Morgan Twofeather marries Grace Delgado-Delgado while George Soros looks on. Artist’s rendering courtesy Google Gemini
The NEA has cancelled the 2026 Creative Writing Fellowships program. […] The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.
— from an August 22nd email from the National Endowment for the Arts
Dear Committee:
For the 2027 Creative Writing Fellowship, I am seeking funding to write WOKE NO MORE: WHEN THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS BLOSSOM, a feature film script that reflects this Administration’s support for artistic excellence, critical thinking and nuance. It’s the story of Morgan Twofeather, a member of the Potawatomi Nation or something, and Grace Delgado-Delgado, the daughter of a Cuban father and a Puerto Rican mother, both of whom have succeeded at things they would not have been able to succeed at in the places they came from.
Morgan and Grace meet at Howard University, where he is learning to weld, and she majors in Gender Studies. When a Christ-hating professor rebukes Morgan for his faith in a lecture hall filled with woke Christ-haters, Grace comes to his defense, because even though she believes there’s no such thing as gender, she also thinks Morgan is hot.
But Morgan has competition from Benjamin Morganthal-Schwartz-Cohen, the offspring of a trans Jewish throuple. Benjamin works for the Soros Foundation, developing plans to force all Asian restaurants in the Capitol to close so he can build mosques. Grace is at first charmed by Benjamin’s East-Coast elite values, until his friends sneer at her for suggesting that Curtis Yarvin makes a few interesting points.
When a freak hurricane caused by wind turbines devastates D.C., Benjamin sees his chance, rallying wealthy patrons from his synagogue, Temple Beth Marx, to hurt Asian-Americans with wokeness. Morgan, however, has been teaching welding to his multi-ethnic church youth group, which includes several grizzled veterans, and they save businesses and buildings with their welding, and Grace sees this and is psyched.
Will the Jews Benjamin be thwarted in his nefarious plans? Will Morgan and Grace date and definitely not have sex before marriage? Will Grace abandon Gender Studies to make a kajillion dollars doing something with Christian AI? Yes, yes, and yes.
The final shot of the movie is their glorious marriage on July 4th, 2026—America’s 250th birthday—as the cherry blossoms shower their petals and a Marine Band plays I’m Proud to be an American or maybe YMCA, while George Soros looks angry in the background, twirling his mustaches.
Thank you for taking the time to consider my project. All NEA funding will go to American performers and craftsmen in the United States of America, and not a penny to Canada, where the tax incentives are better for filmmakers.
Artificial Intelligence is like death in that it’s inevitable, and there’s nothing we can do about it, so we may as well prepare—especially if you earn your living from editing and writing.
Most recently, I’ve been tooling around with image generators. Not because I relish the idea of illustrators or photographers getting put out of business. But it does seem important, as a freelance writer, to understand the limitations and attractions of the technology.
First I played around with Stable Diffusion. Actually it was stabledifffusion.com—note the extra “f”—because that’s what comes up when you search for “stable diffusion” with DuckDuckGo.
After trying various prompts, out of boredom or vanity I typed in “Draw a picture of Gordon Haber.” Here’s what came up.
Here’s the metadata by the way:
“prompt”:”Create an artistic portrait of Gordon Haber, a wildlife biologist renowned for his work with wolves in the Alaska wilderness. Depict him standing amidst a lush, green forest, surrounded by towering trees adorned with vibrantly colored foliage. Utilize soft, golden sunlight filtering through the leaves, casting gentle shadows on the ground. Capture the essence of his passion for nature with a thoughtful demeanor, wearing practical outdoor attire that reflects his adventurous spirit. The scene should exude a sense of tranquility and reverence for the natural world, illustrating the unique bond between humans and wildlife.\n\ndraw a picture of Gordon Haber”,”originalPrompt”:”draw a picture of Gordon Haber”
Aside from the fact that the AI generated its own prompt, which is problematic, it also confused me with the wolf expert named Gordon Haber, who doesn’t look like the picture above. He’s also dead, but that’s beside the point.
Here’s what stabledifffusion.com came up with after I cleared my cache and tried again.
I’m not sure what to make of that bizarre disembodied hand. Maybe it’s a reference to The Hand, the 1981 movie where Michael Caine plays an illustrator whose hand gets cut off and then crawls around strangling people. I am a big Michael Caine fan.
