jack

As far as I can tell, after three or so nights of pain-driven sleeplessness broken only by the occasional hour unconscious, I crashed so hard last night that I may have slept as much as fifteen hours, which would be amazing except that we are now on the later side of autumn and I slept out all the sunlight in the day. My entire plan had been to take a walk this afternoon. Tomorrow I have a round of doctor's appointments starting early in the morning, but it's not exactly the same thing. Have some links.

1. Mythic Delirium Books is reviving! In order to celebrate the relaunch and their ten-year anniversary, they are offering a deal on three of their most acclaimed collections, all of which I can recommend from reading as well as general enthusiasm for the press and its authors. Various combinations and formats available and an enticing pre-order bundled if you order through their own website. Check it out! Mythic Delirium was the home of my first published poem twenty-four years ago when it was a cardstock-covered 'zine with black-and-white interior illustrations and my affection for it has not dimmed even now that it publishes actual trade-bound books.

2. Until selkie sent it over to me, I had no idea an online archive had been compiled of the Call, the historic English-language newsletter of the Workers Circle. I am thrilled, even if the first article I selected was, in 2025, a little like being socked in the jaw by 1942:

America is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Bill [of] Rights. The Bill of Rights is the Magna Charta of our fundamental liberties such as freedom of speech and press, of petition and assembly, of religion. Together with these go concomitant rights such as the security of the home against the military, against search and seizure, and the recognition of due process of law and trial by jury. In brief, the Bill of Rights stands as a guarantee that the individual and the home are inviolate unless certain clearly defined legal procedures are followed.

Before the rise of totalitarianism, we took these freedoms for granted. They were part of the air we breathed. Now we realize that they are a precious heritage, that they are worth preserving and defending. America is not Utopia. Unemployment, economic crises, poverty and need in the midst of plenty, slums and avoidable sickness, are still with us. But as long as the Bill of Rights prevails, as long as we have freedom of speech and of assembly, of petition and protest, of criticism and political organization, there is hope abundant. With these freedoms, we can go on working for the things we hold dear and good, inveighing against injustice wherever we find it, improving the lot of the masses. Without these, we are lost, doomed either to abject silence or the concentration camp.

3. I missed it for Armistice Day, but Frederic Manning's "Leaves" (1917) is a delicately upsetting war poem and completely at the other end of effects of language from his novel Her Privates We (1929).

Cone of Silence (U.S. Trouble in the Sky, 1960) does such wonderfully anoraky suspense about human factors in aviation accidents that it should not be faulted for including Peter Cushing in its cast and then not having him play the brilliant, haunted designer of the Atlas Phoenix which seems to be doing too close an impression of the de Havilland Comet for the comfort of BOAC, but I did have to adjust to that being Noel Willman.

P.S. Dammit: now TCM has tabletized itself and in the process apparently expunged its considerable database of linked articles, not to mention the hitherto useful indices or even listings of cast and crew. Because what I want when considering a movie is not even to know who's in it unless I can recognize someone from the visual tile which could be anything from a random frame to a production still to part of a poster. The player itself has also been reorganized into a much less pleasant interface. Is there some kind of literal race on to the enshittification? Isn't that one where the only way to win is not to play?