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The Vital and Surprising Role of Driftwood

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You may see a piece of driftwood at the beach or on the shore and wonder about its journey from land to water, and back to land again. As Brian Payton reports at Hakai Magazine, Driftwood is not only beautiful. It’s a critical piece of the marine ecosystem that offers vital sanctuary to breeding insects and invertebrates on shore and in the sea, who in turn feed species all the way up the marine food chain.

Dead trees were sailing the seas long before our ancestors conceived of the ax or skiff, long before the continents split and went their separate ways. And yet, when a tree falls in a river or stream today, it can set out on a journey that remains little studied and poorly understood.

A tree undergoes reincarnation when it lands in flowing water. Branches, bark, and heartwood—what appears to be nothing more than floating debris—become either home to or sustenance for a range of plants and animals. In old-growth forests, up to 70 percent of the organic matter from fallen trees remains in streams long enough to nurture the organisms living there, passing through the digestive tracts of bacteria, fungi, and insects. Caddis flies and mayflies undergo their metamorphosis into adults while anchored to floating wood. When they emerge, they in turn become food for salmon fry, salamanders, bats, and birds. Larger logs control the very shape and flow of streams, creating pools and back eddies where returning salmon rest and spawn. These pools provide critical shelter for young salmon as they hatch, feed, and hide from predators before they make a break for the open sea.

As wood passes through the floodplain, it collides with and remakes the shore. Some becomes anchored there, trapping silt and seeds. As new vegetation takes root, deer mice, voles, shrews, and chipmunks move in for the harvest. Weasels, minks, and hawks make meals of them and fertilize the soil. Wood that drifts into estuaries becomes perches for hungry bald eagles and herons; rafts for weary cormorants, pelicans, and seals; and nurseries for herring eggs.

It is estimated that, in the habitat associated with a single large piece of oceangoing driftwood, the combined weight of the associated tuna alone can add up to as much as 100 tonnes—or the equivalent of well over half a million cans of tuna.

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Take Me Out to the Ball Game: A Baseball Reading List

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When I was a kid, the world appeared most vivid to me during the longest days of summer: grass sprouted greener than ever before, my grandparents’ neighborhood pool shimmered cerulean, wisps of white-feathered clouds trailed across the sky. I can’t quite put my finger on what steeped those moments so much in the sensory — whether it was because I was younger and could give myself over more easily to sound and color, or if it was because I was only a visitor. Every June, I would travel with my family from Indonesia, where I lived, to the United States. Far from my normal routine, summer memories from the sleepy towns of extended family left distinct impressions.

In North Carolina, my grandparents took me and my brother to minor league baseball games. I don’t ever remember which team won or anything remarkable happening, but I hold a particular fondness for the solid thwack of a bat against ball, ice-cold drinks sweating in the heat, sepia-toned sand, the low rumble of an announcer’s voice, sunflower seed shells discarded on concrete, and pinstripes. Something about going to the games felt quintessentially American to me. Perhaps it was because we usually visited around the fourth of July, so some nights fireworks would light the sky. Or maybe it was the scene that reminded me of where I was: a baseball diamond dotted with American flags for a sport called the national pastime, my hand held to my chest during the anthem, brands like Minute Maid and Dippin’ Dots within grasp. Still now, when I go to baseball games, nostalgia pulls me back so that I’m somehow 10 again, perched at the edge of my plastic seat, hair sweaty against my neck, waiting for someone to call the kids out for a run around the bases.

My perspective is largely rooted in these personal memories, which hasn’t always allowed me to see the full texture of the sport. The following essays complicate my relationship to baseball in productive ways by revealing gender disparities, different culture’s approaches to the game, hidden histories, parallels to the craft of writing, and moments of trauma on and away from the field.

1. The Hidden Queer History Behind “A League of Their Own” (Britni de la Cretaz, May 5, 2018, Narratively)

With many men deployed in World War II, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (A.A.G.P.B.L.) was formed, in which women were told to, “‘Play like a man, look like a lady.’” Britni de la Cretaz, by sifting through obituaries and interviewing players, uncovers a fascinating hidden history within the league.

