SCALES #2
Hello!
Almost immediately after I sent the newsletter last week, I felt guilty about breezily mentioning all these other newsletters that I was ripping off, and then not even linking to them. Such behavior cannot be tolerated in academia. It's time to make amends.
The newsletters on my mind, floating somewhere around "sorta-diaristic + links" as a genre, were 5it, 6, Black Cardigan, Can't complain, Metafoundry, The Newsletter™, ORBITAL OPERATIONS, PRIMES (extra apologies for six-letter CAPS title), Things That Have Caught My Attention, and This week's work. There are plenty of newsletters that very successfully inhabit other forms too, of course—full list of my favorites TK, I guess.
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When I wait for the bus in the morning, the branch of my line that I don't board displays its terminus as Clarendon Hill. The final stop of the route is a busway outside Clarendon Hill Towers, a 501-unit affordable housing complex in Somerville. The Clarendon Hill busway, located in a state-defined environmental justice community, lacks connectivity to nearby green space. In 2013, there was an investigation into repeated complaints by residents of the towers about discriminatory and retaliatory treatment by the management, including 10 to 30 eviction proceedings per month. Also nearby is the Somerville Housing Authority-run Clarendon Hill public housing development, first built for WWII veterans. In 2016, the Somerville Housing Authority selected a bid to redevelop the Clarendon Hill public housing site with a mixed-used plan.
Clarendon Hill is one of the seven hills (or maybe more?) of Somerville, the hills being a product of ancient glaciation. In the modern era, some of those hills have been flattened, at least in part.
Clarendon Hill was agricultural land early in Somerville's history as a city, and was used as a Civil War encampment from 1861 to 1862.
"Front of Clarendon Hill Car House on April 13, 1966"
I can't find any information about the origin of the hill's name, but it seems likely to have a connection to the English name, either the earldom or the site of a former royal palace. The medieval palace, now a ruin, was the site of a royal hunting ground, and also likely used during Roman times. Both the 1166 Assize of Clarendon and the 1164 Constitutions of Clarendon, steps toward establishing common law and limiting the power of ecclesiastical courts in Britain, respectively, were issued from the site. Elsewhere on the grounds the Clarendon Park mansion was built in the 1700s.
The name Clarendon ultimately arises from Old English for "clover-covered hill".
Just some things for me to keep in mind while I mourn the fact that the bus isn't going to Davis.
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So I've been listening to this podcast...
Code Switch at AWP. (No permalink to the episode... :/ )
Brooke Gladstone, interviewed on Longform, is fired up about covering the media in 2017.
Usonia 1. Can't believe I didn't check this out in Madison!
One reason I've found The Daily to be so successful out of the gate is the way they consistently integrate great pieces of tape from primary sources into their stories.
Links
Alex Ross going beyond the easy answers on making art in times of crisis. (Important addendum from Angela Flournoy, interviewed in the above Code Switch ep: "For writers like myself, I feel like any writer who's writing about an, airquote, "marginalized" community—we were already doing it.")
Be worried about the EPA, but not about "a classic piece of stunt legislation".
Poems and the Ideal Reader Resistance in the latest Black Cardigan.
Science!
Clearly said with the relish of a physicist delivering a sick burn to chemists: "Triangulene is the first molecule that we’ve made that chemists have tried hard, and failed, to make already".
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The sophomore slump edition.
—Adam