EPISODE 336: SHINE A LIGHT THROUGH AN OPEN DOOR

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Short one this week, in honor of the fact that my D key has now joined my A key in refusing to make letters and my little finger is getting really tired of having to hit the tab and caps lock keys as replacements.

FOUR INSPIRING QUOTES
I saw the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man at a Writers’ Guild event tonight. Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy deliver outstanding (and largely wordless) performances. Given the subject matter it’s going to be a popular film, I suspect.

Afterwards the writer talked about how strange it seems to him that we were willing to take such huge risks under such difficult circumstances to go to the moon, but we’re still holding back on dealing with climate change.

Maybe you read that the UN’s most recent climate report has just come out? Guys, you won’t believe it, but we do not seem to be doing too well. Basically we have 12 years to make radical changes worldwide or prepare for serious social and climate effects.

Now I don’t want to overreact, but that doesn’t sound, ummm...great? But I was really inspired by this reaction from climate change reporter Eric Holthaus:

If you take the report literally — which you should! — the decade of the 2020s is about to be the most important years in all of humanity. We’re about to enter one of the most creative, meaningful, transcendent eras of human history — simply because we must. That makes it an exciting time to be a scientist and writer (support my work here, if you’d like).

And the solutions can help eliminate extreme poverty and the roots of systemic oppression — existential problems, like climate change, are often symptoms of the same bigger problems.

If that is the world we need to will into being — one that centers justice, equity, and respect for all people and all non-human species — then so be it. Through the stark black-and-white of climate data, this report is now the clearest call ever made to motivate bold ideas into action.

It’s nice to meet people with more to say than shrieking, you know? And also nice to be given something to actually chew on, rather than just newsicles and top ten lists.

In Australia there was something similar this week. The leader of the opposition, a guy named Bill Shorten, is sitting pretty right now. The government pretty much self-imploded over the summer (and frankly had not been going well for quite some time beforehand), there’s going to be an election sometime in the next nine months. Shorten’s party getting into office is looking more and more likely.

But here’s what he had to say to those kinds of evaluations.

And then I was reading Laura Olin’s newsletter (which you absolutely should sign up for, every week it’s got ten links to great things), and she referenced a talk by Alice Walker, which I then discovered is actually part of a something a little larger that Walker gave on life and dealing with disappointment and the beauty to be found in our flawed humanity.

All we own, at least for the short time we have it, is our life. With it we write what we come to know of the world. I believe the Earth is good. That people, untortured by circumstance or fate, are also good. I do not believe the people of the world are naturally my enemies, or that animals, including snakes, are, or that Nature is. Whenever I experience evil, and it is not, unfortunately, uncommon to experience it in these times, my deepest feeling is disappointment. I have learned to accept the fact that we risk disappointment, disillusionment, even despair, every time we act. Every time we decide to believe the world can be better. Every time we decide to trust others to be as noble as we think they are. And that there might be years during which our grief is equal to, or even greater than, our hope. The alternative, however, not to act, and therefore to miss experiencing other people at their best, reaching toward their fullness, has never appealed to me.

I have learned other things: One is the futility of expecting anyone, including oneself, to be perfect. People who go about seeking to change the world, to diminish suffering, to demonstrate any kind of enlightenment, are often as flawed as anybody else. Sometimes more so. But it is the awareness of having faults, I think, and the knowledge that this links us to everyone on Earth, that opens us to courage and compassion. It occurs to me often that many of those I deeply love are flawed. They might actually have said or done some of the mean things I've felt, heard, read about, or feared. But it is their struggle with the flaw, surprisingly endearing, and the going on anyhow, that is part of what I cherish in them.

Then, there’s this story of Angelenos who undertake to care for the guy who is holding them hostage at a Trader Joe's.

Moss watched his blood drip onto the tiles. She thinks he asked for her help, so she got up, removed her insulin pump from her hip and took off a long shirt she wore over a tank top. She used her shirt to wrap his arm.

All is not lost! And also, if you look around a little, turns out there’s still much to be found! Speaking of which...

THREE GREAT WEBSITE FINDS
The Museum of Rural English Life seems like a place you drive by in some country town on your way to somewhere interesting. It’s got like one room and has pictures of bogs and costs 20 pounds.

But their twitter feed is actually really fun. For instance, there was this thread about a farm diary they found in their offices, which becomes this incredible story. Or there’s this story of a town whose name “Hen Pants”, which leads to great hilarity.

Meanwhile, did you know there is a whole site dedicated to live feeds of animals? For instance, the BEAR CAM.

The Fox Den cam.

The Hummingbird’s nest cam.

The Chipmunk cam.

And the best cam of all cams, The Puppy Playroom Cam.

Finally, there’s this, which I cannot explain, just go there and see where it takes you, it’s not for everyone but it’s kind of wonderful.

TWO SHORT ARTICLES THAT ARE ALSO KIND OF WONDERFUL
Actor Daniel Ratcliffe, currently playing a fact checker on Broadway, does fact checking with The New Yorker, as described in a New Yorker article which is later fact checked.

And there’s this sweet story about doing a skin graft on a purple bear.

ONE: CAPES!
This list of cinema’s greatest capes seems to be in no discernable order and disses Vader entirely – “Darth Vader’s cape is not on this list because it’s a boring cape. I’m sorry, but that’s what it is. There are no real design details and not a single sequin. What are we doing?” (What is wrong with you?)

But it does include Joan Crawford, “the LeBron James of wearing capes”; an amazing GIF of Yul Brenner; and the Rocky Horror Picture Show – “Curry works his cape in this one shot like the rent is due” and therefore all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of thing shall be well.

Keep your head up. Halloween is coming! See you back here soon.