#and i get that she is some learning lesson for glassman

[a-dash-in-the-middle]

Debbie,glassmans wife, is so annoying i cant. Now we have people in our lives so him and shaun have to change their relathionship completely bc she fucking minds

[after-nine-at-the-oasis]

As I've learned from watching House M.D. clips, it's never lupus lol

Let her feel it Shaun lol

Ayy yeah Jared and Asher on her side :D

AW she's so cute I love her

And like me fr honestly xD

Oop?

Nah I bet it's something that shouldn't be there

Hmm gallstone?

OOP o.o

Is that a needle, just not yours?

Wire o.o

Ohh the barbecue :OO

I mean I don't remember but xd

Yeeah those brushes! Wild o.o

Hmm yeah he did get slapped in the head lol

Yeah tell her good job :)

She wants it from Shaun though doesn't she xd

Shaunnn xd

Hmm a magnet?

Also with the other scene good thing the thing they did worked :D (the one before this)

Glassman you do have to be professional though xd

And do work like you're playing pool right now lol

Steve being there too xD

Yeeah I mean Lim can't do all of it lol

Lim insulting him to Steve XDD

Ope? What are we doing again

OPE O.O

Oohhh right it's a magnet :O

OHHHH :O

One stuck up there!!!

Where was it?

Ohh tonsils :F

Ahh and the nerve and stuff :O :D!! That's wild :)

Nice job y'all :DD!!

Yeah it is cool :))

Lol yeah those wire brushes are not it xD

What's this thing with this butcher lol o.o desperate to find out later (when I watch the beginning) xD

Ahh they're like his brothers :'))

LOL this is very pointed at Asher right now xD not on purpose from the guy but yk

Certainly a hmmm 👀👀 ain't that interesting moment though xD

I mean you don't HAVE to do dangerous stuff for the people you love that's not the lesson here lol

But yeah doing what they enjoy sometimes :'))

XD Jared's look at Asher

We knew it was coming lol

Take it to heart Asher!

Meanwhile Dom just standing here: :)

Oop now's the time Jerome's going!!

Asherrrr go to!!

I bet he will :)

AAAHHHHHHH AW KISS 🥰🥰🥰❤️!!! My lovelies <33

AAAHHHHH YES go :DD!!

Awww slay 🥰🥰

Awww Dom it's okay :'((

You're trying your best dude and you're doing great <33

AWW Park :'))) see this is what makes him a good teacher <3

I mean it's not the only way to do it but with Park it works well :)

AWWWWW 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️ the hug :'))

:'OO Morgan watching!!

Aww :'))

Yeah girl you want that man as the father of your child lol

:OOO AAHHHH WE GET TO SEE THE PARTY!!!

I'm so excited omgosh

Wait why is this gonna be hilarious lol :D

Ahh so a niece

Is she gonna say Asher too :))

AWW 🥰🥰

:DD Ooh a sports team sweatshirt!! AW :))

:'OO IS SHE GONNA HUG ASHER TOO

YES DO IT DO IT

AAAHHHHHH AWWWW YESS :'DDD :))

This is so cute my gosh

Lol I'm assuming that's the niece's dad, so a brother xD and he seems to support another team slfhdjs

Not gonna lie realistic dad-child banter lol

:'OOO ASHER BEING ALL INCLUDED STOP 😭😭💔❤️❤️ I'M NOT OKAY

AAWWWWW THE LITTLE HANDSHAKE THING!!!

STOP I AM SO NOT OKAY 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️

That was the most adorable thing ever

Like the whole scene, I loved that so much <333

Just thinking about Asher leaving his family behind and not having that for years and finally he's remembering what it's like :')) I am not okay thank you very much <33

Ill :D <3 (ill)

Oop Charlie! Hey girl :D

Aww she's so sweet :)) I'm kind of assuming she's trying to get in his good graces but yk lol

Okay nice we're being chill so far :)

Okay but pushy girl but fair xD

Fair to want rude to ask but yk

Okay listen I'm scared because the more emotional dramatic moments from the promo haven't happened yet so idk if this'll stay going good

UH OH

Shaun o.o

That's not what she wants is it? She wants to be a surgeon right?

Yup o.o

SHAUNNN YOU'RE LITERALLY DOING TO HER WHAT THEY DID TO YOU!!

Stoppp 😭😭😭💔

I don't deserve this <3

Honeyy :((

She just wants to be like you Shaun 😭😭😭

Poor girlie 😭😭

She doesn't deserve this Shaun >:(

It's not your job to decide what she can do, job wise I mean

She's not you!! She's herself!! And she can be a surgeon!!

