#MatteredToMe - April 10, 2020: Meal Planning, Lean Economics, and Twitter Joy
Hello, everyone. It's Friday. Here are some things that mattered to me recently:
- I have often found over the years that I am most comforted by poems that acknowledge darkness, but choose to turn toward the light. Ross Gay's poem "Sorrow Is Not My Name" does that.
- Lydia Kiesling wrote about meal planning, in a piece which is also about gender roles, and parenting, and the stress of isolation, and, I think, a certain grace in surrender. I think a lot of us will find it relatable.
- Anna Watkins Fisher's essay "Nothing to Spare" is about the precarity of lean production, and how running the government like a business undermined our infrastructure. It's not comforting, but it is illuminating, I think.
- This Twitter thread by Mary Neely, in which she reenacts moments from her favorite musicals, is hilarious and utterly delightful. Being a former theater kid, it really hit me exactly perfectly.
- Last night, my friend Cecily sang us all a little lullaby on Twitter—the song "The Dimming of the Day," which I know as a Bonnie Raitt song—and it was so beautiful it made me cry a little.
As always, this is just a portion of what mattered to me recently. It's been a strange and difficult time for most of us. If you're upset, just know: it's okay to be upset when things are upsetting.
Thanks, and take care.
-Mike