Three Interests Meme: Shortwave, Office Supplies, Primo Levi

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks to sasha_feather for these prompts

Happy to carry the meme along -- let me know you want prompts and I'll trawl your interests and offer you three to discourse upon.

Shortwave

I spent a long time in bed between 1988 and 1991, with limited attention span and no assistive technology to help me read. My favorite companion was the Sony compact shortwave radio on my bedside table. Before the internet, many countries funded education/cultural/propaganda broadcasts, bouncing these shortwave signals off the ionosphere and around the world. Programs were short, and I could follow cultural or scientific or travel stories that were 15 or 30 minutes long. 1989 was a busy year in the world, and I loved triangulating what was happening from various sources. Broadcasters shifted frequencies to ensure better reception with changes in daylight and solar weather. Learning the geeky details was the kind of puzzle I enjoyed and could still actually solve, supported by the dense listings in the Passport to Worldband Radio. Favorite programs include BBC (African and World Service); Radio Netherlands, Radio Canada International, Kol Yisrael, the Voice of America, and lucky catches like Finland.

Office supplies

My father sometimes let me play in his study where I could bang on the manual typewriter. I loved to fondle the typewriter eraser — a hard rubber disk spinning from a small brush to tidy up the rubber shreds afterwards. There were small dishes with paperclips, binder clips, flags (a precursor to post-it notes), several piles of softly folded galleys. Small materials which helped keep the grand Snowpiercer of academic publishing in motion. In sixth grade I discovered the magic of Letraset transfer lettering. I’d spend hours making little posters and booklets with different font designs. And this is why when I feel stressed, browsing an office supply store is a guaranteed pleasure. The staff aren’t pushy, and there’s actually thousands of things to admire.

Primo Levi

Introduced me to the lived experience of the Holocaust. Levi was an Italian Jew, born two months after my mother. He finished a university chemistry degree and was able to work until 1943, when he became an inept (by his own admission) anti-Facist partisan. On capture he avoided immediate execution by admitting that he was a Jew. He was sent to Auschwitz. His lab skills permitted him to work indoors, which helped him survive. Levi’s books — If This Is a Man and The Truce — detail his time in the camps and the year he spent wandering all over Europe on his journey back to Turin. His writing is a vital witness that survivors were often mendacious and cruel; that religion isn’t always supportive; that strangers can create a better world.

My favorite of his is The Periodic Table, 21 short stories/essays linked to 21 elements, from argon to carbon. Each is informed by Levi’s experience as a child, as a prisoner, as a chemist working with German colleagues after the war. The BBC is currently hosting a six-part audio presentation of eleven chapters from the work, including the exquisite conclusion, Carbon.

Bookshare has seven of his works

Your public library probably has it

English translations of these three works are available at the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/search.php?query=primo%20Levi&and[]=creator%3A%22primo+levi%22&and[]=languageSorter%3A%22English%22

If none of those work for you and you're interested in reading The Periodic Table, I'd be happy to give you one in your preferred format.