Essential prep for the beginning and end of the new year

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Amber the Alchemist

https://zora.medium.com/how-to-ground-your-mind-body-spirit-and-emotions-e55199ddf7b4?source=post_page-----e55199ddf7b4-----------------------------------

Dec 17, 2021·8 min read

Some folks use notebooks to review the old year and plan for the new year. Do you? Image: Getty

You don’t need a crystal ball to tell you that the past two years have been a whirlwind, to say the least. No matter how hard some people have tried to separate themselves from the Collective, the pandemic — along with political…

Image by Ulrike Mai from Pixabay

There’s a bucket in my classroom.

It’s bright yellow plastic with a sturdy black lid. It’s large. It looks like any one of the industrial sorts of buckets you might find in the aisles of Home Depot or in the dusty disarray of a construction site. It lives under my desk, just between a box of printer paper and a crate of student portfolios, and it has been there since 2013. It goes mostly unnoticed from day to day. It’s just a bucket, after all.

In my 16-year career as a high school teacher, I have been through more lockdowns than I can count. Neighborhood shootings, nearby police activity, external threats, and rumor-driven caution have all been past prompters for lockdowns to be enacted. The lockdown alarm at my school is awful — which is fitting. It’s a wall-jarring screech that sends students cowering from its racket even before they have a chance to process its meaning. The students crouch down, away from the floor-to-ceiling windows, and all of their fear and their questions collect in a dense cloud above, pressing down on us with invisible force, rendering us wide-eyed and breathless. It feels like choking.

It’s exhausting.

In the past two weeks, there have been multiple incidents of firearms discovered on my school’s campus. None have been brandished or used. We’ve been lucky.

Sometimes (many times) I think about how I would protect my students if there was an active shooter at our school. I think about the fire extinguisher hanging next to the door and how it might be sprayed or heaved at an armed attacker. I think about the weight of the chairs and desks in my room and wonder how quickly we could push and stack to create a barricade from the snarl of metal and plastic. I think of the fact that most students don’t get cell service in my classroom, which would make it difficult for them to make phone calls or send text messages to their loved ones. I think about what I would do in that razor-thin edge of a moment if I found that I was only thing standing between my students and unimaginable harm.

This morning as I was getting ready for work, I looked in the mirror and thought, “Today *could *be the day. Today our luck *could *run out.” I found myself wondering whether this would this be the last thing I ever wear. I found myself wondering — did any of the students or teachers at Oxford High School look in the mirror before heading to school or work and think these very same thoughts?”

Logical folks will tell me that I’m far more likely to die in a car accident or from cancer. They’re right. I know this because I *am “*logical folks” most of the time. But the logical part of my brain is also the part responsible for telling me to wear a seatbelt and obey traffic laws, and to exercise and eat well. The logical part of my brain is the part that wants to plan for the worst because the logical part of my brain knows that unlikely doesn’t mean *impossible. *This fear isn’t consuming me from the inside out; it’s not keeping me from living my life. Still, every time there’s coverage of another shooting, it’s impossible not to wonder if my students will be the next to say, “We never thought it could happen to us.”

The high school where I teach is a loud and cavernous place. Our students are vibrant and resilient and energetic. The hallways echo with student laughter, door slams, rail taps, thundering footfalls, and the occasional curse word. Every so often, a student will think it’s funny to pound heavily on classroom doors as they skitter by on a bathroom break, and entire classes will seize and jerk with a collective gasp, like any and all composure has been sucked from the room. They’re more than just startled. It takes several moments for them to recover from that split-second surge of belief that *it *could be happening to them.

Those yellow buckets appeared in our classrooms in January of 2013. That was eight years ago. That was the month after Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We were tired then.

That yellow bucket opens. The flat lid flips on black plastic hinges, revealing what looks like a donut-shaped seat. Inside the bucket is an assortment of survival necessities that seem more appropriate to the debris-strewn wake of a natural disaster than a brightly lit public school classroom: a tarp, rope, plastic bags, first aid supplies, dehydrated food items, water, and a variety of other worse-case-scenario items. The bucket, one realizes upon further examination, is meant to double as a toilet in an emergency situation. The words LOCKDOWN KIT scream in glossy capital letters across the curved plastic. It’s a clever concept in its multifunctionality, but it seems oddly incongruous in a classroom setting. It’s unsettling.

