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On Walking and Reading at the Same Time
Michelle Huneven September 1, 2009 | 2 books mentioned 20 3 min read
Hiking is the only form of exercise I actually enjoy. Luckily, I live a mile from the San Gabriel mountains with their tangle of steep trails. In the last year, as I've hiked, I have begun listening to stories and novels on my iPhone, and this has transformed an enjoyable pastime into a deep pleasure. Recently I described my new habit to another novelist, who recoiled, shaking her head. "I'm a firm believer in the imaginative space created by the printed page," she said.
So what about the imaginative space created by the audible page?
Of course, sitting and reading, lying down and reading, chaise lounging and reading are lovely; the body is still, eyes scan the page, the brain avails itself of the printed words, interior worlds bloom. Scientists tell us that, when reading, we have the same, if muted, responses to described or dramatized experience as we do to the real thing. Muscles tense. Hearts pound. Tears well.
If I am seated or reclining and still, I much prefer reading the printed page. Being read to is too passive an activity, I'm apt to get restless or, worse, fall asleep.
Walking, however, my listening capabilities are enhanced; simple physical activity, I believe, sharpens concentration by occupying the senses just enough to allow a purer attention to the narrative.
In this sense, walking is like doodling and knitting, which busy the hands and free the mind. (I always wondered why my grandmother loved to knit as she watched TV.) When hiking, I'm watching my step, I'm noting wildflowers, poison oak, the view; I'm keeping an eye on the dog, looking out for snakes; meanwhile, my deeper attention is engaged with the story leaking from my ear buds.
I have listened to news podcasts, and interviews, but these tend to make me mutter and twitch. Narrative and walking—as Chaucer knew—are a fortuitous match. They twin beautifully; listeners follow the plot, the thread, the branching path. Words and heartbeats, sentences and breaths, steps and plot align in ever new, complementary rhythms.
And there is another result: the landscape becomes festooned with fictional memories.
I remember, always with a pang, exactly where, on the trail, Katherine Mansfield's valiant, plucky fly finally succumbed after his fourth bath in ink. A series of uphill switchbacks evokes the astonishing description of a young man's madness in Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" read sentence by perfect sentence by Mary Gaitskill:
Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees.
I don't remember where I read the physical books I read. I must have read them somewhere—in bed, on the couch, in chairs about the yard.
On the other hand, I recall precisely how I climbed up and down a steep fire road as the Earnshaws and Lintons moved back and forth between Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. And right where the road curves behind the mountain, I became so maddened by Catherine Linton's hysteria—today, she'd rate as borderline—that I pressed pause and stamped down the mountain in far preferable silence. (I recovered and later listened to the end, although I will always associate the book with a certain prickling of irritation—whether at the dry dusty summer heat of the hike or Nellie Dean's meddling.)
A rocky switchback on a different trail recalls "Lawyer Kraykowski's Dancer,"Witold Gombrowicz's obsessive stalker who responds to insult as most of us respond to tender endearment. That madman shares those uphill miles with the more benignant huffing and sputtering Mr. Panks—not to mention the debtors prison and the Office of Circumlocution, the mild Mr. Clennam, the sweetness of Little Dorrit, the Madoff-like ruin of Mr. Merdle—40 hours of hiking with Little Dorrit claims a broad swath of ground.
At the gates of an old estate I wept at the last paragraphs of Alice Adam's "Roses, Rhododendron." By a one-mile marker, I wept as Tobias Woolf read Stephanie Vaughan's "Dog Heaven." And here in my own neighborhood, a green-tiled house is inextricably tied to the moment when, on a quick walk, I listened as Michael Henchard, bedeviled by rum at a country fair, sold his young wife (and child) to the highest bidder in the very first chapter of The Mayor of Casterbridge.
Thus, miles are walked, books are read and the landscape is littered with dialogue and description, desolation, striving and love. Literary moments are overlaid on views, scattered along the trail, and hung like ornaments on the rocks and bushes, the slow clouds and darkly gesticulating trees.
Resources for reading and walking: Miette's Bedtime Story Podcasts, New Yorker Fiction Podcasts, and Audible Books.
Michelle Huneven is a novelist whose most recent books are Blame and Off Course.
A Little Publisher Hits the Big Time
Daniel E Pritchard October 15, 2008 | 2 books mentioned 1 3 min read
This guest post comes to us from Daniel E. Pritchard. Daniel works in production, sales, and marketing for David R. Godine, Publisher, in Boston. He has now read The Prospector. He is also a co-founder of The Pen & Anvil Press, The Boston Poetry Union, and writes a regular blog on literature and culture called The Wooden Spoon."You peaked early," my girlfriend says. It might be true, sad as that would be. Not to sound too Nick Hornby here, but a certain type of person runs into major achievements like this in their twenties and feels, immediately, that this is as good as it will ever get. I am that kind of person. The path of my career (and temperament) doesn't seem to be pushing me towards major publishing companies, and Nobel Prizes are usually the playground for big boys. They were noticeably absent from this one, leaving all the fame and street-cred for small independents. It is fair to say that I – like my boss, David Godine – will go the length of my career and have this happen just once. This is that once. I am twenty-five.Let me emphasize that I had nothing to do with acquiring, editing, or producing The Prospector (link to more info on the publisher's site), the J.M.G. Le Clézio novel brought out in 1993 – when I was twelve – by David R. Godine, Publisher. Of the many books that I had read on the Godine list, The Prospector was not among them. Nonetheless, on the morning we heard, I was absolutely beaming. I called my mother. I called my girlfriend. I called everyone. I gushed to the Falafel King at lunch. Of course, I'm aware that any pride I feel regarding Le Clézio's Nobel Prize is purely by association: this is very much an Olympic games for literature. He's one of ours, so we won. In a peculiar, not uncomplicated way.But in thinking about all this between frantic calls to printers and bookstores, there might be a more substantial sense of victory in this year's Nobel. David Godine took a huge chance on an unknown (in the US) French author, on the basis of a recommendation by Gallimard's rights manager – one book lover to another banking on a "no marketing" zone. He printed 6,000 copies of that first hardcover edition ("I must have been on drugs," David told a Publishers Weekly reporter last week) because he thought it was a good book. The book was well-reviewed and sold well enough, and was the first in a list dedicated to works of literature appearing in English, in the US, for the first time, called "Verba Mundi." It's a good thing.We had 420 copies in stock from that original printing of The Prospector, fifteen years ago, on Thursday, and were taking back orders by Friday morning: vindication by sales. Godine is one of four publishers in the US, I hear, to carry Le Clézio's work, along with the University of Chicago, University of Nebraska, and another small trade press whose name escapes me [ed note: Curbstone Press]. It's a banner moment for independent publishing. I can't speak for the other houses, but at Godine, Le Clézio's appearance in