Mika Kennedy

Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

I just finished reading Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, on the recommendation of several of my Russian literature teachers/professors several years ago. Now that I’ve finally read it, I’d like to recommend it to everyone I know, in the hope that in the next several years,Continue reading “Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them”

conversation with my mother 3/7/2015

i want a goat, i tell her. pygmy or nubian? the cheese-making kind, i tell her. & their eyes are so cute. i say, my friend has a goat who will only deign to eat grass if you rip it out for her and let her eat it out of your hand. my mother takesContinue reading “conversation with my mother 3/7/2015”

Mourning from Cali

Morning from Cali! — Paul Walker (@RealPaulWalker) January 28, 2013 I miss Paul Walker. When he wasn’t filming, or on press tours for Fast, he would post the most adorable, endearing Tweets–the kind of adorability that comes from having, at best, only a tenuous understanding of the medium. You could always tell when it wasContinue reading “Mourning from Cali”

“The Muckleshoot Tribe is spreading traditional food through schools” | NWIFC

As someone who can attest to the power of elementary school lunch as a defining aspect of my K-6 experience, this is such an excellent program. In the Pacific Northwest, The Muckleshoot Tribe is introducing traditional foods into the school lunch program– salmon, halibut, and other seafoods (and occasionally also venison and elk) are backContinue reading ““The Muckleshoot Tribe is spreading traditional food through schools” | NWIFC”

Gloria Harrison’s “Let’s See How Fast This Baby Will Go”

I’m a sucker for all road/car narratives, but Gloria Harrison’s is one of the best–if not the best–I’ve ever read. She combines an artful matter-of-factness with a masterful ability to interweave personal history with the multivocal, character-infused present. And she’ll have you hooked from her opening paragraph: I wake up before 7:00 on the morningContinue reading “Gloria Harrison’s “Let’s See How Fast This Baby Will Go””

Remix, Revolution, Reinvention: The Hunting Party, Linkin Park’s Carnivores Tour

Linkin Park has long since fashioned itself as a jack-of-all-trades kind of band, hailing from the “hybrid theory” of rap-rock, directing animated music videos, producing artsy movies, designing their band artwork, participating (like many bands) in a baffling number of side-projects, promoting bizarre online/cell phone games based on their albums, apparently really liking The Transformers–evenContinue reading “Remix, Revolution, Reinvention: The Hunting Party, Linkin Park’s Carnivores Tour”

Review: The Extreme Life of the Sea, Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi (2014)

Palumbi, Stephen R. and Anthony R. Palumbi, The Extreme Life of the Sea. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Hardcover. $27.95 (US). Recently, I’ve been looking at the interstices between science and literature (and the humanities and social sciences at large). The Extreme Life of the Sea was written in partnership between marine scientist Stephen R.Continue reading “Review: The Extreme Life of the Sea, Stephen R. Palumbi and Anthony R. Palumbi (2014)”

cost

why did the Challenger explode? asks my sister. we’re at Disneyland. o-rings, says my father. it was cold in florida, and the o-rings were brittle. the rubber was brittle and there was no seal. when the gas leaked, flames blew out the sides of the rocket boosters like crazed tufts of hair: unruly. the wholeContinue reading “cost”

poem from last midnight

it sounds like a bees’ nest at my ceiling but when i sit when i put my head out the window it’s water, a neighbor’s shower going; i go back to bed it’s bees again, some fantasy of wood and angles and bent sound but in the end it’s water a shower it stops. there’sContinue reading “poem from last midnight”