Book News Roundup: O Captain! My Captain!

  • Artist Trust has launched a COVID-19 relief fund that is open to Washington state artists. You can see if you qualify on their submissions page.

  • Beloved Seattle cartoonist Ellen Forney has contributed an excellent hand-washing guide to the Washington Post. It makes use of Forney's greatest talents: her friendly and explanatory style, her wondrous sense of economy, and her gorgeous illustrations of hands. Now that Steve Ditko has passed away, Forney has a claim to the greatest illustrator of hands in the business today.

  • Last night, Governor Inslee announced that all non-essential businesses in Washington state will close tomorrow for at least two weeks. He closed his speech by paraphrasing a passage from Whitman's "Song of Myself." Watch here:

  • And here's the quoted passage, from the Poetry Foundation's edition of the poem:

    • I understand the large hearts of heroes,

    The courage of present times and all times,

    How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,

    How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights,

    And chalk’d in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;

    How he follow’d with them and tack’d with them three days and would not give it up,

    How he saved the drifting company at last,

    How the lank loose-gown’d women look’d when boated from the side of their prepared graves,

    How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipp’d unshaved men;

    All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,

    I am the man, I suffer’d, I was there.

  • Inslee's announcement that non-essential businesses must close ended a bad day for local comic shops: the only nationwide comics distributor, Diamond, announced that this would be the last week that they would be delivering new comics to shops, though backlist will still be available for as long as it lasts. If you can, buy a gift certificate to your favorite comics shop in the next day, to ensure that they'll still be there when all this is over.