Then again, this is the USA.

Most of the time I can forget these fears. They rest in the back of my mind, in a listless state of dormancy, and they go unnoticed for extended periods of time. I don’t constantly fret or worry. I do frequently lose myself in the joyous chaos of the typical day, and those sleeping fears allow my thoughts to linger decadently on Shakespeare or Steinbeck or Cisneros or Baldwin.

But every so often as I’m returning to my desk to check an email or edit a student’s grade, I see that yellow bucket.

Then I’m tired all over again.

“Granite erratic, Dudmaston” by Richard Webb is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse&atype=rich

It was the rock that caught my eye. Dappled with lichen and lighted by the afternoon sun, it appeared to be the perfect place for contemplation. A spot where you could sit and write your novel, ponder your place in the universe, and perhaps reach some kind of equilibrium with the planet.

https://clivethompson.medium.com/?source=post_page-----d64291cea550-----------------------------------

Clive Thompson

https://marker.medium.com/who-was-first-with-a-big-idea-its-often-hard-to-know-d64291cea550?source=post_page-----d64291cea550-----------------------------------

Dec 22, 2021·6 min read

Guglielmo Marconi invented radio in the 1890s — but so did Nikola Tesla and several others. (Photo by Nicolas Buffler)

I recently wrote about the history of “pinch and zoom” — and how Apple didn’t really invent it. Apple executives love to claim they did; Steve Jobs even stood on stage and boasted “boy, have we patented it!”

One email notification led Carla Barnes to question her whole identity and try to find it again. Barnes expected the email — even looked forward to it — but it delivered an unexpected shock. The email held the results of her at-home DNA test. It revealed her ethnicity, a list of her DNA relatives, and a secret her mother kept from her for her entire life. When she opened her results, she didn’t second guess the accuracy of her ethnicity, but the list of relatives the test identified made her question its validity. As she scrolled through the list of people with whom she shared DNA, she noticed some obvious oversights. The test failed to identify any of her family members from her father’s side as DNA relatives.

Barnes’s experience provided her membership in a growing community — those who experience a non-parental event (NPE). An NPE occurs when a person discovers they are not genetically related to the parent or parents who raised them. The acronym first stood for non-paternity event and some use it to mean not parent expected. Others also often use the term MPE, or misattributed parental event, to refer to these situations. People created these different terms and acronyms to be more inclusive of all situations and to make these discoveries more personal and less scientific.

NPEs can result from a multitude of situations, including adoption, sperm or egg donation, kidnapping, rape, adultery, a mistake during IVF or artificial insemination, and a range of other scenarios. While NPEs themselves are not new, it is becoming increasingly easier to discover them. “This stuff has always existed, but we’re just now on the brink of discovering how frequent this is,” Barnes says. The prevalence of and increased accessibility to at-home DNA testing has led many people to discover their own NPE, and those discoveries and the emotional challenges they create have led to the growth of organizations that seek to support those who experience them. NPE Friends Fellowship, a non-profit that aims to support and raise awareness for NPEs, says that 5% to 10% of people who take an at-home DNA test discover an NPE. NPE Friends Fellowship began in June of 2017 as a Facebook group of people who experienced NPEs supporting each other. The group grew to 20 members after a week and more than 1,000 after a year. The group currently boasts more than 11,000 members and grows every week.

And the growth of the at-home DNA test business helps fuel these experiences and these communities. In a 2020 blog post by Ancestry, then president and CEO Margo Georgiadis said that 30 million people “started a DNA journey” worldwide. 23andMe alone has sold more than 12 million of their DNA test kits since they began in 2006. While these millions of tests likely resulted in a large number of NPE discoveries, most users who decide to spit in a little vial do not seek to discover or verify their biological parents. Another Ancestry blog post outlines some of the main reasons users do decide to take a DNA test including seeking out the specifics of their ethnicity, connecting with distant relatives, and making discoveries about their family trees. DNA test takers also often get their test kit as a gift from a loved one as the biggest DNA test companies run sales around the holiday season. In Barnes’ situation, she hoped that taking a DNA test would help fill in the gaps of the family tree that she started researching and building more than a decade earlier. Rather than being able to see it grow more branches, she instead had to watch half of the roots of her family tree die and disappear.