Gosh 😭😭

Hey again y'all xd

Must everyone always be arguing xd like always some pair lol, over several episodes

Especially these two ngl lol

You'll survive it xd

Ope o.o Charlie :(

Ahh they're gonna see and see that neither of their advice worked lol

Ope honey D:

This makes me so sad :(( <3

Honey 😭😭😭

[meirmakesstuff]

1/2 Hi Meir! I saw your answer on WWC, and since you mentioned you're professionals, I figured I'd ask directly: I'm writing a second world fantasy with a jewish coded people. I want to be clear in the coding but avoid the "if there's no egypt, how can there be passover?" so I called them Canaanites. I thought I was being clever by hinting in the naming that the whole region does exist, but I've since read that it might've been a slur in fact? Do you have any advice on this?

2/2 I did consider calling the group in question Jewish, but aside from how deeply Judaism is connected to the history of the Israelites, I haven't used any present-day real-world names for any other group, (I did use some historic names like Nubia). I feel like calling only one group of people by their currently used name would be othering rather than inclusive? Or am I overthinking this?

Okay so I want to start out with some disclaimers, first that although WWC recently reblogged an addition of mine to one of their posts, I am not affiliated with @writingwithcolor​, and second that the nature of trying to answer a question like this is “two Jews, three opinions,” so what I have to say about this is my own opinion(s) only. Last disclaimer: this is a hard question to address, so this answer is going to be long. Buckle up.

First, I would say that you’re right to not label the group in question “Jewish” (I’ll get to the exception eventually), and you’re also right in realizing that you should not call them “Canaanites.” In Jewish scripture, Canaanites are the people we fought against, not ourselves, so that wouldn’t feel like representation but like assigning our identity to someone else, which is a particular kind of historical violence Jews continue to experience today. I’ll get back to the specific question of naming in a moment, but because this is my blog and not WWC, and you asked me to speak to this as an educator, we’re going to take a detour into Jewish history and literary structure before we get back to the question you actually asked.

To my mind there are three main ways to have Jews in second-world fantasy and they are:

People who practice in ways similar to modern real-world Jews, despite having developed in a different universe,

People who practice in ways similar to ancient Hebrews, because the things that changed us to modern Jewish practice didn’t occur, and

People who practice in a way that shows how your world would influence the development of a people who started out practicing like ancient Hebrews and have developed according to the world they’re in. 

The first one is what we see in @shiraglassman​‘s Mangoverse series: there is no Egypt yet her characters hold a seder; the country coded Persian seems to bear no relation to their observance of Purim, and there is no indication of exile or diaspora in the fact that Jews exist in multiple countries and cultures, and speak multiple languages including Yiddish, a language that developed through a mixture of Hebrew and German. Her characters’ observance lines up approximately with contemporary Reform Jewish expectations, without the indication of there ever having been a different practice to branch off from. She ignores the entire question of how Jews in her universe became what they are, and her books are lyrical and sweet and allow us to imagine the confidence that could belong to a Jewish people who weren’t always afraid.

Shira is able to pull this off, frankly, because her books are not lore-heavy. I say this without disrespect--Shira often refers to them as “fluffy”--but because the deeper you get into the background of your world and its development, the trickier this is going to be to justify, unless you’re just going to just parallel every historical development in Jewish History, including exile and diaspora across the various nations of your world, including occasional near-equal treatment and frequent persecution, infused with a longing for a homeland lost, or a homeland recently re-established in the absolutely most disappointing of ways.

Without that loss of homeland or a Mangoverse-style handwaving, we have the second and third options. In the second option, you could show your Jewish-coded culture having never been exiled from its homeland, living divided into tribes each with their own territory, still practicing animal, grain, and oil sacrifice at a single central Temple at the center of their nation, overseen by a tribe that lacks territory of their own and being supported by the sacrifices offered by the populace.

If you’re going to do that, research it very carefully. A lot of information about this period is drawn from scriptural and post-scriptural sources or from archaeological record, but there’s also a lot of Christian nonsense out there assigning weird meanings and motivations to it, because the Christian Bible takes place during this period and they chose to cast our practices from this time as evil and corrupt in order to magnify the goodness of their main character. In any portrayal of a Jewish-coded people it’s important to avoid making them corrupt, greedy, bigoted, bloodthirsty, or stubbornly unwilling to see some kind of greater or kinder truth about the world, but especially if you go with this version. 

The last option, my favorite but possibly the hardest to do, is to imagine how the people in the second option would develop given the influences of the world they’re in. Do you know why Chanukah is referred to as a “minor” holiday? The major holidays are the ones for which the Torah specifies that we “do not work:” Rosh Hashannah, Yom Kippur, and the pilgrimage holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot. Chanukah developed as a holiday because the central temple, the one we made those pilgrimages to, was desecrated by the invading Assyrian Greeks and we drove them out and were able to re-establish the temple. That time. Eventually, the Temple was razed and we were scattered across the Roman Empire, developing the distinct Jewish cultures we see today. The Greeks and Romans aren’t a semi-mythologized ancient people, the way the Canaanites have been (though there’s increasing amounts of archaeology shedding light on what they actually might have been like), we have historical records about them, from them. The majority of modern Jewish practice developed from the ruins of our ancient practices later than the first century CE. In the timeline of Jewish identity, that’s modern.

