👉🏽 Register for Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club here (Monday, 1/18) 👉🏽 Register for Disrupt the Narrative: Writing Through Chaos* here (Sunday, 1/24).
Questions? Conundrums? Ask away. Would love to see you and be together.
photo by Jonatan Pie on Unsplash
Good morning.
I am not the greatest at turning around snappy commentary. It takes me however long it takes to feel through stuff and then regurgitate anything remotely astute or (ideally) helpful. And, after many years of experiencing anger as one of my foremost, baseline emotions, I am cautious about rants (my own, I mean - don’t get me wrong, I love a good rant).
Everything running through me today feels insufficient. Even love. Which I send to you anyway, even as I acknowledge its insufficiency.
If I can offer one small thing, and in honor of the name of this here newsletter:
let’s slow down.
We are in dangerous, chaotic times. I’m not saying look away; never, ever that. I am saying (I am reminding myself) that it’s possible to not get hooked into the swirl. I am saying that it’s precisely inside these moments that would seek to pull me off my center, back into the dangerous place of not knowing how to deal with what I’m feeling, of all that would overwhelm and level me, that familiar and painful place I have fought so damn hard to transform—I am saying that what there is to do is to feel my body. My feet on the floor. Breath in my lungs. Skin, muscle, skeleton. Hella tears. All the fire. I am alive, I am here, I have a say. I am at the mercy of nothing, and no one, and I have a great responsibility.
My dream with this newsletter is community. Let me know how you are in the comments below 👇🏽. I would love to start a conversation. How can we support each other? What resources are seeing you through, slowing you down?
I am here. I love you. Keep going.
xxoo dani
⛓ Links for you, my bunnies. It’s a, uh, mixed bag this week, isn’t it? Links reflect as much:
If the question we’re willing to ask, however, is “how should we act if we, ourselves, are the hostage-takers?” then the answer is more difficult but leaves us with much more agency. Because here’s the thing. Your local school board is just as much under siege by white parents as the Capitol building was yesterday by MAGA commandos. Your mayor is just as hemmed in by white fraternal orders of police and white development groups as your elected officials were by the gun thugs in DC. The same is true for your local zoning board, your State Legislature’s Revenue Committee or your local transportation authority. Just as not all heroes wear capes, so too is it true that not all hostage-takers carry flash bombs and wear deer-hunting camo.
***Also check out Garret’s “Barnraisers Project” which coaches and trains white people to organize their friends, neighbors and colleagues for racial equity. I’m excited to be part of the first cohort that starts next week.
🐕 “OK, Caesar, Let’s Go Home” - as a single, child-free woman in her mid-thirties who spends her days talking more to her dog than other humans, this got me all choked up for my Tater “Caesar doesn’t give a hoot about my existential crisis.” (any of y’all who have found solace in your pets these days will dig this one). Also click here for a poem by Saeed (don’t forget to read it out loud (but you were expecting me to say that, weren’t you)).
📯 This fucking guy is a virtuoso French horn player who put a spot with the San Francisco Symphony on hold to fall back on his other career, which is, you know, viral epidemiology. I’m being silly but really it’s just lovely and I just adore humanity (yep, still do).
👑 My queen, Heather Cox Richardson, talking to Bill Moyers on his podcast about this week’s fuckery at the capitol. Also subscribe to her newsletter here if you aren’t already. I am not exaggerating when I say that her nightly missives have kept me tethered to reality this past year.
🎬 I feel kind of embarrassed by how much I’ve been posting about Moonstruck recently? Are there any other superfans out there or do y’all just think I’m a weirdo (maybe don’t answer that): “Moonstruck” is a film that never winks at its audience; it seizes them in a firm embrace, kisses them on both cheeks and forces them to sit down and eat something. As a result, people hold back tightly to it, whether they first encountered it in the theater, as a VHS tape, on Hulu or on DVD. Coming across it is like finding a dollar on the sidewalk.”
Thank you so much for being a part of this community. If you like this newsletter, please consider leaving a comment, sending it to a friend or subscribing. Or email me and say hi, I’d love to hear from you.