Next I tried openart.ai with the same prompt. It gave me two versions. In the first, I look like Kevin Spacey’s disappointed dad…
…and an antebellum state senator with a hangover.
I wanted to try an image generator from a more reputable company, so I tried Microsoft Designer, which provided four images. First, it rendered me as a young, Asian female…
And a young, Asian male…
And an over-caffeinated white guy…
And again, another young, Asian female.
As surprising as this was, ChatGPT was arguably the most interesting of the experiments. Here is the response to my prompt:
While it is indeed flattering to have my work referred to as “witty” and “observant,” I’m not sure how I feel about being rendered as a depressed-looking 40-something with several rejections from N+1.
I’m also not sure if there are any grand conclusions to draw from this experiment. Except maybe in the case of Microsoft Designer, either the algorithm sucks or there are a surprising number of Asian women named “Gordon.”
Finally, in case you’re curious, you can see a picture of me on my LinkedIn profile.
Portrait of a young badass: Ed Gruber in 1952. Image courtesy of Ed.
The Korean War began on June 25th, 1950, when North Korean soldiers invaded South Korea.
US President Harry Truman pressed the UN to quickly approve a “police action” to aid South Korea—an international effort spearheaded by the US. The brutal conflict that followed led to millions of Korean deaths and close to 140,000 American casualties.
One of the many forgotten aspects of this war is that the US actually fought China: in December 1950, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army came to the aid of North Korea, and their estimated casualties are in the hundreds of thousands.
Another forgotten fact: 5.7 million American servicemen and women served in Korea. Among them was Ed Gruber, a self-professed “wiseass kid from the Bronx,” who had enlisted in the Navy in 1948.
Ed and I became friends through the Korean War Veterans Family and Supporters Facebook Group. I had joined the group when I started publishing fiction set during the Korean War. Ed is also a writer, and he turned out to be a helpful source for historical accuracy as well as a supportive reader.
The war was just one aspect of an eventful life. He was childhood friends with singer Edye Gorme (née Edith Gorman) and friendly in high school with a young photographer named Stanley Kubrick. He snuck into Yankee Stadiaum and ended up watching the game with heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
While waiting tables in a Catskills hotel, Ed kibitzed with Red Buttons. And while stationed with the Navy at Pearl Harbor, he shook hands with President Truman. After the war, as an ad man in Detroit, Ed worked (and drank) with another promising young copywriter who wrote Western stories in his spare time—Elmore Leonard.
2025 marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. This year also marks the release of In Combat in Korea: Eighteen Veterans Remember the War, by Ryan Walkowski. Ed wrote the foreword and mentored Ryan through the editing process. Ed refers to it as “a labor of love in honor of all my brothers who served in Korea—those who survived, those who didn’t, those who still carry scars.”
In light of the anniversary and the book release, I thought it would be illuminating to have Ed share his experiences. Our conversations, via phone and email, have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tell us about your family and your childhood.
My parents were both born in Harlem. My immigrant grandfather tended horses and shoveled manure in Manhattan stables. Mom was a housewife, and Dad drove trucks and buses. During the Great Depression, he moonlighted as a cab driver. Then he got a job at a leather belt factory until he joined his brothers in the banana trucking business.
I was born in the Bronx in 1928. My earliest memories are from when I was two or three years old. I remember the iceman coming to fill our icebox. And one memory that’s indelible, my maternal grandfather teaching me to play a card game called Pishe Pasha. His smile was so warm, so paternal, so loving, it’s a precious moment I’ve kept close to my heart.
Where were you educated?
I attended public schools in the Bronx and graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1946. Stanley Kubrick and I knew each other well enough to say “hi” in the halls and occasionally share a table in the cafeteria. I was good friends with Mark Rydell—or Morty back in high school—who went on to direct The Rose and On Golden Pond.
I was a so-so student, a smart-ass, a street-kid in corduroy knickers. I preferred to play ball more than anything else, except for my weekly treks to the Bronx Public Library, rain or shine.
After high school, I attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. It was a two-year college then. I took the production engineering course: production line workflow, business accounting, industrial psychology, things like that. I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t know what was, but this was not it.
How did you end up in the Navy?
The government was still drafting young men for military service, but you had a choice in a way. You could be conscripted for two years or enlist for three. So after FIT, I enlisted in the Navy. I was willing to go the extra year to stay out of foxholes and mud, as Army service was vividly described to me by a neighborhood guy who’d fought in Europe during WWII.
