Month in Review: August

I've been unexpectedly busy this summer with work and other things and have unfortunately had almost no time at all to do any reading or drawing. I'm disappointed to have fallen short of my goal to complete my story by the end of June. At this rate, I can only hope it is completed by the end of the year. 

I had begun a few books in August, but I figure I may as well leave this month a blank and put those books on next month's review. 

This year has been a very bleak, but August may have been the nadir, at least for me. As bi-partisan support for BLM continued to wane and, like everything in this country, become weaponized for political purposes so too did any hope that this country might be able to unify around some common good. America is fractured and the various splinters have so calcified that there is no hope, at least for the foreseeable future, that they could ever grow back into a whole. Given the malfeasance of the Republican party, it seems quite likely that we will have four more years of fascism. If 45 does not win the election outright, then it will most likely be contested, brought to the Supreme Court and, well, I have no illusions on how that that scenario will play out.

I fear the human project has run its course. 

Growing up in a Christian home, I was told by my youth leaders and other church leaders, that we were in a culture war. We were called on to be martyrs. Christian bookstores were lined with books on the end times. The Left Behind series was very popular. When you convince congregations that secular liberals kill babies it isn't hard to start a culture war. I don't go to church much anymore. I have a kind of spirituality, but it is rooted in the arts and sciences. I have no hope or concern for the afterlife. Still, my wife attends church and wants our Lily to as well. I don't entirely mind, Lily is only five and she may as well learn about religion. With the pandemic going on though, she just attends zoom Bible studies. Listening in on one the other day I heard Lily's Sunday school teacher say that we were at war with the world. It was weird hearing those words said again, when the country was quite literally on the brink of real war. 

So, it seems, we are at war. Once the guns begin to come out in earnest I wonder what Christians will think of this war they've been anticipating for so long. It will undoubtedly be much uglier than its advocates expect. The sides will be murkier too. The Christians, I hope, will feel uncomfortable having Neo-Nazis and the KKK as bedfellows. 

But whatever fighting happening breaks out after the election will be a mere gentle prelude to what will come once climate change kicks in in earnest.

The forest fires and storms we are seeing now are only the beginnings of climate change. Things will get much worse. As the oceans acidify, as the global crop yield decreases as population increases, as the habitably areas shrink and migration grows, we will find ourselves in an increasingly cramped planet with fewer and fewer resources. 

And with so little trust among each other, with so little willingness to work together, I don't see how we will be able to pull through this. It would require the cooperation of all nations, around the world. It would require a kind of massive mobilization and self-sacrifice unseen in human history. And like the pandemic, the longer we wait the more difficult this project will become. I fear that the game is already lost. 

Month in Review: July

Books Read:

Tim Maughan, Infinite Detail: A Novel

Philip Kitcher, Joyce's Kaleidoscope (still reading)

Project Update:

Slowly but surely.

Month in Review: June

Books Read:
note: from now on I will list books I'm in the process of reading or rereading. For example, re-reading Blake and Qunney's study on Blake. I started Kitcher's book earlier this year and am still working through it.

William Blake; "Milton"
Laura Quinney, William Blake on Self and Soul
Stephen Saperstein Frug, Happenstance
David B., The Littlest Pirate King
George O'Connor, The Olympians (vol. 1-6)
Philip Kitcher, Joyce's Kaleidoscope

Project Update:

Inked section 1 (of 4). Finishing fine pencils on section 2.

Future Reading and Writing Plans:

I've committed myself to writing two book reviews. I still plan on writing an essay on Economics and Utopia. I've also picked up Plato and plan to do a careful reading of all the dialogues. I'm currently re-reading The Republic, but will continue from there to a more standard order of reading the dialogues. I have the Hackett edition of the complete works and planned on reading that in order. I may adjust the order though if I find reason to do so.

Reading Plato and Finnegans Wake simultaneously will undoubtedly set my reading plans back. I don't expect to finish either by the end of the year. I had the convenient idea yesterday that I might be able to accomplish a few goals at once (as a pacifist I won't say "kill two birds with one stone.) I had been laboring over a book to center my essay on economics and utopia. I had been using as a framework Brandeis professor William Flesch's course I followed last year, "Imagining Money." The course books were interesting, but  I didn't feel overly compelled to choose any of them to write a paper on. Not that they were inappropriate to the course, but mostly because I couldn't find a clear link to ideas I was already working on. My recent flash of insight was to consider economics as "household management" and what better book to consider this topic with than the family drama, Finnegans Wake. FW, I think, provides an interesting bridge between economics and utopia. It contains both the particular family drama and the universal drama of humanity. Anyways, I think it will be a fun and challenging essay to write. One angle of approach could be the link between the Irish famine and the use of feasts in Joyce's work as suggest by Charles Mudede:

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/22/25652094/why-the-dead-by-james-joyce-is-the-greatest-christmas-story 

Month in Review: May

Books Read:

Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005)

Jonathan Hopkin, Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies (2020)

I've been listening to a couple new podcasts this month; the philosophy podcast The Partially Examined Life (PEL), and the history of conservatism podcast Know Your Enemy (KYE). Both are very good and very helpful for me in filling in some important gaps in my knowledge. My knowledge of the philosophic tradition is very thin, so PEL is useful as a kind of intro course on major thinkers and ideas. I've been mostly focusing on subjects and thinkers who address politics and economics. There was a very good series with Elizabeth Anderson that I listened to this morning. The PEL crew are all non-professional philosophers who, none-the-less, are very professional in their dedication and consideration of their subject. In contrast the KYE crew were more closely involved in the inner workings of their subject, conservative politics. They are especially strong on intellectual conservatism. The episode, "Gun Power" was particularly good. Also notable was the episode on the Koch dynasty.

