July 28: Speak Out for Ashraf Fayadh

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In February, a court in Abha, Saudi Arabia, announced that it had retracted its November 2015 death sentence for the poet Ashraf Fayadh and exchanged it for a sentence of eight years in prison and 800 lashes with a cane. He must also make a public statement of repentance.

This new sentence switched his conviction from one of apostasy, or renouncing his religion, to one of blasphemy, insulting that religion and its leaders.

On Thursday, July 28, artists and activists around the world will speak out on behalf of Ashraf Fayadh by creating art, writing essays, joining a Tweetstorm, recording podcasts, and many other ways of showing support in a “Day of Creativity.” The website “Arabic Literature (in English)” published a list of ten suggestions in a recent post: “Make Noise & Beauty on July 28, a Day of Creativity for Ashraf Fayadh.” If you participate, please use the hashtag #FreeAshraf. Everything that follows below is my small contribution.

The Operating System, a small press, will be publishing a volume of Fayadh’s poems entitled Instructions Within, translated by Mona Kareem.
Read More

Crisis Mismanagement

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

* * * *
“Take my advice—I’m not using it.” I can tell you to keep calm. At my worst, I might insist that you keep calm. But as someone who can introduce stress into the least stressful, sweetly innocuous, and even some of the more pleasant experiences in life, when I am confronted with the parts of life that others find truly stressful, I hunker down and find the effort deep inside myself to make them yet more stressful.

In one of my lesser achievements in the field of stress management, I gave myself a black eye while tying my shoes. These were boots with leather laces (I am not a cowboy) and such laces can take a little effort to yank into position. While securing my “half-knot” on my right shoe, the length of lace in my left hand broke and I clocked myself in the right eye. At the time, I was 34 years old, not 11.
Read More

Today in History: July 27

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Warner Brothers film A Wild Hare opened in theaters on this date in 1940. The cartoon featured both Elmer Fudd and the first appearance of his catch-phrase—”Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits”—and the first official appearance of Bugs Bunny.

A character that resembled the eventual Bugs Bunny character appeared in other Warner Brothers cartoons through the 1930s, but he was usually silent except for a guffawing laugh. In one cartoon, the character was referred to as “Happy Rabbit.”
Read More