I breezed into Amsterdam from the idyllic Butler, Pennsylvania, wedding of a college buddy. My legs are sore from dancing all night and my liver needs a break. I write this from an awesome one-room box apartment attached to one of the canal drawbridges near Vondelpark. If I don't draw the blinds, the hundreds of passersby on the pedestrian/bike bridge look right in upon my near naked form. Am I like the Red Light worker, a sort of human aquarium specimen? How voyeur.
A large, strange waterbird (a coot?) has a nest with chirping chicks at the base of a piling right below my window. Blonde Dutch couples putter by on boats seemingly without a care in the world. I'm digesting a meal of baguette with tomato hummus, a few cheeses I've never heard of, European cured meats, and anchovies I bought from a local grocery chain called Jumbo. Dessert was a single chocolate the friendly man I briefly sat next to on the plane gave me. He was a Cleveland, Ohio, denizen born in Sudan who is now a crypto trader on social media.
100 Subs!
As of about an hour ago, Norris Note passed 100 subscribers. Thank you all for tuning in and making this a triple digit operation. They say the first 100 subscribers are the most challenging, the climb from zero to something inherently uphill.
Once I’m back in the states, I plan to focus more on Norris Note to add entries in addition to my weekly(ish) standard. This base weekly(ish) content will always be free, but to join the ranks of cool kids who get to break stories on Substack for paid subscribers would be a dream. We’ll see how that pans out.
Georgia Tech Teachin’
I will be hopping on a train south to Metz, France, soon thanks to invitation from fellow MilSpeak author Dr. Jen Orth-Veillon. I’m a guest speaker for a Georgia Tech college class Travel Writing in Metz and Alsace-Lorraine: Navigating the Art and Science of War and Peace. The students are certainly in good hands with Jen, whose WWI anthology Beyond Their Limits of Longing was published recently. We met and became friends as part of a collaborative MilSpeak authors book tour from Atlanta to Norfolk which was a blast. She’s great!
Class description excerpt from the syllabus: “With Gallo-Roman ruins, art museums, sweeping cathedrals, winding water ways, mysterious passages, and the ghosts of three recent major wars haunting the streets and surrounding landscapes, Metz and the Lorraine region offer an interesting conversation between war and peace that may be compelling to diversity of artistic and historical sensibilities. We will process this sensorial experience through the genre of travel writing. Travel Writing is an exciting reflection on travel by connecting with foreign places through our unique, personal perspectives. Travel writing is not neutral or objective. But it isn’t fiction either. You will be constantly asked to make comparisons between your cultural experiences and observations with ones made in France. Renowned travel writer Pico Iyer claims that “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves.” For our topic, we must consider that war destroys lives but also familiarity and tradition. However, in the wake of peace, creation abounds. New landscapes, design, art, history, and ways of thinking reflect the shifts in consciousness after war. This course will help you produce clear, expressive prose, sharpen your eye for travel detail, and cultivate your individual voice through the lens of art and history shaped by war, but also by peace, in Metz and the Lorraine.”
I’m excited! This will be my first college class as a visiting writer. Here’s to giving the upcoming crop of writers and travelers something useful.
Norris Reads: Night of the Living Rez
I’m reading novel Night of the Living Rez by Penobscot nation member Morgan Talty and am about two thirds of the way done. I was drawn to this book after hearing Morgan talk at last year’s Portland Book Festival partly because he had a good sense of humor. Most of the talks I attended at the festival were quite humorless and Morgan was a breath of fresh air.
Thus far, I am enjoying the book. The storytelling is vignette-style and I think the chapters have roots in the author’s past published essays with threads like common characters tying it together. The thrust of the book is life on the Rez as protagonist David grows up and navigates tribal society and life.
I was prepared to call the book a comedy as Morgan’s sense of humor shines through especially during the first half. David and his friends and family often come across as “the gang” in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but trying to put food on the table. Teasers include a burnt out medicine man dating mom, a rotten turtle under the house, and failing to hunt porcupines for quick cash. These stories are rich in symbolism and deeper meanings under the surface and are my favorite parts.
But as the book goes on, the darker personal trauma takes the wheel: drug addiction, deaths, hospital visits, dysfunctional relationships, hopelessness. I’m in the thick of some pretty dark stuff at the moment and the idea that this book is a comedy has been blasted into oblivion. The shifting tonal gears can be jarring and the chapters are not always chronological, but I think these are deliberate creative choices. The highs and the lows of David’s life are mushed together and mixed up just like how we humans recall our own lives naturally.
I’m glad I picked it up. If you’re curious about contemporary indigenous literature or want to feel the spectrum of human emotion from humor to hopelessness, Night of the Living Rez is probably up your alley.