18 Jul 2025 5 min read

7.18.2025 - Weekly Digest

Hola from Detroit. That's how we talk here. Actually we just go straight to the Latin:

SI QUAERIS AMOENAM PENINSULAM CIRCUMSPICE

(*if you seek a pleasant peninsula look around you)

7.15.2025

I have a lot of scattered thoughts this week as I sort and pack and prepare to return to the States. I'll be focusing on some of the more positive influences I turn to when I'm feeling like this - and on Friday I'll be posting from Detroit, so we'll see what passes for useful thinking between now and then.
-JA

We have so much to do to keep things from getting even worse and so much of that begins with the arts. This has been on my mind a lot lately and my favorite living essayist, Rebecca Solnit, discusses the subject with her usual poise and authority in the latest piece from her excellent newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency (link at the bottom).

I've never been more than slightly inconvenienced or annoyed by someone making assumptions about me for my gender or ethnicity but I can imagine it feels pretty bad. She articulates exactly how, and why, and has been for decades. The first time I read her it reminded me of James Baldwin. I devoured most of her catalogue in the lockdown years and I say without qualification that her writing has made me a better person.

We need thinkers like her more than we ever have. The blogging platforms are lousy with sharp analysis and calls to action but they/we suffer from a struggle for attention. And corporate decision makers do not decision-make in the interests of those who can't afford monthly subscriptions.

After six months in Canada I'm more aware than ever of how discourse is bent and manipulated in the U.S. to make the most reasonable, sensible notions about collective stability sound like radical psychosis.

Clarity. We need clarity, dammit. Eloquence is pretty good too.

7.16.2025

-Everyone is stupid in an election year.
-No, everyone is treated like they're stupid in an election year.
(The West Wing 0209, 'Galileo')

Martin Sheen as President Jed Bartlett, tying his shoes, probably winning an Emmy for it

The last time I binged The West Wing must've been 2020, the last time things felt like this, when I was having a lot of trouble sleeping for personal as well as political reasons. I'll say what I'm sure countless fans and critics have said: the dialogue is outstanding, the acting is all top notch, and the setting and premise are idealized. This last bit is what makes the show valuable. It's all driven by a fanatical devotion to the idea that government can be a good thing in the hands of the right people. Add that to the list of things I want to believe.

I've had the show running in the background while I sort and pack. Seeing all these hypercompetent people work together and compromise and solve problems and argue productively makes me emotional. It's the same reaction I sometimes have to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. Maybe I've never been part of something like that but I'd settle for an arrangement not quite so grandiose as working in the White House or serving on a warp capable starship. Not that I'm ruling either one out.

We could use a sweet but salty president with a Nobel prize in economics who surrounds himself with people even smarter than he is. Also Martin Sheen might be my favorite actor of his generation. Apocalypse Now and his voice acting as the Illusive Man in the Mass Effect games put him two thirds of the way there already but any scene he's in is a master class and reminds me of why I don't try to act.

7.17.2025

I gaze stupidly at my possessions scattered over the floor. The simulated sunlight panel was useful when it was all drear outside but now it's a useless piece of plastic with an LED in it. The $20 miniature fan I got at Canadian Tire to offset the humidity in the last place I stayed. How civilized and soft I am. But the main thing is to cram the big soft shelled steamer trunk with less than 50 pounds (American) of goods and to drop whatever I don't need at a donation bin, or offer it to the nice lady who's been hosting me. Thanks for the lodging, here's eight disposable razors and a bottle of shoe conditioner to say I appreciate vous.

For 6 weeks I've been in the flight path of this airport. I choose to use the constant exposure to remember that flight is mundane and just because I still treat it like I'm being strapped into an amusement park ride against my will doesn't mean I don't appreciate the convenience. Or the meds I take before boarding.

See you soon Daytwah.

Update: steamer came in at 49.8 lbs on the scale. I'm getting good at this.

7.18.2025

Detroit is a city of empty spaces. There's so much unused land here that any functioning business on a given block looks both isolated and more important than it probably is. Like a long Latinate word in a phrase made up of short ones. Unassuming brick structures with an OPEN sign surrounded by vacant lots and I go, oh, I guess these guys run the market on bicycle pumps. It's a weird feeling I get from this place. I want to live here. I've always wanted to live here. There's so much potential in these hundred year old buildings. I want to occupy a top floor loft on an empty block and peer out the windows at night at my blank kingdom. I want to turn brownfields into green ones. And there are plenty of folks doing that kind of work already. And this neighborhood I'm in, Midtown, is rocking by any standard. Protected bike lanes on Cass. Go figure. People I talk to seem, I don't know, less heavy. Maybe I'm less heavy. There's evidence everywhere that this whole city was a-bustle once upon a time, and there's even still a streetcar I'm not sure anyone uses, but it's really difficult to imagine what it must have been like sixty years ago. There's also no reason to want to force things. Space is good and there's enough here for all of us who want to be here.