Hello. It’s been a long time, but I’m still here, writing emails! My life has changed quite a lot since the last time I sent out one of these in early June, and for a while there I took my own advice from the last tinyletter I sent: I logged off and hung out outside. I also have been working a lot, so it hasn't all been picnics in the woods after work, alas.
A short one today: a poem, Mads Mikkelsen, one of my favourite (older) books of the year, and light alarm clocks.

Article: Rise: From One Island to Another by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna
Everything I’ve been reading has been either in German or Norwegian, in print, or so specific that I doubt anyone else would be interested (as usual, it’s all history and climate stuff). So what I’m sharing today is not an article, it’s a poem/video that I saw in an exhibition showcasing artists who work in dialogue with climate justice movements. Poets and activists Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and Aka Niviâna are in conversation about their respective homes, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ/the Marshall Islands and Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland. A call to action and an elegy.

Film: Druk (Another Round), directed by Thomas Vinterberg (2020)
This was the second (and to date, last) film I saw in a cinema this year: in an open-air cinema on the rooftop of the Vienna Main Library, on a warm summer night. When we left, we felt ecstatic. This is a sad, funny, thoughtful, invigorating film about four middle-aged teachers who conduct an experiment in small-town Denmark: every day, they drink, on purpose, to keep their alcohol level at a stage of mild – then, not so mild –drunkenness. What follows is revealing about the characters and about the society they live in. I’m not sure if any of this sounds appealing, but trust me, it is. I still think about the final scene every other day.

Book: The Terrors of Ice and Darkness (Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis) by Christoph Ransmayr (1984; English translation 1991)
In this conglomerate of fact and fiction, Ransmayr circles the real story of the first Austro-Hungarian polar expedition, which discovered and named the Franz-Josef-archipelago in the 1870s. It is a pageturner without a conventional plot, a novel that cites archive material, diary entries, lists, tables and multiple digressions about unrelated expeditions; a novel that dismantles notions of heroism, exceptionalism, the glamour of “discovery”, and the fruitless exploitation or attempted subjugation of the natural world for profit. Plus, the history of attempts to find the North East Passage. One of my favourite books I’ve read this year.
Note: I read the German original. You can find the English translation by John E. Woods here.

Other: light alarm clocks
I’m not going to make it a habit to recommend products, but the light alarm clock that my mum gave me for Christmas about 15 years ago is truly the gift that keeps on giving. It is the one thing that has moved with me everywhere, even when I’ve moved with just one bag. Whenever I don’t sleep at home and have to use e.g. the alarm clock on my phone, everything feels infinitely worse. Also, because the light is adjustable, it’s the perfect bedside table reading lamp. Mine is so old that it’s not sold anymore as far as I can tell, but it’s a Philips one.