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Book: How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

How High We Go In the Dark
By Sequoia Nagamatsu
Audiobook published by Harper Audio
2022

How High We Go In the Dark is a book about a plague that reshapes humanity for centuries. (Note, this is not about the plague we are in at the moment. Also: it is intense to read about a world reshaped by plague, while in a world pretending not to have an ongoing plague at all…)

Melting permafrost reveals the remains of ancient people, who thaw and release the Arctic Plague upon the world, a pandemic of terrifying symptoms and profound lethality. The scale and scope of the suffering it causes remakes the world in surprising ways.

If you have wondered how serious a plague would need to be for society to adjust its values around voluntarily ending life to limit suffering; to refocus the economy around the business as its core; or how the risk of humanity’s end could drive new goals for space exploration, Sequoia Nagamatsu has wondered about this more – elaborately, delicately, thoughtfully. Through a series of interconnected chapters / short stories / vignettes, we learn about the Arctic Plague through the eyes of people who discover it, die from it, spare their loved ones from dying of it, mourn their losses, try to cure it, survive it, and travel between worlds to create a future without it.

Nagamatsu’s world building is remarkable – so plausible, so human, yet so far from the particular choices we are making during our current plague. The characters have motivations that are varied, but make sense. The settings are notable in the way the characters describe how they feel when they experience them, yet are never so detailed that you require footnotes. The emotional journey of coping with global grief and hope is handled so well. The story reveals humanity adapting to this challenge in surprising ways under the worst circumstances.

I listened to the audiobook version of this from Libro.fm, which is brilliantly acted by a cast of about fifteen voice actors (!), whose characters are compelling. (For those of us who live in the SF Bay Area, some of the voices sound pleasantly local in our port-city, collecting-people-from-afar-and-influencing-each-other way.)

This has been my favorite book of 2023. I think of it often, and have recommended it internationally! Go read or listen to this excellent book.

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Hello (again) world (2023!?!)

Evening sky over San Francisco Bay by A.E. Graves, copyright 2023

For someone with a very steady and predictable blogging habit, it’s exotic for me to START posting for the year in December. But… it has been quite a year.

In brief: a death in my immediate family, an enterprise-wide technology project, an underperforming vendor whose work I took on, an incompletely staffed team, a previously unenforced building code, a potentially broken bone, an immediate family hospitalization, a death in my partner’s family, countless COVID tests, and other events inflated 2023 beyond a year’s natural dimensions. It has been… an experience which would make for low-quality television, though there have been numerous comedic side quests which could be garishly animated to break the tension.

I still have books to write about, of course. I don’t plan to write often about coffee: though I enjoy my precious French press brews often, I don’t want to write about my local coffee suppliers in a commercial-feeling way, despite recent internet trends (which I’ll write about eventually). But there are plenty of books, and even Korean comics (!), to fill any perceived gaps.

So, I’ll get back to it.

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Life: End of Year Update

Glorious Evening (December 20)
Weblog by A. Elizabeth Graves. iPhone photography and links to science-y and foodie topics.

So, I haven’t posted in a very long time, and… so much has happened that I can’t summarize it all today!

The highlights: I emptied my home of 20 years, moved to a neighborhood where all the little dogs have their own outfits, had a major structural retrofit start at my house, covered the work of multiple open roles at my job, photographed an amazing series of sunsets, spent a lot of time enjoying holiday lights, and caught COVID.

The books I was in the process of reading are all in storage, and most of my ordinary habits have been very much disrupted. I’ll get back to them, but I’ve been living in an interim (liminal?) state for months.

I’ll get back to myself and start posting again. In the meantime, best wishes for a healthy and happy 2023.

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Book: Unknown Number by Azure

Unknown Number
by Azure (https://twitter.com/Azure_Husky)
published on Twitter
2021

This is a sci-fi story about parallel universes, and a person who makes contact with a parallel version of themselves to see how their life could have been different. It’s concise! It’s great! Go read it.

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US Mass Shootings: The Onion’s Devastating Repeated Commentary

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
UVALDE, TX—In the hours following a violent rampage in Texas in which a lone attacker killed at least 21 individuals and injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the mass…

If you aren’t used to seeing this satire site’s fierce commentary on American Denialism, it devastates because they can use this template SO OFTEN.

The Onion went big for this particular mass shooting, covering their page in reprints of the many times they have needed to use it. For commentary on that, the Guardian has a good recap:

‘No way to prevent this’: why the Onion’s gun violence headline is so devastating
After the latest mass shooting in Texas, the site, known for satire, opted for a layout that was ‘not a belly-laugh type joke’

While you may think this dark view and the imagined interviews are an overstatement, I personally have heard young people say that mass murders such as these can’t be prevented and that gun control doesn’t work, completely oblivious to how the rest of the developed world lives. Without awareness of the world beyond the US borders, the fact that other nations successfully prevent mass murders and successfully apply gun control can’t penetrate the internal propaganda bubble that Americans live in. (This is politically convenient for all sorts of fringe political leaders, but mostly right-wing ones, which we have so many of.) The internal propaganda around this wears people down, until they just… accept it.

