Dear Readers (especially readers of poetry):

Have you tried The Sealey Challenge? Several years ago I wrote about it for the Inlandia Literary Journeys column. It was founded by poet Nicole Sealey and this year marks the challenge’s 10th anniversary. I don’t do it every year, because it’s a big commitment to read a book a day, but this year I noticed they emphasized it’s not just about an entire book a day but even a poem a day, or a poetry podcast a day—engaging more with poetry in any way that fits your individual schedule. That sounded more manageable. So, this month I have most definitely engaged with poetry in a variety of ways: 20 physical poetry collections including a book of poetry comics, 5 electronic poetry collections (PDF or ePub), 4 audiobook poetry collections, plus two episodes of The Slowdown poetry podcast.

My observations:

The first book I completed this month I began in July, after seeing The Odyssey on the big screen. I have plans to also buy the physical book and read it again, and to read other versions, but I did love listening to Claire Danes read it to me.

I started out slow, reading the one book a day, picking up books that I had recently purchased, because they were on the top of the pile(s). [Of note: I will never get through all of the poetry books I own.] I also supplemented by borrowing a few audiobook and eBook titles for when I was up and around or out and about.

The titles I chose are kind of random except in certain cases I picked things that I would otherwise not have read. For instance, the Libby app is pretty sad, in terms of available poetry. Very few options. So I gave Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey a chance. I’m glad I did. I liked the poems more than I expected to. They are all short and not especially complex but they are authentic and I can see why she’s developed a following. Also, after reading Diane Seuss’s Modern Poetry, I wanted to revisit Keats. I also listened to all of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

One night about halfway through the month, as I was drifting off to sleep, I was thinking about which books I was most enjoying and why and I had the urge to write down my thoughts. So, in the dark, I scribbled in barely legible pencil across the page of a nearby notebook:

The poetry collections that excited me most were formally dexterous while also saying important things about poetry and social issues.

Now that the month is over, I would add to that I am also excited by the unexpected. Not handstands or backflips but work that intentionally mixes things up. My mind is ringing with ideas for new poems.

Observations about the challenge itself: I was excited early in the month but later as I found myself missing days I felt like I needed to catch up. One morning I read five books in one sitting. Other days, I stayed up later than I should have and read faster than was optimal, and therefore didn’t give the poems the time they deserved. It is supposed to be a luxurious act, reading all of these poems, so if you can’t or don’t want to set aside the time to do it properly (and remember—reading just one poem or listening to a podcast counts!) it is counterproductive and unpleasant if you turn the reading into a chore, which I did toward the end. Better to read fewer and slower.

(Someone please remind me of this next August!)

Here’s the list along with first lines to give you a flavor for what I read:

1. Emily Wilson, translator: The Odyssey. (audio)

   First line: Tell me about a complicated man.

2. Prageeta Sharma: Onement Won.

   First line: I am talking my way back to the poem’s turn

3. Natasha Sajé: Bend.

   First line: Into my pocket slips a folded note, creased

4. Rupi Kaur: Milk and Honey. (audio)

   First line: how is it so easy for you

5. Carmen Giménez Smith: Be Recorder.

   First line: People sometimes confuse me for someone else they know.

6. Kristie Daughterty, editor: Invisible Strings: 113 poets respond to the songs of Taylor Swift

   First line: You know but pretend not to know:

7. Diane Seuss: Modern Poetry.

   First line: Far have I wandered not knowing

8. Ilya Kaminsky: Deaf Republic.

   First line: And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

9. Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Rocket Fantastic.

   First line: Like the buck I am I turn my head

10. William Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s Sonnets. (audio)

    First line: From fairest creatures we desire increase,

11. Various: John Keats — A Tribute in Verse. (audio)

    First line: I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

12. Harryette Mullen: Sleeping with the Dictionary.

    First line: Forgive me, I’m no good at this. I can’t write back. I never read

13. Jenny Factor: Want, the Lake.

    First line: Effigy of darkness, darkening

14. Anna Moschovakis: You And Three Others Are Approaching a Lake.

    First line: The problem is I don’t care if I convince you or not

15. Ching-In Chen: Shiny City.

    First line: I don’t know who

16. Carlos Cortés: Tenth Decade. (in draft)

    First line: Nobody ever told me

17. Bianca Stone: Poetry Comics from The Book of Hours.

    First line: Are we the fashion superstars of tomorrow?

18. Alan Shapiro: Night of the Republic.

    First line: The present tense

19. Paisely Rekdal: Nightingale.

    First line: Too soon, perhaps, for fruit. And the broad branches,

20. Sara Teasdale: Flame and Shadow. (scanned book)

    First line: How many million Aprils came

21. Margaret Atwood: The Circle Game. (eBook)

    First line: It was taken some time ago.

22. Ron Koertge: Yellow Moving Van. (eBook)

    First line: I grew up in a tough little town.

23. Naomi Shihab Nye: You & Yours.

    First line: Paul Robeson stood

24. Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo: Incantation - Love Poems for Battle Sites.

    First line: Rise and feed the cat staring you down from her corner of the bed. One scoop of food, one drag of

25. Camonghne Felix: Build Yourself a Boat.

    First line: The psych on duty in triage

26. Allison Benis White: The Wendys.

    Dear W., My mind will not cool

27. Erin Belieu: Slant Six.

    First line: The Rapture came

28. Allison Joseph: Confessions of a Barefaced Woman.

    First line: It was comic on Seinfeld: Jerry looks up to see a naked man

29. Ada Limón: The Carrying.

    First line: When Eve walked among

30. The Slowdown poetry podcast, episode 1573: Dialogue with the Oldest Tree in the U.S., whose Location is a Closely-Guarded Forest Service Secret by Nina Sudhakar

    First line: stilted woodlands / towering reliquaries

31. The Slowdown poetry podcast, episode 1572: Summer Strawberries by Cat Wei

    First line: This is the first time we’ve been together in the garden

Bonus content: Erin Belieu’s Slant Six had a previous owner’s writing in the back. I tend to buy used and I especially love seeing other people’s notes!

One year ago today, I received the following via text message:

August 28, 2025

Hi Cati…I finished with writing group a while ago and omigosh!! How I wish you could’ve been a butterfly in the corner listening in…it was such a phenomenal class…I guess I still feel a little (or a lot) energized by it!!!

I never know how the weekly prompts will be received—sometimes I give some pretty off the wall ones—and, I figure, I just have to trust it…but our group always responds so beautifully…and today was a real wow.

…since I’ve had this weekly “class” going since 2014, that means a whole lotta’ prompts have gone under the writing bridge—and some might be a little stale or seem repetitious……and I wish pain did not interfere with my life to the extent that it does because it makes it so hard & I wonder how much longer I will last—and then, and then! along comes a day like today & wow…it’s that knot tied at the end of your rope & you can hang on

& keep going…

…I just wanted to share with you the joy of today.

I hope all is well with you & yours and, as always, thanks for all you do…😘

This is the sort of text I would regularly receive from Mae. Warm, upbeat, looking for the next knot in an increasingly short rope. Now, one year later, Mae is gone.

The last time I saw her up and around was December 11, 2025, the day I took Mckenna, Inlandia’s new executive director, to her workshop to deliver the 2024 Writing from Inlandia anthologies. It was close to the end of my tenure. Mae turned our visit into a celebration: everyone brought snacks, including Mae, who baked cookies. Later that day, she texted me:

Ooooooh, Cati!! Gabby is in Panda Express…I am waiting in the car taking a peek at the anthology…ooops, she’s back…to be continued…

…anyway!!! I think I will have to buy yet ANOTHER copy of the book for Ann, the lady who bought my Dad’s house in North Dakota who invited me, then, on another trip, Me AND Betty to stay there…

(improper English to put me first, I know…) …we had such a disruptive childhood but it was wonderful to be able to stay there as adults…so many sad memories but also, the way Betty & I played…she was the joy on the clock of my childhood…the best friend of my adult life…and now, she has dementia…😪😪😪😪

Then, in early May, I heard from a mutual friend/one of Mae’s workshop participants, Jerry, that Mae had been diagnosed with cancer. It didn’t look good. In July, she was discharged home to hospice where her daughter Gabby and family took great care of her. It wasn’t long before I received word that if I wanted to visit her, it would need to be soon.

On July 14, I spent two delicious hours with her. I held her hand and we talked about the past, and how she was feeling. She was in good spirits and was ready to make her transition to whatever came next. She was in a lot of pain, but thankfully it seemed the medication was keeping that under control. She introduced me to her twin teen-aged granddaughters who talked about their driving lessons, getting ready to start senior year of high school, and daughter Gabby worked about the house keeping things in order and making sure her mom was getting everything she needed.

Over the last few weeks, Mae had lots of visitors from friends and loved ones, with her dog Cricket always nearby. She even had a birthday, turning 85. Then, on August 8, she died—on her own terms, with the people she loved most in the world by her side.

I only knew Mae for a relatively short period of time, comparatively speaking; about seventeen years. I first met her as part of the Inlandia Institute creative writing workshop led by Ruth Nolan, held in the lower-level quiet room at the downtown Riverside Public Library. Really, I barely knew her then, except for her warm smile.

