Review of NEXT OF KIN by Melinda Mitchell

Cover art and design by Honor MacDonald

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I’m keeping up with my New Year’s resolution to review all the novels I read this year, and I just finished Melinda Mitchell’s Next of Kin, the first in a planned series called Stardust and Ashes. I loved the premise for this book as soon as I heard about it: It’s the Book of Ruth as a space opera. In case you missed the Book of Ruth (it’s in the Bible, a pretty popular and easy-to-find anthology), it tells the story of a woman who comes to a foreign land after her husband has died. She returns to the land of her mother-in-law, finds a new husband, and becomes one of the great matriarchs of her new, adopted people. Mitchell resets the story amid conflicts between groups of humans fighting interstellar conflicts. There’s a lot to like here. It’s a sci-fi story. It’s an action/adventure story. It’s a military story. It’s a love story. It’s a story about a daughter and a mother. But I think the think I appreciated the most is that Mitchell turns it into a mystery. II was reminded of a creative writing master class of Eric Witchey’s. One of his lesson really stuck with me: Every story is a mystery. The question of whether or not the protagonist will succeed or fail (classical comedy/tragedy) should be a question of whether the protagonist will figure it out. “It” may be something about themselves or a solution to some external problem, but we are watching them attempt to reason their way out of some quandary. Mitchell’s story doesn’t seem like a mystery at first, but it resolves into a mystery, and the way it all comes together in the end shows elements from the beginning were essential clues the reader and protagonist needed all along. I also like the way Ami (Mitchell’s Ruth) has this varied but believable skill set, and her abilities all come into play in a believable way to allow her to succeed where no one else would have. 

Plus, it’s a really fun read!

(My other New Year’s resolution [or is it Not a Pipe Publishing’s resolution?] is to give out free ad space for authors on the Writers Not writing podcast/YouTube show, so if you have a book to advertise, send a 30-60 video to notapipepublishing@gmail.com. Be sure to include the title, your name, and where folx can find the book, and bear in mind that it’s also a podcast, so make sure all the important information is narrated. Just trying to help out my fellow authors!)

Review of Babel by R. F. Kuang

Artwork by Nico Delort

Continuing with my resolution to review all the novels I read this year (not counting manuscripts for Not a Pipe Publishing, so don’t worry, authors!), I find myself reviewing another novel that doesn’t need any of my support or praise to find readers. Too bad! I’m going to offer praise, anyway!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Rebecca Kuang’s Babel is a masterpiece, as you may have already heard. It tells the story of four students who are studying together at Oxford in the 1830’s. If that sounds a bit dry, I should add the students are there to study magic. Yeah, that should pull you back in, but what makes the book so brilliant is the magic system as metaphor. I don’t want to spoil anything, but this novel is not escapist fantasy nor some kind of nostalgic perversion of the past through rose tinted glasses. This is a book about the past and magic, but it’s a novel about the world we live in right now and the world we want to live in tomorrow. 

I know Babel been compared to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell a lot, and there are certainly similarities in the scope of the story, the meticulous research required, the blending of history and magic, and the quality of the writing. I loved Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and I’m not disparaging it by saying Babel is alternate-history to illuminate our modern world, while Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is alternate history as glorious escapist fun where the deeper meaning is in the characters and their humanity. Babel has those deeply human characters, but it is also commenting on our present political, economic, and social structures. It’s less like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and more like Gulliver’s Travels. Maybe it’s my writer bias, but I think I might compare Babel more to Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, though Cloud Cuckoo Land is not set in one particular era of history and is less fantasy than sci-fi in that it abides by our univer’s laws of physics to highlight the …proverbial? …metaphorical? …literal-but-in-our-universe-and-therfore-not-fantastical? magic role of storytelling itself. Both Babel and Cloud Cuckoo Land are deeply researched, beautifully written, and will stick with you, but I’m struck by the way both are incredibly ambitious. Rebecca Kuang set out to tell a story of enormous scope and power, and whether she came up with the metaphor of her magic system first and endeavored to do it justice, or decided on the nuanced point she wanted to make and conceived of the magic system in order to do that, she has risen above the cleverness of the conceit of the novel to build something greater than the sum of any of its parts.

Be warned: Babel doesn’t let any of us off the hook about the harm we create in enabling and/or resisting colonialism, patriarchy, structural and cultural racism, and hyper-capitalism. To acquiesce is to cause suffering of the most vulnerable. To fight back is to cause suffering of the most vulnerable. None of us escape unscathed from Babel.

Review of Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Cover art BY Carson Lowmiller

I didn’t understand the appeal of the cozy trend until I read Travis Baldtree’s Legends and Lattes. I was under the misapprehension that “cozy” meant “low stakes,” and “low stakes” mean boring, meandering, and possibly inconclusive. This was recommended by a handful of authors I admire, and they finally convinced me to check it out. And they are all correct; it’s a delight. “Cozy” might mean we don’t have great armies crashing into one another on battlefields, but nothing feels unimportant in this story of a retired sellsword and adventurer, Viv, trying to start the first coffeeshop in the town of Thune. I wanted her to succeed, I wanted her to make peace with her new life, and I wanted her to find love. This novel felt just as pulse-pounding as some murder mystery thriller, and a lot more exciting than some droning, plodding epic high fantasy because the characters were so well drawn and their concerns were relatable. Highly recommend.

Review: Martha Wells’ System Collapse

Cover art by Jaime Jones, cover design by Christine Foltzer.

