AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR
A friend sent me this reflection by Maggie Nelson published yesterday in the The New Yorker entitled "Finding Moments of Calm During a Pandemic." Nelson describes re-reading Natalia Ginzburg's essay "Winter in the Abruzzi" (this is Dick Davis' translation and Lynne Sharon Schwartz has a fine one too), calling it "an essay I consider one of …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (24) Deus nobis haec otia fecit"
On a good day: And this is how I feel on a bad one: https://dailymotion.com/video/x2wzqqj (Don't worry "Silver Linings" will be back tomorrow. I just thought I'd revive my "This is how I feel..." series to mix it up a little.) (And although I find the first video here hilarious, there is a disturbing …
My great friend and fellow translator Ann Goldstein will be reading from Elena Ferrante's new novel The Lying Life of Adults tomorrow night! The Center for Fiction and Europa Editions have put together an inspiring and innovative virtual event on Zoom. Hope to see you there! MONDAY 4/6 | 9:15PM (EST) Our Brilliant Friends: After Dinner …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (23) Elena Ferrante and Ann Goldstein Go Zooming"
So I was wondering when and how the universe would speak to me again and they did today indirectly, randomly, serendipitously which is the universe's preferred way of communicating with me and frankly my preferred way of hearing from them--that direct thing was way out of pocket. They spoke to me during my run …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (22) Spiritual Hand Holding Through Our Blood"
This is a photograph of Annie Easley (1933-2011), another trailblazing black woman scientist who worked at Nasa during the "Hidden Figures" era. Easley is an inspiration for computer scientist Timnit Gebru, born in Ethiopia, now a resident in the US. Gebru is leading the charge to expose bias in the "alogrithyms that run our lives." …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (21) The Undersampled Majority"
You really need to watch this all the way to the end. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- التباعد الاجتماعي dervaytern zikh fun andere soziale Distanzierung on reste à la maison, faites pareil stay the f— home Read about how people across the globe are discussing and translating "Social Distancing." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Italian Red Cross thanked Michele and Stefania for …
Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. And around the world innovation is happening at rapid speed in the face of necessity. Today I read about a physicist who is using technology for holographic protein binding to potentially form the basis for a highly accurate, easily administered, fast, and affordable test for the coronavirus. …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (19) The Mother of Invention"
I have had the great good fortune to fall in love at first sight with two men in my life. The first was Luca whom I first laid eyes on in the summer of 1984 while working behind the cash register at Laura Ashley on Madison Avenue. It was a very busy afternoon and out …
On my run in Riverside Park today, I was listening to a favorite podcast which I will get to in a minute, and heard about for the first time the hugely important and influential activist and civil rights leader Audley Moore, better known as Queen Mother Moore. The Queen Mother lived for a very long …
Continue reading "Silver Linings (17) Discovering the Other Queen Mother"
So today I'm posting to you from bed where I have been languishing all day--not with "the roni" as my sons call the virus, but with what is probably a hang-over after too many quarantinis exacerbated by the usual middle of the night panic: "Do I have it?" "What will happen if I get it?" …
Jenny McPhee 