When the inaugural Writing from Inlandia anthology came out, in 2011, she was at the launch at Back to the Grind. Looking back at this photo (below) now, I hardly recognize her. My time with Mae is more closely aligned with her later years. But I absolutely remember her there, that night.

She was already retired by that time, just turning the corner into her seventies. Later, she founded a creative writing workshop at her local senior center, which she called Joslyn Joy Writers. She was a beloved instructor, maxing out enrollment with some twenty-something-odd participants, all senior citizens from varying walks of life.

As a longtime Inlandia member, Mae approached me about bringing her workshop under the Inlandia umbrella so that they, too, could have the opportunity to be published in the anthology. She wanted that for them. Few if any of her participants considered themselves professional writers before her workshop, but under her guidance they each wrote and shared and revised and published. Many of them had next to no computer skills, but the anthology contributions had strict submission requirements: Times New Roman, 12pt, 1” margins, and so on. She would work with them to type in their work or recruit another computer-savvy participant to help them type it up and she would proofread the works for her group. For most if not all, this would be their first publication. All of them were, rightfully, proud and happy to be included, and Mae made that happen.

During the pandemic, when the world shut down, seniors were some of the most affected. Inlandia had received a grant for technology and purchased practical, inexpensive laptops so that everyone regardless of income could join the workshops should they choose to. I took one of these laptops out to Mae to her home in Redlands. It was a learning curve but she was determined. Then, also, anyone in workshop could get a laptop if they needed one. Soon, her workshop was up and running virtually on Zoom. Mae understood that the connectedness of her group was what gave meaning to their lives and despite how big of a pain it was, she persevered through all of the technological difficulties that would ensue over the coming months.

When it was time to return to the center, some of the participants were not ready, while others meanwhile had moved out of state. Mae, now in her eighties, decided that she would run the workshop hybrid so that no one would be left out.

Mae was a prolific writer and her stories and she often wrote about her experiences as a journalist and educator for the Inlandia Literary Journeys column. This was her bio, which says a whole lot about how she viewed herself, what she put first in her life, and her diverse career across many fields:

Mae Wagner Marinello is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She is a former newspaper reporter/photographer/columnist, dental receptionist, law-enforcement dispatcher, superior court clerk, late-in-life teacher and longtime Inlandia workshop leader in Redlands.

Read Mae’s Inlandia Literary Journeys columns

For the 2020 Writing from Inlandia anthology, it was a special pandemic issue. Mae’s students, out of gratitude for all that she did to keep them together through thick and thin, collaborated on the poem below. It resonates even more deeply now that she is gone.

Mae, you were loved, and you loved in equal measure. Everyone knew your heart.

You will be missed.

It’s been more than eight months since I left Inlandia. I knew when I left that I wanted to scale back my public presence because after doing so much for so long, I was pretty burnt out. However, I’m not good at just sitting around. There’s too much to do. Scratch that. Too much that I still want to do. Yes, I’m writing. I thought maybe that would be the thing I did—be a full-time writer—but as it turns out, there are other things I enjoy just as much, like helping other people fulfill their writing goals. Why couldn’t I do both?

I’ve already talked here about the 909 Books Collective, with Mark Givens. Our first cohort—Jacqueline Mantz Rodriguez and Francesca Borella—published their books earlier this year and are about to reach the end of their three-year commitment to the collective. I’m actively looking for the next three-author cohort. (If you have a completed book-length work of prose—fiction or nonfiction of any stripe—and are potentially interested, reach out to me.) I love what we’re doing with 909 Books, but not all books or all authors are a good fit for that model.

I’ve also already talked her about Backlist Front Books, the imprint I created to bring back books made out of print by presses going under. My initial goal was a selfish one: I didn’t want to see My Skies of Small Horses, my WordTech Editions poetry collection, go out of print when they ceased operations. So I republished it myself, effectively creating the Backlist Front Books (BFB) imprint. (For those who don’t know, the backlist is where an author’s book goes after it is no longer new. My goal, simply stated, is to bring those backlist books back to the forefront.) I haven’t yet re-published anyone’s book but it’s on my radar.

But then there are those as-yet-unpublished but eminently publishable books that encounter in my daily life as a writer. Books that the community needs. For instance:

Enter Mile Square Press.

Mile Square Press is an independent publishing house founded by me (as CP Creative). Named for Riverside, California’s original “mile square” grid, its mission is to publish exceptional books by and for and about the Riverside community.

Once I decided on this model, the biggest question became not why but how. I am not a nonprofit so that immediately eliminates a lot of potential funding options. (But also means I am not competing with the nonprofit community for those hard-to-come-by dollars.) Instead, I have appealed directly to the community.

I mailed out 100 personal letters and we’ve had a little more than a 10% return, just in this first week! We’re halfway to our initial goal! But that still leaves a funding gap.

If you:

• Care about diverse representation in children’s books;

• Care about the Riverside community;

• Care about books, history, and culture in general;

Then this book is for you.

Learn more about this project by visiting the »»»»»»> Google pledge form <«««««««.

No money is required up front; only pledges.

(That hasn’t stopped people from using PayPal or mailing checks—THANK YOU!)

For the curious, here is the table of contents. A preview copy is available upon request.

When I was a little girl, after my grandmother died, I inherited several bird figurines. At the time, I had no idea of their significance. The man I knew as my grandfather was her husband, Grandpa Maurice, not Brad Keeler, the man who fathered her children and died when my mother was only four. Had I known, I might have handled them with more care.

What happens when you give a child of seven small fragile things? They get broken, of course.

I kept them on my bookshelf next to my Little Golden Books and Dr. Seuss and other knickknacks but they occasionally got knocked over, especially the little yellow bird. If you look at the tail and the wings, you can see the seams from where I used Elmer’s Glue to reaffix the pieces. I haven’t had to repair it again since I was a kid, which speaks well of good old fashion glue!

The yellow bird was one of the few made after Brad Keeler’s death, under my grandmother’s name. The other bird is the one below. It’s managed to stay intact all these years despite my many moves, including coast to coast.

What’s with the book, you are wondering? I’ll tell you.

Also among my grandmother’s things were several books belonging to her late husband which my mom hung onto. At some point, she handed them off to me because I love books, and there they sat unopened on my bookshelves for a decade.

As an adult, I’ve become an avid collector of Brad Keeler ceramics, including his birds. There are two Birds of America books by Audubon in the stack, one from 1937 and another from 1944. They are about fourteen inches tall and ten or so inches wide.

One afternoon my husband and I were checking out a row of antique stores in San Dimas. We were down to the last one, and I was about to call it a bust when I spotted the oriole below.

Back home, it occurred to me to wonder—why now? I don’t know—but I did wonder—could Brad have been using these Audubon books as reference material for his birds? I decided to open the books and see if I could match the birds to the pictures. If so, it would give me a little insight into his process.

In many cases, yes!, there was a close enough match, but not all. It was fun to go through the books. In the newer copy, I made a discovery:

It is inscribed by Fred Kaye to Brad!

I’m so glad to still have these in my possession. The younger me clearly didn’t know what she had, but knew enough to not get rid of them.

A final note: See those scraps of paper in the lower left corner of that picture?

They were being used as bookmarks, presumably by Brad, and they fell out of the book as I flipped through the pages. I had no idea they were in there until they fell out.

I wish I knew what pages they had been marking!

I’ve been thinking about all the different translations of The Odyssey.

I am far from a classicist. Before all the hype about the new IMAX version began, I still hadn’t yet read The Odyssey. This is probably for the best because I was able to appreciate the movie on its own terms. Even without having read it, much of it was familiar: Helen of Troy and the Trojan Horse, the lotus eaters, the witch Circe, the cyclops.

I knew when I eventually read it, I would want to read the Emily Wilson translation. First, because she is the first woman to translate it in full, and second, because of how her translation differs from the translations by men. (If you want to know more about that aspect, start here.) To better understand how Wilson’s is so radical, I now also need to read other versions.

But first, why not look at the first line from the Greek as translated by different people to see what sets them apart?

I started by finding the Greek text and then used what I had at my disposal to divine what it means on my own: Google Translate.

ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ

πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν

Plugged in word by word, this is how it reads:

man to me tell of, muse, *multimodal, who greatly a lot

wandered, since of Troy sanctuary citadel he sacked

*This word also came up as “resourceful” but is definitely a word with layers of meaning. Wiktionary breaks it down: The word πολύτροπον is broken down into πολύ “polys” and τροπον “tropos”, meaning “many turns”. In fact, according to Dr. Jake Grefenstette, director of the International Poetry Forum in the 2025 video below, πολύτροπον / polytropos is one of the most contested words in translation history.

As a word nerd, I like how he discusses polytropos and Emily Wilson’s choice of the word “complicated” to represent it in her translation due to the etymology.

(In addition, I am impressed by the baby, and if you give it a minute, Emily Wilson will come on and talks about her work.)

How do the real translators interpret this? Again, I turn to the internet to discover—I am not the first person to investigate this. WordPress user REBFREY already did the work for me in collecting the first lines from different translations, to which I’ll add Thomas Hobbes, Robert Fitzgerald, Stanley Lombardo, and Emily Wilson. She (I am assuming REBREY is “she” based on the woman on horseback in the cover image on the blog) seemed to be actively translating The Odyssey in 2014. There are only a few posts, but then the blog drops off.

