6/30/2022

The 33 Project

Good morning all. It has been an incredibly difficult week or so for many reasons, chief among them the actions of an extremist Supreme Court majority. Many better writers have taken to writing about the repercussions of recent decisions, so I won’t say much more than I feel angry and activated.

1/ This New Yorker piece from Jia Tolentino is worth a read if you want to truly understand why the SCOTUS Dobb’s decision is so terrible.

People you’ll never hear of will spend the rest of their lives trying and failing, agonizingly, in this punitive country, to provide stability for a first or fifth child they knew they weren’t equipped to care for.

Read the piece, get educated and angry, and act. That’s been my way of dealing.

We should demand more, and we will have to. We will need to be full-throated and unconditional about abortion as a necessary precondition to justice and equal rights if we want even a chance of someday getting somewhere better.

2/ I’ve found, one source of comfort can be sought through poetry. I’ve been scrolling the poetry foundation site for some good pieces, and one I especially liked was this poem by Ada Limon:

How to Triumph Like a Girl

I like the lady horses best,

how they make it all look easy,

like running 40 miles per hour

is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.

I like their lady horse swagger,

after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!

But mainly, let’s be honest, I like

that they’re ladies. As if this big

dangerous animal is also a part of me,

that somewhere inside the delicate

skin of my body, there pumps

an 8-pound female horse heart,

giant with power, heavy with blood.

Don’t you want to believe it?

Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see

the huge beating genius machine

that thinks, no, it knows,

it’s going to come in first.

[SOURCE: Ada Limon, "How to Triumph Like a Girl" from Bright Dead Things.]

3/ Another way of coping is with good coffee. There is no better coffee, in my humble opinion, than Parlor. Start with the Kenya blend. You’ll never go back.

Thanks for reading and as always, please share with anyone you think may enjoy this newsletter of weekly recommendations.