Value for Thursday of Week 27 in the season of Ripening

Being Ready and Adaptable

Circumstances change. We must change in response.

Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. [Martin Luther King, Jr.]
(Man is) a tool-making animal. [Thomas Carlyle via Benjamin Franklin]
It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. [attributed to Charles Darwin]

People like being comfortable. Changing circumstances that upset our routines can be upsetting.

The ability to adapt to changing circumstances is essential to human welfare and, as Dr. King observed, to our survival. If we cannot adapt to changing circumstances, it is as though we expect the world to conform to our expectations, when in reality we must conform our behavior to the circumstances around us.

Context is essential. The propagandist has adapted to prevailing prejudices and may turn them to her personal and short-term advantage but that success is rarely good for the whole community. Humans have subdued the earth, after a fashion, but our “success” may be our undoing.

Adaptability is the fruit of openness. Its main relations are to time and changing circumstances. Only when we have mastered the ability to adapt are we truly ready to face the world on its own terms, as it is.

As is obvious from the wealth and content of scholarly literature on this subject, adaptation is a key concept in the dynamics of life. It describes how evolution operates as a result of environmental changes. This distinguishes it from that branch of evolution that addresses mutations and other changes within the evolving species or system. Thus, the study of adaptation is a branch of evolutionary science.

Real

True Narratives

Adaptation is central to human history and prehistory. We have long known that our technology threatens to outrun our ability to cope with it. The absence of adaptation theory from our educational curricula in late primary and secondary schools is a tragic and shameful oversight.

Lee Cronk, Napoleon Chagnon and William Irons, Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective (Aldine Transaction, 2002).
G.A. Harrison and Howard Morphy, eds., Human Adaptation (Oxford University Press, 1993).
Emilio F. Moran, Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology (Routledge, 4th edition, 2022).
Jing Tsu, Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern (Riverhead Books, 2022): “The story of how linguists, activists, librarians, scholars and ordinary citizens adapted Chinese writing to the modern world is the story of how China itself became modern.”

It is key to psychological health . . .

Sarah Honn Quales and Norman Abeles, eds., Psychology and the Aging Revolution: How We Adapt to Longer Life (American Psychological Association, 2000).
Donald J. Cohen and Dante Cicchetti, eds., Developmental Psychopathology: Theory and Method (Volume 1); Developmental Neuroscience (Volume 2); Risk, Disorder, and Adaptation (Volume 3) (Wiley, 2006).
L. Alan Sroufe, Byron Egelund, Elizabeth A. Carlson and W. Andrew Collins, eds., The Development of the Person: The Minnesota Study of Risk and Adaptation from Birth to Adulthood (The Guilford Press, 2005).
David Vision and Mutiya Vision, Adapt! (Soul Vision Works, 2005).
Richard S. Lazarus, Emotion & Adaptation (Oxford University Press, 1991).
John P. Wilson, Zev Harel and Boaz Kahana, eds., Human Adaptation to Extreme Stress: From the Holocaust to Vietnam (Springer, 1988).
Regina Lederman and Karen Weis, Psychosocial Adaptation to Pregnancy: Seven Dimensions of Maternal Role Development (Springer, 2009).
Vanessa S. Castro, Acculturation and Psychological Adaptation (Praeger 2003).

. . . and to physical health:

Meghan O’Rourke, The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead Books, 2022): “The book is not only a memoir of her illness, but also a document of years of research, some of it for this book, but much of it simply to preserve her sanity.”

It is essential to anyone in pursuit of a new venture, such as a college or graduate level education.

G.W. Bernard, Studying at University: How to Adapt Successfully to College Life (Routledge, 2003).
Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry Committee on the College Student, Helping Students Adapt to Graduate School: Making the Grade (Routledge, 2000).
George E. Vaillant, Adaptation to Life (Little, Brown, 1977).

Immigrants face adaptation challenges. Those who expect the challenges and are open to meeting them will often succeed.

Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation, 1998).
Mary C. Waters, Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities (Harvard University Press, 2000).
Boaz Kahana, Zev Kamal and Eva Kahana, Holocaust Survivors and Immigrants: Late Life Adaptations (Springer, 2005).
Moses O. Biney, From Africa to America: Religion and Adaptation Among Ghanian Immigrants in New York (NYU Press, 2011).
Young Yun Kim, Becoming Intercultural: An Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation (Sage Publications, 2000).
Raynel M. Shepard, Cultural Adaptation of Somali Refugee Youth (LFB Scholarly Publications, 2008).
Catherine Simpson Bueker, From Immigrant to Naturalized Citizen: Political Incorporation in the United States (LFB Scholarly Publications, 2006).
Reema Zaman, I Am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack Publishing, 2019): “Zaman can write beautifully about the frustration and pain of being a woman in a man’s world, an immigrant in a world suspicious of outsiders. In the States she finds not only the promise of liberation, but also its opposite. A colleague rapes her; a man she has trusted. She decides to keep the assault to herself. ‘I cannot jeopardize my chances at staying in America, she explains.”

Social systems are adaptive.

John H. Miller and Scott E. Page, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life (Princeton University Press, 2007).
Walter Buckley, Society - A Complex Adaptive System (Routledge, 1998).
Timothy A. Mousseau and Charles W. Fox, Maternal Effects as Adaptations (Oxford University Press, 1998).
A. Roberto Frisancho, Human Adaptation and Accommodation (University of Michigan Press, 1993).
Robert M. Young, Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization and Its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier (Oxford University Press, 1990).
Ang Yan and Yin Shan, Intelligent Complex Adaptive Systems (IGI Publishing, 2008).
Ang Yan and Yin Shan, Applications of Complex Adaptive Systems (IGI Publishing, 2008).
Ann Black and Gary S. Bell, Law and Legal Institutions of Asia: Traditions, adaptations and innovations (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Anthony J. Marsella, Ayda Aukahi Austin and Bruce Grant, eds., Social Change and Psychosocial Adaptation in the Pacific Islands: Cultures in Transition (Springer, 2005).
Homa Bahrami and Stuart Evans, Super-Flexibility for Knowledge Enterprises: A Toolkit for Dynamic Adaptation (Springer, 2010).
Colin M. Turnbull, The Mbuti Pygmies: Change and Adaptation (Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1983).
Glenn Petersen, Traditional Micronesian Societies: Adaptation, Integration, and Political Organization (University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
Rosalind L. Hunter-Anderson, Prehistoric Adaptation in the American Southwest (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Diane Ackerman, The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014): “ . . . spotlights ‘our medicine cabinet of good ideas’ as we face the complex challenges of accelerated adaptation. The book becomes a paean to ingenuity, to the power of science, technology and engineering to make the unthinkable material.”

Technology is an adaptation.

Kathy D. Schick and Nicholas Toth, Making Silent Stones Speak: Human Evolution and the Dawn of Technology (Simon & Schuster, 1993).
Richard G. Klein, The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Anthony T. Boldurian and John L. Cotter, Clovis Revisited: New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1999).
Bryan Appleyard, The Car: The Rise and Fall of the Machine that Made the Modern World (Pegasus Books, 2022): “Things change because when problems arise, people work at solving them, and sometimes they arrive at solutions. The answer to the psychosocial and physical degradation brought on by too many people employing too many horses in the burgeoning Industrial Age was, of course, the development of the motor vehicle. Specifically, one powered by the internal combustion engine.”

Systems of thought evolve, including thinking about evolution.

Timothy Shanahan, The Evolution of Darwinism: Selection, Adaptation, and Progress in Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
J.E.R. Staddon, Adaptive Behavior and Learning (Cambridge University Press, 1983).

Competitive adaptation occurs when two systems compete against each other for advantage.

Michael Kenney, From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
Steven W. Hook, ed., Comparative Foreign Policy Adaptation Strategies of the Great and Emerging Powers (Prentice Hall, 2001).

Language, literature, and art are adaptive systems.

Nick C. Ellis and Diane Larsen-Freeman, eds., Language as a Complex Adaptive System (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Patsy M. Lightbrown and Nina Spada, How Languages Are Learned (Oxford University Press, 4th edition, 2013).
Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Belknap Press, 2010).
Sebastian Smee, Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism (W.W. Norton and Company, 2024): “. . . we learn how Manet and Morisot responded to the escalating chaos around them, which shook the foundations of their lives and their art. While other painters in Manet’s circle of future Impressionists fled the incessant bloodletting — Camille Pissarro and Claude Monet to England, Paul Cézanne to a hiding place in a village near Marseille — only Manet, Morisot and their close friend Edgar Degas ‘had the misfortune of being trapped in Paris during its long winter siege.’”