The Navy got you started in communications and journalism.
After boot camp, I read in a service publication about the Navy’s School of Journalism, where sailors and marines were trained to become combat correspondents. I applied and was transferred to the school located at Great Lakes. It was a jam course in writing, newspaper layout and design, public relations, photography, and radio, including working weekends as a rookie reporter with one of the Chicago newspapers, going on calls to fires and robberies.
After graduating, my new post was at the Pearl Harbor Public Information Office at the headquarters of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific and the Pacific Fleet.
What kind of work did you do at Pearl Harbor?
One of my first assignments was to record a USO show starring Al Jolson for the Navy’s archives. The technology was a pre-magnetic tape era wire recorder. I set my mike on the stage among the others and sat on the floor of the arena before the platform.
Mostly though I was writing dull Navy peacetime press releases about promotions and ship arrivals. What I found more interesting was helping to design and build a radio recording studio. Two days a week there were lineups of sailors and marines waiting to record interviews on miniature vinyl records. We’d send the platters back to their hometown radio stations. The stations would call the families and tell them when the records would be on air, and each kid’s voice, his impressions of the Navy or Marine Corps, and his duty in the Hawaiian Islands, would be broadcast for all friends, neighbors, and relatives.
Where were you when the Korean War started?
I was actually in a bar in San Diego. We’d stopped on the way to an assignment in Alaska. On Sunday, June 25, 1950, a group of us were having beers and shooting dice when two guys from the Shore Patrol began thumping their nightsticks on the bar and shouting, “Now hear this! The fucking North Koreans have invaded South Korea and we’re in a fucking war. Get back to your ships and bases on the double.”
What happened next?
Things got more interesting on Pearl Harbor. A lot of people came through on the way to Korea. Carl Mydans, a fantastic photographer from Life Magazine, gave us an impromptu photography lesson. John Ford, the Hollywood director, showed up on the way to shoot his documentary This Is Korea. I helped Lieutenant General Chesty Puller, the legendary Marine, prep for a press conference.
One guy I worked with, a chief petty officer, came up with a brilliant P.R. idea—a radio program to distribute to commercial stations with Hawaiian music and a vignette about Navy and Marine heroics or an interview with a visiting celebrity. We called it Across the Blue Pacific, and I got to write most of the dramatic segments and do many of the interviews.
I have great memories of John Wayne. He was shooting Big Jim McLain nearby and agreed to do a monologue for us. He arrived at the studio sporting a world-class hangover. He could hardly read the script. We filled him with potent Navy coffee, and even that failed. Our commander had us lace the coffee with something from the bottle he kept in his desk drawer. Wayne gave a flawless performance, with me as director and engineer.
Another time, I nabbed an interview with Bob Hope, and it went so well he invited me to play the straight man in a bit with him for his radio show.
One member of Hope’s entourage was a young comedy writer by the name of Larry Gelbart, who among other things went on to become one of the creative forces behind M*A*S*H. I spent as many minutes with Larry as possible, hoping some of his talent and know-how would rub off. When he got back to New York, he very kindly called my parents to tell them I was fine and not being shot at.
“Now hold it there. Don’t take that picture.” Bob Hope arrives to entertain the troops in Korea. Photo: Stars and Stripes
But you did volunteer to cover the fighting.
In retrospect it seems like an absurb impulse, but I still had the irrational guy-thing to “get over there.” In June of 1952, I broached the subject to my boss, Commander William Lederer, and he agreed that reporting from closer to the action would broaden my experience. (Commander Lederer, by the way, was already a published author.) To ensure my relative safety, he ordered that I take along Seaman Dean Musgrave from Iowa as an assistant.
Commander Lederer was expecting that I couldn’t get into too much trouble. Officials from the UN, North Korea, and China, were having truce talks at Panmunjon. But there was still plenty going on. There were no large-scale combat operations, but there were a hell of a lot of small ones, if you can call people trying to blow your head off “small.”
Dean and I flew from Honolulu to Tokyo and then to an aircraft carrier, the USS Valley Forge. Then we transferred to the USS Mispillion, a Navy tanker. We did this by highline, also called a “breeches buoy.” This is an open, one-person apparatus run on a pulley system attached to lines strung between two ships while they move in open water at equal speeds. Dean and I were relieved to plant our feet on the steel deck, and I was beginning to question my judgment in volunteering for this assignment.
