Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. Up to this point, these journals have focused almost entirely on how my habits and modes of thought have been disrupted and recast by a powerful pathogen. I’d like to take a moment now to reflect on the myriad ways in which life […]
Late last year, I spent several months writing a series of essays on the nature of friendship. I wish I had read William Rawlins’s Friendship Matters before undertaking that process, but unfortunately I only discovered it after completing the essays. This dry but extremely thorough examination of friendship is an essential text for anyone who cares about […]
Hey everyone and hope you’re staying safe out there! Today I’ve got a special edition of my “Notes From a Pandemic” series to share with you. It’s an interview with my father, Terry Raymer. Terry is a diabetes specialist who has worked in the Humboldt medical community for about the last three decades, with the […]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. As I consider the passing of another week in this pandemic, my mind settles on the feeling of being unable to directly assist the people fighting on the front lines. In other crises, I’d get out of the house. I’d find something useful […]
This is the third novel I’ve read by Gabriel García Márquez, and I won’t be surprised if it turns out to be the last. Love in the Time of Cholera is a beautifully-written book packed with a wealth of vibrant symbolism, but its thematic and interpersonal qualities are unmistakably corrupt. Márquez’s prose––expertly enlivened by Edith Grossman’s […]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. “Getting sick is different now.” In a conversation with my wife Jessie, these words tumbled out of my mouth before I could give much thought to what they meant. This is a fairly common experience for me, which means I spend a […]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. There have been many times in my life when I felt like things were moving quickly. Most people agree that the speed of human events has increased in recent decades, largely due to breakthroughs in digital technology and globalization. And yet, we are […]
Every great novel has a time, or times, when it is needed most. For Albert Camus’s The Plague, that time is now. As I write these words, 24,127 lives have been lost to SARS-CoV-2, and this is just the beginning. Locked in mortal combat with an enemy we will certainly vanquish––either by wit, endurance, or some combination […]
Greetings, dear friends of the present and curious citizens of the future. These words are reaching you from the upstairs home office of a residence in Humboldt County, California. The sun is rising, inimitably bright on this clear, crisp morning. Shining dewdrops bedeck every blade of grass and the crimson flowers of the season’s first […]