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[SENT: January 13, 2026]
into 2026~
wilson took this (can u spot otis?)
i'm thinking about white noise, static, silence, snow—the electricity that exists in that void (or the cumulative void of electricity). trying to, like otis above, find joy within.
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the closing half of 2025 brought many transformations. life got bigger, denser, higher contrast.
professional updates:
the Other Almanac 2026, which i was the managing editor for, is now available online and at many bookstores around ny. thank you to all the dear friends who contributed essays and artwork, and to Ana Ratner, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this wonderful project.
i've been writing a whole lot about food for my recent(ish) tenure as the Hudson Valley dining critic for Times Union. will expand on my experience at a later date but for now, i'll say i'm having a blast and love talking to food people. :)
i also wrote a short personal essay on building a hot tub made of cob and being 10 in 2001 for Hot Room, a quarterly print zine on sauna culture brought to you by our local pop-up banya, Big Towel. pick up a copy the next time you go for a schvitz!
personal updates:
wilson and i got married! :) there were many moments i thought my heart would actually explode from how much i was feeling. idk...if a heaven exists for me, it's there, walking down to meet all the people i love most in a fucking beautiful dress. everything about it was sublime.
my godmother, the groundbreaking documentarian Christine Choy, died peacefully in december. have been missing her the most every time i watch a really great or really bad movie; her opinions were always unpredictable but precise. she introduced me to Agnes Varda, Issey Miyake, and AAPI involvement in the Black Panther Party (vis a vis her own affiliation).
shannpo digest:
speaking of movies...
we just watched Chloé Zhao's Hamnet which was one of the most impactful moviegoing experiences i've ever had. it's a masterpiece. watching it in a theater, listening to the bated sobs of everyone around, all responding to this shared dream echoing through their own internal landscape...we really do come to this place.
i've loved all of Zhao's films that i've seen (especially The Rider) but i think this film, by far her most personal and metatextual, distills why we are compelled to create and how great art moves us through the void without any reduction or cliché. i have about a universe to say about it (also loved Margaret Renkl's thoughts).
Gourmet Magazine is "back"—and, now worker-owned, better than ever. condé nast forgot to renew its trademark on the long-defunct magazine so a ragtag group of food people and writers jumped on the IP. what a coup!
[SENT: September 17, 2025]
greetings~
lately, the half-baked, squishy recesses of my brain keep fiddling around with the idea of fantasy**: how it exists privately, socially, and politically; its metastasis into reality; "good" fantasies vs "bad" fantasies, etc.
what are otis's fantasies?
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shannpo digest:
charlie markbreiter wrote one of the only pieces on ch*rl** k*rk i give a shit about. it traces the growing fantasy (paranoid delusion) of the trans shooter, connecting it to the larger fantasy of a national return to a greatness that never existed.
"It feels both vertiginous and soothing to watch consent get manufactured in real time, like a HowStuffWorks video about the propaganda machine."
fuck...
speaking of political fantasies and manufactured consent, ismail ibrahim wrote about his experience as a fact-checker and the only arabic-speaker on the editorial staff of one of america's most prestigious magazines (it's the new yorker) after october 7th.
here is ibrahim on having to fact-check a story about a palestinian man who was murdered while picking olives by an off-duty israeli soldier in the west bank:
"Though the man’s killing had been filmed, a fact checker is obliged to seek comment from any party alleged to have committed a crime. I called the soldier’s lawyer. He picked up from a café, where I could hear trance music blasting in the background. The lawyer told me that while, yes, his client did shoot the man picking olives, and yes, the man did die, the Israeli military court found his client not guilty of murder because the man picking olives was a terrorist who was throwing stones. Even though the video did not show the Palestinian man throwing stones, the court said that he was, so he was. QED, his client did not murder anyone, and it would be slanderous for us to say so."
the essay is a must-read.
what does it mean to fact check against increasing delusion? how do fantasies present themselves as reality? who is afforded the ability to engage with fantasy uncritically? all this further exacerbated with people like bari weiss set to helm "legacy" media outlets...
anyway.
i could go on and on with more frivolous fantasy fare (dungeons and dragons, drag, dreams, delusions, kink, football, grifts, romantasy) but i'd love to know... what role does fantasy play in your life?
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a dream job has been added to my (chaotic) permalance roster! i recently joined the times union (a regional upstate NY newspaper) as its hudson valley dining critic. you can also hear me yapping on their podcast; i haven't listened but my brilliant friend frances told me i sound smart, so! shoutout to phil pantuso, who recommended me for the position. :)
the 2026 other almanac is now available for pre-order! for those unfamiliar, the other almanac is a reimagining of the old farmer's almanac, updated for today’s world. it's filled with gorgeous work by some of my (and editor/founder ana ratner's) favorite artists, writers, and thinkers—i was the managing editor of this year's edition.
