Author: Erik St.Andrew Moe
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46 Days: RBG
Yesterday and today I’ve been working on a story about Occupy Wall Street, which began nine years ago Thursday. It’s a tangled story, and I was too exhausted yesterday to think through whether Part I stood on its own. I’ll come back to Occupy. Tonight, just as I was settling in for a Little Salon…
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48 Days: Go Fund Me
Yesterday I filed my quarterly taxes. It’s not my favorite part of working for myself, but taxes are part of living in common cause with 705,000 Washingtonians and 328 million Americans. Everybody chips in a penny or two, and we get things like bus service and food safety standards and national parks. As I wrote…
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49 Days: Climate Migration
In all, Hauer projects that 13 million Americans will be forced to move away from submerged coastlines. Add to that the people contending with wildfires and other risks, and the number of Americans who might move — though difficult to predict precisely — could easily be tens of millions larger. Even 13 million climate migrants,…
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50 Days: Halfway Point
A three-foot rise in sea level would submerge almost 20 percent of the entire country and displace more than 30 million people. Some scientists project a five-to-six foot rise by 2100, which would displace perhaps 50 million people. As perspective, the ongoing tragedy in Syria has caused the exodus of approximately three million people. —The…
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51 Days: This Is What You Did
Is it holding you down?This great weigh I miss, flatteningAnd it’s breaking you upAll your frequencies shattered in… This is what you getThis is what you didThis is what they wantWhy are you still here?This is what they said — This Is What You Did, This Is The Kit One of the most memorable concerts I made…
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53 Days, 52 Days: I Am the Internet
On Thursday, I wrote about my Facebook/Instagram bubble. I weighed the value of glimpsing friends’ lives against the cost to our privacy; the cost of turning ourselves into eye candy to keep each other hooked, for advertisers’ benefit more than each other’s joy. Yesterday I turned my thoughts to Twitter. It became a long post,…
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54 Days: Socializing
It’s not accurate to say that I don’t use social media at all. I just haven’t been posting to social media. I login in to both Facebook and Facebook’s Instagram two or three times every day. What keeps me coming back? Both apps learn what I respond to and show me more of it each…
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55 Days: Publishing
I’ve not been sharing these posts widely. When I began the series of 100, I wasn’t sure what it would become, if I’d keep the promise of posting each day, or if I’d be happy with the results. And I wasn’t sure who it was for. I knew I wouldn’t be writing in the easy…
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56 Days: Temporary
The day after Labor Day was always the first day of school when I was growing up in Minnesota. Even now, with nowhere to go, in pandemic life at home, and having worked for myself these past seven Labor Days, I feel like today is the start of something. More New Year’s Day than New…
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57 Days: Free Labor
Labor Day has a way of sneaking up on me. The sudden end point of lazy summer routines. Echoes of childhood. Butterflies in my stomach realizing school starts the next day. Am I ready? Do I have enough notebooks? What will I wear? Will any friends be in my classes? On my school bus route?…
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58 Days: Phone
On Sundays I am posting the most constructive action I’ve run across this week to help end Trump. Reclaim Our Vote is a volunteer-driven outreach campaign contacting voters of color in states where voter suppression tactics — mandatory ID laws, cuts to early voting, mass purges of voter rolls, systemic disenfranchisement, and gerrymandering — are…
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59 Days: What’s In It For Him?
On Thursday, The Atlantic reported that Trump called American soldiers killed in action “losers” and “suckers”; that he did not want disabled Veterans to march in military parades because “nobody wants to see that”; that he said to retired General John Kelly near the Arlington National Cemetery grave of his son Robert, who died fighting…
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60 Days: Temple Bells
Yesterday I dropped a quote about the traditional Japanese time system. I was curious to learn more. The system splits a day in to six units of daylight and six units of night: The typical clock had six numbered hours from nine to four, which counted backwards from noon until midnight; the hour numbers one,…
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61 Days: Workday
“On this day in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Adamson Act, which established an eight-hour workday, with additional pay for overtime work, for railroad workers.” —The Opportunity Agenda “…as late as a century and a half ago [from 1995] the Japanese day was not divided into twenty-four hours. Instead it was broken…
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62 Days: Indoors
I’ve gone inside buildings a few times in the past two weeks. This is a novelty. I’ve been avoiding buildings other than my home since the start of quarantine in mid-March, ordering groceries delivered and meeting friends in the park if I go out. My last couple of indoor outings that month were a concert…
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63 Days: Cherry Picking
Today began with the sound of construction, as almost every day in quarantine has. A six-story building is going up right outside my apartment. The construction crews gather outside my window during the 6 a.m. hour and start their equipment around 7 most days. Lately, there has been a giant cherry picker climbing up past…
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64 Days: Crescendo
I finished Timothy Denevi’s Freak Kingdom today (earlier mentions here and here). The last sections concern Nixon’s reëlection and downfall. Denevi makes the case that the conflict against Nixon and all he represented exhausted Thompson and resulted in his last widely acclaimed work. Denevi is also explicit about the parallel he’s drawing between Nixonian fascism…
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65 Days: Volunteer to Become a Poll Worker
On Sundays, I briefly suggest some small thing you can do to end Trump and preserve our fragile Democracy. This week’s suggestion to become a poll worker came to me from the newsletter of Brad Listi’s OtherPPL podcast. Have been listening to Brad’s author interviews for years now. Highly recommend. Volunteer to become a poll…
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66 Days: Grit
Continuing through Charles Portis’ 1968 classic True Grit with A Public Space’s #APStogether quarantine reading series… Under cross-examination, Rooster Cogburn is asked about his use of excessive force under oath in a Little Rock, Arkansas courthouse. We are learning about the Federal Marshal’s toughness as our heroine Mattie Ross seeks out his services at the…
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67 Days: Antidote
Most years, D.C. empties in August. People of means head to Maine or North Carolina or the other side of the planet. Others take their few vacation days in August to visit family wherever they are welcome. Some of that is still happening, but this year coronavirus has more of us staying put. A chance…
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68 Days: Exodus
Today I began reading True Grit as the next book in the #APStogether quarantine reading series hosted by A Public Space. At the opening of Charles Portis’ 1968 classic (the basis for Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2010 film), the narrator’s father has been murdered by a scoundrel and she must tend to the mundane tasks of the…
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69 Days: Salvation
Today was a busy day. I wrote for a client in the morning and finalized a book layout in the afternoon. I was settling in to read and zone out with the comforting background noise of masked, quarantined, socially isolated baseball when I remembered that I hadn’t written today’s post. I was unsure if that…
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70 Days: Curiosity
On Saturday afternoon, a car pulled up in my alley to make a delivery to Po Boy Jim, a restaurant next door. I knew a car had pulled up because its stereo was so loud I mistook it for one of the frequent and beautiful rolling go-go protest parties that pass by here, staples of…
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71 Days: Teeth
Over the weekend I finished reading Valeria Luiselli’s The Story of My Teeth. By the end, the story of the book’s creation was as exciting to me as the narrative itself. Luiselli was invited to write a piece for the catalog of an exhibition at Galería Jumex, an important contemporary art collection in Mexico City…
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72 Days: Watch the Speeches
Sunday is the day I offer some small thing that you can do to end Trump. Past Sundays have included: Register to Vote, Learn Anti-Racism, and Adopt a State. This week I’m recommending you take the time to hear the Democrats make the case in their own words. I have struggled this week to hold…
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