Things I Learned This Week

The First Amendment, Hettie Jones, Aimee Mann, Birdwatching, and Books

Welcome to the end of another legendary week. I’m still having the time of my life, even though my past university of employment has made a devastating mistake, and my current university of employment is in the thick of it as well. Not to mention all kinds of other stuff that is too plentiful to mention. So I’ll start of today with a First Amendment refresher and then go onto the fun stuff from there. That’s right, friends, it's come to this. Good times, right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now that that’s out of the way, can I tell you about my favorite read of the week? How I Became Hettie Jones, because like most Gen X girls who grew up in the hyper-masculine 1980s, reading fiction by men, I had no idea how many female writers there were in the Beat generation. How I never ended up reading this book, I’m not sure, but now that I’m onto this, I’ll be headed down this path for a while. As soon as I started reading, it was like meeting an old friend, so familiar am I with the time and places she writes about. She even went to college in Virginia as a Jew from New York, which is pretty spectacular. She hooked up with the Black writer LeRoi Jones, and together they founded the lit mag Yugen and Totem Press, where they published the early works of Kerouac and Ginsburg. She died last August, still a badass.

Let’s celebrate some more women by talking about Aimee Mann. Just rewatched Magnolia with my son this summer, man, is the soundtrack stamped into that movie in a big way. Aimee Mann is just a literal fucking angel. If you haven’t listened to Wise Up, the pivotal song in that movie for a while, do yourself a favor and have a listen. And then listen to Save Me, still one of my all-time favorite songs. We have tickets for the new Paul Thomas Anderson One Battle After Another when it opens next weekend, so stay tuned. Word is that the soundtrack features Eye of the Tiger. Woot!

Must-watch this week is Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching, about Quentin and Owen Reiser’s 2024 attempt to set the Lower 48 Big Year record; the “big year” the attempt to identify and observe the most bird species in the wild in one year. It’s an awesome romp into a very niche pastime that is both hilarious and mocking while still filmed with respect and love. You can watch it on YouTube with my favorite comment on there being, “You didn’t start your day thinking you would watch a documentary about birdwatching. None of us did. It’s that good.”

And some ceramic eye candy for this Friday. UK artist Lisa Stevens’s lovely sea-based pottery in porcelain and black clay that explodes in bright colors and makes me happy every time it comes up in my feed.

Lastly, in sweet celebration of the last year of Trinity University Press, I want to give a shoutout to the beautiful little book I worked on with editor and poet Jenny Browne—Texas, Being: A State of Poems, a wonderful little collection of poems about and from this beautiful and brutal state. I want to give a special shoutout to the wonderful Austin photographer Minta Maria, who contributed the cover photograph. Check out her stuff, she's awesome. I’m going to leave you with a small portion of a poem from this book by Texas writer ire'ne lara silva, whom I had the pleasure of spending some time with this week. Mexico abolished slavery almost four decades before America. Her poem is called “To the South” about the underground railroad that ran from America and into Mexico in the late 1800s—a southern path to freedom.

I imagine many homes with a light at
the window. Many kind faces. Many plates
of food. Many blankets. Many guides in the night
helping those who needed help through the
darkness, through the wild, across rivers, away
from unjust laws, away from enslavement, away.

‘Til Tuesday kids.

Burgin

(An MFA grad student at 50+… follow along and read my story here.)