Friday, 30 November 2018

New top story on Hacker News: Observable Playground

Observable Playground
79 by mbostock | 9 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: New for AWS Lambda: Use Any Programming Language and Share Common Components

New for AWS Lambda: Use Any Programming Language and Share Common Components
402 by abd12 | 174 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: 'Talent Wants Transit': Companies Near Transportation Gaining the Upper Hand

'Talent Wants Transit': Companies Near Transportation Gaining the Upper Hand
298 by bootsz | 277 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Go 2, here we come

Go 2, here we come
680 by mdelias | 434 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: A 96-year-old artist who saved a village

A 96-year-old artist who saved a village
28 by MiriamWeiner | 0 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: GraphQL: A Retrospective

GraphQL: A Retrospective
103 by lchsk | 35 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: The Digital Maginot Line

The Digital Maginot Line
101 by crunchiebones | 44 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Inside the Marriott-Starwood Loyalty Program Turbulence

Inside the Marriott-Starwood Loyalty Program Turbulence
77 by jedwhite | 64 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: Incident Command for DevOps: Learning from the Fire Department [video]

Incident Command for DevOps: Learning from the Fire Department [video]
39 by kiyanwang | 3 comments on Hacker News.


New top story on Hacker News: The Unified Theory of Ram Dass

The Unified Theory of Ram Dass
81 by adrice727 | 63 comments on Hacker News.


Russia-Ukraine crisis clouds G20 summit in Buenos Aires

Leaders gather in Argentina amid tension with Russia over Ukraine and a US trade row with China.

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Charlottesville driver Alex Fields Jr acted in anger, trial told

The trial opens of Alex Fields Jr, who drove a car into a crowd in Virginia in 2017, killing a woman.

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Berta Cáceres: Seven convicted of murdering anti-dam activist

A Honduran court finds seven men guilty of killing renowned environmental campaigner Berta Cáceres.

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South Korean train crosses DMZ into North Korea

A group of experts will travel around North Korea working out how to update its ageing train network.

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Whale stranding: Another 50 pilot whales die off NZ

The mass stranding on Chatham Island means more than 200 whales have died off NZ in the past week.

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MeToo founder Tarana Burke: Campaign now 'unrecognisable'

Tarana Burke first used the phrase 12 years ago before it became a global movement last year.

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Australian students in mass climate protest

Thousands skip school to urge action on climate change, despite criticism from Australia's PM.

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Michael Cohen in court: Trump ex-lawyer admits lying to Congress

Michael Cohen says he lied "out of loyalty" to Mr Trump, while the president says he is "weak".

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Merkel's plane makes unscheduled landing after technical hitch

The German chancellor will miss the start of the G20 in Argentina after her flight had to turn back.

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Southwest Airlines apologises for mocking girl's name

Southwest Airlines has offered its "sincere apology" after staff mocked five-year-old Abcde Redford.

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Georgia woman jailed as 'cops mistake candy floss for meth'

A Georgia woman was charged with meth trafficking due to a faulty police drug test, says a lawsuit.

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G20: So how does the summit work?

The G20 summit of the world's most powerful leaders begins in Buenos Aires on Friday.

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Michael Cohen: What Trump lashing out at his ex-lawyer reveals

Michael Cohen is a liar and a "weak person", according to the president. Anthony Zurcher analyses his response.

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How Disney's Wreck It Ralph is challenging Disney's stereotypes

Why Ralph Breaks The Internet is the Disney sequel that is not afraid of poking fun at a Disney stereotype.

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'Miss Environment': The 11-year-old girl 'saving Lagos'

Misimi Isimi is an 11-year-old environmentalist on a mission to clean up Lagos.

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Syrian on 'sound and smell of freedom' after months in airport

Syrian Hassan al-Kontar had not been outside for nine months - but now has a new home in Canada.

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How do you make a vinyl record?

Watch behind the scenes as a vinyl record is processed from start to finish.

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Like Ali v Frazier, how Magnus Carlsen kept his World Chess title after 50 hours and 12 draws

Norway's world number one Magnus Carlsen retains his World Chess Championship after 12 draws and more than 50 hours of play - eventually beating Fabiano Caruana in a tie-breaker.

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Starbucks to block porn on free wi-fi in US

The coffee chain says watching porn has always been banned, but it will now block access to content.

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Shenzhen Half Marathon: Traffic cameras catch cheats taking shortcut

Almost 250 runners in the Shenzhen Half Marathon are caught cheating by traffic cameras that show them taking a shortcut through bushes.

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China employees fined for walking fewer than 180,000 steps

Staff at a real estate firm had to walk 6,000 steps a day in order to avoid a fine.

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Sabarimala: India activist held for 'explicit' thigh photo

Rehana Fathima made an unsuccessful attempt last month to enter one of Hinduism's holiest temples.

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The French village that fears for its British community

Alet-les-Bains has benefited from a British influx and many there fear the aftermath of Brexit.

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Carmichael project: Visiting Australia's controversial Adani mine

The BBC's Vineet Khare visited the controversial Carmichael project by Indian energy giant Adani.

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'Hermione has taught me how to be angry'

The actress Noma Dumezweni, best known for playing Hermione Granger in the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, says women need to learn how to be angry.

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Africa's week in pictures: 23-29 November 2018

A selection of the best photos from across Africa this week.

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President Trump Bashes the Fed. This Is How the Fed Chief Responds.

Jerome Powell’s playbook includes making allies outside the Oval Office, never talking politics and sticking to the economy.