English is based entirely on the personal taste of David Godine, who still acquires our titles and who has picked up the work of important, unheralded authors such as Georges Perec and José Donoso since then.For what it's worth, I think that this year's Nobel highlights a great and unfortunate weakness of American publishing. Not the charge that we don't keep track of every author in every language in Europe, which is a Herculean task, perhaps impossible. Rather, that introducing and supporting the work of authors from around the world as part and parcel to being a publisher is an idea that seems to be fading. One expects not that all the work of Europe (and elsewhere, ahem) is published in English, but that American publishers get behind some author who, to their tastes, is great; is capital-G great. That they take a significant chance. Translation isn't a nice thing you do if you can spare it, which is the way most publishers regard it; translation is essential. If evangelizing new, unheard-of authors isn't integral to the reason a person goes into publishing, then why? It's not for the fame, fortune, or the stylish tweed jackets. I have at least one of those, and I'm still pretty miserable.You have to want this one moment, when you feel sure you've won something good for the culture, that you've introduced something new and important to the world. Even if it only lasts a day or an hour before, you know, reality sets in. Thursday morning. Three people in the office. The New Yorker is on the phone: tell us about this author.Bonus Links: Le Clézio Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature, The Prizewinners: International Edition
Daniel E Pritchard | 2 books mentioned 1 3 min read
Nell Boeschenstein January 15, 2010 | 2 books mentioned 6 16 min read
Having failed to convince friends to join me, I went alone to Riverside Church the night of November 9th for Mary Travers' memorial service. On my way in, an usher handed me a program with a black and white photograph on the cover of a bombshell with long blond hair and blunt bangs, a straight nose, almond eyes staring at the camera, and a sensuous mouth. I opened the program and scanned the pictures—black and white and color, aesthetically delineating eras—on the inside flaps: that same blond bombshell performing at the Lincoln Memorial (black and white), smiling at her husband (color), doing presumably good deeds in a presumably third world country (black and white), and with her two bandmates, smiling and bald from chemotherapy on what looks like the stage at Carnegie Hall (color).
Inside the sanctuary, the pews were packed with the predictable sea of gray hair, sober colors, practical sweaters and comfortable shoes. (Two thousand people, the paper reported the next day.) I slipped into a seat three rows from the back between a man my father's age and a woman my mother's. At 29, I was at the youthful end of those who had read the small notice in the Times that morning: "A memorial celebration of the life and music of the folk singer Mary Travers will be held at 7 p.m. on Monday at Riverside Church. Ms. Travers, who with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey formed the renowned trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died on Sept. 16. Besides Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey, participants in the celebration will include Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton… Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Moyers, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and former Senators George S. McGovern and Max Cleland."
A video montage of Peter, Paul and Mary concert clips featuring "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind" was code for "Please turn off your cellular devices," and the service began. Cameras on mechanical arms manned by a PBS film crew patrolled the airspace above the gray heads like giant disembodied insect legs. As it goes with memorial services, a parade of people—many famous—from Travers' life then began filing on and off stage to lead the audience in song and to recall and applaud her beauty and talents and hobbies and temper and quirks and grace in the face of illness. November 9th would have been her 73rd birthday. I thought about how somber parades like this of personalities and anecdotes ask us, "Remember this time? Remember that time?" and how we in the audience then say to ourselves, "Yes," even when the truth is closer to, "No, but I believe it."
Veiled cell phone warnings notwithstanding, for the duration of that first half hour, a man in the pew in front of me held his phone in the air so that the person at the other end of the line could hear what she was missing. I pictured that other person on a couch in a comfortable living room somewhere sitting alone with the phone to her ear, her face quiet. I wondered whether she was his wife, daughter, or granddaughter and whether she could hear a word of what was being said or sung through the earpiece, or whether all she heard was the occasional garbled lyric of a well-known protest song and the static of periodic applause.
I preferred to imagine her as woman of about my own age and the man in front of me as her father. He had probably told her about the car he drove in those days, about the time he took it to the record store to buy his first Peter, Paul, and Mary album, about how he had taken the record back to his house, put it on the record player and promptly developed a crush on that blond bombshell. Maybe he had told her how he had once seen the group in concert and been close enough to see that the buttons on Mary's shirt were made from mother of pearl. Speaking of mothers, he may have then said, your mother has always been very patient with me. Sitting behind him that night, I wondered whether holding up his phone was this man's way of asking his daughter to remember the things he had told her about who he had once been in another time and place. I wondered whether the she in this equation was sitting wherever she was sitting with the phone to her ear for his sake or hers.
As a teenager I watched the movie Harold and Maude thinking what an eccentric hobby it would be to spend one's spare time attending strangers' funerals. That's what you are supposed to think when you watch that movie; its eccentricity is the engine of its charm. Yet in the past year, this extracurricular activity seems to be one I've begun cultivating. Last February I braved an hour and a half in the bitter cold outside Riverside Church in a line that wrapped around the corner and reached to Broadway to attend Odetta's memorial service. In May, I finagled prime seats to Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday Bash at Madison Square Garden. The concert may have been billed as a celebratory extravaganza but it resembled a memorial service in that the celebration was one of a life nearing its end, and Pete was more the theme of the evening than the primary performer. And now, the Mary Travers service, back again at Riverside. I plan to keep going as the services keep coming, which they will.
So far, the events I've attended have shared traits: length (they have all been at least four hours long), singing, the singing of specific songs ("This Little Light of Mine," "This Land Is Your Land," "Amazing Grace"), references to Selma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Dr. King, the Kennedy brothers, Nixon's List of Enemies and Greenwich Village in the fifties and sixties, and famous faces on stage or at the pulpit podium (Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Gloria Steinem, Peter Yarrow, Bill Moyers). The crowd always knows the words to the songs, as well as to clap reverently while nodding knowingly at the mention of key cultural touchstones. To watch a crowd like this respond to the word "Vietnam" is akin to watching more traditional evangelical churchgoers respond to a particularly resonant passage from The Book of John.