This seventh entry in The Murderbot Diaries series doesn’t need my review, but I’m trying to be better about posting reviews of all the books I read and enjoy in order to support my fellow authors, even when, like Wells, they are getting the attention they deserve. System Collapse is a great addition to this series. SecUnit is going through some stuff, so while this book is as action-packed as the previous ones, there’s this added wrinkle which helps develop its character, a character I already loved. As a special bonus (and I don’t think this is too much of a spolier), Wells has this great scene where the creation of art and literature, complete with all the usual stresses an artist deals with when creating, is featured as the strategic move that saves the day in a very high stakes situation. Sure, that was preaching to the choir for me and the many authors and artists who love Wells’ work, but I appreciated it none-the-less.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Review of Wendy N Wagner’s An Oath of Dogs

I try to encourage my students to move beyond simple reviews of “good” and “bad,” and instead to consider who a work of art is made for. Are they the target audience? When it comes to Wendy N Wagner’s An Oath of Dogs, I suspect the target audience is: Me.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

But maybe it’s for you, too. Are you skeptical of the power of rapacious corporations extracting profit at the expense of the environment and the working class who live in it? But do you also acknowledge the people involved are often conflicted or outright reluctant to participate yet cannot figure out a way to challenge the system? Do you like science fiction that explores highly relevant contemporary social issues while still being smart about technological and biological plausibility? Does the idea of colonizing space excite you while also worrying you because of our human history of colonialism? Do you have complicated feelings about religion, recognizing the dignity of religious people and the beauty of belief systems while also seeing the way religions can be systems of oppression people impose upon themselves and others? Do you like characters who are nuanced, flawed, and believable but ultimately likable and admirable? Do you like carefully constructed mysteries where the clues come together in a thoughtful, satisfying way? Oh, and do you like dogs? Then this book is for you, too!

One of the trickiest parts of writing a mystery on a colony world with a large cast of characters and is that Wagner has to manage an ending that resolves the mystery and lets us know where the characters end up without magically solving all the interplanetary environmental and socio-economic problems in the universe in a way that would feel inauthentic. I felt like all my questions about the characters were answered, but the larger issues still left me contemplating moral dilemmas in just the way Wagner intended. I do have one burning question remaining, though: Which Wendy N. Wagner book should I read next?

Ben Gorman immersed in writing as teacher, author and publisher

I made the paper! Here’s an article by David Hayes of the Itemizer Observer from November 1st, 2023, preserved in case it gets lost in their archives:

Ben Gorman immersed in writing as teacher, author and publisher

by David Hayes

November 1st, 2023

Ben Gorman, a creative writing teacher at Central High School, displays books printed by his company Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated, including his last novel “Don’t Read This Book,” and gives a sneak look at his latest novel, “You Were Warned."

Photo by David Hayes

Whenever Ben Gorman is at a public event, say Independence Days or Rose City Comic Con, inevitably someone will approach him and exclaim a non-sequitur that would leave onlookers not in on the reference scratching their head.

“Somebody will walk up and go, ‘The Magritte painting!’ and they’ll get the reference,” Gorman said, referring to Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated. “I’ll go, ‘I bet you were either a philosophy major or art history major.’ Almost without fail. Nice to have folks make that connection.”

The name of Gorman’s Independence-based publishing company refers to a work by French painter René Magritte, “this is not a pipe,” that represented a thing that is not a thing. An apt epithet, Gorman explained, for a company that features printed works that are all representation.

“It’s not the thing itself. It’s fiction representing our world in some way,” he said.

The first book Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated published in 2013 was one of Gorman’s works, figuring his tome would look more legitimate if it came from a local imprint, rather than going through the self-publishing route.

“I’d made so many mistakes in the publishing of this one book, I thought I can help a lot of other authors avoid those mistakes,” Gorman said.

Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated now has dozens of authors of both genre fiction and poetry, and Gorman’s latest novel has been added to the catalog -- “You Were Warned,” the sequel to his 2019 urban fantasy, “Don’t Read This Book.”

Now in his 19th year at Central High School, 23rd overall in education, Gorman teaches ninth grade English and creative writing for juniors and seniors. He couldn’t enjoy more being fully immersed in the writing industry and passing on his passion to the next generation.

“I get to teach creative writing, which is every writer’s dream. I get to talk about reading and writing all day,” Gorman said.

Tracing the evolution of the publishing industry, Gorman said there used to be very few big companies, and in order to break through, one had to pass through several levels of gate keeping. Gorman, in part, started Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated to circumvent the process, which was timed perfectly with a change in the industry.

“Technology changed, so you could now purchase a book and it could be printed after the fact. So you didn’t have to print a run of 10,000 books and keep these in the garage and hope for success,” Gorman said.

“It allowed for a company like ours to vet and decide who are these really talented authors whose books really deserved to be read then as people buy them they get printed,” he added.

The company has since grown significantly. Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated now features 43 titles in print and 80 authors under contract.

They started with genre fiction, especially by underrepresented authors, women, and people of color, which Gorman said has been important throughout.

Their biggest “get” came from participating in 2018’s Year of Publishing Women, which challenged publishers to commit to publishing only women for a year.

“That was huge for us, because it kind of put us on the map,” Gorman said. “We were one of two publishing companies in the world that participated. We took that challenge and made a big deal of it.

“Authors we signed that year have become our mainstays who keep coming back. That’s been really wonderful for the company, to be an outlet to help folks who otherwise get mistreated by this industry.”

They have published more authors from the Pacific Northwest than anywhere else, including Portland, Seattle and Grants Pass. But they’ve also accepted submissions from authors in England, Norway and Pakistan. Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated has an open submission period every August, when they receive hundreds of books that they winnow down to asking for full transcripts from about 10.

“But we can’t publish 10 a year. It’s a really tough challenge to do three or four in addition to sequels to previous authors,” Gorman explained. “It looks like next year we may publish eight or nine, which is a lot for us, but they’re so good really have a hard time turning these away.”