She understands today that talking about being a gay athlete is a double-edged sword, in a way. There’s the stereotype that women athletes are all lesbians, which is both inaccurate and unfair. And yet, there’s also the truth that there are many athletes who are also lesbians.

2. The 9 Minutes That Almost Changed America (Kate Nocera and Lissandra Villa, May 14, 2018, Buzzfeed News)

While practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game, an annual bipartisan event that takes place every summer between Republicans and Democrats, a man “fired 62 7.62 x 39mm rounds through a lawfully purchased Century International Arms SKS-style semiautomatic assault rifle” at members of the Republican team. Kate Nocera and Lissandra Villa, in this harrowing piece, reflect on the act of terrorism and how close the event came to changing modern politics and life as we know it.

 

It occurred to a few of them then that maybe the dugout wasn’t really that safe after all. And if you go to the field, you can see bullet holes through the top of the dugout, sheds, and metal poles on the fence.

 

3. This is why baseball is so white (Alvin Chang, October 24, 2017, Vox)

In this powerful collection of personal memory and demographic information related to baseball from the 1980’s to 2016, Alvin Chang writes that even though baseball teams have slowly become more diverse, the culture surrounding baseball has not.

 

But only looking at who’s on the field misses something very important: Baseball is still very white. The people who are in power are almost all white — and the cultural forces behind baseball are too.

4. He Was the Best We’d Ever Seen: On Baseball, Greatness, and Writing (Seth Sawyers, Lit Hub)

High school baseball up in the Appalachians is a rough red sleeve wiped against the nostrils four dozen times. It’s a Dan’s Mountain wind whistling your batting helmet’s ear hole. It’s a dozen scattered parents, wrapped in four, five layers, large cups of Sheetz coffee long gone cold on the warped bleachers etched: Sentinels Rule Campers Suck.

 

In this personal essay, Seth Sawyers reflects on playing baseball against Walker Chapman, a baseball legend in his hometown, and what it means to seek greatness in both writing and sport.

5. The Art of Letting Go (Mina Kimes, writer, with illustrator Mickey Duzyj, October 4, 2016, ESPN The Magazine)

As Major League Baseball struggles to overcome its staid image and lure younger fans — according to Nielsen, most of the sport’s TV viewers are over 50 — the simple bat flip has come to symbolize the culture war being waged within its ranks.

While bat-flipping is seen as disrespectful during baseball games in the U.S., it’s a celebrated part of baseball in Korea. Why? After finding no satisfying answer from American and Korean sports writers and historians, writer Mina Kimes, accompanied by illustrator Mickey Duzyj, traveled to Korea to learn more about why bat flipping is an integral part of the game.

6. How to make the Team USA women’s baseball team (Natalie Weiner, August 22, 2018, SB Nation)

While women in Japan, Australia, and Canada are encouraged to play baseball, the same does not happen in the U.S.

 

In the U.S., not only are there are no reliable opportunities for women to play professional baseball, but the sport is still considered taboo for women — even though they’ve been playing it for over a century.

Natalie Weiner explores the various factors — sexist societal expectations, lack of financial incentive, an uninformed public, funding from universities that prompts women to switch from playing baseball to softball — that make it difficult for women baseball players to commit to their craft.

Related Read: The Old Ball Game: 100 Years After Amanda Clement, Baseball Still Can’t Recruit Female Umpires (Britni de la Cretaz, February 12, 2018, Bitch Magazine)

7. Home Field Disadvantage (Kelsey McKinney, November 2018, Longreads)

Because of lack of general support for women’s baseball, the U.S. team only had the chance to train together for five days before the 10-day 2018 Women’s Baseball World Cup — and even at the World Cup, there was barely an audience for their games. Each player on the U.S. team, remarkably talented, had overcome a lifetime of disparaging attitudes toward their participation in the sport, as Kelsey McKinney makes clear through her research and wide range of personal interviews in this piece.

 

According to a survey of high school athletics conducted by the National Federation of State High School Associations, almost half a million boys play baseball at the high school level. In the 2017–2018 school year, only 1,762 girls played baseball.

