Resource Roundup #65
For the week of February 3rd.
Happy Friday Folks,
I’ve just landed in Florida for the weekend, and it appears I’ve carried the rain that’s hung over North Carolina all week with me. Still, there’s something comforting about seeing palm trees again; growing up between the foothills and the coast, the two things that remind me most of home are pine and palm. In this dead of winter, I remind myself that nothing is truly dead. Here are the seasons unspooling, here is the place where we meet. As Emily St. John Mandel writes in Station Eleven: “But these thoughts broke apart in his head and were replaced by strange fragments: This is my soul and the world unwinding, this is my heart in the still winter air.”
Good Folk Book Club launches on Tuesday! I’m so excited to “meet” those of you who have already registered, and if you have yet to do so, you can here. If you don’t finish the book before Tuesday, don’t stress! We’ll reserve some time at our next meeting for further discussion, so just catch up when you can.
A so-called “social recession” doesn’t seem shocking to me, but I absolutely think it will have greater implications than we can imagine. It’s hard enough being in the world, and much harder to be in the world alone.
That being said, here are some thoughts on solitude by Montaigne in The Marginalian.
On brand, The New York Times did some stereotyping of the rural this week, once again describing it as a monolith place full of resentment towards the urban. I like this take on “rural rage” by Claire Carlson in The Daily Yonder (and a great newsletter to subscribe to, if you don’t already).