Resource Roundup #17
For the week of August 13th.
Are you from a rural community or the American South? Share your story with us to be published in an upcoming newsletter!
Well, folks, it’s Friday the 13th again. Like many, I’m thinking of the Friday the 13th where the whole world shut down from Covid the first time. I’m thinking of how I still feel I am processing that year, and yet we are now closer to 2022 than we are to 2020. Strange. Disconcerting. Like many, I’m finding solace in books and music, films and poems. I hope you can find some solace in the resources below too.
I love this new story, “The Low Countries” from Brandon Taylor for The Cut. Especially these lines on heat and humidity: “He gave some thought to going to the river, but it would only be more humid there, the water frothed and filled with bloom and loam from upriver where they were blasting apart a hillside to widen the road. There was nothing to do for it except wait for it to break and lay down like a tired animal.”
For anyone whose TikTok has been filled with Alabama rush content all week, and especially those who are lost, this is a great explanation from Reckon South.
High Country News is explaining teen incarceration in rural America through comics.
This story about death and ghosts— written with the help of AI— blew my mind.
In a win for the modern study of folklore, Mona Lisa Saloy, a Dillard professor and folklorist was announced as Louisiana’s next poet laureate.
A moment of peace for your day:
Alabama-based rock band Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires are soundtracking my weekend.
As is this Black Keys song from 2019 that I somehow, mindblowingly, overlooked on this album.
Orville Peck by Shayan Asadi. That is all.
On revolutionary love, from Valarie Kaur, Sikh activist, civil rights attorney, and author:
