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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

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A Brief Weekend Reading List

Some Articles and Essays Worth Considering

Hank Kalet Sep 16 ∙ Preview

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Here is a brief overview of what I’ve been reading this week. I’ll try to continue posting these things on Saturdays. Feel free to send me recommendations, as well, and to comment on my brief notes. I’ll post a link to Substack Notes for discussion.

Justin E.H. Smith, “My Generation,” Harper’s Magazine

Justin E.H. Smith offers what begins as a lament for what I’ll call the Invisible Generation, or what the demographers and press call Generation X or Gen X, but ends as a critique of everybody’s favorite target, “cancel culture” —  or “the widespread philistinism and prissiness that prevails with regard to art” that he says prevails in our current moment.

Books by Hank Kalet
Much of the essay is personal reflection, which makes clear that he might not be a common representative of his generation — showing himself to be artier, more of an outlier than the vast majority of Xers who went to college, accumulated debt, and went to work, with many ending u living back at home. Smith is focused on the forces the Boomers unleashed, but doesn’t talk much about how their move from Hippie to Yuppie not only damaged our relationship to art and authenticity but also endorsed the shift in our economy from makers to takers.

In the end, his is a purely art/cultural analysis that leaves one major question unanswered: Why have we allowed ourselves to by into this false generational narrative in the first place?

I am a boomer, based on the demographics, but those of us born in the 1960s have only a nominal connection to the boomer generation. We grew up after the Sixties, but in its shadow, and came of age as AIDS took center stage and the economy choked our opportunities. At the same time, we were lucky to avoid the extreme college debt that has burden Xers and those who come later.

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What Are Words For

The Debate of Whether Trans Kids’ Should Be Outed by Their Schools Starts with a Battle Over Language

Hank Kalet Sep 15 ∙ Preview

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Photo by Marc Nozell. File licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
The debate over trans kids in school is at least partly a debate over language. Even the best reported and written stories on the topic are falling into the trap of accepting seemingly neutral language that is anything but neutral.

Case in point is Thursday’s story in NJ Spotlight — a news site for which I have written and that is probably the best in the state.

The story focuses on a debate in Hanover, a town in Morris County, one of the more affluent counties in an affluent state. The debate revolves around the questions of parental notification of information that “could impact a student’s health or well-being, including sexual orientation and gender identity.” The board approved a policy earlier this year that requires such notifications, which led the state to sue and the courts to issue an injunction and order the policy to be rewritten. The board has approved a revised policy and is awaiting a ruling.

The Hanover case is part of a national debate over the rights LGBTQ+ students — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and allies. Advocates for the LGBTQ+ community — like me — argue that parental notification laws like the one in question amount to the forced outing of students, potentially endangering them, and ultimately forcing them back into the closet. Parents’ groups argue that as parents they are entitled to all information about their children — and they have assumed the mantle of “parents’ rights,” which has been an effective way of framing the debate for public consumption.

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This is a free, public post from Hank Kalet’s Channel Surfing. You will continue to receive these email stories and newsletters as long as you remain a an email subscriber. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get paywall-protected posts, the ability to comment on posts and participate in discussion boards, offers to write guest blog posts, and copies of my books. If you are a $5-a-month Patreon patron, you already are considered a paid subscriber.

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Syndication Questions

Books by Hank Kalet