Share this post
23 // let’s slow down.
Share this post
Quickly:
👉🏽 Register for Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club here (Monday, 1/18)
👉🏽 Register for Disrupt the Narrative: Writing Through Chaos* here (Sunday, 1/24).
Questions? Conundrums? Ask away. Would love to see you and be together.
Good morning.
I am not the greatest at turning around snappy commentary. It takes me however long it takes to feel through stuff and then regurgitate anything remotely astute or (ideally) helpful. And, after many years of experiencing anger as one of my foremost, baseline emotions, I am cautious about rants (my own, I mean - don’t get me wrong, I love a good rant).
Everything running through me today feels insufficient. Even love. Which I send to you anyway, even as I acknowledge its insufficiency.
If I can offer one small thing, and in honor of the name of this here newsletter:
let’s slow down.
We are in dangerous, chaotic times. I’m not saying look away; never, ever that. I am saying (I am reminding myself) that it’s possible to not get hooked into the swirl. I am saying that it’s precisely inside these moments that would seek to pull me off my center, back into the dangerous place of not knowing how to deal with what I’m feeling, of all that would overwhelm and level me, that familiar and painful place I have fought so damn hard to transform—I am saying that what there is to do is to feel my body. My feet on the floor. Breath in my lungs. Skin, muscle, skeleton. Hella tears. All the fire. I am alive, I am here, I have a say. I am at the mercy of nothing, and no one, and I have a great responsibility.
My dream with this newsletter is community. Let me know how you are in the comments below 👇🏽. I would love to start a conversation. How can we support each other? What resources are seeing you through, slowing you down?
I am here. I love you. Keep going.
xxoo
dani
⛓ Links for you, my bunnies. It’s a, uh, mixed bag this week, isn’t it? Links reflect as much:
🙌🏾 As per usual these days, Garrett Bucks speaks it so well.
***Also check out Garret’s “Barnraisers Project” which coaches and trains white people to organize their friends, neighbors and colleagues for racial equity. I’m excited to be part of the first cohort that starts next week.
🐕 “OK, Caesar, Let’s Go Home” - as a single, child-free woman in her mid-thirties who spends her days talking more to her dog than other humans, this got me all choked up for my Tater “Caesar doesn’t give a hoot about my existential crisis.” (any of y’all who have found solace in your pets these days will dig this one). Also click here for a poem by Saeed (don’t forget to read it out loud (but you were expecting me to say that, weren’t you)).
📯 This fucking guy is a virtuoso French horn player who put a spot with the San Francisco Symphony on hold to fall back on his other career, which is, you know, viral epidemiology. I’m being silly but really it’s just lovely and I just adore humanity (yep, still do).
👑 My queen, Heather Cox Richardson, talking to Bill Moyers on his podcast about this week’s fuckery at the capitol. Also subscribe to her newsletter here if you aren’t already. I am not exaggerating when I say that her nightly missives have kept me tethered to reality this past year.
🎬 I feel kind of embarrassed by how much I’ve been posting about Moonstruck recently? Are there any other superfans out there or do y’all just think I’m a weirdo (maybe don’t answer that): “Moonstruck” is a film that never winks at its audience; it seizes them in a firm embrace, kisses them on both cheeks and forces them to sit down and eat something. As a result, people hold back tightly to it, whether they first encountered it in the theater, as a VHS tape, on Hulu or on DVD. Coming across it is like finding a dollar on the sidewalk.”
🗣 Platforms Must Pay for Their Role in the Insurrection: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have spent years fomenting and enabling yesterday’s violence at the Capitol. Policymakers need to do something about it. May it be so.
👥 Making Sense of the Facebook Menace
💔 Finally, and I’m sure you’ve already seen this but, yeah. We had some celebrations this week too, you know?
Thank you so much for being a part of this community. If you like this newsletter, please consider leaving a comment, sending it to a friend or subscribing. Or email me and say hi, I’d love to hear from you.