Adaptation occurs naturally through the evolutionary process. Adaptation through biological evolution favors the species, not the individuals within the species.

Michael R. Rose and George V. Lauder, eds., Adaptation (Academic Press, 1996).
Geerat J. Vermeij, The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010).
George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought (Princeton University Press, 1967).
Kurt Schmidt-Nielsen, Animal Physiology: Adaptation and Environment (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Julius van der Werf, Hans-Ulrich Graser, Richard Frankham and Cedric Gondro, eds., Adaptations and Fitness in Animal Populations: Evolutionary and Breeding Perspectives (Springer, 2008).
Maurice A. Tauber, Catherine J. Tauber and Sinzō Misaki, Seasonal Adaptations of Insects (Oxford University Press, 1985).
Colin Little, The Colonisation of Land: Origins and adaptations of terrestrial animals (Cambridge University Press, 1984).
Alvin Silverstein, Virginia B. Silverstein and Laura Silverstein Nunn, Adaptation (Twenty-First Century Books, 2007).
John C. Fleagle, Primate Adaptation and Evolution (Academic Press, 1998).
Michael J. Angilletta, Jr., Thermal Adaptation: A Theoretical and Empirical Synthesis (Oxford University Press, 2009).
George A. Feldhamer, Lee A. Drickamer, Steven H. Vessey, Joseph H. Merritt and Carey Krajewski, Mammalogy: Adaptation Diversity Ecology (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
Alexandra van der Geer, George Lyras, John de Vos and Michael Dermitzakis, Evolution of Island Mammals: Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
J.G.M. Thewissen and Sirpa Nummela, Sensory Evolution on the Threshold: Adaptations in Secondarily Aquatic Vertebrates (University of California Press, 20o8).
Peter W. Hochachka and George N. Somero, Biochemical Adaptation: Mechanism and Process in Physiological Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2002).
John Dawson and Rob Lucas, The Nature of Plants: Habitats, Challenges, and Adaptations (Timber Press, 2005).
Mary E. Glenn and Marina Cords, eds., The Guenons: Diversity and Adaptation in African Monkeys (Springer, 2003).
David C. Culver, Thomas C. Kane and Daniel W. Fong, Adaptation and Natural Selection in Caves: The Evolution of Cammarus minus (Harvard University Press, 1995).
Ann B. Butler and William Hodos, Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy: Evolution and Adaptation (Wiley-Liss, 2005).
John A. Byars, American Pronghorn: Social Adaptations & the Ghosts of Predators Past (University of Chicago Press, 1998).
Bobbie Kalman, How Do Animals Adapt? (Turtleback, 2000).
Bobbie Kalman, Camouflage: Changing to Hide (Crabtree Publishing Company, 2005).
Joanne Settel, Exploding Ants: Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt (Atheneum, 1999).
Alessandro Minelli and Maria Pia Mannucci, Surviving: How Animals Adapt to Their Environments (Firefly, 2009).

The seeds of adaptation are in nature, of course. By their nature, organisms have a capacity to adapt.

Gary William Flake, The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation (MIT Press, 1998).
W. Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (Simon & Schuster, 1992).
John Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Perseus Books, 1995).
John Holland, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis With Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 1992).

We humans have the capacity to adapt, or direct the evolution of other organisms, as a matter of choice.

Jay Schulkin, Cognitive Adaptation: A Pragmatist Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
David J. Ortner, How Humans Adapt: A Biocultural Odyssey (Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 1983).
Lloyd T. Evans, Crop Evolution, Adaptation and Yield (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

