December Digest, 2024
How do you feel about this Substack?
Before we get into the rest, know that I, Emily Munro, LJ Cohen, Gordon Linzner (the founder of Space and Time magazine), Alexander Sirkman, and one surprise guest who far more famous than all of us combined will be reading January 21st in NYC. Please mark yourself as a maybe and invite ten friends who will invite ten friends.
Our official first month has come and gone (with 2 extra test weeks to work out kinks) and so here’s the first monthly digest. Again, for those that haven’t, if you’d prefer to only get one email a month select the frequency of the emails you’d like to receive — and make sure you’re unsubscribed from other Substack notifications in your account (like notes, likes, direct messages, etc.) if you, like me, do not wish to receive those.
I have catered a survey for you. I really am curious for your opinion, harsh or heavenly, with how I can improve:
Or if you prefer, we can just chat in the comments about what I can fix:
Leaderboard:
In case you didn’t know there’s a leaderboard on the Substack. You can get it by referring friends:
We’re doing some rewards — 3 referrals gets you a 3 month comp, 7 referrals gets you access to Discord and a free novel, 101 referrals gets you a 2hr private zoom and a signed book.
Right now, the #1 referrer is the Eastern Orthodox iconographer, Solrun Nes. As a shoutout, I want to link to Solrun’s substack:
Top posts:
A short story about one father who tries to make The Right Pitch with his daughter’s barbie doll holds the top seat. It originally sold to Riddlebird.
When you consider The Brooklyn Dodgers Opportunity Cost, you can see that the Dodgers would be worth more money had they stayed in NYC rather than move to L.A.
A survey of Neil Gaiman's Prostitutes throughout his literary characters would have served as an early warning sign of his moral failure.
The New Haven Review originally bought this story about a pregnant mother and a father fighting off the threat of a tornado in oil-rush Southern Illinois.
A poetic meditation on how New Yorkers fly in concrete, originally sold to Forgotten Ground Regained.
A reflection on the self-made character and the kenosis of the author helped us talk through The Economy of Stories in The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, the bestselling fantasy novel.
This young prosecutor from Boston gave up his Hugo Boss suit to stage hunger strikes and get arrested for the sake of the overly incarcerated.
I finally came out of the closet about the time a dying artist begged me to bathe a wolf while naked.
Who Owns the Sky? The gold? The oil? The sea?
I’ve grown to know and love Dr. Jack Hickel (son of Gov. Wally Hickle, former Secretary of the Interior under Nixon; father of the economist Jason Hickel), Ian Liang, and the various board members of the Institute of the North. They have a huge mandate there at the Center for the Commons. Their mandate eventually so convicted me that I pursued a short f…
Lit & Thought:
A refugee girl tries to solve a rocket problem using the Montauk lighthouse in a weather crisis world.
Bren from Bell Hammers takes a pontoon boat out and someone suggests they start a bonfire on it to roast hot dogs. Originally sold to The Misty Review of the U.K.
She Stoops to Conquer was staged by the Theater Company in the Lower East Side — it’s a theater company without an online presence, a formal ticketing system, a playbill, or even an announcement of the next classic play they intend to perform to their vaudeville audiences.
Santa Claus may subscribe to the privation theory of good and the first hint comes with the contrast of “nice” with “naughty,” naughty meaning “nothing.” This teaches us the purpose of the gift of coal.
Contra a minor point by David Bentley Hart on how travelogues focus on unbiased observation, I offered the counterpoint of Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie in Search of America, which feature strong opinions on the American people.
Pop Ethics:
I know homeowners and business owners who are homeless after a fire. Do you know your homeless neighbors?
Elon Musk doesn’t realize that Simulation Theory was Debunked in 1637.
Zuckerberg need not advocate for robot taxes: he can simply turn Facebook into an owner state managed for the maximum benefit of all stakeholders through dividends.
While C. Lance Williams served out his prison sentence for his crimes, he and I cowrote a piece on his experience learning how to manage a poker bankroll in prison. It originally sold to the World Series Edition of Poker Pro.
Interviews:
Bestselling horror master Grady Hendrix talked with me about witches (both the burnings and the trashy 70’s covers), torturously horrific Japanese art films, Anthony “Bourdain boys,” and Greenwood.
Poetry Grandmaster Linda Addison and I did cold readings of our favorite poems and talked about both the sweat equity and the unpredictability of the discerning moment, the morning dream, the early journal
The award-winning author of everyday absurdism, Karen Heuler, talked to me about her early interactions with The Brothers Karamazov and the ethics of stories.