SC Weekly – November 2025 – #2

~ a curated selection of discoveries ~

::: The Open :::

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy this edition of SC Weekly (published on Sundays).

Please consider sharing with a friend who you think may enjoy this newsletter.

Thank you for reading and for your time.

With Gratitude,

~ Mark

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::: Personal Notes :::

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Thie past week was rough with the time change and, seemingly, the onset of seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The key, of course, is to attempt to maintain routine and keep on keeping on. That being said, our natural rhythms do shift with the rest of nature and so it’s sensible to dial it back a little in terms of expectations about your own output and productivity during warmer months and periods when it’s not getting dark at 4:30 in the afternoon.

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A lot of energy is going into scheduling ONE ART’s 2026 programming.

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My Personal Favorite with Mark Danowsky

Much thanks to Kelly Fordon for sharing my short essay on “Darling poems” on her Substack.

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::: ONE ART :::

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ONE ART’s December 2025 Reading!

Date: Sunday, December 7

Time: 2:00pm Eastern

Featured Poets: Amy Small-McKinney, Linda Laderman, Laurie Kuntz, Susan Michele Coronel

FREE!

>>> Register Here <<<

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Singing in Dark Times: Trying to Praise the Mutilated World – A Workshop with Donna Hilbert

Workshop Leader: Donna Hilbert
Date: Tuesday, November 18
Time: 4pm-6pm Pacific (7pm-9pm Eastern) – Please check your local time.
Duration: 2-hours
Cost: $25 (sliding scale)

>>> Register Here <<<

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Speaking To & Listening To Our Aging Bodies – A Workshop with Amy Small-McKinney

Workshop Leader: Amy Small-McKinney
Date: Tuesday, January 13
Time: 6:00-8:00pm Eastern – Please check your local times.
Duration: 2-hours
Cost: $25 (sliding scale)

>>> Register Here <<<

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Mastering the Epistolary Poem – A Workshop with John Sibley Williams

Workshop Leader: John Sibley Williams
Date: Monday, January 26
Time: 11:30am-2:00pm PT / 2:30-5:00pm ET – Please check your local times.
Duration: 2.5 hours
Cost: $25 (sliding scale)

>>> Register Here <<<

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~ ICYMI ~

A recording of the ONE ART x Keystone poetry reading is now available on YouTube.

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>>> Submissions are open!! <<<

IN A NUTSHELL: An Anthology of Micro-poems

Guest Edited by Julia Caroline Knowlton!

Submissions for this anthology will be made through Subfolio.

<< (no email submissions) >>

Deadline to submit: December 15

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::: The Literary Community & Beyond :::

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Great resource: The Lit Mag Lab (Hosted by Vevna Forrow (Jazz Marie Kaur))

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::: Podcasts :::

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What the climate story gets wrong (The Gray Area with Sean Illing)

Some refreshing positivity.

For more, I recommend reading Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book, What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures

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Trump’s K-Shaped Economy: Why the Economy Feels Broken

(Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov)

Great conversation. Hitting a lot of the recent talking points and elaborating on a few.

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What if we had fixed social media?
(Your Undivided Attention)

Valuable short listen about how we could’ve handled social media and how we still can handle social media and how this relates to the future of how we handle artificial intelligence and other risky new technologies.

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“It’s Not What You’re Called, It’s What You Answer To.” - Jim Clyburn on Staying Grounded in Divisive Times

(At Our Table with Jaime Harrison)

A heartfelt and inspirational conversation with Jim Clyburn on Jamie Harrison’s podcast ‘At Our Table.’

I teared up multiple times while listening to this conversation.

I may talk about this episode more in the next newsletter.

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::: Music :::

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Been trying to like Cate Le Bon’s music and it’s just not clicking.

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‘Grammy Nominations 2026: See The List’ (Stereogum)

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‘This Year’s Biggest Grammys Snubs and Surprises: Lorde, the Weeknd, Benson Boone’ (RS)

Well that dashed my hopes of Lorde getting Album of The Year. She still wins in my book.

Grammy’s seems intent on being more and more irritating year after year… probably in a weak attempt to retain relevance.

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::: Health & Wellness :::

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Newest study results reinforce importance of getting at least 3,000 steps per day. This is especially true for older adults in order to slow cognitive decline. You don’t have to get crazy with it. Seems like the benefits (in term of maintaining cognitive abilities) max out between 5,000-7,500 daily steps.

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A study of hope

Hope and the life course

Interesting to hear different ways to frame “hope” and how this can better help us.

Hope = belief that things will get better

vs.

Hope = the determination to make them better, which reflects agency and determination (grit)

vs.

[insert your definition of hope]

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‘Nearly all drivers say headlights are too bright’ (BBC)

Agreed.

