Yosa Buson, "Early summer rain"

WNYC's On the Media had an excellent midweek program, "The Story Behind Biden's New Tariffs." You're going to want to listen to all 33 minutes of it. Gordon Hanson explains how Biden is continuing and expanding Trump's tariff policy for electoral reasons, how those tariffs are probably not going to bring back manufacturing jobs at scale, and how the cost of that taxation has been passed to us.

Another deep dive into news that I'm thinking about: "Elon Musk wanted The Onion; he got Thud". Thud sounds amazing. Their plan was "detailed satirical worlds," not just a website or newsletter:

One project Thud eventually envisioned was to create an entire museum wing imagining Britain’s imperialist conquest of Heaven. There’d be a painting showing a ship ascending into the clouds and a plaque describing the treacherous journey there. Elsewhere, artifacts like a flaming sword would represent the treasures they brought back.

Thud got funding from Elon Musk, but after he pulled it, Thud's projects had to be scaled back quite a bit. From The Verge: "For the fake DNA testing company DNA Friend, Thud had wanted to run ads anywhere that 23andMe did. Instead, all they could afford was to have a costumed mascot, a smiling drop of spit named Spitty, make an appearance one day in Times Square and at SXSW in Austin."

The story of Thud has me thinking about what success in the era of social media is. I don't think it has to do with doing viral numbers, getting funders, or building a massive audience. I'm thinking success has to be somewhat proportional, that your audience can rely on you to give what they benefit from and enjoy, and over time people build trust and maybe even hang out with each other. It sounds so simple, but people distort their personalities in order to be recognizable on X or Threads. In the case of Thud, making immersive satire is a fantastic proposition, but how are the creators and audience benefiting from it? I've learned that if you ask people to help you create something, you are wise to make sure they are continually rewarded. They have to know you have their back, that you're there to support them too.

Lots of light rain in South Jersey makes everything a bit too overgrown. Leaves droop with wetness, plants and weeds fight with glowing greenness, and the grass needs to be cut soon. The rain and overgrowth are pleasant. They invite work, but nothing directly threatens disaster, nor is there an undercurrent of future misfortune.

Early summer rain (tr. Robert Hass)
Yosa Buson

Early summer rain –
houses facing the river,
two of them.

Buson's haiku might go a different direction than my present thoughts. "Early summer rain – / houses facing the river, / two of them." The words flash flooding. "[S]ummer rain" does cause this; when I lived in Dallas, it could be terrifying. I remember plenty of times I got caught in vicious downpours on the highway. Seeing in front of you was impossible, and water on the road accumulated quickly.

The houses face the river. Do they panic about rising water? Hass notes that "The houses are seen at a distance, across the river in the rain. Their exposure to rising water seems to be hinted at. The last phrase has been translated, 'two lone houses'." (274) The houses sound lonely, isolated, fixated on the river. I can imagine someone, maybe two people, after a breakup. The world is beautiful and treacherous, but they're staring, wondering about what's ahead while being blankly numb to it. The more I think about it, the more I must admit to being an empty house in front of a random body of water most of my life.

All the same, when I recently read Buson's haiku, I thought of brightly colored homes standing like flowers in the rain. Sure, there is such a thing as too much water. At this moment, though, there's no reason to be hopeless.

References

The Essential Haiku. ed. Robert Hass. New York: HarperCollins, 1944.