Tag: brooklyn

Happy December 2023! Or Post-NaNoWriMo 2023

Happy December 2023! Wait, what? How did the time fly by like this?

Well, the streak has finally broken: I didn’t make it to 50k words for National Novel Writing Month 2023, falling short of 45,000. But, I did get past 44,500, so it’s better than zero. I’ll have to see what is salvageable, if anything was at all. There’s next year, I guess. Writing sure is a process.

The above image is/was the 2023 NaNoWriMo Writer Badge, which you can find over at the NaNoWriMo website, with more info about NaNoWriMo.

Work and life took a lot of my mood from writing and writing prep this year, unfortunately. Regardless, to all of us who did it, 1 word, 50k words, or more: we survived NaNoWriMo 2023!

On a more positive note: I was also in the middle of reading Haruki Murakami’s “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,” a memoir of Murakami as a runner and a writer who runs. I finished reading the book, and I liked it. I am not a runner, but the book gave me a lot to think about when life is such a process for us all.

Anyway, I’ll see about posting again on Triscribe soon before the year winds down. How does the time get away from us all?! — ssw15

(cross-posted to sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com.)

Observations of the 1st Quarter of 2023

Happy April 2023! How did the first quarter of the year go by so quickly? I usually blame that on how February is such a short month, and for me, March goes by in a blink because I spend the weekends watching copious amounts of college basketball.

March Madness was indeed full of Madness, with the upsets. I still can’t believe how New Jersey get to be the state of Cinderellas. In March 2022, St. Peter of New Jersey was the low seed that went far. In March 2023: we had two New Jersey institutions of higher learning: Fairleigh Dickinson got to be the 16-seed that shocked us all (they were a play-in team, for God’s sake!), and Princeton – a 15-seed – somehow made it to the Sweet 16 round.

Hope springs eternal that an Ivy League team make it past the Sweet 16!

And yes, only in college basketball can we think of an Ivy League school as a Cinderella. It is weird to view an elite school as a Cinderella at all, and just how New Jersey is Princeton? Beats me. And honestly, the only time I’d root for Princeton is when they represent the Ivy League.

I do prefer March Madness over March Sadness 2020, which was when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down everything.

While I’m glad that COVID-19’s perpetual March is behind us, I’m still not sure where my head is with COVID-19. Are we as a nation ever going to be more equitable, when the pandemic showed how much we are not? Did we learn anything from the pandemic, and how we are to avoid the next one (or at least be better at responding to mitigate the painfulness)?

Plus, emergencies are going to keep happening because we’re in a world very much affected by climate change, which is real and is causing all kinds of weather fluctuations. Are we going to do more at a societal level? How can we keep asking individuals to take action when we need more action?

The above questions are entirely rhetorical, of course…

The first quarter of 2023 was also a weird winter, with a paltry snowfall in New York City and an average higher than normal temperatures. Perhaps climate change skeptics can remain skeptical, but it’s weird to have had random low frigid temperatures that veered into higher than normal.

April is National Poetry Month. But, of course, I managed a re-read of Billy Collins’ Aimless Love in March 2023.

I completed reading Mary Oliver’s Dream Work in April so far. Will I get to another poetry book before the end of the month? We shall see.

I have an intention to read more in 2023 than I did in 2022, but it’s not like I follow any real reading goal.

Girl Scout Cookies Season 2023: I hope we don’t lose sight that this is part of fundraising for the kids, but the craze for the new Raspberry Rally cookie seemed too much to me.

Like, hey, greedy bastards, the point of Girl Scout cookies is to help the kids, not buy the new cookies to re-sell them for your own profit. And hey, the people who are desperate to get the Raspberry Rally cookies – why are you so desperate that you’ll go to eBay for the cookies? How is that safe, and again, you’re not helping the kids by buying them cookies off of eBay.

Restrain yourselves, people… (see here for a March 4, 2023, CNN Wire report regarding the Girl Scouts’ asking people to not buy Raspberry Rally off of eBay: https://abc7ny.com/girl-scouts-raspberry-rally-new-cookie-ebay/12909915/).