 

***

 

 

 

Jacqueline Alnes is working on a memoir about running and neurological illness. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @jacquelinealnes.

 

 

‘The Home Is a Place as Wild as Any in the World.’

Moose grazing in Cook Inlet with Anchorage Alaska in the background. Jonny No Trees / Getty

Alex Madison | Longreads | May 2019 | 13 minutes (3,462 words)

In the opening pages of Chia-Chia Lin’s gorgeous debut novel, The Unpassing, ten-year-old Gavin lays in the grass with his father, searching for meteors in an autumn sky. His father claims to see them, but Gavin is doubtful: “Either my eyes were not fast enough, or he willed those fragments of space debris into being. They flamed with the intensity of his wanting.”

We learn Gavin’s family has followed this flame of wanting from Taiwan to the U.S. and eventually all the way to Anchorage, where Gavin’s father feels “closer to the stars.” It’s 1986, and Gavin and his three siblings — Pei Pei, Natty and Ruby — eagerly anticipate the launch of the Challenger shuttle, hungrily gathering details about civilian astronaut Christa McAuliffe. Their world hums with yearning and potential. But before the first chapter ends, Gavin contracts meningitis and slips into a coma, only to awaken in a new world: a world in which the Challenger has exploded, and four-year-old Ruby has caught his illness and died. What follows is the unspooling of a new, lonelier life for each family member.

While Ruby’s death charges each of the novel’s movements, my experience of reading was filled with more wonder than sadness. Even as calamity shortens their childhoods, Gavin and his siblings remain vibrant. Their sorrow can’t erase the marvels of never-ending summer light or the joys of tromping among mysterious fauna with new friends. Grief also holds its own wretched beauty — peeling away surfaces and exposing raw feeling. The aura of grief hovers at the edges of Gavin’s experiences, but his observations are also threaded with strangeness and humor.

Chia-Chia Lin is heartbreakingly attuned to the nuance and depth of the children’s perspectives, and Gavin’s narration reflects an acute sensitivity to his family’s emotional weather. Her prose is unadorned but luminous, distilled to potent precision: “two punch holes” of Natty’s pupils in the night, “shredded clouds” announcing summer, a baseball cap that “sliced and resliced a line in the air.” Read more…

The Mysterious Disappearance of Sam Sayers

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After summiting Washington state’s Vesper Peak on a day hike in August 2018, Sam Sayers disappeared. At Seattle Met, Allison Williams reports on the conspiracy and true-crime enthusiasts, the social media frenzy, and the desperate search for a woman who hasn’t been seen since.

THE TRAIL REGISTER may be the last tangible piece of Sam on Vesper Peak, the last one you can physically touch, but there was one more sign of her. That sunny August Wednesday, a hiker stopped a few hundred feet below the top, right above the meadow where Kevin would one day erect his camp.

The hiker turns his camera in a blurry panorama, catching blue sky over boulder fields, the sharp peaks that circle Lake Elan. A big open space where it looks like you can see everything. As the camera trains on Vesper Peak, a figure ascends the scramble route, passing other climbers at a determined pace.

Sam has a hiking pole in each hand, head down as she earns the last of the 4,200-foot climb. This is the stance of someone who doesn’t give up. The camera moves on, and Sam continues ever upward.

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The Joy of Watching (and Rewatching) Movies So Bad They’re Good

Wiseau-Films, Warner Bros, American International Pictures, Quintet Productions, Four Leaf Productions, Mid-America Pictures

Michael Musto | Longreads | Month 2019 | 8 minutes (2,090 words)

 

I’ve known about the power of good/bad movies since I was a kid, but I was reminded of it just a few days after 9/11, when I went to a press screening of Mariah Carey’s unwitting classic Glitter.