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Hi!
It's been a minute; I know I'm not alone in the feeling of overwhelm and a loss for words. A recurring theme I've seen crop up at exhibitions, in drafts, and elsewhere is this search for voice through silence.
It's noisy out there, and I think so many of us are looking for and working toward moments of clarity. At what point does all this noise and energy culminate into something more tangible?
It was so uplifting to hear how many of you are canvassing for Zohran Mamdani in the upcoming NYC mayoral primary! It inspired me to volunteer as soon as phone banking opened up (if anyone wants to gift me any surplus campaign swag, I'd be so grateful).
A lot of you have also echoed finding voice through song—a great metaphor for the process of transcending the word into something that, quite literally, moves us. There's talking and then there's singing!
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Lately, my neighborhood's been singing to me.
I mentioned this in my last dispatch, but since the beginning of this year, I've been volunteering with For the Many, a grassroots organization of everyday people that fights for laws and wins elections in order to transform New York so it works for ALL of us.
I've been so heartened to see the ways in which our community here in the Hudson Valley has inspired groundbreaking models for progressive legislation nationwide, winning local elections, and getting laws protecting immigrants, tenants, the environment, and working class New Yorkers passed.
I've been so heartened to see the ways in which our community here in the Hudson Valley has inspired groundbreaking models for progressive legislation nationwide, winning local elections, and getting laws protecting immigrants, tenants, the environment, and working class New Yorkers passed.
None of this is possible without community organizing groups like For the Many. Groups like these are what allow the people to have a voice in their governments and are foundational to a thriving democracy—something I know all of us are passionate about, particularly now!
We're currently working to raise $125K by June 9th to win housing, healthcare, and environmental justice for all! Can you donate an amount that feels meaningful to you to help us reach our goal? No amount is too small!
I know there's so much demanding our money, effort, and attention these days but I did want to put this on all of your radars as something that I have seen make an enormous difference in my local community.
To give just one example, For the Many played a major role in getting Sarahana Shrestha elected for our district's assembly, turning a historically red district blue; I keep joking that after 33 years in NY, it took me moving upstate to be represented by a progressive Asian woman.
Here's a photo of me making that joke at our local block party in April!:
A big part of why Wilson and I moved to Kingston two years ago was because it felt increasingly impossible for a writer/editor and a carpenter to afford a future with a family in NYC. But as demand for housing in the Hudson Valley increases, the same parties and factors that pushed us out of the city are making places like Kingston also increasingly difficult to afford.
All that to say, whether you live upstate, downstate, or out-of-state, the disenfranchising powers that be affect us all—and it takes all of us to fight back. I hope you'll consider joining us!
PLUS! If you send me a donation receipt for any amount, I will send you:
- A recording of the bells at our local historic church singing Mr. Rogers' Won't You Be My Neighbor, which I heard for the first time while getting coffee yesterday and nearly wept as a result (it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood!)
- An obscenely cute photo of Otis wearing his fancy new clown collar (a ruff ruff, if you will) that my friend Mothh made for him
[SENT: March 13, 2025]
Hello!
Thanks so much to all who responded to my last (first) dispatch. It was so great to hear about how all of us are thinking/rethinking around our relationships to social media.
Many of you echoed the general sense of fatigue; the yearning for meaning and tangibility, something better.
Connie shared how social media, for them, "creates information at the speed of thought, thus it makes it easier to infiltrate the very sensitive and more profound parts of our mind/soul, like the space where imagination might exist. It's like a trojan horse of the mind."
Linyee hinted at MOLD's recent announcement to divest from the internet/social media.
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LATELY:
An essay I ghost commissioned by Randa Tawil and Najwa Mayer on Palestine and the Asian American Question was recently published in The Margins. It's such an honor to have had a hand in producing such an important piece. Biggest thanks to Jacinda Tran for introducing me to Randa and Najwa, and to Dana Isokawa for taking the reins.
I joined The Other Almanac as the managing editor for the upcoming 2026 edition, taking over for my friend and nominal doppelganger, Shannon Lai (making it sooooo confusing for correspondences). I'm still the editor at The Amp and Artlab Editorial.
I've been volunteering with For the Many, a local progressive advocacy nonprofit in the Hudson Valley. We phonebank, lobby, and generally raise awareness around issues like tenant, immigration, and environmental justice. We're also working to turn our local privately owned utility monopoly into a publicly owned utility provider! Being a part of these incremental local changes has been so rewarding and a real bulwark to my nihilistic spiral/doom scroll habit.
