There is currently a dual-author hyperfixation occurring in the Howard household. While I’m in the grip of Austenmania, my wife is deep-diving in Tolkien lore. Yesterday she showed me her binder of printed out of lineage charts of the elven families. On our walk we took turns info-dumping on each other; her explaining Morgoth Bauglir’s fall and rise and fall again, me talking about the sources of Mr. Bingley’s wealth. Last night I dreamt of Emma writing a letter inviting the gentleman Mr. Underhill, the sole inheritor of Bag End and all its titles, to a ball. The handsome, if diminutive, gentleman of the finest breeding and manners from a most laudable family. At the age of three and thirty (though what a youthful example of such!), he would be a most suitable acquaintance for her dear Harriet.

Since last writing, I have finished Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, and will have finished Emma by the time of this publishing. We’ve also watched the 1999 film of the latter, and on a whim, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Both films represented large departures from their source material, though only one had a knife fight between potential lovers where their clothes got progressively cut off.

It shouldn’t be surprising how much I can accomplish when not looking at social media or listening to podcasts, though it is. I’m quite ashamed to admit to how much time I was wasting on Instagram that I could have spent learning the nefarious deeds of many a coxcomb in the Regency countryside. I also had a productive pottery class, played Dungeons and Dragons at the library, and cooked an enormous amount of Super Bowl food.

I’m more or less halfway through the Austen catalog (Lady Susan is a short novella), and I can’t imagine loving one of her books more than I’m loving Emma. It’s so funny, first of all, but also dang it if it isn’t capital T true. I’ve already been so amazed that someone writing two centuries ago has a comedic and literary voice that resonates so well today. I’ve always been skeptical of the so-called generational divides, and have never been more so upon reading the writings of centuries ago and finding so much to relate to. So much of what we say about boomers, millennials, gen z, and my forgotten generation could easily be summarized by Jane Austen: young people are silly, middle aged people are scared, older people have stopped caring what people think about them.

My understanding is that Emma is the most flawed of Austen’s heroines, and maybe that’s why I, a mess, relate to her so much. I also strongly suspect that she has ADHD, like me. She collects hobbies to the point of proficiency but not excellence, hyper-fixates on one thing at a time to the point of obsession, and is relentless in novelty-seeking. And while loyal to her friends and charitable to the needy, suffers from jealousy, pettiness, and a distinct mean streak, which I’m afraid I have to admit to, though it’s something I’ve tried my whole adult life to actively counteract.

When Frank Churchill comes to town, Emma finds a kindred spirit in mocking her neighbors, and commits the comedy sin of punching down at someone at a lower station than herself. I couldn’t help remembering a friend of mine who I am still very fond of but who I have to admit brings out those latent tendencies in me. Once, when spending time with this friend and some others, my wife pointed out that we were “mean girls,” making fun of strangers for the mildest of fashion or behavioral faux pas. It was a side of me she had probably seen only glimpses of before, was clearly not impressive, and something I should have done away with long before.

That Emma will experience a harsh comeuppance for this behavior seems inevitable (I’ve seen the movie so I have a good idea of where this is going). She can work to remedy her ways, but wounds will still fester. I have to deal with the fact that in spite of all the work I’ve done to be a kinder person, I will always have a reputation among some of being thoughtlessly cruel. As they are no longer in my life, I can’t do much about it now. My only hope is that by continuing to surround myself with people who assume the best in their community members, that will continue to rub off on me and I won’t keep making the same mistakes.

—

This was my first full week of Log Cabin February, and there have been a handful of events that make me feel good about my decisions to distance myself from social media. I’m glad I didn’t have to participate in Super Bowl Halftime Discourse, for example. Like Emma will soon be forced to learn, I am reminded that my opinion isn’t necessary in all moments about every little thing. They may, even, be woefully misguided. And if mine adds to the clamor of people disaffected because this thing or that is no longer the Way it Used to Be, it’s also not welcome.

It’s weird after being so fully immersed that to distance myself even for a week from the opinion machines and just grappling with the world through my own eyes only is difficult and jarring. I don’t have to take to the internet to find out if other people like the Fallout tv show as much as I do; instead I can just like it. It makes me wish I wasn’t looking at social media when Stranger Things finished. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn’t subconsciously defending it from critics who keep watching something they hate for the sole point of being able to make Points about it Online. I forgot what it’s like to just take in information without micro-blogged takes or phone-screen deconstructions.