Finally, we made our way to one of the islands called Modo. It was only only 2000 yards from the mainland—not only in sight of enemy eyes, but also in range of their firepower. On Wonsan, the nearby port on the East Coast of North Korea, the enemy had shore batteries and antiaircraft guns and an estimated 80,000 Communist troops.
Modo was laced with trenches and sandbagged bunkers. Dean and I were assigned to a cave-bunker and given free rein by the officer in command to explore. He did warn us that if the Chinese on the mainland saw unusual movement, they’d direct mortar shells or machine gun fire at the island. We set out to explore and look for stories anyway. We were young and invincible, probably stupid, and began our walk—kicking up pieces of shrapnel with almost every step.
We encountered a Korean Marine Corps (KMC) outfit guarding a group of North Korean and Chinese POWs who were digging trenches and bunkers. We heard “Incoming! Hit the dirt!” Which we did. Then, two explosions about 75 yards from us; shells from the Chinese. Nobody was hurt, but it was a rude awakening.
When it was time to leave Modo, we filed some hometown hero stories from an aircraft carrier, got cleaned up, and headed to the Korean mainland, where the First Marine Division was deployed on the Main Line of Resistance (MLR).
Civilians combing through the rubble in downtown Seoul, November 1, 1950. The ruins of the Japanese General Government Building, a relic of the Japanese occupation of Korea, stand in the background. Photo: U.S. Department of Defense
What was it like on the Korean mainland?
We went through Seoul by jeep, and there was hardly a roof left on any of the buildings, and many were completely gutted. The locals wore customary Korean garb or western clothing, and some wore GI castoffs. They pushed or pulled wooden carts or tended to retail stands along the road—trying to survive amidst this hell.
As a teenager during WWII, we saw the war through newsreels and LIFE Magazine. And here I was traveling through the devastation that was once a major Asian metropolis. I was thinking how fortunate Americans were that our homes and cities didn’t suffer the ravages of battle.
Our destination was a Marine unit on the MLR near Munsan-ni. We were greeted and briefed by Lieutenant Anton Froelich, from Chicago. He explained that the Chinese were just up the road and that the roads and rice paddies between us and them were mined. Panmunjon, where they were holding the truce talks, was up another narrow road.
He said, “We send patrols out most every night to get prisoners or to ambush enemy patrols or just to learn what’s happening out there. If you’re looking for stories, there’s a patrol going out tonight. Want to go along? Might be fun.”
“We have no combat training,” I said.
“Don’t worry. My boys will take good care of you, even though you’re Navy.”
We met up with squad leader Sergeant Mac McCorckle, from Palatka, Florida. Mac was a veteran of the horrific Chosin Reservoir pullout where he’d been wounded—three burp gun shells across his chest. He was sent back to the States to recover, and then volunteered to return to combat.
“Why the hell would you want to come back,” I asked. “You paid your dues.”
His answer was simple: “To prove to myself I’m not chicken.”
An hour or so before sunset the patrol formed up. It was made up of two squads [a squad is about ten men] led by a Sergeant Moore. We were reinforced with a machine gun squad.
Moore briefed us: “We’ll be taking the Panmunjon truce road to our breaking-off point.”
“But isn’t that a neutral zone?” I asked.
“Good point, Gruber. So if we meet any Chinese, no firing. We get our business done with no noise.”
The ramifications of that statement weakened my knees. Meanwhile, the guys—Frankie, Woody, Morgan, Tony, Tom, Tex, Shelton, Burnett, and the others, were checking their weapons and canteens with lots of kibitzing and lack of tension; these were veterans.
Luckily, we met no Chinese on the dusty truce road, even though I thought I saw one behind every bush. On schedule, we reached our destination at the base of a hill just after dark. The sun had dropped like a bullet behind the western mountains, and we went from a hot red sky to a cold black one instantaneously.
It was a sweaty, feel-your-way-along in the dark, ten-minute climb to the top of the hill. Once there, I plopped down alongside a well-sandbagged position and Mac told me to stay close to him and do whatever he said, to do it fast, and without question.
When Sergeant Moore clicked on the field telephone, it turned out the line had been cut.
“Okay, they know we’re here,” Mac said calmly. Then he whispered to me, “Pass the word, Ed. Fix bayonets.”