“Of those surveyed, 33% said they had either stopped driving or are driving less at night because of lights, while another 22% said they would like to drive less at night but have no choice.”

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‘The Era of the Too-Bright Headlight Is (Slowly) Coming to an End’ (Slate)

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Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.)

“Summer seasonal affective disorder is less well-known and thought to be triggered by the heat, humidity and pollen.)” (WaPo)

The more common and more commonly known variant expresses itself as the days get shorter and colder.

“Researchers believe that wintertime SAD is caused by reduced daylight, which can desynchronize our internal circadian rhythm from the natural light cycles outside.”

Now standard suggestions include getting a lightbox for “light therapy” which has personally been ineffective for me. I’ve tried several lamps as well as some pretty fancy light glasses (see what I believe was my first ever Instagram post vaguely showing myself … you may have noticed I very rarely post photos of myself on socials…)

Apparently, light therapy works for a lot of people so if you haven’t tried it, well, it’s worth testing for yourself.

Exercise, unsurprisingly, is another factor.

Waking up and getting out earlier is sensible. This is me saying this and I should follow my own advice.

There are, of course, also medication interventions.

This is interesting: “Even if you are losing just 10 percent of your usual functioning this season — feeling just a bit more tired, more down or more lethargic — it’s something that needs to be identified and addressed.”

I’m actually used to doctors giving me a hard time about my complaints that I’m simply not operating at “peak performance” based on my own self-evaluation. I’d like to think I’m pretty self-aware and particularly in this regard. This has typically fallen under the eyeroll category (by docs) about me being a bit of a hypochondriac (which is really a likely side effect of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and OCD).

In any case, Seasonal Affective Disorder is serious and just when I thought I was doing better this year with the seasonal change we hit the Fall Back time change and, go figure, I’m feeling the repercussions quite hard.

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‘Do you need more sleep in fall and winter? Probably.’ (Popular Science)

Basically, listen to your body. You probably need more sleep. You probably need to rest more and have more relaxed downtime. Don’t beat yourself up. We are animals and we cycle with the seasons just like the rest of nature.

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::: The Trump Regime :::

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A blue wave at the polls!

Democrats had major wins across the country.

“If Republicans aren’t scared by what happened Tuesday night, they should be.” (Semafor)

“It’s not doomsday,” one White House ally said of the election results, “but the tea leaves are not good.” (Politico)

“Off-year elections are never quite the crystal ball for midterms that political junkies want, but one thing that last night’s results seem to convey clearly is that many voters are unhappy with President Donald Trump.” (The Atlantic)

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This is now the longest Federal Government Shutdown on record.

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“President Donald Trump threatened to end all aid to Nigeria Saturday and ordered the Pentagon to prepare for possible military action. The warning comes as Trump accuses the country of failing to protect its Christian population.” (1440)

Here’s what’s really going on here.

For a while now, it’s been predicted that Nigeria’s fast-growing population will lead to the country becoming a significant world player as time marches on. This isn’t going to happen overnight but it seems that concerned (read: racist) parties are not happy about an African nation getting invited to the future table as a world superpower. And it looks like they’re finding excuses in the here and now to try to prevent this from happening.

This is sad for a number of reasons. For one, many will know that many African nations have struggled to maintain stable governments and so when they do manage to become more powerful this will be a hard won effort. What we all know is that Africa has been horribly taken advantage of across modern human history.

Last I checked, Nigeria wasn’t expected to reach the population growth that would lead to this kind of empowerment until around the year 2100.

Africa has rising population numbers and as population declines in wealthier “developed” nations, African nations are experiencing steady growth.

So, the real story here is, in short, a continuation of the white man trying to keep the Black man down.

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We don’t have enough air traffic controllers and those working without pay are not happy.

This is when accidents happen.

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‘Guest collapses near Trump during Oval Office weight loss drug event’ (ABC News)

Trump not easily phased…

My guess is he was probably debating if that made for “better” television or if it merely took attention away from something he saw as a personal accomplishment.

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::: Small Explorations & Deep Dives :::

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“More than a quarter of US adults say they’re struggling financially: 73% of Americans reported “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” according to October 2024 survey data from the Federal Reserve. Another 27% said they were either “just getting by” (19%) or “finding it difficult to get by” (8%).” (USA Facts)

My first thought is that this says something about how you pose a survey question.

My second thought is that Americans don’t like to admit that they are not doing well financially.

I simply don’t believe nearly 3/4 of Americans feel like they are “doing ok.”

What do you think?

