7.15.2025
I have a lot of scattered thoughts this week as I sort and pack and prepare to return to the States. I'll be focusing on some of the more positive influences I turn to when I'm feeling like this - and on Friday I'll be posting from Detroit, so we'll see what passes for useful thinking between now and then.
-JA
We have so much to do to keep things from getting even worse and so much of that begins with the arts. This has been on my mind a lot lately and my favorite living essayist, Rebecca Solnit, discusses the subject with her usual poise and authority in the latest piece from her excellent newsletter, Meditations in an Emergency (link at the bottom).
I've never been more than slightly inconvenienced or annoyed by someone making assumptions about me for my gender or ethnicity but I can imagine it feels pretty bad. She articulates exactly how, and why, and has been for decades. The first time I read her it reminded me of James Baldwin. I devoured most of her catalogue in the lockdown years and I say without qualification that her writing has made me a better person.
We need thinkers like her more than we ever have. The blogging platforms are lousy with sharp analysis and calls to action but they/we suffer from a struggle for attention. And corporate decision makers do not decision-make in the interests of those who can't afford monthly subscriptions.
After six months in Canada I'm more aware than ever of how discourse is bent and manipulated in the U.S. to make the most reasonable, sensible notions about collective stability sound like radical psychosis.
Clarity. We need clarity, dammit. Eloquence is pretty good too.
Rebecca Solnit