Our technologies pose new adaptive challenges and may outrun our capacity to adapt to them.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life (The MIT Press, 2011).
Kirkpatrick Sale, After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination (Duke University Press Books, 2006).
C.G. Nichols Mascie-Taylor and Lyliane Rosetta, eds., Reproduction and Adaptation: Topics in Human Reproductive Ecology (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Kristie L. Ebi, Ian Burton and Glenn McGregor, eds., Biometeorology for Adaptation to to Climate Variability and Change (Springer, 2009).
Rob Roggema, Adaptation to Climate Change: A Spatial Challenge (Springer, 2009).
Bettina Menne and Kristie L. Ebi, eds., Climate Change and Adaptation Strategies for Human Health (Steinkopf, 2006).
Robert O. Mendelsohn and Ariel Dinar, Climate Change and Agriculture: An Economic Analysis of Global Impacts, Adaptation and Distributional Effects (Edward Elgar Pub., 2009).
Ryo Fujikura and Masato Kawanishi, Climate Change Adaptation and International Development: Making Development Cooperation More Effective (Earthscan Publications, 2011).
Fulco Ludwig, Pavel Kabat, Henk van Shaik and Michael van der Valk, eds., Climate change adaptation in the water sector (Earthscan Publications, 2009).
Akimasa Sumi, Kensuke Fukushi and Ai Hiramatsu, Adaptation and Mitigation Stragegies for Climate Change (Springer, 2010).
E. Lisa F. Schipper and Ian Burton, eds., The Earthscan Reader on Adaptation on Adaptation to Climate Change (Earthscan Publications, 2009).
Jane Bicknell, David Dodman and David Satterthwaite, Adapting Cities to Climate Change: Understanding and Addressing the Development Challenges (Earthscan Publications, 2009).
David B. Lobell and Marshall Burke, eds., Climate Change and Food Security: Adapting Agriculture to a Warmer World (Springer, 2009).
Erik Assadourian, et. al., State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010).
Thor Hanson, Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change (Basic Books, 2021): “How the Animal World Is Adapting to Climate Change”.
Emily Raboteau, Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse” (Henry Holt & Co., 2024): “Across 20 essays, many illustrated with her arresting photos of murals and other public art around New York City, she considers a trio of calamities: climate change, racially motivated police violence and the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program was an effort to eliminate poverty in the United States. Less than a generation later, the new global economy threatened the capacity of governments to sustain a vibrant middle class, with nations competing against each other for economic advantage, usually at the expense of most of their people. Across the millennia of history, until less than two hundred years ago, economies were local and regional. In a little more than a century, developed nations went through the era of national economies. Yet many people in the United States speak as though they are unaware that the industrial revolution has passed, while others seem oblivious to the fact that it ever happened. Governments and peoples across the world now face the challenges of the global economy, which challenges us to adapt to a new set of economic and political realities.

Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Welfare States in Transition: National Adaptations in Global Economies (Sage Publications, 1996).
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Why We Need a New Welfare State (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens, Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets (University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Sheila Oakley, Labor Relations in China's Socialist Market Economy: Adapting to the Global Market (Praeger, 2002).
Guoguang Wu and Helen Lansdowne, Socialist China, Capitalist China: Social tension and political adaptation under economic globalization (Routledge, 2009).
Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Farrar, Straus & Girous, 2011).

The fall of many great nations is a product of their people's unwillingness and failure to adapt to changing circumstances. A people is especially vulnerable to this when it has grown accustomed to success. The United States has been and remains a world power but political evolution raises serious questions. Here are some writings on contemporary challenges of adaptation:

Andrew Bacevich, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed (Metropolitan, 2021): “. . . Bacevich looks back at the long and rather weird tradition of American exceptionalism, as it’s called”, and offers ideas for a new foreign policy.
David Finkel, An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country (Random House, 2024): “Finkel’s book adroitly assembles these stories into a poignant account of the social and political mood in the United States during Trump’s presidency.”

Narratives of peoples that adapted and survived:

How will we respond to the influence of social media?

Max Fisher, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World (Little, Brown and Company, 2022): “Alongside descriptions of stomach-churning brutality, he details the viral disinformation that feeds it, the invented accusations, often against minorities, of espionage, murder, rape and pedophilia. But he’s careful not to assume causality where there may be mere correlation. The book explores deeply the question of whether specific features of social media are truly responsible for conjuring mass fear and anger.”

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Dark Days, this film about people living underground within the New York City subway system is about their ability to adapt, and also the filmmaker’s ability to adapt to filming in that environment
Lost Boys of Sudan: young men from Sudan try to make their way in an unfamiliar land and culture.

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

"It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers. . .” [H.G. Wells, “The Time Machine” (1895).]