I went with friends to the Odetta service and to Pete Seeger's birthday concert, and socialized with them throughout both, so sitting alone through Travers' service was a new experience and one I intend to try again. All around me was a burgeoning community of mourners coming to pay their final respects and say goodbye to all that. The pews have been full thus far, but looking at that sea of gray hair I have begun wondering whether this Riverside pew community will begin to thin out as the services reach a fever pitch, then slowly fade to nothing. I keep picturing myself among the stragglers at these final services and us stragglers—us Harolds and Mauds—getting to know each other, making the pews a good place to be as our own hairs begin to gray.
A fair number of the people there had probably been at Odetta's service and Pete's birthday as well. Many were the same people who had celebrated life in a different way fifty or sixty years ago, doing their small parts to imbue the words "Selma" and "Vietnam" with the meanings they have today. Many, but not all. Some were also young, some middle-aged. These are the ones I will sit with when the pew population thins out. I looked for them now and then among the faces in the crowd that night. I wondered whether one day one or more of them would confide to me that the same things that brought me to these pews had brought them as well.
When I first took my seat that evening, I noticed those around me taking stock of my person—my age, my moderately expensive handbag, my iPhone, my fur vest. Throughout the service the man on one side of me would occasionally lean over and quietly ask me a question. In each case, I couldn't tell whether he was hard of hearing or whether he was quizzing me on my place in that pew. If it was a quiz, I failed. The woman on the other side of me would wait for my responses before correcting me.
"Who's that?" he whispered, as a man with white hair in a grey suit took the podium.
"McCarthy?"
"McGovern," corrected the woman on my other side. I flushed.
As a string quartet played Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," he turned to me again and whispered, "What movie is this from?"
"Apocalypse Now?"
"Platoon," hissed the woman on my other side.
I wanted to apologize for getting his questions wrong even when I knew the answers. Instead, I smiled as I stood to leave five minutes early. For the past half hour people had been slipping out and I had begun to feel as if I had stayed too long at the party. I was neither family, friend, nor peer, after all. I wished them a good night, hoping that next time, I would answer their questions correctly, that I would know my history, for their sake and mine.
Goodbye to all that. You can't write that phrase and not name-check Didion, who earned her reputation as the observer in their youth of the generation I was now observing in their age. In her famous essay, she explains how over the course of a decade, she fell in and then out of love with New York. She flew into the city at 20, a girl with all the time in the world, and she flew out of it at 29, a woman aware that neither time nor life were what they had been when she arrived. The essay is a memorial to a time and a place, and to a girl who had been and who that girl had become. It is melancholy and wry and wise and tender and bitter and sweet.
As it was beneath the arched stone ceilings of Riverside Church, beneath the strict architecture of Didion's sentences, there is a great deal of emotion churning that people understand. Sitting in the church that night with nearly 2,000 people who remembered where they were and what they were doing on those days in 1968—more than a decade before I was born—when the gunshots sounded in Memphis and Los Angeles and their youth ended, I realized that just because these people had said goodbye to all that does not mean they ever let it go; that's what memorial services like this were for. While some of the famous folkies may have lived fast, that was not the image they were projecting. The movement's breakout stars were people who resembled, at least superficially, your average guy and gal who wanted to change the world and make it a better place back in the day; the folkies most resembled the everyday members of that generation. The ones dying now are not dying young, troubled, or tragically; these are the ones who have just gotten old and sick.
I never worry much about the fate of classical music or the novel when I catch talking heads bemoaning their imminent demises. I have a feeling both will find ways to weather their current and future storms with an audience to support them spiritually if not financially. I don't know if I can say the same for folk music. It rose to popularity as a single generation came of age. It fell from grace when that generation got its rude awakenings. It has been growing old ever since alongside the people with whom it blossomed. I wouldn't be surprised if it dies with them, too.
When Pete Seeger took the stage at Mary Travers' memorial service, the entire room rose to its feet, a single organism, to give Seeger a standing ovation before his name had even been announced. Everyone in that room knew who the stooped old man carrying a banjo in the plaid shirt was. Last year, when I told friends—well-educated, left-leaning, socially-conscious individuals—I was going to Pete Seeger's birthday concert, more than a handful had responded saying, "Wait, that name is familiar. Who is that again?"
There's a Tumblr site called My Parents Were Awesome where people can submit old photographs of their parents when their parents were young. The site is like a photo album for a generation, not the public face of that generation, but a more private one. There's Jim with his long hair and beard smiling at Elaine with her long blond ponytail and paisley shirt. There's Vilma bearing her middriff at a dancehall. There's Karin and Gary snuggling on a lime green beanbag chair. There's Jim, hairy and shirtless, standing in the doorframe above Sue in her swimsuit on the steps of a wood-framed cabin. There's Bob sucking on a hookah at the dining room table, and a smiling David embracing a smiling Norma in a peasant shirt that billows over her pregnant belly.
My parents were awesome once, too. My mother left the chicken farm in Maine where she had grown up for adventures in rent-striking, a summer on a Massachusetts naked commune during which she ate a naked dinner with Taj Mahal, and a failed-yet-eye-opening attempt at group-living in Haight-Ashbury; and my father, the architect and painter, who escaped the stifling atmosphere of country club St. Louis life for Cambridge and the offices of Hugh Newell Jacobson and Jose Luis Sert. They weren't exactly hippies or fervent subscribers to any particular counter-cultural trend, but they were young and open to experiences and taking chances with their lives.
For years, there was a large painting of a suitcase hanging in my parents' living room in Virginia. When I would ask about it my mother would respond, "Oh, that's just by an old girlfriend of your father's back in Cambridge." I always wondered why my mother was okay with the fact that this strange still-life hung in our family living room, but it seemed to be something I would never understand. I've seen too the clothes my mother wore then. I fit into them in high school: the pink Mexican dress that ended halfway down my thigh, the brown and white striped Marimekko shift cut for a stick figure. I remember when she first brought them out of the attic for me to try on. "You look beautiful," she said, looking at me in the Marimekko. "It fits you perfectly." I continued growing, of course, and the dress hasn't fit me for years. I don't even know where it is now—whether it's packed back away in some attic box that I will find when I have reason to go through those boxes, or whether I forgot it at a friend's house or left it behind in a hotel room somewhere along the line.
