The Salamerta Generation

★★ The sun laid a chilly shine over the pavement to the east. A dog stood in a doggy coat, its bare hind legs trembling. Six blocks to the pre-K and six blocks back was enough to make the cold subcutaneous. In the West 60s it was possible to stay bareheaded but when the wind blew through the treeless stretch of cross street downtown, the hood had to come up. Clouds halfway formed, slowly, to whiten the early afternoon sky. Steadily and uninterestingly the white became gray, then gray streaked with darker gray. A woman in a short fur poncho stepped out into Broadway and raised an arm and with it the hemline, hailing a cab.

I am running out of ways to express the combination of sheer joy and utter surprise I experience each time I discover we have somehow made it all the way to Friday, so I will do what I think everyone should do more often and just shut up. In the absence of my chattering please enjoy this astounding track from Mikael Seifu. [Via]

★★★ An elephant herd of purple cumulus marched away to the northwest. On the last rise toward the pre-K school, the wind picked up something lightweight but not tiny—something dry dropped by a tree, maybe—and blew it straight to the back of the throat, to be dislodged only by violent gagging and coughing. The sky was a clear but not remote blue; a dazzling faint blue haze dissolved down from it into the landscape. A little space of warmth floated just above the bottom of the Columbus Circle exit stairs, where the reflected sun reached but the wind did not. A celebrity strolled past the luxury hotel entrance, coatless and at ease in a blue sport coat, sunglasses, and suede shoes. People snapped surreptitious photos of his broad back. A woman with her hair in a dancer’s bun hurried past, her athletic pants rattling and snapping in the breeze. The sunset sky was almost clear, save for purple and pink streaks running just along the top of the drab apartment slab in the west.

On Tuesday, the Appellate Division of New York State’s Supreme Court ruled that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s suit against Donald Trump, a New York real estate developer and the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, and the institution formerly known as “Trump University” could proceed, dismissing arguments from Trump’s lawyers that the statute of limitations for the attorney general’s claim had run out. “We look forward to demonstrating in a court of law that Donald Trump and his sham for-profit college defrauded more than 5,000 consumers out of millions of dollars,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Trump University, incorporated as a limited liability corporation in 2004 and headquartered at 40 Wall Street (known as the Trump Building), claimed to offer students the opportunity to learn the secrets of real-estate investment from its namesake’s “handpicked experts.” One advertisement, inviting prospective students to a free, ninety-minute seminar, attributed a quote to Trump: “I can turn anyone into a successful real estate investor, including you.” A direct mail solicitation proclaimed, “In just 90 minutes, my hand-picked instructors will share my techniques, which took my entire career to develop.” It continued, “Then just copy exactly what I’ve done and get rich.” By 2013, however—a few years after “Trump University” had changed its name to the “Trump Entrepreneur Initiative”—the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit against Trump, claiming that the free seminar was nothing more than a “bait and switch.” Trump University, Schneiderman said, had defrauded hundreds of New Yorkers and thousands of Americans of some $40 million.

Death & Co.


The dead bell, the dead bell
Every Christ a clap of bad behaviour, 
Ballsy as Blake, a birthmark
Of meat, a red frill of privilege.

Baby eaters all, a sweet girl
In a white cage. Such a useful future
Looming, the men at the door of thirteen
Waiting for the right moment.

  I haven’t felt this way in years. I have been
A sheep in wolf’s clothing, eating 
At the trough, supping on fine bones.
They have treated me like just another,

I sort of stopped keeping track of time in 2007 or so, which is probably why whenever I look in the mirror lately I’m like, “Holy fuck, when did I get this old?” But it also explains why every time someone talks to me about Yeasayer my brain goes immediately to its “new bands” folder for information. Imagine how surprised I was to find out they’re coming up on ten years together as an act. That’s right! A decade! Newer bands have gotten together, broken up and reformed in that time! Oh my God, I’ve wasted the last ten years and now I have nothing to show for it, not even memories, what have I done with my life? Sorry, I got sidetracked there. What I meant to say was, hey, new Yeasayer out soon! Enjoy!

★★★★ The morning was bright and tolerable. The kids from the school shivered coatless for an actual, if false, fire alarm, as the fire trucks came around the block. All up and down the train car people were coughing or sneezing. Spray-painted utility markings on the Fifth Avenue pavement were richly colored and salient to the untrained eye. Clouds slatted like a ribcage raced overhead in the golden late light. What seemed to be the smell of wood smoke was carried on the pushy night breeze.

First of all, I just want to thank everyone for writing in with all their amazing questions and comments. The reaction to my last post has been totally overwhelming! I’m delighted, and more than a little humbled.

When I first sat down to start working on the crazy, sprawling, life-consuming project would eventually become Salamerta, I would never have guessed the extent to which it would eventually take over my life—let alone what it might mean to anyone else. So thank you, and while I obviously can’t answer everyone’s questions, I’m going to try to respond to as many as I can.

Let’s dive right in. Many of you wanted to know more about the origins of Salamerta, and how and why I created it in the first place.

It truly has been a labor of love; I’ve spent over two years obsessing over it, staying up way into the night fiddling with every little geographical and cultural detail. But that said, Salamerta did originally begin as a job for hire. A couple of years ago, a video game developer hired me to create a world for a free-to-play mobile puzzle game. I’d put about three solid months of work into the map when the developer was acquired by another company and the project killed.

To make matters worse (and to get a little awkwardly personal here) my marriage, at the time, was pretty much on the rocks. My husband and I actually separated the day after I got the news. I found myself with not much to do and a rather strong desire to escape the “real” world. Almost out of habit, I kept tinkering with my little creation.

Well, it looks like our endorsement of Donald Trump really moved the needle for the man who is the essence of the modern Republican party, and we’re that much closer to his presidency becoming an actual thing that is going to happen and not just a terrible stand-up routine you’d boo some lazy comedian off stage for trying to pull on you once he ran out of decent material. I wonder if when the aliens land on the charred wreckage of our planet a thousand years from now and read the runes they will get to the part about Super Tuesday and go, “Oh, yeah, now we understand how this happened.” Fortunately, it won’t be my problem. Or any of ours! We’ll all be so very dead! Can you even BELIEVE IT? Anyway, maybe this new video from M83 will distract you for a few minutes. I have nothing better on offer, sorry. Enjoy.

★★★ Overhead at the school dropoff were lovely puffy clouds on blue. By the time the kettle was back on upstairs, the view out the west had gone fully gray. Gulls flying under the oncoming darkness caught the sun from the east and flashed like scraps of reflective metal. A shower wetted down the wooden tables on the roof across the avenue. The clouds thinned out. Breeze sent ripples across the puddles. Both sides of the avenue were sunny for the early pickup from preschool, and the little shadow held hands with the big shadow straight ahead on the sidewalk.