An NPE discovery can take some people on an emotional journey of rediscovering their identity, but for others, the information is as insignificant as what they ate for breakfast. One NPE, who wishes to remain anonymous due to the fact that much of her extended family is unaware of the situation, took a 23andMe DNA test and discovered a half sibling she never knew about. After repeated attempts to convince her parents to explain the half-sibling she found, her mom called her crying and finally admitted that she was conceived through a sperm donor due to infertility issues with her parents. This new information, though, failed to alter her self-perception. “For me, it almost turned into, rather than being this emotional event, it was kind of just a detective, mystery-solving thing,” she says. She does not feel as though she lost any connection to the man who raised her even with the knowledge that they are not genetically related. “Honestly, I don’t care. This doesn’t, from my perspective, change anything. My dad is still my dad,” she says. “Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

“My dad is still my dad. Sure, he didn’t donate genetic material to me, but I think that fatherhood is so much more than that.”

— Anonymous NPE

For many people who discover their own NPE, they question their own identity, not just the identity of their biological parents. “It’s probably like grief of a parent who loses a kid. It’s probably on that level,” Barnes says. “No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.” Those who discover the truth of their ancestry through an at-home DNA test often feel an extra level of hurt than if a loved one had told them. “It adds a betrayal factor on top of the issue in itself,” Barnes says.

An NPE discovery can lead to a person questioning not only who their parents are, but who they are too. | Original photo by Caleb Oquendo

Barnes recalls that the stress and crisis of the situation would wake her up in the middle of the night. Instead of putting her head back down on the pillow, Barnes would instead pick up her phone and start searching the internet for answers to her questions. Googling phrases such as “my dad is not my dad,” “mom had an affair,” and “I don’t know my dad” did not result in any support for Barnes, but she kept trying. Two years after her initial DNA test, she learned the term NPE from a New York Times article. It was then, as the brightness of her phone’s screen shone on her face, that she felt less alone in her experience, and she used the term to find some support and understanding. “I found some communities on Facebook. I found other people who had stories like me, but I had to search for it,” she says. “It took a long time.”

“No one has died, but a part of your reality and your truth of yourself has died when you hear something different.”

— Carla Barnes

Jodi Klugman-Rabb also discovered her NPE situation through an at-home DNA test. But the shock and realization of what the results meant took longer than Barnes’ immediate shock. In fact, the chaos of life, including having young children and a career, kept her from truly understanding the reality presented in her genetic report. Two years after taking the DNA test, while on vacation in Mexico and reading a book poolside, Klugman-Rabb relaxed enough to process her results. The test revealed that she was 50% Scottish and not 50% German like she was expecting. She used this information to deduce that she was not genetically related to the man she believed was her father. This revelation made her rethink who she was. “It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis,” Klugman-Rabb says.

With improved and accessible DNA technology, more and more people are discovering their own NPE and being left to deal with an identity crisis. In the past few years, various support efforts emerged to help NPEs deal with the turmoil that a discovery causes. One of these efforts is the non-profit organization NPE Friends Fellowship. The organization began in 2017 as a Facebook group that was created by NPEs and for NPEs. As it became more in demand, the group expanded to a non-profit organization in 2018. In addition to the original Facebook group, the organization also holds a yearly conference for those in the NPE community to meet each other, works with researchers to get more data about NPEs, and provides grants to help people financially afford to travel to see their newfound biological family. The organization hopes that their efforts will help raise awareness for NPEs and provide them and their affected loved ones with support. “It’s a multi-sided coin. The NPE is at the nucleus of what we do, they’re at the heart, they’re at the core, but we know there’s a ripple effect. So, our long term goals are to make sure that we provide resources and support to that entire ripple,” Rebekah Drumsta, Director of Public Relations at NPE Friends Fellowship, says.

