Kimberly Hirsh

🔖 Read Why PhDs Need to Study Creative Writing.

Awesome piece with an excellent argument. I’ve been tacking this direction for a while and it’s nice to see more scholars talking about it.

🔖 Read We Are All Hostages to Anti-Semitism by Yair Rosenberg

Excellent piece about how anti-Semitism is not individual prejudice, but part of a vast, centuries-old conspiracy theory that undermines people’s faith in democracy.

🔖 Read Hypertext Gardens.

Efficient traversal provides the information readers think they want, but may hide information readers need.

I love the 1998ness of this essay. It’s given me a lot to think about, though it’ll be a while before I figure out how I’d like to apply these ideas.

🔖Read What happens when we die.

Beautiful notes from Maria Popova on the novel Mr g.

🔖 Read The comedy of survival.

🔖 Read “I Feel Very Uncomfortable When People Call Me A Writer”.

Great conversation between Sara Fredman & Dr. Merve Emre. WRITE LIKE A MOTHER is a newsletter fave for me right now. Highly recommend.

🔖 Read Lost Time in COVID.

Overall, we have, of necessity, learned to value the quality of our time over the quantity of it, and to work with the rhythms of our energies.

🔖 Read Everyone should blog.

🔖 Read Celebrate by Writing.

🔖 Read True gender-neutral clothing must go beyond fancy sweatpants.

I love the idea of a shop where clothing is arranged by type (shirts here, dresses there) and silhouette (narrow shoulders over here, broad hips over there).

🔖 Read 6 ways to deal with anxiety and uncertainty this winter.

One way to embrace radical uncertainty is to develop coping mechanisms. This NPR piece suggests some possibilities.

🔖 Read What the Aztecs can teach us about happiness and the good life.

This is an excellent way to think about how to live.

🔖 Read How your brain copes with grief, and why it takes time to heal.

This time last year, my grandmother was in the hospital. She’d been non-responsive for several days but had just started indicating that she was aware of what was going on around her. She recovered enough to talk to my mom on the phone and to be transferred to hospice. She died on January 2. I didn’t go to her memorial service because it was in a county with a very high COVID-19 positivity rate. Not gathering with my people has delayed my grieving significantly.

Mostly, at times when I would normally call her, I forget that she died until I start working out the logistics. I wanted to invite her to watch my dissertation defense. My graduation. To call her and tell her about the postdoc.

I only called her for big things: getting engaged, being present, Christmas, her birthday. There are many granddaughters more communicative than I ever was. But I made sure she always knew about the big moments.

I have to trust that if her spirit persists in some form, she still knows about the big moments. But it’s really hard not to actually hear her talking to me about it.

It’s hard knowing I’ll never again sit in her bedroom and talk with her and my mom late into the night, or lie in bed and watch TV with her until we both fall asleep, or sit out by her pool, or insist she come to the beach. Never amble about the little neighborhood market Wal-Mart around the corner from her house with her picking out groceries, or go to the Chinese buffet with her. There are so many little mundane things that I miss.

She didn’t die of COVID-related illness, but it’s COVID that kept me from seeing her for a scheduled visit in April 2020, that kept my mom from rushing down to Florida to bring her here to visit before Christmas or to be at her bedside when she was in the hospital.

I really appreciate how this article ends by urging people to remember that those of us who have lost loved ones in the past 21 months have traded everyone’s safety for the last moments with the people we love, and that in making that trade we have shifted our own grieving processes in ways we’re still discovering.

🔖 Read if we’re all about to get Omicron, here are 5 tips from a long-hauler (via @agilelisa on Micro.blog).

This is sound advice for living with any chronic illness.

🔖 Read The Scholarship of Sexy Privilege: Why Do I Love Dark Academia Books?

…there will always be fringe groups who parade their complete rejection of the source material and make it their own. This ownership over dark academia gives me the courage to keep going with real academia; to forge a space again in the gaps and achieve immortality in the sharing of ideas without boundaries.

🔖 Read and highly recommend Neurodiversity in Academia: The Autistic advantage in qualitative research.

🔖 Read The New Outliers: How Creative Nonfiction Became a Legitimate, Serious Genre.

🔖 Read On the Fleeting Wonder of Youth and the Surreal Permanence of Motherhood .

🔖 Read Will Self: How Should We Read? In Praise of Literary Promiscuity in the Digital Age.