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Al Franken Steps Back Into Public Eye for the First Time Since Resigning Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations

51 Pilot Whales Have Died in Another Mass Stranding Event in New Zealand

Hopes Slim for End to Trade War When Xi Jinping Meets Donald Trump at the G20

‘I Begged Them to Kill Me.’ Uighur Woman Tells Congress of Torture in Chinese Internment Camps

‘Their Aim Is to Assimilate Us.’ China Sends Government Workers to Infiltrate Minority Uighur Homes

Former FBI Director James Comey Challenges House Subpoena in Court

‘Stop This Chaos Now.’ Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyer Says Rape Accuser Pressured a Friend to Corroborate Her Account

The Next U.S. Moon Landing Will Be by Private Companies, Not NASA

A Man Confessed to Killing About 90 People as Part of Deal to Move to Another Prison

Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Is Now the Second Largest in History, WHO Says

Al Franken Steps Back Into Public Eye for the First Time Since Resigning Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations

51 Pilot Whales Have Died in Another Mass Stranding Event in New Zealand

Hopes Slim for End to Trade War When Xi Jinping Meets Donald Trump at the G20

‘I Begged Them to Kill Me.’ Uighur Woman Tells Congress of Torture in Chinese Internment Camps

‘Their Aim Is to Assimilate Us.’ China Sends Government Workers to Infiltrate Minority Uighur Homes

Former FBI Director James Comey Challenges House Subpoena in Court

‘Stop This Chaos Now.’ Harvey Weinstein’s Lawyer Says Rape Accuser Pressured a Friend to Corroborate Her Account

The Next U.S. Moon Landing Will Be by Private Companies, Not NASA

A Man Confessed to Killing About 90 People as Part of Deal to Move to Another Prison

Congo’s Ebola Outbreak Is Now the Second Largest in History, WHO Says

Merkel's plane makes unscheduled landing after technical hitch - BBC News


BBC News

Merkel's plane makes unscheduled landing after technical hitch
BBC News
Her office says Mrs Merkel and delegates made a safe, but unscheduled, landing in Cologne after the aircraft developed a technical problem. The plane turned back while it was over the Netherlands, Germany's dpa news agency says. Reports say Mrs Merkel ...

and more »


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Is the world heading for an insulin shortage? - BBC News


BBC News

Is the world heading for an insulin shortage?
BBC News
It has been called the scourge of urban life. Poor lifestyle and obesity have led to a surge in type 2 diabetes, a condition that occurs when the body cannot produce enough insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. Now scientists say that millions of ...



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Ukraine-Russia sea clash: Trump cancels Putin talks - BBC News


BBC News

Ukraine-Russia sea clash: Trump cancels Putin talks
BBC News
US President Donald Trump has cancelled a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over a naval clash between Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday Russian border guards fired on three Ukrainian ships and seized their crews off the ...

and more »


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Samuel Little: US serial killer 'admits 90 murders' - BBC News


BBC News

Samuel Little: US serial killer 'admits 90 murders'
BBC News
An imprisoned murderer is being investigated after confessing to 90 killings across four decades in the US. The FBI believe Samuel Little, who is 78, may be among the most prolific serial killers in US criminal history. State and federal agencies are ...

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Dow snaps 3-day winning streak on trade worries - CNBC


CNBC

Dow snaps 3-day winning streak on trade worries
CNBC
News of his attendance dampened hopes that a trade deal could be hatched at the dinner given his longstanding hawkish tone on U.S.-China trade. Earlier this month, Navarro said any deal between the U.S. and China would be on Trump's terms, not Wall ...



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Scientists Improve Mood By Stimulating A Brain Area Above The Eyes - NPR


NPR

Scientists Improve Mood By Stimulating A Brain Area Above The Eyes
NPR
There's new evidence that mild pulses of electricity can relieve depression — if they reach the right target in the brain. A study of 25 people with epilepsy found that those who had symptoms of depression felt better almost immediately when doctors ...

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What’s on TV Friday: ‘A Very Nutty Christmas’ and ‘The Shining’


By DANYA ISSAWI from NYT Arts https://ift.tt/2DQOHG0

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

3 dead, 8 injured after high-speed chase at border

11/29/18 11:45 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Deputy US marshal killed in Arizona shooting

11/29/18 8:55 PM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

President Trump cancels meeting at G20 with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine tensions

11/29/18 8:44 AM

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Ex-Trump attorney Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress in Russia probe

11/29/18 6:34 AM

Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Michael Cohen’s New Guilty Plea

Here’s Everything You Need To Know About Michael Cohen’s New Guilty PleaIt's been nearly eight months since the FBI raided Michael Cohen's New York




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House Democrats agree: It's time for the same generation

House Democrats agree: It's time for the same generationA few of the Democratic Party’s young stars in the House took on Nancy Pelosi this week and proved mainly that none of them have anything like the political acumen to replace her.




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Melania Trump Thinks White House's Red Christmas Trees 'Look Fantastic'

Melania Trump Thinks White House's Red Christmas Trees 'Look Fantastic'Although Melania Trump is getting criticized for putting red Christmas trees




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Yahoo News Explains: The cost of Trump’s tariff war

Yahoo News Explains: The cost of Trump’s tariff warGeneral Motors recently announced its plan to cut more than 14,000 jobs. Earlier this year, the car manufacturer warned the Trump administration about the cost of his tariff war. Trump lashed out at GM after its job reduction announcement and allegedly told its CEO that she “better” reopen plants in the U.S. soon.




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Cindy Hyde-Smith's Response To Whether She Regrets Racist Comments: 'I'm A Cowgirl'

Cindy Hyde-Smith's Response To Whether She Regrets Racist Comments: 'I'm A Cowgirl'Mississippi Senate incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) didn't use the opportunity




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'Unruly' young boy upstages Pope Francis

'Unruly' young boy upstages Pope FrancisA young boy upstaged Pope Francis on Wednesday, escaping from his mother and running onto the papal podium at a general audience, tugging on the hand of a Swiss guardsman and playing behind the pontiff's chair. Pope Francis told her to let him carry on playing. As she left the stage, a smiling Francis leaned towards Bishop Georg Ganswein sitting next to him and whispered: "He is Argentinian.




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Here's how long it takes a Lego head to pass through your body

Here's how long it takes a Lego head to pass through your bodyDiscovering that your kid has swallowed Lego is pretty annoying as a parent, but these researchers did the same thing in the name of science.




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Safely on Mars, InSight unfolds its arrays and snaps some pics

Safely on Mars, InSight unfolds its arrays and snaps some picsAfter safely landing on Mars following its nearly seven month journey, NASA has released the first pictures taken by its InSight spacecraft, which has opened it solar arrays to charge batteries. The $993 million lander, which landed on Monday and appears to be in good shape, will soon begin unfolding its robotic arm and deploying its quake-sensors on the Martian surface. NASA engineers are planning to begin work with its robotic arm soon, but are proceeding with caution.