Naturally, New York City was traumatized, many of us going through the motions in a daze as we tried to make sense of the horror. But we had to make a living, so, along with a handful of other arts journalists, I dragged myself to the screening, not sure of what we were getting into. It turned out to be the hackneyed story of a DJ who tries to lift a backup singer (Mariah) up from her humble roots through song and romance. And it was evident quickly into the film that Mariah just didn’t have the acting chops; the new Meryl Streep this wasn’t. We uncomfortably sat there watching the pop diva try to act, but eventually we couldn’t hold back, and a few of her line readings were greeted with titters — the first time I’d heard laughter (including my own) since 9/11. It sounded both shocking and very welcome, and the unintended reaction mounted during a ludicrous scene where Mariah and the DJ were magically thinking of the same melody. By the end, when Mariah spills out of a limo in a glittery gown to visit her dirt-poor mother, we were all screaming in hilarity. This was just the catharsis we needed, and it generously helped us bond and move on.

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Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail

AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty

Suzanne Roberts| Almost Somewhere | University of Nebraska Press | September 2012 | 36 minutes (7,365 words)

 

Day 1

Summer’s 3 Percent

Whitney Portal (8,360) to Outpost Camp (10,080) 3.8 miles

 

Going on twenty-three, I fancied myself a naturalist, thought I knew about the wilderness, about wildness, because I had been an avid reader of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau. I enjoyed reading about Muir’s exciting climb into a giant Douglas spruce during a torrential windstorm. I liked to imagine a young bearded Muir climbing into the treetops, wind whipped like a kite.

Once on the trail, however, I had my doubts.

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Canada’s Breeding Ground for Hate

Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press via AP

The country that seems so attractive to so many Americans fatigued by Trump, racism, and conservative politics is not immune to the violent nationalism that plagues its southern neighbors. For the Globe and Mail, Shannon Carranco and Jon Milton examine some 150,000 messages posted on a video game app to expose the new Canadian far-right’s attempts to expand its network, recruit members, and influence politics. Better educated and organized than past generations, this new generation of racist, anti-immigrant, sexist homophobes aims to create a white ethno-state. Rather than paraphrase the nationalists’ vitriol, the Globe chose “transparency and accuracy” by including direct transcripts of offensive conversations in order, the paper writes, to paint “a disturbing portrait of a virulent subculture that speaks in a graphic, hate-fuelled vernacular.” This is excellent reporting.

Not long ago, the far right seemed a negligible force. In 2014, CSIS declared on its website that right-wing extremism was not a significant problem in Canada. In part, that lack of concern reflected a view of the far right as self-defeatingly fractious. Groups tended to spring up – and disappear ­– with regularity, often destroyed by infighting. They were dismissed as an ineffectual rump of high-school dropouts who couldn’t effectively organize anything.

According to Barbara Perry, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and a leading expert on the far right in Canada, the threat of far-right violence here is often underestimated. Between 1985 and 2015, her research shows, roughly 120 violent incidents in Canada could be attributed to far-right groups and individuals. That compares, she says, with a relative handful of incidents that can be attributed to Islamist-inspired suspects, who tend to draw far more intense scrutiny from police and intelligence agencies.

Among the most horrific examples in recent years were a deliberate attack on police in New Brunswick in 2014, in which three officers were killed; and a shooting at a Quebec City mosque in January, 2017, that left six people dead. In both cases, the men convicted of the killings had been radicalized online.

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Game of Crones

Illustration by Homestead

Laura Lippman | Longreads | May 2019 | 16 minutes (4,090 words)

[1]

My daughter was 10 days old the first time I was asked if I were her grandmother.

It was the second week of an unseasonably early Baltimore heat wave and I had managed to maneuver her stroller across my neighborhood’s bumpy, narrow sidewalks to my favorite coffee shop. Almost nine years later, I still remember the one spot on our street where the juxtaposition of a tree planter and a set of rowhouse steps made it physically impossible to push a stroller through at any angle. One either had to lift the stroller a foot in the air or bump it over the curb into the street, a solution I figured out only after much grunting and angling. By the time I arrived at the coffee shop, I was sweaty and unkempt.

A young man peered into the stroller, then glanced at my face: “Oh, are you her grandmother?” Only three days earlier, a woman had seen me boarding a plane with my newborn, eyed me approvingly and whispered: “You look amazing!” An unearned compliment — my daughter didn’t come out of my body and my body’s not that great, anyway — but I had been happy to take it. I’m not dumb. I knew the grandmother question would be asked again and again, and that compliments would be rare.

