E.B.'s Notes & News: September 2023 📓✏️🐢
Notes & News: September 2023
Happy September! I have to say I always kind of love when the first Friday of the month is also the first of the month... it seems like a nice fresh start, and September always feels like it is full of beginnings for me with back-to-school season. I guess decades of being a student and then a teacher and now working in higher ed means that the beginning of the fall always gives me those "happy new year" vibes. So, hooray for September! And congrats to all the parents for surviving summer. Your kids are back in school! Enjoy!
As always, below you can find what I've been writing, reading, a very important cause I hope you all donate to, my upcoming events, and the wild and crazy things my friends and pets have been doing since I last emailed.
xoxo,
E.B.
People & Places to Support:
There have been lots of lists out there about ways to support the people impacted by the wildfires in Hawaii, but I want to draw your attention to how you can directly impact one West Maui family.
My BFF from Wellesley, Lee Ung, is raising money to help her native Hawaiian family. Lee shared with me:
My cousin Cody and his family’s houses in Lahaina burned down in the fires. They are native Hawaiians and they slowly built 3 houses on their land in Lahaina over the past 100 years where they all live. Those 3 houses were the work of 3 generations of regular ass people (the latest generation were all 1st gen college graduates). Two of the family cousins are firefighters, one of the patriarchs is a retired teacher and public school fundraiser lead and Aunty Jan works at the tourist booths around the island. I’d really appreciate it if you could share this with other people.
Please consider donating and help Cody and his family keep their family homestead. I've been reading a lot about resort owners controlling water rights in Hawaii and developers swooping in to try to buy land from Hawaiians who cannot afford to hang on after losing so much, even with insurance payouts. It's disgusting. So, please consider donating to help the Maus and the Rogers! Any amount makes a difference. Let's blow that $10k goal out of the water! Thank you for spreading the word, too.
Writing Notes & News:
I don't have much to report this month writing-wise other than the fact that I'm still glowing after celebrating one year of Good Grief. In case you missed it, the header of this newsletter features just some (!!!) of the many wonderful pets who posed with a copy of my book over the past year. I love getting these photos! Keep sending them to me! :-)
I do have one new Good Grief development though and that is my partnership with Urn to Stone Pet Memorials! (You can find them @urntostone on Instagram.) You know how in chapter four of Good Grief I write about the beautiful objects and art pieces people make to memorialize their pets? Well Urn to Stone does just that! Using some of your pet's cremains and an "ashes to aggregates" process they will make a handcrafted memorial stone for you to display in your home or garden, and this can be with recent pet cremains or ones that have been sitting on a shelf for decades. And now when you mention my name (E.B. Bartels) or my book (Good Grief) you can get 10% off your order! For more info visit www.urntostone.com.
In non-dead-pets writing, my latest Non-Fiction about Non-Humans interview is up on Fiction Advocate! This time I was in conversation with Gloria Dickie, author of the excellent book Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future. You can find all the past Non-Fiction about Non-Human interviews now at this link here.
And for Wellesley, I wrote about the very cool environmental studies class that did a trash audit of campus, plus a story about alums who ended up working in technology fields that did not exist yet when they were students.
Events Notes & News:
My upcoming events are below, but be sure to check the events page on my website for the most up-to-date information, plus links to recordings of some of my previous events.
UPCOMING 2023 EVENTS:
NOTE: all events are in person unless labeled ***VIRTUAL***
Thursday 9/7/23, 6:00pm-9:00pm EDT: I’ll be hanging out at Papercuts JP as part of the Jamaica Plain Nite Market festivities, alongside fellow dog authors Karen Fine, author of The Other Family Doctor, and Morgan Baker, author of Emptying the Nest.
Saturday 9/9/23, 11:30am-1:00pm EDT: Save the date for the River Bend Bookshop’s 2023 Author Stage on Hubbard Green, at 99 Hubbard Street, Glastonbury, Connecticut, in conjunction with Glastonbury Art’s Arts & Crafts Festival on the Green. I will be part of a panel with Jaime Green, author of The Possibility of Life, and Amanda Parrish Morgan, author of Stroller, at 12:40pm, and I will also be hanging out and signing books in the “Author Alley” from 11:30am-1:00pm. They also have more great panels and authors all day Saturday and Sunday, too! Check out the full schedule!
Sunday 9/24/23, 11:00am-2:00pm GMT+9: Do you live in Kobe, Japan? Are you a young person who loves creative writing? Do you want to learn more about flash fiction/nonfiction and six word stories? Then come to my very special writing workshop at Learning Lab Kobe, hosted by my college BFF Lee Ung! More information and registration link can be found here.
