We read in the ARA One of those news stories that fascinates us Catalans. A study, published by the journal of the US National Academy of Sciences, concludes that "the first examples of writing appeared 40,000 years ago, engraved by our ancestors on stone objects," and not, as we thought, around 3000 BC. A German research team has analyzed several objects found at an archaeological site and has determined that they have the same "level of complexity and information density as the earliest examples of cuneiform writing from the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of some 5,000 years ago." In the photograph, we see a clay mammoth with a series of X's and dots engraved on it that don't seem decorative, but rather a record of a commercial transaction, as if the mammoth were the ledger or contract where we noted how many things were consumed. It's intriguing to see these crosses; exactly the same ones we would put on a chalkboard to remember things we've sold or bought.

A study published PNASThe journal of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences is poised to overturn the previously accepted chronology of the emergence of the first forms of writing. According to this research, the earliest examples of writing appeared 40,000 years ago, inscribed by our ancestors on stone objects. Until now, the earliest known examples of writing were placed around 3000 BC. Therefore, this discovery pushes back the emergence of writing by 35,000 years.

As there were no large circulation newspapers in England at that time, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele founded a broadsheet in 1711 with the name The Spectator, which had a short life: during the first stage, between 1711 and 1712, everything was written by Steele; sometimes also by Addison and someone else, leaving aside a section of "letters to the editor" that maintained a permanent dialogue between the opinions of the founder and those of the readers, as it still happens. Later, in 1714, Addison took charge alone, and there was still a string of installments. Donald Bond made a complete, very useful edition in 1965: very recent. (Literature has a different tempo from the time of history.)

Neither Joan, nor Miquel, nor Paula, but neither Josep nor Montserrat. None of them practice what the English writer Virginia Woolf called "the most human art": writing letters by hand and sending them. Or at least not regularly. In fact, Joan, 23, hasn't done so since she was in school, when she shared some letters with other students from the State as part of an educational project. "I don't remember the name of the town, but I know we wrote and sent letters to other children through the postal service. After that, I'd say I haven't sent any more," she explains, crunching her memory. However, the truth is that using a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a stamp, as well as one's hands, to write and send a few words to someone can almost be considered an exception. In Spain, 80% of the population says they will not have used traditional postal service—sending a letter or postcard—at any point in 2024.

"With her breasts exposed," literally and metaphorically, is how writer Núria Esponellà has experienced the breast cancer she was diagnosed with in October 2023. Literally because it has been demanded of her by mammograms, tactile examinations, radiotherapy sessions, radiotherapy sessions... because, as she explains, with the disease she has learned to value the essential things and, like someone throwing away their bra, to shed the armor and limiting and useless thoughts in order to feel free and love herself and her body, including her breasts marked by aging and the scars from the operation. With bare breasts It is also the title of her latest book, where the writer bears witness to the pain she has suffered, but also to the courage and positivity with which she has faced the illness.

Karl Kraus was dying when he learned that the Japanese had invaded Manchuria. "None of that would have happened," he exclaimed, "if we had been more strict in the use of commas." I won't go as far as to say, but I do believe there's no way to develop critical thinking by ignoring the use of conjunctions. I completely agree with Antoni Capmany: "Anyone who can't read and write never speaks about what they're thinking."

The night I finished my first novel, as I was printing it (I could hear the printer spitting out pages in the background), I had a panic attack.

Dialogue is a humanities and spirituality magazine that, as its editors describe, "highlights the diversity of religious beliefs and the roots of all of them in this corner of the world that is Catalonia." My favorite section is the Spiritual guide of Catalonia, signed by the writer, journalist, translator and editor Anna Punsoda (and also director of the magazine for a year): a series of chronicles written after spending a couple of days in oratories, monasteries or retreat houses, which will end up being a book by Fragmenta and which will delight everyone who has read her magnificent guide to the Segarra, The hard earth, published in Pòrtic in 2024. So far, two have been published: that of the Montserrat monastery (warning that if you read it you will end with a crush with its abbess) and that of Casa Virupa, the Mediterranean Buddhist center in Llinars del Vallès. Here, Punsoda learns the Four Noble Truths enunciated by Buddha: that living involves dissatisfaction (illness, aging, loss, death); that the cause of this is desire or attachment (to pleasure, ideas, ego); that by ridding ourselves of attachment we can extinguish dissatisfaction; and that the Eightfold Path is the way to achieve it (understanding, intention, word, action, way of life, effort, mindfulness, and concentration).

They find it funny, even mocking, that so many women spend their afternoons doing what they contemptuously call "adult extracurricular activities." And it's true that reading clubs, conferences, workshops at community centers, and courses on a wide variety of subjects are mostly supported by an attendance almost always made up of women of a certain age. Men who prefer to devote their remaining vital energy to watching a couple of dozen children in shorts chasing a ball don't wonder how women behave this way, how they have acquired this hyperactivity. First, because they have no interest in little boys running around on the grass, and second, because many of them are part of a generation that has never been able to do what they wanted, that has gradually put aside, over the years and decades, all those interests that weren't strictly useful for supporting family life and other work. Some complain about this massive and normalized theft. One of them expressed it with reasonable indignation: "Now I realize that I've been deceived my whole life." Others remain silent, leaving their husbands "staring at them on television" (a phrase used by a Valencian feminist when explaining her beginnings in equality associations in the 1970s and how she managed to attend meetings), and have their own time now that they no longer have to care for children, grandchildren, parents, or even friends.

In the mid-twentieth century, when she was already in her fifties, the writer May Sarton bought a ramshackle 18th-century cottage in the town of Nelson, New Hampshire. This decision, as unusual and courageous as it was, and all the experiences that followed, are the literary material she used to write Desire for roots, a book that now reaches us in Catalan, thanks to the translation by Núria Parés published by Amsterdam.