new essay + brooklyn book festival + some rocks
Hi all,
Hope you're breathing easy wherever you are. Here in Oakland, our AQI has gone back to normal after the wind shifted direction and stopped bringing in the smoke from up north. I've been trying to go for more walks to see the unusual number of butterflies in my neighborhood this year, including a gulf fritillary that left me speechless on a pedestrian stairway:
Gulf fritillaries are not native to California because we have no native species of passion vine, their host plant. But this Bay Nature article explains: "When the love for 'All Things Tropical' exploded onto the 1940s Hollywood film scene, into the Southern California nurseries went palm trees, canna & calla lilies, hibiscus and … passion vine! The Mexican butterfly opportunistically pushed its northern extremes as we put this pretty flowering vine into our yards. This gives it the unique status of being our only non-native butterfly on a non-native host."
writing news
• I have a new essay out with Pioneer Works about my favorite collage artist, Jess, as well as my reluctance to separate visual art from writing. The essay is part of a series called 13 Ways of Looking, where writers reflect on images that influenced them; I encourage you to check out the rest of the series.
• I've also just finished the foreword for Near-Earth Object, a book of poetry by John Shoptaw, my friend and former undergrad thesis advisor. John, who appears in both my books, has been an incredibly important mentor to me since we reunited in 2018, and our work addresses similar dilemmas. To call Near-Earth Object a book addressing climate despair would be reductive -- it does many other things -- but it is an important demonstration of what John calls "ecopoetry," a type of nature poetry that inhabits real, crisis-ridden time. For me, it models a complex but viable mix of hope and grief in the way that only poetry can. Near-Earth Object will publish in April 2024. In the meantime, you can read "For the Birds," one of my favorite of John's poems from the book, here.
• Back in May, I wrote and delivered a "letter to the future" at the Sydney Writers Festival. It draws not only on John's ecopoetics but on the Tagalog phrase "bahala na," which I learned one day on a walk through a garden with the artist champoy.
events
• Oakland / last minute: Tonight I'll be doing an event with Andrew Alden, author of Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City, moderated by Oakland treasure and retired librarian Dorothy Lazard (who recently published her own book, a memoir). Andrew is the geologist who patiently answered all my rock questions when I was writing Saving Time; I'm also inspired by how he eschews the convention of trying to separate natural history from social and cultural history in his work. Our event will be at the Oakland Public Library main branch at 6pm, and will be recorded and available later here.
• NYC: I will be on a panel with Jessica Elefante, author of Raising Hell Living Well, at the Brooklyn Book Festival, Sunday 10/1 at 1pm.
• A reading with Cathy Park Hong and conversation with Manjula Martin are on the horizon... stay tuned.
rocks
If you've made it to chapter 4 of Saving Time, you know that it's set on a pebbly beach near Pescadero, California. The chapter contains this image, collaged from a visit I made there in 2021:
I recently visited that beach again, with more knowledge than before (largely thanks to Andrew). Sifting through the pebbles, it was a bit easier to identify at least a few kinds of rock on my own... including chert:
Chert has become a favorite rock of mine; it actually means a lot to me that I'm standing in front of a huge chert wall in my NYT profile from back in March. In the case of these pebbles, the chert formed when silica-based plankton accumulated far offshore in water with lots of silica, i.e. an upwelling zone -- "a set of conditions that's uncommon now," Andrew told me. Reddish brown is the color of chert I see most often around the Bay Area, but it can be altered by hot fluids or impurities ("Earth is impure," Andrew said when I asked about this) to other colors, often green. That might be what we have here:
But as much as I love chert, let's not forget good ol' sandstone:
(By the way, if you follow me on Instagram, you may know that I have been posting photos of a "skeptical rock" since 2014. I won't tell you where it is, but I can tell you that the skeptical rock is sandstone.)
assorted unsolicited recommendations
• Alexis Madrigal has a plant-obsessed newsletter, and also recently interviewed the folks from iNaturalist on Forum.
• Lio Min, the author of Beating Heart Baby and who I mentioned last time, also has a new music-themed newsletter.
• Some friends and I (including Lio) recently tried to decide on five movies, not necessarily our favorites of all time, but ones that together delineate the universe of what we each tend to like. Mine were Dark Waters (2019), First Reformed (2017), Imelda (2003), Safe (1995), and Gremlins II: The New Batch (1990). Make of that what you will.
• It may not surprise you to know that I eat a lot of beans... here is a favorite bean recipe of late.
• As COVID and other things continue to circulate, I thought I'd share three things that helped me through the terrible flu I just had: breathing the steam of boiled thyme, the John Early HBO special, and my forever comfort-watch, David Attenborough's Life of Birds.
lastly...
I ended my last newsletter by sending well-wishes to the striking writers in Hollywood. Now I send a huge, huge congratulations to everyone for sticking it out and landing an incredible tentative deal! 🎉
Until next time,
Jenny