The rabbinic period and the Temple period overlap somewhat, but we’re not getting into a full-scale history lesson here. Suffice it to say that it was following the loss of the sacrificial system at the central Temple that Judaism coalesced an identity around verbal prayer services offered at the times of day when we would previously have offered sacrifices, led each community by its own learned individual who became known as a rabbi. We continued to develop in relationship with the rest of the world, making steps toward gender equality in the 1970s and LGBT equality in the 2000s, shifting the meaning of holidays like Tu Bishvat to address climate change, debating rulings on whether one may drive a car on Shabbat for the sake of being with one’s community, and then pivoting to holding prayer services daily via Zoom.

The history of the Jews is the history of the world.  Our iconic Kol Nidrei prayer, the centerpiece of the holiest day of the year, that reduces us to tears every year at its first words, was composed in response to the Spanish Inquisition. The two commentators who inform our understanding of scripture--the ones we couldn’t discuss Torah without referencing even if we tried--wrote in the 11th and 12th centuries in France and Spain/Egypt. Jewish theology and practice schismed into Orthodox and Reform (and later many others) because that’s the kind of discussion people were into in the 19th century. Sephardim light Chanukah candles in an outdoor lamp while Ashkenazim light Chanukah candles in an indoor candelabrum because Sephardim developed their traditions in the Middle East and North Africa and the Ashkenazim developed our traditions in freezing Europe. There are works currently becoming codified into liturgy whose writers died in 2000 and 2011. 

So what are the historical events that would change how your Jewish-coded culture practices, if they don’t involve loss of homeland and cultural unity? What major events have affected your world? If there was an exile that precipitated an abandonment of the sacrificial system, was there a return to their land, or are they still scattered? Priority one for us historically has been maintaining our identity and priority two maintaining our practices, so what have they had to shift or create in order to keep being a distinct group? Is there a major worldwide event in your world? If so, how did this people cope?

If you do go this route, be careful not to fall into tropes of modern or historical antisemitism: don’t have your culture adopt a worldview that has their deity split into mlutiple identities (especially not three). Don’t have an oppressive government that doesn’t represent its people rise up to oppress outsiders within its borders (this is not the first time this has occurred in reality, but because the outside world reacts differently to this political phenomenon when it’s us than when it’s anyone else, it’s a portrayal that makes real-life Jews more vulnerable). And don’t portray the people as having developed into a dark and mysterious cult of ugly, law-citing men and beautiful tearstreaked women, but it doesn’t sound as if you were planning to go there.

So with all that said, it’s time to get back to the question of names. All the above information builds to this: how you name this culture depends on how you’ve handled their practice and identity. 

Part of why Shira Glassman’s handwaving of the question of how modern Jewish practice ended up in Perach works is that she never gives a name to the religion of her characters. Instead, she names the regions they come from. Perach, in particular, the country where most of the action takes place, translates to “Flower.” In this case, her Jewish-coded characters who come from Perach are Perachis, and characters from other places who are also Jewish are described as “they worship as Perachis do despite their different language” or something along those lines (forgive me, Shira, for half-remembering).

So that’s method one: find an attribute of your country that you’d like to highlight, translate it into actual Hebrew, and use that as your name.

Method two is the opposite: find a name that’s been used to identify our people or places (we’ve had a bunch), find out what it means or might mean in English, and then jiggle that around until it sounds right for your setting. You could end up with the nation of the Godfighters, or Children of Praise, The Wanderers (if they’re not localized in a homeland), The Passed-Over, Those From Across The River, or perhaps the people of the City of Peace.

Last, and possibly easiest, pick a physical attribute of their territory and just call them that in English. Are they from a mountainous region? Now they’re the Mountain People. Does their land have a big magical crater in the middle? Craterfolk. Ethereal floating forests of twinkling lights? It’s your world.

The second option is the only one that uses the name to overtly establish Jewish coding. The first option is something Jews might pick up on, especially if they speak Hebrew, but non-Jews would miss. The third avoids the question and puts the weight of conveying that you’re trying to code them as Jewish on their habits and actions.

