Podcastery

I’m still on hiatus/book-leave, but I posted Episode 671 of my Virtual Memories Show last night! My guest this time was poet-translator-professor Rachel Tzvia Back, author of The Dark-Robed Mother: A Memoir (Wesleyan University Press). She explores her life with high-functioning depression, weaving Ancient Greek myth, poetry, family history, interviews, and more into an amazing tapestry of life in the dark forest. We talk about the challenge of structuring the arc-less nature of depression, the shame of not being completely debilitated by her illness, how the myth of Demeter and Persephone helped her translate and understand her experience as a mother and a daughter, what it means to be the mother who fails and why she included interviews with her adult children in the book, whether there’s a therapeutic aspect to writing a memoir like this, and how much of a departure this book was from her poet-roots. We also get into how she found herself in Greek and Roman myths in contrast to her orthodox Jewish upbringing, how she manages to bridge the Athens and Jerusalem divide as a teacher, her family’s roots in Israel and what the country has become since she moved back 40+ years ago, what it’s like to live life under rockets and how normalizing it affects us, our takes on Achilles and Odysseus, and more. Give it a listen! And go read The Dark-Robed Mother: A Memoir!

Recent podcast episodes: Sven Birkerts • Indefinite Hiatus monologue • The Guest List • Jonathan Sandler • Morten Høi Jensen • Prue Shaw • Glenn Kurtz

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

BIRDY!

MHere’s a little BIRDY! for you, now that she’s discovered our other living room sofa:

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 a Kickstarter for my photo book.

Open All Night

I left the house at 4:15 a.m. today to drive to FDA for a negotiating session, feeling all Springsteen/Nebraska when I hit the Turnpike at pre-dawn. (Driving because Amtrak’s service is limited due to construction, and it was Amy’s birthday yesterday so I didn’t want to head down a day early.)

As usual, everything was fine until I hit Baltimore at 7:30 a.m., but Apple’s GPS had already factored traffic-time in, so I made it down here nice and early, and changed from sweatpants and base layer shirt into a suit & tie in an FDA bathroom. The security guys who saw before and after praised the suit.

I’ll probably drive back tonight, another 4- or 5-hour haul. I’ve brought overnight gear in case I don’t feel up to it, but once I’m rolling I tend to stay in motion.

Postcardery

My postcard-a-day habit is NOT on hiatus, so let me know if you want to be on my list.

Until Next Time

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

Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours / Sun’s just a red ball risin’ over them refinery towers / Radio’s jammed up with gospel stations / Lost souls callin’ long distance salvation,