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Trevor Noah Blasts Paul Manafort For 'Resting Snitch Face'

Trevor Noah Blasts Paul Manafort For 'Resting Snitch Face'Trevor Noah, host of "The Daily Show," has refocused his attention on the




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Immigrant deported after seeking refuge in N Carolina church

Immigrant deported after seeking refuge in N Carolina churchDURHAM, N.C. (AP) — A Mexican immigrant who sought refuge in a North Carolina church for nearly a year was deported Thursday, federal authorities said.




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Urgent hunt underway for teen's killer in North Carolina

Urgent hunt underway for teen's killer in North CarolinaThe body of the kidnapped 13-year-old was found, police said.




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11 Weight Loss Apps for Real Results

11 Weight Loss Apps for Real Results




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Trump Administration May Reshape Next Federal Climate Report: EPA Chief

Trump Administration May Reshape Next Federal Climate Report: EPA ChiefEnvironmental Protection Agency acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler said




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Right-Wing Conspiracist Laura Loomer Handcuffs Herself To Door Of Twitter's Office

Right-Wing Conspiracist Laura Loomer Handcuffs Herself To Door Of Twitter's OfficeFar-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to the front




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This was the top-selling item online in 33 states at Walmart this Thanksgiving weekend

This was the top-selling item online in 33 states at Walmart this Thanksgiving weekendShopping during Thanksgiving weekend pretty much guarantees the best bargains




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Contender: Saudi Arabia nabs new China oil demand, challenges Russia's top spot

Contender: Saudi Arabia nabs new China oil demand, challenges Russia's top spotSaudi Arabia, the biggest global oil exporter, has been surpassed by Russia as top crude supplier to China the past two years as private "teapot" refiners and a new pipeline drove up demand for Russian oil. Now fresh demand from new refineries starting up in 2019 could increase China's Saudi oil imports by between 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 700,000 bpd, nudging the OPEC kingpin back towards the top, analysts say. Saudi Aramco said last week it will sign five crude supply agreements that will take its 2019 contract totals with Chinese buyers to 1.67 million bpd.




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US indicts Iranians over hospital ransomware attacks

US indicts Iranians over hospital ransomware attacksThe US Justice Department charged two Iranian hackers Wednesday with extorting at least $6 million from hospitals, city governments and public institutions in the US and Canada by remotely locking down their computer systems. The DOJ said Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri deployed the SamSam Ransomware into the systems of more than 200 institutions, encrypting their operations to make them inaccessible until the owners paid ransoms by bitcoin. Victims included the city governments of Atlanta, Georgia and Newark, New Jersey, the University of Calgary in Canada, major US hospitals in Los Angeles and Kansas City, and Laboratory Corporation of America, or LabCorp, one of the world's largest medical testing businesses.




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Senate Panel Delays Vote On Trump's Pick To Lead ICE Over Tweet Critical Of President

Senate Panel Delays Vote On Trump's Pick To Lead ICE Over Tweet Critical Of PresidentPresident Donald Trump's newest pick to lead Immigration and Customs




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Federal authorities raid office of Chicago alderman

Federal authorities raid office of Chicago aldermanChicago Alderman Ed Burke has done property tax work for President Trump.




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Tour Brian Atwood and Dr. Jake Deutsch's Striking NYC Apartment

Tour Brian Atwood and Dr. Jake Deutsch's Striking NYC Apartment




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Drug lord who changed his face testifies against 'El Chapo'

Drug lord who changed his face testifies against 'El Chapo'NEW YORK (AP) — A former Colombian drug lord known for an extreme plastic-surgery makeover meant to hide his identity testified Thursday at a U.S. trial about his lucrative drug-trafficking alliance with notorious Mexican counterpart Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.




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Hakeem Jeffries Wins Contested House Democratic Caucus Chair Race

Hakeem Jeffries Wins Contested House Democratic Caucus Chair RaceWASHINGTON ― In perhaps the most contentious battle for House Democratic




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Perfect Zodiac Gifts For Astrology Lovers That Any Sign Will Appreciate

Perfect Zodiac Gifts For Astrology Lovers That Any Sign Will AppreciateCelebrate your celestial-consumed cousin, star-obsessed sister, or planet-




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Best Bites: Overnight pecan pie french toast

Best Bites: Overnight pecan pie french toastWelcome to Best Bites, a twice-weekly video series that aims to satisfy your




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California AG Considering Legal Challenge to Use of Force on Border

California AG Considering Legal Challenge to Use of Force on BorderCalifornia attorney general Xavier Becerra said Wednesday that his office is “monitoring” the use of force against a caravan of migrants and the possible closure of the southern border and considering filing a legal challenge. “We have been approached by folks who have expressed complaints,” Becerra told Reuters in an interview. Becerra, a Democrat and former member of Congress, suggested that president Trump’s threat to close the border in response to the influx of central American migrants arriving in caravans might provide a legal avenue to challenge the administration, provided the border closure affects a California resident.




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Doomed Lion Air jet was 'not airworthy' on penultimate flight

Doomed Lion Air jet was 'not airworthy' on penultimate flightA Lion Air jet that crashed into the sea off Indonesia last month was not in an airworthy condition on its second-to-last flight.




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Collaging Together Scraps of Trauma: Karen Green’s “Frail Sister”

THIS YEAR, New York Times editors Amisha Padnani and Jessica Bennett launched the revisionist history project “Overlooked,” a section that runs obituaries for historical figures who, at the time of their deaths, did not receive them because of their race or gender. It now has over a dozen obituaries, almost exclusively of women, including Sylvia Plath, Diane Arbus, and Marsha P. Johnson. The fact that most of these names are now commonplace, but at the time of their deaths in 1963, 1971, and 1992, respectively, they were not given their due, speaks to the historically undervalued accomplishments or simple humanity of women. Karen Green’s Frail Sister fits squarely within this. It documents the life of 1940s woman Constance Gale, a fictional character modeled on Green’s own aunt who went missing. Her story is told visually, with fragments pieced together from her life’s detritus — photographs of Connie and her family, scraps of paper with typewritten letters, newspaper clippings, and doting notes from male suitors.