And Americans have fantasies such as, “this can’t happen here, to my family,” until it does.

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Art: Drawing practice (for paint cravings)

A collage of recent sketches of boats I’ve seen in recent months, after a long break from drawing

I AM DRAWING – BY HAND! ON PAPER! It has been a while since I’ve done this… I drew often in childhood, and regularly sketched for architecture school in my late teens and early 20s, but after leaving architecture professionally, I stopped drawing regularly. Drawing is slow and thoughtful, and I have too often struggled with long hours and demanding work – drawing felt like something I didn’t have time for. Photography, especially once I started carrying a small camera in my purse, was more accessible – and FASTER. Drawing fell by the wayside, a cost of my non-creative profession.

I never gave up drawing entirely: I still enjoy drawing in flurries, especially when I want to really take my time to enjoy studying things. I’ll take a new sketchbook to a museum, sketch sculptures for a day or two, and then set it aside until the mood strikes again.

I’m drawing again this month, because I’ve been suffering from paint lust. In my fantasies, I’m about to make a series of really great gouache representational paintings, and I’ll need to lay out some great drawings and buy some gouache to make this happen. This is an outrageous fantasy: I have been making primarily abstract (non-representational) drawings and paintings since 2012, so I am out of practice in representational (representing the shape of real world things) drawing. Plus, I have never been IN practice with gouache: I have just one, small notebook with abstract or patterned gouache multimedia sketches.

This fantasy is grandiose, and so I’m putting conditions on it, such as: I can’t buy gouache until I make a representational gouache painting with my existing little set of 5 colors FIRST.

And I can’t make a representational painting without a drawing to guide me, and so this is why the sketches at the top of the page exist. I need the practice. Badly. This is a fun prerequisite, even if I am clumsy and using a museum-gift-shop pencil with multiple leads.

*

There is more to this plan: I can’t just buy any paint, because gouache paintings are delicate (there is no natural seal against moisture, abrasion, or UV light, like traditionally varnished oils or acrylics have), and I insist on using permanent, artist-grade paints. Gouache has often been used for commercial art with a short lifespan, and so many colorful gouaches aren’t made with stable, long-lasting pigments.

I’ve done my research, ruled out familiar brands with unstable pigments, and have a surprise choice in mind (German!?!), but… I don’t want to write about that until I’m actually painting with that product. So, hopefully I’ll get some more drawings in, and knock out at least one cheerful little painting before money flies out of my wallet for this.

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Books: The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez

The Love Bunglers
by Jaime Hernandez
published by Fantagraphics, Seattle, Washington
2014

Oh, this book hit me hard.

This book centers on Maggie, one of the heroines of the Love and Rockets Locas stories, and the hardships – and relationships – that shaped her and her family from childhood through middle age. With her family eager to suppress the truth – about infidelity, abuse, divorce, and painful separations from partners, siblings, and friends – traumas play out in slow motion over many years, but are not fully healed.

In her later years, Maggie may have a chance to (re)connect with the people she loves, before they are truly gone.

This is a well executed, well drawn, well told story. While I’ve seen elements/chapters of this in other collections, there is new material here as well, and the way it is all combined creates a profile of Maggie’s relationships that packs a great emotional punch.

I recommend reading ALL of the Locas stories first, to understand more of Maggie’s life and the relationships (shown here in chapter-length flashbacks) for the greatest impact – and because the Locas stories are GREAT! (Disclosure: I cried at the end of Locas volume 1, so I’m invested in the characters. No, I’m not telling you why I cried.)

I love this – and highly recommend it to all Maggie (and Love and Rockets) fans.

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Coffee: Ethiopian Fancy from Peet’s as a Pour Over

Coffee fans fall into camps, and I’m both an espresso drinker (a special fan of almond milk lattes) and a French press coffee devotee.

I rarely drink pour-over coffee. I’ve had it in various places, and… just haven’t been impressed. It was okay, but it reinforced my fondness for the additional flavor that soaking in a French press brings out in the beans.

My friend C brought me the gift of Peet’s Ethiopian Fancy (peets.com) recently, which is a favorite of mine – but he brought it over ground. FINELY ground. It was automatic: he makes Italian Roast as pour-over, and this is his usual grind, though it is too fine for my French press. I made it in the French press anyway, and it was good, but also different, and I didn’t like having sediment in my cup afterward.

So, I caved and bought a pour-over device from another local coffee place, plus filters to fit, so I wouldn’t have to waste any of this finely ground coffee.

And… my first attempts at pour over were really GOOD. Yes, the coffee is different from my French press version with these same beans (though ground more coarsely, and with the oils still in the brew rather than on a paper filter). But still richly flavorful. And fast to make!

I’m not giving up the French press, but I like this additional option – and I LOVE Ethiopian Fancy this way.

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Language: Still Studying

Even I am surprised at my persistence!

I’m still studying Japanese, but my lack of kanji memorization is slowing me down, and I haven’t been making the flash cards from my notes to get to the level I need to be at. But I’m not giving up, either…

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