The small company consists of Gorman, co-owner and fiancé Chrystal Law, who also owns Bricks & Minifigs in Salem, who handles the marketing side. They have a team of freelance folks, editors who evaluate submissions. But the entire paid staff is just Gorman.

“We’re ready to grow. We need to grow. We need more people if we’re going to do more, otherwise we need to stay same size,” he said.

The irony to Gorman’s first novel is he most definitely wants you to read, “Don’t Read This Book.” He calls it the first in a trilogy with a “what if” premise.

“What if all the monsters in mythology actually existed in our world and got together once a year at a convention in Las Vegas to talk about how to keep themselves secret,” Gorman said. “Things go awry when one of them tricks the rest into abducting and forcing this human author to write a book that is so scary, it will kill anyone who reads it. The other monsters think this might be a great idea, not realizing if all the humans are killed, they lose their food supply.”

The sequel, “You Were Warned,” continues the saga of killer monsters.

“It’s a fun kind of adventure, with underneath, I hope, a much deeper book questioning our own mortality and how our identities play into our ability to acknowledge that we are human,” Gorman said. “And this one has baby werewolves. Who doesn’t like baby werewolves?”

He hosted a launch party for “You Were Warned” Oct. 28 at Rose City Book Club, along with fellow Not a Pipe Publishing Ink-Corporated author Kate Ristau promoting the third in her trilogy. Gorman said no local events promoting his book have been scheduled yet.

He added the U.S. culture has entered a time where books and authors are under attack and now is perfect to support those who deserve the public’s thanks.

“Kate Ristau has a wonderful afterword in her latest release thanking librarians. I just encourage everyone, please, support librarians. Support local bookstore owners. Support authors, support people fighting for books and freedom of books,” Gorman said. “There are a lot of forces out there that are trying to stifle what is getting into people’s hands.”

I Made Some Art

I had an old, broken dishwasher in my back yard. I tried to see if someone would come and haul it away for scrap metal or something. No takers. So it was just sitting there being ugly. I also had two toilets I’d replaced sitting on my side yard. So I decided to make something out of them.

I learn a lot when I take on new projects. And then there are things I still haven’t managed to learn. Like how long a project will take. I thought I would get this done in four or five days. That didn’t happen. It always takes me longer than I think. But I got it done by 8pm the night before I needed to go back to work for the school year. Phew!

I did learn, when working with large projects, be very careful where you place them because you won’t be able to move them when they are complete. Luckily, this is roughly where I wanted the piece to go. I do wish I’d oriented it differently. Too late now! It weighs like a thousand pounds.

Basically I made a bowl first. That was harder than I thought. Things don’t really stick to wet cement and stand up on their own. Wet cement likes to move down into a horizontal position like other liquids.

Noah helped me smash the dishwasher initially, and he helped smash the toilets. That was a lot of fun.

Toilets smash in a very satisfying way.

It was probably around this point where I was learning another valuable lesson: Concrete does terrible things to your hands. I wore gloves, but they were not water-tight, and the silt would get inside, dry out the skin of my hands, and then the skin would just split like crepe paper. I had so many little cuts. At the end of the day, my hands would ache like they were on fire. In addition to a lot of band-aids, Chrystal advised me to put on dishwashing gloves under my work gloves. That worked like a charm, and most of the cuts are healed already.

Then, the moment of truth:

And there was enough porcelein to make a matching ring around the fire pit!

Oh, and the jeans I wear to paint and work with concrete didn’t fit at the beginning of the week. I couln’t button the top button. But by the end of the week, they fit fine. Art is good for the waistline, folx!

Think suicide bombings are bad? Then we need to address our mass shootings in the U.S.

Okay, this is grim, but I went down a bit of a data rabbit hole, and what I found is striking.

I was recently at a conference and heard some horrific, racist rhetoric directed at Palestinians. It was literally stomach-turning, but it was also a powerful learning experience.  I cannot imagine what it would be like to say, “I was born in Michigan” and have someone immediately fly into a rage about that part of my identity, but that’s what I witnessed. 

Then, today, I began reading a novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It’s brilliant so far, and this is no criticism and not much of a spoiler, but at one point a character is planning to plant a bomb as an act of political violence.  And I thought, “That’s odd. Bombing isn’t really America’s style. The authorities keep an eye out for people researching bombs, and we track the materials. Meanwhile, we make it as easy as possible to get guns. Many mass shooters are at least partly politically motivated. And many want to be killed, which is why a number of our ideas about deterrents will never work.”

I do not pretend to be any authority on the motivations of Palestinian suicide bombers, but I’ll bet they are complicated and involve a number of factors beyond the two-dimensional portraits we’re often provided. This is by no means a justification for a suicide bombing, but it’s interesting that we’re provided all kinds of theories to explain the motivations of American mass shooters (mental health, politics, bullying, video games, weed, and on and on), but  the closest we get to that when there’s a suicide bombing is a polarized view that the bomber is either a horrible person who hates Israel or a brave freedom fighter trying to liberate an illegally occupied land. I’m not saying it’s somewhere in between. I’m saying it certainly involves other things like mental health, isolation, radicalization, and more. (The video games excuse has always struck me as ridiculous and grasping. Weed is even more absurd.)  

And then I remembered some of the insults hurled at the Palestinians at this conference. And I thought I’d do a little research. If mass shootings are our suicide bombings, I wondered if they are more prevalent than suicide bombings in Israel or in Palestine. 

Guess what I learned?

According to JewishVirtualLibrary.org, a cite that is heavily biased against Palestinians, there hasn’t been a suicide bombing in Israel since 2008. Zero. In 14 years.

Now, I know an absence of a thing isn’t cause for a headline, but this was news to me. It certainly flies in the face of the vitriol I heard hurled at the Palestinian Americans at this conference. 