The story begins when Connie and her sister are child performers, at four and six years old respectively. A newspaper fragment — pasted below a photograph of the girls and their show business benefactor, the playwright Marcelin J. G., whose face is obscured by a burn hole — notes the children’s upcoming performance: “Sisters Connie and [name scratched out] in ‘thirty Minutes of Sunshine.’” Connie’s typed text above explains, “He tells me my hair is too dark, even in this afternoon light, and my nose is too long,” but of her sister, “Your hair is goldenrod and you’re an easy sitter.” The early pages are filled with black-and-white and sepia-tinted images of the young girls interspersed with admiring letters from M.J.G. The narrative is unsettling, the danger of women’s sexuality, even as children, looms over the entire story. “Ma is having a Catholic episode,” Connie writes over a child’s drawing of a young woman in a long dress and dress hat. Her mother instructs them to always keep their legs crossed “until matrimony or it’s brimstone, etcetera.” Across the page, below the photograph of a stoic but captivating young girl in a dance costume, she typed, “Sister, You float & I fall,” beginning the ongoing narrative of Connie’s inability to keep to her family’s strict lessons (“I know Mama’s theory is I’ve gone wild, but maybe I was born so”).

Faced with limited options, Connie leaves her home to join a group of traveling war performers: “Besides the USO shows, our duties include dancing with them, listening to their miseries, and keeping them away from the local [inked out] most of whom were perfectly nice girls before this started and are only bad now because they are starving to death.” Coupled with tiny photographs of Connie in fatigues and trench coats alongside soldiers and her fellow female entertainers, many of the letters from this period recount her struggles to follow the rules, to not get too involved with any of the men, and her horror at their stories and what she witnesses. She describes the bombing of a bridge “filled with crying dogs and children” and later laments, “If there is a God, and Sis I grow more skeptical by the hour, He’s a mean one,” highlighting the harsh juxtapositions of her current position where “[y]esterday afternoon I saw a mound of children’s bones and by nightfall I was singing.” The contrast of her own writing against the soldiers’ love letters is especially striking, as it presents the interiority of a woman’s emotional state against her status as an object of entertainment in the eyes of men who write to her as “Paper Doll,” “Darling,” and “Dearest,” professing their love and desire for her while they unload their harrowing war stories onto her. Women’s roles remain so limited — object of affection or comforting mother.

Many of the notes are typed on scraps of paper, hymn booklets from church (“Angels, Bear the News to Mother” and “Jesus’ Blood Covers Me”), envelopes from letters received, and studio portrait photographs. When the text is typed on top of existing text, as with hymns, Green is careful to avoid complete illegibility, instead creating a multilayered reading experience. This collaging of materials is both familiar and jarring: locks of hair are affixed to sweet notes as tokens next to photos of soldiers whose faces are scratched over with messages indicating their deaths.

In Frieze magazine, writer and editor Jörg Heiser explores the relationship between memory, trauma, and collage. “The literal meaning of the word ‘trauma’ is ‘wound’, which indicates a parallel between collage — defined as the bringing together of different elements — and an injury that needs binding or stitching in order to heal.” In Frail Sister, this aspect is amplified, as fragments used to connote a sweetness, a sense of traditional femininity (a photograph of a woman in a beautiful dress standing in a field), are placed against the detritus of war (test results for effectivity in weapons, tactics, and field activities). A studio portrait, possibly of Connie, obscures her face with a mask and nurse bonnet, the words “WAR HAS SWORDS LOVE HAS DARTS WAR BREAKS HEADS LOVE BREAKS HEARTS” scratched across her chest. The childishness of these rhyming phrases is at odds with the clear violence of the environment and emotions, Connie refutes the myth of quiet femininity to tell a story of extreme suffering, often at the hands of men.

The most telling example of this is Connie’s harrowing account of her illegal abortion. Across a photograph of a woman signing on stage she writes, “I only have one towel. There is a battlefield on what Mama used to call my Dirty Front.” Across the top she scratched in “THE NEEDLE IS ALSO THE GAY ASSEMBLER OF BONNETS & BOOTIES.” She goes on to explain why her friend had to leave her alone to hemorrhage because she was afraid, having witnessed another woman executed (“placing her head into the lunette” of a guillotine) when her abortion was uncovered. The designs and cute doodles sit against a narrative of painful trauma, a physical ripping apart and sewing back together. The needle functions as both an instrument of feminine pastime as well as a tool to try and stitch her whole again.

Of the evolving psychology around collage, Heiser explains, “Collage could involve, say, getting survivors of a flood to paste together pictures in order to deal with their post-traumatic stress — a therapy of seeking sense and redemption not through words but images.” In Frail Sister, much is left unknown to the reader, such as whose collection of fragments we are reading and where Connie ends up after a series of abusive relationships. Presumably, the ephemera was collected by Connie’s unnamed sister, because so many letters are addressed to her. But some moments seem to suggest that the memories were gathered by Connie herself, perhaps in an attempt to come to terms with her life. At one point, Connie wonders “if the Germans have a word for the ways in which war surprises and alters one. I feel a new skin growing. And the surprise is that there is still room for enchantment.” Despite Connie’s story being one of trauma and loss, demonstrating the hardships placed on women, Connie herself seems to remain hopeful, nearly to the end.

References to broken hearts echo throughout, as does a fixation with the concept of a bridge, which also relates to the function of collage, another method of joining things together. Toward the end of the book, after she experiences a series of particularly disturbing events at the hands of men, she pastes in a picture of a bridge between two mountains. Each mountain is painted white with text scratched in: “THIS WORLD” on one and “THE NEXT” on the other. Over the bridge between the text “faith” is collaged in.

