I’m watching

 Hercule Poirot

Love Art Deco

Tina brown

 Was a force in the magazine publishing industry. I ‘came across’ her during her time at The New Yorker when I read magazines, Sunday’s newspaper supplements, Esquire, The  New Republic, there were a lot of good magazines. They weren’t as hot as the daily racing form which is still in print but they were certainly better than daytime network TV.

But back to Tina Brown and how she charged me up recently.

She has 4 George Polk Awards (from L. I. U.), 5 Overseas Press Club Awards, 10 Magazine Editor Awards.

She charged me up with interviews on TV for her book on the Royals.  About her time at The New Yorker: Ms. Brown said “there were people you couldn’t get out the door”. 

Interviewer: “print journalism in ten years?”.  Tina Brown “They need to create Buzz”.

Thank you Tina, you got me charged up.  So I went out Saturday looking for magazines. First choices Granta, The New York Review of books and Three penny review. I found The New York Review of Books only.  Then opened it up and … first review got me. Truly the very first review, I took notes.  here goes. The review

Wimple Networks by Marina Warner

Reviewing: Relations of Power: Women’s Networks in the Middle Ages, edited by Emma O. Berat, Rebecca Hardie, and Irina Dumitrescu

From Reviewer: “Network theory is a child of the digital age: a quantitative approach to literary criticism that depends on computer modeling of exchanges and relationships in a text. Think flight paths across the globe: the busy hubs (Heathrow O’Hare and Perry’s )show up on a map as dense clusters, with hundreds of arcs springing from them in to the destinations they serve, filling out toward less frequented places.”

“Likewise network theory takes a novel or a play and plots the characters actions and encounters on a graph: in the jargon, each actor is known as a node or a vertex while interactions with others are represented by edges.  Computer algorithms can apply to literature”

From the book “the past just as visible as the present that is one major change introduced by the use of networks. Then, they make visible specific regions within the plot as a whole: sub-systems, that share some significant property.”

 Over five charts breaking down the networks in Hamlet, Moretti reveals Claudius as the towering twin all of the play embedded in the thick cluster constituted by the court of Elsinore by contrast a character like Horacio Hamlet’s friend and someone of crucial psychological importance to him drops to the periphery of the grap

.Franco Moretti, “Network Theory, Plot Analysis,” New Left Review, March/April 2011

Time flattened into space.

The reviewer: “Teaching students nurtured on Google, it’s often worrying how weak their grasp of chronology is: the Cybersphere may be geographically vast and marvelously interconnected, but it is happening in an eternal present.” 

Back to the book:

Plotting the network of their relationships reveals that these women enjoyed “betweenness centrality,” Network jargon for connectivity, between subjects who appear in multiple instances of intervention, mediation, and peacemaking. Ethelddreda, who ranked 31st when considered on her own according to number of mentions, jumps up to 14th place when her position in the network of relations is represented in a graph.  The writers claim this reveals her influence at a deeper level.

Etc. the reviewer is not happy with the method but the substance of the book fascinates, e.g.

“In The period covered by Relations of Power, the church proves to be hospitable to women ambitious to manage their own estates, but at the cost of surrendering the right to movement, sex, marriage and children.

“In the long term the nuns resolve was in vain: these great Abbeys were stripped and razed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536-1541; only a curfew tower remains at Barking, the ruins of St. Mary’s Church at Wilton and a single soaring arch of the medieval priory at Walsingham, once the wealthiest pilgrimage site in England. 

The reviewer remembers “ those ripe, richly tapestried and stirring psychological dramas of the Middle Ages by novelists such as Anya Seton, Geoffrey Trease, and Rosemary Sutcliff” which she read as a girl and Toni Morrison, Hilary Mantel, and Lauren Groff today.

Lastly, she mentions Ted Hughes exploration of the erasure of female power in his monumental, erratic, study “Shakespeare and the Goddess of Supreme Being”. 

Thank you, Tina, I’m buzzed.

Another milestone

 Hurry hurry 

Jump in front of me

Don’t slow down

Wait and never ever

Stop

Crowds rushing by on Saturday caused me to make a quick shift in movement.  I fell into the wall of a building, scraped elbow and a goose egg on my head.  Got to a restaurant cleaned up elbow and iced head a bit. 