I could hardly get the words out to the Marine next to me.
I’d been in a few fistfights in my life and only wound up with a black eye. I hadn’t planned on hand-to-hand combat, and I was shaking—and it wasn’t from the cold Korean mountain air.
Throughout the chilled night, we all crouched in anticipation, watching machine gun tracers lighting up the sky over nearby hills, where firefights were in progress. I was wondering if ours would start…and when. I wondered how Dean and I would handle it.
My body so desperately wanted to doze off, but every little sound was like a screaming alarm clock. Mac recognized my anxieties and quietly explained, “If they come it’ll probably be just before dawn. They’ll drop some 80mm mortar shells on us, then they’ll blow those goddamn bugles. We’ll pop a few flares, so you just toss those grenades where you see the moving shadows. You’ll be okay. Just keep your head down.”
I shivered the night away waiting, waiting, and waiting. At dawn, sure enough, four enemy mortar rounds came in over our heads and exploded just beyond our positions with enough force to give us a bounce and shake some sand out of our protective sandbags. But no bugles, no flares, no shadows, no Chinese coming up the hill.
We scrambled down White Hill and made our way back to the MLR without incident.
“How about that, Ed!” Mac exclaimed over a beer back at camp. “Your first patrol and you didn’t hurt yourself or anybody else. You did good. I’ll take you Navy boys out anytime!”
The war patrols that came later—some were nasty. But even with the bugles and the flares, the shadows, the noises, the yelling, and the horrors, it was a different kind of terror than first one. On that initial patrol, the most frightening thing was my own mind and the pictures it called up.
I ordered Dean to remain behind on those later sorties. I chose not to put him in harm’s way again, and he’d be able to write up our stories using the typewriters at company headquarters. It turned out to be good for Dean, because he didn’t have to do or see the things I did, of which to this day, I do not—cannot—speak or write.
What was like being a Jew in the service in the early 1950s?
Generally, in the Navy’s Public Information Office, I was surrounded by young men of intelligence, humanity, and tolerance. But there were a few minor incidents of anti-Semitism during my four-year hitch. Some were resolved with bloody noses, sometimes mine and sometimes the other guy’s.
There was one memorable incident when we were recording Across the Blue Pacific at Pearl Harbor. I wrote a monologue about a veteran Marine sergeant, and [Oscar-winning actor] Walter Brennan played him.
I was working the engineering board when Brennan told the guys in the studio a stale, anti-Semitic joke. He didn’t know the mic was still hot. Brennan was a fine actor, but to me he was a lousy person.
What are your thoughts on the Korean conflict?
It’s been considered “the forgotten war,” and there has never been a signed peace treaty. From a positive viewpoint, the UN—led by US forces and dollars—was victorious in driving Communist North Korean Forces out of South Korea, which did become a model democracy and world industrial leader. But the cost was high in the deaths of those who fought, as well as innocent civilians. When it was all over, I was hoping that lessons were learned on diplomacy, great power politics, and readiness. I’m not so sure.
A Zoom Conversation with Ryan Walkowski and Ed Gruber
6/26/25 @ 7PM ET on ZOOM
“If the best minds in the world had set out to find us the worst possible location in the world to fight this damnable war, the unanimous choice would have been Korea.” —Dean Atcheson, Secretary of State, 1949-1953
“I had to reach them and get their stories before it was too late.” —Ryan Walkowski
June 25th marks the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, when North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel to invade South Korea.
The war lasted only three years and was officially referred to as a “police action.” And yet it cost millions of lives and its effects still reverbate throughout the world.
Ryan Walkowski’s In Combat in Korea: Eighteen Veterans Remember the War (McFarland) brings this historical event to light with Korean War veterans recounting the most terrifying moments of their own lives with startling emotion and bluntness.
The preface is by Ed Gruber, a veteran who saw combat while embedded as a Navy journalist with a Marine unit.
Writer and editor Gordon Haber (who has published several short stories about the Korean War) will moderate an online conversation with Ryan and Ed about the book, Ryan’s incredible determination, Ed’s own war experiences, and what it means to remember the “forgotten war.”