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow- creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination. And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering. [Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour” (1894).]

Jim Crace’s “characters typically face some encroaching, inhospitable new order . . . where they must scramble to adapt or be mowed down.”

Jim Crace, The Gift of Stones: A Novel (Scribner, 1989): on change in a simple village of stoneworkers.
Jim Crace, Arcadia: A Novel (Scribner, 1992): “. . . evicted market workers rally and start a new open-air sequel called ‘Soap Two, just like a film,’ demonstrating that there is still room for guerrilla vitality in the cracks of the most antiseptically engineered future.”
Jim Crace, Signals of Distress: A Novel (Farrar, Straux & Giroux, 1995): adapting to the beaching of a ship.
Jim Crace, Quarantine: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), retells the story of Christ’s forty-day fast in the desert.
Jim Crace, Being Dead: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000): on adapting to life after death.
Jim Crace, Harvest: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2013) on suspicion and unease in an insular agrarian community when a surveyor arrives.

Other authors:

Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel (Scribner, 2017): “. . . a road novel, a slender epic of three generations and the ghosts that haunt them, and a portrait of what ordinary folk in dire circumstances cleave to as well as what they — and perhaps we all — are trying to outrun.”
Jo Baker, The Undertow: A Novel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), follows four generations of a British family, from World War I to the present.
Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals: Stories (Riverhead, 2021): “. . . Taylor’s first story collection presents sumptuous, melancholic portraits of characters overwhelmed.”
Dana Spiotta, Wayward: A Novel (Knopf, 2021): “When the ‘Change of Life’ Means It’s Time to Change Your Life”.
Wolfgang Hilbig, The Interim: A Novel (Two Lines Press, 2021): “It can’t be easy for a writer to recognize that his sensibility was shaped irrevocably by a world that was deeply compromised and is no longer relevant . . . though it has to be said that this is more or less the plight of any writer who has had the misfortune of surviving his youth.”
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel (William Morrow, 2022): “In a Virus-Stricken Future, Humanity Endures Amid the Grief”.
Rasheed Newson, My Government Means to Kill Me: A Novel (Flatiron Books, 2022): “This is a story of coming-of-age, of sexual and political awakening, of life lessons learned at the school of hard knocks.”
Rachel Heng, The Great Reclamation: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2023): “The question of change — whom it affects and how — sits at the core of (this novel), a stunning historical fiction set against the backdrop of Singapore’s struggle for independence during and after World War II.”
Janika Oza, A History of Burning: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing, 2023), is “about an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again. With each disruption of movement, the author skillfully interrogates sweeping themes of survival, inheritance, immigration, colonialism and racism.”
Han Kang, Greek Lessons: A Novel (Hogarth, 2023): a native Korean speaker learns Greek so that she can speak again.
Téa Obreht, The Morningside: A Novel (Random House, 2024): “Island City resembles Manhattan, but alarmingly smaller, the borders of the city redrawn by the rising water. There’s the River to the east, the Bay to the west. Here, hurricanes and tides have made building collapse a constant danger, the freeway is visible only on low-tide days, food is government rations, the wealthy have fled “upriver to scattered little freshwater townships,” and gigantic birds called rook cranes are everywhere.”
Jonas Hassen Khemiri, The Sisters: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025): “With its accumulation of small, logistical details of life — meals, sleep, sex, transportation, the bathroom, excursions, paperwork, rules, differences in electrical outlets — “the American ones resembled a sad face with two squinting eyes above and a sad, disappointed mouth below” — it demands, and delivers.”
Annika Norlin, The Colony: A Novel (Europa Editions, 2025): Damaged souls live in a remote settlement in a Swedish forest. “Together they bring a staggering amount of violent history and psychological torment to this glorious mountain setting, where they fall into such a harmonious rhythm that they hardly need to speak. Their days are governed by work and they have almost no contact with outsiders, but there are plenty of foraged berries, roast perch from the nearby lake swabbed with butter and nights spent sleeping together under a sprawling, quasi-matriarchal tree they call Big Spruce.”

Novels, from the dark side:

Paul Murray, The Bee Sting: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023): “The once-wealthy Barnes family has been struck hard by the 2008 financial crash, much like “half the shops on Main Street” in their Irish town. Yet as others steady themselves, the Barneses sink.”

