Dear Reader,

Here in the middle of March—I looked it up, the Ides aren’t till tomorrow—it’s hard to know what to say. So much is happening, and so much of it so bad! To start, let me say that I hope you and yours are safe.

I’ve got a big Lightplay today, starting off with the return of my podcast You Know What’s Good, followed by some diverse motes. I hope you enjoy it. And thanks, as always, for reading.

– Jasper

This week on YKWG:

The first episode is a eulogy for a beloved teacher, Joe Smith, who taught me Shakespeare and so much more. The latter episode is the first ever guest interview for YKWG. It reflects, I think, some of my best audio editing—hopefully capturing the specificity and joy of the conversation in a condensed format. I’m glad to be back at it with this project.

Goodbye foam pear, once my grandmother’s, till I slipped from her sideboard into my suitcase during a visit to her home, back when she was living in Oxnard, back when she was. Goodbye foam pear with bite marks from my child, who pressed his teeth into it while looking me in the eye, a hunter who has many times been thwarted but now captures his prey. Goodbye foam pear that liked to hide in the fruit bowl, by the apples and kiwis, back when it still looked like something you might slice and have with yogurt in the morning. Goodbye foam pear, nearly weightless memento. Now memory alone will have to suffice.

The California state legislature is considering a new law to change management and funding for our state forests. This would be massive news for Jackson Demonstration State Forest, the 48,652-acre publicly owned redwood forest in Mendocino County that is currently managed by CalFire and that continues to be extensively logged—and to generate extensive protests. This law could change all that for the better, prioritizing “biodiversity, fire resilience, tribal co-management, carbon sequestration, and recreation instead of timber production.” I’m taking that summary from a great call to action put out by Mendocino Trail Stewards, which Evan kindly sent my way. The big takeaway here is that public comment closes this coming Monday. If you want to add your voice, do it soon! (And if you’re curious, you can read my letter to the Natural Resources Committee.)

I haven’t written about it here, but over the last six months I’ve been teaching myself black and white film photography with a sweet little Pentax K1000. I’m doing all the developing and scanning at home. It’s really fun!

Part of why I’ve taken on this project has been to build up my knowledge and skills to eventually tackle using my dad’s old Sinar P. The Sinar P is a 4×5 camera with so many pieces and variables you have to control for. Among those variables is metering. Luckily, my dad’s old Pentax Spotmeter V still works, and I’ve been teaching myself how to use it. My investigations led me to this very specific vinyl sticker that you can place over the Spotmeter V’s exposure calculator such that the readings correspond to the famous zone system of metering. It makes determining exposure and shutter speed much more intuitive. This is the kind of thing that makes me happy the internet exists!

“The first six days of war in Iran cost U.S. taxpayers at least $11.3 billion in munitions alone.” (USA Today)

“The strike, which killed at least 165 people, mostly children, according to Iranian state TV, occurred on Saturday, during the first wave of U.S. and Israeli operations against Iran. Shortly after, several videos appeared showing a girls' school in Minab largely destroyed.” (CBC)

“In FY2024 (the most recent year for which complete data are available), USAID managed more than $35 billion in combined appropriations...” (Congress.gov)

“As of November 5th, it estimated that U.S.A.I.D.’s dismantling has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children.” (Atul Gawande, New Yorker)

“To partially offset the cost of trillions of dollars in tax cuts, the [One Big Beautiful Bill] legislation includes $186 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).” (Urban Institute)

“33.6 million adults and 13.8 million children — including nearly 2 million children under 3 years old — lived in food-insecure households in 2023.” (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)

“The 20 richest people in the [U.S.] hold a collective $3 trillion—nearly half of all American billionaire wealth—up from $2.3 trillion a year ago.” (Forbes Australia)

“There are about 33,000 homeless veterans in the United States, about 14,000 of whom live on the streets. Veterans make up around 5 percent of the unsheltered homeless population.” (New York Times)

About a month ago, Lisa invited me and the kid out to Glassell Park to check out the latest show from painter Aaron Morse. The paintings were interesting, but not as much fun as the review Lisa wrote for Momus. I love when criticism can help you see the thing under discussion more clearly than before. For instance:

Lisa tries to situate Morse’s work in the recent vogue for “Westernalia” but ends up finding resonances with artists stretching back through mid-century sci-fi zines, ’90s comic books, and even the woodcut artist Tom Killion. She explains, “In layering and drawing these styles together, Morse’s paintings stun the reader into a kind of dreamy present.”

For the second year in a row, our white amaryllis is flowering. The trick seems to be to stop watering it in December, let all the leaves fall off, and then recommence watering as soon as the flower shoot appears.

I wonder what projects of our own might flower if given a chance, first, to die back.

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