Time: Jun 26, 2025 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Zoom meeting ID: 789 4703 3320 Passcode: 9iYQd9 Meeting link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78947033320?pwd=hBbTAXjG3zvehwkxnqSmtECb813b78.1
Ryan Walkowski (Author)
Ryan Walkowski is a blue-collar worker from the small farming town of Birnamwood, Wisconsin, and an avid hunter and fisherman. He has always been a military history enthusiast, but his grandfather and great uncle never talked much about their own experiences in the Korean War. So Ryan began interviewing soldiers, sailors and Marines. Using weekends and vacation days, he drove coast to coast in pursuit of the stories that eventually collected into In Combat in Korea.
Ed Gruber bio (Author)
Born and bred in The Bronx, Ed Gruber resides in Woodstock, Georgia. As a US Navy Correspondent, Ed wrote speeches for Admirals, Navy radio programs and films, news releases, and fleet newsletters. He earned three battle stars while deployed with Marine Corps infantrymen on nighttime patrols. Ed then had a prolific career as a writer, Creative Director, and marketing consultant. He now enjoys writing, golfing, fishing, and talking to senior and veteran groups about his rich and varied experiences.
Gordon Haber (Host)
Gordon Haber is a writer and editor. His reporting and commentary on religion and culture have appeared in The Forward, Religion Dispatches, Arc, and Salon. His short stories and novellas have been published in journals like Bodega, Cagibi, The Rumpus, and The Short Story Project, and as three best-selling Kindle Singles. His awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Poland, a MacDowell residency, and a residency at the Toji Cultural Center in South Korea. His Korean War novel, The First Hard Fight, is currently on submission to publishers.
Many of us are feeling helpless and overwhelmed. It’s only natural, considering how the current administration is dismantling the federal government and throwing their support behind murderous dictators.
But we don’t have the luxury of admitting defeat. If want a return to responsible governance and the rule of law, we’ve got to find concrete ways to defeat Trump – or at least limit the damage.
I spent some time in the last few days looking for ideas. Here’s what I found. Please let me know what you think, and if you have ideas of your own.
1. Primary Trump
“Democrats are on the receiving end of a bum rush. They need to think outside the box and get tough. Maybe a quiet pledge to make significant contributions to the reelection campaign of any Republican member of Congress who is primaried for voting against Trump? That might get some attention.” James D. Zirin in The Hill
2. An American Arab Spring
“There is no substitute for a voter uprising that threatens politicians with losing their jobs. […] We need an American equivalent of the Arab Spring — an overwhelming and sustained demand for fundamental rights, good government, a healthy democracy and the rule of law. And because a stable democracy and stable climate go hand in hand, their restoration would be a fitting theme for a massive show of voter power on Earth Day this April in Washington.” William S. Becker in The Hill
3. Take Your Congressman to Work Day
“Here’s an idea, guys, how about all these agencies where employees are being locked out, how about you send members of Congress with those employees to walk them into work, or just send members of Congress to go into the building and investigate what these people are doing, dare them to stop you because they can’t.” Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger on X
4. Pressure low-level staffers
“It’s largely ineffective for protesters to focus […] on the government’s top decision-makers, such as the president and his political appointees. […] But virtually every government policy must be developed and implemented by people far below those appointees. These people — who swear an independent oath to protect the Constitution — can be affected by public influence, and as public servants, should be. Activism can help them understand issues, and empower them to speak up against illegal or unjust policies.” Brendan Ballou, a former federal prosecutor, in Politico
“Slow the Senate. Lawmakers in the upper chamber of Congress don’t have a big red “stop everything” button—but the Democratic Senate minority can slow business as usual and dramatize its opposition.
Make congressional Republicans work for Democratic votes. When their votes are not just symbolic, Democrats should filibuster where they can, force Republicans to squirm for as many hours as possible, and extract a serious political price for standing down.
“Trump’s aggressive use of presidential power is not just a constitutional crisis, it is a political one. For those seeking to resist, this is too important to just be left to the courts; it must also involve America’s key political institutions.” William Partlett in The Conversation
BONUS: 7 Ways to Rise Up Against Trumpism 2.0
“[…] people are fighting back with every tool at their disposal, from trainings and legal challenges to walkouts and strikes. Here is a non-comprehensive list of ways people across the United States are rising up against Trumpism.” Sonali Kolhatar in Yes Magazine
Even if they unfreeze communications, they will likely politicize the reporting of data on infectious diseases like bird flu, COVID, and HIV. This will make it difficult for journalists to report on these issues and for citizens to assess their own risks and make decisions accordingly.
