Just Motes: The Sauerkraut Report, the Pineapple Vinegar Report, the Manuscript Report

Dear Reader,

I’m enjoying the freedom of writing these “Just Motes” editions of Lightplay so much that this week I’m adding a new wrinkle: reports. These will give me space to share updates on ongoing projects—kitchen projects, writing projects, publishing projects, and more.

As a matter of fact, I already did one report: the melt report where I tracked a snowman’s gradual, then sudden, demise. That first report series is something of an inspiration for this week’s three reports.

Below the reports I share some Motes about the ongoing, utterly sickening assault on American cities by “our own” federal government. I want to share these pieces in part because I’m disappointed by TV and newspaper coverage, and I think others might want to read some of the pieces I’ve found most useful in understanding the unfolding situation this last week. (Please do send me what you are reading and finding insightful.)

I remain grateful to have this space (and my Wednesday deadline once again!) to think in community. I’ve been in touch with so many of you the last few months, and it’s been really grounding in a time where I sometimes struggle to maintain tip-top mental health. So truly, thank you for reading. I wish safety, health, and joy for you, your families, your friends, and all of your neighbors.

– Jasper

The Sauerkraut Report

The day after Christmas, I spotted some likely red cabbages at the store, bought four, and carried them home. That night I sliced them thin on the mandoline. The kid helped me pack the crock, adding salt between layers of cabbage. It has been going for a bit over two weeks now.

The other night I pulled some young kraut out to eat with nachos. I like how the acid and salt and vegetable energy of the kraut balances out the rich earthiness of the corn chips and black beans and cheese. This kraut clearly will keep getting better. But it’s already yummy: crunchy, cabbage-y, lightly sour, with a complex flavor.

When we took it out, the kid said with pride: “We made it, and no one else.”

(Real ones will remember that the third issue of Lightplay, back in May of 2020, was titled simply “Sauerkraut”.)

The Pineapple Vinegar Report

This is my first time trying out Sandor Ellix-Katz’s incredibly simple recipe for Vinagre de Piña. I’ve been wanting to try it ever since reconnecting with his book Wild Fermentation in September as I wrote my Lightplay, “An Archipelago of Life-Promoting Culture.” 

Saturday evening, the kid watched me cut up the pineapple. Then together we filled a half-gallon jar with sugary water, stuffed the roughly chopped pineapple skins into it, and covered the jar mouth with cheesecloth. We set it to ferment on the far end of the kitchen table. I ate my portion of the pineapple flesh in the bath.

Now we’re waiting, sniffing it daily, and occasionally skimming some scum off the surface. The liquor is definitely getting a bit funky. On Saturday we’ll strain the pineapple skins out and then let the clear liquid keep fermenting for a few more weeks. I’ll keep you posted on how it comes out.

The Manuscript Report

The good news is that I finished drafting Part I of my book in Chicago, just a few days after Thanksgiving. I was sitting at my cousins’ dining room table, dance music blasting in my headphones, writing longhand in the notebook I’ve been drafting the book in this year. A giant snowstorm was beginning to blanket the whole region in sculptural white fluff. (The next day we made a snowman.) It was a great, cozy, victorious morning.

The bad news is that, since then, I’ve been a bit stuck. I’m bogged down by big-picture questions. How do I want Part II to go? Should I write it in the same style as Part I? Or strike out down a new path? Take a shortcut? I have been sitting with this quantum uncertainty for the last month-plus. It has stopped me from really doing any work on the book at all.

But the last two days I have felt the call to press forward again. I have been rising early and spending some time transcribing my scrawling, crossed-out handwriting into my big Google Doc. (226 pages and counting.) I have 18 more handwritten pages left to type up. I’m cautiously hopeful that by the time I finish transcribing, I will have enough clarity on how to proceed that I can begin.

I like to believe that projects have rhythms, and sometimes you need to listen to your body and wait. In fact, I must believe this, otherwise I would exclusively feel jealousy at the 1000-words-a-day crowd and self-loathing at myself for failing to Churn It Out™. So much of the mental game of writing is coming up with excuses not to give up.

One more piece of good news: in returning to the manuscript I found this:

The Smirk

I continue to worry profoundly about this country I live in, as the feds have now responded to their own murder of Renee Good by upping the level of brutality and lawlessness in Minneapolis even further. The corporate media seems to struggle to look straight at this story, to describe what’s actually happening, and even just to keep it on the front page. So once again I find the best coverage coming from outlets where you might least expect it. I was especially gripped by the firsthand reportage by Ryan Broderick in “We're all just content for ICE: Four days on the ground in Minneapolis.”