There is a photograph I have on the refrigerator of my Brooklyn apartment that I think illustrates a moment of transition in my parents' lives between who they were once and who they are now. It's a family portrait taken on my mother's childhood farm. My mother, in oversized sunglasses and her long hair pulled back, is beaming and holding the reins of my grandfather's appaloosa. My father, in his aviators and chin-length hair, is standing behind the horse. You can't quite see it, but you know his left hand is supporting me at six-months-old perched in the western saddle in front of my sister, who was seven years old at the time and who has her arms wrapped tightly around my babyness to make sure I don't tip over and fall off. My parents are still relatively young here, they both look young and as if they might still occasionally act young around their friends. When my own friends come over and notice the picture, they often do a double take between me in real life, and my mother frozen in time. "You two look exactly alike," they say.
The photograph, snapped in 1980, is in color, but the color wears that yellow coat of time. It is maybe the only photograph I have of my family in which I can see, for my parents, the continuity between their youth and their age. That said, I write this in a moment that I recognize as yet another time of transition in all our lives. The baby in the picture has just turned 30 and my father celebrates his 70th birthday in May. The hand holding up the baby in the photograph is slowly being lifted up and away from horse, saddle, and the blond seven-year-old as well.
My father, who has taught architecture at the University of Virginia for more than three decades, has been trying to pin down his retirement plans for years. He would habitually drag his feet when the topic came up, but this past summer, he set a date: May 2010. Two months later, the 36-year-old who was once the blond seven-year-old was diagnosed with cancer. There's still the four of us for now, but there are also other things.
I discovered the music of the folk revival movement after watching The Eyes on the Prize PBS series about the Civil Rights Movement in my eighth grade civics class with Mr. Moore and wondering about the soundtrack. Mr. Moore wasn't crazy about getting up to the blackboard to lecture us, so he showed us movies instead. The Eyes on the Prize series took up a good two weeks of class time and by the time we had finished it I had decided I wanted to be a folk singer when I grew up because that was an effective way to change the world. I remember coming home each day after school and asking my parents about whether they had been to Selma or the March on Washington or where they had been when Dr. King was shot and how they had confronted their own parents about politics and whether they had ever seen Dylan in concert, or Odetta. To some questions they answered "Yes, and he was rude," and to some, "No," sometimes adding, "but we did watch on television and were of course sympathetic." I was disappointed that they hadn't been more politically strident, but was glad they hadn't been boring either.
I don't know if folk music is still an effective method of changing the world, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for it and for the sincere singers who popularized what became anthems for my parents' generation. That said, I'm not and never have been a huge fan of Peter, Paul, and Mary. For all the individual strength of Mary's vocals, I've always thought of the group as a little bland. Although my parents know all the songs and have memories of the group from when they were young, they feel—and felt—the same way; my parents and I have always preferred Seeger and Woody Guthrie and Arlo and Joan and Joni and Dylan. I did, however, at some point during my adolescence buy a CD or two of Peter, Paul, and Mary's music that I would listen to occasionally. The first (and only) time I ever tried to add my own verses to a folk song was in ninth grade after repeatedly listening to Peter, Paul, and Mary's version of "500 Miles." "If you miss the train I'm on," the song goes, "you will know that I am gone…" I cannot remember what new stanzas I wrote down in the song notebook I kept, but I do remember how encouraging my parents both were when I came downstairs to sing for them with the guitar they had bought me.
I went to Mary's memorial service, not for Mary so much as for my family. These days, when I talk to my parents on Sunday evenings as is our routine, we ask each other what we've done during the week. I tell them about the parties I've been to and the music I've been to hear and the museum exhibitions I have every good intention of attending. They tell me that the dog is well fed, that they talked to my sister a few days ago, and that things in general are just fine. But more and more, they've been telling me, too, about who doesn't know how he hurt his back and who is feeling sad about her childrens' life choices and who needs a hip replacement and who died quietly from a heart attack the day after he had gone out and bought himself a new computer. Every six weeks or so, we'll go through the "What did you do this week?" routine, and they will run through the typical list of responses before I will say, "What else?" and they will then hesitate before elaborating: "Well, we went to so-and-so's funeral. It was nice." Most of the time it's just an acquaintance or neighbor they have lived down the street from for 35 years, but sometimes too, and with increasing frequency, it is a beloved old boss or friend. I think then about Mom and Dad coming home from these services, my father calling to the dog and retreating to his studio, my mother going to her computer to see if there is a new email waiting for her in her inbox from either me or my sister. I can only hope we don't let her down too often.
I knew when I told my parents over the telephone I had gone to Mary Travers' memorial service that—even though they hadn't been fans per se—they would want to hear all about it, just as they had wanted to know every detail when I told them I had gone to Odetta's service and Pete's birthday. I could hear it in their voices as they asked me questions—Who spoke? What did you sing? Did many young people go? Did you have a good time? Who went with you?—that they wished they could have been there. In each case, I tried to tell them everything I could remember to make what I had seen come alive for them, but I am a poor storyteller and I know my paltry accounts left them unsatisfied after we had exchanged "I love yous" and hung up the phone.
Riverside Church it is not yet a confirmed venue on the old folkie memorial service circuit, but my money's on the likelihood of it becoming one. It is an interdenominational church with a liberal tradition. Martin Luther King spoke there, Nelson Mandela has too. The walls soar up past scenes in stained glass from the life of Christ to a domed ceiling. Church acoustics are always tricky, especially when the place has to accommodate more than a single voice. Sounds bounce from wall to wall to wall so that when you are singing as part of a group you can never be sure if you are singing to the intended beat or to your own imagined tempo; it's nearly impossible to discern whether what you are hearing and following is coming directly from the choir and choir director, or from an echo across the room. Not even Pete Seeger, the master song director himself, can overcome this technical glitch. That night, my corner of the room reached the final line of "This Little Light of Mine" at least a measure ahead of Seeger and his banjo that "surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."