In the interest of transparency, I’m assembling a list of city and municipal agencies that provide health data. Scroll to the bottom for other organizations, like the WHO. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of each site, and some sites are easier to use than others. You’re going to have to do some digging. But at least you have a place to start.
I’m adding to the list as time allows. There’s a contact form at the bottom if you have questions or a link to add.
Update 2/28/2025. The installment of RFK Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services will likely have a disastrous effect on public health in the US and beyond—which makes data transparency even more urgent.
As I’ve delved into health data websites, my understanding of the field has improved. Wherever possible, I’m focusing on three areas:
Update 5/28/25. Added Impact Metrics Dashboard, which “visualizes the human impact of funding changes for aid and support organizations. Each metric represents real people affected by policy decisions.”
Surveillance Program & Statistics (Don’t waste your time. The most recent Communicable Disease Surveillance Report is from 2020. Other statistics, like TB, haven’t been updated since 2023.)
Other organizations providing health data and statistics
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
“This dashboard visualizes the human impact of funding changes for aid and support organizations. Each metric represents real people affected by policy decisions.”
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)
This piece was published on the departed website Bookslut in April, 2010.
Titles are hard. You spend weeks or months or years on your work, and somewhere along the way you’re expected to encapsulate it in a few pithy words. It’s kind of draining, when you think about it. Maybe that’s why Mark Rothko used the word “untitled” so often — not because he wanted to leave interpretation to the viewer, but because he put so much effort into the art itself. After a long day of painting huge colored squares, who has the energy for titles?
But I would posit that titles are hardest for filmmakers and writers. They need to suggest something with their titles. It’s a kind of marketing. Thus they can’t resort to Untitled (although I’m sure it’s been done), and Krzysztof Kieslowski cornered the market on colors and numbers.
When I asked around, I found out that I was right. Amanda Church, a painter, told me that “a title can make or break a painting.” And Ruth Boerefijn, an installation artist, said that “sometimes a title comes to me out of the blue — and it is right.” Now, these remarks don’t suggest that titling is easy, but they were nowhere near as fraught or self-deprecating as the responses I got from the filmmakers and writers. Novelist Lauren Grodstein compared her “title sense” to her “sense of fashion — a little off, and not in a hip way.” And documentary filmmaker Robin Hessman referred to the process as “excruciating.”
Considering all the agita, we might forgive those who take the easy way out — by using title templates or patterns. We might forgive some of them, anyway. Really there’s no excuse for using the most common pattern, Participling the Proper Noun, as exemplified by Searching for Bobby Fischer, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Nemo, Killing Zoe, and ten thousand other movie titles.
We can’t blame it all on Hollywood. Martin Amis, who usually knows what he’s doing, has a nonfiction collection called Visiting Mrs. Nabokov. But the pattern does show the symbiotic relationship between screenplays and other forms of writing. Crossing Delancey and Driving Miss Daisy started out as a plays; Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Leaving Las Vegas were novels. The latest novel from one Elizabeth Aston is called Writing Jane Austen — a name with cachet in the movie business, to the point where Austen herself is a character in Becoming Jane, which (stay with me here) was based on the nonfiction book, Becoming Jane Austen.
Two important points about Participling the Proper Noun. First, the participle is not a gerund, which is when a verb becomes a noun. (Trainspotting is a gerund; Being John Malkovich is not.) Second, with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, there is at least one unimpeachable use of the pattern. I think it’s fair to say that this title arose from the play itself, not from an attempt to make it sound like a movie. And who cares, anyway? The play would still be good even if it were called Irritating Estragon.
Of course this isn’t the only title pattern. Another (noticed by the astute Michael Schaub) is The Occupation’s Relative. In this case, the relative is usually the distaff spouse, as in The Zookeeper’s Wife, The Senator’s Wife, The Astronaut’s Wife, and so on. This convention, I think, is used to emphasize that we still see wives as mere appendages to their husbands — and husbands as defined by their professions. Interestingly, the occupations can become quite abstract, as with the novels The Kitchen God’s Wife and The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Regardless, The Occupation’s Relative is not limited to spouses. The Farmer’s Daughter is the title of a 1947 movie, a novel by Jim Harrison, and innumerable jokes about horny salesmen. With Senator’s Son, author Luke Larson drops the definite article, presumably following the elision of the Creedence song, Fortunate Son. Then there’s The Accordionist’s Son, by Bernardo Atxaga, who writes in his native Basque tongue. I’m guessing that the novel’s original title, Soinujolearen seme, translates directly into English, but my Euskera is rusty.