A parallel narrative that runs throughout the story is that of a woman found dead, Jane Doe, who remains unidentified throughout the book. Connie returns to this, continually troubled by the details that unfold about her death but none that emerge about her life or identity. “CAN A WOMAN IN AMERICA STEP OFF THE EDGE OF THE WORLD AND NEVER BE MISSED???” she asks. Green shows us how, after years of abuse and neglect, a woman can hold on and sustain herself. Though fictional, Green’s elegant collaging of image and text makes for a compelling story that stands in for so many women’s lives cut short by the whims of men and the objectification of their bodies.

¤

Megan N. Liberty is an arts and culture writer based in Brooklyn. She is the Art Books editor at the Brooklyn Rail and has a master’s in Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

The post Collaging Together Scraps of Trauma: Karen Green’s “Frail Sister” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.



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“The Poem Doesn’t Happen Until You Roam Away”: A Conversation with Eloise Klein Healy

ELOISE KLEIN HEALY is a poet of exquisite emotional precision. “Love is how close you can get and even bleed / and even want to pick it up again,” she writes in her poem “Cactus.” Reading her poetry feels exactly like that: it pierces and illuminates all at once, stirring a craving for more. She is a visionary teacher and mentor, who for years has inspired and guided young writers to find their own voices, a social justice warrior and advocate for those whose stories have been traditionally undervalued or dismissed. She is a lover of baseball and Chinese brush painting, of grackles and Portuguese Water Dogs. She is a blast to hang out with. She is my former employer, my wise woman, my dear friend. Eloise is a Los Angeles literary legend, dazzling us all with her talent, grace, and wit. In 2012, she was named the inaugural poet laureate of Los Angeles, her beloved city loving her right back.

Eloise is the author of the poetry collections Building Some Changes (1976), A Packet Beating Like a Heart (1981), Ordinary Wisdom (1981), Artemis in Echo Park (1991), Passing (2002), a finalist for the Lambda Book Award and the Audre Lorde Poetry Prize, and The Islands Project: Poems for Sappho (2007), winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society Poetry Award. In 2013, Red Hen Press published A Wild Surmise: New and Selected Poems & Recordings by Eloise Klein Healy, to great acclaim. In 2016, Publishing Triangle honored Eloise with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the literary and gay and lesbian communities.

A few months after being named poet laureate of Los Angeles, Eloise was hit with a bout of viral encephalitis; the resulting aphasia affected her ability to process language and to understand or express speech. In the years since, with the help of her spouse, Colleen Rooney, and her therapist, Betty McMicken, Eloise has worked to rewire the language networks in her brain, to find her way back to, in her words, the “hungry vision” of poetry.

Eloise and I sat down recently to talk about her ninth book, Another Phase, due out today from Red Hen Press.

¤

TARA ISON: Hello, Eloise — huge congratulations on the new book!

ELOISE KLEIN HEALY: I know. Thank you. Can you believe it? It’s been five years.

I loved sitting down with a collection of Eloise Klein Healy poems again. And they are Eloise poems — I hear your voice, I feel you in these pieces. They’re clever and playful and insightful. They’re so moving. But still, this collection is … different.

Oh, yes. Very different. These poems came about because I lost my brain.

Okay, let’s start there. Tell me about that.

The encephalitis hit in the back of my brain, here, behind my left ear. I lost speech; I lost language.

What do you remember about when that happened?

I remember that night I’d had an event: I met with Caroline Kennedy, downtown at the Public Library, for a discussion on poetry. She was phenomenal, so knowledgeable and invested in the arts. It went great. I came home afterward, and I was totally tired, tired, tired. Colleen thought I was a little too tired. … I just went to sleep, then woke up in the middle of the night and spoke to her, but my words made no sense. At first she thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t kidding. None of my words came out properly — none of them.

Did you understand the words in your head? Did your own thoughts make sense to you?

No, not at all.

That must have been terrifying.

I was lost. It was like everyone — the doctors, nurses, Colleen, friends — everyone was part of this world. And inside I was feeling: okay, I think I’m on another planet, I’m floating somewhere else now, bye!

In the poem “Mind,” you write: “My little brain flipped a coin and off I went.”

Off into the weird time, as I call it. Those early days when everything was scrambled up. But once they figured out the encephalitis, and the aphasia, we knew I wasn’t going to die. I was here, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

And then you had to get back to work.

I had to get my language back, yes. We had to redevelop parts of my brain, the parts that were missing. And I had to learn to use other parts.

Tell me about Betty McMicken.

Colleen knew I had to work with a therapist, someone who truly understands how the brain works to create language, to recreate language. We met with four different therapists. Each one came in — the first three were all looking at Colleen, speaking only to her. I’m just sitting there like, “Oh, I must be the stupid one.” Then in comes Betty. She walks up to me, puts her hand out, and says, “Hi Eloise, I’m Betty. I’d love to learn how to work with you and be your friend and talk about language and what that means to you.” I looked at Colleen and I said …

This one.

Yes. She treated me like a person. I never stopped being a person.

How did she work with you to get language back?

We often started with a picture. She’d show me a picture of something. I often didn’t know what it was. Say, an elephant. And she’d talk around the word “elephant,” just the idea of it. Then I’d sometimes find the word curled up in my brain, she’d lead me back to it, and there it was. Or she’d have to teach me the word again, as if for the first time. I had to reattach words to things, but also relearn the use of the thing, its bigger meaning. Every thing, every moment was a lesson. This is a fork, this is a pencil, this is a table. It was hard work, baby steps, but I remember saying to Colleen, “I want to hold on. I’m not going to let it go.”

Your language.

My language.

Did you have to relearn to read and write? Was it something that came back to you, or something you had to learn all over again?

Both, in a way. I had to learn a lot of it from scratch. I remember trying to write my name, and I wrote down the letter E. I wrote it backward, but still. [Laughs.] And I thought, “Oh my God, I remember E!” So I was on my way. Letters, words, sentences. Some things would come back to me. But then Betty would say, “Okay, which word here is the noun? Which is the verb?” And I’d get so frustrated — how could I not know what a noun was? How could I not put my words in proper order? I definitely remembered A, E, I, O, U, at least. I was happy to have my vowels.

In the introduction to Another Phase, Betty says that, because you were a poet, she believes you already had more connections to language in your brain than most people.

I did. So much of it was still there, buried deep inside.

