Journal of the Plague Years: The Magazine

27/10/2024

To Cancel or Not to Cancel? Some media stars give you the pros and cons.

In the wake of the obvious capitulation by Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, readers had to decide whether to cancel their subscriptions as a protest or n

27/10/2024

Good news, bad news. Heard on X, a Murdochian may be trying to buy the Guardian. Good news? Bad Bunny endorsed Kamala, moments after speaker at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally trashed Puerto Ricans. More good news? The Journal just published two-time Pulitzer winner Gene Weingarten's beautifully written take on the crisis at the WaPo and LA Times, plus a roundup of opinions that will tell you what all of it really means.

When both the Washington Post and the LA Times backed off on endorsing Kamala Harris, it was a sign of journalism's decline, and the billionaires who stepped in to "save" these onc

20/10/2024

How Democrats Win Back the Working Class and the Sooner the Better.

The Harris campaign isn't achieving the same popularity with Black and Hispanic voters that Biden won with in 2020. When it comes to the Harris economic platform, it's not just abo

19/10/2024

Pundits say that women will save the country from Trump. But politicians have been ignoring escalating rents for too long. That neglect may come back to bite us in the swing Sunbelt states.

The Harris campaign isn't achieving the same popularity with Black and Hispanic voters that Biden won with in 2020. When it comes to the Harris economic platform, it's not just abo

17/10/2024

As the election draws closer, more of us are having dreams - nightmares, really - of what happens if America becomes a fascist dictatorship. One woman's nightmare, last night.

As the election draws closer and Donald Trump sounds more overtly fascist, many of us are having nightmares of what a Trump "victory" would mean.

13/10/2024

Buy Journal of the Plague Years: Words & Music from the Lost Days, an anthology of writing from the magazine, including work by Steve Erickson, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Mikal Gilmore and many others, plus playlists by our own High Fidelity musicologist, Brian Cullman.

We're sending a shipment of books out tomorrow. Add your order today and get a free tote bag.

A new publishing imprint, BLUE BOOKS, is a home for high-quality fiction and nonfiction that reveals the friction, as startling as it is inevitable, when people and cultures find they have outgrown their past but can’t make sense of their future.

10/10/2024

Kamala Harris appeared on the TV show The View yesterday, announcing a proposal to fund home care for seniors through Medicare. This may sound wonky and dry until it hits you. But with the Baby Boomer generation reaching old age, the proposal couldn't be more timely or necessary. There's simply no way our current expensive system, geared to corporate profits, can handle the needs of aging America.

The Harris campaign gets it, journalist David Weir said today. Not only does Harris herself understand the difficulties of caring for an aging parent; the campaign clearly knows that winning the votes of college-educated GOP women, who are likely to be caregivers, helps cement the path to victory.

Weir makes it matter with a delicate, beautiful personal story.

Kamala Harris released her plan to help seniors get the care they need at home through Medicare. David Weir tells us why it's so important.

07/10/2024

The Harris campaign needs to do more to reach the 78 percent of voters who live paycheck to paycheck, including Latino voters. But there's still time for Kamala to prove she feels our pain.

The campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is doing so many things right. Why isn't the election a slam dunk? James Carville got it right: It's the economy, stupid. But not the eco

07/10/2024

Someone said that Kris Kristofferson's life reads like the Great American novel he wanted to write. Rhodes scholar, helicopter pilot, Nashville janitor, movie star, outspoken political activist, lover of strong, beautiful women, and, above all, brilliant songwriter. But the essence of a man is conveyed not by mere facts. Steve Jones tells stories about Kristofferson that we haven't heard anywhere else.

When Kris Kristofferson died on September 28, it affected all of us. But for some people, it was personal. Kris Kristofferson changed the life of one younger rock and roller, and t

06/10/2024

Like the U.S. housing market, we are waiting to exhale. It's only 29 days until we find out if the grand experiment in universal human rights prevails or dies at the hands of...a sleazy real estate developer? It beggars the imagination.

As the tension builds, it's impossible not to hover over the Harris campaign like an anxious parent. The campaign is doing almost everything right, but we worry about the old James Carville saw: the economy. Not the jobs report or the stock market, but the economy as most Americans experience it: ripoff health insurance, ridiculous rents, the creeping fear that you'll outlive your retirement savings - if you have any. Practically within hours of starting her campaign, Harris made peace with Silicon Valley and Wall Street by proposing a lower tax rate on unrealized capital gains than Biden. Now she's striking a populist note. Will it be enough to bring working-class voters into the fold, especially Latino men in swing states like Nevada and Arizona?

Have Democrats Learned the Lessons of 2016?

The campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz is doing so many things right. Why isn't the election a slam dunk? James Carville got it right: It's the economy, stupid. But not the eco

29/09/2024

"I had long been attracted to Arivaca. It was essentially an improvised experiment in anarchy and tolerance, with no local law enforcement and none wanted by most of its residents. A friend of mine who grew up there, mostly in a tent, describes Arivaca and the borderland hills around it as “the edge of empire, where no authority will hold.” It appealed to my desire to maximize my personal freedom and live outside society’s rules."

Richard Grant tells the real story of the U.S.-Mexico border, not far from where Vice President Kamala Harris gave a rafter-shaking speech on Friday.

