Links + recs might be emerging as a regular, monthly feature of this here Substack. Here’s what I’ve been reading & pondering, lately:
First: the world is a mess and the United States is behind a lot of it. The State of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams for a crime no one believes he committed. The Democratic Party has quietly removed abolishing the death penalty from their platform. Hanif Abdurraqib writes better Instagram slides than most people can write novels.
While we’re on the horrors of existing in this absurdist madhouse, Israel has gone rogue and every day we learn new appalling details about how the United States arms, abets and encourages their genocidal warmongering. This week, we learned how the Secretary of State lied under oath to keep the massive flow of weapons going. Arms embargo, immediately.
Second: I spend FAR less time thinking and worrying about the state of the American church these days, but I know a lot of y’all are still all up in that. I’ve been following Lynn Horan’s research on gendered scapegoating and the decline of women clergy, and her full dissertation was just published. There’s a short video overview if you’re not up for an entire manuscript.
And, I know and love kind of a lot of church people who are making very hard decisions about what to do with their property and buildings. You are NOT ALONE. This is, like, The State of Mainline Protestantism Today. My two cents? Do not, under any circumstances, if it is at all avoidable, cede your resources to a denominational bureaucracy that is far less skilled at innovation and creative, local thinking than traditional congregational leaders are.
THIRD: the good news! Government workers are doing all kinds of incredibly fascinating things, solving immediately impactful problems, living lives of deep investment and world-changing persistence. This profile of the guy who made coal mine ceilings safer was ENTHRALLING.
I’m trying to invest my (paltry) dollars in places where they’ll go farther: independent bookstores instead of the Amazon Behemoth, local farmers instead of pitifully declining Kroger, places where the communities that live with the effects make high-level decisions instead of billionaire CEOs and stockholders who will never feel a single implication. In that vein, I’m so happy to have okra in my fridge from Garden Variety Harvests here in Roanoke, which recently secured a community-owned land trust deal to keep the urban land as a farm for the next 99 years.
And, did you know that I now own a bookstore? Letters Bookshop in Durham became a community-owned co-op last month, and I bought in. I’m gonna carry my tote bag everywhere I go.
Other Things I Can Personally Recommend this month include, but are not limited to:
This Trick or Treat Yourself Pumpkin Pie Body Butter from Benevolence Farm feels pretty much like slathering an actual pumpkin pie on my skin, in a good way.
Visiting a different library location than you usually patronize. The South County branch here in Roanoke is GORGEOUS, and I had no idea.
Lunch salads that incorporate all the early-fall pear&apple produce. Current personal favorite: pear/apple, bleu cheese, walnuts + greens.
I bought this Eddie Bauer gauzy button-down on big sale as a layering piece for Alaska and liked it so much I just bought it in a second color.
Making the trip if you can. I got to see multiple dear friends this last month, both because I made time to drive to them and because they drove to me. Sometimes I get stingy with my time and energy, but time with people I love is always, always worth it. Just go.
OKRA. That I GREW.