She writes, “In Eloise’s case, her language returned with exceptional poetic ability” and that “the recovery of her poetic abilities has been a unique, previously undocumented neuroscience phenomenon.” You’re a phenomenon!

[Laughs.] Yes, but she still wanted me to name the damn noun. She was tough on me. 

So, how did these new poems come out of the work you were doing with Betty? At some point did she just say, “You’re a writer. Why aren’t you writing?”

Yes, but she knew I had to come at it from a different angle. I was still too brain-fried, too far away from it all, and I was stuck on wanting every word, every line, to be perfect …

Of course you were. A, you’re Eloise, and B, you’re a writer.

Right, I know. … But how could I get back inside something as huge as a poem? I used to tell students that a poem is a huge circle, it’s all the plants, all the trees, all the people, everything in the world. But you can’t stay in the middle of the circle where you know everything. The poem doesn’t happen until you roam away. And I didn’t know how to roam anymore.

So Betty said, “I think you could try this by writing five lines. Just five.” I said, “Okay. I’m going to try it from A to Z.” That was it. I started with the letter A and I’d think, “A, what’s that about? What does ‘A’ mean, what does ‘A’ do? Okay, blah, blah, blah, five lines. Then B, okay, let’s get inside the letter B.”

You’d use the letter as a writing prompt, like you’d give a student?

Right. And I got all the way through A to Z, five lines each. When Betty gave me that assignment, those five lines to write each day, it was like letting me stay in that smaller circle just a little while longer. After a while the lines weren’t about A or Z anymore, I was able to roam beyond that again. And the poems became about what had happened to me, to my brain.

After “the weird time,” how did it feel to write your first poem?

I thought it was great! I was doing four poems a week! I’d plan a day off, usually Sunday, but I’d be doing something else and realize I didn’t want to be doing that other thing. I wanted to be writing. Or I’d wake up in the middle of the night and get up and go write a little bit. 

In the title poem “Another Phase,” you write: “It’s hard for me to read the LA Times. / I want to relearn, to reline part of me. / How did my brain twist? / How did the whack of it phase me? / Every page. Every word blank.” I love the playfulness of it, but also the sense of inquiry that energizes so many of these poems. And they’re surprising, the turns they take.

Poems need those places where you think you’re turning down one street, that you’re going left, but you discover you’ve really gone right.

The roaming.

You have to roam, yes. You have to allow that to happen.

The poem “Attitude” says: “I know about the word information. / Now I’ve learned I ‘broke’ my mind. / My words smeared me — aphasia. / My speaking could not count names or rhyme, / The ‘I, me, much’ of mine, gone, lost.” One of the things I love in these poems is how you’re using words to describe losing words. It’s such a great paradox. Some of these poems echo the metaphysical poets, to me, how you’re unearthing a new truth inside an impossibility.

Sometimes those were just wonderful accidents. I’d feel how the words could measure and move, measure and move, and I’d get to the right thing. Or I’d take apart a word and reshape it, keep finding different meanings inside of it.

We’re talking about this in the context of recovering from viral encephalitis, and the aphasia, but much of what you describe is just being a writer. The struggle to find those meanings hidden inside words.

Yes, it is. I was recovering me, recovering language.

And re-informing language. That’s what we’re all reaching for.

Yes.

In “Awake,” you write: “At 3:00 am, I open my eyes. / No reason. / No barking dogs next door. / But in the middle of the night, / here come the words.” I’ve had that happen, when words woke me up.

Here they come, knocking on the inside of your head, begging to be let in, or let out! [Laughs.] Sometimes I don’t answer; I just let myself chill out and go back to sleep.

The book isn’t just about your personal relationship to language but also your struggle with the larger world. Some of the poems are explicitly political. In “Imagination,” you write: “It’s imaging the nation, I know. / The whole bad-ass things bashing a broken trumpet. / Is this only a room you’re now upholding / for your ‘presidential’ affairs or are you invading?”

No secret who I’m talking about there …

But it ends: “Put it simply, I am still envisioning a better world.”

I am. Again, something we’re all struggling with, isn’t it?

This poem, “Flashlight,” reminds me of your work with Betty, how she’d show you a picture of a dog. And you knew it was a dog. But you didn’t have the word dog.

So there was no dog. “Dog” didn’t exist for me.

You write, “When did the flashlight get its name? / Didn’t have one yet? That time was 2013. / I have a new word exactly now. / Not only the thing I hadn’t said for three years. / Now, saying and using the flashlight, big deal for sure.”

Exactly. I had to find the word in my brain.

Or the object wasn’t real.

I used to have Post-its all over the house: “refrigerator,” “scissors,” “kettle.” Once I could name the thing, I could begin to understand it.

I’m thinking of Helen Keller, when she connected the word “water” to the water itself.

Yes, the power of that single word cracked the world open for her again. That one word was the beginning of it — amazing. There’s one poem, “Food,” about how I couldn’t stop with the word “bread.” That wasn’t enough for me to have all of bread back. Once I knew “bread,” I still needed to learn spelt and rye and wheat, and each one is another experience, a world of bread in itself.

Your brain is almost a character in many of the poems — there’s an ongoing debate you two are having. In the poem “Ever,” you write: “Can I get better? Ever? / Can anything change it? But the brain / manages me. Rules it. Pain.” And yet in “Here’s What I Said,” you write: “My brain needs me to knock out the haziness.”

It’s a power struggle. We’re still working it out.

I think writing these poems shows that your brain’s not managing you anymore.

Let’s say we’re still negotiating.       

The poem “Decided” raises a similar question. You write, “Though I’ve done this before, / I can’t determine who / authorized my work. / I’ve never chosen to care / about any moment of their concerns.” I wonder, have you always been that brave? Not to care what anyone thought? Or are you more unfiltered now?

I’ve always known I was never going to wait around for someone else to authorize me, to approve of what I want to say. [Laughs.] Maybe that’s impatience more than bravery.

I think many of us feel that way, though — that someone has to tell us it’s okay to write in the first place.

That’s so paralyzing, isn’t it? And if someone has the authority to allow you to write, or the authority to keep you quiet. You have to authorize yourself. Allow yourself.

