Rattling in my brain-pan

• Over at Sojourners Courtney Ariel lays down six things we can do to be stronger allies.
• “By all accounts, even revisionist ones, Ishi was a mensch: patient, friendly, curious, upright. He weathered the sort of radical and traumatic change that would destroy most of us, and he did so with an unflappable calm that, as his joking and frequent delight suggested, had nothing to do with stony-faced stereotypes of native imperturbability. There was a charm to the man that radiates throughout his story, throughout time even, which is partly why print-outs of his image are now stapled to that signboard at Grattan.” Erik Davis has a newsletter — even if you choose not to subscribe, do yourself a favour and read his latest.

Ishi Obscura

• Lefsetz interviews Kendzior — for two hours. I haven’t heard it yet, but Sarah Kendzior is a terrific interview with anyone. Her book is waiting for me at Blue Heron, so I will give this a listen there and back.
• Jonathan Haidt is trying to heal America’s divisions — I read Peter Wehner’s profile of his psychologist friend earlier this week. Hard to believe five days ago seems like a more hopeful time.
• “How did I meet Larry? He called me a murderer and an incompetent idiot on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner magazine” — Anthony Fauci reflects on his beloved friend and nemesis Larry Kramer.
• “I have to say that my better judgment does not get a lot of exercise these days” — surprisingly, shock-novelist and inveterate pot-stirrer Lionel Shriver proves capable of understatement.
• Finally, a little over a month ago I nervously linked to David Cayley’s contemplation of what Ivan Illich might have made of the pandemic response. A week went by and nobody commented on it. I breathed a sigh of relief. Alas, a week later Paul Bowman informed me that the wags at Solidarity Hall were gettin’ into it, big-time — enough so to coax Cayley out of the study and into the square to deliver further rumination on the matter. My thoughts, yet again: a hot-take on what has, possibly, been sacrificed from human community in our hasty embrace of the atomistic contemporary is maybe not the best way to determine, “What is to be done?” But, hey — for them what’s got to contemplate on it, keep on it contemplatin’.