Owners Paddy Calistro and Scott McAuley donated their publishing company Angel City Press to the Los Angeles Public Library in 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/la-public-library-book-publisher.html

https://monde-diplomatique.de/artikel/!5688407

Yesterday, I met Gil Agnew, who has been focusing on the Angel of Wholeness.

Ezra has been the saving grace for many of the main characters and for the doctor, mending either life or relationships or innocence. This is a really fitting description yet horribly sad ending for Ezra.

Lost?

The story starts off very interesting. The writer speaks about their current situation which is being isolated in homes because of high concentrations of carbon monoxide in the air. She speaks about how Susan’s daily activities-practicing for the marching band and playing flag football- have been halted due to this incident; however, the writer does not speak about how it has reached that stage of severe air pollution. Although the writer slowly speaks about it, a brief summary of it at the beginning would clear up my uncertainty.

Curious?

Just out of curiosity, who created these ibots? Did this carbon monoxide poisoning happen suddenly or gradually? Initially when the carbon monoxide poisoning happened, what were their main way of surviving? I also found it interesting how they would stay indoors and make the ibots perform their daily outdoor activities. Since the ibots are doing their outdoor activities, is it that they can control their own personal ibot or does each family receive only one ibot?

Engaged?

I enjoyed reading this story because it talks about the future and the use of technology to help mankind. The use of dialogue in this story allowed me to visualize the story in my mind. Furthermore, the plot itself is very interesting, creating a feeling of wanting to read and know more. I enjoyed how the story got more and more intense which spiked up my curiosity and need to know more!

I found the piece engaging, although there were a few points I found confusing. In terms of cohesiveness, the writer was able to put the pieces together, which allowed for better understanding; however, the ending ended abruptly. As a result, it felt as if something was missing. I think providing more information towards the end may assist the reader in understanding the story a bit more. All in all, I enjoyed reading the writer’s story!

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination is a 1979 book by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in which Gilbert and Gubar examine Victorian literature from a feminist perspective. Gilbert and Gubar draw their title from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, in which Rochester's wife (née Bertha Mason) is kept secretly locked in an attic apartment by her husband. Context provided by Wikipedia

Jane Eyre: "In the deep shade, at the further end of the room, a figure run backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not... tell: it groveled, seemingly on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face."

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, New York, 1960, p.295

Erëmirë's comment: The dwelling of Bertha Mason's madness is the attic, the dark nonproductive space of her mind, a space commonly inhabited by spiders and their webs. Both Bertha and Arachne have been removed from the sphere of power, demonized and rendered marginal. The pairing of Arachne and Bertha is not accidental, Arachne's art of weaving was qualified as nonproductive because it told stories that contested larger narratives produced by gods [such as the rape of Europe], while Bertha Mason the not-quite-human-Other, the white Jamaican Creole who is not-yet-European, she destabilizes the narrative of white Europe. So, removing the distance between her and animality - discursively - is easier than bringing her closer to europeaness.

And haunted by prejudice/expectations, as we see with Woolf's Angel of the House who seems to represent the looming patriarchal expectations of gender.

My mind immediately leapt to Woolf's rather graphic visualization of killing the Angel in the House. The timeliness did rather seem to underscore his point, here.

(Please forgive all the bullet points, but hypothes.is was not cooperating with my formatting. The options were either this, or to have the poem become one long paragraph)

• Excerpt:
• Man must be pleased; but him to please
• Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
• Of his condoled necessities
• She casts her best, she flings herself.
• How often flings for nought, and yokes
• Her heart to an icicle or whim,
• Whose each impatient word provokes
• Another, not from her, but him;
• While she, too gentle even to force
• His penitence by kind replies,
• Waits by, expecting his remorse,
• With pardon in her pitying eyes;
• And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
• A comfortable word confers,
• She leans and weeps against his breast,
• And seems to think the sin was hers;
• Or any eye to see her charms,
• At any time, she's still his wife,
• Dearly devoted to his arms;
• She loves with love that cannot tire;
• And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
• Through passionate duty love springs higher,
• As grass grows taller round a stone.

This part is quoted in a talk on the Thelemic concept of Holy Guardian Angel here.

This part is quoted in a talk on the Thelemic concept of Holy Guardian Angel here.