> 184: We love what we have, no matter how little
One of the voices I’ve most appreciated over the past few months is Mariame Kaba’s. She’s a longtime organizer, educator, and librarian/archivist who worked in Chicago for a long time and is now in New York, spending a lot of time on countering the prison industrial causes but also many other causes. I mostly follow her on BlueSky, but she’s also got a newsletter and has written many essays and books. I wouldn’t say I agree with her on everything, but she’s dropped some wisdom that constantly runs through my head these days: “Keep it moving.” (Don’t spend time trying to convince people who won’t be convinced, and who can count it as success to distract you from doing your real work.) “Most people aren’t brave.” (Sad, true, and makes you treasure the rare, courageous people all the more.) I also appreciate that she regularly lifts up non-electoral ways to make life better for other people. Defending libraries. Getting on school boards. Donating to abortion funds. The opportunities are there, and you don’t even have to look that hard.
Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you:
"They have not always been right; even when right, their prescriptions for the problems they’ve identified and their means of directing attention to them have not always been prudent. But time and time and time again, the student left in America has squarely faced and expressed truths our politicians and all the eminent and eloquent voices of moderation in the press, in all of their supposed wisdom and good sense, have been unable or unwilling to see.”
Through children I am adjacent to I recently mainlined several episodes of a mid-2010s BBC show called Sarah and Duck. It’s a simple premise: It’s about a little girl who has a pet duck (guess what his name is). They go on little UK adventures: Riding a bus to somewhere. Encountering a woman who wears a scarf all the time who they call, right to her face, Scarf Lady. Playing with a friend down the street who casually has a pet flamingo. Chatting with an anthropomorphized rainbow and moon (the rainbow has a cloud mustache, of course). The opposite of this is another show I encountered involving an obnoxious French bunny called Simon who constantly has to learn lessons about how to be a marginally OK person (bunny) because it’s seriously not obvious to him from the outset. God, I hate that fucking bunny. Sarah and Duck: something to consider when you’ve run out of Bluey.
The end of this Q&A with Ethan Hawke: “You get to decide if art has value. Then you just put yourself at it.”
Moira Donegan on feminism: It’s “something the world has abandoned, grown bored with, moved on from. It is also something the world clearly needs.”
Alexander Chee on how to get more interiority into your writing.
These are rich and wondrous times in which to be a hater. Also: Here’s how to remove dumb AI stuff from your Google searches.
Hear the song written on a sinner’s butt in Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights.
From Erica Cerulo, who never wanted to be a parent but loves being a “lady down the street”: “My long game is not to be friends with kids but to be friends with adults who were once kids.”
Looking forward to: New Knives Out. New The Bear. New Sally Rooney.
We love what we have, no matter how little,
because if we don't, everything will be gone. If we don't,
we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.
What's here is something that we are still
building. It's something we cannot yet see,
because we are part
of it.
Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,
we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce
wind, the trees that will give shade
to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.—We Love What We Have, Mosab Abu Toha
Laura
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