In Their Own Words: Monsters, Reflection, Standing Up and Speaking Out.
Today’s must-read on the craft of putting words onto the blankest screen you’ve ever seen, why does it have to be so void of content, do I even know how to string a sentence together, ahhhhhh: “Fuck perfection. Just write.” Breaking news: Mandy Stadtmiller is goddamned delightful, as always.
From Elizabeth Bruenig’s gorgeous reflection on the monster in “Annihilation,” which you should see btw: “Bounty and abundance are everywhere around us, and are usually adduced as positive indicators for society… Yet not all plenitude fosters a sense of peaceful ease.”
In the new issue on race, new National Geographic editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg (the first woman AND the first Jew in that role, holy shit) asked a historian John Edwin Mason to look at how NatGeo has presented race on its pages since 1888. She writes, “What Mason found in short was that until the 1970s National Geographicall but ignored people of color who lived in the United States, rarely acknowledging them beyond laborers or domestic workers. Meanwhile it pictured “natives” elsewhere as exotics, famously and frequently unclothed, happy hunters, noble savages—every type of cliché.”
““I’m scared,” James Schwab admitted to KTVU. “But I need to have my integrity.”” The Bay Area battle between federal immigration enforcement and local leaders continues, as an ICE spokesman quits because he says he was asked “to parrot the Department of Homeland Security’s account that an unspecified number of “criminals” got away,” when Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf told the public of an upcoming ICE action.
As my Rabbi Jessica Zimmerman Graf said, "when we find laws that are not just and don’t comply with our views, it is our obligation to speak up and speak out.” In San Francisco, Congregation Sherith Israel has declared itself a sanctuary synagogue, “committed to aiding immigrant families under threat of federal deportation by offering moral and material support.” As a Jew, and as a member of Sherith Israel’s Board of Trustees, I am proud to have voted for this commitment to human dignity
And finally, When zoos rate animals, Yelp-style: “ok first of all i'm very satisfied much improved over river edition. extremely warm insulation which adds buoyancy. if u like kelp the UrchinCrusher+ is a must on coastal trips. minus one star because it's actually a weasel lol?! #rateaspecies”
Hugs and love, my dearests. Be kind to each other.