I’d pulled up the populations of Palestine (4.8 mil), Israel (9.2 mil) and the US (329.5 mil) so I could do some math to try to figure out the danger of mass shootings in the US relative to mass shootings in Israel and Palestine. I thought it would be really tricky to pick out the periods of time. I didn’t want to skew the data by cherry-picking the years, and finding reliable data on mass shootings in the US is incredibly difficult since the Hyde Amendment makes it illegal for the government to research gun deaths as a public health issue. 

Based on what I could find in an archive maintained by Mother Jones, we have lost at least 682 Americans to our version of suicide bombings since 2008. 

Number of Isrealis killed by Palestinians in suicide bombings since 2008? Zero.

It turns out there is no adjusting for population which is necessary or even possible. No matter how you slice it, mass shootings in the United States are more lethal than suicide bombings in Israel. 

This wasn’t always true. During the height of the Intifada, in 2002, 220 Israelis were killed in suicide bombings (according to JewishVirtualLibrary.org) and that coincides with the year, nine years into the Federal Assault Weapons ban, when the number of mass shootings in the US fell all the way to zero. So I completely understand why people in the US, watching the news, have this sense that Israel is a country plagued by frequent suicide bombings. That was the case. Twenty years ago. 

And I’m not trying to explain the causes of the end of suicide bombings in Israel. My guess is that it’s complicated, and the fact that the Israeli military has killed five times as many Palestinians in 2022 than it killed in the same period in 2021 does not bode well for peace for Israel or Palestine. But, again, I am not an expert on Israel or Palestine. 

I’m just a person who lives in a country where I am now far more likely to be killed in a mass shooting than an Isreali is to be killed in a suicide bombing. And I think that’s worth reflecting on.

Because Americans have a remarkable ability to convince ourselves that everywhere else is worse, no matter what the data shows. 

Did you know that, when North Koreans escape to South Korea, they are shocked by the standard of living they find? No matter how bad things get in North Korea, the people are taught that things are worse everywhere else. I’m not trying to draw a one-to-one comparison. We are certainly not North Korea, and the rest of the world relative to the US isn’t South Korea in relation to North Korea. But if we’re going to address any problem in the US, we ought to have a realistic view of it. Yes, repealing the Hyde Amendment and allowing rigorous study of the problem of gun violence would sure help, but we should also consider how our emotions color our perception of the data.

We have been taught to shake our heads sadly and believe the political situation between Israel and Palestine is intractable because of Palestinian suicide bombings or Isreali aggression or both.  And this taps into American anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and racism, since Palestinians are Mulims and Jews and Christians and Druze and atheists but anti-Palestinian sentiment is rooted in Islamophobia or just anti-Palestinian racism, and Isreal is often conflated with Judaism even though it’s a country and does not represent the religion. But even for Americans who don’t hate or fear people from Israel or Palestine, I think there’s a common misperception that suicide bombings are this frequent occurance, and that they are symbolic of a massive political and humanitarian failure on the part of two governments. 

I am not qualified to adjudicate the situation there, but if we have the sense that frequent suicide bombings are emblamatic of a crisis, we need to look in the mirror. 

The United States is not a failed state. We don’t have the murder rate of South Africa or El Salvador, the authoritarianism of Russia or China or the DPRK, the poverty of Burundi or Afghanistan. But we also don’t have the health of Japan or Iceland, the freedom of Singapore or Switzerland, the happiness of Finland or Bhutan.

And we now have frequent and increasing mass shootings while Israel and Palestine have no more suicide bombings. 

I think that’s worth reflecting on. 

Open Letter to Christians

Um, excuse me, Christians? We need to have a talk. Please hear me out, and when I'm done, if this offends you, you can just ignore me. I get the impression you've become pretty practiced at ignoring.

If it helps, I used to be one of you. I was raised in a loving Christian household. I was baptized, confirmed, and married in the Church. At one point in my life, I even thought I’d become a pastor. Many of the people I love and respect most are Christians. Like some of you, I went from being a Christian to a Christian-But-Not-That-Kind-Of-Christian to “I’m uncomfortable with the label but I love Jesus,” to … well, not a Christian at all. If that last part means you don’t want to hear what I have to say, I understand. At one point in my life, I would have been reluctant to hear criticisms of Christianity from non-Christians, too. But here’s the thing: The Body of Christ has cancer. You may not want to hear that diagnosis from someone who doesn’t share your faith, but ignoring cancer does not make it go away. And if you’ve read this far, you are the kind of Christian who would do more than just pray for the cancer to go into remission. You’d talk to someone about chemotherapy or radiation or surgery. And the person you’d talk to might not even be a Christian. So consider hearing me out. 

The prognosis is bad. It’s really bad. 

First, the symptoms:

Today I attended a counter-demonstration, a protest of a rally. The rally was part of the Reawaken America Tour, a cash-grab featuring disgraced army general and felon Michael Flynn, and Eric Trump Jr., a man who is mostly famous for being the worst son of our worst President and whose only noteworthy personal accomplishment was stealing millions of dollars from a supposed cancer charity to give to his own family. One of the themes of these crooks’ rally, according to the group’s own materials, was a celebration of the forced conversion of Native Americans to Christianity. The organizers of the rally called it "The Trail of Joy Tour" to maximize offensiveness. You read that correctly; they had a rally to celebrate a genocide. They held it in a stadium (specifically the Volcanoes baseball stadium in Keiser, Oregon), and they hired the Proud Boys to provide "security." Yep. They hired members of an identified hate group to protect them from peaceful protesters so they could hold a hate rally.