Outside, the church dwarfs the other buildings on its quiet Harlem corner and opens onto Riverside Drive. Unlike the great cathedrals of Europe, it does not open onto a city square in which pigeons beg for birdseed, men with carts sell postcards, and enterprising artists sell watercolors to tourists. Instead, it opens onto a scene that at first appears more modest but is really just more American. From the front steps you look out not at other buildings enclosing you inside the city, but to Riverside Park, the Hudson, and across the state line to the trees of Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Even the church's name reminds me of its political and social allegiances. It was probably an unintentional allusion, but nonetheless when I think about the church I soon find myself humming an old Baptist spiritual co-opted by the folk revival movement: Gonna lay down my sword and shield, down the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside…
I met the first boy I ever really loved during our first week of college in 1998. We sat next to each other at a lecture being given by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin. It was a small lecture hall and only half full. Coffin had been the outspoken and progressive chaplain at Yale during the Civil Rights Movement and then served as a senior minister at Riverside through the late Eighties. He retired to Vermont, not far from where I arrived that September, more than a decade younger than I am now. I don't remember exactly what he lectured on that evening, but I do remember his thick white hair and how whatever it was he was saying was what I wanted to hear when I was scared and lonely, missing home and my parents intensely: stuff about taking on the world and doing the right things and making our families proud and one day, too, ourselves and our own children. Coffin died in 2006 at age 82, two and a half years after the boy I met that night when I was 18 years old broke my heart.
The boy and I didn't start dating immediately as I had thought we would when we said goodbye to each other that night in the chilly New Hampshire darkness outside the lecture hall. In fact, we didn't even know each other until we met again and started dating a couple of years later. We were a case of opposites attracting. I am highly sensitive and impulsive where he was (and is) analytical and methodical. It took me a long time to understand him, but my lack of understanding never meant a lack of sympathy, respect, or comfort. I always remembered how something had brought him to that auditorium his first week of college, how he had been there, his knee touching my knee, as we forgot—temporarily—our anxieties about our new lives. When we were together, I would sometimes ask him if he remembered that night and he never did. "Don't you remember? Don't you remember?" I would ask. "We went to see William Sloane Coffin. We sat next to each other. I knew then that everything was going to be alright so far away from home." In response, he would smile and shake his head. "No," he would say, "I don't remember, but I believe you."
Image credit: Fabian
Nell Boeschenstein | 2 books mentioned 6 16 min read
In Defense of Autobiography
Jennifer Miller May 7, 2012 | 2 books mentioned 16 6 min read
I spent years feeling like a failure before I'd even started writing, all because I was terrified of producing a cliché. If only I could have written a World War II epic with a chose your own adventure twist.
Jennifer Miller | 2 books mentioned 16 6 min read
Leaked Literature: Why We Should Respect Salinger's Wishes
Ian Rogers January 2, 2014 | 2 books mentioned 14 5 min read
Garth Risk Hallberg says:
This is lovely, Ms. Huneven, and perhaps is one of those cases of a technology finding its ideal purpose (the way Marshall McLuhan suggests that the best application for the telephone is teaching). Often, I feel like what my laptop/iPod/cellphone are doing is pulling me out of the world, creating anxiety, but I share your sense that walking and narrative (like music and driving) is a pairing that pulls us deeper into the world.
I don't listen to audiobooks. Not from any puritanical anti-audiobook bias, it's just not my thing. If I did listen to audiobooks, however, I can't see myself listening while on a hike in a natural area. I like hearing the birds/wind/insects/etc.
Tracy King says:
I've been enjoying hiking up to Echo Mountain while listening to podcasts of all sorts, mostly from the npr.org crowd from Fresh Air to Motley Fool and recently HowStuffWorks.com. I even listened as I hiked up Half Dome in Yosemite, since I'm slower than my hiking companions and this helped me pass the time as I hiked alone, which I totally enjoy.
But I like the idea of some fiction choices. A lovely essay, and inspiring as well.
Edan Lepucki says:
What a beautiful post!
Sara B. says:
I would listen to the New Yorker fiction podcast and Selected Shorts whilst doing data entry when I worked at my part-time job and it made that time much more bearable. The Tobias Wolff one you mentioned was particularly beautiful. Living in NYC, my natural options are more limited but I'll give one of these a try next time I'm strolling in Prospect Park. Thanks for the wonderful post!
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Michelle Kerns says:
Hey, what about walking and actually reading, as in out of ye olde fashioned book? The summer I turned 16 I read Crime and Punishment while walking an hour both ways to piano lessons, four days a week. I've never talked to so many people in my life: every block, people would call from their porches, lean out car windows, turn from the gas pump and say, "Hey, whatcha reading?" You'd think they'd never seen a human read in public before.
Lorelei King says:
As an audiobook narrator, it's wonderful to see how people use and listen to audioboks. And I agree! I love listening to audiobooks (not my own!) when I'm walking or jogging….
Ali Muirden says:
How wonderful to see such a well-written, well thought out article. Very much enjoying your blog!
Pauline Rowson says:
A great article. As an author ( crime fiction and business books) which are also in audio book format, I find this most encouraging. I too am a walker – in the UK -and a knitter and find that both help me work through my plots – especially when I am at a difficult stage of the crime novels. I can let my mind go into freefall at the same time as doing something productive ( knitting a jumper) and getting beneficial exercise, walking. Though I don't yet do all three at the same time, or should I say four – now that would be a feat!
Robin Whitten says:
Michelle's right on–audiobooks and walking are a terrific combination. With a great narrator you 'travel' farther than your feet can take you. Imagination, imagery, the music of the language and dialects can fill your mind, but not detract from a natural setting. I just listened to an Agatha Christie story and spent an hour in a charming English village as I walked the streets to work!
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Anuradha Raja says:
Beautiful post – it inspires me to walk more often (hiking difficult where I live), the whole package becomes attractive.
I listen to podcasts – on my way back home from work, in the cab – as other users said, new yorker fiction…and sometimes economist podcasts. But the story by Nabokov…and another one which talked about the protagonists' list of books to read…have been etched to certain places, crossings, signboards I gazed at while waiting for the trafic to clear. Music is another companion but a great option for short fiction when reading a book is difficult. And it stimulates imagination in a slightly different way than just reading does; bound to, with two stimuli – the writer and the narrator.
Some time back, I started reading aloud and recording fragments of some poems by Eliot, Cummings on the phone so when I feel a need for some sprinkling of the interesting in the humdrum, the listen is just a touch away.