I tried out a simple, direct reply, the one I use to this day: “No, I’m her mother, but I am old enough to be her grandmother, so it’s understandable that you would ask.”

I thought my answer generous. But in the years since my daughter was born, I have discovered that people who ask rude questions feel terribly affronted if you say anything that implies they have just asked a rude question.

“But I’ve seen that baby with a young couple,” the man said. “Out and about in the neighborhood.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No, I absolutely have,” he insisted. “She’s been going around with a young couple.”

I let it go. I live in a city that, year in and year out, has a startlingly high teenage pregnancy rate, and consequently a high number of young grandmothers, some of whom end up raising their grandchildren. I’d be proud to be one of those women. But I am not. I’m just an old mom and I’m cool with that. Say a word or a phrase often enough, and it loses its power. I’m an old mom. I’m 60. I’m a 60-year-old woman with a third-grader. I am old. I am 60. I am old. I am old. I am old.

“You don’t look old to me,” my daughter has said on more than one occasion. “You could be in your 40s, your 30s, you could be in college, you could be in high school.”

Uber drivers say something similar, but at least I know why they’re blowing smoke up my ass. I’m not sure what my daughter wants, but she’s been eyeing the American Girl Doll spaceship, which lists at $449.99 on eBay. Good luck with that, honey. Mama’s got money, but she’s not crazy.

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Critics: Endgame

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Soraya Roberts | Longreads | May 2019 | 9 minutes (2,309 words)

It’s a strange feeling being a cultural critic at this point in history. It’s like standing on the deck of the Titanic, feeling it sink into the sea, hearing the orchestra play as they go down — then reviewing the show. Yes, it feels that stupid. And useless. And beside the point. But what if, I don’t know, embedded in that review, is a dissection of class hierarchy, of the fact that the players are playing because what else are you supposed to do when you come from the bottom deck? And what if the people left behind with them are galvanized by this knowledge? And what if, I don’t know, one of them does something about it, like stowing away their kids on a rich person’s boat? And what if someone is saved who might otherwise not have been? If art can save your soul, can’t writing about it do something similar?

The climate report, that metaphorical iceberg, hit in October. You know, the one that said we will all be royally screwed by 2040 unless we reduce carbon emissions to nothing. And then came news story after news story, like a stream of crime scene photos — submerged villages, starving animals, bleached reefs — again and again, wave after wave. It all coalesced into the moment David Attenborough — the man famous for narrating documentaries on the wonders of nature — started narrating the earth’s destruction. I heard about that scene in Our Planet, the one where the walruses start falling off the cliffs because there is no ice left to support them, and I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. Just like I couldn’t bring myself to read about the whales failing to reproduce and the millions of people being displaced. As a human being I didn’t know what to do, and as a cultural critic I was just as lost. So when Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation launched “Covering Climate Change: A New Playbook for a 1.5-Degree World,” along with a piece on how to get newsrooms to prioritize the environment, I got excited. Here is the answer, I thought. Finally.

But there was no answer for critics. I had to come up with one myself.

* * *

Four years ago, William S. Smith, soon to be the editor of Art in America, attended the Minneapolis-based conference “Superscript: Arts Journalism and Criticism in a Digital Age” and noticed the same strange feeling I mentioned. “The rousing moments when it appeared that artists could be tasked with emergency management and that critics could take on vested interests were, however, offset by a weird — and I would say mistaken — indulgence of powerlessness,” he wrote, recalling one speaker describing “criticism as the ‘appendix’ of the art world; it could easily be removed without damaging the overall system.” According to CJR, arts criticism has been expiring at a faster rate than newspapers themselves (is that even possible?). And when your job is devalued so steadily by the industry, it’s hard not to internalize. In these precarious circumstances, exercising any power, let alone taking it on, starts to feel Herculean.

