PicoBlog

In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, this week’s visit to The Library shows what is possible in conversation across apparent differences. This year, 2024, is an election year in the United States, and differences will be magnified. I wanted to start by thinking about belonging, rather than isolating, by highlighting a conversation between social critic bell hooks and agrarian writer Wendell Berry. Read on! By the way, I extended the discount for paid subscriptions until Friday, January 5.

Studies suggest that biculturalism is achieved through a level of proficiency and comfort in the differing cultures (heritage, or host) a person encompasses. Yet I hear from many immigrants, children of immigrants, and bi/multiracial folks regarding how uncomfortable they can feel in their cultural identity. Earlier this week, I asked you all in the BGT community on Instagram how you felt about your bicultural or multicultural identity, and the response was eye-opening.

History occasionally provides lessons of uncanny application for comprehending current events. Author Benn Steil shares such insights in his new book, The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and The Fate of The American Century. Columnist George Will aptly calls it “timely, riveting.” In the summer of 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt exhibited manifest physical decline. Heading into the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, FDR arranged for the removal of his hand-picked vice president, Henry Wallace.

If you’ve been to Downtown Berkeley or along San Pablo Avenue in the last couple years, there’s been a large development boom of apartment homes. A lot of newcomers to Berkeley don’t know that this is a very unusual sight for a city that in the last 50 years built virtually no new housing up until recently. Since the 1990s, there has been a debate over whether allowing developers to construct housing again would tame housing costs or worsen them.

Some of my kids (that’s how I refer to my friends’ children with whom I am very close) are in grad school overseas, and they met up in Berlin. The call came in over the weekend: “What do we do?” Here is what I told them about one of my favorite cities to spend a long weekend or a week … or a month. Rogacki: My fave sit-down food hall. I love this place as much as any other.

I CAME TO Philip Kerr (1956-2018) —and to his greatest creation, detective Bernhard Günther— oddly. Deliciously. It was in Madrid. During the course of a conversation over fish and wine with my friend and fellow-historian of things early modern and Spanish James Amelang, we uncovered a mutual appreciation for beleaguered chief inspectors. Trading authors and our reasons, Jim put me on to Kerr. Philip Kerr's fourteen historical novels about Gunther are set, first and most famously, in 1930s Berlin, then in Nazi Germany and on the Eastern Front, and finally, amidst the chaos, compromises, and desperate flights of several “Cold War” aftermaths.

In a recent issue, I spoke about how one of my simple food pleasures is a crisp sandwich, and how I always remember eating them at the beach – praying that a grain of sand had not embedded itself in the butter somehow. Because as much as I love the feeling of sand between my toes, I loathe that moment you crunch a grain between your teeth. In fact, it makes me shiver just thinking about it.

NateI told myself I would finally post this for Pride month, and on the very last day of June…here we are. I made this comic to explain things to my family, but you can have it too. So hello! I am Nate, or ND, or Indy if you’d like. I think I wanted to wait until I was absolutely sure of everything, which I still am not if I’m being honest.

Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books and director of three films for PBS since 2021. He first wrote about the evils of Kissinger for Crawdaddy more than a half century ago. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free. Came back from dinner tonight to learn that ogre who has haunted my life for six decades, Henry Kissinger, has finally died. At least Jimmy Carter outlived him, though perhaps a million others he killed around the globe did not.