Resource Roundup #37
For the week of July 1st.
Well, folks, we made it through June.
Somehow, here we are in July, more than halfway through 2022. If you feel like every day you wake up the world seems to get stranger and stranger, you are not alone. I too feel that way. I’m forcing myself to hold on to hope, which is truly a radical force:
Monday, July 4th, is my birthday (among other things, I suppose) so this newsletter will be taking a long weekend. We’ll be back on Tuesday, with some sort of new rant about the South, I’m sure (hey, at least I can poke fun at myself!). I’m leaving North Carolina today to head to Charleston for a few weeks, and then I will be driving along the East Coast through DC and Philadelphia to upstate New York. If you exist in any of those locations and would like to get coffee, reach out! We’re working on a new initiative here at Good Folk involving on-the-ground storytelling, and I would love to have any— and all!— of you be early participants.
As an early birthday gift from me to you, this week’s Resource Roundup is open to all subscribers. Starting back next week, Resource Roundups go to paying subscribers only except for the last Friday of the month, which is the extended edition. If you have any questions about subscriptions, you can always email us.
I particularly enjoyed this piece in Bitter Southerner about off-grid living in North Carolina and getting back to nature. If you, like me, have always been into the Into the Wild or Last American Man type of stories, this feels like that with a female bend. Reminds me as well of this old New York Times piece that I often recommend.
The Daily Yonder on the importance of rural grocery stores to small communities. It’s so true. In one of the towns I worked in, the only places to get groceries were the gas station and the dollar store. We talk often about food deserts, but I don’t think we really take into account how common they are, and what local grocers do for their communities.
Shout out to my new home city of Durham— this is awesome. Everywhere needs community care!
I think I speak for everyone when I say I am glad to see SCOTUS go on break today. I don’t know how many more life-changing rulings I can handle waking up to.
In good news, however, many Southern states— including Florida and Kentucky— are blocking abortion bans, even if only temporarily.
You need some joy? Me too. American country music reaching popularity in rural Africa should do it.
This is a great interview in The Southeast Review with Oscar Hokeah, citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma and author of Calling for a Blanket Dance. See especially his points on the diversity of rural states:
“The reason I apply this tricultural, intertribal, and transnational element to my debut is because that’s a face of Oklahoma very few know about. We think of large cities, like Miami and New York, being diverse, but we don’t think of Oklahoma as such a place. Once folks spend some time here, then they start to realize how diverse we are. It was natural for me to fit Kiowa, Cherokee, and Mexican cultures together because that’s how I grew up. Like the main character, I’m also Kiowa, Cherokee, and Mexican. They say write what you know, and so that’s what I did. I think it's going to give readers a new look at Oklahoma and broaden their perspective. It’ll be an eye-opening read for many people.”
Fiction from North Carolina writer Sarah Edwards in Joyland. I love this story.
Music from Nashville duo Watkins that just feels like summer.
New to this Substack -- I'm a southern fiction writer and lived in NC for several wonderful years. The picture on this post of Caudill's market grabbed my eyeballs. I used Caudill's Food Market in a short story of mine (Magnolia Nights), a wholly fictional food market created entirely in my imagination from little small town grocers and general stores from when I grew up. I chose the name Caudill in the story rather randomly -- a friend of a friend was a country music songwriter named Caudill, and I just wanted to use that name in the story. To see a photo that matched not only the name I used in the story, but very closely matched the image in my head when I wrote it, was almost unsettling, but in a good way. Thanks!
I love this, happy early birthday Spencer!!!!! <33