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Duke Ellington adapted his musical style to suit contemporary tastes. You can follow his development from 1924-1947 on this 618-track anthology. Biographies about Ellington include those by Terry Teachout, M.D. Payne, A.H. Lawrence, John Bankston, Stephanie Stein Crease, Mark Tucker (ed.), Henry G. Cohen, Carin T. Ford, and Rebecca Carey Rohan. Books mainly about his influence are by Ken Rattenbury and John Franceschina. Ellington authored an autobiography. Ellington’s career offers lessons in day-to-day living, and for success in business. “Duke Ellington led one of the greatest jazz bands ever. At the same time, he ran a successful business with an excellent team. He did so by using a combination of business savvy and leadership skills. Today’s business managers can apply Ellington’s techniques to achieve success in their domains.” His albums and live performances include:

1927-1928: “Duke Ellington and His Orchestra 1927-1928” album
1929: “Black and Tan”; 1929 New York Sessions
1930-1934: various tracks
1935: “Reminiscing in Tempo”, “Symphony in Black”
1936: “Anthology” album
1937: Cotton Club broadcast, March 18
1938: “Anthology” collection, Volume 16
1939: at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York City, July 26
1940: “Live from the Crystal Ballroom” Fargo, North Dakota (99’)
1941: “Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra” album
1942: The Blanton Webster Band 1940-1942
1943: Carnegie Hall concert, January 23, 1943
1944: Carnegie Hall concert, December 1944
1945: New Zanzibar broadcasts
1946: Carnegie Hall concert, January 1946
1947: at Frank Dailey’s Meadowbrook, Cedar Grove, NJ, September 1947
1948: “The Tattooed Bride”, live at Cornell University, December 1948
1949: at the Hollywood Empire, February 1949
1950: “Salute to Duke Ellington”
1951: at the Metropolitan Opera House, January 21, 1951 (59’)
1952: Duke Ellington and his famous orchestra (29’)
1953: Pasadena Concert (56’)
1954: How High the Moon
1955: “Ellington ‘55”
1956: “Ellington at Newport” (44’)
1957: “Such Sweet Thunder” album (36’)
1958: live at Het Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (66’); live in Amsterdam
1959: “Berlin 1959” album (87’); live in Switzerland (43’)
1960: “Piano in the Background” album (41’)
1961: “Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington – The Complete Sessions” album (69’); “The Count Meets the Duke” album (40’); on UK TV (39’)
1962: “Midnight in Paris” album (43’)
1963: “Afro-Bossa” album (37’); in Milan, Italy, February 21, 1963 (52’)
1964: in concert, London (52’); live in Montreal (64’)
1965: live in Copenhagen (114’)
1966: with the Ella Fitzgerald Trio in Milan (75’)
1967: leading his orchestra (76’)
1968: live in Mexico (20’)
1969: live in Tivoli Garden (83’)
1970: with Ann Henry at the Mount Angel Abbey Library (71’)
1971: Uppsala 1971 album (79’)
1972: live at Carnegie Hall ()
1973: live in Barcelona (100’)

In addition to composing and performing jazz, Ellington also composed symphonic works:

Black, Brown and Beige Suite (approx. 20’)
Three Black Kings (approx. 19’)
New World a-Comin’ (approx. 14’)
Harlem (approx. 15’)
“The River” Suite (approx. 24-33’)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, musicians turned to performing remotely, even in ensemble. A prolific exponent of this was Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, under the auspices of Afro Latin Jazz Alliance. They performed every Sunday evening, creating a Virtual Birdland series that you can hear and watch on YouTube.

Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major, M. 82 (1930) (approx. 18-20’) (list of recorded performances): Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I, commissioned Ravel to compose a work he could play with his left hand only. “The Concerto unfolds in a single movement that falls into three sections. An impressive feat of musical legerdemain and illusion, the full sound and texture of the solo part rarely give the slightest hint that a mere single hand is involved.” Top performances are by Fleisher (Ozawa) in 1992, Zimerman (Boulez) in 1998, Bavouzet (Tortelier) in 2010, Wang (Bringuier) in 2015, Tiberghien (Roth) in 2022, Poizat (Menezes) in 2024. Son (Bihlmaier) in 2025, and Ovcharenko (Lyniv) in 2026.