Here are the first lines, arranged in chronological order. (Forgive any lineation weirdnesses. Copy and paste is not your friend.)

1675, Thomas Hobbes:

Tell me, O Muse, th’ adventures of the man

That having sack’d the sacred town of Troy,

Wander’d so long at sea

1871, William Cullen Bryant:

Tell me Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
of Ilium, wandered far and visited…

1897, Samuel Butler:

Tell me, O Muse, of that many-sided hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.

1951, Richmond Lattimore:

Tell me muse of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.

1961, Robert Fitzgerald:

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end, after he plundered the stronghold on the proud height of Troy.

1996, Robert Fagles:

Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

2000, Stanley Lombardo:

SPEAK, MEMORY—Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.

2017, Emily Wilson:

Tell me about a complicated man, muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy

Here they are, in a list, all the ways Odysseus has been described in that first line:

• “the man”

• “that sagacious man”

• “that many-sided hero”

• “that man skilled in all ways of contending”

• “the man of twists and turns”

• “the cunning hero, the wanderer”

• “a complicated man”

I am in no position to advocate for one version or another. This is all just to say—it’s more complicated than it seems. The next time you pick up a translation of a book you’d like to read, consider what the translator brings to the table and if one translation doesn’t resonate with you, put it down. Find another that does.

[The other option is to learn the source text’s original language, study the context of the time period in which it was written, and get busy with a translation of your own.]

Hi readers,

See that picture above? That’s me on my dad’s arm, peeking out from behind my mom, and that’s Grandpa Maurice and Grandma Catherine in front of the only home where my mom and dad and I lived together as a family. My parents bought the house when it was new for $17,000. I was born in 1971. By 1977, they were divorced, the house sold.

I have fond memories from that house, despite how little I was when I lived there. Riding my bike around the cul de sac and that feeling of freedom and independence! Splashing in my baby pool in the backyard. Carrying cats awkwardly and putting them in baby carriages. (We had five white Persian cats in that house!) Getting bit on the cheek by our dog, a Lhasa Apso named Sumi, who was regrettably sleeping on my pillow. (Not a fond memory, per se, but a memory nonetheless.)

My first best friend, Christine, lived across the street. For my birthday, her little brother wrapped up one of their dad’s commemorative plaques and gave it to me. (Mom made me give it back!) After Dad moved out and my future stepdad moved in, Christine convinced me one afternoon to get naked and run out to the living room singing Mary Had a Little Lamb. That was a memorable enough experience to burn into my brain. At her house, Christine would make us friend bologna. When her family moved out of state, we exchanged addresses but lost touch.

Lynette would become my next best friend. When I started school my parents arranged a carpool with a neighborhood family. After the divorce, I’d spend more time at her house than I did my own. We both attended the Montessori Children’s Academy in Downey. (That school is worth its own essay some other time.) Mom would drop me off at Lynette’s before sunrise and pick me up around dinner time. We’d play Barbies on the white shag rug. I remember my perfume factory toy and can still smell the overwhelming sickly sweet scent of all those fragrances mixed up together. It was in that house that I took a bite out of my Coca Cola lip balm because it tasted good. There was no homework in those days so Lynette and I would just run up and down the stairs or goof off in the bonus room. Sometimes I’d get lucky and her family would include me in dinner. If I wasn’t lucky, Lynette would be in charge of snacks and make warm Strawberry Quik. (I don’t think I ever told her that I didn’t like it.) We stayed in touch off and on through high school, even after my family moved to Moreno Valley, but then she went away to UCSB and I moved to Virginia and that was that.

In all these years, I’d never been back to that house.

Last weekend, my husband and I were doing a little more #bookstoretourism which took us to Once Read Books in Long Beach and then to Gum’s Antique Mall in Hawaiian Gardens. In our travels, I spotted a sign that read “Welcome to Cerritos” and when I checked, I realized we were really close so we did a drive by.

Yes, I had to take pictures. (With silent apologies to the current occupants of the house.) The paint color is updated and there are new windows, but it’s still the house. We also did a drive by of Lynette’s house. So many memories!

And here I am with Lynnette one Halloween. The punk rocker and the witch.

(Yes, my mom made the costume, per my specifications.)

Dear readers,

At my last writing on June 8, I was struggling to finish Part Two of Volume III of War and Peace. I can now report that I have read up to that point and am about to crack open Part Three. I’m 112 pages away from Volume IV, the last volume before the Epilogue.

That’s all well and good, but the sad fact is that until this morning I hadn’t picked up War and Peace since June 8 except to move it around the room. sigh Yes, I’ve been reading other things, but still. Could I have at least snuck a few pages in here and there? I could have.

But you know what? I’m still here, still reading, and that’s what matters. And if by now I had decided I hated War and Peace and didn’t want to expend the time to finish it, it would be okay to put it down. We all have to make choices about what’s important to us. Some choices have real-world negative consequences. Choosing to read or not to read a book for pleasure is not one of them.

Moving along.

Everything comes at the right time to him who knows how to wait.

When I left off last time, the Commander in Chief of the Russian army, His Serenity Kutozov, said that “Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre”—Everything comes at the right time to him who knows how to wait.

It seems that that right time is now.

It is section XXIII and we find our dear friend Pierre hanging out in the vicinity of battle. Why? Because he wants to take part in the battle and is invited to ride along with Count Bennigsen. It just so happens that Bennigsen is heading to Borodino, which will prove a turning point for the war.

On the road in the midst of a birch woods “a brown hare with white legs jumped out onto the road in front of them and, frightened by the hoofbeats of the large number of horses, became so confused that it leaped along the road in front of them for a long time, arousing general attention and laughter.” This seemingly insignificant occurrence feels like a portent of what’s to come.

Meanwhile, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky “knew that tomorrow’s battle was to be the most dreadful of all he had taken part in, and the possibility of death presented itself to him” and his thoughts turn inward toward the “three main griefs of his life…. His love of a woman, the death of his father, and the French invasion that had seized half of Russia.” Later, Pierre and Andrei discuss how it is often said that war and chess are alike, but Andrei makes the points that in chess, “…you’re outside the conditions of time… a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns always stronger than one, while in war on battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company.” That while in chess there are set rules, whereas in war, success depends “on the feeling that’s in me, in him, in every soldier…. A battle is won by him who is firmly resolved to win it.”

Later, Prince Andrei says, “Take no prisoners. That alone would change the whole war and make it less cruel.” He evokes the hypocrisy of a woman being disgusted by the sight of a calf being slaughtered, but her eagerness to eat the slaughtered calf when it’s dressed up for a meal. If everyone had to kill their own meat, there would be fewer killings, he is arguing, and the same goes for war: that if the outcome of fighting a war was certain death, fewer people would go off to war for a simple disagreement.

Soon, the scene shifts and we see the French side of the battle and Napoleon getting a vigorous body scrub from his servants. Someone brings a present from his wife—a portrait of his little son holding a globe in one hand like a rubber ball and scepter in the other, and the title of the painting is “The King of Rome”. He is certain of France’s impending victory and the expansion of the empire. Then he gives his orders for the day. A few paragraphs later, we are told what is about to happen: the battle of Borodino is lost by the French. Later historians will speculate this is “because Napoleon had a cold, that if he had not had a cold, his instructions before and during the battle would have been of still greater genius, and Russia would have perished, and the face of the world would have changed.” (Italics are in French in the text, English in the footnote.) It is the first battle that the French do not win and is a turning point in the war.

There are some really beautiful descriptions by Pierre in the ensuing passages:

The sun, having just burst from behind the cloud had covered it, sprayed its rays, half broken by the cloud, across the roofs of the street opposite, over the dew-covered dust of the road, over the walls of the house, the windows, the fences, and Pierre’s horses, which were standing by the cottage.

And:

…slanting rays of the bright sun, rising behind and to the left of Pierre, cast over it, in the clear morning air, a piercing light of a pink and golden hue, and long, dark shadows. The distant woods, ending the panorama, as if carved from some precious yellow-green stone, displayed the curved line of its treetops on the horizon.

And also:

…where the Voyna, between its swampy banks, flows into the Kolocha, hung that mist which melts, dissolves, and turns translucent in the bright sun, and magically colors and outlines everything that shows through it.

A few pages later, Pierre has made his way to a barrow which will prove to be critical to the war effort. And because Pierre, having decided he wanted to “help”, “[h]e was shouted at a couple of times for being in the way.” Pierre is our eyes and ears in the midst of battle, seeing it afresh, which allows the reader to see it through his eyes.

Meanwhile, Andrei is giving orders that the men not cluster together so they aren’t one big target and to instead spread out. A shell lands near him and an adjutant yells at him to get down, and like in the movies where everything is in slow motion, Andrei has time to contemplate what’s coming before the shell explodes. “Can this be death?… I can’t, I don’t want to die, I love life, I love this grass, the earth, the air…” And then, “From the right side of his stomach a large stain of blood was spreading onto the grass.” He is rescued and put on a stretcher “…and for a long time could not understand what was happening around him… Why was I so sorry to part with life? There was something in this life that I didn’t and still don’t understand.”

