The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Tiny Bubbles
A bubble is a sphere of privilege, but it also provides the safety to mix up more soapy water and to blow new bubbles to protect what we hold dear.
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Posts by: Martha Bayne
Fathers, and Stories, and Father’s Day Stories from the Sunday Rumpus
This time last year I sat for days with my father in his room at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, recording his voice as he narrated the story of his life. “She’s helping me write my memoirs,” he quipped to the endless parade of nurses passing through to change the dressings on his legs, take […]
...moreTerry Gross and the Art of Shutting Down
I never thought I’d wish for a trigger warning until this week, when this long and loving NYT profile of Terry Gross appeared and, with marksman-like aim, shot me back to a day that lives on in infamy, if only in my own head. And, sadly, somewhere deep in the Fresh Air archives.
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This Is a Refugee Camp
Zoe and I got an email the other day from Stephen Dau, a writer and expat who’s been living in Belgium the last ten years or so. He wanted to draw our attention to his current project, a series of reports from the refugee camp that has sprung up, seemingly overnight, in a park in […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Words Fail
Martha Bayne runs away with the circus and finds unexpected meaning in the effort required to achieve its gaudy display. “Can it really be escapism,” she asks, “if you’re working so hard?”
...moreMore Sunday Links
Friday was one of those days where it felt like way too many threads had come unraveled from the thrift-store sweater of my life and were just tangled in an heap of wet yarn at my feet. One of those dreary grey days when I could have used some advice, and maybe a gentle voice […]
...moreSunday Links
This week’s Sunday Rumpus essay is the Rumpus debut of one of my longtime personal favorite writers — and I say that with all proud claims to bias, because I also was, for a spell, her editor. Back in the 2000s Liz Tamny was the photo editor at the Chicago Reader, where I was an […]
...moreMore Sunday Links
I went to see Interstellar the other night, in need of three hours of sci-fi escapism from the terrestrial horrors of the last week, and while, frankly, it’s sort of an incomprehensible film, it not only served its purpose, it got me thinking about fathers and daughters. Specifically, about another braniac father-daughter team that travels […]
...moreSunday Links
Can’t get enough Leslie Jamison? The Chicago Humanities Festival video of her October 20 talk with Jac Jemc is available here. They cover a lot of ground in this hourlong Q &A, including a much more involved exploration of “wounded women” and the problem of trying to distinguish between “actual” pain and “performed” pain. But I […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Leslie Jamison
In which we discuss Frozen, Taylor Swift, the limits of empathy, the problem of happiness, and why we listen to sad songs over and over.
...moreSunday Links: Words + Pictures
We have been doing this Sunday Rumpus thing for a month now, and it’s been — to be quite honest — way more fun than we expected. Really, the feedback so far has been very gratifying, and it’s a joy to have the chance to showcase such great work. In fact, I think Zoe and […]
...moreMore Sunday Links
I took a break this weekend from reading Eula Biss‘s On Immunity to go hear Biss speak as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. Biss’s book is a study of both the history of and current wild confusion around vaccination through various different kinds of bodies. To wit, in the words of Katie Watson, her interviewer, […]
...moreKathy Acker, Pirate
Speaking of icons being people … here’s an odd piece of memory to add to the mix. Way back in 1997, I was enlisted as the lighting person for a performance of the Kathy Acker-Mekons operetta Pussy, King of the Pirates, an adaptation of Acker’s novel Pussy, King of the Pirates, at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary […]
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Fresh Air Fail: What Happens When Personal Writing Draws a Spotlight
Martha Bayne wrote a piece for The Rumpus about her unplanned pregnancy. Next thing she knew, she was being invited onto Fresh Air. That’s when things got sticky…
...moreSunday Rumpus Essay: Knocked Over: On Biology, Magical Thinking, and Choice
Forty-four, single and accidentally pregnant. Before Martha Bayne can even decide whether this is a dream or a nightmare, the realities of insurance, economics and government legislature over women’s bodies kick in.
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