> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.richardjnewman.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Four by Four #60 - URL: https://www.richardjnewman.com/four-by-four-60/ - Published: 2026-10-23T10:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T13:20:50.000Z - Description: Four Things To Read, Four Things To See, Four Things To Listen To, and Four Things About Me - Author: Richard Jeffrey Newman - Tags: Blog, Four by Four #### Contents --- To those new subscribers who have recently come over from Substack, welcome to **It All Connects!* I am really glad you’re here. My newsletter has two tiers, free and paid. The free tier includes Four By Four, which you are reading now, and Learning To Love The Questions. The paid tier includes a long-form essay, On My Desk Now, which is an inside look at what I am working on at the moment, and some other benefits. 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Thank you! ## Four Things To Read [**The War Tehran Believes Is Coming**](https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-war-israel-netanyahu-trump-hormuz-mohsen-rezaei?ref=richardjnewman.com)**, by Jeremy Scahill, Peiman Salehi, and Ryan Grim:** > A U.S. official confirmed to Drop Site that military assets are being moved rapidly into place in preparation for an expected green light from Trump. Among the American officials pushing for renewed attacks is U.S. Central Command chief Gen. Bradley Cooper, the official said. “CENTCOM is putting all the pieces into place to renew major combat operations,” added the official, who is not authorized to discuss war plans. He was skeptical the war would resume before the Israeli elections, but conceded, “We did start Epic Fury without all our assets in place.” That same official also told [Drop Site](https://www.dropsitenews.com/?ref=richardjnewman.com) that “Trump has back off major combat operations against Iran or the Houthis seven times since July.” Whether or not you find that comforting—I do not—the fact that both the United States and Israel are even contemplating the renewal of combat operations against Iran is deeply troubling. The Islamic Republic has already demonstrated its ability to survive such attacks politically, while at the same time inflicting real, if asymmetrical damage militarily. A prolonged war will be good for no one, except maybe Netanyahu and Trump/Republican candidates, who might benefit in upcoming elections. If you’ve been reading about the plans for these attacks elsewhere in the news, you’ll find this piece interesting for the way it reports the cool confidence with which the quoted Iranian officials talk about the capacity they have built over “decades \[of\] preparing for a broader war waged the U.S. \[and Israel\].” General Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s personal representative, put it this way, “Washington has repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that, if it can make life inside Iran difficult enough, Iran’s political system will consequently accept America’s strategic demands. These are two different calculations.” This article gives a small sense of what he means by that. **§§§** [**He Accused His Brother of Sexual Abuse. Then He Took on His Family.**](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/world/asia/thai-singha-beer-family-abuse-accusations.html?unlocked%5Farticle%5Fcode=1.BlE.72px.sXHUX%5Fh-jofX&smid=url-share&ref=richardjnewman.com) **by Sui-Lee Wee:** > \[Siranudh Scott’s\] accusation — which his brother denied — unleashed a rare public reckoning over sexual assault in Thailand, where the #MeToo movement had failed to make an impact. Many Thais have responded with accounts of sexual assault within families and by powerful people. The story this article tells is in many ways a very familiar one. The child of a powerful family alleges sexual abuse on the part of another family member; the family chooses not to believe the accuser, tries to keep the story out of the press in part by pressuring the accuser to protect the family’s reputation; and, when the accuser refuses, punishes them by, among other things, shunning them, depriving them of money, and taking them to court. What makes this story different is that the accuser/survivor is a man. I’m not going to say more than that because I don’t know anything about how allegations of sexual abuse are handled in Thailand beyond what Wee says in the article regarding both criminal defamation laws and cultural values that place the family above the individual acting as deterrents—though I imagine that patriarchal attitudes towards women might make it harder for a female accuser, even one from a powerful family, to get the kind of national attention that Sirandhu has gotten. It’s an interesting contrast to the way high profile cases involving male survivors and male perpetrators have been handled in this country. **§§§** [**Pregnancy as a Crime: An Interim Update on the First Three Years After Dobbs**](https://www.pregnancyjusticeus.