Update: Rat Park in college textbook

Hi everyone,

A short update about a few things that have been happening here.

Rat Park in college English textbook

My comic Rat Park is being included as a reading in a new textbook aimed at U.S. college students.

All in all, my comic takes up 11 pages of the textbook, (the 40-page comic is printed as four-to-a-page), with accompanying questions for students to respond to. Some photos:

I have published a a short video of me flipping through the book, showing how my comic sits next to the other material contained in the textbook.

The textbook is copyrighted as a 2023 publication, so I have an advance copy of the book. Presumably the textbook publisher, McGraw Hill Education, is currently in the process of shopping the book around to college professors with the aim of getting it on the curricula for next year's classes.

All indications are that the book will appear in the lives of hundreds of thousands of U.S. English students' lives next year. A captive audience of new readers! This is a wonderfully unexpected outcome that I could not have predicted when I was creating Rat Park in 2012-13.

Million Dollar Baseball in book about the commons

On a similar note, an excerpt of my comic Who Owns the Million Dollar Baseball? appears in the new publication The Commoner's Catalog for Changemaking, which is all about the subject of The Commons. The editor of the publication, David Bollier thinks that the my baseball anecdote comic is an excellent thinkpiece to explain the concept of commonly-owned resources.

The entire Commoner's Catalog for Changemaking is published under a Creative Commons licence (naturally), and can be read for free online. Printed copies of the book can be ordered through the website also.

What I've been up to

I've been working in my art studio 5 days per week for the majority of this year so far. To keep myself entertained, this week in particular, I've been listening to the music of James Brown as well as, of all things, podcast interviews with the fascinatingly eloquent Ian MacKaye of Fugazi.

All year, I've been stockpiling artwork for a project that I will be releasing later this year. More news about that in due course.

There is also Part 3 The Town Without Television, which is a big project that I am slowly working towards. This chapter will be roughly as long as Parts 1 and 2 combined, so you'll have to forgive me for taking my time between instalments! I promise that you'll soon learn all about the rest of Tannis MacBeth's research findings!

PS: just tested positive for covid!

Would you believe it, but I have just tested positive for COVID-19, two hours after beginning writing this email. (I just got a text from my workplace to say that another resident of the arts centre has tested positive for covid, so I took a RAT just to check myself). This is surprising news, as I am feeling asymptomatic! There goes my plans for the weekend! 7 days of home quarantine ahead.

Thanks again for your ongoing support. More news soon,

Stuart McMillen
Canberra, Australia