Last week’s bloody battle — not that one — was only the latest reminder of critics’ growing insignificance. In response to several celebrities questioning their profession, beleaguered critics who might have proven they still matter by addressing larger, more urgent issues, instead made their critics’ point by making it all about themselves. First there was Saturday Night Live writer Michael Che denigrating Uproxx writer Steven Hyden on Instagram for critiquing Che’s Weekend Update partner Colin Jost. Then there was Lizzo tweeting that music reviewers should be “unemployed” after a mixed Pitchfork review. And finally, Ariana Grande calling out “all them blogs” after an E! host criticized Justin Bieber’s performance during her show. Various wounded critics responded in kind, complaining that people with so much more clout were using it to devalue them even more than they already have been. “It’s doubtful, for instance, that Lizzo or Grande would have received such blowback if they hadn’t invoked the specter of joblessness in a rapidly deteriorating industry,” wrote Alison Herman at The Ringer, adding, “They’re channeling a deeply troubling trend in how the public exaggerates media members’ power, just as that power — such as it is — has never been less secure.” 

That was the refrain of the weeklong collective wound-lick: “We’re just doing our jobs.” But it all came to a head when Olivia Munn attacked Go Fug Yourself, the fashion criti-comic blog she misconstrued as objectifying snark. “Red carpet fashion is a big business and an art form like any other, and as such there is room to critique it,” site owners Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan responded, while a number of other critics seized the moment to redefine their own jobs, invoking the anti-media stance of the current administration to convey the gravity of misinterpreting their real function, which they idealized beyond reproach. At Vanity Fair, chief critic Richard Lawson wrote of his ilk offering “a vital counterbalance in whatever kind of cultural discourse we’re still able to have.” The Ringer’s Herman added that criticism includes “advocacy and the provision of context in addition to straightforward pans,” while Caroline Framke at Variety simply said, “Real critics want to move a conversation forward.” Wow, it almost makes you want to be one.

I understand the impulse to lean into idolatry in order to underscore the importance of criticism. Though it dates back as far as art itself, the modern conception of the critic finds its roots in 18th-century Europe, in underground socially aware critiques of newly arrived public art. U.K. artist James Bridle summed up this modern approach at “Superscript,” when he argued that the job of art is “to disrupt and complicate” society, adding, “I don’t see how criticism can function without making the same level of demands and responding to the same challenges as art itself — in a form of solidarity, but also for its own survival.” Despite this unifying objective, it’s important to be honest about what in actual practice passes for criticism these days (and not only in light of the time wasted by critics defending themselves). A lot of it — a lot — kowtows to fandom. And not just within individual reviews, but in terms of what is covered; “criticism” has largely become a publicity-fueled shill of the most high-profile popular culture. The positivity is so pervasive that the odd evisceration of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, for instance, becomes cause for communal rejoicing. An element of much of this polarized approach is an auteur-style analysis that treats each subject like a hermetically sealed objet d’art that has little interaction with the world.

The rare disruption these days tends to come from — you guessed it — writers of color, from K. Austin Collins turning a Green Book review into a meditation on the erasure of black history to Doreen St. Felix’s deconstruction of a National Geographic cover story into the erasure of a black future. This is criticism which does not just wrestle with the work, but also wrestles with the work within the world, parsing the way it reflects, feeds, fights — or none of the above — the various intersections of our circumstances. “For bold and original reviews that strove to put stage dramas within a real-world cultural context, particularly the shifting landscape of gender, sexuality and race,” the Pulitzer committee announced in awarding New Yorker theatre critic Hilton Als in 2017. A year later the prize for feature writing went to Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, the one freelancer among the nominated staffers, for a GQ feature on Dylann Roof. Profiling everyone from Dave Chappelle to Missy Elliott, Ghansah situates popular culture within the present, the past, the personal, the political — everywhere, really. And this is what the best cultural criticism does. It takes the art and everything around it, and it reckons with all of that together.