“It destabilizes your sense of identity and creates an identity crisis.” — Jodi Klugman-Rabb

In addition to organizations, individuals are also dedicated to working to help and support NPEs through dealing with their discoveries. After discovering their own NPEs, both Barnes and Klugman-Rabb decided to combine their experiences with their careers to help others in situations similar to their own. Barnes, a licensed professional counselor, specializes in working with NPEs. Prior to her own discovery, Barnes worked as a school counselor, but she decided to open up her own practice in Schertz, TX so that she could provide others in her area with the help and support missing for her when she first took her DNA test.

In fact, like Barnes and Klugman-Rabb, many of those who build communities or create resources to help people who experience NPEs do so to address the lack of awareness, information, and support they experienced after a DNA test revealed a secret in their family tree. Klugman-Rabb, a licensed marriage and family therapist, works with NPEs to help them deal with their discovery and its effects. She also works with parents of NPEs prior to a discovery to help them figure out the best way to tell their child the truth. “The anger is going to be there one way or the other. The hurt and confusion is going to be there regardless, but there’s a way to mitigate it so that it’s understandable,” Klugman-Rabb says. “You just have to give an MPE time to work through the feelings to get to that point where they understand it, and that happens with counseling and the ability to talk about it openly with people in their lives.”

In an effort to educate more non-NPE mental health professionals on the appropriate ways of supporting clients working through an NPE discovery, Klugman-Rabb created a curriculum called Parental Identity Discovery. Through webinars, she uses the curriculum to train mental health professionals all over the country on the topic of NPEs so that there are more resources available for NPEs that are equipped to properly help them. She feels that many education and training programs fail to adequately teach mental health professionals how to properly support someone going through an NPE discovery. By combining her experiences and her expertise, she believes her program will prepare professionals to effectively assist those who discover NPEs in the future. “For most people, they just don’t put it together that it’s an identity issue,” Klugman-Rabb says. “So then I decided, well, I have so much of the clinical background already in place, this makes sense that I put together a curriculum to help other people go through this as well.” She also hosts a podcast called “Sex, Lies & The Truth” with Christina Bryan Fitzgibbons, a genetic and family investigator. In the podcast, they interview real people going through a variety of DNA revelations. Klugman-Rabb hopes that between her curriculum and her podcast that she is able to make going through an NPE discovery a little bit easier for others. She says, “It helps to have a safe place to talk about what you’re going through when you’re scared.”

Photo: Carolyn Raship

9 weeks in 2020. 12 essays. Covid-19.

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John DeVore

https://johndevore.medium.com/scenes-from-quarantine-f22f8fe7dd26?source=post_page-----f22f8fe7dd26-----------------------------------

Dec 20, 2021·76 min read

• Hi. My name is John. This collection is possible because of the support of Medium subscribers. Thanks to them, I’m able to write weekly essays about pop culture, politics, and feelings. If you’d like to learn more, click here.

Prologue: December 19th, 2021

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Ellis Brooks

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Dec 17, 2021·15 min read

Julie Blackmon, Homegrown Food (2012). Pigment print available at Edelman Gallery. Also minted as an NFT and listed at Quantum.

Multiple things can be true at once, even when they appear to be contradictory. Granite, for example, can be both solid and ethereal. Hold a chunk of it in the palm of your hand and it’s clearly a…

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Gwen Frisbie-Fulton

https://gen.medium.com/what-if-we-arent-divided-as-they-tell-us-we-are-5b8ec61a645b?source=post_page-----5b8ec61a645b-----------------------------------

Dec 19, 2021·4 min read

“Do you think we are headed towards civil war?” The question is jarring, but not absurd.

It was two weeks before the 2020 elections and I was sitting in my living room on a Zoom call when it was asked. I glanced over at my child, who was reading on the…

https://medium.com/@lindacastrilli?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

Linda Castrilli

https://index.medium.com/i-took-an-extended-break-from-the-rat-race-here-are-lessons-learned-that-i-never-want-to-lose-942da44c924?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

Dec 16, 2021·6 min read

Photo: GettyImages

In the spring of 2021, I left the corporate job I had been in for the prior seventeen years.