There’s one other option that can work in certain types of second-world fantasy, and that’s a world that has developed from real-world individuals who went through some kind of portal. That seems to me the only situation in which using a real-world name like Jews, Hebrews, or Israelites would make sense. Jim Butcher does this with the Romans in the Codex Alera series, and Katharine Kerr does it with Celts in the Deverry cycle. That kind of thing has to be baked into the world-building, though, so it probably doesn’t help with this particular situation. 

This is a roundabout route to what I imagine you were hoping would be an easier answer. The tension you identified about how to incorporate Jewishness into a world that doesn’t have the same history is real, and was the topic of a discussion I recently held with a high school age group around issues of Jewish representation in the media they consume and hope to create. Good luck in your work of adding to the discussion.

[5questions]

Joselia Hughes

Joselia "Jo" Hughes is a Black 1.5-generation Cuban-Jamaican-Guyanese-American writer and artist from the Bronx. She lives with Sickle Cell Disease (HBSC) and ADHD.

Where did you find the 3rd grade poem? How did you decide to include it? What other collage or found art/poetry do you like?

The 3rd grade poem was from a collection of student works, Witch’s Brew, released by my grammar school, Horace Mann. I have two issues from 2nd and 3rd grades. Both of my works were quartered in the “Fantasy” section. There was another section called “Feelings” and, I think, The Sky more accurately suggests a feeling. Scratch that: it explicitly discusses a feeling. This misidentification by academic administration/curatorial staff (which doubles as a political demonstration) is telling. I think it explains a lot about the root confusion between what I have felt/feel to know as Experientially True versus what I’m told to know as The Truth. When considering the emotional and material lives of Black femmes, we must remember Black femmes have been historically disallowed, disavowed and dispossessed of creative virtuosity. Too often, we are strapped in the monolith of stereotyped caricature dictated by the manifested destiny written into commandments/constitution of misogynoir. Black femme virtuosity is reappropriated, regesticulated and worn like some earned bloody body wisdom by the Opps (Oppressive Forces). While I didn’t have those terms as a child, I experienced the consequences of misogynoir in conjunction with dis/ableism and classism, which aren’t separate entities but necessary vices that amplify asphyxiation. Is disabled Black femme loneliness only permissible when classified as fantasy? That shit don’t sit right in my spirit. I also used the poem because the title is Witch’s Brew and my zine, Heartbeats But No Air (HBNA), is a kind of exorcism. A few years ago, I pieced together that my maternal grandmother was a covertly practicing Bruja. With the widening reclamation of ancestral wisdom by BIPOC, in an effort to decolonize our existences, I was tapping into that tender tendon of wisdom.

Understanding my grandmother’s practice reminded me that she wanted to name me Darthula Verbena (daughter of God, enchanting and medicinal). I started referring to myself as DV, my pre-name, and inspected my childhood. That’s been a remarkable endeavor. I had to teach myself to play again. Through play, I learned how to feel. Learning feeling meant learning the qualitative and quantitative nature of the labyrinth of my thoughts. Once I learned some of the turns of the labyrinth, I could feel to know how to navigate the terrain without fear and engage in the rigorous study that’s always characterized my central self. Play is a code switch. I often think of code switching as a means to subvert/refigure power differentials. To hide in plain sight by retooling “seeing” to perception/sensing. How much are we perceiving/sensing? How often do we mean perception/sensing yet default to “sight”? Perception/Sensing adds dimensionality that isn’t always articulated with and through “sight” and “seeing”. Ralph Ellison’s identification of “lower frequencies” and J. Halberstam’s configurations of Low Theory do this work. I toy with these multiplicities in the zine. I work low to the ground which means I work close to my heartbeat, my central drum. I work meta; I go beyond. I like to sprinkle codes, tickle clues, tuck in questions, sew in wisdoms so I know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, who I’m doing it for and to always remember the fun of FLiP (Feeling, Learning, iPlaying).

Some of the works/folks who’ve helped me FLiP are Dana Robinson’s meditative and piercing collages; Zulie’s mind bending, heart wrenching, time suspending zines; Nikki Wallschlaeger’s I HATE TELLING YOU HOW I REALLY FEEL; Seth Graham’s tattoo practice/paintings/unbounded love of outer space (they’ve done 3/4 of my tattoos); Amanda Glassman’s razor sharp poetry and encyclopedic curiosity;  L’Rain's music has literally helped me scale the side of a mountain and carried me through hospitalizations; KT PE Benito’s multidisciplinary liberation praxis and collaborative friendship; Zoraida Ingles' holistic creative prowess (a conversation with her is why Heartbeats But No Air, as a title, exists); and Marcus Scott Williams’ writings/video/sculpture work that readily embraces the persistence of ephemera. This isn’t an exhaustive list—I have a solid library of books and papers and zines and tunes at my crib—but, genuinely, I’m inspired by everyone I’ve had the honor to encounter.

