What does writing about one’s personal experiences feel like? I think these lines in Eminem’s song expresses it well.
“I’ve heard that from other writers, too,” she told me. Compared to writing fiction, revisiting your own past just beats you up, she said. And a newfound urge to sleep is only one side effect of drafting a memoir: People who are long dead can slowly come alive in your mind; you can hear and smell them almost as vividly as if you were having a full-blown hallucination. Your memories will change, as truths you long held about your life begin to unravel. Ultimately, you may end up a different person altogether. “In some ways, writing a memoir is knocking yourself out with your own fist, if it’s done right,” Karr writes in her most recent book, The Art of Memoir, which was released in paperback last fall. “The form always has profound psychological consequences on its author.” Writing a Memoir Is a Strange Psychological Trip Through Your Past
I have not bought Hillary Clinton’s new book yet. I hope to have it late next week when I’ll have some time to go to the brick and mortar store of an independent bookseller at a city near me. I have heard that it is difficult to read. Emotionally difficult.
I hope to do a review of it here at IAN, at some point. I’m sure there will be other reviews done by other readers of DK.
Additionally— David Remnick in the New Yorker —
When I told Clinton that I had looked her up that morning on Twitter, she smiled knowingly and said, “A dangerous thing to do!” She knew all too well what was there, and it wasn’t merely the usual filth about her appearance or her marriage. It was the kind of material that allowed men like Trump, Michael Flynn, and Chris Christie to get in front of roaring crowds and inspire chants of “Lock her up!”
SNIP
Such talk was not a matter of wishful conspiracy thinking. Scott Shane, of the Times, recently published an article in which he, with the help of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, detailed the Russian efforts against Clinton in the campaign, far beyond the hack of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta’s e-mail accounts. Shane reported that a “cyberarmy” of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of bloggers and bots with fake American identities spread disinformation about Clinton on various platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
These tactics, Clinton told me, were “right out of the playbook of Putin and one of the generals whom he listens to, who talked about the kind of war planning and preparation that Russia needed to be engaged in. It was no longer just large, conventional forces and nuclear warheads—it was also cyberwar, covert and semi-covert, even overt, as we saw in Ukraine. This attack on our electoral system was at least publicly encouraged by Trump and his campaign. [...]”
This is the Itzl Alert Network. (Itzl is the name of the dog in the picture.) We publish
a diary here every day, just before midnight. This group is here for us to check in with each other, to let people know we are alive, and doing OK.
We have split up the publishing duties, but we welcome everyone in IAN to do daily diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news! If you would like to write a diary, let us know in a comment.
We would love it if you joined our list of writers. You can sometimes alternate with someone. New voices are always good for a group.
Monday: Crimson Quillfeather. Tuesday: ejoanna. Wednesday: Pam from California. Thursday: art ah zen. Friday: FloridaSNMOM. Saturday: Gwennedd. Sunday: loggersbrat.
There are many good reasons to watch “The Vietnam War.” Unless you are very well informed, it will teach you things you do not know and correct things you thought you knew. It may be, if you are of those generations for whom the words "the war" call to mind only Iraq or Afghanistan, that you know nothing of Vietnam at all. But there are lessons in this misadventure worth learning regarding the crooked course of human events and the collision of interests and individual lives. Its multiplicity of voices, from both sides of the war and the war at home, might make you a more thoughtful, less judgmental person in the end if you pay attention.
And you should pay attention.
“It was so divisive,” one commentator remembers. “It’s like living in a family with an alcoholic father — ‘Sssh, we don't talk about that.’ Our country did that with Vietnam."
A musical break — —
PP: How would you describe your photography to someone who has never seen it?
CL: My work is called “Shorebreak Photography”. I put myself and my camera into a critical section of a breaking shorebreak wave, and capture the view looking out or looking in from the “tube”. A tube is formed when the water from a wave throws itself over and creates a pocket of air before it collapses.
I love interesting lighting, colors, backdrops (palm trees, sunsets / sunrise, white sand beaches), water texture (or lack of texture) and lots of action and power. All of my shots contain some or all of these components. LINK