Thursday 10/19/23, 7:30pm EDT: ***VIRTUAL*** I am over the moon to get to be part of the Cary Library Literary Cafe Series, an author series that happens at the library in my hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts! The very library I grew up going to! And even more exciting, I will be in conversation for this with Neema Avashia. Stay tuned for more info!
Reading Notes & News:
Okay, I cannot stop telling people to read Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer. I am listening to it now, and honestly, I keep laughing out loud to myself in my car, which I did not anticipate -- who knew a book about the horrible crimes of great artists would be so funny? It is also so deeply relatable. She gets right in there and digs around in all those uncomfortable feelings we all have when dance to R Kelly at a wedding or still love Woody Allen movies after everything. I am obsessed! Everyone read it!!!!
I also really enjoyed I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai which I read for my dark books book club. I had been feeling like I was in a real reading slump this summer and sometimes all you need is a page-turner whodunit (that also smartly analyzes rape culture and boarding school communities). I think I maybe loved this book especially because I went to high school and then taught at a school very similar to the private school in the book -- it felt so real, and she really got at all the good and the bad of that type of educational world.
This past month I also listened to Pageboy by Elliot Page. In terms of other audiobook surprises, I was not expecting to learn so much Canadian history in his memoir?! (So many facts about Halifax!) But all joking aside, it was heartfelt and honest and I am glad he wrote the book, even if I had some issues with the structure/timeline. (As anyone who has been in a writing workshop with me knows, structure/timeline is my #1 pet peeve and also I am especially harsh on celebrity memoirs which I think get churned out too fast without careful editing because publishers are like "eh people will buy it no matter what, who cares if the timeline is confusing.")
Friend Notes & News:
Look at all these truly excellent and wonderful things my friends have been doing!!!!!
Erin Bruynell was named one of The Best Lawyers in America 2024: Ones to Watch! (See above!!!)
Kelly J. Ford was interviewed about The Hunt for Dead Darlings!
Frankie de la Cretaz wrote about going to Camp Gaylore for Cosmo!
Jean Duffy wrote about the Soccer Grannies tournament for Cognoscenti!
Erica Berry wrote a killer op-ed about dating during the climate crisis for The New York Times!
Tove Danovich wrote all about August's super moons for The Washington Post!
Jason Prokowiew was awarded a fall 2023 Ucross Fellowship!
Deborah Sosin wrote about inclusivity for the Brevity Blog!
Look at the beautiful cover of Lilly Dancyger's forthcoming book First Love: Essays on Friendship, which features a photo of my Columbia BFF and excellent writer Elisabeth Sherman! First Love comes out in May 2024, but you should preorder it now!
Speaking of preorders, you should also consider preordering these other great titles that are all coming out in January 2024: Holiday Country by Inci Atrek, The Tigerbelles: Olympic Legends from Tennessee State by Aime Alley Card, and River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure.
Menagerie Notes & News:
Well, the big update is that we have three pigeons now. :-/
Richie spent all spring and summer crafting a beautiful new pigeon loft ("Loft 2.0") for Bert, Dan, George, and Lucille so they would have more space to roost and perch and fly around. We finally finished the new loft this month and moved the four pigeons in, and things seemed great even if the dynamic shifted a little bit. (Bert and Lucille were being more aggressive towards each other again.)
And then this past Sunday, during feeding time, our beloved Lieutenant Dan decided she was not a fan of the new loft (or maybe she was tired of Bert's aggro shit) and snuck out of the door and took off over route 2. Richie and I were hopeful for a few days that Dan would come back because when Bert got out last summer he stuck around, loyal to his mate Dan who was still in the loft, and Dan had been with us over a year-and-a-half, so maybe she thought of the loft as her home now.
But it has been almost a week and... I think she is gone. She probably flew back to Lowell, maybe back to the fire station where the Lowell Humane Society told us she had been found hanging around. I hope that's what happened. There are also a lot of hawks in our neighborhood. :-(
I am pretty sad Dan is gone, I have to admit. I'm not sure I can get used to the continuous heartbreak that comes with having pigeons. Dan was a pretty badass pigeon too with her missing toe and the fact that she was the only female pigeon we've had so far who successfully laid and hatched an egg and raised up a baby pigeon. And her name was Lieutenant Dan! What a character.
Enjoy this final photo I have of her, together with our three remaining pigeons. Dan is on the bottom perch on the right, next to Bert (our sole gray pigeon) who has spent all week on his perch looking in the direction where Dan flew off. Tell me animals don't grieve, and I'll show you one sad pigeon.