April ‘25: A World Under Attack
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Any support, even just giving these posts a read, is always appreciated.
Recent Updates:
No new updates.
BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS is on Storygraph and Goodreads. Add it there. Stay posted as release month gets closer!
Project Progress:
I’m making steady progress on Song of Calarine Book. I’m about halfway done with the rough draft of it.
Publication process for BEYOND THE RUINED NIGHTS is plodding steadily along, and I’m still on schedule to hit my August plan. Ebook preorders will be available early may.
Additionally, the promised previously released (under a pseudonym) short story is coming in may. I’ve decided to postpone it, as my mental space has been taken up by something we’ll get into in a moment.
All other projects are still on hold until after I release BRN.
Recent Fascinations: A World Under Attack, or Why the Humanities Matter
Last month, when I sent my newsletter out, I mentioned shifting to a new job and how that might lead to me discussing and writing about some more political topics in the future. I didn’t know, when I sent that out, what was immediately ahead, and what was going to be resting so firmly at the center of my mind when I sat down to write April’s newsletter.
Across the country, humanities organizations are under attack. Both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institution of Museum and Library Services have been the subject of intense federal cuts under the new administration. There’s a lot I could say about this, a lot I could put out there as analysis or description of the situation. I struggle, though, to put together any coherent thoughts not layered with intense, personal anger. I, also, am a little too close to the situation, I think, to provide any real information without it turning into an emotional diatribe. So, if you are reading this, hoping for some detailed, analytical piece of journalism on the topic, I am sorry to disappoint.
However, I feel I have a responsibility to be sure you all understand what is happening and what the situation is. In Mississippi, the Mississippi Humanities Council has had its funding from NEH completely cut off, and libraries and museums across the state are in limbo while federal funding from IMLS sits frozen. I know, though, that I can’t make any of you (those of you who don’t already) care by talking about funding and bureaucratic nuances. I won’t appease the better parts of your collective humanity, or ask you to call your political representatives, either. I hope that is something you’re already doing and I hope, if you’re here reading this, that you do not need me to plead with you to understand why attacking libraries and museums is, without question, bad.
History is littered with regimes who have attacked the humanities and the arts. Books were burned in Berlin streets in Nazi Germany and paintings were destroyed. In the 1800s, in our own nation, generations of cultural art were destroyed as Native Americans were forced from their homes and onto the Trail of Tears. I grew up in the tiny, tiny town of Seminary, Mississippi. I wasn’t the best student, not by any measure, but as I sit here in this unprecedented time, I have found myself thinking back to those earliest moments in that rural Mississippi town during the early 00s.
In that school, I was taught that people are fundamentally good. I was taught that oppression, of any kind, is undeniably wrong. I was taught, by everyone in my life, that anyone who tries to suppress what you read, what art you enjoy, is up to no good. Beyond that little school, my mother taught me a few things about this too. That you treat people with patience and respect. That there is never an excuse for hate. That, under no circumstance, should you EVER apologize for caring.
She taught me too, that burning books, or any of its near cousins, was an ultimate evil. Perhaps, if more of these ignorant, angry fools had a mother like mine, or teachers like I did, then we wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t be ashamed of the art around them that makes them so thoroughly question themselves that they reject it with deep, blind horror. With violence.
The humanities, art, and honest, accurate history, are no threat to you, unless you feel you have something to hide. Or, perhaps more horrifying, you feel that you, and those like you, are better than others. That you have a duty to suppress the other. I don’t know where things are headed, where we (America) will end up, and despite my tendency towards pretentious pontification, I won’t hazard a guess.
Instead, I think the last thing I want to leave you with is that same advice my mother gave me. Don’t hate, dont apologize for caring, and don’t let the bastards pull the wool over your eyes.
And remember, the people who are trying to tell you what you can read and who you can love are ALWAYS the ones up to no good.
A Final Aside: Love is the Uniter
When I wrote the above section of this newsletter, it was early April, and the news on the MHC was fresh. I was, I think you can tell, angry. I was, and in some ways still am, hurt by the actions of the world I see unfolding in front of me. But I think in the text, the anger is most prevelant. I wrote that piece as someone angry, furious, looking for a fight. Part of me is hesitant to publish it now as I write this new addendum in late April. The compilation of this newsletter took longer than I anticipated, and since then my anger has cooled, if only a little. To be clear, I still feel upset at what I see, at these attacks on institutions I hold dear. I am still worried about what this means for my home, our world. But, I think the anger in the above is just that, more anger. More flame. More fury. It is the anger there, the harshness in my words, the absolutism, that makes me hesitant to publish it. I think, though, that I owe that anger its vent. I owe my friends at MHC that anger.
Still, I don’t want to end this thing on some message of anger, some grandstand about standing up to tyrants and liars and manufactured pretense about my moral raising. In the interim between that original writing and what came later, I’ve thought a lot about what remains to be said. What is the alternative to what I see going on in the world around me? Finally, I think I have at least some answer that satisfies me.
Love.
Go for long walks and watch the way the trees move in the wind.
Stand at the edge of the Pearl River or the Okatoma or the Leaf or the Pascagoula or wherever you are and watch the way it moves.
If you are a parent, hold your child a little longer. If they make you angry or frustrated, revel in that human, beautiful emotion.
If you are lucky enough to still have living grandparents, call them. Ask them how they are. Tell them you love them.
Talk to your parents about little things, about the weekend, and the weather. Be near them, love them.
Call a friend to tell them you love them for no reason besides it’s true.
Plant a garden, and when the harvest comes, share the fruits of your labor with friends, with coworkers, with a neighbor who’s name you don’t know.
Read a good book.
Watch a movie you love but haven’t seen since highschool.
Really, what I’m trying to say, is to live. Live a real, human existence. Love yourself, your family, your neighbors. Regardless of what bad news there is, love.
In my life, for all of my life, I have had a propensity to declare my hate for something at any moment. A hatred for a person, a hatred for a thing, a hatred for a concept. More than once in my life, people have commented on that, and I’ve brushed it off, but now, in a world where so much hate is real and palatable, I find myself weary of my own behavior. My hate.
I know that this might read as somehow worse than the pretentious moral absolutism of the earlier section. It might be something saccharine, soft hearted. Those behaviors are not something I tend to default toward, but in times like these, I think often of a quote from Tolkien:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
With whatever time I have, I don’t want to hate anymore. All I want, quite simply, is to love.
What greater act of resistance could there be than to Love in the face of Hate?
Thanks for Reading.
