Hello, hello . . . it seems the corporate giants just keep getting bigger, but what does it mean? Are the barbarians upon us? Imagine an economic system in which the mere mention of your political party affiliation to a competitor will cause them to instantly sell out to you? Originally published February 18, 2023.

It has been a year -- and I don't mean a year since my last message in this space -- I mean 2022.  What a year.  Covid continues but masks are history.  Like many of you, I'm sporting a bunch of new needle holes and I leak when I drink water, like in a cartoon.  The north pole has become the wobbly Polar Vortex.  Originally published December 7, 2022.

This time, the special theme is Frontiers, inspired by a recent book-research trip out to California, a place referred to by some as the farthest place you can run from your problems without getting wet. Originally published August 31, 2022.

June is LGBTQIA+ Pride month, so -- since historical writing is one of the many foci of this newsletter -- let's celebrate some titles that served as important historical landmarks in the eventual creation of good queer literature. You may not decide that these books are good, or that their publication was entirely helpful to the community or to gay rights, but they're only featured here because, for a long time, they represented almost the only information about queer lives available to a cis audience. Originally published June 29, 2022.