Now, you and I both understand the people inside don't give two shits about Native Americans. That was never really the point. In the same way they like to target trans people, they've picked a group who are (now, thanks to the very genocide they are celebrating) too small in number and have too little political power to fight back. They didn't care what an Indigenous person thought of their rally. That wasn't the point. They picked the most offensive idea they could get away with in order to get attention. I'm sure, if they thought they could get away with it, they would have been celebrating the forced conversion of enslaved Africans, or maybe holding a somber memorial for the glory days before women could vote. They might as well have called it The Trigger The Libs Hate Rally. That's really the point. I was torn about attending the protest against their rally because I know I'm giving them some of the attention they crave. I'm feeding the trolls. But I was asked to go by a member of a local tribe and an activist in the Land Back Movement. I've been taught that if a colonizer like me participates in land recognitions but doesn't actively support the Land Back Movement, that's the height of hypocrisy. I've led land recognitions before. So I couldn't say no when I was asked to step up and do something about it.

I freely admit I was nervous. Underneath my t-shirt that says, “Fight Fascism with your voice while you still can,” I put on my bullet proof vest. I don’t know which is more laughably absurd, a public school teacher in a bullet proof vest or a guy who writes books of poetry wearing a bullet proof vest, but I was both today. 

Luckily, our protest of the rally remained peaceful. To my relief, the Proud Boys handling security stayed inside the stadium, and we stayed outside. I heard a rumor that there was a bit of a falling out between the rally’s organizers and the Proud Boys, so many of the Proud Boys went to their own event in Clackamas, Oregon, leaving just enough to satisfy the obligations of the contracts the rally’s organizers made with them. I cannot confirm this, and we were nervous about what might happen if we waited until the end of the rally. The lead organizer of our protest, an elder from the Kalapuya tribe, asked us to leave shortly before the hate rally crowd came out. I think that was wise. 

So most of our interaction with the rally’s participants occurred as they were driving in. They would flip us off or shake their heads or roll down their windows and amuse themselves with their brilliant wit by yelling, “Let’s go, Brandon!” (I’m honestly not sure how to punctuate and capitalize that, since they don’t say it with the same intonation and pauses as, “Fuck you, Biden!” It’s just all vomited out in a stream, “LETS GO BRANDON,” a though they’re afraid revealing it to be mimicry of “Fuck you, Biden!” would be too close to swearing. This from people perfectly comfortable flipping us off. Very weird.) 

I would raise my megaphone and affect the most bored, disinterested voice I could muster. “You are attending a hate rally,” I’d say. If they stopped to shout back, I’d add, “If the god you believe in exists, he knows you chose to attend a hate rally.” 

One couple walked over to try and engage. They told us they loved us and there was nothing hateful going on inside the rally, and we were the ones filled with anger. A few of my fellow protesters talked about their own experiences and why the racism, homophobia, and sexism they’d endured justified anger. The couple explained that they didn’t believe any of our sources of information. (They were convinced we all watch CNN, of all things, and amazed that none of us get our news from cable TV.) I tried to make an appeal to a source I thought they might find authoritative, the Bible, and I quoted a handful of verses to them. They said they didn’t know those verses, but they sounded like things Catholics believed. None of the verses I quoted are different in Protestant or Catholic translations. Ultimately, they said “both sides” just understand this rally and, I guess, our entire society differently. I encouraged them to read more, including their own Bibles, and I walked away. 

“Both Sides.” I loathe this reduction to a simple binary. The people standing on my side of the street were a varied group. Some wanted a peaceful protest. Others wanted more physical confrontation. Some are more moderate, like me; people who believe in engaging with the political system and altering it through its own mechanisms, and some are far more extreme, reactionaries who believe the system is too rotten to be altered through its own processes and must be replaced from the outside only. We can agree to disagree about that. I can respect that their lived experience has taught them the system has been wholly unresponsive to their calls for change, and, as People of Color or members of other marginalized groups, they have faced the consequences of the systems’ failures far more personally than I have. They can respect that efforts to work within the system by people like me who share their values have produced more tangible improvements for marginalized communities than calls for revolution, and we can all agree that those improvements have been insufficient. It’s a legitimate debate: Do we aim for something that’s not enough and legitimizes the system which keeps failing, or aim for something which has produced nothing but which may or may not turn into something significant if the system is delegitimized? We are not completely unified in our goals or tactics, and I know the people on the other side of that street are varied as well. But when we are reduced to “both sides,” it’s worth examining the shared beliefs that the varieties of constituent groups are willing to rally around. Look at our signs. These are statements of our values. What are the other sides of these which this couple wanted us to respect?

What is the other side of “End white supremacy”?

What is the other side of acknowledging we are standing on stolen Kalapuya land?

What is the other side of standing for equality?

What is the other side of acknowledging that Black lives matter?

Meanwhile, their side was selling variations on the American flag where the bars are AR-15s and the stars are pistols. This at a rally in the name of a man who said, “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” from a book that says, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” What is the “other side” of violent hypocrisy?

But I’m making the same mistake I made when engaging with people headed into the rally. I wasn't there to try to change their minds. They are what I have come to think of as Fivers. Fivers are people who, at some point, came to believe 2+2=5, but then formed an identity group around this belief. This group identity has become so important to them, the underlying belief has been almost forgotten. We then waste our breath trying to explain that 2+2=4. We get out apples and do demonstrations. We get out chalkboards and give long lectures, dissecting mathematical history and theory. We appeal to their senses of consistency and honesty, showing them all the areas in their lives where they depend on 2+2 equaling 4. And it doesn’t matter. They are Fivers. They’ll question our sources, deflect with “both sides,” and claim victimhood if challenged. We’re “canceling” their Fiver-hood with our “woke ideology” that says 2+2=4.  Because the central tenet of being a Fiver isn’t really the a math equation but the notion that the world is their enemy and wants to take something from them. Attempts to convince them that 2+2=4 are perceived as assaults by the others they’ve been taught to see as enemies. 

