✨ pittsburgh blues
short update on Q1 2025, lol
Dear friend—
I am reflecting on the year so far, which is mostly a reflection of the post-inauguration weeks. I spent January 20, inauguration day, with friends in my heart city, Pittsburgh. I was fortunate to have the space and means to drown out the newest addition to our nightmare timeline with loved ones.
A cadre of college friends and former roommates left Pittsburgh this spring, and I visited for a sort of last hurrah. Since we graduated in 2020, many of us have scattered, slowly trickling from the city that held us in its hilly hands for four or more years.
On the 20th, it was snowing—big, thick flakes that quickly blanketed the streets. A few friends and I spent the entire day watching House. In the evening, I gathered with other friends I’d gone to grad school with. We played Pittsburgh trivia for, like, two hours. I have retained zero (0) facts in my head from that night, but lots of fond memories.
The whole trip was restorative. For my college friends, the loneliness epidemic sweeping the discourse has not hit, I think. We have been fortunate to live with or near each other for anywhere from 4 to 8 years now. (I’m using “we” very loosely here—I left Pittsburgh in 2023.)
I’ve noticed we’re draining from the city as we reach 26, 27, around the time our frontal lobes are reaching their Final Forms. It feels symbolic. As those lobes resolve, we’re shedding the city of our formative young adult years.
I call Pittsburgh my “heart city” because it’s the city where I feel most at home. I stumbled out of adolescence there. Got my first taste of independence, trekked its streets in the dead of night, broke my own heart, went from first-time user to fervent lover of public transport, became part of a beloved community of friends.
My claim to the city is paper thin, admittedly—especially compared to friends who have invested much more into caring for its people and its future. But out of everywhere I’ve lived and been, it’s where I feel most comfortable; where even just walking down the street makes me feel connected to something bigger.
In our current age of capitalism-induced alienation and creeping fascism (or long-since arrived, depending on Your American Experience), I am thinking about place and rootedness more than ever. I am thinking about how being disconnected from, unbothered by, and even fearful of your surroundings is exactly how those in power—corporations, billionaires, authoritarian personalities—stay in power. Fear and loneliness are a helluva drug.
Currently, I live in a small town in Idaho where I can count on one hand the people I know. But I’ll only be here for a few more months. I didn’t expect to be here for more than a year or two to begin with, which, despite my hemming and hawing about ~community~, has made me wary of putting down anything resembling a root.
My next few years may also be transient, though, and I don’t think I can evade temporary roots for the rest of my life. I am trying to recall the boldness of my college days, when I framed everything as “a learning experience,” even and especially the things I came to regret; when I was happy to do things “for a good time, not a long time.” Not to be dramatic, but I think the, like, fabric of society might depend on it.
“Our atomized and alienated society leaves little organic space for political communion or even shared compassion. And in the spaces between us, fear grows,” write Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba in their book, Let This Radicalize You. “Governed by fear, people are largely cooperative with systems that produce torture, mass death, and annihilation. That is the greatest danger that fear poses: not panic amid disorder, but cooperation with an order that we ought to find unspeakable.”
In a time of mass deportations, silencing of dissent, U.S.-sponsored genocide, economic crisis, pandemics, etc. etc. etc. etc.—fear is so easy, understandable, warranted. But of course, its alternatives—not just courage, but connectedness, compassion, and generosity—are more essential than ever.
some other stuff i’ve worked on
A sampling of recent pieces I’ve helped write and edit at FWW with the org’s team of incredible researchers.
"The Tech and Fossil Fuel Oligarchs Behind Musk-Trump’s Chaos”
“Artificial Intelligence: Big Tech’s Big Threat to Our Water and Climate.”
Rad that the issue of microplastics has hit public consciousness so hard that artists are making satirical memes from it. But also, I do care 😭
reading round-up
See something on here you’ve read and enjoyed? Shoot me a message!! Would love to chat about it!!
Thanks for reading this short update—I’ve got some bigger ones in the works that I’m really looking forward to!!
Much love,
—mia xx