Friends,
Here’s 10 Useful and/or interesting things that found me this past month.
Five books I’ve read recently about Palestine. ❤️💚🖤🤍
Not everyone you follow online will be posting about Gaza, and that’s ok.
‘Trust nothing will fall apart if you stop taking it all so seriously. Let it be looser.’
Rebecca Solnit’s How to Comment on Social Media is gold. They’re all hilarious but 14 is special.
14) Nothing exists but social media. No one does anything offline. So the entire measure of someone’s commitment is how much they post about their commitment. Never mind if the noble cause is their day job, the thing they donate to extensively, the volunteer work they do; only the racket made online matters. Let the beginning and the end of thy commitment be the noise you make about that commitment (and others’ lack of commitment), and make it loud.
I also loved the hopeful message in this practical guide by Solnit — What Can I Do about the Climate Emergency? (A LOT! HERE’S HOW!)1
In the restful houses of women who live alone.
(somewhat related, ha) The revenge of the water bottle.
The hot water bottle is still a common household item in some places – such as the UK and Japan – but it is largely forgotten or disregarded in most of the industrialised world. If people know of it, they usually associate it with pain relief rather than thermal comfort, or they consider its use an outdated practice for the poor and the elderly.
(definitely related) A Japanese hot water bottle.
One autumn evening around dusk, filmmaker Henry Davis stopped by a strip mall in his neighborhood in Austin, Texas, and noticed thousands of birds swirling overhead. He had stumbled across the roosting-grounds of migrating purple martins, one of many stops along their annual five-thousand-mile journey from the northeastern United States to southern Brazil. Returning with his camera over the following week, he joined the patchworked community of shoppers, employees, passersby, and avid birdwatchers to bear witness to this momentary confluence of humans and birds.
Related — Everyday British Birds.
in case you missed it:
Caveat: This guide is for people in the US who want to act, because every country has its own laws, structures, movements, problems, and opportunities, so activism isn’t one size fits all.
Solnit is always so good. Will never forget the first essay in Men Explain Things to Me - Hilarious . Thanks for sharing your Palestine reads. Minor Detail sitting on our shelves needing to be read.