Michael Downs

I don't understand. Like, "The compute was falling faintly and faintly falling"? "Or, "all happy computes are alike; each unhappy compute is unhappy in its own way"? Or is it a proper noun? "The Compute didn't want to go to Florida." I'm confused.

At the Limits of Possibility: Ursula Phillips on Translating Jacek Dukaj’s 'Ice' 'Ice' imagines an alternate early-20th-century world reshaped by the Tunguska explosion, where a mysterious substance freezes not only Siberia’s landscape but the very logic and history of Europe. Ble...

Creative artistic solutions require creative artistic humans. Read this interview with the English-language translator of Jacek Dukaj's ambitious novel ICE and imagine how many ways AI translation apps would fail at the same task.
culture.pl/en/article/a...

A #SundaySentence from John Cheever's story, "The Housebreaker of Shady Hill."

Introduce yourself with five concerts YOU WISH you could have seen -

Howlin' Wolf
The Who
Bill Evans
Patsy Cline
Ella Fitzgerald

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen -

Doobie Brothers
Willie Nelson, Van Morrison, Sheryl Crow
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
Pearl Jam
Tedeschi Trucks

Once again for Thanksgiving, this poem, following a year of miraculous good and formidable ill.

You gave me gifts, God-Enchanter.
I give you thanks for good and ill.
Eternal light in everything on Earth.
As now, so on the day after my death.
-- "Thankfulness," Czesław Miłosz; trans. by Robert Haas

YouTube video by PBS Official Trailer | Country Music | A Film by Ken Burns | PBS

A reminder that old #KenBurns remains as relevant as new Ken Burns. Just finished 2019's Country Music and came away knocked out by the poetry and storytelling. Also, troubled by the commodification. Cash, Hank Williams, and Emmy Lou Harris are national gifts.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fZ_...

Let's keep trading these sorts of gifts. The best kind, and you, my friend, give as well as you get.

Thanks, Jane. We loved your visit to the farm and all the great energy you brought with you.

What @janefriedman.com says!

If you can, please support writers, readers, and the Good Contrivance Farm Writers' Retreat.

secure.givelively.org/donate/good-...

At 97, the Bard of Albany Still Spins Tales of Gangsters and Politicians

My first literary hero ... and still my literary hero at age 97.

"I have been true to everything in life." – Legs Diamond

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/a...

Good Contrivance Farm is a magical place for readers and writers. I’m pleased to serve on the non-profit’s volunteer board. We’re engaged in our first-ever year-end fundraiser. If you can help us in our mission to support literary culture, thank you. bit.ly/WriterFarm
#literarylife #writingcommunity

I first saw food stamps in 1975 when Mom used them in a grocery store line. I was 11 then, or 12. Eventually, Dad and Mom had stable work and didn't need the country's help anymore. But the country was there for us when we did.
That the administration now chooses to deny hungry people sickens me.

Are you insufferably chill? Answering questions about dinner with koans?

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.