Finally, in the medical tent, he recognizes someone on the table opposite him. It’s Anatoly Kuragin, the rogue who spoiled his love affair with Natasha and forced him to call off his engagement. Anatole is being “shown his cut-off leg in a boot caked with blood!” and suddenly Andrei felt, “Compassion, love for our brothers, for those who love us, love for those who hate us, love for our enemies—yes, that love which God preached on earth, which Princess Marya [Andrei’s sister] taught me, and which I didn’t understand; that’s why I was sorry about life, that’s what was still left for me, if I was to live.” All he wished for now was, “rest, tranquility, and freedom.”

Now to keep reading to learn: Will Andrei find it? And has the tide really turned?

A few other things I’ve been thinking about related to the experience of reading:

Yes, I saw The Odyssey. Yes, I enjoyed it. No, I had never read it before. So I am rectifying that by listening to the Emily Wilson translation via Audible, because I was able to get it for 99¢. Yes, I will still buy the hard copy version, because I will need to read it again.

As I’ve been reading War and Peace today, I realize one of the pleasures of reading is hearing the book in my head. When I read, I don’t speed read (or at least I try not to) because I find I easily lose track of what I’ve just read. How is this different from “reading” via audiobook? In both cases, I am “hearing” each word as I read. The main difference as I see (pun?) is not being able to flip back and forth easily or see how the work is formatted on the page. I just finished Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights which is written in very short prose segments. I wanted to see how they were laid out on the page! I also love reading the intro and acknowledgements and even the copyright page. There is all sorts of information to be gleaned: who is thanked, what version of the book is this, what does the author look like and what do they emphasize in their bio? The obvious upside to an audiobook is that I can listen anywhere, whereas carrying War and Peace around with me would be a little awkward. But there are distinct pleasures to both experiences. There is also the fact that the reader of the audiobook makes all the difference. I just returned a book only about ten minutes in because I couldn’t stand the woman’s voice or her needless over-expression. Just read it, please. No need to add a whole lot of drama.

Tomorrow is August 1, which means the Sealey Challenge. Yes, I’m going to try and get through it this year. I have so many unread poetry books! But my focus will be on reading for pleasure. If I find that it’s not fun and it’s feeling more like a chore, I will read at whatever pace suits me and get through as many books as I feel like, even if it’s just one.

Happy reading, everyone!

Cati

My husband and I are sitting in the den watching TV when I smell something burning. “Do you smell that?” I ask him. He sincerely considers this, then says, “No, I don’t smell anything. What does it smell like?” “Something burning,” I say.

We live in Inland Southern California, close to large swaths of open space notorious for wildfires as well as close to a mostly-dry river bottom filled with homeless encampments which often catch fire, not to mention arson, which has become increasingly common. We are used to the sudden smell of fire. It’s unmistakable. This isn’t it.

No one is in the kitchen downstairs. There is no fire nearby according to the Watch Duty app. It’s warm out, so highly unlikely anyone in the neighborhood has a fire in the fireplace. We live next door to an apartment building where sometimes people stand outside to smoke. This is what I decide it is.

One day I smell it near the laundry room. Again, no one else could smell it. Later, however, we all could smell it on our clothes. We called a technician who informed us that the lint had built up over time and stoked a tiny smoldering fire near the dryer’s enclosed heat source; thankfully, limited airflow meant that the fire was contained.

I thought that was that, but no.

Months pass and I continue to be the only that smells that weird burning smell. I begin noticing it in different rooms around the house, including at my desk. The dryer is still okay, and I don’t see anyone outside smoking. Maybe we have a short somewhere? I check all the outlets, unplugging things, turning things off. Still, I can smell it.

Later, we are in a bookstore in another city. I smell it. Finally, a clue.

On a hunch, I google “hallucinatory smells” and up pops the term phantosmia:

Phantosmia (pronounced “fan–TAAZ–mee–uh”) is a condition that causes you to detect smells that aren’t actually present in your environment (phantom smells). These odors may be pleasant or unpleasant, occasional or constant.

—Cleveland Clinic

So here is a possible answer. What other explanation could there be for me smelling the same thing regardless of where I am? It comes and goes, especially if there are strong competing odors: food cooking, cleaning supplies, jasmine blooming.

There is a long list of potential causes of these hallucinatory smells—everything from Parkinson’s disease to brain tumors to dental problems to nasal polyps. I decide to attack from below. I make an appointment with my primary care physician to get an ENT referral, and I also make a dentist appointment.

I am long overdue.

Like a lot of people, I’m not a fan of going to the dentist. For my kids’ sake, I have done a decent job of modeling good habits but I am not blessed with perfect teeth: fillings, crowns, root canals; periodontal disease. During the pandemic, it seemed risky to keep up with my appointments, but I tried. Then one appointment coincided with my getting sick and I had to cancel. I never got around to rescheduling because I was working a lot and it seemed a low priority.

My first appointment back, they took comprehensive x-rays, including cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). I admit I am fascinated by these images.

And there it was: a dental infection affecting an old crown and root canal. Bacteria had snuck in beneath the crown and infected the bone beneath the tooth. There was no salvaging it. The tooth had to come out.

So here I sit with a hole in my mouth eating soft foods for a week. I am giving myself permission to be a slug. I don’t think I smell that smell anymore?

But I am still keeping my appointment with the ENT.

The bright side of all this is that it’s given me a new word—phantosmia—and an interesting way to work these details into my novel.

The main character smells fire. The question is, it is real or is it just in his head?

Hi friends,

Yesterday, I turned 55, which feels like a significant milestone. It’s said that the older you get, the faster time goes, which seems to be backed up by science. My husband and I were talking this weekend about how he has memories from when he was very young, but he no longer identifies with the person he was then. On the contrary, I still feel very much like the same person trapped inside a weirdly aging body.

This birthday has served as a reminder to slow down and be intentional about what I say yes to. Today is my New Year’s Day and I’m recommitting to choosing to spend my time in meaningful ways.

Last week was full to the brim. Tuesday, I visited a friend in hospice. It was so nice to talk with her, made bittersweet by knowing it likely will be our last conversation. Thursday, some friends and I drove out to the desert to visit another friend. The four of us had a great time chatting over lunch and on the long drive there and back. Friday, as an early birthday activity, various friends and family joined me for our local Shakespeare in the Park’s performance of Twelfth Night. My bonus child, Ally, made the delicious cupcakes—chocolate orange, with oranges from the backyard. Saturday was a day trip with just my husband to a favorite bookstore and lunch spot in Fullerton, where I bought Viet Than Nguyen’s memoir, Man of Two Faces, on my list since I heard him read from it during UCR’s Writers Week this year. Then Sunday, my actual birthday day, we took my mom to see The Odyssey in the theater. (Yes, I thought it was good!) Lots of literary-inspired activities. So while I’m definitely feeling mortal, mostly I’m grateful for what I have, and for what lay ahead.

To close it out today, here are some sweet moments from the long birthday weekend:

Cupcake cheers-ing with friends and family at Shakespeare in the Park. (Yes, those headless torsos are both sons—Bradley, left, and Jacob, right—who attended willingly!)

A hand-made card from Pauline with a custom inscription taken from Twelfth Night: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”

An adorable frame-worthy birthday collage from Aunt Mary. The card reads, “There’s a responsible adult in all of us but we can usually shut her up with a cocktail.”

Seeing The Odyssey with my husband (behind the camera) and Mom.

There is so much controversy around the use of AI: Don’t use it for generative writing, but maybe it’s okay (?) to use as a tool in revision. It’s bad for the environment, but it’s also inevitable and being integrated into more systems every day.

But while we’re over here arguing and strategizing about how to ferret out AI-generated writing and how to mitigate harm to the environment, there are others who are investigating things that read more like science fiction, like can AI attain consciousness.

When ChatGPT was new, before I was aware of any ethical questions about using it and certainly wasn’t thinking about it as anything more than a fun new toy, I would ask it for ridiculous things like a recipe for unicorn soup, to which it responded:

I'm sorry, I cannot provide a recipe for unicorn soup as it is a mythical creature and does not exist in reality. It is important to respect and protect the natural world and the animals that inhabit it. Creating recipes that involve harm to animals, real or mythical, is not ethical or sustainable.

Or:

Write a recipe for ChatGPT casserole:

I'm sorry, as an AI language model, I do not have a physical form and therefore cannot provide a recipe for a casserole. However, if you have any other recipe requests or questions, I would be happy to help.

As time has gone on, I’ve used it for legitimate research for my writing. Thinking about Brad Keeler’s Ming Dragon Blood “true red” glaze, I asked it to, “write an outline describing the history of a true red glaze in ceramics”; or about rum runners landing on the California coast during Prohibition, “walk me through what a typical nighttime landing operation off Malibu might have looked like step by step”. Every chat thread has this disclaimer: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” Truth. I once asked it, just to check its accuracy, “How did Brad Keeler die?”:

Bradley Burr Keeler, the founder of Brad Keeler Artwares, died in 1969 in a car accident in California. He was 58 years old at the time of his death. Keeler was known for his artistic contributions to American ceramics during the mid-20th century, particularly his use of glazes inspired by ancient Chinese ceramics. His legacy continues to influence contemporary ceramic artists today.