I joined a community choir in Hudson; I missed singing a LOT and hearing other people's voices do something beautiful as a collective is so profound and makes my heart so full I'm tearing up just typing this. :,)
I continue to experience funny coincidences that make me feel like I live within an algorithmic glitch. In February, I was invited by the Enoki crew to introduce the Korean funk band, Sangjaru, who was playing a show at The Local in the nearby town of Saugerties. What they didn't realize was that Wilson had randomly seen Sangjaru perform at a street festival while we were in Seoul this past fall. He even asked them if they had any plans to come to the US ("not yet!"). Stranger still, one of the first jobs Wilson had when we moved to the Hudson Valley was building out the Local's stage. Of all venues, of all bands, of all freelance carpenters with Korean fiances.
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ON THE HORIZON:
Club Mugwort at Bronx River Foodway's Spring Equinox Celebration
March 22, 11am—2pm
Overjoyed that Bronx River Foodway invited me back to host another mugwort foraging and rice cake making workshop this year. Come celebrate the arrival of spring at NYC's only legal (!) foragable public space. Traveling to London
April 21—25
Just for fun! Apart from gallery and museum hopping, hoping to visit Stonehenge and Southdowns and maybe arrange a few studio visits. LMK if you have any recs! ------------------------------
SHANNPO DIGEST:
(LMK if you'd like a .pdf of any paywalled articles!)
-Disgusted by how university leadership at Yale and Columbia are spinelessly capitulating to the fascistic Zionist demands of this government.
-Loved listening to RF Kuang's Babel on audiobook. At times didactic and literal, the fantasy was still wonderfully cathartic.
-Speaking of fantasy, Andrea Long Chu wrote an amazing essay on the history and cultural implications of DnD's recent surge in popularity. Also, Dungeons and Drag Queens has been my latest salve for sleeplessness.
-Again re: Fantasy, this 2023 essay on Mariah Carey's artful refusals of time by Amelia Groom is, IMO, perfect cultural criticism. Hooves up, lambs!
-Movie roundup:
- Maurice (1987): dark British academia Call Me By Your Name or Brokeback Mountain with young (and insanely hot) Heath Ledger, brought to you by Merchant Ivory. Wilson's wedding fit inspo.
- An Autumn's Tale (1987): fun and sweet Chinese-language love story set in Manhattan's Chinatown directed by Mabel Chung, starring a young Chow-Yun Fat. Wonderful to see a film in which Chinatown and its residents aren't mere background actors and set decorations.
- Take Out (2004): IMO, Anora is good but overrated; we really liked this early Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou collab, however!
- Wild at Heart (1990): regrettably, art school ruined Lynch through to most of my 20s but I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to revisit and appreciate the devastating beauty of his work these past few years. If someone were to ask me what artist best captures the surreal, delusional, naive, and beautiful rotting spirit of America, I'd have to say Lynch.
Thanks for spending time with me here, however long and in whatever capacity. I'd love to know:
What IRL things are you looking forward to participating in this spring? What's something you recently read, listened to, watched, saw, or otherwise experienced that moved you?
[SENT: February 25, 2025]
Hi fam, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, haters (?), and miscellaneous internet people—
Thanks for opting to stay in touch with me! :)
As a token of my appreciation, here's Otis:
I deleted social media from my phone for all the typical and known reasons (still need to maintain an account for work purposes, unfortunately).
Something I've found interesting is how this current wave of folks going "offline" seems to be summoned by the independent wills of lots of individuals (as opposed to, say, a mass call to delete Meta products as a much deserved fuck you to Zuckerberg). This feels in sharp contrast to the kind of collectivized action that often exists in online spaces. I've been wondering if this mode of online participation has reached a critical mass wherein its weight has become more water than muscle.
For me, taking a step away from being online was prompted in large part by a deep frustration with the way this past election transpired—where has all this online discourse gotten us, tangibly? One of the last things I looked at on IG was this post by Forge Project, a nonprofit honoring Indigenous pasts and building Native futures, that asks its community what it feels is next for social media. While there aren't clear answers or alternatives, I think it's always worthwhile to interrogate why and how we are participating in these systems.
Anyway—
I'm hoping that this newsletter will inspire more active and engaged participation with one another. Expect lots of longform article links (or their pdf equivalents for the paywalled), half-baked observations, life updates, recipes, recommendations, and questions...
For example, I'd love to know: What's your current relationship to social media? How are you evaluating its purpose in your life, personally or professionally? If you've gone offline, why and what have you discovered?
Excited to hear your thoughts!