This one is coming to you fast and loose, a day late and a dollar short. I’ve been upstate with the family for the week, generally screen-less, swimming and grilling in between rounds of Bananagrams from the porch when the skies opened up. Our neighbor Bruce passed away and his obituary is the most moving thing you’ll read here, by a long shot. A long life, extremely well-lived. Here’s a collection of bits and bobs, all for you:
Trailhead signs have been multiplying thanks to the Champlain Area Trails, a nonprofit creating public trails on private property. Since 2009, they’ve pieced together 80 miles of hiking paths. “People deserve to be able to walk into the woods and not be burdened with signs that say, forbidden, or, private property” says Bill Harbison who hosts one of the trails on his private property in Willsboro. Their long-term goal is to create a trail system around Lake Champlain and eventually connect them to trails in the Adirondack Mountains, Vermont, and Quebec.
Trying to light a charcoal grill with no lighter fluid? We were stumped but Kira did some light internet research and hacked it, subbing vegetable oil instead. You twist paper towels, soak in the oil and tuck down into the coals. It’s just as effective with the added bonus of no smelly fumes.
The bathing machines of the Victorian era were invented by Quaker Benjamin Beale - cabins on carts that would be rolled out to sea so women could change and enter straight into the water, without having to cross the beach in their swim costumes. Most of them didn’t know how to swim so a “dipper” could also be hired, a strong person from the same sex who would essentially push them into the water and pull them out when they were done. The bathing machine went out of fashion by the 1920s but some had their wheels removed and survive today as beachside huts.
I was riveted by this profile on Italian rapper Ghali, the son of Tunisian immigrants who has been outspoken about how migrants are being treated in his country. “Those born in Italy to stranieri — or foreign — parents are known as the seconda generazione, as in second-generation immigrants. (Children born of immigrant parents in the United States are considered “first generation” Americans.) In a looser definition, it also refers to individuals who arrived younger than 18, as well as those who, like Ghali, have gained Italian citizenship. As of 2018, Italy had roughly 1.3 million second-generation minors in that broader sense, three-quarters of whom were born in Italy. They made up 13 percent of Italy’s under-18 population.”
The concept of the hedgehog's dilemma from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “One cold winter's day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order through their mutual warmth to prevent themselves from being frozen. But they soon felt the effect of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from which they could best tolerate one another.” Forever torn between the need for mutual warmth and the unavoidable pain of the spikes, only showing our sharpest edges to those closest to us — human intimacy in all of its paradoxical glory.
Childcare is community organizing, quite literally the building block that is leading to policy changes. “As the labor movement experiences a resurgence and mainstream feminist movements reassess their relation to motherhood, it’s past time to recognize the importance of child care to organizing among working mothers—and the importance of working mothers to movement-building. At worker centers across the country, those discussions and innovations are already well underway.”
Are you a continuer or a divider? Meaning, have you always been the same person or do you look back and see distinct chapters of your life where you don’t recognize yourself? And what criteria are you factoring in, given that we all evolve throughout the course of our lives while retaining core consistencies? A debate that the Supper Club group chat has unpacked to no end. I remain… divided?
Desobediencia Perfecta, a film production house exploring the stories of queer and lower-middle-class Guatemalans, photographed by Juan Brenner. “Most of the collective’s 14 members were raised in conservative Catholic households, but many of them don’t practice the religion anymore. Instead, they’ve found solace and chosen family through art.”
Visual effects workers at Disney-owned Marvel have voted in favor of joining a union, standing “as proof of concept for the overall viability of an industry-wide unionization push.” It’s a playbook animators set in motion in February resulting in the Animation Guild. I listened to this Deadline podcast episode via Kishori featuring Lilly Wachowski, Craig Mazin, and Jason Blum. It is an illuminating listen on Day 103 of the strike, covering everything from the conundrum of AI, the Ponzi scheme that is Netflix, and how they would end the strike if they were AMPTP executives.
The wildfires in Maui are devastating, the result of a dry summer, strong winds from a nearby hurricane and the climate crisis. The death toll continues to climb and the historic city of Lahaina, once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, has been destroyed. Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, currently staffed 24/7 in the wake of the wildfires, is helping pregnant and postpartum people who are often overlooked in climate disasters.
“Often times people in government are not people who have been pregnant or given birth so it is not on the top of their list the same way that we saw with the COVID response,” said Tanya Smith-Johnson, a doula, midwife and policy director for Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies. It’s why they built their mobile health clinics to reach pregnant people who were scared to leave their house during COVID. “It is always the same when things happen. Who is thinking about women and children and families and what their needs are? It takes people who’ve done it, who care about people, who have birthed,” she said.”
I recently found out that Mariame Kaba has been writing an incredible newsletter titled
. Her abolitionist work has been life-changing for me. She recently wrote about Chicago Community Jail Support:“They recognized a need and organized themselves to meet it. They are lessening suffering. That is a whole lot. This type of mutual aid work pushes people to get active where we can make the most difference which is LOCALLY. We can save each others’ lives by coordinating to meet our survival needs, by offering material relief. This work also often mobilizes us to take on public officials, landlords, and employers at the local, state, and federal levels, and it fosters a ready-made community for that work. So mutual aid doesn’t preclude systemic changes, it usually enables them. People are being changed as they change others. This is something to build on. Who knows where it leads? We don’t know and it’s still worth doing.”
A perfect distillation about how mutual aid has been central to me as we’ve shape-shifted throughout the pandemic and beyond.
Field trip!
What: Second Sundays, open house featuring live music, food and workshops
Where: Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
When: Sunday August 13, 12-7PM
Till next time,
ASK