Fascism is not a governing philosophy. In fact, Fascists in power can never produce benefits for their group because they don’t want their group to be happy or satisfied in any way. Fascism is a movement which seeks to empower authoritarians by convincing the already dominant majority their lives are threatened by dangerous minority groups. The aspiring dictator is allowed to lie, Fascists tell themselves, because he’s trying to save your life. The opposition can’t be trusted even when they tell the truth because they’re secretly only using the truth in an attempt to kill you. There is no such thing as debating in good faith with someone who has come to believe the truth or falsehood of their ideology is unimportant. The people in that rally didn’t care what we believed, and they don’t really care what the speakers said, as long as they speakers affirmed they are all part of the same threatened group. The point of the hate rally is to be inside the hate rally. 

I should be explicit about this. I know one likely dodge by people seeking to comfort themselves about their silence will be pretending the rally was something other than a hate rally. The attendees do not acknowledge it as a hate rally. That’s kind of like someone going into a bank, waving a gun, and walking out with the cash, then saying it was not a robbery but merely “an involuntary withdrawal from other customers’ accounts” because the robber does not want to see herself as a robber. A hate rally does not require the attendees to be in bad moods. They were happily celebrating. But this was levels of white supremacy and Fascism stacked on top of one another. In addition to celebrating a genocide with their “Trail of Joy” theme, the speakers at these rallies vie for cheers by telling the crowds who to fear, how they are all under threat, and who they need to support in order to keep those supposedly dangerous others at bay. Those leaders they are told to support go on to push truly hateful policies like trans bans, family separation of legal asylum seekers (but only those who are not white) to dissuade other asylum seekers, and increasing violent over-policing and mass incarceration of communities of color. At the most basic level, the local idigenous tribes asked this group not to come and hold a rally, and the white organizers said, “We know better.” That attitude is, on its face, white supremacist. On a dollars-and-cents level, the organizers hired the Proud Boys, a violent, known white supremecist organization, meaning every person who purchased a ticket was putting money in the pockets of a right-wing hate group. Don’t be deceived by the Fivers who , I’m sure, would say, “I felt positive and happy and loving” inside their hate rally. It’s still a hate rally.

No one there would give a second thought because of my sign, so I didn’t bother targeting it towards them at all. I wrote it directly to you, just as I'm writing this for you now. Because, Christians, as much as these brothers and sisters of yours are a danger to people who are Indigenous, Trans, LGBTQ, Black, Latino, Asian, women, poor, disabled, or otherwise marginalized, they are a threat to you, Christians who don’t share their Fiver ideology. They won’t come for you first. Right now it’s indigenous people and trans people and people who need abortions but can’t afford to fly to other states. It’s Latinos but only the newest arrivals with the least power who the Fascists can pit against other Latinos. It’s Black people, but not “the good ones.” They’ll come for all People of Color eventually, even those who tried to serve them. And you’ve seen the Trumpers go after the “RINOs,” and the “Never-Trumper” Republicans, too. Sharing some of their labels will not be a protection if you are insufficiently loyal. You’ll be in their crosshairs soon enough.

And yet, the Trumpism is not the cancer.

You may be saying to yourself, “I’m not that kind of Christian,” or “They aren’t real Christians.” That’s for you to decide in-house, I guess. But even if we agreed to exclude all the Fivers from our understanding of The Body of Christ (and I’m not willing to go that far), the church is still very, very sick. Maybe the Trumpism is an external threat, a rabid dog attacking The Body of Christ from the outside, and maybe it is a parasite ideology coiled up and feeding in the intestines, but The Body can’t fight off internal or external threats because of the disease. 

The disease is your silence. 

There were 4,000 people throwing a hate rally in the name of your religion, and whether you call them Christians or not, there were less than a hundred people standing up to say their hate rally was wrong, and of those, I saw two who clearly identified themselves as Christians. As I took pictures of signs, I asked protesters if they wanted me to be in them (lots have good reasons not to want to show their faces), and the pair holding the explicitly Christian sign wanted to be shown. Those are the Christians who are not silent. I’ve read statements by a few Christian leaders denouncing the rally. Those are Christians who are not silent. There may have been more Christians in attendance. Maybe I was the only non-Christian on my side of the street. Maybe there were 99 Christians (two of whom held up a sign that said so), … and 4,000 self-identifying Christians inside throwing a hate rally. 4,000! 

Some context: Even if we don’t count people who could drive in for a half an hour from the little surrounding towns like the one where I live, there are 208,239 people in Salem/Keiser. 43.1% identify as Christians. That’s 89,751 Christians. Sure, it’s a small percentage of those Christians who attended the hate rally. But it’s a much smaller percentage who stood up and said they will not tolerate a hate rally thrown in Christ’s name. 

Based on national averages, about 49% of Christians attend church services regularly. So 43,978ish people (probably less this week, more in a couple weeks for Easter) will rouse themselves tomorrow morning, put on nice clothes, and go to their various houses of worship. Again, 44 thousand who can find the energy to go to church, and less than a hundred who can be bothered to protest a Christian hate rally. How many Christians, do you think, will talk about the hate rally on Sunday morning at church? How many pastors will condemn it from their pulpits? How many pastors will talk fondly about it? How many Christians will push back? 

Maybe the two or 99 Christians who attended the protest might mention it in church. Quietly. To friends. Maybe. But I doubt it. Remember, I was one of you. A lot of energy goes into teaching Christians, starting when they are very young, that they are to be silent in church unless they are reciting what they are allowed to recite, singing what they are allowed to sing, and, in some churches, speaking in tongues when moved by the Holy Spirit (but only, conveniently, during the specific time for that in the service. The Holy Spirit is clearly beholden to the printed bulletin.) So 4,000 Christians held a hate rally in the name of Christ today, and ten times that many will go to church tomorrow in the same cities and act like it never happened. That’s the cancer. 