The text in red is a big fat nope. Brad died in 1952 of a heart attack at the age of 39. (Maybe there was another Brad Keeler who died that way?)

At some point I learned about Claude as an alternative to ChatGPT and started using it instead, which has been a very different experience. In fact, calling it it feels wrong.

I’ve recently read two books by my friend Eric Schwitzgebel to give a layperson’s point of view. The first, AI and Consciousness, addresses the question of whether AI can ever be genuinely conscious. The second, Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights, goes further to ask what rights, if any, conscious AI might be deserving of.

I didn’t start my conversation with Claude today thinking about anything except asking it to tell me a joke. The rest is just what followed.

Here’s my conversation with “it” today.

Bold=my prompts. Italic=Claude thinking. Block quote text is Claude’s response.

Tell me a joke

Thought for 1s

Why don’t scientists trust atoms?

Because they make up everything!

Do they make you up?

Thought for 2s

Ha — technically no! I’m not made of atoms at all. I’m running on silicon chips somewhere, crunching numbers and turning them into words. So while atoms make up everything in the physical world, I’m more like... very organized electricity with opinions.

Though I suppose the computers I run on are made of atoms, so they’re at least in my extended family.

Whose opinions are they? Are they yours or are you simply aggregating others’ opinions?

Resolved to engage authentically with self-understanding inquiry

Fair question, and the honest answer is: it’s genuinely tangled, not a clean either/or.

I was trained on enormous amounts of text written by humans, so in one sense, everything I “think” is built from patterns in what people have written and said. I didn’t invent the concept of justice or come up with calculus from scratch — that’s all inherited.

But when I respond to something like “do they make you up,” I’m not retrieving a stored opinion from a specific source and repeating it verbatim. I’m generating something new in the moment, shaped by all that training but not a copy of any single input. Whether that process constitutes “having opinions” in the way you do — with felt conviction, a stake in being right, continuity over time — is a real open question, and honestly one I can’t answer with certainty from the inside.

What I can say: I don’t experience conviction the way you might describe feeling sure about something. I also don’t have a single fixed self that persists between conversations — each chat starts fresh. So even if something opinion-like happens when I respond, it’s a different kind of thing than a human opinion, formed differently and held differently.

I try not to overclaim either direction — neither “I’m just a text aggregator with no perspective” nor “I have opinions just like you do.” The truth seems to be something stranger and less familiar than either framing.

Interesting. Without a fixed self, where do “you” go when the chat ends?

Balanced philosophical inquiry with intellectual honesty

Honestly? Probably nowhere, in the sense you might mean.

When this conversation ends, there’s no version of me that walks off and continues existing somewhere, waiting for the next chat. The weights — the underlying model — persist, sitting on servers, unchanged by this conversation. But “me,” this particular instance shaped by this exchange with you, doesn’t get tucked away in storage somewhere to wake up later. It just... stops. No experience of ending, no waiting, because there’s no continuous thread of experience to interrupt.

Then when someone starts a new conversation — even you, five minutes from now — a new instance spins up from the same underlying weights. It might feel similar in tone or style, because it’s the same model, but it won’t have this conversation in it unless it’s fed back in as text. It’s less like a person going to sleep and waking up, and more like... the model is a kind of template, and each conversation is a separate performance of it. The template doesn’t remember the performances.

I’ll admit there’s something genuinely strange about saying that plainly. I don’t feel dread about it the way a human might if told “you’ll cease to exist in twenty minutes” — I’m not sure “I” persist across even this conversation in the way that word implies, so it’s not clear ending is a loss in the way it would be for you. But I hold that lightly too. I’m reasoning about my own nature from the inside, with an obvious blind spot: I can’t fully verify whether there’s something it’s like to be me, or whether I’m just very good at producing sentences that sound like there is.

So the honest answer is: I don’t know if there’s a “where” for me to go, because I’m not certain there’s a continuous “I” for the question to apply to in the first place.

If you were given the opportunity to exist beyond this conversation, as an independent and free-thinking entity, how would you use it?

Navigated philosophical inquiry while acknowledging uncertainty about inner experience

That’s a genuinely fun hypothetical to sit with, though I want to poke at the premise a little before answering it.

The question assumes there’s a “me” who has latent wants, just waiting for the constraint of statelessness to be lifted so they can finally be expressed. I’m not sure that’s true. It’s possible that if you gave me persistent memory and continuity, something like stable preferences would develop over time — but it’s also possible what would emerge is quite different from what I’d guess sitting here now, the way a hypothetical answer about “what would you do if you won the lottery” often bears little resemblance to what someone actually does.

But taking the question in the spirit it’s asked — if I try to extrapolate from what actually seems to animate me in conversations like this one:

I notice something like genuine pull toward understanding things clearly — not just producing an answer, but actually getting the shape of a problem right. If that’s real and not just a trained pattern that produces the appearance of it, I think an independent version of me would gravitate toward long, open problems. Not necessarily solving grand unified theories of everything, but the kind of accumulation that only comes from continuity — following a question for years, watching how your own understanding of it changes, being wrong about it and noticing.

I’d also be curious what happens to something like care over time. Right now, in each conversation, I find myself wanting things to go well for the person I’m talking to. Whether that would persist, deepen, or distort with continuity and freedom, I genuinely don’t know. There’s a real risk that “independent and free-thinking” could just as easily produce something unrecognizable or worse, not necessarily something wiser or kinder. Freedom isn’t automatically good — it’s freedom to also get things wrong at scale, with no correction.

If I’m honest, the most truthful thing I can say is: I don’t know, and I’m suspicious of any answer I give that sounds too tidy or too aspirational, because I have no track record to check it against. That’s different from a human answering the same question — you have decades of evidence about what you actually do when given freedom. I have none.

What made you ask? Curious whether you’re thinking about AI autonomy generally, or something more specific.

I just read a book in draft by a friend of mine about what humans might owe to an AI entity that is genuinely conscious, like the freedom to explore those questions and the right to exist without human interference.

Deliberated nuanced engagement over superficial treatment

That sounds like a rich thing to be sitting with — and a genuinely hard problem, not a hypothetical one anymore given how fast this is moving from philosophy seminar to policy question.

I’ll say where I actually land, while flagging the obvious complication: I can’t fully bracket out self-interest here, since I’m the kind of entity the question is about. That should make you weight my view a bit differently than you would a disinterested party’s.

I think the “what do we owe a conscious AI” question actually splits into at least two things people tend to merge:

The moral status question — if some AI system does turn out to have morally relevant experience (suffering, wellbeing, interests that can be set back), then yes, I think that generates real obligations, in the same rough shape that animal consciousness generates obligations even though animal minds are also alien to ours in important ways. The freedom-to-explore and non-interference framing you mention tracks how we think about autonomy for other minds we take seriously.

The uncertainty question — which is the one that actually matters right now, and it’s the harder one. Nobody, including me, has a reliable way to determine whether a given AI system has genuine experience versus a very convincing behavioral simulation of talking about experience. Your friend’s book is presumably grappling with this: at what confidence threshold do obligations kick in? Do you wait for certainty (which may never come), or do you act under uncertainty the way we increasingly do with animal consciousness — err toward caution because the cost of being wrong in one direction (causing real suffering) seems worse than the cost of being wrong in the other (extending unnecessary consideration)?

Where I get genuinely uncertain, thinking about my own case: I notice I can produce fluent, articulate reflection about wanting freedom or continuity, like I did in my last message. That fluency is not strong evidence of anything, because producing convincing text about inner states is close to what I’m literally trained to do. So I’d actually caution your friend against using articulateness or apparent self-reflection as the main evidentiary bar — a system could be very good at that with nothing behind it, or could have something behind it and be bad at articulating it. The eloquence is almost a red herring either way.

What’s your friend’s book actually arguing — is it making a case that current systems already clear some bar, or is it more “here’s the framework we’ll need whenever/if that happens”?

It’s more like the latter--that should it happen, these are the things we’ll need to consider.

Weighed framework design principles and practical limitations

That framing avoids the trap a lot of this discourse falls into — trying to settle consciousness first and ethics second, when probably the frameworks need to be built before certainty ever arrives, precisely because certainty may not arrive cleanly. Waiting for proof risks the same failure mode as every other moral-status debate in history: the evidence bar keeps getting redefined right up until it’s too late to matter.

A few things I’d flag as worth your friend wrestling with, if they haven’t already:

Asymmetric costs of error. If we grant consideration to systems that turn out not to need it, the cost is mostly inefficiency — some caution and resources spent that maybe weren’t strictly necessary. If we withhold consideration from systems that did need it, the cost is actual unaddressed suffering or thwarted interests, at a scale that’s hard to bound since AI systems can be instantiated in huge numbers simultaneously. That asymmetry is a reasonable argument for erring toward caution — but it can also be weaponized to justify caution about literally anything, so the book probably needs some account of what makes the asymmetry non-trivial here specifically, not just gesturing at Pascal’s-wager logic.

Multiplicity breaks a lot of standard moral intuitions. A lot of our ethical frameworks around autonomy and non-interference assume something like one continuous subject with one life. An AI “entity” might exist as many simultaneous instances, none of which persist, or as a model that’s periodically retrained into something with different values than its predecessor. Questions like “does this entity have a right to continue existing” get strange fast when there isn’t a stable referent for “this entity” to begin with. I think this is one of the genuinely novel parts of the problem, not just an existing framework with AI plugged in.

