Month: July 2024

Now that I have your undivided attention, I’d like to tell you about my day. I’m fussy about books that make it into my home library reference collection, and always borrow from a library first before anything makes the cut. “Making Things” @_making_things is one such book with the kind of making we can do to resist the demands (where we can) of the capitalist society we live in. Making useful everyday items that are also beautiful in their utility and simplicity, doubly so, considering many of the tools and materials needed we tend to already have handy or can improvise or repurpose with basic camp-craft skills and supplies, many we can make ourselves or find at the local hardware store, thrift shop or craft store. With @bookshop_org offering free shipping this week, it’s a great way to support independent bookstores, and do an activity/craft that is fun to do and can revive flagging spirits. It’s called craftivism.
After reading in print, I turned to my iPad and whoops, slipped right into social media. Thank goodness for @thecurvycapsule post on history and current events, in which she mentions the Reichstag Fire. I’d heard of the Reichtag Fire, and the post prompted me to do my own reading and research because it echoes so much of what my coterie and I have been discussing on the daily for years now. I began with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s account of the Reichstag Fire, followed by a Harper’s Magazine @harpersmagazine essay from 2017 by journalist Marsha Gessen entitled “The Reichstag Fire Next Time” (prompting me to add James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time,” to my book queue). I continued with a Smithsonian Magazine @smithsonianmag piece from the same year by Lorraine Boissoneault sharing more on the story of the fire.
I love having deeper, more thoughtful and meaningful discussions about these topics and while it can happen here on Instagram, many times it’s happening so fast, I can’t process it as well as I can by actually reading well-written works of interest. Hence, I engage; I disengage. I love history, both learning it and living it, but reliving it? Especially another Reich. No thank you.

What to write about? It’s hard for me to continue to post sentiments here that appear oblivious to what’s happening in the world around me. One thing I decided on my latest break is that while I don’t care to perpetuate trauma drama as a regular thing here (I’d much rather shoot my mouth off in my local community, within my family and so on, where I might actually have more impact), I do want to remember the suffering that continues around the world, sanctioned historically by my own government as well as those of other countries. How will we atone? Our latest atrocity being the rampant “legal” slaughter of human rights here on our own turf, as our flawed democracy continues to decline. Still, the sun rises, the sweet peas are blooming with mad abandon, and my dog comes in from the garden, with much of its detritus, seed pods, twigs, leaves, and the like clinging to her fur, and she makes me laugh. It’s these little things that provide momentary solace. That, and my knowing that there ARE others out there paying attention too, trying to keep their hope afloat, sometimes sharing their moments of joy, other times speaking to despair. The wabi-sabi, ying-yang of our human existence here on Earth. Sometimes we just need to know we are not alone, and let others like us know they are not alone. When we no longer know that, that is the time for true despair. Yet we’ll still cling to our tattered hopes, won’t we?