There are themes of love and race and beauty and culture and self-transformation in this book. Paired randomly, some pieces may not make as much common sense together, but as a whole, it feels powerful and cohesive. What was the structuring process like for this chapbook? Each zine is different, right?

It is one zine. I find it cool that you consider HBNA a chapbook made up of many zines. The word chapbook had never crossed my mind. I walked into the process with DIY zine logic and HBNA was printed using office photocopiers. I think the feeling of cohesion you mention is what happens when you witness a lot of parts of one person. In this case, you’re witnessing a lot of different parts of me, my thoughts, my actual labor. Whole is the goal ‘cuz people are whole. I am whole. I consider HBNA a single revolution of myself— one big twirl around a fire, a sun. I was in a very strange place. I’d alleviated, with the help of acupuncture and CBD products, a significant amount of the chronic pain I’d been experiencing since August 2014. I fell around love with someone and rose in love to myself (thanks Ms. Morrison and Ms. Stanford!). I was in an unfamiliar painless trance. I created and tinkered with all of those pieces during a very short period of time from Summer 2017 to Summer 2018. HBNA was originally named Girl Pickney (the prose pieces were written under that moniker) and before that NggrGrl (a nod to Dick Gregory). I wrote the poetry in an even shorter period of time—March to July 2018—and the poems are actually part of a full length collection that I wrote in those four months. I didn’t decide on the layout of the zine until I was with two friends formatting it for printing two days before I was going to read at The Strand and sell it. I kept all the pages, the puzzle pieces, in a folder. A lot of book structuring, for me, is based on emotional knowing—when to slap, when to pound, when to breathe, when to confuse, when to stun, when to anger, when to tell, when to soothe. All of my structuring decisions are fly about to get swatted dead but fast enuf to fly away first intuitive. If I’m channeling that intuition, I know I’m in running in the proper heat and lane.

You were in an MFA program at one point. How does this chapbook contrast with your style from before that program and during that program? Did that program have an effect on your writing? This doesn’t feel like the most MFA-y writing, which is why I ask, and which I mean as a compliment.

I’ve attended a few schools. I’ve completed fewer than I’ve attended. Until my late 20s, I was shy and desperate for people, those noun-verbs, to stay. This desire for people to stay meant I spent an inordinate about of time and energy relegating the difficult parts of myself to the margins of the margins and continually stepped into social/academic shoes that did not fit. HBNA was the first fitting of the bespoke shoes I can now emotionally afford to make. The first copies I sold had typos! I misspelled my own pre-name and that’s exactly what I needed to happen. It needed it to happen because I’m full of mistakes and yet! I try! I understand HBNA as a radical refutation of embarrassment. Depending on when you purchased a copy, you’ll see I used white-out to make a few corrections. No two zines are the same; only 80 copies exist. I’m printing 12 more copies (they’ve already been claimed) and then on to new pastures! The zine was printed in three different places (two offices I don’t work in and a local printing shop) and I was lugging around 800 individual sheets of paper that I stapled, numbered, indexed and decorated with stickers by myself…standing barefoot on the carpet of Staples in Co-Op City, listening to Ryo Fukui’s Early Summer on repeat until I finished and then I jetted to the Strand to read. HBNA was how I knew to embody my physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual labor. I’m a goofball with zany ideas, an indifference to external definitions of relevancy, sickled cells and a lot of chaotically grounding love. I write for myself first. Of the school lessons I did receive and learn, there weren’t many I didn’t later disassemble to rebuild, freak unfamiliar or completely misunderstand. J. Halberstam calls this “failing”. Rejigging failure has been such a gift to me. How wonderful! A failure AND still happening? Fuck yeah! I was a wildly uneven student whose knees buckled at mere thought of rigid academic authority. After years of shame and refusal, I can finally admit I am an autodidact. I intentionally get lost and navigate in and to the direction of my own senses. School didn’t teach me to write for myself and that’s who I always have to write for. If that’s selfish, so be it. I am my first audience. If I’m sus of me, then me and myself got foundational problems. I know my writing is non-institutional and that lack of institutional alignment and support, while scary as shit, pushes me to make and take risks to believe beyond the immediate demands/plans/remands of whatever external force I am facing. My writing is constantly colliding into A New I can’t predict. I’m fully committed to unfolding, unraveling, for curiosity’s sake.

What’s a typical day like for you?

My day to day life is as predictable as it is unpredictable. I am formally unemployed and have been for awhile. I live on very little cash and am kept afloat because my mom is a gem and hasn’t kicked me out. My days are 100% influenced by the weather and I spend a good portion of my time negotiating how to minimize the occurrence of vaso-occlusive crises and other complications from the disease I have, Sickle Cell. Between January 2018 and January 2019, I was hospitalized three times. Each hospitalization was about a week long and recovery took significantly longer.