Daniel Goldin says:
1. I love your new novel "Blame." Thank you for writing it.
2. I own a bookstore in Milwaukee. For the front of our in-store event flyer for July, I wrote an essay on walking and reading, with the high-point being almost bumping into another person in Milwuakee who was also walking and reading. And let's just say the odds of that, based on the number of folks walking the streets of downtown Milwaukee at any time but weekday lunch and on a festival weekend, are slim to none. Now that I think of it, it isn't indexed anywhere.
Audiobook Librarian says:
Thanks for this wonderful essay. There are so many devoted audiobook fans, but it's so hard to convince some readers to try audiobooks. Your essay couldn't have said it better. However, I was surprised to see that you didn't mention the great audiobook resources at public libraries. In particular, a valuable source for finding downloadable audiobooks at a libraries in the U.S. is at http://search.overdrive.com.
Beth F says:
So true! I've read hundreds of books while walking, gardening, and cooking over the years. A fabulous combination. Especially with digital downloads and very light mp3 players.
Patrice says:
Ah, your lead has my follow, and paths pace seems suited to meranderings of the mind, but not to miss nature's sound— And what is so rare as a day in June? Then if ever come perfect days, Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune, and over it softly her warm ear lays.
Love your work– Bravo!
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Eric Gudmunsen says:
I stumbled upon it by googling 'are audio books only for the blind'.
I'd listened to a few podcasts, mostly comedy, whilst walking in the countryside just outside Dublin, Ireland. Any previous experience with spoken word audio resulted in my falling asleep within minutes and never getting a good feeling of the story.
But I recently listened to Craig Ferguson's An American On Purpose during my walks and I was blown away both by the book and the idea that I could learn whilst exercising.
Great news! I really looked forward to my next 100 minute walk to get the next thrilling instalment.
Also, I've started to write a bit myself lately, so it's good to hear different styles of writing spoken out loud. Whether or not I continue this practice remains to be seen as I'll probably get withdrawal symptoms from lack of music which is pretty much my life passion.
"The landscape becomes festooned with fictional memories." Oh, so well said, Michelle. What a fantastic blog entry!
In read my Kindle while I walk, and have found that going around my local high school track works well, particularly along the outer, rather than inner, edge for a smooth, graceful curve that allows an obstruction-free walk. I discovered that, when I was away from home and there was no track on which to walk, walking a straight line in an open field at a park works well, too. It would be rather mind-numbing to walk out and back in a long field repeatedly without a book, but with one–joyful! Exercise body and mind at the same time!
Stephen King, it is said, is an avid walk-reader. Thanks again. Sven.
A Little in Love with Everyone: On Alison Bechdel
Genevieve Hudson April 12, 2018 | 2 books mentioned 11 min read
Edith Wharton: A Writer's Reflections
Roxana Robinson April 11, 2012 | 2 books mentioned 4 6 min read
Born in New York City in 1862, 150 years ago, Edith Jones was part of a small, wealthy, patrician community. She was well-born, but she was not born rich. Socially, her family dwelt in the innermost circles, but financially they were somewhere closer to the outer rim. During the post-Civil War recession, more than once the Joneses had to rent out their property in America and move to the Continent. There they lived cheaply while they waited for their finances to recover.
Edith married within her circle and led an affluent life, which was latterly true because of her writing: she made more money from royalties than she ever inherited. But she never forgot the threat of being poor, and the risk of expulsion it carried, from the only world she knew. Her work echoes with the subversive powers of wealth, and of the chilling presence of its counterpart, poverty.
Much of Wharton's work is set among the crystal chandeliers and gold plate of the very rich. Because she knew that community so well, and because she wrote so tellingly of its mandarin complexities, Wharton has been called a novelist of manners. But manners — and money — were never the point.
Wharton's deepest concern was morality. She wrote about the struggle between the body and the mind, that battlefield from which morality emerges. Central to her work are stifled and illicit passions, manifested in divorce, adultery, incest, and illegitimacy. She wrote about the struggle to integrate the life of the emotions within the life of the world. Her writing was stylistically decorous but socially transgressive: her prose is so elegant that her message comes as a shock, like a sword wrapped in satin.
All of Wharton's most important novels — The House of Mirth, Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence — take place, partly or entirely, in New York. This city was central to Wharton's understanding of the world.
Lily Bart, brave and vital, is at the heart of Wharton's greatest tragedy and arguably her greatest book, The House of Mirth. Lily is beautiful and well-born, but she is orphaned and impecunious. At 29, time is running out, and she knows she must marry. The New York world in which she lives is shrill and materialistic, but Lily is a woman of principle, which makes for a dilemma. How should she choose her future? Should she marry for love or for money? Tempted by luxury and practicality, Lily plans to marry Percy Gryce, who is unthinkably rich and unspeakably dull. But her principles interfere, and so begins her downfall. Wharton asks what all great writers ask: how should we make the choices that will shape our lives?
It's a deeply American story, and one that shows the conflict between market and morals, glitter and bedrock. It's as true now as it was then: we choose continually between emotional veracity — life in the deeps — and getting and spending — life in the shallows. The House of Mirth shows the consequences of our choices.
Wharton's work is part of the story of how we became the people we are. Money, idealism, and morality are central to our national chronicle, and Wharton's novels remind us of the roles they have always played. She maintains that personal morality and emotional truth are essential for survival, which is still true today.
The Custom of the Country is not a great novel, but a great problem novel. It's great in its ambition and intensity, but it never achieves true greatness because it's fueled by rage and untempered by compassion; it's driven by judgment without understanding.
At the center of this novel lies Wharton's own understanding of marriage: she saw the institution as part of the most fundamental underpinnings of society. She believed that marriage vows were pledges that were given not only to the spouse but to the entire community. She saw divorce as a betrayal of that community. These beliefs made Wharton's own decision to leave her husband agonizing, since it made her a traitor to her own world. Divorce was an act she'd felt compelled to perform, but for which she could not forgive herself.
