With Counterclock, Clark Gibson and his band take listeners back to the bebop era. Gibson’s naked saxophone solo on “Embraceable You” brings back nostalgia. His duet with trumpeter Sean Jones on “Boptude” brings back the good old days of Bird & Diz. The trio solo (with Michael Dease on baritone saxophone) is just striking. With contribution of Pat Bianchi (b3 organ), Lewis Nash (drums) and Nick Mancini (vibraphone), this album lifts up my spirit for a long, rainy day at work.

Kris Sowersby writes:

To curate means to care, not to make a list. We like to remember those who start things, but the real work of archives and institutions is the maintenance and continuation of them. Starting something is easy, caring for it over centuries is hard.

Read Kris’s in-depth essay on Martina Plantijn, his latest typeface release.

Neither one thing nor the same
thing all the time, I am the punch
lines of jokes about copy and type, the mark of least use,
the maiden aunt of punctuation.
I feel at home in old formes, amid dust and clutter,
akin to the moths whose wings show my outline,
no good in a crunch.
Educated kids forget my name
or try to turn when, if ever, they would choose
me into a game. I am also accused
of harboring ambitions above my station.

I am still figuring some of that out myself.
I know, though, that I was made to join together
things formerly thought incompatible, to be neither-
nor and both-and; to seek a connection
that does not amount to copulation.
In Greek I simply indicate a question.
I always keep one eye open. I know what I’ve seen.

My siblings-in-arms include the tractor trailer,
platypus, lungfish, merfolk and seaplane.
When challenged about my right
to exist by some precocious reader or editor
who makes my deletion into a helpful suggestion,
I once allowed myself to be struck out;
now, however, I will more likely assert
that I have been around for centuries,
long before anyone asked me to explain.

Stephanie Burt

While biting into a Lee’s sandwich and listening to Mile Davis’s solo, I was enjoying the best of both worlds. When Black folks took Western instruments and put their own sounds into them, they created jazz. When Vietnamese folks took French baguettes and put their own flavors into them, they created bánh mì. Isn’t life just beautiful when you take a second to appreciate it?

Big shoutout to Lee’s Sandwiches at Falls Church for supporting Liên Đoàn Hùng Vương. Your delicious bánh mì keeps our stomach stuffed and our scouting spirit soaring.

Sligo town

This small child at a travellers’ halting site
(in American: trailer park)
chose to arrange
two-dozen-odd slabs of cracked asphalt,
each about the size of a housecat,
so that
they made a straight path, then veered up to the property line
in the shape of a giant, crumbling question mark.
Anything, given time, can become a fine
art. Anything can turn over, or decline,
or break, or come back together, or simply change.
Put that in your model museum. Put that in your vault.

Stephanie Burt

Đán is a natural rollerblader, but he lacks the motivation. He rather plays on his PC than blading at the skatepark. Getting him out of the house always created tensions. He would throw a tantrum when I asked him to go out. I would get infuriated watching him and his brothers fixed to their screens. I no longer make it optional to get out of the house. They need to get out even if they don’t skate.

Đán outgrew his rollerblades. He couldn’t do much with them at the skatepark, but he refused to make the switch to aggressive skates. Last week, I bought him a pair of USD Transformer skates from Marketplace. I took away his old rollerblades and asked him to give the aggressive skates a try. He put them on and he was just shredding it. He could jump over the spines on the half pipes. He could blade over the ramps. He could drop into the bowl from the deep end.

With the copings on the aggressive skates, he can stall, grind, and do more tricks. I hope he will be motivated again to push himself further. Blading can keep himself physically active, mentally strong, and morally sound.

I’m proud of my work,
if you can call it work:

I am, also, fond
of far-off lightning, and completed connections,

and and and and and and and and.
I want to be everyone’s long-distance friend,

a second-chance source for anyone’s tenuous spark.
Like sex, I may be overemphasized,

overlooked and misused, kept out of the most polite quarter.
No mark I make should ever

be final. I love the idea of public performance,
like a girl on a wheel in a spotlight on a wire.

I see myself as neither straight nor curved.
And yet I am all too familiar with

the experience of creativity as temptation,
the feeling that you are always required

to volley, that you are never allowed to serve.
Every tragedian I know is a liar:

the announced end of a story is never
the end. That postcredits scene is my salvation,

my first line of self-defense,
the board I break, the myth I use against myth.

I am insatiable, forever
and always still swimming, and on my way. I take

and wonder whether I give. I know what it’s like
to believe you have an appeal you never deserved.

Stephanie Burt

We, too, feel uneasy alone; we believe we exist
to keep you safe and self-contained, at the cost

of making you seem, or feel, like you might not matter,
or not from the outside,

or not much.
We try to protect you. We have nothing to hide.

We can adjust
ourselves to look straighter, or flatter,

or more like sharpened claws, but we largely prefer
the state in which we resemble finger-

nails, or a French manicure,
reaching out with both our hands, your cure

for shapelessness, for your persist-
ent feeling that you will forever

remain immaterial, that you are better
off that way, that there is nothing or

nobody you are ready to let yourself touch.

Stephanie Burt

Editing the hosts file on your Mac allows you to test your site before it goes live. Launch Terminal, copy and paste the following command:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

Add the IP address (example: 123.45.67.89) of the site’s server follow by the domain name:

123.45.67.89 visualgui.com

Save the file by pressing Ctrl+O then exit with Ctrl+X.

I reactivated my Facebook account. I needed to access Marketplace to sell and buy used things. I listed a bunch of ice skates, hockey skates, aggressive skates, roller skates, and rollerblades. I haven’t sold anything and yet I bought a pair of USD Kids Transformer aggressive skates for Đán. It was sold for $50 and the condition was pretty new. It seems like the previous owner only skated for a few times. Đán seems to like it. I hope the skates will motivate him to learn more tricks at the skatepark.

When I made the transition from rollerblade to aggressive skates, I didn’t want to switch back. Aggressive skates provide more stability at the skateparks than rollerblades. I wouldn’t drop in using rollerblades, but Đạo and Đán didn’t seem to have any problem. They dropped in just fine. They just can’t stall or grind on rollerblades.

I am looking for another pair for Đạo. Hopefully, I’ll come across a great deal. Although I reactivated Facebook, I hadn’t posted anything. Facebook is becoming a ghost time. I get more junk posts from Facebook than from my family and friends.