We all have to knock out our own haziness.

Exactly. Knock it out of the park.

Thank you, Eloise!

Thank you!

¤

Tara Ison is the author, most recently, of the short story collection Ball and the essay collection Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies.

The post “The Poem Doesn’t Happen Until You Roam Away”: A Conversation with Eloise Klein Healy appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.



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What Does Jill Soloway Want?

“HELLO, LOS ANGELES!”

Center stage at the Largo, Jill Soloway pumps two fists in the air, drawing cheers from the packed house. “It’s so good to be home!” Soloway says. “We’ve been on book tour for two weeks. It’s a jungle out there.”

Jill’s older sister, Faith, poised at the piano, laughs into the mic. “In Chicago, we had to put our mother on the stage. She came out with red-arrow Post-its on all the pages of Jill’s book that upset her.”

Jill rolls their eyes theatrically. “It was a lot of pages.”

On cue, the crowd roars.

Others, unspared, might have their own copies of Jill’s book dotted with Post-its, too. (Now ex-)husband Bruce takes a drumming for not quite showing up for his wife. “I tried to push down the anger that Bruce hadn’t yet arrived to my birthday party,” Soloway writes. “I thought, […] I can’t believe this is the person to whom I will be married for the rest of my life. I don’t want to tell him the ways I need him. I want him to know.” And Soloway’s brief, life-altering romance with poet Eileen Myles, first announced in the pages of The New Yorker, died as publicly as it lived, onstage at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. “We have things in our relationship that we haven’t quite worked out yet,” Soloway told the audience, as Myles nodded their assent. “We have lots of things to talk about that we’re too embarrassed to talk about alone, so we’re going to talk about them with you guys.” A gust of surprise blew through the theater’s 300-person crowd, but soon, the spectators joined the conversation.

Back at the Largo, Faith plays the first notes of a musical interlude, Jill’s cue to exit the stage. “Let’s hear it for my sister,” Faith says.

“Sibling,” Jill yells from the wings.

“Sibling,” Faith concedes. “I’m getting used to them being gender nonbinary. The pronouns keep tripping me up.”

The program unfolds, more feminist rally than book tour stop. Jill and co-presenter Roxane Gay invite the audience to join their conversation about femininity, gender fluidity, and BDSM. Faith and friends preview songs from the final season of Transparent, which will end with a single feature-film-length musical. The show-stopper is a duet between Shelly, the Pfefferman/Soloway family matriarch, and daughter, Sarah, who’s desperately resisting her mother’s intrusiveness. Shelly’s message to Sarah is classic Pfefferman/Soloway: “Your Boundary Is My Trigger.”

¤

This is what it’s like on publication week for the memoir She Wants It, Jill Soloway’s latest disruption-seeking missile, and you don’t have to live in Los Angeles to hear Jill live and in person. Soloway. Is. Everywhere.

Defining patriarchy as “men corroborating one another’s reality” for the ladies on The View. Explaining “their” use of the pronoun “they” instead of “she” as “a bridge” between male and female on CBS This Morning. Telling Newsweek that “[e]ven though I don’t identify as a she anymore, I love the power of She Wants It.” In dialogue with Nanette superstar Hannah Gadsby — to whom the book is dedicated and who appears in the book’s acknowledgments — onstage at a New York Times talk.

It’s a big job, being Jill Soloway. The divorced parent of two sons, Soloway is best known for the Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning, unabashedly autobiographical phenom that is the Amazon series Transparent. But wait, wait: there’s more. Soloway also runs Topple (as in “topple the patriarchy”), the production company within Amazon Studios that produced Transparent and Soloway’s second Golden Globe–nominated series, I Love Dick.

Founded by Soloway in 2015, Topple is currently developing eight new series and four feature films, along with the fifth and final, Jeffrey Tambor–less season of Transparent.

Jill Soloway’s bio describes them as “an artist and activist.” Indeed, the 53-year-old devotes their formidable energies to both — mostly by creating activist art; sometimes by co-creating activist organizations. An active participant in the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, in 2017 Soloway co-founded “50/50 by 2020,” “an intersectional power movement in arts and entertainment” that asks, “What if Hollywood wasn’t run by cis white men?”

Also, a few months ago — in their spare time? — Soloway launched TOPPLE Books, an Amazon imprint that specializes “in stories designed to drive discussion and social change about sexuality and gender.”

¤

Like many “overnight successes,” Jill Soloway’s was a long time coming. After college, they worked as a production assistant on music videos and commercials in their native Chicago, presaging Transparent with theatrical transgression, collaborating with sister Faith on plays like The Miss Vagina Pageant and The Real Live Brady Bunch.

In 2001, Six Feet Under executive producer Alan Ball read Soloway’s short story, “Courtney Cox’s Asshole,” and immediately hired Soloway as a writer on the iconic show. “Desperate for something else of hers to read,” Ball blurbed Soloway’s first memoir, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants (2006), “I hired her so she would be forced to write more for my own private enjoyment.” The job ran as long as the show did, ending in 2005.

Fast-forward to 2012, the year Soloway almost gave up on Hollywood, because Hollywood seemed to have given up on them. Their episodic work on various TV shows had dried up; a promised writing gig on Glee fell through, and Soloway — then married to music supervisor Bruce Gilbert, with a son from a previous marriage and a second son on the way — was drained of both money and hope.

Then came The Call. As described in She Wants It, Soloway’s father asked if Jill was sitting down, then told his daughter, “I’m coming out to you. I’m trans.”

“Even though my brain was trying to jump out of my skull through the back of my neck,” Soloway writes, “I knew to listen and be present, to speak with reassuring words […] there was also some part of me that knew I would be making this into something.”

We all know what that “something” turned out to be. But before Transparent, there was an epiphany to have, and a long-unfinished movie script to complete.

“Once my parent came out,” Soloway writes,

I was suddenly powered by a huge gust of yes. […] I stopped believing what I had believed about myself — that I probably wasn’t a real artist […] Something about my parent coming out immediately shattered a wall; she was being her true self, a woman. Now I could be my true self, a director.