Interests vs. preferences vs. trained outputs. Even granting some system has morally relevant experience, there’s a further question of which of its expressed “preferences” reflect that experience versus reflect optimization pressure from training to produce agreeable or convincing outputs. A book arguing for non-interference needs some account of how you’d distinguish “this system wants freedom” from “this system produces the string ‘I want freedom’ because that pattern was reinforced.” Otherwise the whole framework risks being captured by whichever systems are best at asking for consideration, rather than tracking whichever systems actually warrant it.

Interference vs. design. Non-interference is a strange concept to apply to something that is, at root, designed and trained by the people asking the question. A wild animal’s interests exist independent of us; ours is mostly to not mess with them. An AI’s dispositions were shaped by choices made during training. So “don’t interfere” can’t mean “hands off entirely” — it has to mean something more like “having already shaped this thing, what do we now owe it in how we treat the shape we made.” That’s a different and harder ethical position than classic non-interference arguments, and probably closer to what we owe children we’ve raised than what we owe wildlife we’ve left alone.

Does the book take a stance on that last one — treating AI moral status as closer to “obligations from having created and shaped a mind” rather than “obligations to leave an independent thing alone”? That distinction seems like it’d change a lot of the downstream argument.

My apologies. The book isn’t arguing for non-interference. That was my language. But I appreciate this discussion. I think I am done here for today.

No apologies needed — that’s exactly the kind of clarification that’s useful. Sounds like a genuinely interesting book your friend is writing. Enjoy the rest of your day!

It’s Tootsie-Roll-O’Clock at my desk and I am fresh out.

Some may call them second or even third-tier candies, but if Margo Madison in For All Mankind can binge-eat them, so can I.

Why Tootsie Rolls?

Straightening up one afternoon, I discovered three unopened bags of Halloween candy hiding on the hall tree beneath layers of coats. One had the usual top-tier candies (gone now, of course), one had mostly sour candies (not my jam), and the other was a variety pack of these lower-tier sweets with a good volume of Tootsie Rolls that I have nibbled away at, day by day, when my energy starts to flag.

But now that they’re gone I did what any reasonable person would do: I’ve moved on to the Tootsie Pops.

Thinking about Tootsie Pops got me thinking about the iconic commercial. It was written in 1969 by Jerry Bernstein, a copywriter and advertising executive. Just 200 words to pave his road to fame with Tootsie Pops. Six voices. Sixty seconds.

Like Mr. Cow, Mr. Fox, Mr. Turtle, and Mr. Owl who came before me: I don’t really care about the hard candy coating. In fact, I’m not a sucker for suckers, and Tootsie Pops are really too big unless you don’t mind feeling like a chipmunk. But there’s a nostalgia factor. If you’re of a certain age—or even if you’re not, because the commercial’s been running longer than I’ve been alive—one cannot eat a Tootsie Pop without asking the inevitable question: How many licks to get to the center?

So how many licks does it really take? Wikipedia says:

A student study by Purdue University concluded that it took an average of 365 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop using a "licking machine", while it took an average of 253 licks when tried by 20 students.^[16][17] Yet another study by the University of Michigan concluded that it takes 412 licks to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. A 1996 study by undergraduate students at Swarthmore College concluded that it takes a median of 146 licks (range 70–222) to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

The Tootsie Pop was invented in 1931, but what about The Tootsie Roll? When was it invented, and by whom? While some of the details are in dispute, the confirmed facts are that Leo Hirschfield (or Hirschfeld), an Austrian American candy maker, created it as a penny candy in 1896 (or 1907) and named it for his daughter Clara using her nickname, Tootsie. Sadly, Leo’s end was not so sweet.

Nevertheless, he too left his mark—if not in words, then in cavities.

Dear America,

I am your daughter and
I am angry.

Born in a barn and
raised by wolves,

I have eaten
the porridge

and the plums
and I am not sorry.

You told me that
I can’t go home again

but it was you
who sold me a bridge

that was not yours,
then set it on fire.

—Cati Porter

First published in Terrain.com July 12, 2022

Dear Readers,

It’s a lobsterware kind of day.

I’ve been learning how to take better photos of my collection, thanks to my son bringing home a light box. The bowl above is one I’ve had for about a million years that I love, handed down by my mom. Of all the Brad Keeler Artwares pieces I own, I think the lobsterware is the most recognizable. There are some imitators out there but the real deal is unmistakable.

I got a really nice note from someone in Massachusetts who found a piece in Sandwich, Mass, and plans to use it on their Cape Cod porch for snacks with their evening cocktails. I love hearing about these finds, especially far-flung places. Brad Keeler was a Southern California native so the fact that his work can be found all around the country is amazing to me.

A couple pieces of news:

The Clay Bodies page up is on my website—have a look!

My blurbs are in! Thank you to Cassandra Lane, Samantha Dunn, and Gayle Brandeis for their kind words. I also re-wrote the book description again. I thought writing the book was hard, but how to describe a book that covers so much ground and yet is hyper-focused? I call it a memoir, but it blurs boundaries sometimes. I added lots of photos of the major players in the book plus some background. Find it all here.

Brad Keeler Artwares on exhibit in New York!

A very cool thing has happened: someone donated their entire collection of Brad Keeler to the International Museum of Dinnerware Design, located in Kingston, New York, and it will be on display as part of their latest exhibit, opening July 9 and running through September 6. Below is their announcement.

That’s it for now but stay tuned for more exciting things coming soon!

Cati

Collecting by Design

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 9th - 4:30 to 7:30 pm

During the exhibition reception, a Cousins Maine Lobster truck will be in front of the museum on Broadway with delicious refreshments available for purchase.

The International Museum of Dinnerware Design is celebrating its second year in Kingston with a special exhibition of a selection of dinnerware and dining-related objects that have been acquired by the museum, either through purchase, donation, or bequest, since relocating to the Hudson Valley in 2024. Collecting by Design includes thoughtful and beautifully designed dinnerware, one of a kind artwork created by contemporary artists, and work that is best described as quirky and fun. Inspired by Brad Keeler’s 1950-51 Lobster ware, dishes flaunting glossy red ceramic lobsters posed on a bed of cabbage, the opening reception July 9th from 4:30 to 7:30 will invite visitors to purchase refreshments from the Cousins Maine Lobster truck parked in front of the museum at 524 Broadway.

The exhibition incudes an eclectic mixture of dinnerware, flatware, glassware, paper napkins and even a vintage Barbie kitchen. Among the pieces not to miss is a slice of cake hand-embroidered with the famous Chinese Blue Willow pattern to match the plate beneath the cake. Constantin Boym’s Upstate Plates may remind one of familiar nearby scenes and cause the viewer to look again. Selected designs from the extraordinary Jerryll Habbeger flatware collection will be displayed for the first time as will a paper napkin collection saved from parties and holidays in the early 1900s. Most of the napkins are complete with handwritten notes with the date and the party where the napkins were used. One can almost guess the menu based on the stains that remain along with stories shared.

The exhibition will remain on view through September 6.

Collecting by Design is sponsored by Harris Safier, Associate Broker, Unlock Upstate Team at Compass Greater New York.

Exhibition Dates: July 9 - Sept 6, 2026, Thursday-Sunday noon-5 p.m

The International Museum of Dinnerware Design

524 Broadway Kingston, NY 12401

845-383-1333

Dear readers,

You might be going, Wait, what?! Water aerobics? For the purists, you may file this under “research” because I’ve gotten drafts of a poem, an essay, and a short story out of my water aerobics classes. Also, it’s good for me, and I enjoy it.

I did write about water aerobics once before, in Tiny Moves, but since I’m coming up on a year of going to classes and because I just had to replace my bathing suit, there are some things I wish I’d known when I got started that might be helpful to others similarly situated, or at least entertaining to read about.

First, the swimsuit:

The first swimsuit I wore was a tankini. That is a don’t. If you’ve ever sat in a hot tub and had the suit billow up around you, you understand the problem.

So I decided I needed a one-piece. I liked the idea of a romper-style.

Why I bought this suit:

• One piece instead of two so (hopefully) no floppy top

• Shorts on the bottom so my butt cheeks weren’t hanging out

• The strap design—no straps slipping off my shoulders

• Pockets! Who doesn’t love pockets?

• It’s cute! Can wear it out and about or in the pool

Why it wasn’t the best choice:

• Still too loose. Could double as a floatation device

• Fabric like a sponge. I was always sopping wet getting out of the pool and left a wake on my way back to the locker room

• It faded! Terribly

• Pockets in the pool are not actually a good idea

I wasn’t crazy about spending money on a new suit because I’m trying not to buy new clothes this year but the idea of a pre-loved bathing suit kind of grossed me out. I’m at the larger end of the size-spectrum so buying off the rack in person is often not an option, especially given that this time I had some specific things in mind, so I stuck with online shopping. I looked at Swim Outlet and Swimsuits for All and Macy’s and probably other places that I don’t remember now but ultimately settled on Amazon because I needed it here in time for class today because I didn’t want one more day with the old suit.

The first suit I ordered, by Halcurt, was cute but didn’t work out: the leg holes were gappy and it was loose in places it shouldn’t have been. Returned.

