Transformations
April updates
I make a print magazine, so it’s no surprise that I get excited when my writing appears in someone else’s print magazine. I’m particularly delighted to have the cover story in this month’s issue of MIT Technology Review. It’s a very fine magazine that makes great use of the print format, so while the gift link above will get you past the paywall, I still encourage you to track down a physical copy. The issue’s theme is nature, and my feature tries to untangle the tale of the red wolf, which I think of as the Wolf of the South. It’s always been a mysterious beast, and its complex lineage raises questions about how genetic technology should inform conservation.
That’s the only traditional byline this month, but I was glad to have another, less typical project debut this month: I’ve recorded an audio version of a tiny little essay about river confluences for the St. Louis Museum of Art. It’s a part of their audio guide for their outdoor sculptures—which, of course, will be more valuable to listen to if you actually visit the museum’s campus. But the recording is available online, if you’re curious.
A mixtape
In last week’s Southlands newsletter, I referenced my old habit of making mixtapes. Maybe that’s because, for the first time in a while, at the prompting of an old friend, I’ve made one. Or, at least, the modern version: a Spotify playlist that compiles a bunch of songs that have wormed into my ears over the past several years.
April Scenes
May has been a true whirlwind. Southlands’ second issue is currently with the printer, and should be shipping soon—so be sure to put in your order. (I encourage you to subscribe, too, though subscriptions now begin with the third issue, which a bunch of writers are already writing away on.)
At some unknown moment in the next few weeks, I’ll be shutting down for a brief bout of paternity leave. So there is some good chance that you will not receive a May edition of this newsletter. From what I can tell, as big as my May news may be, I won’t have much to report but sleeplessness…
The many transformations of meat
In terms of the book, I’m still slowly mulling the core chapter, on chicken and fast food and convenience in the modern world. I’ve realized that part of the difficulty is my own divided loyalties. On the one hand, I find myself drawn to the Michael Pollan mode of eating—fresh and local and natural. I think it’s worth remembering that when we eat we are taking part of the wider world into ourselves, and making it a part of ourselves. We should eat with reverence; we should make rituals. And the more those rituals involve our neighbors and our surrounding terrain, the bettter.
On the other, as I noted last month, I love cheap, greasy fried chicken, which feels to me like road trips and freedom, the simple pleasures of America at its best.
Last month, too, I mentioned Benjamin Lorr’s book The Secret Life of Groceries. It’s continued to stick with me in the weeks since. In particular, I’ve kept contemplating a moment that Lorr describes, recounted to him by a slaughterhouse supervisor, when a dead chicken, already drained of its blood and now plucked of its feathers—”cleaned on an existential level,” in Lorr’s words—enters a tunnel and emerges into a new room.
