I realize Instagram is still Facebook (and probably about to get a lot more like Facebook) but it’s my preferred way of getting sewing inspiration, or regular inspiration, or serendipitously learning about art movements like the Transcendental Painting Group.
Which is a long lead in to say I just found Carissa Potter Carlson’s account and if you, too, are feeling discouraged or overwhelmed (MY GOD THE NEWS I can’t talk about it or I’ll want to start fires) this is a good account to look at:
Via Kottke, here is a charming and amazing short story by Robin Sloan, set as a book proposal for a book that will make Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson president. Wait, what? You just have to read it. The meditations on The Rock, and America, and the description of the book that will do this–I think Robin Sloan needs to work on actually making this happen, because it is compelling. Worth a read.
Proposal for a book to be adapted into a movie starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson
Here is the meager gift tucked into the disaster that is Donald Trump: now, anyone can be elected president, so anyone will be elected president. We might never have another lawyer in that office again. Donald Trump broke the seal, but Dwayne Johnson will fulfill the prophecy.
Sometime in June, I wanted to re-read all the books I’d get again and again from the library as a teen. And I wanted my own copies of them, finally. So I put in a few orders at Thrift Books and spent the summer reading stories about girls with magic in space, girls with magic in the desert, girls who make friends with horses, girls who make friends with unicorns with magic, girls who go to college, girls who paint watercolors, and a couple new ones (The Summer Book, the Dodie Smith one that I’m saving for when there’s a nip in the air).
Honestly it was one of the best $20 I’d spent in a long time, just to have those old beat up covers that I remember and to be able to take my time with all of them again. I hadn’t read any fiction for a while and I’d forgotten how nice it is to get out of your own head and into the head of a girl having adventures. With magic.
I came across this writeup of Ranchlands, a Colorado land-preservation institute and model working ranch, last week. They offer working vacations and let me just say, going away for a week to ride a horse through the interior West and only worry about what’s in front of me sounds really great. (Yes, I follow them on Instagram now.)
The author of the profile (a Utah native) did a good job with it, too. I especially liked this cowboy philosophy:
Back at camp, I inarticulately tried to explain it to Bonney and Cam, but could only come up with this: As an adult, it’s easy to forget you’re capable of doing shit beyond banging on a keyboard until you do said shit and are jolted back into remembering we are meant to do more than stare at tiny screens all day. Bonney, in her button-down western shirt, brown Stetson, and faded blue Wranglers—a uniform I can only pray she wears to class—attempted to make a little more sense of what I was trying to get at. “Wallace Stegner said an American is—I’m going to get this wrong—” she pauses but then motors on. “An American is a civilized man who has renewed himself in the wild. I mean, the story of American wilderness has been, you know, that’s what we got. We ain’t got no kings, and we ain’t got no dukes. And we don’t have the castles with moats, but we got beautiful, beautiful wilderness. And so that’s, you know, much of our national story, and our notion of a national character is built out of that renewal that comes when you experience a place like this. The West is part of our origin story.”
Some final long(er) reads with which to end your week:
Today’s read by Heather Havrilesky made the rounds when it was published in May, as it deserved to do because it is beautiful. Yes, it’s a moving tribute to Mr. Rogers–but it’s also a clear-eyed look at the human condition, the “vast ocean of emotions” within all of us, the need to feel seen.
Why Did We Ever Leave Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood?
As a parent, sometimes I have to remind myself that even playing games or having fun together isn’t the same thing as offering up time for kids to be seen and heard clearly. Because when you’re a kid, even good friends mostly talk over you and rarely listen. Childhood is lonelier and more isolating than most of us are willing to remember or admit.
But then, most people would rather avoid talking about dark emotions like fear, anger, melancholy, and longing anyway—a problem Rogers’s show always tried to address. And most parents don’t love the idea that children experience a vast ocean of emotions beyond happiness, in part because many of us don’t like admitting that we all contain volatile seas of rage and despair. Rogers’s quiet air of acceptance and love makes us squeamish because it exposes our own conflicted, avoidant natures. His silence challenges us to accept our own emotional complexity in ways that the whirring, buzzing, flashing simulacrum of global culture specifically discourages.
Today, we have Blair Thornburg’s gentle, beautiful love letter to sea shanties and what they meant to her while she tapered off Seroquel: How Shanties and Songs of the Sea Helped Me Weather the Storm of Depression.
I have a backlog of recent and not-so-recent articles that are worth sharing but seem a little too long or Too Meaningful to be a Friday Link. So I’m calling this week The Week of Long Reads and posting a string of them.
First up, a recent one by writer Lyz Lenz, which…well, the title says it all: Why Writing Matters in the Age of Despair
The Queen is dead, as I’m sure you’ve heard. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online tributes and obituaries, but these two stood out:
“Soul Survivor” mentions a couple of her stand out performances that I looked up, and yeah, that Kennedy Center Honors performance of “Natural Woman” is worth the hype:
And! This cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is sublime.
