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Lightplay 14 – Utopian Proposals

What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Dear Reader — Hello and welcome back to Lightplay, the big email of your faithful if intermittent correspondent Jasper Luna Nighthawk. (Who was until recently named Jasper Nighthawk Henderson.) I’m delighted to return to your inbox, and I hope that wherever you’re reading these words, you and your family and friends are safe and doing okay. Happy Mother’s Day! Here in Los Angeles, I’m spurred to write again by the blossoming jacarandas. Every May and June, these Brazilian trees produce luscious,… Read More »Lightplay 14 – Utopian Proposals

Lightplay 13 – Chronos, Nomads, Fruit

What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Dear Reader — Greetings on another Sunday in the interminable present from which 2020 is apparently fashioned. Will the year ever end? Will the final six weeks somehow outdo in chaos and pestilence the preceding forty-eight? This morning I received one of the golden tickets of 2020: another negative COVID test result. I hope you, too are staying COVID-safe and -lucky. Now is no time to get lax in our dodging of the virus. If you recall back to August’s Lightplay… Read More »Lightplay 13 – Chronos, Nomads, Fruit

Lightplay 12 – the Lost Travelogue

What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Dear Reader — I hope this letter finds you well in health and spirit. Here in Los Angeles, the morning is cool and the air clear. Late fall! Today, I’m thinking about travel. Partly, this is because I’ve been receiving short, photo-laden daily emails from a man currently walking the 500km Tōkaidō pilgrimage route in Japan. (More info here.) Maybe it’s also due to a seasonal fear-of-holidays, an atavistic terror at the big feelings I and others will surely have. And,… Read More »Lightplay 12 – the Lost Travelogue

Lightplay 11 – Rainbow

What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Dear Reader — I hope that this Sunday you’ve had space to exhale, relax, and take stock. I know I have. The election is over. Thank you, each of you who helped rebuke this band of would-be authoritarians, be it by voting, volunteering, giving money, protesting, having hard conversations, and never going along with the worst of it. We did it. I am going to keep this letter short. There will be plenty of time to explore what it all means.… Read More »Lightplay 11 – Rainbow

Lightplay 10 – American Trip

What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Dear Reader — What a Sunday to find myself back in your inboxes! The first of November, 2020. Two days from a true fulcrum of history. I hope that you are well, that you have been able to sleep, and that you and your families are safe. Welcome to the tenth edition of Lightplay. Four years ago, I gave my presidential endorsement in the the form of a series of Star Wars-themed collages. Although the election didn’t go the way I… Read More »Lightplay 10 – American Trip

Quarantine poem #166 the virus lands

This guest poem was initially published in Lightplay 09 – The Strangest Summer. Quarantine poem #166 the virus landsby Hunter Gagnon 13,284,292 confirmed 577,843 deaths7,373,782 recovered3,428,553 US, July, the vision             of these virus lands, cities like broken shellsflattened in a bright wavethe no mercy of God and his flashing blue light, his                              mist, his vision of names          tossed around             Fort Bragg, Somersworth, the Portlands, the mythicalstaterecoils        at voice, no don’t misunderstand me my friend in the        fire red chair not the voice as a category an abstract        collapse        of content, but                     Life voice, in the virus lands, mumbling out                     in the teachers better kill… Read More »Quarantine poem #166 the virus lands

Lightplay 09 – The Strangest Summer

Featuring guest epidemiologist Erin Graves Quansahand guest poet Hunter Gagnon What follows is an installment of Lightplay, my email newsletter. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Hello, dear reader. I hope and pray that this letter finds you in good health and spirits. It’s late August, and things are touch and go. The post office is run by saboteurs. The hills are aflame, and the convicts aren’t available to cut firebreaks for $1/hour because the jails are too rife with COVID-19. The policemen who killed Breonna Taylor are still at large.  And yet life goes on. The… Read More »Lightplay 09 – The Strangest Summer

Week 8: Bread

What follows is an installment of my Writer’s Diary, which for eighteen weeks I am sending every Sunday. This current run has a central focus on food. To receive this in your email inbox, subscribe here. Hello, Gentle Readers, and may your Sunday be peaceful. This is the eighth letter in this food-themed season of Nighthawk’s Notes. (Is that the name of this newsletter/email diary? Still not sure.) Thank you for reading it. When I started this season, I said that there would be either 12 or 18 issues. Finally this week I figured out the answer: there will be… Read More »Week 8: Bread

Baker’s Log

Here you can download my Baker’s Log, a handy form that makes it easy to keep track of baking variables: I’m offering it for free, but I reserve the copyright. Please don’t distribute without my permission. This is what the log looks like filled out: