Reading List: We've Made It Another Week, And That's A Gosh Darned Miracle.
My dearests, we’ve made it to yet another Friday, and I for one am grateful. Now, is my skin essentially translucent from the lack of sun? Have I started hankering for an animal companion so much that I googled “hypoallergenic cat” even though that is very much not a thing and I am VERY allergic to cats? Did I get super emotional yesterday when the grocery down the street got a shipment of flour because I can now bake myself something I would never otherwise bake? Yes to all of the above my darlings, yes to all of the above.
And hey, thank you all for the lovely notes saying you appreciate this here Missive during the quarantine. Writing these (almost) every morning has been a source of normalcy and joy, and I very much appreciate that you’ll have me in your inbox. Thank you for reading.
TO THE LONGREADS!
Nina Siegal and Josephine Sedgwick, The Lost Diaries of War (The New York Times) - If you read one thing in this Missive today, let it be this. As this stunning collection of primary sources leads with, in 1944 the Dutch minister of education called on the people of the Netherlands to save their personal recollections and memories of the war, so thousands provided their diaries and journals to the government after they were liberated. Now, “the Dutch have launched an effort to transcribe the handwritten or typed pages into digital documents,” and the NYT has included excerpts in this devastating piece, which concludes with the words of a teacher in Delft who writes this on May 6th, 1945: “I’ve had the painful privilege of having experienced an ‘all-out war.’ That is behind us now. With all the strength that’s in us, let’s go for ‘all-out peace.’” So write those journals, friends. We’re living history now and need to document it.
Reed Albergotti, Weed is deemed ‘essential’ in California, but many pot businesses are on the brink of failure (The Washington Post) - First off, if you haven’t read Albergotti and Vanessa O’Connell’s book Wheelmen: Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France, and the Greatest Sports Conspiracy Ever, you can stop right now and get that book onto your e-reader, cuz you’ve got an amazing weekend read ahead of you. So Albergotti is at the WaPo now, and while the topic of how cannabis companies struggle whilst operating in this semi-legal gray zone has been covered very well by other journalists (looking at you, Max! ) over the past few years, Albergotti’s piece looks at the lack of safety net for an industry that can’t tap into federal stimulus funds. Similar pieces were written after the Sonoma wildfires, but there’s an urgency in knowing that businesses deemed “essential” (and they absolutely are btw) are on the razor’s edge of failure at every moment. And personally, I’d love to see Albergotti move even further into this beat.
Jane Meyer, How Mitch McConnell Became Trump’s Enabler-in-Chief (The New Yorker) - I get it, some folks aren’t exactly jazzed about the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. But I hope every Missive reader realizes how critical it is to vote the current occupant of the White House out while flipping the Senate (if you don’t after reading this Missive for as long as you have, I’m not doing my “job”.) If you aren’t feeling that urgency, you’d better read this piece and then head over to Vote Save America to figure out how to help the effort from home. Because I’ve got five words that will flush your brain with endorphins and bring joy to your homebound heart: Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Warren.
Annie Lowrey, Millennials Don’t Stand a Chance (The Atlantic) - Lowrey asks if Millennials are the new lost generation, and though I haven’t finished this piece yet, I’m already nodding my head along to this horrible stat: “Data for Progress found that a staggering 52 percent of people under the age of 45 have lost a job, been put on leave, or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic, compared with 26 percent of people over the age of 45.”
Sandra Upson, The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder (WIRED) - Haven’t finished this one yet, but what I have read is just heartbreaking, but so beautifully written.
Have a restful weekend, my loves. Be kind to each other.
xoxo Amy