Thanks everyone who reached out after last week’s letter, it really touched me how much Mira and Louis’ story resonated with you. It’s a funny kind of grief, losing your grandfather’s girlfriend. They were two big personalities who figured out a way to be together in a surprisingly tender way. A couple months ago, I read Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies after a neighbor left their copy on their stoop (one of the greatest perks of living in Fort Greene). She wrote this line that has lodged itself in my brain: “Grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.”
Anne Lamott is also the writer of the best book on writing I’ve ever read, the iconic Bird by Bird. Anytime (every time) I’m stuck on the page, it’s what I return to — it’s the funny yet patient guide that picks me up, dusts me off and sends me right back on my way. I’ve had birds on the brain a lot since our bedroom faces our backyard and this is the time of year when their calls come in earlier and louder than my alarm clock. If you are lacking in the bird call department, sign up for
and you’ll get (U.K.) birdsongs delivered to your inbox on a weekly basis.Bird migration is truly a wonder we don’t marvel enough at. It’s wild to think that every fall and spring, hundreds of millions to billions of migratory birds are passing over our roofs as we sleep, despite everything we keep throwing at them. In North America we’ve lost 3 billion birds since 1970 — 30% of the overall population has now disappeared. If you have binoculars or a telescope, you can watch birds flying at night across the disc of the full moon. Naturalist Scott Weidensaul says “back in the 1940s and '50s, before radar became common, that's how scientists studied nocturnal bird migration, what they called moon watching.” His whole NPR interview is worth a listen and I can’t wait to read his latest book, A World on the Wing.
I am mesmerized by Amanda Bonaiuto’s animations of galloping crows and crying men for Cécile McLorin Salvant’s new music video D'un feu secret. Zeba Blay turned me on to it via her newsletter
. She scours the internet like no other and it is well worth the subscription price!Hart island is a mile-long island off the eastern coast of the Bronx where over a million people are buried, making it the world’s largest taxpayer-funded potter’s field. Homeless individuals, victims of AIDS and COVID-19, stillborn infants and those unclaimed by family have been buried there since 1869. However, it is not open to the public — the only people who have been able to access the island have been the inmates from Rikers Island jail who were paid one dollar an hour to dig the graves.
The Traveling Cloud Museum is an interactive map conceived by Melinda Hunt that is collecting people’s stories to restore their identities. Largely thanks to her efforts, the Parks Department has taken over from the Department of Corrections and hopefully in the future Hart island will finally be an open public cemetery. Hunt envisions keeping it a burial site paid by our taxes since funerals are so cost-prohibitive and maintaining it as “a woodland where people could navigate using their phones, with cloud-based mapping and storytelling—a sort of Traveling Cloud Museum in real life.”
Barbara Lee is running for Senate! It’s going to be a fierce battle and I am equally thrilled Katie Porter has thrown her hat in the ring. Lee was the only member in Congress in 2001 to oppose a broad war authorization following the September 11 attacks. Her interview on Gaslit Nation is a good reminder of what a beacon of strength she has been and continues to be.
So in love with Joy Yamusangie’s work and they’ve having an opening March 8 - London buds, please go for me! I’ll satisfy myself with the playlist they made for the show in the meantime.
I was so moved by this portrait of Raghavan Iyer who made Indian cuisine accessible to American audiences and is now building a database of comfort foods from around the world while fighting stage IV cancer. Iyer says “as an active cancer patient myself, I began to wonder why the great wisdom of the world’s home cooks and healers has not yet found its way into hospital settings and dietary training where it can provide real comfort to an increasingly multicultural patient population.” You can join me in supporting his Revival Foods Project, which is really culinary medicine - here’s hoping it is not only funded but also fully incorporated into our health care system one day.
If you are looking for a memoir to inhale, Dirtbag, Massachusetts by
is a wild ride. It’s disarming in its honesty yet filled with so much joy in the face of an equal amount of struggle. He’s lived many lives, from porn actor to missionary worker to biker bartender and he’s unflinching in his examination of all of them. He also writes the excellent newsletter where he brilliantly interviews writers while taking a walk with them through New York.And finally, Barbara Kingsolver giving the world’s best to do list:
Till next time,
ASK