💜(10/3) the creativity for good friday five

Happy (happy?) Friday, y’all!

I’ve had another very strange week. We buried my father-in-law (a wonderful man I wrote to you about last Friday) on Monday, and the days since have been an exercise in managing grown-up feelings, big-kid feelings, little-kid feelings, attempts at logistics, and much less successful attempts at not just flat-out falling down in exhaustion.

This week also contained Yom Kippur, which, as I’ve written about in the past, is my favorite day of the Jewish year (props to Hey Alma for re-posting this one every year so that I get a click boost!). It’s the one holiday of the year where I do my best to attend services, and the liturgy — while challenging and controversial — is, in my opinion, some of the most meaningful. This year, coming off of a shortened shiva (Yom Kippur is one of the holidays that “cancels out” the traditional seven days of formal mourning) and all its associated exhaustion, I didn’t manage to get to synagogue. I did, however, crawl into bed at 7:30 with my five-year-old and livestream services with her, and while I don’t think Kol Nidrei will be her favorite service anytime soon, it still made for a surprisingly special experience.

All this is to say that today has been my first day as a “real” person since last week, and my brain is pretty much mush. But next week, I’m looking forward to diving in on edits for Book 2 and research for (shhhhh) Book 3 — I can’t wait to tell you more!

your friday five!

this week’s highlights on creating for good

1. What if we cancel the apocalypse? (Elia Ayoub for New Line Magazine)
   This came up on my BlueSky feed this week, and was a genuinely fascinating — and honestly delightful — exploration of solarpunk not just as a genre of speculative fiction, but also as a framework for grappling with real-world doomerism, violence, and climate grief. This line in particular stood out to me:
   
   “There are only so many ways one can be told that the future is going to be dark. At some point, there has to be concrete imaginaries readily available for anyone who wishes to cancel the apocalypse.”
   (emphasis added)
   
   When we think about creativity as a force for good, this is what it means: Imagination as a tool for telling the apocalypse to fuck directly off.
   

2. The Rebel Ever After Podcast (created by Ella Dawson)
   Ella’s podcast is a must-listen for anyone who loves romance novels and progressive politics, understands that both reading and writing are political acts, and isn’t afraid to get into The Discourse. It is my comfort podcast. It says, fuck you, we don’t need anymore billionaire romances. Or cop romances. Or nazi romances. More people should say that, I think!!!
   

3. Jane Fonda Relaunches Committee for the First Amendment With Support of 550 Celebrities Including Pedro Pascal, Viola Davis and More (Jack Dunn for Variety)
   When it comes to giving the middle finger to fascism and political violence, Jane Fonda has been walking the walk for decades — she started out protesting the Vietnam War, has been arrested six times since 1970 (including spending her 82nd birthday in jail), and has pretty much dedicated the majority of her non-acting time to political and activist work.
   
   Young people like to think that they’re at the forefront of everything, but Jane (and many of her contemporaries) are a reminder that this work is intergenerational. It’s not enough to just teach our friends and siblings and children, we need to learn from our elders, too.
   

4. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? The Power in Our Relationships With the People Next Door (Rebekah Brandes for Nice News)
   Back in June, I wrote about hosting a gathering for our neighborhood, just about a year after we moved from New York to Massachusetts. As part of that newsletter, I wrote,
   
   “[o]ne of the things we were most surprised by was just how excited people were about finding ways that they could connect, come together, and help out. I had put together a little sign-up sheet where people could give their contact information and check off anything they might be willing to do to support one another — things like childcare, help with lawn care or snow removal, bringing over a meal if someone is sick, helping with transportation to stores or appointments, etc — and I was stunned not just by how many people put their phone numbers down, but by how many people checked off almost every box.”
   
   There were a number of people who reached out to me after that newsletter asking for ways they could cultivate (…or “create”, if you will 👀) better relationships with their own neighbors. If you were one of them: This article is for you!
   

5. The Resilience of Nature Gives Jane Goodall Hope (Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams for Literary Hub)
   We lost another great this week, and man, wouldn’t it be great to go a week or two without having to say that?
   
   This LitHub article is actually an excerpt from The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, which Goodall and Abrams co-wrote in 2021. In it, Goodall writes,
   
   “We still have so much to learn— we’re like babes in the wood when it comes to really understanding nature. We haven’t even begun to learn about the myriad of forms of life in the soil beneath us.”
   
   In honor of Dr. Goodall, spend some time with the natural world this week. Go outside. Step on some crunchy trees. Play with an animal. Hug a tree. Create something about the experience.
   
   What did you learn?

See you next week!

💜Shelly