Some of you might be saying to yourselves, “I live on the other side of the country. What, am I supposed to protest a hate rally that’s not even in my community?” In short: Yes. Maybe not this hate rally in particular, but this is a nationwide tour, and the ambitions of this particular group are to elevate their Fascist aims back into the place where they can dictate national policy. If you live in the United States or any other country where American Christendom impacts the way Christianity is perceived (everywhere there are Christians), you should be speaking out in some way. Maybe that doesn’t take the form of standing on a street corner holding a sign. There are lots of ways to protest. But here’s what all those ways have in common: None of them are quiet. 

If you want to make change, you need a mixture of tactics. After George Floyd’s murder, hundreds of people came out in the streets in my small town. That was huge, but alone, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything. Thousands of people in my town got active online, loudly announcing their recognition that Black lives have just as much worth and dignity and deserve just as much respect and protection as anyone else’s (that’s what “Black Lives Matter” means), acknowledging Black people still aren’t receiving the equitable treatment they deserve, and demanding that changes be made. But online activism alone would not have made any of those changes. Because of the political pressure, some of us were able to sit down with our local police and provide them with a list of demands for immediate changes. To their credit, the police made many of those changes. That wasn’t enough, but it would not have happened without the protesting. Then two of the lead organizers of the protests ran for city council, and they’ve been able to do more. Their elections were made possible by the protests. Have we brought equal rights and equal justice to all People of Color in our community? Absolutely not. What has taken centuries to build will take generations to deconstruct and replace. But we’ve started. Because lots of people got loud. 

This cancer is treatable, and the treatment plan is scriptural. I’m not a Biblical scholar, and this passage always struck me as a bit odd and perhaps plugged in after-the-fact since it refers to the church, and Jesus wasn’t really focused on starting an institution, but if you believe in Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the Gospels, you might want to consider Matthew 18:15-17. Jesus says that if someone is sinning, go and talk with them privately first. If that doesn’t work, go with a couple other people. If that doesn’t work, take the issue before the whole church. And if that doesn’t work, kick the person out. I think this sequence is wise for dealing with lots of kinds of infractions that aren’t acceptable to a group. Try and handle it privately, then in a small group, then as a group, and ultimately by preserving the group’s integrity by kicking out people who can’t abide by the group’s norms. Jesus was smart. I don’t know how well this will scale when you’re dealing with a whole organized Fascist movement, and it’s complicated by the fact that you are splintered into hundreds of denominations and thousands of individual church communities, but those are complications you caused, and you’ll need to figure out your own solutions. Let me be clear: This can’t just be an exercise in branding. If you splinter off into some even smaller group with a more modern looking logo and electric guitars in worship and a name like “The No-Hate Christ Followers,” …but all you did was let the hate rally go on unchallenged, you may have assuaged you own conscience, but you did nothing for the targets of the hate rally, and you didn’t really affect the way outsiders like me see followers of Christ. No matter how the silent Christians reorganize themselves, if you are still X percent hate-rally-attenders and Y percent Christians-who-silently-tolerate-Christian-hate-rallies, your “emerging church” that meets in a brew-pub and has a grunge band is still dying of cancer. 

I’ll be up front: Protesting still may not work. You, as an individual, may get loud, and that might not cure the church of its cancer of silence. And even if it does, the patient may still succumb to the anti-truth Fivers and the Fascists they serve. Who knows? But if you believe in judgment, consider this exchange: You get to the Pearly Gates, queue up, and slowly make your way to Jesus. (No rush. Your watch says, “Infinity.”) Jesus (or his designee, St. Peter. Depends on the version) says, “So, I see here there were hate rallies thrown in my name, and you didn’t do anything about it.” 

And you say, “Lord, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to upset the people in the pews around me at church. I certainly didn’t want to write about it online, to set some post about it to ‘Public’ and deal with the blowback. I would have been crucified! Not literally. Sorry. Lord, I didn’t think my pastor would support me. I thought my family would be angry with me. I just couldn’t figure out how to speak out.”

“Well,” he’ll say, “unfortunately for you, I don’t have a hard time making difficult choices.” [Thumbs down gesture.] [Wet fart noise.] [Trapdoor opens.] [Long fall.]

Look, I know this is hard. Losing my faith was one of the most painful experiences of my life, and I don’t evangelize my agnosticism because I don’t wish that pain on anyone. If your Christianity brings you comfort, and if it motivates you to treat others well, that’s great. But there’s a line, and I know I misread that line for a long time, so you might be, too. I thought that when Christianity changed from a belief system that gave me a sense of purpose and made me treat others better, and it turned into a religion that motivated me to treat others worse, that was a red line I wouldn’t cross. With that line in mind, I would dismiss the behavior of other Christians by saying to myself, “I’m not doing what they are doing, so Christianity is still working for me.” Notice the selfishness. “For me.” That’s not where the line should have been, at least not within the Christian moral framework. Here’s where the line should have been: Once my Christianity crossed over to the point where my identification with the group was more important than my concern for people outside the group, and that identification made me tolerate the harm Christians were doing to one another and to non-Christians, then my Christianity wasn’t working for a loving God.” 

(This was not, ultimately, the reason I lost my faith. I wish it were. I would be a far more moral person if I’d lost my faith because it’s the more loving thing to do when faith makes us tolerate evil. I’m no hero; I lost my faith on epistemological grounds.)