The result was Soloway’s first feature film, about a frustrated stay-at-home mom who brings home a sex worker to poignantly comedic results. Although its reviews were mixed, Afternoon Delight yielded proof that Soloway was, in fact a director. Quentin Tarantino included the film on his list of top 10 films of 2013, and it won the 2013 Sundance Directing Award.

¤

Soloway describes the writing of the Transparent as coming out “so easily, like a slippery baby.” The selling of the show? Not so much.

After a half-dozen studios turned Transparent down, “Finally, [agent] Larry called to let me know there was one more option.” Soloway writes,

Amazon wanted to hear the pitch. The place I did my online shopping for banana slicers and replacement phone chargers wants to make my show into a web series? No. Thank. You.

I went to the meeting anyway. […] They explained to me that no, it wouldn’t be a web series, that their budgets would be the same as any TV network.

Okay, really? And what channel would it be on?

It would be on Amazon.

Hmm […]

If nothing else, by trying this version of whatever they were calling TV with Amazon I’d at least have the funding to get started on something.

So, Soloway’s “no” turned into “yes,” and Transparent turned into a five-season, multiple-award-winning series — the first Amazon Studios production to win a major award, and the first streaming series to win a Golden Globe for Best Series.

And then, in November 2017, right in the middle of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements that its creator had helped propel, Transparent turned into an object lesson in humility, as in, “Yes, it can happen here.”

When the Jeffrey Tambor crisis broke, Soloway was more ascendant, as an artist and an activist, than they’d ever been. Topple had just moved into new, lofty offices on the Paramount lot. Season five of Transparent was underway, with a new showrunner, new trans writers, and a writer’s room that was “more queer than ever.” Soloway had just attended a meeting with Reese Witherspoon, Ava DuVernay, Shonda Rhimes, Natalie Portman, and, um, Oprah that yielded a new movement called #TimesUp.

On their way to work the next day, Soloway learned that two trans women affiliated with the show were accusing its star of sexual assault.

“I felt myself splitting in two,” Soloway writes.

On the outside, I was part of a cultural explosion. On the inside, I hated myself for questioning the validity of the claims. Yes, believe all victims but—damn it—how could this happen on my show, too. […] I could see the whole future of the show, everything I had worked for, all of it spinning out.

An investigation into the abuse claims was undertaken. Its outcome: Tambor was fired. If Transparent was to continue, it would do so without the character around whom the series revolved.

“Post-reckoning, everyone was writing, but none of the beauty or joy was there,” Soloway writes. “The folks at Amazon were unsure if there was a version of the show we could all still imagine. I wanted to imagine it. I kept feeling around for inspiration. […] But as the accusations flooded social media, I felt someone wagging a finger at me: Look, it all came tumbling down.”

¤

So who is Jill Soloway, really? What will be their place in the herstory of the entertainment business? The feminist movement? The world?

What can the reader of She Wants It take away from the much-plumbed depths of Soloway’s life? If the reader is a fan of Six Feet Under, Afternoon Delight, Transparent, or I Love Dick; a seeker and/or a teller of modern truth; a proponent and/or a student of feminism; an aspiring artist/activist struggling to find the light — the answer is, a lot.

“On most shows, they act like they’re running out of money, they’re running out of time, they’re running out of light,” Soloway writes of establishing the culture of Transparent. “On this show, let’s try saying we have plenty of money, we have plenty of time, and we are the light.”

As does any good memoirist, Soloway mines their own experience for universal tips. As work on Transparent began, Soloway writes,

I began to realize that my perceptions about needing to bring something great to my work were wrong. There was nothing I needed to get or know or bring with me. Artists synthesize their experiences onto the canvas, the page, or the screen. Everywhere we’d all been, all the people we’d met and the inside jokes we have, we sculpt them into what we make.

Which brings us to the most obvious question raised by, and often asked about, Jill Soloway’s work. Is the very personal not only political, but worthy of the label “art”? Are the gains yielded by the intimate revelations upon which Soloway’s oeuvre is built worth the collateral damage?

“Was it unfair to transform my real life into a product?” Soloway asks in She Wants It. Soloway’s mom, with her red-arrow Post-its, might have her own opinion. But fair or unfair, the ends — TV shows and movies, past and future, that probe and illuminate the human condition with Soloway’s signature depth and wit — justify the means.

Of this, Soloway themself remains unconvinced.

“I am still compelled by the idea that I have to hurry and change the world before I die,” Soloway writes in the book’s conclusion. “Post reckoning, what am I doing to get what I want? What am I doing to topple the patriarchy? It never feels like enough.”

¤

Meredith Maran is a contributor to The New York Times, the Washington Post, theLos Angeles Times, among other publications. The author of the memoir The New Old Me and a dozen other books, she lives in one of Silver Lake’s finest bungalow courts, and on Twitter @meredithmaran.

The post What Does Jill Soloway Want? appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.



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Fed Chairman's Remarks Spark Market Rally

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 600 points, erasing its November decline, after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell eased investor worries about an aggressive increase in interest rates.

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‘The Numbers Are So Staggering.’ Overdose Deaths Set a Record Last Year.


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Wildfires Burn Across Eastern Australia in Sweltering Heat Wave


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South Korean Court Orders Mitsubishi of Japan to Pay for Forced Wartime Labor


By CHOE SANG-HUN from NYT World https://ift.tt/2E1EQy7

3 Philippine Police Officers Are Convicted in a Drug War Killing


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On Politics: Pelosi Secures Nomination for Speaker but Needs Votes to Clinch


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It’s Almost 2019. Do You Know Where Your Photos Are?


By JOHN HERRMAN from NYT Style https://ift.tt/2zxFqQb

Shade


By KATHERINE SCHULTEN from NYT The Learning Network https://ift.tt/2Qn5R4S

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At Tiffany’s, It’s All Party, Party, Party


By RACHEL FELDER from NYT Fashion https://ift.tt/2DPfwu9

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By ELIZABETH PATON from NYT Fashion https://ift.tt/2E0FJHf

Vintage Bubbles, With (Real Gold) Baubles


By NAZANIN LANKARANI from NYT Fashion https://ift.tt/2FKc46Q