PODCAST

This week, I posted Episode 687 of my Virtual Memories Show, featuring the second installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Ida Kao (F18) talks about having a ringside seat for Hampshire College’s decline. We get into how she’s trying to preserve the school’s spirit by co-curating the Post-Hampshire project, what it was like trying to pursue an education in the face of Hampshire’s financial crisis and COVID, the ups and downs of editing The Omen during those times, her exploration of The Omen‘s archives how it led to a nostalgia for the Hampshire before her time, and how she recognized pretty early on that some of Hampshire’s troubles weren’t fixable (at least not by sit-ins). We also discuss Hampshire’s stabs at student government (see her Div III), the institutions that came and went before her arrival (more Div III) and what that said about ahistoricism on campus, whether she felt short-changed by her time there, and more. and more. Give it a listen!

Recent podcast episodes: Halstead York • Sarah Minor • Ali Trotta • R Sikoryak • Katie Skelly • Colin Asher • Kate Maruyama & Me

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

BIRDY!

Our little girl goes on some rampages. The sofa cushions are all askew because she was bouncing up and down and racing side to side to bark out the window. She likes to move Amy’s sneakers and slippers (there’s a 5th one hidden behind her) whenever she leaves the house, takes a shower, or just works at her desk for too long. She’s a funny girl.

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are some links for you:

• RIP Tommy John . . . RIP Frank Beard . . . RIP Hayden Panettiere . . . RIP Mary de Rachewiltz . . . RIP Mary Heilmann (and tribute by Jerry Saltz ) . . . RIP Mary Morello . . . RIP Dave Marsh . . . RIP Skip Bertman . . . RIP Ward Churchill . . . RIP Pat Easterling (condolences, Edith Hall) . . .

• Henry Wessells wrote a tribute to John Crowley. Gavin Grant at Small Beer Press wrote one, too. Here’s the NYT obit for John and the MassLive one. (John was one of the first real pantheon-level guests on the podcast. We recorded three times over the years: 2013, 2017 and 2022.)

• Seymour Chwast turned NINETY-FIVE this week! HBD, Seymour!

• CHRIS WARE WROTE A TRIBUTE TO JERRY MORIARTY FUCK YEAH

• We’re on a Road To Nowhere.

• I’m a Matthew Rhys mark, so I dug this NYT interview with him. (We enjoyed the heck out of Widow’s Bay.)

• Virtual Mouse Memories.

• EEE! Two new episodes of Ric Burns’ New York documentary coming!

• My brother wrote about translating the opening lines of the Odyssey.

• Speaking of translation, here’s a neat piece on why Thoreau & Walden appeal to Chinese youth. (As someone whose fave deadly sin is acedia, I could only aspire to be The Patriarch of Lying Flat.)

• Live-streaming is another symptom of this benighted age that I blessedly have no interest in viewing or making.

• Speaking of symptoms, Bloomberg tells us that people have stopped toothmaxxxxing, and started petmaxxxing and suitmaxxxing.

• Also, people read.

• I’ve written about this before, but part of Gil Gets Swole was because I used to occasionally get the call to go over to my dad’s house and lift his 200+-lb. body off the floor after a fall. Here’s a video about practicing and developing techniques for handling a fall, in case you don’t have a conflictedly devoted and swole son around to help.

• No post-workout pic; I may look hot, but I still feel out of shape, between bad diet habits, slacking off on exercise, Birdy wrecking my sleep routine, and general on-off depression-dealings.

• BUT: I recorded last weekend with David M. Carr for his new book, Unmaking Eden, which will be out in October. I found a pic from when we recorded 10 years ago, realized I still had the shirt, and decided to wear it and see if I could get a matching photo up at his place. I didn’t check the first one when I shot the 2026 edition, or I’d have realized I was facing the opposite direction in 2016, with the sun behind instead of in my face, BUT: ten years wasn’t that rough on me, and now I’m looking at 45-year-old me as though I was a kid back then:

  

COMMONPLACE

Among other stuff, I added this to my online commonplace book:

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.

Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.
—William Carlos Williams, Paterson

Original Face

“Old zen riddle: What was the face you had before you were born?”
—Denny O’Neil, The Question, #11

I was 16 years old when I read that comic book. It was decades later when I learned that it misquoted the Original Face koan, which is, “What was the face you had before your parents were born?” But the character asking it was an orphan, so maybe that played into the paraphrasing.

I like to look at photographs of people I know taken before they ever saw me, before I contaminated them, before I spoiled the control group, before I existed or before my existence mattered one way or another, before I hurt them or loved them or both.

It started with the high school yearbook casual of my girlfriend, taken before we met. (I moved before my senior year, thought I’d make a fresh start, and maybe did.) She drove a Chevy Corvair and I wrote a poem about us, Unsafe At Any Speed. She had plenty of wounds, an extensive set of pre-existing conditions that she would spend years resolving, her life an ongoing recovery.

What was the face you had before you met me?

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be on my list.

I have to tell you, this postcard thing is steering me in Griffin and Sabine territory. Maybe 2-3 times a year, I receive a postcard from a person in what I’d consider an exotic country. He only signs his first name, seems to know who I am, and doesn’t provide a return address. A couple days ago, another one showed up, “Greetings from [CITY]! [NAME],” with lovely near-calligraphic handwriting. For the life of me, I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THIS PERSON IS. The first name is common and western, I don’t know anyone who lives in that country, and tbh I’m genuinely torn about writing about this (hence my not revealing the country/city/name), partly because if they’re reading this, I don’t want to sound like a heel, and partly because I LOVE HOW MADDENING THIS MYSTERY IS.

(For my part, I write a return address at the top of every postcard, and always sign as “Gil,” with the occasional, “that podcast guy,” depending on the recipient.)

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

It's a Man Ray kind of sky / Let me show you what I can do with it,