I bought a bag of hard green pears today.
I came home and sat in our room
listening to music for hours,
solo piano, things from France, from the beginning
of the century.
When we were very young, your forgiveness
humiliated me. I knew
you would be asleep when I got back.
It is night outside
and raining. It is the same night
that fills the ruins.
You are naked, drowsy, lost. Stay like that.
In my favorite recordings,
you can hear the pianist breathing.

Richie Hofmann

Follow “How To Install WordPress on Ubuntu 20.04 with a LAMP Stack.”

Log into MySQL:

sudo mysql -u root

Update the root user’s password (replace new_password with a strong password):

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'new_password';

Create database:

CREATE DATABASE yoursite DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

Create user with strong password:

CREATE USER 'yourusername'@'%' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'yourusername_mysql_password';

Grant permissions to user:

GRANT ALL ON yoursite.* TO 'yourusername'@'%';

Creating a Virtual Host for your Website

Follow “How To Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) stack on Ubuntu 20.04.” Continue with step 4 to create a virtual host.

Create the directory for your_domain:

sudo mkdir /var/www/yoursite.com

Assign ownership:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/yoursite.com

Open a new configuration file in Apache’s sites-available directory using nano (command-line editor):

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

Paste in the following configuration:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yoursite.com
    ServerAlias www.yoursite.com 
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Change owner (chown) recursively (-R):

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yoursite.com

Change user (usermod), append (-a), group (-G):

sudo usermod -a -G www-data yourusername

Change group ownership (chgrp) recursively (-R):

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/yoursite.com

Change permissions with chmod command recursively (-R) with write permission for group (g+w)

sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www/yoursite.com

Change owner www:date to yourusername:

sudo chown -R yourusername /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-content/themes

Change permission for directory:

sudo find /var/www/yoursite.com/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

Change permission for files:

sudo find /var/www/yoursite.com/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Edit WordPress config file:

sudo nano /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-config.php

If you are setting up your Droplet for the first time, follow “How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 20.04” to install Apache. Step 5 is where you set up virtual hosts.

Create the directory for your_domain:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Assign ownership of the directory:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Set up permissions:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Copy an existing virtual host file:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

Make updates for the new directory and domain name:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

Edit thee following lines in :

ServerName yoursite.com
ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Enable the file with the a2ensite tool:

sudo a2ensite yoursite.com.conf

Disable the default site defined in 000-default.conf:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Let’s Encrypt

To set up SSL certificate using Let’s Encrypt, follow “How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04.” Let’s Encrypt will generate the follow file, you can take a look:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com-le-ssl.conf

Reading Richie Hofmann’s reminds me of Ocean Vuong’s. They are both very open about their sexuality. In “Mosquitoes,” Hofmann confesses: “I projected my homosexuality onto everyone.” And he sure did beautifully in A Hundred Lovers with lines such as, “the T-shirt he wiped his penis with,” in “Coquelicot.” I find his poems easy to understand and enjoyable to read.

It is so easy to imagine your absence.
Maybe it is night, we are still handsome.
All the young are.
It is so easy. Another thing to be beautiful.
How gently the curtain falls back down
and the room is dark again, the season
of in-betweenities,
my eyes heavy, my lips numb.
Fingerprints on the unjacketed books.
Inside the collars
of the shirts in the open closet—
An affluent night.
You’ve touched everything in my small room.

Richie Hofmann

How the hell did I miss Clipse’s Lord Willin’? The album released in 2002 and I only discovered it in the past week. I am 21 years behind the time, but better late than never. With Pharrell Williams on the beats and on the hooks, Clipse dropped dope rhymes such as “I understand that the envy is part of the game / But make no mistake, you and I, we are not the same,” boasted Malice. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Young Boy,” in which Pharrell sang the hook: “When I was a young boy / My mama always told me, “Don’t take no shit” / “Motherfucker hit you, you better hit ’em back.” Sounded just like my own mother.

I read all the poems from Baker’s Whale Fall, but I didn’t fully get them. For example, I like the vibe in “Extinction,” but I am not sure what he’s talking about:

When you are gone they will read your footprints,
if they still read, as they might a poem about love—
wandering in circles, here and there obscured,
washed out in places by weather, sudden landslide.
Keep walking, pilgrim. This is your great tale.

I need to keep learning about poetry by reading more poems.

Coming home early in the morning,
I heard withered cats

behind the sycamores, the canal rushing
from a different century. The alleys

so quiet in this city I never really liked.
The widow with an Hermès scarf tied around her head

walked her ugly-beautiful dogs.
I lived behind a Louis XV door

in a room that imprisoned winter
even as spring was rife outside—

I was not in love, there was nothing to experience.

Richie Hofmann

Bước vào năm Quý Mão, cháu xin chúc dì dượng một năm dồi dào sức khỏe và tràn đầy hạnh phúc. Cháu rất vui khi nhận được thư của dì. Cám ơn dì luôn nghĩ đến gia đình cháu.

Thời gian trôi qua nhanh quá nhất là giờ đây bận rộn trong công việc kiếm sống và nuôi nấng mấy đứa con. Chúng cháu cố gắng làm hết sức để tạo cơ hội cho tụi nhỏ được có những môn thể thao và để mở mang thêm trí tuệ. Hy vọng sau này tụi nó sẽ hiểu được những giây phút giá trị bên gia đình.

Sức khỏe của dì dượng dạo này ra sao? Tuy con không ở gần dì dượng nhưng nếu cần gì thì dì cho con biết nhé. Điều gì con làm được con sẽ làm. Dì đừng ngại.

Tuần sau là đúng một năm Cậu 6 từ trần. Mỗi lần đọc những bài viết của dì và xem lại những hình ảnh ngày xưa của gia đình mình, cháu không thể nào kiềm được nước mắt. Giờ đây họ Lý chỉ còn lại một mình dì. Dì cố gắng giữ gìn sức khỏe nhé.

Cháu Doanh.

Who can say
what the tulips dream
in a hard frost,

the sky as cold
as it is clear
and still unreadable.

Or how pain
decides what stays
in memory, a gift

broken by the time
it reaches us,
silvered, gleaming with age.

Maya C. Popa