A title pattern can define an entire career. Consider The Ludlum Protocol, named for the suspense novelist who awkwardly roped a proper noun to a noun, as in The Osterman Weekend, The Bourne Identity, and The Icarus Agenda. I suppose that the pattern sounded good to Ludlum. It also made his novels instantly recognizable on a paperback rack. But again, before we sneer, we should note that the Bourne movies were fun. And that when Ludlum did deviate from his own template, the results were not enticing. The Road to Omaha may be suspenseful, but it sure doesn’t sound like it.
More recent patterns are looser, less grammatically stringent, perhaps as a reflection of uncertain times. One current literary pattern is The Lyrical Instruction Manual, wherein the title suggests a poet trying to explain something vital while doing bong hits: Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing,Eat When You Feel Sad, How to Be Alone, How to Leave Hialeah (which, Google informs me, is near Miami, so the best way to leave is via I-95).
We Are VaguelyIncluded seems to show the influence of Miranda July, who has demonstrated talent in numerous genres while consistently formulating vaguely inclusive titles. July has a performance piece, Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About; a film, Me and You and Everyone We Know; and a story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Just typing these titles makes me feel like I’m at an extremely cool party where everyone, at some point or another, mentions their therapist.
Even more lyrical vagueness can be seen in the What Is Unspecific pattern, wherein a title seems to be referring to something concrete but probably isn’t: What We Are, What Becomes, What Was Lost, What We Keep, and, moving into Zen-koan territory, What is the What. Beyond that the only alternative is nonsense, like Tao Lin’s Eeeee Eee Eeee. Or maybe we’ve come full circle. It’s only a short step from the title of Joshua Ferris’s latest, The Unnamed, to no title at all, aka, Untitled.
Maybe it’s unfair to insinuate that writers use these patterns only to reflect a kind of hipster ontology, or out of sheer laziness. Certainly it’s unfair to present the issue completely unsympathetically. Most writers, myself included, know how difficult it can be to come up with an interesting, original title. So perhaps the answer is to find a way around the whole business by using only one-word titles, like the writer and performance artist Andrea Kleine. Or to be lucky, like author Peter Manseau, who says that for him titles are “the easiest part.” All I know is that I felt immense relief when I started writing journalism, where titles are the editor’s problem.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
It was a very tough year for all of us, what with the continuing political, social, and epidemiological upheavals. Here is what I managed to get off my desk anyway:
Fiction
My short story, Winter Break, 1986, about family responsibility and the pickle business, was published in Scud.
I wrote an opinion piece for The Forward contextualizing JK Rowling’s goblins as a trope in British literature (we’re all tired of the word “trope,” but here I think it’s valid).
So while the above output may seem small, I’m giving myself a “W” for 2022 in that I managed to publish while working full-time and being (mostly) present for my family and pushing forward on a novel draft after promising myself I’d never try another book-length manuscript again.
Hoping we all have an easier time, in writing and in life, in 2023.
Soldier using the latrine on the USS Meigs. Photo: Hanson A. Williams, Jr.
Author’s note: this story was originally published in a print-only journal, Newtown Literary.
I
They’ve got the whole regiment lined up at the Port of Tacoma, 22 July, 1950. Fifteen hundred men shouldering weapons and duffels, numbers chalked on their helmets, shuffling toward the General Darby. Hesh looks up in awe: the troopship is a horizontal skyscraper, the hull flaring upward to lifeboats, smokestacks, gangways strung like umbilical cords to the pier. He can’t get over the size of the ship, thinking, I’m going to Korea in this fucking thing.
Note: I pitched this piece to a few places and was met with silence. Rather than keep pitching and get paid somewhere between zero and and $50, I decided to post it here. Let me know what you think. —GH
Late in 2020, I noticed among female friends and colleagues a certain desperation creeping into their online messaging. There was fear about the upcoming presidential election, but also exhaustion, real exhaustion, mental and physical depletion from parenting and housework and their job (if they still had one). They were wondering when it would all end and how much more they could take. They were crying in their cars, or gaining weight, or screaming at their kids, or drinking too much, or all of the above.
These crises de coeur, by the way, were almost exclusively from straight married women. Which made me wonder: Where were the dads? Why aren’t they complaining?
