do list. 

The store & the laundry will be back, of course, but for now I am free of obligations. 

A small but gratifying pleasure. 

I had the middle section of a sectional couch, covered in nubby aqua-glitter cloth. It was wide in the back but narrow in front, so it barely fit two people yet took up a disproportionate amount of room in my small apartment. So I decided to get rid of it. 

I threw it out my window. Oh my, what a satisfying thunk when it landed in the courtyard. There's a picture, but I can't find it & I can't really tell which way it goes. 

This was shortly before I started going out with Johnny, the longtime super of his building. 

I mentioned it one day & he was so appalled he almost broke up with me. 

It was the backyard! No one was endangered! 

Since I complained so much all summer about the enervating heat, it's only fair to shout out the energizing autumn mild. Right this minute it's 75°. There's a spring in my step (as it were) - better than a fall in my future! Giddy, I think of this:

An American Poem

In New York in autumn
leaves don't change. They wither & tumble

or wilt & stay stuck. What's special
is Saturday night.
It's the night
brokers have off
from robbing people
to mug people.
Nature?
One birch after another.
Have a nice trip—
see you next fall!

Which in turn reminds me of a poem I wrote in maybe 8th grade. I praised New York City (where I'd never been): bright lights! big city! The poem ended with this line: 

Nature: green emptiness. 

My wonderful neighbor took this wonderful photo last month in Vermont. Should be the cover of an edition of Moby-Dick, doncha think? I remember the cold, sunny New England farm houses I lived in the years I spent in Maine. 

1) Sitting on my bench, a little boy came over to show me his acorn. What does an acorn turn into? I asked him. An oak tree! He was probably 4. He was with a younger brother & a baby, and his mom, whose hair was well past her knees ~ the longest hair I've ever seen. I thought of my mom, who also had 3 kids under the age of 4 at one point. This woman didn't look the least frazzled & maybe my mother didn't either. 

2) On the corner of 5th St, I overheard a man tell the woman with him that this was the block with the Hells Angels clubhouse. That was 3rd Street, I called to them. They stopped & we chatted about the neighborhood & how it's changed, & what businesses & people were still there or not. Chris & Virginia: old friends in a moment. 

I love my neighborhood, no matter how many beloved residents & restaurants & stores disappear, no matter how many killing e-bikes replace them. 

Poetry is what we do to break bread with the dead.
~ Seamus Heaney

This makes me think of a little anthology I have of troubador poetry by women (a book I can usually put my hand on but I can't spot it at the moment)(but I can look it up: Meg Bogin's The Female Troubadours) (damn, where is it??) & how sure I am that those poets & I would be laughing together in a couple of minutes (language aside). I know them, I am sure, & they would get me. Yes, poetry is the way they are alive with me. (Oh, there it is!)

East 3rd Street, the Two Boots corner. No matter how many times I walk on any given block, I almost always see something new, surprising, &/or enchanting. I will never not love New York City. 

Look up, it's Cloud Appreciation Day

Thousands of cloudspotters around the world will be looking up on Friday September 13 and submitting photos online for the third annual Cloud Appreciation Day. Anyone, anywhere, can take part for free by photographing their sky and submitting an image for the 2024 Memory Cloud Atlas website. Images can only be submitted on the day.

"We encourage contributors to include with their photograph some words about their feelings and impressions of the sky above them on the day," says  Cloud Appreciation Society founder Gavin Pretor-Pinney. "In this way, the website serves as a worldwide snapshot of the beauty of clouds and of thousands of people around the world looking up on the same day. It's a record of people's feelings about the sky, which is the most universal part of nature that we all share."

Finally my sister & got to watch our favorite episode of What's My Line together, 3 times in fact. This is out of the something like 500 episodes that are available on YouTube. Everyone on the panel is tipsy, along with the usually unflappable moderator, John Charles Daly, but especially Arlene. Drunk in a ti many martooni sort of way. This is a great show, as I've written about before, & while this one isn't typical of its usual sophistication, it's awfully fun to see what can happen on live TV. 