This sense of failure and self-contempt play a large part in the formation of The Custom of the Country, in which Wharton created a character she could despise for doing just as she had done. Undine Spragg outperforms Wharton, of course, by producing not one but a spectacular crescendo of divorces. And it's not just the divorces that make Undine Spragg so unsavory: this woman typifies everything that Wharton holds in contempt. She's shallow, vulgar, ignorant, narrow-minded, and grasping. Undine is Wharton's loathed alter-ego, someone she can whole-heartedly despise. In this raging, contemptuous, furious novel, the protagonist's immoral behavior threatens the whole of civilization, just as Wharton felt she had, in her own colossal and public failure at marriage, the great stabilizing linchpin of society.
Wharton's self-rage is expressed by her rage at Undine, and it's this unmediated fury that keeps Custom of the Country from greatness. Rage can be used as a narrative engine to drive a novel, but in order for the novel to achieve greatness the rage must be tempered by compassion — a deep understanding of the characters, despite their flaws. Wharton feels no compassion for the shallow, heartless Undine. The book is like a melody played only on the brasses — it's shrill and relentless, without the deep mellow notes of understanding.
The Age of Innocence shows a profoundly different view of Wharton's New York. Written in 1921, after World War I, it derives from Wharton's meditations on the New York of her youth, and the view it presents is a far cry from the cold and grasping New York of Lily Bart. By now, Wharton has come to admire this earlier world. This is one that celebrates family, rewards commitment, and requires morality. Newland Archer obeys the social codes, and, when he falls in love with the mesmerizing Ellen Olenska, he does not abandon his dull and conventional wife, May. He lives up to the promises he has made, to May and to the society in which he lives. And we admire him for his principles, despite their heart-breaking consequences. The Age of Innocence celebrates a society in which passion and romance are subordinated to an overarching moral code of great exigency, supporting family and community. It is a world Wharton respects and cherishes.
Edith Wharton's work has been part of my own world for many years. My first connection, as a reader and writer, came in my senior year at boarding school, when I first read The Age of Innocence. It was then that Wharton's work took up residence in my mind. I was mesmerized by the elegance of her style and the acuity of her intellect, by her courage and her compassion.
One of the brave things that Wharton does is to recognize the coexistence of the world of passion and the world of strictures. I don't know another writer of her era who felt so seriously bound by the rules of society, and who took so seriously the great forces of emotion that were aligned against those rules. Since one of these rules was silence, it took great courage merely to declare the conflict, merely to write it down and speak it out.
I was also struck by Wharton's courage in declaring a woman's story to be a tragedy. I don't mean the story of a beautiful woman betrayed by her lover, for many writers have made that into a tragedy. I mean the story of a woman on her own, forging her own way, and making her own terrible mistakes. Lily Bart is beautiful, but her story is hers alone, and depends on no one else for its outcome. She is the tragic hero of her own narrative, the sole agent of her own downfall, just as King Lear was, or Oedipus, and this is remarkable.
But most important to Wharton's work is her own sense of compassion, something essential to all great fiction. It is Wharton's empathy for her characters that makes our own possible. Wharton allows us to know them, to admire them, to understand their flaws and to forgive them — in short, to love them — as she does. For a writer, there is no greater skill.
The way a young writer learns what is possible is by reading what other people have done. Wharton showed me that it was possible to write about the collision between passion and responsibility, about the complexities of class. That it was possible to write about a society in a way that was both ruthlessly observant and fundamentally forgiving. That it was possible to write beautifully and cleanly and intelligently. I aspired to all those things, and the awareness of what she accomplished has entered into my own sense of possibility.
Virginia Woolf once said, "We think back through our mothers, if we are women." This is also true for those of us who are not only women, but writers. Edith Wharton is one of my mothers, and for that I am grateful.
Talk given at the opening of the exhibition "A Backward Glance," at the New York Society Library on March 14, 2012.
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
Roxana Robinson | 2 books mentioned 4 6 min read
Hot Asian Babes
Chaya Bhuvaneswar April 3, 2018 | 2 books mentioned 2 11 min read
As a 20-something woman of Indian descent moving unchaperoned about Oxford, going out at night alone in London, I am a symbol, a target, a love, a sweetheart, foreigner, vassal.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar | 2 books mentioned 2 11 min read
Poshlost Highway: In Praise of Dubravka Ugresic
Arnon Grunberg March 20, 2013 | 2 books mentioned 1 9 min read


In the wonderful world of freelance, over-promising is a fantastic way of failing hard and fast. You and I both know you can't stick to the proposed deadline, even though you agreed to it. So what can you do to avoid awkward situations like this? It's a pretty easy and overlooked technique. All you need to do is stop letting your clients set the deadlines and dictate how you do your job!
I can't stress enough how important it is that you set the project deadline. Early on in my career, I would ask the client when they wanted the work done by. All that lead to was me saying "Yeah sure, I can do it by then". Inside I was thinking "I'm never going to get the work done". I bet you've had similar experiences.
The reason it's so important to set the deadlines yourself is so you have control over your own work. The client is hiring you to work with them, not for them. So in light of that, it's time to act as though you're working with them.
A benefit of under promising and over delivering is you appear more efficient than everyone else. It may feel like you're taking longer, but that doesn't matter when you're seen as a consistently reliable resource.
Let's look at an example: You estimate some work will take four days and someone else says it will take only two. Imagine how good you look and how bad the person looks when you both deliver on day three. You appear more efficient because you deliver one day earlier than expected. The other person delivers a day late. They look unreliable whereas you look the opposite.
When you make a promise, you'll be held accountable. If you fail to deliver on that promise, you'll be seen as unreliable. It then showers the people you failed with doubt in your abilities as a professional.
You want to build trust with clients. To do that, you need to seem as though you're always on the ball. Do you want to be the person who constantly hands in the deliverables late? Or the person who always finishes before the deadline? I think you know the answer.
Think about someone you don't fully trust. If you ask them to do something for you, you'll likely be dissatisfied with the outcome. Now pretend you're paying them a large sum of money. Not great, is it?
What's the worst thing that can happen when under promising and over delivering? Ironically the worst thing that can happen is you'll be finished on time. The secret to under promising and over delivering is giving an estimated, yet realistic, timeline of how long it'll take you. Even if you finish on the deadline, you still look competent and trustworthy. It's a win-win.
Finishing on time is nowhere near a bad thing. You may be disappointed because you only managed to finish right on the deadline. However, in the eyes of your clients, you're a reliable and trustworthy freelancer and that's exactly how you want people to see you.