It feels good.

It would be dope, I think, if we collectively could acknowledge that some things just aren’t for us, even and especially when it seems like they’re unavoidably popular. An estimated 150 million people watched, which is almost half of the United States’ population. I suppose there is no other cultural event left that draws that many of us to the same event anymore. I don’t know why the whole country watches the Super Bowl. It’s the equivalent of there being a social expectation to watch the season finale of The Bachelor every year, even if you’d never seen another episode. Is this a good one of these? Who knows! I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at. Instead, because I don’t care about or for it, I spend the time lamenting my fate on the internet.

As someone who (unfortunately) loves football, it bums me out that my fun makes you miserable. Don’t be miserable! If you’re there alongside family or a spouse, eat your food and go for a walk, engage young family members, put on some Mario Kart rounds in the basement, play the pianoforte in the parlor or practice your drawing. I assure you the commercials have never actually been good.

This has become one of my deepest values: if it ain’t worth it, hit the bricks. Bail on books, quit on tv shows midseason, walk out of movies, stop eating that thing that makes you sick, take a break from the football season when your team is bad and revisit it when the playoffs start (if at all). If your club or church or friend group or fandom brings more anxiety than edification, I give you permission to step away. It may feel like an integral part of your personality, but you’ll be surprised at how much of yourself still exists even though you’re no longer the Star Wars guy. If you feel better away, you can stay away. If you find you miss it terribly, work on a way to engage with it in a healthier way when you return. In much of my thirties and forties, my life has improved through subtraction and simplification. There are more examples of this than I can list. You’ll not only make life better for yourself, but your absence will make for a better place for folks who still want to be there without you bellyaching within it.

I don’t know if this sounds preachy or not, I apologize if it does. What I do know is that these are all corporations. The company that makes your favorite super hero movie, the owners of the sport team whose colors you decorate your office with (unless you’re a Green Bay Packers fan), the streaming services that make propaganda to appease a government so that they can be allowed to consolidate even further. They are dragons sitting on hoards while people starve. That doesn’t mean art that resonates with you isn’t made by real artists–at least for now–or that your emotions aren’t real. But the decisions their funders make are financial ones. And they are harming us. At the very least either enjoy yourself or deny them even one more penny if you aren’t.

If you want to enjoy some fine entertainment without enriching a billionaire, the Jane Austen books are all public domain now.

–

Okey dokey artichokes, big news:
This weekend I listened on vinyl to Nine Inch Nails, Pretty Hate Machine; Phoebe Bridgers, Punisher; and Metric, Art of Doubt.

Metric is on tour soon, so is Jimmy Eat World! So is Brandi Carlile and Nine Inch Nails. Hit me up if you’re there.Hey it’s our first newsletter and wow this is more work than I thought.

As no true Scotsman would put sugar in porridge

No actual cedars are found

Growing natively

In any or all Americas.

Why, there are cedars in those very mountains!

You may be saying

Have you not seen our redcedars?

Many a town or high school in the West bears the name.

Check

And

Mate

And like the pedant of fallacy lore

My rejoinder is that those lineages trace to the cypress family

And

And this is very important

Definitively not Himalayan or mediterranean

Cedrus from the pine one.

We all pine for what we never had

Like our misnomer’d and contorted

Evergreens.

As lovely and sweet-smelling as a juniper

Or strapping sequoia,

One mourns for what could be.

The Portuguese call this

Saudade

Nostalgia for what never was

Nor may occur.

My daughter collected guidebooks

Of dragon species

Their habitats and haunts

For how can a world with giraffes and

The platypus

Not have magic hidden still?

Though how’s this for secret enchantment:

Shelter to countless ecosystem dwellers,

And observe the “berry”

The false cedar’s twice misnomered cone

Vital food for winter birds

Ceremonial purifier

Stuffing in a plague doctor’s mask

Sourdough starter source.

True is not all a tree can be

I am taking any and all submissions. Poems, art, essays. The only request is that the fit into the general vibe of what I do online, these include: ecology, domestic violence and sexual assault advocacy, books, recipes

Also, if you make stuff that you sell online, I would love to feature your products in anticipation of stocking season.

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