My three siblings & I just spent a couple days together to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of our mother's passing, as well as what would have been her 100th year. We went to a show & had some leisurely meals full of laughter & reminiscence. One sister brought in the idea of Jeffersonian questions at dinners. It seems that Jefferson didn't like people having side conversations at his dinner parties, so he would ask a thoughtful question & every guest was expected to respond. We did that last night & it was very revealing & loving. Our first question was something we are proud of that the others might not know, & then we each said something we admired about each other. When does one have the chance for that sort of conversation?

I'd never seen Cabaret, & knew little more than it was a louche look at Berlin in the 30s. My siblings & I went last night, half-imagining it would give us a glimpse into our dad's life in Berlin - he & Christopher Isherwood were the same age & I imagine my dad as at least a hanger-on in that world, being a young man-about-town with money & curiosity. The show Cabaret, however, was kind of awful. I don't really like musicals, & this was nearly plotless plus rather random: CBGB's legendarily dirty bathroom meets Fiddler on the Roof. Maybe it would have worked better if the star (Eddie Redmayne) & not the understudy had been there to play the Emcee, or if the obviouslly gay main character wasn't having a love affair with Sally Bowles. And the sudden appearance of a Nazi was both dated & overly topical. We left at the intermission. 

The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel. 

~ Horace Walpole

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
~ Jean de La Bruyère

I've heard this many times but who said it? Jean de La Bruyère lived a century before Walpole. Or maybe it's one of those thoughts that people have that gets credited to someone respectable to give it extra weight, the way the Psalms are attributed to King David. I think I like JdLB's version better. What does that say about me & my sense of humor, irony, or philosophy? 

This is not an old-time story but something that was in front of my building a day or 2 ago. Why? Who? No idea. Hooray for the East Village hanging on to its unapologetic strangeness. 

What the hey, I have decided to consider Brooklyn to be in the neighborhood. A 30-minute ride on the F & I knew exactly how to get to my friends' place from the train. I passed restaurants I would eat at & stores I would explore. Baz & Martha are neighbors, sympathetic, fiery friends. We laughed & talked & reminisced & I was home again in no time. An expanded neighborhood is a good thing. 

In economics, free-riding means using services, resources, and other public goods without paying (or paying enough) for them, a term often applied to tax cheats. Besides putting an extra burden on those who do pony up, free-riders can lead to lack of cooperation and cynicism, which in turn makes things worse. I've never heard the term applied to politics, but I think it could & should be: it means enjoying the benefits of government — peace, economic stability, rights & so much more — without being willing to contribute to maintaining them. A friend's partner, who's in his 40s, has never voted. He thinks (like an adolescent) that all politicians are corrupt; he will only vote for someone who is perfect & in perfect alignment with his own positions. I used to stop my mother from talking about politics - she lived in the United States for 70 years before she became a citizen - I believed she had no right to an opinion if she wasn't going to vote, if she hadn't committed herself to this country. (She became a citizen in 2016 at age 92 in order to vote for a woman.) I think of the long long lines of people waiting to vote for the first time in post-apartheid South Africa, many of them people who had dedicated their lives to acquiring that right, & it's hard to feel respectful towards people who spurn that right. 

Walked past this on 6th St, just east of the Bowery. It looks like it's been there a while, but I've never noticed it before. The wall it's on is part of a games store, so I suppose they put it up. 

Oh! Why yes, it's a real thing: 

Nintendo was founded in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards. After venturing into various lines of business during the 1960s, Nintendo distributed its first console, the Color TV-Game, in 1977.

When I was 18 or 19 I went out with a guy named Jim Rigby. Over the years I've thought of him often, mostly in the context of the name I could have had if we had gotten married. Turns out I play the same role in his life - the girl who could have become Elinor Rigby. I happened to look him up on Facebook the other day, & he had just posted about dating two (!) Elinors his junior year of college. So now we're Facebook friends & catching up & he looks the same & holy crap it's been 50 years. I know it's all for the best that I ended up with Johnny & he with Marilyn but we both have that shining moment of could-have-been that is sweet to hold on to. 

