Brains v Brawn
you know whose side I'm on
I saw the latest Superman (yes I’m late to the game) and frankly, I understood Lex’s frustration - it does not seem fair that even extraordinary brains can be defeated by brawn — but I have other, more confusing questions, which arose while discussing safety:
Why do we put seven different locks on a single door?
Why do our passwords connect our private phone numbers to business bank accounts?
How is it safe for me to give my home address to a stranger on the phone to access an account for a coffee shop?
Why are we spending millions of dollars on risk management that basically invites strangers to assess our weaknesses?
When we’re done with those questions, I invite you to think up things that AI can never do, and go do them with some humans. Here’s a start:
Hum along with its favorite song in the shower
Smell the milk to see if it’s still drinkable
Lovingly run a finger over your shoulder while you’re driving.
Hold your hand during the scary parts.
Smile in recognition when you turn a sharp corner, nearly run into each other, and simultaneously apologize while also giving a helpless shrug, indicating your twinned groceries.
Creative Spark
This week I attended my lovely friend Nick Kaufmann’s 25th anniversary of his first published writing. They held it at Pangea on the Lower East Side. Remember my book launch party? It was there - the “ringmaster-of-ceremonies” at my literary circus has a book out now! It’s called Jumping Through Hoops. (She also has two Emmys! She won the first the day after my launch!)
I was a busy bee this week - in addition to Nick’s party, I hosted a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends event on Wednesday (thanks to all who came) and gave this speech (enough people emailed me to ask for the silly poem I wrote on the train on the way to the event that I went ahead and typed it up)
But that’s not all!! I attended a three day nonprofit leadership convening in Hudson, NY where we discussed all manner of nonprofit issues. I will spare you, but it was actually great fun to hang out with the Executive Directors & Program Directors of such luminary institutions as Poets House, Poets & Writers, Pen America, The National Book Foundation, Writers and Books, Poetry Society of America, Kundiman, and on and on and on. Best moment was when I asked Mahogany Browne if she remembers reading for Pen Parentis in 2015 and she said “Remember it? I LOVE Pen Parentis!” (now, for those of you who don’t follow famous poets, she has just been given a role as Poet in Residence of Lincoln Center. They pretty much INVENTED a role for her and invited her to take it. Oh to be such a talented star. She literally read her panel speech and sounded like she was reciting poetry. And was.)
Had our own Board meeting too. As you can tell this week was chock-full of Pen Parentis. Met up with two of my meetup participants, one has a book coming out in March and one is churning her way through a manuscript, and got to congratulate a few established writers who read at our Salons: not the least of which is Sara Lippmann now the new Editor in Chief of Epiphany Magazine!
I was so delighted for all of them— but after all this socializing with writers I wanted something utterly mindless and fun. So I went to the Renaissance Festival yesterday. I frolicked around with the yellow jackets and knaves and the tricksters, rogues, and slatterns. It was excellent.
ALSO THIS HAPPENED:
Next episode around the 🔥 on Spirit Reflections:
Meet Milda De Voe, the multi-talented and awarded author behind "A Flash of Darkness", "Book & Baby," essays, poems, and more—and the founder of Pen Parentis, a nonprofit since 2009 that gives writer-parents the tools, grants, mentorship, and platform they need to keep creating. Her personal writing career and nonprofit work feed into each other: she knows both the craft and the systemic challenges of being a parent-writer.
Discover her personal journey in this episode, born from Texas-based Lithuanians, moving to NYC and creating Pen Parentis. See her tips on how she balances her own writing & creative projects, and what advice she has for listeners charting a similar path as serious writers who are also parents.
- Premieres Sat. Sept 20, 2025
- 🇺🇸 7pm ET | 🇧🇷 20h
👉YouTube: CLICK HERE
👉Spotify: Search for “Spirit Reflections” Podcast
This is a terrific conversation - Fred deeply understood what Pen Parentis wants to do and was so eager to help his listeners comprehend the nonprofit. It was such fun to record!
And PS: I’m working on getting my novel out into the world. Yes I said it. I felt rejuvenated this week when a very close (and ridiculously intelligent) friend of mine said that it was one of his top five books of all time.
We all just need someone to believe in us.
He read it years ago, not long after it was a finalist for the Bellwether prize. (And the Dana Awards. And won an Arch and Bruce Brown Grant for Gay-Positive Historical Fiction.) Yes, that book. Lots of you have read parts of it. Many of you have read all of it. Thank you for your patience. (Mom, please do not write me an email to get a better sense of when it will come out, I’ll tell you when I know.) Anyway. It’s coming.
RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT
If you leave a bookmark in a book and fully intend to go back to it, how many years later can you still claim you’re reading it?
Charming, as always! Mom note led to a smile and tears ❤️