One thing I love about writing this newsletter every week is that, unlike a tweet or an instagram comment, I can take my time. Weeks like last one, where major news breaks just hours before I hit send, are pretty rare. So last week's intro was more raw than usual, less considered. 

After more consideration, I would write it differently. I wouldn't use the word schadenfreude, because it does not capture the complexity of what I feel about this president, who has shown so little regard for the lives of others, being stricken with a potentially deadly virus. I'd still acknowledge that tiny thrill I felt, but instead of diagnosing that as pleasure in someone else's pain, I'd probably characterize it as a strange burbling hope that maybe someday there will be consequences for the actions of this man and his enablers. I wouldn't use that Melania quote, which as reader Amy pointed out, I took out of context. And I'd write a very different subject line, this time quoting the brilliant Sabrina Hersi Issa: "He is a symptom, not the disease."

This is something else I love about writing a weekly newsletter: I can't go back in time and revise, but I can try to write something better today. The weeks just keep coming, each one a fresh opportunity to find better words to capture the strange experience of being present for this moment in history.

Speaking of staying present in the strangeness, on the podcast we talk about being 6 months deep in this pandemic, and how we're coping.

This is the most unequal recession in modern history. Every Black woman has faced a Mike Pence. As WNBA players double down on social justice, they won't say the name of one particular team owner. What does it mean to preserve Black art and culture well into the future? Huge fashion moments inspired by Black culture. Rest in power Monica Roberts, who was a pioneering Black trans journalist. The public reckoning that followed the Holocaust shows a path forward for the United States. What we can learn from 15 hours of Amy Coney Barrett's speeches. A profile of dissenting daughter Claudia Conway. A political scientist's guide to following the election. Elected officials seek out Native expertise to prevent wildfires, and why we need to keep talking about extreme heat, too. The case for a new Bauhaus-style school. A Joan Didion's photo captions. I am here for the "not too sweet" dessert trend. A miscarriage and heartbreak on a road trip. On #FreeBritney and pop-star emancipation narratives. A dispatch from Redding, California, where the School of Supernatural Ministry is rapidly growing. What happens after you write a viral poem? Why you should read the acknowledgments at the end of every book. We're all nesting now. Sadness has moved in. "This sense that we are missing so much that we never even got to do, missing people that we have never even met, missing a country we have never actually known."

Pie charts are brought to you by paying members. Become a paying member for just $5/year. Whew, that's cheap!

---

Psalm 1 of O Ye Tongues by Anne Sexton, read by Tina Antolini, Leila Day, and Avery Trufelman. Nobel laureate Louise Glück reads three of her poems. Folk games of TikTok. And The Sea in the Sky, a new audio drama by pal Jackson Musker!

---

Celebrating Indigenous People's Day by knowing whose land you're on.  Native Land is an interactive map that has helped me better understand pre-colonial North America. You can see which Native people live(d) in a given area, the treaties that affected how that land was taken, and the languages spoken there. I linked to the site back in 2017, and it's worth mentioning again because, since then, this site has become a regular resource for me. When I travel (remember traveling?), I like to check the map to find out about the place I'm visiting. 

I'm also reading about the importance of tribes controlling their own health data, and ceremony as protest.

Hello Canadian pals! Aminatou and I are doing two virtual book events this month:
Oct 16: LitFest Alberta
Oct 30: Toronto Public Library

Also, Big Friendship is on super sale at all Canadian ebook retailers until October 19. I'm talking $2.99 CAD!