Nobody wants to set themselves up for failure. Yet by overpromising that's exactly what you're doing. Take some time to make a realistic estimate of how long the task or project will take, then add on a day or two, and things will run more smoothly.
Appearing more efficient has many more benefits than simply appearing reliable, it also builds trust. When you're working with clients, especially overseas, trust is an incredibly important factor. If there's no trust then there's a pretty slim chance of the project running smoothly.
The only thing left to do is go and make a start on improving how you appear. If you've ever watched any kind of drama on TV you'll notice there's always a character who doesn't care what people think of them. Do you want to know a secret? In business everything revolves around what people think of you. So get out there and become a reliable, trustworthy, freelancing professional.


Here's an interesting deck! For all intents and purposes, this is a new Reinforcements list, but with the added flavor of Hobbits from Raise the Shire.
I've always had a natural attraction to cards that can create a entire archetype around them, cards that often need to be built around to really shine. Reinforcements is exactly that kind of card, and because of that, there are no ally cards in this deck that cost less that two, which means that every time you play the card, you are getting more value in return. The best case scenario is to have Reinforcements drop down a Guardian of Arnor, but of course can be used to plonk down a Northern Survivor for additional willpower gain, or the amazing new Imladris Minstrel. Also possible in the single copy of Erebor Record Keeper for additional card draw. It may seem weird that most of the allies in this deck are 2 cost rather that shoving tonnes more 3 or 4 cost. I wanted to get rid of the chaff (Trollshaw Scout and Warden of Anuminas) and keep only allies that are valuable for the deck itself so to make sure the deck is consistent.
Reinforcements is definitely the key card here, but that's not to take away from Raise the Shire. While is doesn't have the same oomph, it can still grab you a copy of Farmer Maggot, the new Hobbit Bounder or Curious Brandybuck, all cards that would normally cost 3 or 4, for the low low price of 2 resources. Of course it can also whiff really bad if you get Wandering Took.
Both Reinforcements and Raise the Shire mean that you can quickly build an army very quickly (hence the name), or a finely-tuned machine with Guardian of Arnor protecting party and Imladris Minstrel giving him a healing hand. Weaponizing both these cards even further is two copies of Study the Scrolls which can recur either of the cards for a third (or fourth) copy.
The deck is also loaded with tonnes of good attachments with the trifecta of Sword of Numenor, Raven-winged Helm and Gondorian Shield. The latter of which is fantastic on Guardian of Arnor to assist in his survivability... no joke, I've had this dude at 10 health which made him essentially a fourth hero. Another super nice addition to this deck is the Ranger Cloak. It has two really good targets in both Aragorn and the Guardian of Arnor (both Dunedain traited), boosting both health and (most notably) willpower.
So how did it go? So far, pretty well. It has consistently achieved 500+ score on both Adventure and Challenge modes for all the new quests in The Shadow's Fall EXCEPT Escape from Dol Guldur. The deck isn't the most powerful or optimised deck out there, but it works well and it definitely a fun deck to try as Reinforcements is such a fun card to play on its own.
An opening hand should include a copy of Reinforcements and, ideally, Study the Scrolls for recursion (this will allow 2x Reinforcements on the first turn).
I applaud your use of Raise the Shire! I'd mentally filed that one away for future use owing to lack of hobbits. Hadn't appreciated it could fetch Farmer Maggot. You've convinced be it's actually not too bad!
@Iluvatar 79 Haha, it's a very interesting card to me because I can't tell if it'll get better with time or worse. Right now the odds of pulling a higher value card is higher and with more cheaper hobbits to come, it may dilute in worth.


text:
MESD EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES
COVID - 19 VACCINATION Monday, May 9th at MESD School Base Health Center from 9:30am until Noon. Parents please send immunization cards and consent forms with the student.
Good Friday, April 15, 2022 Marvell-Elaine School District will be closed. Classes will resume on Monday April 18, 2022
10 months ago, MESD
Because of the forecasted weather conditions, Marvell-Elaine School District has decided we will dismiss early today. Bus riders will be dismissed at 1:30 PM. Car riders and walkers will be dismissed after the bus riders have been dismissed.
Marvell-Elaine Schools District is monitoring the weather forecast. If it becomes necessary for an early dismissal we will update our families and parents via social media, text and calls.
Parent Teacher Conference is tomorrow 3/17/22 from 3pm-7pm. Students will be dismissed at 2pm. There is No School for students on Friday 3/18/22. That is a Professional Development Day for staff.
Special Call Board Meeting Tonight 3/16/22 at 6:30 pm.
MESD will have a COVID Vaccine Clinic Thursday, March 10th, 12- 3 pm in the High School Fitness room. The vaccine is available for students age 5 and up and also for parents.
The Financial Aid workshop that was scheduled for tonight at 6 pm at MEES cafe has been canceled.
MESD 11th graders will be taking the ACT on March 8 & 10, 2022
Special Call Meeting tonight March 4, 2022 at 6pm.
Congratulations to Coach Thrower MESD's Teacher of the Year
MESD Parents, Faculty and Staff Due to the weather and possible conditions of the roads, there will be a two-hour delayed start of school for the Marvell-Elaine School District on February 24, 2022. Buses will pick up students two hours later than the usual time.
MESD will be dismissing early today because of the weather. If your child is a car rider they will be dismissed before 3:35 so please make plans to pick him/her up.
MESD will be closed Monday February 21, 2022 in observance of President Day. We will resume classes Tuesday February 22, 2022 at our regular time.
1A-5 District Tournament Sr. Boys Brinkley Tigers vs Marvell Mustangs Tonight at 5:30 pm in Clarendon
Basketball Tournament MESD Jr Girls and Jr Boys Start Tonight Feb 9 Jr. Girls Play at 4:00 Jr. Boys Play at 7:00
Mustang Family The Marvell-Elaine School District will be closed on Monday, January 17, in observance of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. School will resume on January 18, 2022
The Basketball game for Friday January 14, 2022 Bradford vs Mustangs has been canceled
MESD Parents: If your child has a JetPack Mifi (regardless if it works or does not work) please return it to MEHS so that it can be replaced with a new Mifi. If a student received a Mifi but no longer need the Mifi please return it. Students must bring the old Mifi back to receive a new one. The Mifi that has to be returned is pictured.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl