> 189: AIN' EVEN BEEN PLANTED YET

Hi hi,

Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:

1. I’ve never thought of myself as a person who’s particularly into sci fi or fantasy. But on the worst days—and yesterday was one—I find myself thinking of the essential lessons of art in that genre. Maybe because a lot of it is about people in dire situations making stark moral choices for a larger good—and for various reasons World War II parables aren’t really going to do it anymore, at least in America. We saw Rogue One in the theater soon after Trump’s first election and I took some strength from the image of (vague spoilers) Felicity and Diego on the beach, sacrificing themselves to give everything thereafter a chance. I’ve been thinking of the Battlestar Galactica reboot of the W. Bush years, with the fighter pilots touching a portrait of a comrade on a fallen planet on their way out to battle; of Stellan Skarsgård’s speech and “one way out” in Andor, which you must watch; of Katniss touching three fingers to her lips in a salute special to her community, and a crowd of people she can’t even see saluting back; of the fundamental text that is “Why must we go on?” / “Because there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” Is all this cringe? Undoubtedly; but I think we’ve entered a time that requires deep earnestness. (I hope to come back to this paragraph in four years and feel I was being overly dramatic about how bad things might get but I suspect I will not.)

2. A to-do list for the next two months.

3. Advice from Rachel Maddow: “Join something.”

4. Quilt index. Mushroom color atlas. (Both via NY Magazine)

5. Channel-surf the past.

6. Moira Donegan tells the story of the Jane Collective on You’re Wrong About. Something I found notable: most of the volunteers only did it for a little while, then passed the baton. You don’t have to devote your entire life to a cause to make a difference.

7. A newly digitized social directory for the Black community in New York that was published from 1933 to 1943–an incredible time capsule.

8. This is such a cool story of how researchers stumbled on a lost Mayan city in the Mexican jungle essentially via lasers and page 16 of a Google search.

9. If you could use some absorbing reading, I enjoyed Liz Moore’s “The God of the Woods” lately and am reading the latest installment of Louise Penny’s cozy mystery series partially set in cozy Québécois bistros.

10. I saw this advice somewhere that I plan to take—maybe you want to too: “Stop consuming, start creating.”

11. HEY
    
    C’MON
    COME OUT
    
    WHEREVER YOU ARE
    
    WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
    AT THIS TREE
    
    AIN’ EVEN BEEN
    PLANTED
    YET
    
    —”Calling on All Silent Minorities,” June Jordan

See you later,

Laura

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