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Fall-2026-Data-Update.pdf?ref=richardjnewman.com)**, by Pregnancy Justice:** > This document provides a preliminary update on pregnancy-related prosecutions in the United States during the first three years after the Dobbs decision. This update focuses on pregnant people and the charges and allegations brought against them. [Pregnancy Justice](https://www.pregnancyjusticeus.org/?ref=richardjnewman.com) “advances and defends the rights of pregnant people, no matter if they give birth, experience a pregnancy loss, or have an abortion.” This update covers the at least 902 cases across the nation in which pregnant people were charged with crimes connected to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The material on Pregnancy Justice’s website is written to be inclusive of pregnant people who do not identify as women, but, as important as that inclusive language is—and it *is* important—we also should not lose sight of the fact that overturning *Roe* was essentially an open declaration of war on women. Given that most people who get pregnant are women this report should eliminate any doubts you might have had about that fact. Particularly chilling for me was the report’s finding that the overwhelming number of prosecutions it cites were brought under statutes that make conviction possible without proving that the pregnant person actually harmed the fetus. **§§§** [**A glimpse inside the painstaking process of bringing a subway car to life**](https://www.fastcompany.com/91624647/chris-payne-mta-photographs-subway-factory?ref=richardjnewman.com)**, by María José Gutiérrez Chavéz:** > Although the subway system is New York City’s bloodstream, most riders rarely slow down to wonder where the giant metal cars came from, or where they go after their last stop. Now, a new photography exhibit is transporting passersby into the spaces where the city’s subways and buses reside when they’re off duty, and even the spaces where they’re made. This brief piece made me want to visit each of the stations where Christopher Payne’s [photographs](http://www.chrispaynephoto.com/mta-overhaul-shops?ref=richardjnewman.com) are being displayed: Grand Central Madison, Grand Central Dining Concourse, 42 St-Bryant Park, Bowling Green, and Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr. I spent some time looking not only at the images that accompany Chavéz’ piece in [*Fast Company*](https://www.fastcompany.com/91624647/chris-payne-mta-photographs-subway-factory?ref=richardjnewman.com)*,* but also with the selection Payne has posted to his [website](https://www.fastcompany.com/91624647/chris-payne-mta-photographs-subway-factory?ref=richardjnewman.com). They reveal what’s behind the kind of the thing you take for granted because it’s so much a part of your everyday life: the people who do the work that makes what you take for granted possible. --- ## Four Things To See All these images are in the public domain and have been taken from the website of the [Metropolitan Museum of Art](https://www.metmuseum.org/?ref=richardjnewman.com). The text is adapted from the Met’s site. ### The Intoxication of Wine - Clodion (Claude Michel) ca. 1780–90 ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/c1/acc1ea6d-50e1-4de3-aaca-df8ca23ef15d/content/images/2026/10/the-intoxication-of-wine.jpg) **§§§** ### Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau) - John Singer Sargent, 1883–84 ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/c1/acc1ea6d-50e1-4de3-aaca-df8ca23ef15d/content/images/2026/10/john-singer-sargent---madame-x-1.jpg) **§§§** ### Esther before Ahasuerus - Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620s [Gentileschi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia%5FGentileschi?ref=richardjnewman.com) was the most famous woman painter of the seventeenth century. Here, Esther is appearing before her husband, King Ahasuerus of Persia in her ultimately successful attempt to prevent the Jewish people. Interestingly, Gentileschi allows contemporary theater, rather than historical recreation, to inform this scene in which Esther faints just before the king grants her request. The Met’s text points out that a servant of African descent restraining a dog, painted out by the artist, is still partly visible beneath the marble pavement to the left of the king’s knee. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/c1/acc1ea6d-50e1-4de3-aaca-df8ca23ef15d/content/images/2026/10/esther-before-ahasverosh.jpg) **§§§** ### **Fanny Eaton -** Simeon Solomon, October 2, 1860 Fanny Eaton, who sat for this portrait, was born Fanny Entwistle in Jamaica in 1835 to a Black mother recently freed from slavery. Her father, who may have been a white Scottish soldier, died soon after her birth. Her mother moved them to London in the 1840s, where Fanny eventually married a horse-cab driver in 1857 and began to model for artists by 1859\. While this paintings is a portrait of Fanny, Solomon, in exploring his Jewish heritage, used her biracial features to reimagine ancient Hebrew heroines as dark-skinned and Semitic, rather than as white Europeans. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ac/c1/acc1ea6d-50e1-4de3-aaca-df8ca23ef15d/content/images/2026/10/fanny-eaton.jpg) --- ## Four Things To Listen To ### Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child - Jeanne Lee **§§§** ### Mingus Meditations - Jeanne Lee/Dave Holland **§§§** ### Black Woman - Sonny Sharrock/Linda Sharrock ### **§§§** ### Abbey Lincoln - Retribution --- ## Four Things About Me I did not speak to my father for a decade or so after my brother died. For reasons that I will write about another time, I was quite happy to keep things that way. When my wife and I decided that we would start trying to conceive, however—I was in my early-to-mid thirties—I realized that I had questions about my experience of our father-son relationship that only he could answer. It wasn’t that I wanted or needed him in my life, but if I was going to be a father, I wanted to understand how it came to be that the man who should have been my role model, had ended up as an absence more than anything else. When he and I sat down in Harry’s, the steakhouse he took me to when I went to see him unannounced at One New York Plaza where he did municipal bond research for Prudential Financial, that’s what I told him: I had questions, and how our relationship did or did not develop after that would depend on the answers he gave me. All I will say about that