29/09/2024

Bay Area friends! Bird and Beckett Books is hosting a reading Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. for the Journal of the Plague Years anthology featuring Maxine Chernoff, Mike Medberry, Christine Kiessling, Hailey Nicole Warner, Keith Donnell Jr., and, er, me. Plus surprise guests. Mark this on your calendars now!

Free tote bags to the first 5 attendees. Because you don't already have enough magazine and conference tote bags!

28/09/2024

START MAKING SENSE ON THE BORDER Kamala Harris showed a deep knowledge of the U.S.-Mexico border when she spoke in Douglas, Arizona yesterday. NYTimes bestselling author Richard Grant brings the realities to life in this week's Journal of the Plague Years.

Richard Grant tells the real story of the U.S.-Mexico border, not far from where Vice President Kamala Harris gave a rafter-shaking speech on Friday.

28/09/2024

Start Making Sense

In a strange way, we understand Trump voters better than the undecideds. Sure, there is a sense of recoil as one listens to a perfectly nice woman who took in a friend's dog when there was a fire and she announces, unprompted, that she's a Trump voter. She thinks that the women accusing Trump of sexual assault might have had a relationship with him and it didn't go well so they're miffed. And she's been told that Kamala Harris will levy a $25,000 tax on homeowners. "I'd lose my house!" she says, truly rattled.

That's a neighbor I just met. And, yes, I tried to correct the factual errors, but we quickly moved on to safer ground. Dieting, bad dates, kids. Before we changed the subject, I suggested that she go to the primary source and listen to Kamala Harris' speech on immigration, delivered this Friday in Douglas, Arizona. Because it kicked ass.

Two points. One, I have been a half-hearted Harris supporter. I've been grateful that Steve Erickson didn't mention me by name when he publicly crowed about being right about Harris all along despite the naysayers. I hadn't been impressed with her 2019 campaign. Policy? We don't need no stinkin' policy! And I didn't like her cheap shot at Joe Biden on busing in that famous debate. You know, the good debate, not the tank debate. Of course, I planned to vote for her. But I wondered if she would be much more than a placeholder.

Two, I've reported on the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration, on and off for the last 20 years. That speech did it for me. Not only did Harris get it right both politically and on the substance - with one exception - she slayed. In the first part of the speech, she firmly established her tough on border bona fides, talking not only about the specific cartels running the fentanyl trade, but describing the tunnels crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in terms vivid enough for a novel. They are air-conditioned, she told us, and the walls are as smooth as your living room. I know there is no "crisis" on the border but she needed to reassure the Kool-Aid drinkers and they are legion.

Here's the brilliant part. She told the audience there is no dichotomy between border security and a sane, humane immigration policy. Surprisingly, she talked about a path to citizenship for the 11 million people who have lived in the United States for years, a subject that's been taboo since Ronald Reagan (yes, that Reagan) legalized undocumented folks in the 1980s. She voiced strong support for Dreamers.

The one horrendous thing she said, which only a hardcore border wonk would notice, was that someone crossing the border illegally would be banned from the country for five years. This is a new version of the punitive Clinton administration policy that actually raised the number of undocumented folks living in the U.S. by instilling the fear that if they went home to see their families they wouldn't be able to return. Instead, family members made the increasingly dangerous trek to join them in the U.S.

That's not all Bill Clinton's administration got wrong. Clinton's Operation Gatekeeper, by beefing up security in border cities, raised the migrant death toll, as desperate people crossed inhospitable deserts in California, Texas, and Arizona.

That's where Richard Grant comes in. Grant is a writer who has an unerring ability to get things right. Not just the facts but the nature of a time and place. Perhaps it comes from growing up at the far edges of colonialism, spending his early childhood in Malaysia and Kuwait. He notices.

One of the places he's noticed is an obscure Arizona town called Arivaca. We are happy to run the chapter he wrote about this particular place from his most recent book, A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona. "Arivaca" is the perfect frame for that masterful speech by Kamala Harris that you'll be hearing a lot about in the coming days.

Richard Grant tells the real story of the U.S.-Mexico border, not far from where Vice President Kamala Harris gave a rafter-shaking speech on Friday.

28/09/2024

If you saw the Harris speech on immigration yesterday - and even if you didn't - read the excerpt "Arivaca" from the latest book by NYTimes bestselling author Richard Grant in the Journal today. Harris got it right, and Grant goes her one better.

Richard Grant tells the real story of the U.S.-Mexico border, not far from where Vice President Kamala Harris gave a rafter-shaking speech on Friday.

05/09/2024

Cool. Our book.

31/08/2024

This week's issue of the Journal. You'll either love it or hate it. Except for Jeffrey Bryant's poem and Amy Rigby's delightful everywoman essay on moving house. Those you will love. Guaranteed.

Here's my lede, with thanks for the debate to folks like Ed Hayes, Jan Eliasberg and as always, JP Sottile, the Newsvandal:

Susan Zakin It’s so easy to quote from Eric Hoffer’s 1951 book, The True Believer it feels like cheating. Shouldn’t we be citing a French deconstructionist to explain why we’re so

05/08/2024

Every time I look at the New Republic or worry about politics enough to check X, I miss Walter Shapiro. I'm not alone.

Susan Zakin When someone dies, it’s natural to reel back the years to when you met. With Walter Shapiro that’s easy. I was struggling to finish a novel, occasionally writing an art