Here’s a sketch of what I call a really great day: I wake up before 10. If the night’s sleep was especially restorative, I can comfortably rise at 8. Depending on how my body feels, depending on how much pain I’m enduring, how much fatigue is shrouding/clouding my faculties, I decide if I have the energy to take a shower. I do the bathroom routine, get a cup of orange juice and take my medications (Endari, sometimes Adderall, Folic Acid). I use the first hours of wakefulness to connect with loved ones via text-phonecalls-DMs and browse the internet for headlines-news-updates-new smiles. I wear my fits comfortable. I call comfort my uniform—upend normcore to body sensible—sweatpants/leggings, pullover, one earring (although I’m leaning to pairs again), handy dandy baseball cap and sneakers. I keep it simple. If the weather is aight—if it isn’t too cold or too hot and if precipitation is mostly at bay and air quality isn’t extremely poor—I go outside and get some living exercise. When able, I take extremely long walks. Once I walked over 50 miles in a week! It’s my preferred form of meditation. Walking/body movement grounds my ADHD symptoms more effectively than stimulants, strengthens my body for potential Sickle Cell episodes and satiates my unyielding need to feel connected to other people. I’m at my best when outside and happening. Illness can create an inescapable interiority. Inside reminds me of the hospital and my relationship with the hospital is, at best, fraught. Walking allows me to follow myself. I engage in peek-a-boo with babies, witness accidents, smile at strangers, duck the eyes of leering people and learn how to love differently too. I go to playgrounds and swing. I take photos and notes. If I’ve got a lil cash, I ride the subway for fun. I poke into shops, admire graffiti and other street signs. I have one woman dance parties on sidewalks. I rest on park benches and read. I pick up grub from hole in the wall spots—you know—I live my life and embrace as much as I can while centering kindness and gentle flow. The walks are my favorite part of my job, which I do not have. When I return home, I rest then get to crafting which I sometimes call spelling. Crafting/Spelling can be anything from adding to my I-Box, spitting verses from the abstract (poetry), spinning short stories, detailing journal entries, doodling, painting, knitting, researching & studying,  dancing & stretching, bugging out on Twitter or reading. My bedroom is my studio so I work small yet widely. I intentionally provide myself with many targets so I can a) keep my thoughts and feelings flowing b) find the connections between all of my actions and c) mitigate the stress that sits in the heart of a lone project. I am a multifaceted, multifauceted being. Why not turn on all the taps?

The more long form prose pieces in here have the feel of nice punch-y flash fiction. Are you writing a fiction collection without poems and collage in it? I want to read that, too :)

Hahaha! You’re onto me! Yeah, I am writing another book of poems, a manifesto zine and a collection of fiction. I’ve been writing a collection of fiction since 2012. I had a lot of the difficultly writing the fiction because I was too attached to the title, the characters I conceived needed to grow up with me, and I experienced many years of unremitting and improperly managed mental and physical illness. I was holding onto and telling lies. The shame woven into those lies kept me silent and scared. All of that shit needed to get integrated or dropped. I couldn’t enter the prose/fiction I’m currently writing without learning how to survive myself and the world and bottom-belly-believe in survival too. I’m getting there— healing with primary, secondary and tertiary intentions. Won’t say much about the fiction pieces of than: ~15 stories, lyrically speculative fiction, capital B Black, disabled, and queerfemme parables of creation and destruction and maintenance. My website is in flux but I do readings and performances. Hit me up on Instagram , Twitter or email me at joseliawrites@gmail.com. Might take a minute for me to respond because I’m thoughtful yet questionably organized. Now go play, ya’ll!

Unintentionally wrote a poem in the interview. I call it A.B.B in Lieu of A.B.C

beyond

fly, about to get swatted dead but fast enuf to fly away first,

always believe beyond

[goldeagleprice]

Letters to the Editor (July 3, 2018)

Still thinking up theme songs for numismatics

Should numismatics have a theme song?

I’d like to nominate “When the CENTS come marching in.”

Name withheld Lombard, Ill.

  Nobel Prize medal research will lead to exhibit

I very much enjoyed your recent article on the gold Nobel Prize that was recently in an auction. It sounds like the proceeds from the sale are going for a great cause.

In a related matter, I recently purchased a silver 1926 silver Nobel Prize medal for Chemistry in the original IVA case. I am still doing some research on the medal but hope to exhibit sometime in the future.

Gary Lewis Florida

  Circulation finds include coin from Panama

Since I last wrote you, I’ve found some more interesting coin finds that I thought were worth mentioning:

I found a 2008 Panama nickel featuring Sara Sotillo, a Panamanian feminist. I also received four 2018-D pennies, a 2018-D dime, and a 2018 Apostle Islands, Wisconsin quarter.