first conversation here is that it was a good one and that I went home afterwards optimistic about being able to welcome my father back into my life. Why that optimism turned out to be misplaced is a complicated knot that I can see turning into something like Kafka’s [*Letter To His Father*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter%5Fto%5FHis%5FFather?ref=richardjnewman.com)*,* in form if not in content. Today, though, I’ve been pulling on one thread of that knot. From the start, my father and his third wife believed that the only reason I went to see him was that my wife urged me to do so. More than that, his wife believed—she revealed this to my wife while I cooked dinner for the three of us in my father’s house the day after his funeral—that the only reason I had sought him out in the first place was that I wanted money. The accusation says more about her than me, but what makes me sad is that it also explains a lot of my father’s behavior during the years between our conversation in Harry’s and the last time I saw him before he died. He believed her. **§§§** There was a stretch of years—I don't know how many—during which I woke up almost every night at 2 AM to the sound of a loud bang. When it first started happening, I thought it was the sound of a door slamming somewhere and I would get up and walk around my apartment trying to figure out which door it was. Eventually I realized that the sound was in my head, that it was my mind slamming shut on something, and with that realization, the sound began to change. I’d still wake up with a start at 2 AM, but when it wasn’t the sound of a door slamming, it was a buzzer, or a phone ringing, and sometimes there was no sound at all, just a blinding flash of white light. I put the phenomenon in a poem called “My Brother’s Thirtieth Yahrzeit, My Grandmother’s Third,” which I included in [*Words For What Those Men Have Done*](https://www.richardjnewman.com/books/words-for-what-those-men-have-done/)*,* which may have been when it stopped happening, but I’m not sure. In any event, it doesn’t happen anymore. **§§§** Joey was my best friend from the time I was in fifth or sixth grade until he joined the army when he was sixteen or seventeen. I remember sitting with him on the wooden fence outside the ground-floor window he’d snuck out of so we could talk. “My father,” he said, “can be a real asshole sometimes.” Then he told me he was going to enlist. He never said specifically why he called his father an asshole, but knowing what I know now, and looking back through that lens at what I remember about Joey and his father, it’s hard for me not at least to consider the possibility that his father was sexually abusing him and that joining the military was his way of escaping. I was surprised and sad at the thought of Joey leaving, and I suppose I also felt a little bit betrayed, though that feeling softened over time because it didn’t seem to matter how different our two paths made us. We remained close. I graduated high school and went off to college; Joey, at least to hear him tell it, got deeper and deeper into dealing and doing an awful lot of drugs, trafficking in contraband of various sorts, and making as much illicit money in the military as he could. Nonetheless, whenever he was home on leave, we would get together, and when we did it was as if two old friends were catching up on the mundane and not-so-mundane details of each other’s lives. I don’t remember how much time passed between the last time I saw him and the day I got the news at my summer camp job that he’d killed himself, but I remember clearly that I was walking past the arts-and-crafts shed when one of my sisters told me she’d read about it in a letter someone, I don’t remember whom, had sent her. No one had bothered to tell me, so I don’t know anything about the funeral I obviously missed or where Joey is buried. When I got home, no one talked to me about it. It was almost as if Joey had never existed and/or that I had never been a part of his life. After some time had passed, though, I did learn that he’d tried to kill himself several times before, once by driving his car head on into the wall behind the supermarket next to the apartment complex where we lived. I wondered then, and I still wonder now, if things would have turned out differently if I’d been around for him to talk to—if I’d been able to tell him how deeply it mattered to me that he stay. It might have made no difference at all, but then again it might have made precisely the difference that would have kept him around. **§§§** My mother went to secretarial school after her second husband left us. That’s when I had no choice but to learn how to cook. I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I don’t remember if she had night classes at some point or just school-related events that she had to attend every once in a while, but, in my memory anyway, the first time I had to prepare dinner for my siblings and myself—boiled hot dogs and a can of beans—it was because she had to be somewhere connected to school. I also remember that I had to cook that food on a hot plate because there was some problem with the gas that had not yet been fixed, though really all I did was warm it up. From that inauspicious beginning I grew to enjoy cooking a lot. Every so often I think I should be more disciplined and diligent and choose one of the cookbooks on my shelf and work my way through it, but I never do. --- ****A gentle reminder:** Four By Four is part of the free tier of **It All Connects.* If you are not currently a paid subscriber and would like to subscribe, you can do so [here](https://www.richardjnewman.com/#/portal/signup/65988db373946800080fe780/yearly). 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