OF THE SOIL (October)
the monthly dirt from midwest author,
Amy Fladeboe
Louie’s tiny hand wrapped around dad’s finger against the bright lights of the hospital delivery room, September 15, 2026.
in the soil | in this newsletter
Of The Soil’s October edition includes an interview with Albanian activist, Eri Balliu and a bit of banter on the art of sleep deprivation or the contact high of infancy.
on the soil | making sense of place
what’s happening on the ground in Albania?
Eriselda Balliu hasn’t had time to do her dishes and she’s lost track of how many days she and her husband Baki have found babysitters for their children and traveled two and half hours hours both ways to join the protests of the Flamingo Revolution in Tirana, the capital city of Albania. In this October 5th, 2026 interview with Balliu, English teacher and activist from Vlorë, she discusses growing up in Albania, raising her children there, and dreaming of the future that the Flamingo Revolution may bring on the 127th day of protests. On the date of this newsletter publication, October 15th, they have reached 137 days. Yesterday, October 14th, the movement set the Ministry of Education on fire while riot police detained, tear gassed, water cannoned, and violently responded to the student protestors.
October 5, 2026 Interview with Eriselda Balliu
after the soil | what’s next
what am I working on now?
Louie Guthrie Fitzwilliam 10 days old, rocking the neon blue sunshades and yellow sunshine pjs
I have been percolating on some ideas in delirious fits and bursts since my baby Louie was born on September 15th. I was warned about “mommy brain” the oxi-cortisol fog that descends on new parenthood, but I chalked it up to sleep deprivation. While there’s definitely both going on, I’m also tripping my ass off. It’s the contact high one gets from a fresh human taking in this whole new psychedelic world minute by minute, one blissed out blurry shape by glaring light by unmuffled sound at a time. Plus, skin. Good god, that soft skin of breast at your cheek, that safe oh-shit handle bar of dad’s finger inside your new grip. Can you even imagine feeling someone skin near yours for the first time??!!
I started reading Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch in week one of Louie’s life, and I haven’t gotten past the first chapter because every day I just read it over again. Not because I’ve forgotten what I read, but because I’m slow-cooking these poetic lines into my skin:
“This is life, she has learned, with a newborn: it’s easing someone into and out of consciousness, over and over, providing sustenance in between. As though infants inhabit a different planet, one that orbits its sun four times faster than Earth does. If you want to understand the human condition, pay close attention ton infants: the stakes are simultaneously at their highest, because you could die at any moment, and at their lowest, because someone bigger is satisfying your every need. Language and agency have not yet arrived. What’s that like? Observe a baby” (Gunty 12).
Also, I’m a tad scared, nervous-excited really, maybe more curious of what comes next in this book, in parenting, in this sweet baby’s lifetime. No spoilers on the book or life, please. Maybe it’s time to turn the page.