Ari Kaufman Address withheld

  Why would anyone bother to fake a common dollar?

I recently received a counterfeit Morgan dollar from an online auction. It’s an 1879-O in VF condition. The seller appeared to be U.S. based, but the coin eventually arrived from China! It passes the magnet test but has tiny cracks in the plating that can be seen and felt. It’s also a half gram too heavy and does not have the proper ring when dropped. I’m only out 20 bucks, so I’ll just consider it a lesson learned. When I left negative feedback to warn other bidders, I noticed that the seller had several more suspect Morgans listed, and they were getting bids. It just makes me wonder why someone would bother to counterfeit a $30 coin.

Fool me once,

Name withheld Denton, Texas

  No response to suggestion for mintmarks on bullion

At last somebody has jumped on the bandwagon concerning putting mintmarks on bullion coins. I wrote the Mint, I chatted with the Mint, and I called the Mint about this. I couldn’t believe that Numismatic News had never addressed this problem before. Thank you. Thank you.

Chuck Miller Pittsburgh, Pa.

  Credit cards just one more example of progress

In the June 5, 2018, issue, a reader from Fairbanks, Alaska, laments the cashless society. He obviously owns a shop and does not like paying credit card fees to banks. My friend, you can’t stop a runaway train. Today, just about everyone has a wallet full of credit cards, not to mention Apple Pay, Paypal and other electronic payment systems. It is the way most people prefer to pay. OK, maybe not coin collectors, but most coin collectors are stuck in the last century. The fees associated with credit cards are a cost of doing business. I personally will not patronize any retailer who does not accept credit cards, although nowadays those retailers are a dying breed. I have credit cards that pay me rebates. It is not unusual for me to receive several hundred dollars a year in rebates. Why would I not want to do this?

On a related note, another earlier reader lamented automated payment systems, claiming that they are an attempt to take jobs away from people. Again, automated payment systems constitute progress. When Henry Ford started mass producing automobiles, it threw blacksmiths out of work, but I’m sure Ford did not deliberately set out to do that; it was a byproduct of the era. Paying people to do things that can be automated is a waste of time and money.

Peter Glassman Illinois

  How can book be dated 2019 when it is only 2018?

In the May 15, 2018, edition of Numismatic News, there is an article about the 2019 Coin Digest available for shipping on May 10th of this year. How can this be? Shouldn’t a person reading a 2019 edition at some point in the future be entitled to believe that the contents reflected the state of numismatics in the year 2019? If it is published so early in 2018, then the contents, and especially prices, would have to reflect early 2018 or even late 2017 in order to get it printed in time. By the same token, if I find a used copy of, say, the 2015 issue, I am entitled to believe it reflects the state of affairs in 2015.

Steve Fawthrop Radford, Va.

Editor’s note: New editions are always dated a year ahead, or few collectors would buy them. It is the same reasoning that allowed me to buy a car with next year’s model year.

  1936 cent tops reader’s latest coin finds

I received 94 cents in new uncirculated change yesterday (May 22) at lunch. Although I had six cents in my pocket, I’m a sucker for change! The 94 cents (which the teller had to open two or three rolls to give me) were as follows: three 2017-D George R. Clark quarters; one 2018-P dime, my first 2018 dime; one 2018-D nickel, my first 2018 nickel; and four 2018-D cents. I should’ve asked for a manager to see if they would have sold me some rolls.

I also found a 1936 wheat cent (+/- fine) in the work till yesterday. It’s always a nice little treat to find feral wheats not in the 1940s or 1950s!

Jay Woodin Address withheld

  Chicago Coin Club notes passing of Tillie Boosel

Below is Tillie Boosel’s obituary.

Many people knew Tillie’s husband, Harry (1912-1994). Some facts about Harry:

• Member of numerous numismatic groups, including: ANA, ANS, CSNS, FUN

• Past President of Chicago Coin Club, Washington (D.C.) Numismatic Society, Central States Numismatic Society

• Charter member of the Central States Numismatic Society

• Not sure this record still stands, but Harry was the youngest member elected to ANA governor 1937-39 (age 25)

• Harry’s collecting specialty was the Coinage Act of 1873

Recipient of numerous merit awards.

Tillie Boosel, 1922-2018, passed away April 24, 2018, at the age of 96 and was laid to rest at Westlawn Cemetery, Norridge, Ill.

Tillie joined the Chicago Coin Club in July 1950 using her maiden name Sicher, since she was engaged, but not yet married, to Harry Boosel. After their marriage and up until his death in 1994, Tillie traveled the country with Harry attending many coin shows.

Harry served in many numismatic leadership positions and received numerous awards. Tillie was always by his side and frequently served as a convention volunteer. The American Numismatic Association recognized their years of teamwork by jointly presenting them with the ANA Presidential Award at the 1994 Detroit Convention.