Project Update:

Slow progress. The past three weeks have been unexpectedly busy with no free time after work.

Month in Review: April

Books Read:

Miguel de Montaigne; Essays, Book 2
Robert Sapolosky; Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017)
Daniel Kahneman; Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
Iain M. Banks; Surface Detail (2010)
Lewis Trondheim and Olivier Vatine, Infinity 8, Vol. 2: Back to the Fuhrer
Lewish Trondheim and Fabien Velhmann, Infinity 8, Vol. 3: The Gospel According to Emma

Project Update:

Tentative Completion Date--July 4, 2020

Month in Review: March

Books Read:

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth

Montaigne, The Essays, Book 1 (rereading)

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (rereading)

Project Update:

Due to the pandemic and other factors (long work hours) I haven't made much progress this month. I've switched my focus away from the illustrations to the writing of the text sections, which I've broken up into 4 parts (that I'm calling essays), each being approximately 1500 words. I've written the first of these in draft. I've come to a realization, albeit rather late, that if I don't make concrete daily goals I never make any progress. I am not good at measuring how long it will take to complete each task, but I figure if I at least set aside time each day to work on a project I will be better off than I am now. I hope to spend at least 30 minutes to 1 hour a day doing creative work (writing and drawing) and 30 minutes to 1 hour a day reading. On my days off I should be able to do more, but that will vary depending on the day.

As far as viewing goes, I've still been watching Star Trek Next Generation (about a quarter through season 6), I've rewatched Masaaki Yuasa's Tatami Galaxy (anime tv series) and Lu Over the Wall (anime film). I also finished watching with Lily Edo Oh! Rocket (anime tv series). I started a new podcast, Robert Pogue Harrison's Entitled Opinions, which I think is really good.   

Month in Review: February

Books Read:

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (read chapter 4, still reading)

William York Tindall; A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (still reading)

Edmund Lloyd Epstein; A Guide Through Finnegans Wake (still reading)

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Barbara Maria Stafford; Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (still reading)

Bill McKibben, Falter 

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth (still reading)

Project Update:

Late in 2018 I came up with a rough idea for a graphic novel. One of the biggest considerations I had for this new story was that it would be short. I had already made a few experimental pieces, but nothing yet like a finished work. At the beginning of last year, January 2019,  I drew up a draft of the first 20 pages of that story. Most of the sketches were fairly rough. As I began to revise and flesh out the story I realized the completed project would run to well over 100 pages. My better judgement warned against commiting to such a long project. I wasn't entirely happy with the story I had begun anyways, so it was with some relief that I went back to the drawing board. From March to September I reworked it entirely. 

The inspiration for this revised version was Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. Spenser's poem is, not surprisingly, divided into 12 months, each with a theme relevant to its season. Another influence was early full-page Sunday comics like Little Nemo in Slumberland. I liked the idea of creating a dense story confined to a limited number of panels. My comic would now be 12 chapters, with each chapter being a single 2 page spread.

I spent those seven months sketching out the first few chapters and laying out a rough plot for the entire story. I was mostly happy with the story as it was evolving and began to prepare for the next step. Since I had never written a graphic novel I began to have some hesitations on how I would go about inking and coloring it. Rather than move forward, I decided to start a new project as a chance to refresh myself while experimenting on technique. My goal was to draw a page a week over the next few weeks. I planned to make a short comic of around 10 pages (it ended up being 6). The result was a wordless impressionistic narrative titled "Simon on the Shores of Ruin." I was able to finish it by the end of the year. 

I have recommenced with my project. I've reworked it once again, significantly changing some details, while happily staying true to the original theme. Visions and revisions have rendered the story is significantly better, I believe. Since my goal is publication,  I'm considering doing revisions of the first three chapters (the first six pages) until they reach a professional level. I'd like to seek out some advice on how to bring the quality to this stage. So, there may be a bit of an intermission between the completion of the first three chapters and the remaining nine. If I am not able to bring it to the level of being publishable I will go ahead and finish it. 

I should add, one change to my latest version is the addition is a companion text to the wordless comic pages as a kind of commentary. In addition to the six comic pages there will be significantly more pages of text, perhaps as many as 24. I've written out much of this text already, and don't see that element as holding back the project's progress.

I have been on the overtime list since January and so have not had as much free time as I had from October to December of last year. I have almost no time or energy to work on anything besides my story and that intermittently at best. If I can get in a few hours of work a week, I feel lucky. I will be on the overtime list one more week after this week and then will take myself off the list for the end of January.

I do not want to think too much beyond this project, but there are a lot of other things I'm eager to work on. I'd like to read more and there are a few essays I'd like to write. I find, unfortunately, that I'm not able to work on multiple projects at once. I want to write an essay I'm calling utopian economics, which is, in part, a rebuke to libertarianism. After this, I'd like to write or at least research systems thinking, complexity, and what I call thinking in images. Lastly, I'd like to get around to reading Hans Blumenberg, but who knows when that will happen.