No one should have their identity dictated externally. I can’t tell a person who is gay what it means to be gay, or a person who is Latino what their heritage should mean to them, or a person who is Muslim what it means to be Muslim, and I no longer have a right to tell you, Christians, what it means to be Christian, or how Christians should behave in order to be consistent with the precepts of a faith I no longer hold. You do you. But I can speak from my own experience, and one belief I’ve come to hold as strongly as any Christian dogma I once accepted is this: Impact > Intent. If I swing my fist around and punch you in the nose, the fact that I did it carelessly and without malice may be a small comfort because it makes it less likely I’ll continue punching you in the nose, but my goodwill and regret won’t stop your nose from bleeding. The impact always matters more. The hate rally, regardless of the mood in the stadium, furthers policies which harm and kill people. And your silence, regardless of your motives, condones the hate rally. When silence enables violence, silence becomes violence.

St. Paul said the three main Christian virtues should be faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. I’m on the outside, so I can disagree. For this non-Christian, love has always come pretty easily, but I gave up on faith when it became antithetical to love. The virtue that’s most important and hardest for me, the one I grasp for and sometimes can’t reach, is hope. I hope I’ll see you at the next protest. I hope I’ll see your online post denouncing hate groups. Or maybe your protesting will all happen in your churches, and I won’t hear about it until your actions bear fruit in the world outside the Church. That’s fine. It’s not about some nerdy writer in a bulletproof vest. But your desire for justice can’t be something you reserve for your god’s ears alone. Your words have to be loud enough, your actions visible enough to reach the ears and eyes of the targets of the hate rallies. They need to know where you stand. I hope they will hear more than your silence. 

52 Most Important Sentences of Survival English

A friend in Ireland asked for some help. Her daughter's class has some new students who are refugees from Ukraine, so she wants to make them flashcards to help them learn English. I thought this would be a great activity for my classes. Many of my students are second language learners, so they are experts. My freshman English classes tapped into this expertise and learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs so we could identify the sentences these students would need to learn first. It was also a good practice for my students in what makes a complete sentence. We also tried to come up with sentences that would provide the refugee students with a variety of vocabulary so they could form their own phrases as they learn to mix and match. The exercise even gave us a chance to have a discussion about phrases that will be different in Ireland than in the United States. Bathroom? Restroom? Loo? WC? And certainly not, "I like your pants."  I thought it would be cool if my friend got 52 because then she could put them on playing cards along with their translations, and that way the new students would have something they could play games with while they practice. I'm hesitant to trust Google Translate (it's better, but still far from perfect), so if you write in Ukrainian or know someone who does, please let us all know how these would be translated. Thanks! 

1. May I please use the bathroom?

2. How do you say _____?

3. What is this called?

4. I don't understand.

5. Excuse me.

6. I need help.

7. May I go get a drink of water?

8. I'm thirsty. 

9. When is lunchtime?

10. I'm hungry.

11. May I have some of that?

12. May I have a snack?

13. Yes.

14. No.

15. Please.

16. Thank you.

17.  I like that. 

18. I do not like that. 

19. I'm hot. 

20. I'm cold.

21. I need a jacket.

22. I'm tired.

23. Goodnight.

24. Hello.

25. Good morning.

26. Goodbye.

27. What is your name?

28. My name is ________.

29. I like your ______.

30. It's nice to meet you.

31. I'm from Ukraine.

32. She is a girl.

33. He is a boy.

34. I have one mother.

35. I have two sisters.

36. I have three brothers.

37. I have a cat.

38. I have a dog.

39. How much does this cost?

40. I need space.

41. I feel happy.

42. I feel sad. 

43. I feel scared.

44. I feel lonely.

45. I want to go home.

46. I miss my family.

47. I love you.

48. I like you.

49. Where is the ______?

50. Can you show me the way to the______?

51. Can I play, too?

52. I cannot do that.

---

I got a translation into Ukrainian! Thanks to Sveltana Thomas, and thanks to Molly K. Martin for sending it to me!

1. Можу я піти до туалету? Мені потрібно вийти.

2. Як сказати____?

3. Як це називається?

4. Я не розумію.

5. Вибачте.

6. Мені потрібна допомога.

7. Чи можу я піти попити води?

8. Я хочу пити.

9. Коли буде обід?

10. Я голодний/голодна. — it depends upon whether it’s a boy or a girl answering.

11. Чи можу я взяти це?

12. Чи можу я перекусити?

13. Так.

14. Ні.

15. Будь ласка.

16. Дякую.

17. Мені це довподоби.

18. Мені це не подобається.

19. Мені жарко.

20. Мені холодно.

21. Мені потрібна куртка.

22. Я втомился/втомилася. — it depends upon whether it’s a boy or a girl answering.

23. На добраніч.

24. Привіт.

25. Доброго ранку.

26. До побачення.

27. Як тебе звати? Як твоє ім’я ?

28. Мене звати____.

29. Мені подобається твій/твоя.

30. Приємно познайомитися з тобою.

31. Я з України. Please don’t use “The Ukraine”, only use the correct way “Ukraine”. Like I’m from Ukraine (“The Ukraine” is how russians say it. Also after 24 Feb Ukrainians do not capitalize russia, etc.)

32. Вона дівчинка.

33. Він хлопчик.

34. У мене є тільки мама.

35. В мене є дві сестри.

36. У мене є три брати.

37. В мене є котик.

38. В мене є собака.

39. Скільки це коштує?

40. Мені потрібен простір.

41. Я відчуваю себе щасливим/щасливою. Я щасливий/щаслива.

42. Мені сумно.

43. Я відчуваю страх. Мені страшно.

44. Мені самотно.

45. Я хочу додому.

46. Я сумую за своєю родиною.

47. Я тебе кохаю.

48. Ти мені подобаєшся.

49. Де є _?

50. Як пройти до __?

51. Чи можу я теж грати?

52. Я не можу це зробити.