Publisher’s Note

I am writing on the dark afternoon of this winter’s first snow. Looking out my window at the white dusting on the rooftops, I could imagine for a moment that this is the first of many snowfalls to come this season, and fantasize a classic New England winter ahead, worthy of Robert Frost and Currier and Ives.

In reality, I know I don’t live in that world anymore. As our first five issues of Tandeta discussed often, we live in a world of climate change, where I can expect balmy springlike temperatures to pop up again at some point before Christmas. But for this hour, at least, my world is calm and cold. And perhaps because of my awareness of the historic global heating we’re in the midst of, I appreciate it very much.

December is meant to be our dark, cold season, the season identified in the Chinese worldview with yin: the restful, interior, and receptive energy that complements the active and outgoing yang. And so we’ve made it the theme of our last issue for 2022, balancing the energetic and urgent appeals of our last issue, Mayday Mayday Mayday. We’ve been on hiatus since the spring, as we dealt with many non-literary challenges of life, and we’re not sure when or if we’ll resume publication in the new year. But we’re glad to be completing this first planned set of six Tandeta issues with one in which we and our contributors reflect on all the parts of our lives that aren’t goal-oriented, purposeful, and linear: the enjoyment of art, the love of animals, the experiences of illness or of dreams, and poetic and fictional flights of fancy created just because.

May it be a place for your thoughts, too, to ramble.

Kimberly Gladman
December 2022
Newton, Massachusetts