But the discourse around art has not often included climate change, barring work which specifically addresses it. Following recent movements that have awoken the general populace to various systemic inequities, we have been slowly shifting toward an awareness of how those inequities inform contemporary popular culture. This has manifested in criticism with varying levels of success, from clunky references to Trump to more considered analyses of how historic disparity is reflected in the stories that are currently told. And while there has been an expansion in representation in the arts as a result, the underlying reality of these systemic shifts is that they don’t fundamentally affect the bottom line of those in power. There is a social acceptability to these adaptations, one which does not ask the 1 Percent to confront its very existence, ending up subsumed under it instead. A more threatening prospect would be reconsidering climate change, which would also involve reconsidering the economy — and the people who benefit from it the most.  

We are increasingly viewing extreme wealth not as success but as inequity — Disney’s billion-dollar opening weekend with Avengers: Endgame was undercut not only by critics who questioned lauding a company that is cannibalizing the entertainment industry, but by Bernie Sanders: “What would be truly heroic is if Disney used its profits from Avengers to pay all of its workers a middle class wage, instead of paying its CEO Bob Iger $65.6 million — over 1,400 times as much as the average worker at Disney makes.” More pertinent, however, is how environmentally sustainable these increasingly elaborate productions are. I am referring to not only literal productions, involving sets and shoots, but everything that goes into making and distributing any kind of art. (That includes publicity — what do you think the carbon footprint of BTS is?) In 2006, a report conducted by UCLA found that the film and television industries contributed more to air pollution in the region than almost all five of the other sectors studied. “From the environmental impact estimates, greenhouse gas emissions are clearly an area where the motion picture industry can be considered a significant contributor,” it stated, concluding, “it is clear that very few people in the industry are actively engaged with greenhouse gas emission reduction, or even with discussions of the issue.”

The same way identity politics has taken root in the critic’s psyche, informing the writing we do, so too must climate change. Establishing a sort of cultural carbon footprint will perhaps encourage outlets not to waste time hiring fans to write outdated consumers reviews that do no traffic in Rotten Tomatoes times. Instead of distracting readers with generic takes, they might shift their focus to the specifics of, for instance, an environmental narrative, such as the one in the lame 2004 disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow, which has since proven itself to be (if nothing else) a useful illustration of how climate change can blow cold as well as hot. While Game of Thrones also claimed a climate-driven plot, one wonders whether, like the aforementioned Jake Gyllenhaal blockbuster, the production planted $200,000 worth of trees to offset the several thousand tons of carbon dioxide it emitted. If the planet is on our minds, perhaps we will also feature Greta Thunberg in glossy magazines instead of Bari Weiss or Kellyanne Conway. Last year, The New York Times’ chief film critic, A.O. Scott, who devoted an entire book to criticism, wrote, “No reader will agree with a critic all the time, and no critic requires obedience or assent from readers. What we do hope for is trust. We try to earn it through the quality of our writing and the clarity of our thought, and by telling the truth.” And the most salient truth of all right now is that there is no art if the world doesn’t exist.

* * *

I am aware that I’m on one of the upper decks of this sinking ship. I have a contract with Longreads, which puts me somewhere in the lower middle class (that may sound unimpressive, but writers have a low bar). Perhaps even better than that, I work for a publication for which page views are not the driving force, so I can write to importance rather than trends. I am aware, also, that a number of writers do not have this luxury, but misrepresenting themselves as the vanguards of criticism not only does them a disservice but also discredits the remaining thoughtful discourse around art. A number of critics, however, are positioned better than me. Yet they personalize the existential question into one that is merely about criticism when the real question is wider: It’s about criticism in the world.

I am not saying that climate change must be shoehorned into every article‚ though even a non sequitur would be better than nothing — but I am saying that just as identity politics is now a consideration when we write, our planet should be too. What I am asking for is simply a widening of perspective, besides economics, besides race, beyond all things human, toward a cultural carbon footprint, one which becomes part of the DNA of our critiques and determines what we choose to talk about and what we say when we do. After more than 60 years of doing virtually the same thing, even nonagenarian David Attenborough knew he had to change tacks; it wasn’t enough just to show the loss of natural beauty, he had to point out how it affects us directly. As he told the International Monetary Fund last month: “We are in terrible, terrible trouble and the longer we wait to do something about it the worse it is going to get.” In Our Planet, Attenborough reminds us over and over that our survival depends on the earth’s. For criticism to survive, it must remind us just as readily.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

Lengua Tacos

Getty, photo collage by Homestead

Feliz Moreno | Longreads | May 2019 | 24 minutes (6,008 words)

I am 26 and I haven’t been back to México to visit my dad’s extended family since I was 5 years old, and this isn’t because of financial or legal obstacles. When my youngest sister, Belén, finishes her undergraduate studies and announces that, in celebration, she wants to take a family trip to Michoacán, México, I am not enthusiastic about the idea. When plans for the trip solidify and I request time off from work, my boss asks me if I speak Spanish. “I understand more than I speak,” I tell her, as I fill out the time off request form.