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

~ Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Welsh Secretary of State for Health and Social Care of the UK

I've often thought that my generation, Baby Boomers, benefited by growing up in a booming economy. Our ability to live how we chose, if we chose to, came from the cushion that the economy afforded us. Our labor wasn't needed & we made or took advantage of the Generation Gap to create our ow lives. Wouldn't have been possible if we had had debt or want. 

Talking about the Dixon Brothers the other day made me think about other musicians I've been listening to & how much I like Irma Thomas, "Soul Queen of New Orleans," not least because we share a birthday (& in fact today is our half-birthday. Someone asked me recently if I really celebrate my half-birthday. Someone who doesn't know me very well, obviously. As a kid we always had a half-cake from Dixie Bake Shop on Minnesota Avenue, the only place I know of that sold half-cakes). Irma Thomas is a contemporary of Aretha Franklin and Etta James, although not as well known, obviously. What I just learned is she had her first child at age 14, and was a mother of 4 and twice divorced by the time she was 19. Like all great singers, she sounds like it's all aimed at you. 

Update: Here she is singing "Time Is on My Side." Thanks, DB!

Issue 4 is out, featuring a stellar cast of poets & artists. One day, Maureen Owen was in town. We had a long lunch at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden & talked about the fun old days of mimeo magazines. Let's put on a show! We came up with the name Julebord, literally "Christmas table" in Norwegian, but colloquially the anything-goes holiday party. We're having fun & sharing some good work. Every issue has an all-new cast, with an exception or 2 (us & our "house artist," Basil King). 

... take off my hat & hit me with a bat, if they put the sales taxes on the women. 

A Depression-era song by the great Dixon Brothers, who also sang "Intoxicated Rat" & other close or "blood" harmony songs like "After the Ball" and "Wreck on the Highway." I like their nasal South Carolina twang. 

I went out an hour ago & came back $450 poorer. At least it wasn't a sales tax on the women. 

Part of what is so upsetting about Dale Hart's death is that he's the last of my 5 formative teachers from Sioux Falls. It's so long since I've lived there that still being a part of that world is unlikely, yet there I am & it hit me hard. Mr. Fialkowski (orchestra), Miss Kleinsasser (English), Miss Norman (journalism), & Miss Skaff (Latin). They believed in me, pushed me, were proud of me, trusted me. Taught me. 

Hard too because there are fewer & fewer people left from the generation one up from me - my parents & their peers, my teachers, my friends' parents. 

Another stab of mortality. 

He was my English teacher in junior high, who taught English and theater in the public schools of Sioux Falls for 49 years, and much later, long after I'd graduated from high school, a friend. We communicated frequently for many years, and he always sent an apropos quote or poem, and was full of gentleness and intelligent responses. I'm sure I"m not the only former student who believe themself to be a special favorite!

At least I can go back to calling him Mr. Hart, no more of this phony baloney "Dale." Dale to his face, Mr. Hart behind his back. 

He was the first adult I remember speaking to me as though I were a peer. I was 15, it was after schoo, and he asked me about a current event. He asked with a genuine respect for and interest in my opinion. I still remember the thrill of being taken seriously by a grownup. 

The tributes I've seen so far call him: respectful, smart, thoughtful, an outstanding teacher., a just plain good human, a teacher that shaped your life and is remembered after 53 years was definitely someone with a gift, his character was so influential, and when he coached and encouraged me, he helped me to gain the confidence I would need for the rest of my life, truly a great builder of young adults, inspired me to become a teacher, his sincere interest in his students, a once in a lifetime teacher, validated our contributions and drew every student into participation, related to us effectively and respectfully, my favorite teacher in high school, a man of integrity, high standards, with expectations of excellence from his students, gave everything he had to those of us who loved him.

I am a better person because of Mr. Hart.