Thanks to A, the offspring of FC and P, I ordered a box of Raspberry Rally before the boxes ran out.

Pros: I like that it’s a solid and crunchy cookie with a good bite.

Cons: it’s a little too sugary for me, the raspberry taste came off as too strong for my taste.

I suppose that raspberry isn’t quite my flavor. Ironically, I really enjoyed the Berry Crunch cookie that the Girl Scouts sold so many years ago, but it was a short-lived Girl Scout cookie.

I’m not into Thin Mints, but it is a good balance of mint in a chocolate cookie. I was hoping that the Raspberry Rally was more like that, but to me, it wasn’t quite the right berry and chocolate balance, because it was more of a chocolate coating on a raspberry cookie.

Movies: isn’t it cool that “Everything Everywhere All At Once” (EEAAO) made it all the way at the Oscars? I finally got to see it in the theater back in March 2023, before the Oscars. Is it a perfect movie? No. Well, okay, not to me. I think that it’s weird and all over the place. I’m not in love with the movie, but I enjoyed it. I thought that it was definitely an intense me, and it tells a very Asian Pacific American story.

There’s also something fun and poignant about seeing actor Ke Huy Quan win the Oscar, as a kid actor we all saw as Short Round from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” And, Michelle Yeoh as the first Asian-identified woman to win an Oscar is fantastic to see.

I like to think that EEAAO’s Oscar wins could encourage movie makers to get more diverse stories out there and have more diverse people in front of and behind the cameras. I’ll end this post on a hopeful note, if I learned anything from EEAAO: creatives got to keep being creative! — ssw15

The Tragedy of June 19, 1982

I may be a day late in posting this, but the time for reflection is a never-ending one, really: it’s 40 years since the death of Vincent Chin.

See here for Emil Guillermo’s perspective, posted June 16, 2022, on the hate crime that had occurred, and how we can reflect. There are no easy answers.

I’ve proposed for the last eight years a national period of meditation each and every year between June 19 to June 23 to ask ourselves some basic questions. Questions like, “What does it mean to be an Asian American today?” / “What does it take to stand up for a sense of ourselves?” / “Our community? Our personal and public identity?” / “What does real equality, real justice mean today?” Those are the things worth thinking about now and in the future.

Emil Guillermo

Guillermo ponders on what is justice, if those who commit the crime don’t take responsibility or don’t show remorse? What is a hate crime, if the intent by the person who commits the crime leads to no admission and no reparation?

Guillermo further notes:

No one has to hear from the killer ever. Apology? There’s no there there. / But every year, it’s important for all Asian Americans, past, present, and future, to pause and reflect on what happened on those five days, starting on June 19th and ending on June 23rd, when we awake, inspired to take action, moved by the memory of Vincent Chin.

The further reality is that, during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian hate persists and reminds us that the perpetual foreigner trope persists, and so we keep struggling somehow for what is better, what does it mean to be American, what is equality, and what is justice.

So, yes, Guillermo’s questions are very real.

Significantly, in the 40 years since Vincent Chin’s death, the needs for solidarity and dialog and work persist too. See for more on the struggle of against anti-Asian hate: “Remembering Vincent Chin — and the deep roots of anti-Asian violence,” by Li Zhou, June 19, 2022, over at Vox. Zhou reports:

Overall, activists note that while the causes of anti-Asian discrimination are enduring and as tenacious today as in the 1980s, thanks to continued activism, awareness about these biases has also increased and improved significantly. Continuing to grow this understanding, and maintaining the willingness to fight back against it, is central to moving forward, they say.

As a closing note to pass along: Triscribe’s own FC shared, via Facebook, the link to the Vincent Chin 40th Remembrance and Rededication. I hope that I can check out videos of the remembrance later, but there’s also a guide to consider as well.

Remember to take care of yourself too, as the struggle is real and can be tiring. Keep learning and keep trying. — ssw15