I don’t remember much about the trip we made when I was 5, but I know that my language habits were already solidified at that point, that my understanding of the world had already been shaped by the hard ‘j’ consonant sound found in words like ‘juice’ and ‘jump rope.’ And it is tough for a 5-year-old to rationalize the inability to communicate with other children in a Spanish-speaking country. “Nobody here speaks English,” my 5-year-old self complained to my Dad. This, along with the fact that I got extremely sick from being exposed to México’s tap water, didn’t leave me with any desire to ever return.

The upcoming trip will be 10 days, with time split between the Jacona-Zamora region of Michoacán, where the majority of my dad’s family is based, and la Ciudad de México, México City. My two younger sisters, who took the time to study abroad in Central American countries during their undergraduate careers, are excited about the approaching trip. My dad calls me a few times in the weeks leading up to it to inform me that Michoacán has the highest murder rate in the country right now, and that we need to be vigilant and smart when we travel. I add this to the long list of anxieties I have about the trip, the primary one being my Spanish deficiency.

What is it Edward James Olmos — cast as Selena’s father — says to a young Jennifer Lopez in the 1997 film about the young singers’ life? “You speak it a little funny.” “It” being Spanish. The Quintanillas are in the car discussing the possibility of touring in México when Olmos launches into a frustrated rant.

“Being Mexican-American is tough. Anglos jump all over you if you don’t speak English perfectly, Mexicans jump all over you if don’t speak Spanish perfectly. We gotta be twice as perfect as anybody else…our family has been here for centuries, and yet they treat us as if we just swam across the Rio Grande. Anglo food is too bland, and yet when we go to México we get the runs. Now that to me is embarrassing… we gotta be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans — it’s exhausting!”

In the scene, the Tejano singer laughs and brushes off her father’s frustration with humor. She reassures him that she’s been singing in Spanish for ten years. But the reality Olmos’ character identifies is real, and as we sit in the airport preparing to board the plane to Guadalajara, my anxiety is palpable.

In the states, when Spanish speakers ask me if I speak the language my response varies. I will say “más o menos,” when I am feeling more practiced in my ability to communicate. “Entiendo más que yo hablo” I will say, stumbling over the words, hoping to diffuse any expectations of my responding in Spanish. “Cuando era niña, hablo más Español,” which translates (roughly) to, “When I was a little girl, I spoke more Spanish.” My mother tells me that some of my first words as a baby were “agua” and “leche,” but even so, I’ve always felt apprehensive about my Spanish.

Derek Owusu, a writer and podcaster from Tottenham, London, speaks of the cultural limitations of not speaking Twi after his mother emigrated from Ghana to the United Kingdom. In his article “Mother Tongue: The Lost Inheritance of Diaspora” he writes:

“For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve been asked…whether I can speak Twi or not, my response has always been ‘I can understand it, but I can’t speak it.’ In that moment it’s hard not to feel only half Ghanaian…”

I can relate to this sentiment. In the U.S., I have made myself relatively comfortable with the fact that people see me as an outsider among the middle-class white communities I often find myself in. The discomfort that comes with being an ethnic minority in the U.S. is familiar to me now, even if it remains traumatic. At least I have some language — cold, academic words like “microagression” and “oppression,” — in which to communicate the trauma; I have a wealth of resources I can access that validate my experience in this country. In México, being an outsider hurts more for some reason. Being called a “pocha” by the people that are supposed to be your raza hurts more, or maybe it just hurts in a different way than I am used to.
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