Links to Click: August 11, 2023
Mental health, making public libraries inaccessible to minors, and more.
I am back after several days in Door County. I never made a trek up until late 2020, when I took a pregnant-during-COVID risk of attending a teeny tiny yoga retreat with a trusted teacher–since nearly everything was outside, it felt okay and ultimately, it was. Since then, I’ve gone back several times and always enjoy it. If you’ve never been and have always been curious about Wisconsin’s peninsula, it’s worth it.
A couple of new-to-me stops this time has me wanting to make sure everyone knows about include Bad Moravian for pizza and then when you go up to Washington Island, hit up Jackson Harbor Soup and Sandwiches. That one is not on the main road, but right at the dock for the Rock Island Ferry.
Now onto links for the week.
My Work This Week:
Last week was the Brave Books storytime held at public libraries across the US. But how did these events go? That, plus this week’s unbelievably extensive book censorship news roundup, over .
The Feminist Book Club launched a Go Fund Me to help turn their rad company into a worker owned coop last month in honor of their 5th anniversary. Unfortunately, they’ve experienced
twothree recent office break-ins and now need to raise funds to replace their equipment. Get to know the Club and drop some $$ to help ‘em out if you feel so called. The Feminist Book Club selected Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World as one of their titles in April 2018 and it led me to befriending a gal who was my rock through infertility treatment over the following years.I’m talking about space books on this week’s episode of All The Backlist.
This isn’t my work but it honors my work: the American Association of School Librarians has issued a commendation for my censorship news roundup and archive. I’m humbled and honored.
Two of my anthologies, (Don’t) Call Me Crazy and Body Talk are on sale this month at whatever your preferred ebook vendor.
What I Read & Heard This Week:
The FDA has approved a pill to help with postpartum depression [gift link]. This is huge–the medication works fast and is only a two-week course. Yes, we need better systems and a whole new level of support to help new parents, but until that happens, medication access for individuals is going to save lives.
Speaking of mental health, this is an older piece but one I just encountered. We know about adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and how ACEs are related to complex post traumatic stress disorder. But groundbreaking 2019 research explored the concept of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) and what contributes to children growing up with better mental health. Lindsay Braman links to the study and lays out those seven PCEs in a visually appealing, easy-to-grasp way. This is research that is useful for anyone who works with young people and will be worth citing in censorship-related arguments.
Not one, but two, different proposals to ban people under 18 from using public libraries. In a world where there are virtually no spaces children can be, why bother having kids? They’re just forced to be shoved away, in private. The “think of the kids” nonsense from book banning bigots is simply their way to shove women back into the kitchen and children into submitting to their beliefs about them being little adults who can be groomed into the next generation of cishet white christian nationalists. I feel for my kid and how much the world hates her. She can’t be herself anywhere she goes unless it is very specifically designated for kids (read: expensive play places) and when you take a kid into a space adults believe is just for them, it’s fun to be parents who experience the judgment of other adults. I will hold off on my rant about how it is the so-called lefty, open-minded folks who are actually the worst instigators of this (the above links are proposals from the actual bigots but the far left and far right are much more aligned than not). These two library age restriction stories touch on both why parental mental health is terrible *and* how we fail to provide PCEs for young people.
Have hobbies died in favor of the side hustle? At what point is monetizing a hobby shifting it from hobby to, well, work? I think about this a lot. When capitalism runs our work lives and our work lives become the bulk of our lives, it is not a leap to suggest participating in capitalism on the individual level feels like taking some of that power back. Plus, well, we’re all poor.
Related: the American dream has lost its hustle. We can’t decide what we’re doing in our capitalist hellscape, can we?
This episode of American Hysteria on Barbie and her place in cultural history is a must-listen.
This week’s Sunday newsletter is a longer one that I hope helps give you some language to answer questions you might be seeing if you’re a free speech/anti-censorship advocate.
–Kelly