It was the first time since graduating college — and we’re talking early 1990s here — that I had been unemployed. Back then, OJ Simpson wasn’t yet on trial for murder and Prince…

I would like to dismiss 2021 as a terrible, no-good, very bad year, a year to be sept away and forgotten as quickly as possible. After all, it was a year that began with the insurrection and was quickly followed by my ALS diagnosis. Dire on both the public and private fronts. Such a year can’t possibly have been anything other than bad. And yet — it was also the year that I not only had a new book published, I also sold two new books (on the same day!) to come out in 2022. More importantly, it was a year in which I connected in a deeply heartfelt way with so many friends, old and new, near and far. So, as is so often the case with not only years, but life experiences in general, 2021 was a mixed bag.

Still, I feel a need for a cleansing ritual as 2021 comes to a close, an acknowledgment that some things must be cleared away to make way for what comes next. I have a friend and a sister both of whom are avid sweepers. They take their brooms to the floor with such determination and ferocity it is almost scary — you would not want to be a crumb in their paths. I would trust both of them to sweep out the toxins of 2021 and prepare a clean slate for us going forward. I’ll let you know if they rent out their services.

When my husband and I moved, sixteen years ago, to the house where we currently live, neighbors eyed us warily then came over to check us out. They were amazingly direct about hoping we were good people, because the residents who preceded us were definitely not. Those people had harassed the African American kid across the street. They had amassed piles of glass-laden junk that they expected Goodwill to cart away. They irked the postwoman, the utility person, the telephone guy. Everyone had a story of malfeasance. They were all relieved this extended family had moved out.

Several people suggested a saging ceremony was in order, and I, as a lover of ritual, thought *why not. *So we obtained some sage and burned it in a short ceremony in which we said some words about hoping to made the atmosphere of the property more positive and loving. It seems to have worked, as all traces of the former residents’ bad juju seem to have disappeared, and our years here have been happy, including very enjoyable and mutually helpful relationships with our neighbors.

Sweeping and saging are both great rituals to take us over the threshold into 2022. It is, of course, a completely arbitrary crossing, but because we, as human beings, are meaning makers, it doesn’t feel that way, much as we (I) often try to tell ourselves that the celebration of a new year is manufactured. Why do we do this crazy celebrating with drunkenness and resolutions we know we won’t make good on? Because, I think, a new year gives hope a new platform. The things we hope and wish for seem to have a greater likelihood of coming to pass in the shiny new year than they did in the nasty old one.

When I met my now-husband, he had been reading the Tao Te Ching, and he wanted to warn me about the dangers of hope (the hope of being published was then in our sightlines). The Tao Te Ching warns us against the danger and fallacy of hope. “Hope is as hollow as fear,” says the Stephen Mitchell translation. Or, as my husband put it, “Hope is the flip side of despair.” The Tao eschews hope because of its relationship to selfhood which is reputed to be the cause of human suffering. To hope sets us up for disappointment.

After many years of thinking about this, and weighing the pros and cons of hope, I would humbly take issue with this Taoist point of view. I think most human beings need hope to carry on through life’s plentiful challenges. We need to feel that our lives, and the world in general, might improve. Without hope the motivation for doing much, beyond going to work, would quickly dissipate. Why exercise if you don’t hope to improve your health. Why do volunteer work if you don’t hope that someone will benefit. Hope has been a powerful force in the accomplishments of so many great liberation movements. Women and blacks would not have achieved the right to vote were it not for some people with very strong hope. People dared to hope, as Barack Obama knew. We need to hope without getting attached to specific outcomes, but we can’t give up on the entire idea of hope, which is endlessly renewable.

January is named for the Roman god Janus, guardian of doorways and transitions, who is depicted with two faces, one looking forward and one looking back. It’s almost impossible not to do both at this time of year, reflecting back to sweep out the horrors of 2021, and looking ahead with hope for better things in 2022.

As I try to expunge the bad juju of the insurrection and my diagnosis, I am keenly involved in looking ahead with hope and optimism: I’m hoping to be alive and mobile when my books come out in August and September, I’m hoping to get to Denver to see my grandniece after she is born in February, I am hoping to hold onto my manual dexterity for the continued writing of fiction and this blog, I am hoping Congress passes the voting rights bills, I am hoping to continue communicating with as many friends as possible. And finally, I am hoping I can make peace with whatever of these hopes don’t materialize.

