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I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a...
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Too Big To Fail

Initial Walk by Morgan Crooks (2019) As the light rail car picked up speed, Morris felt his heart race increase. On the speakers, the jangling guitars marking the start of REM’s It’s the End of The World played. “What is this about anyway?” King County Advisory Executive Marrion Tims zipped up the front of her dark purple uniform and grimaced. “Did you watch the videos?” “The cartoons?” Now Tims’ eyes blazed. “Instructional videos and mandated onboarding material.” A glint of something bright attracted Morris’ attention. Far to the south, close to Tacoma, something flared in the bright blue sky. “What the hell was that?” “We don’t have a lot of time and I need to know whether you’re ready for the fight.” “I’d like to know what’s happening.” The windows rattled in the Link Light Rail’s frames and Morris heard a faint thud. On the horizon the glint dimmed as he caught sight of the first trail of smoke. “Are we under attack?” Capitol Hill by Morgan Crooks (20...
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Woburn Library Opening Ceremony

The following is the press release for the March 16th 2019 Opening Ceremony. for the renovated Woburn Public Library. As it mentions, I'll be reading an original poem for the dedication as a part of the ceremony. Thank you very much to the Woburn Library, Rebecca Meehan, and Andrea Bunker for asking for poetry to be included in the ceremony and for choosing my work. Woburn Public Library Grand Re-Opening Welcomes the Public on March 16: 2-5:30 pm For immediate release: Contact: Rebecca Meehan, rmeehan@minlib.net Woburn Public Library Addition Mayor Scott Galvin, the City Council and the Trustees of the Woburn Public Library proudly announce the grand re-opening of the newly renovated and expanded library on Pleasant Street in Woburn Center. The $31.5 million City-bonded project restores the 19thcentury National Historic Landmark, designed by celebrated architect Henry Hobson Richardson, while adding a new wing to meet the needs of Woburn’s 21stcentury community. On March...
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Arisia 2019: Wrap Report

Arisia 2019 is over! It’s back to the real world this week after an entire weekend in Arisia 2019. I go to this convention every year, but this one will definitely be special to me. For one thing, this is the year that felt, at least for a moment, like it wasn’t going to happen. If the debacle with the e-board wasn’t enough, there was the strike at the Westin. The convention felt slimmer this year for sure. A lot of people self-selected to not come this year and honestly with the smaller, more confined venue of the Boston Park Plaza, that was a decision enormously beneficial to my enjoyment of this con. I had a blast. I was more invested in the panels this year because I wrote a portion of them. It’s one thing to go to a panel and listen for reading suggestions, or new ideas, or people to follow on social media, but it’s quite another to put together a panel of people to create a very specific conversation and then get to sit back to see how the discussion plays out. I loved that asp...
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All Words Are Made Up

The title of this post (and the panel I’m participating in for Arisia 2019) come from a random exchange between Thor and Drax in last year’s “Infinity War” movie. It’s what Thor replies when to Drax when the always literal-minded hero doubts the existence of Niðavellir its forge. It’s a funny throw-away line and the title of this post because I think there’s always been a bit of defensiveness on my part when I add some invented vocabulary to a story of mine. Nidavellir from Avengers: Infinity War (2018) The art and craft of inventing new languages has a surprisingly long history. A 12th century nun by the Saint Hildegard is credited with one of the first (sadly incompletely recorded) constructed language. There was also a period during the Enlightenment when the creation of ‘philosophical languages,’ meant to resolve age-old problems and reshape society, were the vogue. Gottfried Leibniz, for example, tried to a create a language that was logically self-consistent. The task prove...
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Thoughts on the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Anything that persists for an entire decade as a recurring entertainment event begins to mean more than simple entertainment. It’s inevitable that once a franchise like the MCU has continued for long enough that its overall significance has to be factored in. I don’t think fans quite appreciate what genre movies like these used to be like before MCU. Battle on Titan Avengers: Infinity War 2018 It’s really not the special effects or effective mix of humor, action, and character development. It’s the fact that all three of things happen within the persistent universe. Because no Marvel movie is the last Marvel movie, and there’s always another one to develop the characters, fans have a different relationship to this franchise. It’s more like what comic books are, obviously, where no matter what crazy stuff goes on in a crossover event, you have a reasonable expectation that your favorite character will be back the next month or the month after that. There have been good MCU movie...
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Alive in 2018

I originally called this last of my year-end posts “Alive in…” because honestly I couldn’t think of a more general or truthful way to labeling the intention of these posts: “I was alive in 20XX and here’s what I saw.” That’s the way it’s seemed to me in the past. Heading Across by Morgan Crooks (2018) I had a tough year in 2018 but I survived. There are many, many things that happened that made this year difficult but I’m still alive and I hope for a better 2019. I guess I’ll start at the top. As many of you already know, I’m getting divorced early next year. Lauren and I have gone through rough patches before but at some point this year it became apparent to both of us that we were trying very hard to keep something going that was making us both miserable. So, in the next few months I will be: selling my house, filing a lot paperwork, transitioning to some other living situation, and figuring out where to go next. In part, although this has been incredibly difficult and I hones...
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