The most gutting part of a gutting piece is this sequence of pictures:

Broderick explains,

When I saw this, I remembered something that happened in June of last year. One of California’s U.S. Senators, Alex Padilla, tried to interrupt a press conference being held here in L.A. by DHS secretary Kristi Noem, only to be muscled out of the room, wrestled to the ground, and handcuffed. The morning that it happened, I watched a video recording of the encounter, shocked by how security seemed to deliberately assault this man’s dignity. Over the next few days, I kept flashing back to a few frames of the video: the moment when a smirk flashed across the face of the security guard as he overpowered Padilla. I became so obsessed that I went through the video frame-by-frame and screenshotted the moment.

Seeing the Fox News reporter’s smirk, I felt I understood the first smirk better. These twisted smiles capture so much. There is a wicked, fragile pleasure in overpowering someone weaker than yourself. Men smile like this as they beat their wives and children. I assume they smile like this as they commit sexual violence against civilians during war. It’s the smile of the torturer. The smile of someone whose psychological state has taken them far away from the capacity to take care, to be gentle, and to remember the humanity of the person in front of them. They are full with gleeful bloodlust.

There must be a way to break these men out of this level of hell.

Socialism Beats Fascism

It’s easy to fall into despair, so I much appreciated the positive vision for abolishing ICE offered by Spencer Ackerman in “Either ICE Is Abolished or It Will Kill Many More Renee Goods.” While it’s terrible what’s happening, it’s important to note the incredible bravery of tens or hundreds of thousands of community members who are doing what they can to protect their neighbors—and mostly with limited support from their ostensibly left-wing elected officials. This must have consequences, says Ackerman.

I like the framing of the “undercard match.” It’s coming, and it’s urgent. Having a clear-eyed, non-billionaire-captured, forward-looking Democratic party is a matter of life and death for countless people around the globe. The editorial board of the New York Times simply isn’t going to lead us out of this mess. Hell, it’s not even going to win an election. Send more Zohrans!

Feel-good chaser: A super-cut of ICE agents slipping on ice.

If Greed Is Good, What’s Murder?

A few days ago, the hedge fund billionaire and triumphant hater-of-Harvard’s-first-Black-president Bill Ackerman gave $10K to a GoFundMe (set up by a Nazi) for the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.

This seems to herald an evolution of the “cancel culture grift.” That being the roughly decade-old arrangement where the billionaire class began creating all these cushy positions for “cancelled professors” (they get jobs at the billionaire-backed “anti-woke” University of Austin or at a think tank) and trans-hating comedians (they get far above-market rates to perform in Riyadh). Under the terms of the cancel culture grift, people who seem to be facing social opprobrium are suddenly presented with a fat check and a new set of friends. This strikes me as sad not just for our wider society but also—and perhaps most intensely—for those people being paid off by the billionaires. In exchange for money and a new platform, they give up the chance to reflect on what they did, grow their hearts, and maybe even make amends.

But now we’re starting to see an emerging “murder culture grift,” where if you’re a white man you can increasingly expect to be given fame and fortune by the billionaire right for murdering someone who that class sees as an enemy. We saw this when a man strangled a mentally ill person to death on the subway (he got a high-salary job at a billionaire’s venture capital firm), we saw it when a 17-year-old vigilante killed two activists in Wisconsin (he was paid to speak at events put on by billionaire-backed Turning Points USA), and now we’re seeing it with the ICE agent who murdered Nicole Good (the GoFundMe has raised nearly half-a-million dollars; Ackerman’s was the largest single gift).

The murder grift, like the cancel culture grift, works to preclude the chance of moral reckoning on the part of those who killed. The billionaires create proud monsters, figureheads for a social order based on oppression and fear. They also make clear to others considering monstrous deeds that, should they actually carry these deeds out, they will be safe, even cosseted.

Apropos of nothing at all, I found this bit of math I must have worked on in 2020.

Do please double-check my figures. And while you’re at it, ponder a minute on the question: does anyone really need a dollar more than more than $999M?

Waxed Linen Thread

The latest Psuedo Press newsletter isn’t up on their website yet, but it’s a great installment. I’m really into the whole vibe of Psuedo Press—they offer their monthly newsletter in mailed zine format, they have some of the funkiest (in a good way!) email styling I’ve ever seen, and they pack their newsletter with tips for us wretched who feel compelled to make books. Their latest newsletter includes a discussion of bookbinding thread that gets wonderfully far into the weeds.

This kind of winding, chatty, thoughtful writing warms my heart. (Thanks to Xander for turning me on to this one!)

The Pillars Are So Back

They’re saving the crazy glowing solar pillars! Why? AI! Is this a good idea? Who can say! They kill 6000 birds a year and burn natural gas every morning and make expensive electricity, but hey, we’ve gotta keep the lights on at the CSAM factory…

Logic aside, there’s no arguing that the vibes are compellingly weird.

I’m so glad to have you as a reader. If you’ve enjoyed this email, have you considered forwarding it to a friend?