This Week
My friends, we have some business to attend to.
Firstly! A couple of newsletters back, I asked for willing postcard recipients. I commented on Twitter this past week that I hadn’t received any emails from people who wanted postcards, but this was in fact incorrect. As it turns out, my email client was not properly delivering all my email. You had one job, email client. I discovered some other non-epistolary-pursuit-related email that got lost as well. So my apologies if you emailed me recently at my hello@ email address and got no response. I’m catching up now and I’ll be sending out some postcards soon. I even bought brand-new dinosaur stamps. It’s very exciting.
Additionally! After an order error, I ended up with a duplicate copy of the Criterion Blu-ray of Thief, which is an excellent film. If you want it, I will send it to you. Preference given to anyone who might happen to be a film student, emerging filmmaker or emerging film critic. Email me at hello@jenmyers.net (an email which I will now definitely receive).
I hope everyone is doing as well as they can be. I have some links for you but no reading/watching/listening updates. We’ll be back to the normal format next week. Next week I’ll also be sending out the monthly essay to paid subscribers. I haven’t written it yet so I don’t know yet what it will be about. Have a request? Let me know. Comments on newsletters are open for paid subscribers. Or you can email me! Because I’m getting all my email now!
Links
“We’re giving no one the benefit of the doubt. We’re skeptical and untrusting, quick to judge and slow to apologize.” The social media shame machine is in overdrive right now.
Things we miss about movie theaters.
How Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Captain Benjamin Sisko wrestled with American history.
40 years of hurt, face-hugging dreams of breathing: Ridley Scott’s Alien.
The colorful history of the troll doll.
“On Apollo 8, we were on the dark side of the moon, which was 60 miles below us. As we kept on going around, we suddenly saw the Earth coming into view 240,000 miles away. I could put my thumb up to the window and everything I ever knew was behind it. Billions of people. Oceans. Mountains. Deserts. And I began to wonder, Where do I fit into what I see? Then I remembered an old saying, “I hope to go to heaven when I die,” and realized that I actually went to heaven when I was born. I arrived on a planet with the gravity to contain water and an atmosphere — the very essentials for life! I arrived on a planet orbiting a star at just the right distance to absorb that star’s energy without being too hot or too cold. So my philosophy is that God has given mankind a stage upon which to perform, and how the play will come out is up to us.” Jim Lovell. The Apollo 13 mission, which Lovell commanded, ended fifty years ago today.
“The coronavirus has brought us to our knees, yet it has also presented us with the opportunity to be prayerful, whether we believe in God or not. By forcing us into isolation, it has dismantled our constructed selves, by challenging our presumed needs, our desires, and our ambitions and rendered us raw, essential and reflective. Our sudden dislocation has thrown us into a mystery that exists at the edge of tears and revelation, for none of us knows what tomorrow will bring.” Nick Cave.
“Trusting yourself is an extreme sport.” Ask Molly.
What plants can teach us about surviving a pandemic.
Keep going. We’re all doing great.
Love,
Jen
Connections
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Email: hello@jenmyers.net
Post: P.O. Box 13114 Chicago, IL 60613
This week’s quote is from Margaret Atwood.