Stuff Read
The Believer Vol 17 No 2 – Night Snow – Apr / May 2020
Kilometres Ran
week nineteen – 63.2
2020 to date: 1,220 KM
I expect issue number 131 to get shoved through my mail slot any day now so I thought I should finally get around to thumbing through issue 130. I started the interview with Stephen Harrod Buhner but lost interest before I even got to the interview. Ross Simonini’s introduction didn’t do much to make me want to read on, but maybe I’ll revisit it. I liked the short piece How to Furnish an Apartment by Weike Wang and really enjoyed the long-form from Laura Preston The Voice Keepers about the forgotten (or in my case, completely unbeknownst) brief trend of recording letters to onto record and then mailing them. It is way more interesting than I’m making it sound here, so it’s good that Preston wrote it and not me. Titles link to the articles online. This issue also lists the finalists in the annual Believer Book Awards, which is very likely going to provide me with a whole bunch more books that I might get around to reading some day, just like all those other ones I am absolutely going to get to honest I promise.
Running is a privilege that I enjoy but that I don’t think about very often. Usually that only time I do is when I’m injured and then I think about what it would be like to never be able to run again. For a while I wanted to get a motorcycle because I’m a cliche post-punk white male approaching (or slightly beyond) middle age but I’ve decided against it because if (when) I crashed it I won’t be able to run. I haven’t ever considered the privilege I have as a cliche post-punk white male that allows me to go for a run. I run everywhere and anywhere. I don’t travel to the most dangerous places, but when I do have the privilege to travel I run there too. On Friday I ran and really thought about that privilege and how much I take it for granted. I, along with thousands of others, was appalled by the news that an African American man, Ahmaud Arbery, was lynched by two white men while he was out for a run. Friday would have been Maud’s 26th birthday. People everywhere ran 2.23 miles, the date of Maud’s murder – February 23 – to demand justice. News came the night before that the two white men who lynched Ahaud (Maud) Arbery had been arrested and charged with murder. There’s no denying that they did it. No, instead there will be debates that essentially boil down to whether two white men are allowed to extrajudicially execute a black man while he is out for a run. Tomorrow I’m going to go for a run. I will take it for granted. I am extremely privileged to do so.