The Main Event, by stacy-marie ishmael

Because you still listen, because in times like these

February 7, 2021

This week I hit a wall. Or perhaps the wall hit me. I can’t quite pinpoint the moment when I felt the bricks come crashing down. Maybe it was when I was...

---

This tart sermon

Premium post · January 31, 2021

This pandemic steals lives (RIP, Francisco Assis da Conceicao, and may all who loved you find peace) and it steals time and it steals, unapologetically and...

---

I need to learn

January 24, 2021

Many, many years ago I wrote another newsletter. Technically I still have that newsletter. Technically alot of things are true. In that newsletter I would...

---

There’s more to MLK than “I Have a Dream”

January 18, 2021

Last year for MLK Day, I compiled a list of resources for folks who might be interested in deepening their knowledge of Dr. King’s words and works. Here it...

---

I always thought language was / Akin to the body

January 17, 2021

Unsent Tweets, March 2020-Jan 2021 coping with the pandemic by watching and reading and listening to work created by people so obviously brilliant and good...

---

Everyone is crying out for peace

Premium post · January 10, 2021

Some folks stormed the US Capitol and killed a police officer. They flaunted Nazi paraphernalia and Confederate flags and Q shirts and Proud Boys tattoos....

---

i am running into a new year

Premium post · January 3, 2021

No resolutions. New intentions. Considered outcomes. Intended effects. You can only control so much when all about you a pandemic swirls, uncontrolled. We...

---

The perfect moment is now.

December 27, 2020

Six years ago Phil Hutchinson died. I didn’t know that then; it took a couple of days for the news that the world had changed for the worse to reach me. I...

---

you cannot catch / my rhythm

December 20, 2020

December 2020, and so many people are just about hanging on. It is not clear what they are hanging on to, and how long that grip will last. I do not want to...

---

what advice do the drowned have for the burned?

December 13, 2020

Pandemic rituals: at the appointed time on Sunday nights, fire up Twitch and connect my phone to the nearest bluetooth speaker. Start this newsletter while...

---

And still a world begins its furious erasure—

December 6, 2020

Geneviève Bergeron. Hélène Colgan. Nathalie Croteau. Barbara Daigneault. Anne-Marie Edward. Maude Haviernick. Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz. Maryse Laganière....

---

You cannot legislate music to lockstep nor can you legislate the spirit of the music to stop at political boundaries—

Premium post · November 29, 2020

We thought Things were Bad, because people were dying. And then more people died, and more people died, and more people died. What happens when you combine a...

---

After that came a sadness so big it made everyone

November 22, 2020

When I say two seconds, I don’t mean the time it took him to die. I mean the lapse betweenthe instant the cruiser braked to a halt on the grass, between that...

---

Inhale. So many of us are breathless,

Premium post · November 15, 2020

I have no way to process this much pain and this much grief. The quiet desperation is everywhere, in the eyes of masked strangers avoiding you on the...

---

Peace.

November 8, 2020

It is a powerful thing to affirm to the eyes of a watching world that though you might be the first, you will not be the last. It is a powerful thing to...

---

is not protecting

Premium post · November 1, 2020

What is happening in Texas but really they’re asking is my guy going to win, please tell me my guy is going to win. It’s not always a guy, just usually....

---

Many of them remain unaware of . . .

October 25, 2020

Existence right now feels like a series of unfinished sentences. A series of lives ended abruptly. Of livelihoods upended. Of families fractured. Of...

---

Guilt is not a response to anger;

Premium post · October 18, 2020

My current favourite videogame is about a dysfunctional family. When last did a single phrase—“good morning, my beautiful son”— reveal so much about so many?...

---

I write about you all the time, I said aloud.

Premium post · October 11, 2020

Video game writer (writer for video games) was not on the list of acceptable professions (doctor, lawyer, engineer, extremely educated housewife) at my all-...

---

How am I to understand the fluidity with which we continue in our days?

October 4, 2020

It’s still a conspiracy theory when you believe in it. Everyone is tired. Some of us have been tired. Do you remember a place differently when you know you...

---