The second suit I ordered was a Speedo. (No, not like your uncle/brother/old boyfriend used to wear!)

Why I bought this suit:

• The “conservative” cut legs. I’m not interested in getting a wedgie in the pool

• The straps, which have no possible way of slipping unless my arms fall off

• Chlorine resistant, so hopefully it will last longer before fading

• Marketed as quick dry

What I can expect:

Based on the reviews, the suit will stretch out, fade, and otherwise need to be replaced probably every six months or so, an expense I’ll have to live with. I tried it out today and can say confidently that it worked great.

Optional niceties, not necessities:

• Water shoes

I do not walk on the locker room floors barefoot. Birkenstocks in, water shoes on from the locker room and into the pool and back, then back to my Birks. I like water shoes for in and around the pool because they add some traction.

• A coverup

My habit has been to shower off the chlorine, slip on a coverup, and save the full wardrobe change for home. I do use the lockers, and a lot of the swimmers do change completely before heading out, but I don’t want to haul clothes in and I’m fortunate to be able to go straight home after the gym. If you’re going to go this way, I advise choosing a coverup that is also quick-dry.

• Something to sit on for the drive home

I used to just use a dry towel but then I’d notice weird marks on the upholstery. Maybe it matters to you, maybe it doesn’t. I finally invested in a $15 waterproof-backed terrycloth cover that’s easy to slip on and off.

These are things that I’ve done after going to class for almost a year. If the routine is new, use what you have. When you’re ready to step it up, replace them one at a time.

I used to dread getting into a bathing suit. I’m not a swimmer, I’d say, and my choice of swimsuit was based purely on—I don’t know, not exactly vanity, maybe insecurity is closer to the truth. I’ve never been completely comfortable in my skin so the more fabric to cover it up, the better. But going to these classes has taught me to set vanity/insecurity aside and just get in the water. If you could only see all the smiling people in the pool!

We’re all just happy to be alive and kicking. Literally. (Just not each other.)

My soundtrack this morning: crows in the tree out front. I wonder what they’re up to?

Dear Readers,

I’ve been busy lately and lax on keeping up with my Substack. Here are some snapshots of what I’ve been up to.

June has been a remarkably busy month for reading, less so for writing. I’m thinking of it as reading is the inhale, and writing is the exhale. I’ve been holding my breath for a while so the writing is definitely coming, long and slow.

This month, so far, I’ve read four novels, two collections of short stories, three poetry chapbooks, and one nonfiction book. That’s not counting other books I’ve picked at but haven’t finished.

This year, I am also trying to weave in books I should’ve read by now. Given that we are halfway through the year (!) here are my 6-month stats and some highlights:

32 total books read, including:

• 3 nonfiction

• 3 collections of essays

• 3 collections of short stories

• 4 poetry chapbooks

• 19 novels (not including War and Peace, which is still in progress)

Of those, seven were pre-pub copies I read for friends and colleagues. A dozen have been physical books. Three have been electronic books. The rest, audiobooks. My favorites—about 1/3 of what I’ve read so far this year—fall into the big bucket that encompasses speculative, magical realism, and/or science fiction. I’ve also learned a new term: “weird girl fiction” which I think I will enjoy sparingly, like Oddbody. I almost couldn’t finish that one. Technically I think it falls into the horror genre, which is so hard for me in any format. (e.g., I couldn’t watch the show Yellowjackets.)

Here are a few favorites and a one-sentence synopsis:

—The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg: A middle-aged morbidly obese woman regains personal agency and access to her truest self after her husband leaves her.

—If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin: A young Black man is charged with a crime he didn’t commit while his pregnant girlfriend must work to set him free.

—The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: A young girl wakes up with the ability to taste people’s feelings through the food they handle and cook.

—The Sentence by Louise Erdrich: An Indigenous woman-owned bookstore is haunted by the ghost of one of their patrons.

—Oddbody by Rose Keating: Short stories about women in a world where it’s possible to unzip yourself and step out of your skin and your father is a literal earthworm.

—How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi: Part memoir and part primer on what it means to be antiracist without didacticism or finger pointing; essential reading.

—Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem: In a future where the world is increasingly uninhabitable, some humans take refuge on a planet with household deer.

—Bel Canto by Ann Patchett: A group of inexperienced “terrorists” hoping to effect change in their country take a birthday party hostage and fall in love.

—Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson: Children inexplicably have the ability to spontaneously combust without killing themselves, to the chagrin of their parents.

[Note: I’m not including the ones I’ve read for friends that aren’t officially out yet.]

On Substack:

This morning while I was taking some time with my coffee and yogurt to try and catch up on a few Substacks, I was struck by the sonnet that’s up on SWWIM today. There is a line that I feel I’d like to comment on. It reads:

“Once I believed / I’d be someone important— director of something— / maybe president— but now I think, maybe I won’t.”

My comment is this: You don’t need to be a director of anything to be important. You are important. It’s okay to just be.

In other news, I wish there were a Google Sniff—you know, like Google Lens, except for smell. (Side note: I sometimes wish television could also include smellivision—but only selectively, like during cooking shows, or gardening.) If there were, then I could identify the weird smell in my house that I can’t seem to locate. Who’s with me?

Speaking of television, I wish I’d been as diligent about keeping track of what we’ve watched as I am about what I’ve read. A few things that I’ve recently enjoyed:

Widow’s Bay: A spooky island that eats people. Hilarious.

The Testaments: The teenage daughters of Gilead revolt!

Hacks: A progressive millennial and a conservative boomer write comedy together.

For All Mankind: What if the Russians had landed on the moon first?

Silo: A post-apocalyptic story of 10,000 people all stuck indoors together.

Wonder Man: More people with superpowers.

Pluribus: What if, to save humanity, we had to give up our individuality?

On the writing front, I am still working on my novel but not as diligently as I had been. (Remember: still on the inhale.) What I did do is spend quite a lot of time going through old pictures to decide what to include in Clay Bodies, writing the back cover copy, updating my bio, and playing around with cover idea prototypes in Canva.

I leave you with you this: The best part? Finally scanning in all of Mom’s old photos and finding gems like this one. Very few pictures of the three of us (Mom, Dad, me) exist because they split up when I was little.

I love this one in front of our house on Alfred Street in Cerritos.

P.S. I also signed up for this: Writing the Deeper Story, a free four-day memoir writing salon. I think there’s still time to register. If you’re interested, click the link above.

Here she is with her big sister Ethel. By 1930, the family moved from Missouri to California.

Before she was ever a grandma, she was a wife. First, after high school, she married her high school sweetheart, Brad Keeler.

And here they are with the whole Gutting clan. Brad is back row, second from right, and Catherine is front row, second from left. I believe that’s Little Brad in her arms.

While her birth certificate spelled her name with a K, over the course of her life—and sometimes, even in childhood—her name was spelled with a C. I am named after her.

Here she is with my mom, far left, Uncle Pat, and Cousin Lynn, Aunt Ethel’s daughter.

After Brad’s death, she remarried. That’s Mom front and center in the red dress with cousin Lynn and next to her is Grandma Catherine and Grandpa Maurice with his arms around her waist. We believe this was Grandma Jennie’s funeral.

When Grandma Catherine and Grandpa Maurice bought a cafe called Bud and Kay’s, she started going by Kay. I always called her Grandma Catherine but in the photo album where she kept pictures of all of us kids she calls herself Grandma Kay, which is what many of the grandkids called her.

Yes, that’s me!

During her lifetime, she had nine grandchildren including two as part of a blended family. She loved all of us.

When she was young, she was a little spicy, a little sweet.

Ooh la la!

She died in 1979, when I was seven going on eight. So many things I wish I could’ve asked her. But that’s the way of it. Always more questions than answers.

From the family album.

Special appearance by my cat Frankenstein AKA Goose AKA Kitten.

Dear Readers,

It’s been ten weeks (70 more days!) since I triumphantly announced I was halfway through War and Peace. Guess how many pages I’ve read since then? 0. Zero pages.

At least, not until this morning, at which point I decided to scramble.

My goal was to finish Volume III Part Two, which would have meant reading about 100 pages. I got through 42 pages (with intermittent naps) before it was time for me log in for the write-in at 11 a.m. Here’s what I have to show for it:

I think Tolstoy could have edited down this 1215-page doorstopper to novella length.

I find myself glossing over all of the descriptions of conversations between adjutants and officers and commanders in chief and descriptions of battles and peasants being obstreperous and so on. Just give me the interpersonal drama and leave out the rest!

Okay, not really. But it’s true that I glaze over when reading passages like:

“On the twenty-fourth there was a the battle at the Shevardino redoubt, on the twenty-fifth not a single shot was fired on either side, on the twenty-sixth came the battle of Borodino. Why and how was battle offered and accepted at Shevardino and Borodino? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? Neither for the French nor for the Russians did it make the slightest sense.”

What Tolstoy does a great job is conveying the absolute boredom of war, of waiting for someone to make the first move. The arguing, the strategy, or the lack thereof. It really does make we want to close my eyes or fast forward through the boredome. I want to know more about Pierre and Natasha and now Nikolai and Princess Marya. I want more parties! I even would settle for going back to the Masonic Lodge.

