Michael Downs

This proud @uarizona.bsky.social alum (Class of '86) is looking at you, President Garimella. Reject the compact now.

"Act and do and make and choose" has become my mantra.

Writing When Your Life Depends on It - The Rumpus Do I want to live, or do I want to write? Sometimes I think it’s that simple.

I would expect you more to write a piece like this one funny, thoughtful one. A friend was dying of cancer and still figuring out how and why to work. The cancer killed her, but she kept working right up until the end. And she even attempted to justify not working! therumpus.net/2018/11/06/w...

“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
Edgar Allan Poe died today in1849 in Baltimore.

Reading White, Latino, Asian, Black, Man, Woman, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish-- we are remarkably alike in the printed word. In sharing our experiences, we're talking about the outside.
Our inner voice, our happiness & despair, is universal.
This is why people who want to divide us attack books.

The Normalization of Book Banning This report offers a window into the complex and extensive climate of censorship between July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025.

pen.org/report/the-n...

For #BannedBooksWeek, I'm for the first time reading this "horrorshow," the most banned book in the U.S. in 2025, per Pen America. Stephen King is the most banned author. I used to think Banned Books Week was a way to remind ourselves not to fall into a bad old history. Yet, here we are.

No #SundaySentence this week. Instead, here's a scene from a literary talk featuring writer Debra Spark in the barn at Good Contrivance Farm. I suppose the luna moth is a fine sentence.

I want the USA to be free from the poison of guns so badly

“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.”

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

What’s the cost of the National Guard deployment in DC? - WTOP News D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is calling for the Pentagon to provide an estimate of the cost of deploying 2,000 National Guard personnel in the District during the federal law enforcement surge ...

Politico estimates the cost of the Nat'l Guard in L.A. to have been $134 million.

Cost of deployment in Washington, D.C., is estimated to be $1 million a day.

Now, if he goes into Chicago and other blue-state cities?

That's a lot of Medicaid, a lot of food stamps, a lot of grants for art ... .

Joining others who point out the inaccuracy of this headline. He didn't turn himself in; he arrived for an immigration-enforcement required interview. There, he was taken into custody without stated reason. You only "turn yourself in" when wanted by police authorities for a crime. Do better, CNN.

He looked at me like I was his spanking newborn baby and he did love me so, but feared the world would never be what any of us had hoped for.

–a daughter recalls her father in this #SundaySentence from Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Poisonwood Bible.

Hey, #NEA. Go ahead and yank annual funding for creative writing. Maybe spend that $875k on Diet Coke for the West Wing. But for F's sake, don't capitulate to the tyrant's gold-plated vanity by capitalizing "administration."

Unless it's at the start of a sentence, which this is not.

Read what @semi-rad.com writes. Your day will be better for it.
semi-rad.com/2025/08/the-...

"The Woeful Angels" is a band name or the title of an unpublished Kundera manuscript.

"Grandma can't fall asleep without the noise of the table saw."

– a #SundaySentence from the remarkable novel VORACIOUS by Małgorzata Lebda, translated by @antonialloydjones.bsky.social. Published by @lindeneditions.bsky.social

Inspiration surrounds you!

Announcing a special micro category for the Baltimore Review fall issue: 400 words max, one or two micros in one sub, micro submission period (9/1 – 9/14) and response by 9/30. Payment for accepted work at our usual rate. Because we love the short and surprising. baltimorereview.org

Where?
(if not a secret...)

"I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order."

Of course, Woody Guthrie painted this sentence on his guitar. Here is the writer's version of a guitar. Different, but the same.

A good day to remind ourselves:

For me, this will be a must read.

The whole article is nonstop fantastic writing. Incredibly moving, as well.

"--what circle of #Hell is this?!"
...
from Solomon Kane: The Serpent Ring #4 (2025), written and illustrated by Patrick Zircher, colored by Pete Pantazis
#Comics

He's always so, so good.

"I give you Thurman Munson ... spitting diamonds of saliva: Safe."

– a #SundaySentence I've long loved, too long for Bluesky's character limitations, so the screen grab. From Michael Paterniti's classic, "The House that Thurman Munson Built," first published in Esquire, September 1999.

Breakfast in Baltimore with James Baldwin.

My policy is not to read the recent Pulitzer/book-everyone-is-talking-about unless people are still talking about it five years later. I sometimes break that rule--this year with JAMES, a good decision–but too often I find the prizes are about fads or committees choosing the book they can agree on.