Tillie is survived by daughter Nanci Judge, son Wayne (Bonnie) Boosel, grandchildren Clayton and Lyndsay Judge and Wendy Boosel. She is preceded in death by her husband of 43 years, Harry; son-in-law Charlie Judge; and sisters Ann Caplan and Lillian Gizzardo.

Carl Wolf Chicago Coin Club

  This article was originally printed in Numismatic News. >> Subscribe today.

  More Collecting Resources

• More than 600 issuing locations are represented in the Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1701-1800 .

• Keep up to date on prices for Canada, United States and Mexico coinage with the 2018 North American Coins & Prices guide.

The post Letters to the Editor (July 3, 2018) appeared first on Numismatic News.

[nomineestheshow-blog]

The Nominees Gossip Column: Remember February?

By Sameer Suri

Well, darlings, here we are, at the first Nominees gossip column since news broke that our beloved venue, the NerdMelt Showroom, is closing. We’ve found ourselves flung to the wind in search of a roof, like a call-girl kicked out of a limo at 4am, still picking her teeth.

Now is the time to look back on the last show we put on before we learned NerdMelt was on its way out - and on the gin-soaked (for me) after-party at The Pikey, where I dished with our winner Stephanie Simbari.

After we spent a few minutes chewing over old Judy Garland dirt, I finally got around to asking if there was anyone in particular whose elimination surprised her.

Anna Salinas “was robbed,” Stephanie said. “She was so good. When she said: ‘I was robbed,’ I had said that to her two seconds before. I thought she was really, really good.”

Naturally, I had to bring up Stephanie’s reality star gig on Funny Girls, and to ask what the oddest part of the job had been. “The weirdest thing about it,” she said slowly, somewhat startled that I’d even heard of her show, “is that you’re playing yourself, so - but what you’re doing isn’t necessarily real. So the line between your truth and the truth that the show wants you to play are blurred. It’s a little stressful.”

When I asked, “How much is instructed?” she said with refreshing forthrightness, “A lot. A lot. I mean, it’s based on reality, but situationally, it’s narratively designed.”

She clarified that “They don’t tell you what to say, but they tell you where you’re going, and what needs to happen in order for the plot to move forward.”

This reminded me somewhat of Martin Scorcese’s improvisational directing style on my favorite movie musical, New York, New York - which is a comparison I’m sure Marty would appreciate. (Very stuffy, he. The magnificent wop journalist Oriana Fallaci told the New York Observer that when she dined at his 58th-storey apartment, he made her crane herself out the bathroom window to have a smoke, “risking to precipitate down on the sidewalk.” And this was in the old days of his marriage to Isabella Rosselini, when as a general rule people were much more relaxed about cigarettes than now, the era of potheads who seem to imagine that what comes out of a peace isn’t smoke.)

Steph’s runner-up that evening was Rick Glassman, who for so much of the show was a reliable crowd-pleaser - but who ultimately ended up sensationally alienating both the judges’ table and a judge-friendly audience.

Once he’d lost, “The first thing that went through my head was, ‘Good for Stephanie.’ You can quote me on this: she needs a win,” he quipped when I spoke to him just before the after-party. “And, it’s just - she went up there, she gave a great goodbye speech. She did a hilarious, vulnerable gag where she didn’t care about the trophy, and then realized she needed to care about the trophy, and then she dug into it and it was great. All in all, I think Steph was the better person for the win.”

Moreover, having dished post-show with the reality star, I of course had to have a chat with a man from the TV genre that reality has supplanted. Chandler Massey, being a witty and elegantly dressed soap star with gorgeous hair, struck me as our Joan Collins, and was one of our judges at last month’s Nominees.

Hoping for bitchery, I asked him which of his fellow judges he preferred - Ryan Cabrera (who very boringly called his ex-girlfriend Ashlee Simpson a “sweetheart” when I asked about her) or Arden Myrin.

Chandler didn’t bite, and his lady friend Amalea across the table (actually just a friend, despite what the phrasing implies) gave him a way out of it. “Both for different reasons,” said Chandler at her prompting.

“So, I think Arden actually brought up some, like - had some pretty stellar insights of like, ‘Oh, my God, that applies to my own life. I’m sitting here getting lessons, life lessons from Arden. And then, Ryan, you know, made a song that I’ve listened to thousands of times.”

Shortly after we wrapped up this conversation with them, I took up with four delightful Kiwis who’d come to see the show, got swept along in their evening, and drank with them until past four in the morning - so I missed rather more of the after-party than I probably should’ve. Call me irresponsible. Or rather, don’t - I don’t need to move any closer to the brink of being fired.