Milestone: getting a cane Monday.  

Who’ll stop the rain

 Of what is reported:

November 2021.  4 LGBTQ people are murdered everyday in Latin America and the Caribbean

2021. Mexico sees deadliest year for LGBTQ people 117 killed … 27% increase

More than 600 LGBTQ people murdered in the USA in the last 20 years.  Since 2021,  57 murdered

50,000 estimated  to have been jailed by the Nazis- 10 to 15000 sent to concentration camps; many died, many castrated, many subjected to medical experiments 

After the war the Allies, the German States and Austria kept homosexuality illegal and imprisoned the concentration camp survivors.  

Long as I remember the rain been coming down

Clouds of mystery pourin’ confusion on the ground

Good men through the ages tryin’ to find the sun

And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain

Happy Gay Pride

I’d go today but for the crowds.

And never forget 1969 and that 

Oslo was this week

Too much

 4000 steps yesterday and then

Very helpful 

then on the street

A new mural in the East Village 

Then what we have a lot of in the East Village now

The Ukrainian Flag for the newest freedom fighters  

The colors symbolize blue sky above the yellow field of wheat representing Ukraine and the Ukrainians as  they are- freedom-loving, independent, brave, and vibrant.  

And then: The Supreme Court has reversed our nations course toward the ideals of the enlightenment  liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity (need to update that one, monsieur), constitutional government and separation of church and state.

Too much   

on this our gay pride weekend and not without fear and loathing I think of my murdered and attacked gay brothers in Oslo, Norway: I will stay vigilant.  I learn again we are not safe it is a matter of life or death.

On Steroids

 40 mg a day

Yesterday, walked to the Whitney Museum to see their Biennial. Then walked to the film forum to see the movie “Miracle”.  Then walked home.  12,679 steps.  And

The Museum

The Movie

On the street

And feeling good today   

Paradox … Enigma

I have an active disease and need medication to stay alive. The disease is ANCA Vasculitis  and the medications are prednisone, a steroid and Rituxan a cancer treatment medication.  The Vasculitis was first officially diagnosed in June 2021 after a kidney biopsy. December 2021 I went into remission possibly only due to medications, Prednisone and Rituxan. Doctors don’t know what caused the disease. They don’t know what brought it back. They know, profess to know, and or just accept that medications are the reason. I have to believe that too. It’s been my experience. So I’m back to this treatment plan Prednisone and if that’s not enough a 6 hour slow IV of Rituxan.  

But there are side effects:

PREDNISONE:

Fluid retention 

High Blood Pressure 

Problems with mood swings, memory, behavior, confusion, delirium 

Upset stomach 

Weight gain with fat deposits in your abdomen, face (moon face), and back of neck

Elevated pressure in your eyes (glaucoma)

Clouding of the lens of your eyes ( cataracts)

High Blood Sugar (diabetes)

Risk of infection 

Thinning bones

Suppressed adrenal gland hormone production that may result in a variety of signs and symptoms, including severe fatigue, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle weakness

Thin skin, bruising, slower wound healing

I’ve experienced fat deposits in neck and face and abdomen and need medically prescribed calcium and magnesium 

. . .

RITUXAN

Can result in serious, including fatal, infusion related reactions within 24 hours 

Severe mucocutaneous reactions, including fatal reactions

Progressive multi focal leukoencephalopathy (PML) including fatal PML

For god’s sake it’s enough, right.  Why go through it: just live with the consequences of the life you’ve chosen.  

Ah, yes. But there’s nothing like another day.

It’s back

 ANCA Vasculitis has resurfaced in my lungs with increased ground glass opacities and I’m on increased steroids, 40 mg. I feel like James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’ :”Steroids … Good” ( if you don’t know who James Whale is check out the remarkable film ‘of Gods and Monsters’.

Steroids have got me moving again in more ways than one.  Got to check on the long term side effects of it cause I really like it. 

Had to get back to writing to expressing to catching the moment.

Jan 6th hearing seems to be having a moment that may impact for change.  They have tv not talking about Trump supporters but Fascists and the violence of Fascists. Very important distinction.

Got to run.  Literally not physically. Not there yet.