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‘Living in ghost cities’ (Seth Godin)

“Those old files, hard-won skills and valuable human networks from the old software stack are difficult and expensive to replace or reproduce. We’ve done almost nothing to increase adversarial interoperability and provide ownership and interchange for network users… because it’s not in the interest of the old network to make it easy for people to leave with their data, and the members of the new networks don’t care–until they become members of old networks.”

A modern classic Godin quote:

“We’re not stuck in traffic, we are traffic.”

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“Roughly 5% of the population is estimated to have a memory of an NDE [near-death experience], with common reports of a feeling of peacefulness (80%), followed by bright lights (69%) and encountering other people or spirits (64%).” (1440 newsletter)

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‘The biggest careers that have now vanished, according to data’ (The Washington Post)

This goes way back and includes known data about work by enslaved people.

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‘Scientists Produce Powerhouse Pigment Behind Octopus Camouflage’ (UCSD)

The military is excited because they can use this technology for better camo gear.

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‘How Men and Women Spend Their Days’ (Flowing Data)

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AI Fears… Doomerism… Attempts to find hope…

‘Your Undivided Attention: Ask Us Anything 2025’ (Your Undivided Attention)

I listened to a few AI-related podcasts and, as has happened before, this led me to a headspace full of worry and despair.

There are so many concerns about the ethics of artificial intelligence which almost goes without saying. Tristan Harris, in one of the podcasts, referenced how there are many things that humanity has chosen not to create because we determined these things are either unethical or inhumane or otherwise likely to result in the destruction of our species. Examples include a cobalt bomb, lethal autonomous weapons (aka. LAWs), human experimentation (trigger warning), human cloning…

Here’s a little something from UNESCO— Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

More on the ethics of AI via Wikipedia

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“Dame Helen Mirren, British actress whose career spans over six decades, to receive Golden Globes’ lifetime achievement award; previous recipients include Walt Disney, Elizabeth Taylor, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks” (1440)

Well-deserved. I love Helen Mirren.

Back in the day, I was a big fan of Prime Suspect. Reminds me to recommend the (nearly impossible to access) Homicide: Life on the Streets, which was David Simon’s brilliant show before The Wire. I don’t really watch these types of shows at this point, but they are well done.

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Dallas Cowboys’ Marshawn Kneeland dies of suspected suicide following police chase.

Days earlier, he scored his first touchdown in an NFL game.

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Signs of peak phone addiction? (Design Boom)

“6 Pound Phone Case wants to limit people from using their smartphones by creating a cover that is heavy, inconvenient, and made from solid stainless steel. A project developed by Matter Neuroscience, the case comes in two separate parts that are screwed together around the phone using an Allen wrench. This design, while it can be detached, stops users from easily removing the case when they feel tempted to use their devices for a long time.”

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A word of the year is “vibe coding” and so far as I’m concerned it means nothing at all.

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New poll reveals how to age better in American.

The answer?

“Money. The Pew survey found income levels can affect someone’s physical health, social life and even cognitive skills in retirement.” (WaPo)

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‘As AI gets more life-like, a new Luddite movement is taking root’ (CNN Business)

This was both predictable and predicted. Younger generations have been expected (and many have hoped) to push back on the status quo of heavy online and social media presence.

“These days, we are all workers in the internet factory: We supply the images, write the copy, engage with the ads, promote the products. That labor sustains an inequitable tech economy in which a handful of companies, including Meta, Google and Amazon, rake in profit and enrich their shareholders. In return, consumers get a product designed to keep us scrolling.”

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‘Visualizing the Cost of the American Dream in 2025’ (Visual Capitalist)

Unattainable for most.

Of course, it’s not new for Americans to not want to think ahead about retirement…

My sense is that (most?) Millennials and under have never expected to retire and instead have had a thought along the lines of “Well, let’s just assume I’ll be dead.”

The younger generations also are not huge fans of the old forms of retirement… I don’t think most who may retire at 70 in 2050 will expect or desire to be golfing and hanging out at the country club and playing bridge, etc. Although, maybe by 2050 hustle/grind culture will not have the same sort of requirements.

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79% of Americans are worried about having enough money for gifts, an 11% increase from last holiday season. (U.S. News and World Report)

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Innovative ‘smart houses’ give adults with disabilities freedom to live independently (Good)

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~ Mark’s Consulting, Coaching/Mentoring, Editing Services ~

Information about my services.

You might be surprised to learn that I don’t exclusively work with poets.

Reach out directly to discuss.

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~ Ways to Support ~

If you’d like to support my work, there are ways to do so other than subscribing to this substack.

>> Consider buying a copy of my new poetry collection, Take Care. Copies are available from Moon Tide Press and Amazon and, of course, I’ll be happy to sign a copy and send you one myself.

>> Consider making a donation to ONE ART: a journal of poetry.

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