National viola day
ICE surveillance, resources, and litigation groups
National Viola Day.
Amidst a barrage of hideous and tragic news, I learned that this past Wednesday was National Viola Day (thank you to my friend Simon in Sydney). So, with your indulgence, I’m taking a moment to celebrate the instrument.
The viola is the string section’s alto. When played well, it produces a rich, honeyed sound that blends with both violins and cellos. Fiendishly difficult, it’s big and awkward (although it’s held upright), but too small to project the deep sonorities of a cello.
This may be why the viola is the butt of many orchestra jokes. E.g., Q: How are a lawsuit and a viola similar? A: For each, it’s good news when the case is closed.
Jokes aside, the viola is a beautiful instrument. Here’s a recording of Brahms’s second viola sonata with a young Pinchas Zuckerman and pianist Marc Neikrug. Please enjoy that very special viola sound.
Rendering this kind of music into words is not possible, but it’s my life’s challenge and the focus of my next novel, DUET FOR ONE, which got some love this week.
(Unboxing advanced review copies above.)
The Republic of Cruelty and what we can do.
We have descended into the Republic of Cruelty. Let us understand (as I heard today), that our neighbors cannot do their shopping or pick up their children at school. ICE agents have fanned out across the country, stationed in 7-11s and Walmarts and Targets and elsewhere, to terrorize immigrants and refugees. We are not talking about the KGB or the Gestapo, but life in the United States, in 2025.
Here are some resources if you and your loved ones are threatened. I listed additional immigration resources in this newsletter. If you know someone who could use these, here are DACA resources.
I commend a news diet, but I also commend reading widely and differently. Here are two people on Instagram whose work strikes me as important and centered: Keith Boykin and Brittney Cooper [known as Professor Crunk online]. If you are not on social media, you can read Keith Boykin’s work at Word in Black News, a good place to find guidance and insight. Brittney Cooper is on the faculty at Rutgers, focusing on feminism, Black women’s intellectual history, and much more. I learned a lot from her book ELOQUENT RAGE.
If you are able, please consider supporting groups filing lawsuits trying to keep up the guardrails of democracy, as well as others mentioned at the end of this newsletter:
Public Citizen, Democracy Forward, GLAD [Trans LGBTQ rights]
Please be kind to yourself and others. I just spent three full days at an intensive writing workshop, which was balm to the spirit, and a place of humor and creativity. All thanks to author and teacher Michelle Brafman, who organized and knit this group together.
Love,
Martha
P.S. ICYMI, here is last week’s newsletter: “Music. Immigration resources.”