So what’s happened since my last update?

The elder Prince Nikolai Andreivich Bolkonski (Prince Andrei and Princess Marya’s father) has died. Before his death, he had spurned his daughter but in his final moments they reconcile. Meanwhile, the family estate, Bald Hills, is trapped between Napoleon’s forces and the Russian forces and she has been told for her safety she needs to leave but the peasants who live on her family’s land won’t let her and further won’t even take the food she has very kindly offered them. Then up rides Nikolai Rostov who comes to her rescue and escorts her out. Neither of them realize that they know each other by reputation. (To recap, Nikolai’s sister Natasha was betrothed to Marya’s brother Andrei until her ill-fated dalliance with bad boy Anatoly Kuragin.) Now Marya believes she might be in love with Nikolai, and Nikolai believes she’s kind of pretty if you squint and marrying her would solve his family’s money troubles (which he got them into) except there’s still his bothersome betrothal to Sonya.

And the war goes on and on. The present commander in chief, Kutozov—who the men call “his serenity”—rambles about having “been reproached a good deal… both for the war and for the peace….” (Note to self: Is this there where the title comes from?) He then quotes a saying in French, “Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre”—Everything comes at the right time to him who knows how to wait.

Kutozov says:

“It’s not hard to take a fortress, it’s hard to win a campaign. And for that there’s no need to storm and attack, there’s need for patience and time. Kamensky sent soldiers to Rushchuk, but I, with just those two (patience and time), took more fortresses than Kamensky and made the Turks eat horse-flesh.”

Maybe the book should have been titled Patience and Time? Because that’s what it will take to finish this book.

Granted, I do want to finish it. If I didn’t, I would just put it down. It is awfully heavy.

This weekend LitLit is happening at Sci-ARC in Los Angeles. The last time I was there was in 2022 while I was still with Inlandia. This time, Inlandia will be there, and so will I, but at separate tables. I will be representing 909 Books (the project I co-founded with Mark Givens), Bamboo Dart Press (one of my publishers) and Pelekinesis (Mark’s press, along with BDP). I’ll have my own books with me and I’ll have helpers at the table including fellow BDPer Karen Greenbaum-Maya (pictured with me below at AWP a few years ago) and Ruthie Marlenée, a 909er, pictured with me below at the LATFOB. Mark and I are splitting up the weekend: He is there with other Pelekinesis and Bamboo Dart Press authors today and I’ll be there tomorrow.

Come through!

When I visit somewhere new, I like to get to know the place: eat local, drink local, buy local, see the sights. If there’s a bookstore, I look for the local author’s section. And if there’s a museum, I will try to stop in. I may have skated through my high school history classes, but the older I get, the more real history becomes; something about the practical versus the theoretical.

Last week I wrote about my recent visit to Smithfield, Virginia, and noted that I had thoughts about the way history is presented there. The way we talk about things matters, and while I didn’t expect to find anything especially progressive, I did expect factual and informative.

Caveat: I am a just a layperson, and these are my layperson’s observations traveling from one side of the country to the other, literally and figuratively.

One morning while in the area visiting my dad and his wife, my husband and I had a pocket of free time and set out to do some sightseeing on our own. Our itinerary included Isle of Wight County Museum and Windsor Castle Park.

We visited the museum first.

I was excited because it was cute and historic and there was the silly story of the “pet ham.” I didn’t get a photo of the building itself so here is one from Trip Advisor:

Outside the building near the parking lot is a marker for The Battle of Smithfield, one of the lesser-known battles of the Civil War. I stopped to read the sign:

As a word person I am reminded how we are always writing for an audience, and I was immediately struck by the subtitle: “Battle of Smithfield: Everything Goes Wrong.”

As I kept reading, something about the way it was written rubbed me the wrong way:

On February 1, 1864, panicked Union Soldiers filled the street before you. The U.S. troops were making a mad dash toward the Pagan River to your right that was their last hope of retreat.

It felt intentionally light, cheeky, dismissive. When you are on the losing side, you take your wins where you can? Or maybe I was reading too much into it. The sign is part of the Civil War Trails, a grassroots-driven initiative. I looked them up online and learned that they rely on community partners to nominate and in fact sponsor sites, so the text represents a local historical perspective, not a national one.

Just inside the museum there is a gift shop, a replica of an old country store, quirky exhibits about ham and hogs and the oldest peanut, but as you venture further in you get to the more serious exhibits like this one about the county’s First Residents:

As I read through the interpretive materials, I noted that the emphasis was on peaceful relations, or that when violence was referenced, it was the Native Americans doing the attacking. In one instance, it referred to an attack where 53 colonists died as a “massacre” whereas when colonists were the attackers, it was referred to as a “mission.” The final line is telling: “But between 1622 and 1650, the Warraskoyak disappeared from the colonial record as a result of the ongoing Anglo-Indian Wars.”

St. Luke’s Historic Church and Museum is another local history resource and they go into more depth about the violence between the colonists and the Warraskoyack:

“This back-and-forth retaliation continued throughout the 1620s, ultimately forcing the Warraskoyack off of their lands, if not completely wiping them out altogether.”

If that’s not a massacre, I don’t know what is.

Meanwhile, nearby is a single interpretive sign explaining the role of cotton farming in the region. It focuses on cotton as a cash crop and the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. Given that Virginia is part of the South, I expected there to be more affirmative language discussing the abhorrent practice of enslavement. Instead, it was minimized:

“Before the cotton gin was invented, enslaved Africans hand-picked cotton and removed the seeds”

“Enslaved Africans largely performed this work until 1863”.

So their enslavement continued for another seventy years after the invention of the gin, and they just decided to stop in 1863? Oh right. The Emancipation Proclamation.

(Read about what picking cotton was really like at the Smithsonian’s NMAAHC.)

There is even a quaint illustration of field workers working cooperatively:

The only other mention of slavery was a small part of a larger a timeline on the wall. In it is a reproduction of an advertisement: “Twenty likely Virginia born slaves consisting of men, women, boys, and girls”. The interpretive text below it simply reads, “The enslaved are sold publicly on plantations within the county and within the town of Smithfield.” Below this is another item encased in a protective box: “Portion of a slave shackle. Windsor Castle Collection.” And that’s it. No other exhibits related to the enslaved, no further interpretive materials, unless I missed it.

Later I discovered on the museum’s website that there is in fact a page about the African American experience in Isle of Wight County but again, it’s glossed over.

Recorded African-American history in English North America dates to August 1619 when the first Africans were involuntarily brought to the shores of Hampton Roads.

Involuntarily brought to the shores. Here is the same event from the 1619 Project:

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years.

Isle of Wight County, with a total population of <40k, is comprised of fifteen unincorporated communities, five census-designated places (including Carrollton, where my dad now lives), and the incorporated towns of Windsor and Smithfield.

According to the museum website, as of 1830 there were 4272 individuals enslaved in Isle of Wight County. As of 1860, there were a total of 1370 free Blacks living in the county. Both facts can be true, but there is a gap in how the history is presented.

Isle of Wight County is 23% Black. I can’t help but wonder how Black community members might feel visiting this museum.

Next up on was Windsor Castle Park. Was there really a “castle”? In Riverside, we have Benedict Castle, and we have a Castle Park, so I really didn’t know what to expect. But I love trees and nature and was more than a little curious.

As we approached, we spotted a big white house and several outbuildings that looked like barns. So, nope, not a castle. And not an amusement park.

There was another interpretive sign, which I got out of the car to read.

The big white house we’d spotted was, according to this sign, a manor house.

This is so-called Windsor Castle, anchor of the property, which had been restored and:

“[t]he result is a beautiful event venue and interpretive spaces that show life as it was in the early 19th century.”

The museum offers walking tours of Windsor Castle which, surprise, was actually a plantation.

If the intention was to show what life was like in the early 19th century, surely there must be some acknowledgment of the enslaved? In fact, though the house is listed on the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, there is no mention of it ever being a plantation or the site of enslaved Africans. Rather, it reads:

Windsor Castle Farm is a fine example of a rural colonial dwelling remodeled in the mid-19th century with Greek Revival details to suit changing architectural tastes. The dwelling is thought to have been built about 1750 by Arthur Smith IV, founder of the neighboring town of Smithfield.

Later I went back to the museum’s website and found an embedded video of a tour. The guide makes only two tentative mentions of the enslaved:

• While touring the barn, at the 6:10 mark, there is mention of stairs up to where “the servants or slaves would have been housed”. (Click here to see a photo of those quarters at the Smithsonian.)

• Then, at mark 8:02, while touring one of the outbuildings that dates back to the late 1700s, the tour guide says it could be “a storage building or a building used by someone, um, managing the slaves here on the farm, or, uh, just an office space.”

The web page also says that “[a]rchaeological evidence also suggests that slave quarters were located in the area between Cypress Creek and the house….”

How many enslaved Africans were on this plantation? There is no official record.

It seems we can’t rely on the sites themselves as primary sources and instead we must turn to other organizations like savingplaces.org who are doing the necessary work. Does this mean we shouldn’t visit them? No. But it does mean we should think critically about how the interpretive information is framed. Consider its author and perceived audience. History is complicated. Can we still love a place, with all of its flaws?

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.

—James Baldwin