I wish you all a smooth transition as you sweep and sage and make the most of hope.

https://scottcdunn.medium.com/?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

ScottCDunn

https://medium.com/creators-hub/id-like-to-be-free-of-it-now-85498e3e5b25?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

Dec 16·5 min read

Photo: Matthieu Spohn/Getty Images

Addictions are usually addictions to consumption. I’m no stranger to addiction. I’ve tried pot, booze, people, sex, food, caffeine, histrionics, TV, and news scrolling. I’ve tasted many things to alter my mood and every one of them came up empty. In the end, it’s still up to me to be happy. No matter how I try to alter my…

https://kellyeden.medium.com/?source=post_page-----2898974e945a-----------------------------------

Kelly Eden

https://kellyeden.medium.com/when-the-world-feels-dark-and-beautiful-in-the-same-moment-2898974e945a?source=post_page-----2898974e945a-----------------------------------

Dec 17·3 min read

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

I’m sure you’ve experienced those strange moments when you feel like your heart is pulled in opposite directions. There are so many experiences with this double-sided quality, where we feel two emotions at once.

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Eve Peyser

https://evepeyser.medium.com/how-people-who-kept-their-new-years-resolutions-did-it-763e1678591b?source=post_page-----763e1678591b-----------------------------------

Dec 17·7 min read

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Time is kinda fake, but the new year nevertheless feels like a clean slate, a moment where you have the opportunity to shed old sins and reinvent yourself anew. For many, this translates to buying a gym membership and vowing to lose 15 pounds. So by March, when you…

Here’s my annual list of favorite books, music, and movies. Art always sustains and nourishes the soul. But for me, music and storytelling felt especially urgent during this pandemic year — a way to connect even when we were cooped up.

Since these are works I have actually listened to, watched, or read, I’m sure I’ve missed some worthy stuff. So if you have your own recommendations to share, I’ll add them to the stack of books and movies I hope to catch up on over the holidays!

Favorite Books of 2021:

• Matrix — Lauren Groff

• How the Word Is Passed — Clint Smith

• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev — Dawnie Walton

• The Lincoln Highway — Amor Towles

• Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City — Andrea Elliott

• Harlem Shuffle — Colson Whitehead

• Cloud Cuckoo Land — Anthony Doerr

• These Precious Days — Ann Patchett

• Crying in H Mart — Michelle Zauner

• Aftershocks — Nadia Owusu

• Crossroads — Jonathan Franzen

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois — Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

• Beautiful Country — Qian Julie Wang

And here’s a reminder of books I recommended earlier this year:

• At Night All Blood Is Black — David Diop

• Land of Big Numbers — Te-Ping Chen

• Empire of Pain — Patrick Radden Keefe

• Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir

• When We Cease to Understand the World — Benjamín Labatut

• Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future — Elizabeth Kolbert

• Things We Lost to the Water — Eric Nguyen

• Leave The World Behind — Rumaan Alam

• Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro

• The Sweetness of Water — Nathan Harris

• Intimacies — Katie Kitamura

Favorite Movies of 2021:

• Drive My Car

• Summer of Soul

• West Side Story

• The Power of the Dog

• Pig

• Passing

• The Card Counter

• Judas and the Black Messiah

• The Worst Person in the World

• Old Henry

• The Last Duel

• The Tragedy of Macbeth

• C’mon C’mon

• Quo Vadis, Aida?

Favorite Music of 2021:​​

• The Only Heartbreaker — Mitski

• I Don’t Live Here Anymore — The War On Drugs ft. Lucius

• Tala Tannam — Mdou Moctar

• Magnolia Blues — Adia Victoria

• Witchoo — Durand Jones & The Indications & Aaron Frazer

• Formwela 10 — Esperanza Spalding

• Gold Chains — Genesis Owusu

• Broken Horses — Brandi Carlile

• Woman — Little Simz ft. Cleo Sol

• Pepas — Farruko

• Go Down Deh — Spice ft. Sean Paul & Shaggy

• Freedom — Jon Batiste

• It’s Way with Me — Wye Oak

• Nobody- Nas ft. Ms. Lauryn Hill

• Nightflyer — Allison Russell

• Montero (Call Me By Your Name) — Lil Nas X

• Patria y Vida — Yotuel, Gente de Zona, Descemer Bueno, Maykel Osorbo, el Funky

• Notice — Tammy Lakkis

• Armash — Teddy Afro

• Write a List of Things To Look Forward To -Courtney Barnett

• Volví — Aventura & Bad Bunny

• Headshots (4r Da Locals) — Isaiah Rashad

• Boomerang — Yebba

• In My Blood — MO3 & Morray

• Ya — YEИDRY

• Rumors — Lizzo ft. Cardi B

• Walking at a Downtown Pace — Parquet Courts

And here’s a reminder of the songs I had on my summer playlist:

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ScottCDunn

https://medium.com/creators-hub/id-like-to-be-free-of-it-now-85498e3e5b25?source=post_page-----85498e3e5b25-----------------------------------

Dec 16·5 min read

Photo: Matthieu Spohn/Getty Images

Addictions are usually addictions to consumption. I’m no stranger to addiction. I’ve tried pot, booze, people, sex, food, caffeine, histrionics, TV, and news scrolling. I’ve tasted many things to alter my mood and every one of them came up empty. In the end, it’s still up to me to be happy. No matter how I try to alter my…

https://evepeyser.medium.com/?source=post_page-----88ec444b6835-----------------------------------

Eve Peyser

https://evepeyser.medium.com/the-best-books-i-read-in-2021-are-all-about-weirdos-88ec444b6835?source=post_page-----88ec444b6835-----------------------------------

Dec 10·6 min read

I might be a professional writer or whatever, but for many years, I have felt deep shame over the fact that I don’t read enough books. It’s not that I hate books or anything. They’re fantastic! It’s just that in this terrible modern world, being able to focus on a book isn’t…

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Kate Green Tripp

https://forge.medium.com/when-life-is-slow-go-even-slower-3a340c067550?source=post_page-----3a340c067550-----------------------------------

Dec 13·3 min read

Photo: Artur Łuczka / Unsplash

Last week, my car needed service.

I typically manage such days of privileged inconvenience by dropping my car at the dealer and grabbing a ride home with a friend or taking advantage of Toyota’s free shuttle service. But in these unusual times, when policies and hours of operation change as county health…

https://philosophyasawayoflife.medium.com/?source=post_page-----3419f18bb86f-----------------------------------

Philosophy as a Way of Life

https://philosophyasawayoflife.medium.com/what-philosophers-think-2020-edition-3419f18bb86f?source=post_page-----3419f18bb86f-----------------------------------

Dec 16·9 min read

[image: the “Thinker” by Rodin outside Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum, Wikimedia; this is essay #351 in the Philosophy as a Way of Life series]

Philosophy, contra popular opinion (even among some philosophers) makes progress. I have written a whole (free!) book (summarized here) about how that works. The basic idea is that philosophy, unlike science, is in the business of discovering, exploring, and refining conceptual landscapes defined by the questions in which philosophers are interested in.

https://sarahstankorb.medium.com/?source=post_page-----532e515e16b4-----------------------------------

Sarah Stankorb

https://gen.medium.com/in-drama-queens-podcast-one-tree-hill-stars-rehash-the-making-of-the-show-the-good-bad-and-532e515e16b4?source=post_page-----532e515e16b4-----------------------------------

6 days ago·6 min read

Photo courtesy of Drama Queens

I’m of an age that for me, first-run WB shows — *One Tree Hill, Gilmore Girls — *felt like guilty pleasures, not only for…

https://medium.com/@lindacastrilli?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

Linda Castrilli

https://index.medium.com/i-took-an-extended-break-from-the-rat-race-here-are-lessons-learned-that-i-never-want-to-lose-942da44c924?source=post_page-----942da44c924-----------------------------------

3 days ago·6 min read

Photo: GettyImages

In the spring of 2021, I left the corporate job I had been in for the prior seventeen years.

It was the first time since graduating college — and we’re talking early 1990s here — that I had been unemployed. Back then, OJ Simpson wasn’t yet on trial for murder and Prince…