22 November 2019

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”

Jen Myers

Nov 22, 2019

This Week

Not a lot to talk about this week, except, of course, this:

Moving forward, newsletter content could be up to 42% #BabyYoda-related. Hope that’s okay with everyone.

Links

The best crime novels of the last decade.

“When the movie palace closes, the community loses a hub. What's lost the most is the community experience, having that shared experience with your neighbors.” The meaning of the movie palace.

The last Woolworth’s lunch counter.

An ode to the Poetry Room at San Francisco’s City Lights bookstore.

The Quartz Obsession on the history and modern resurgence of tarot.

Mortician and educator Caitlin Doughty with the first of a three-part series on death and Disneyland.

I found this extensive guide on scarcity mindset and how to feel like you have enough very useful. It’s targeted at artists, and is particularly appropriate for artists working along side other responsibilities like full-time jobs and/or parenting, but I think anyone in the modern world could benefit from the guidance here.

Billie Lourd on her mother, Carrie Fisher, and Princess Leia.

Reading/Watching/Listening

The Mandalorian (Disney+) I think it was when the main character was guided by a gonk droid into a room containing Werner Herzog when I knew that this was a Star Wars series designed for me personally. And that was before Baby Yoda ™ showed up. Anyway, I'm enjoying this series so far. It feels like an adventure serial with a subtle, slowly expanding emotional core.

In other media, I don’t have a lot of other standouts. I’m watching a lot of older horror movies, rereading my Haruki Murakami library (which covers, um, everything he’s ever published in English except for one short story collection, so it might take me a while also I should probably buy that short story collection) and listening to Sisters of Mercy, for some not entirely explicable reason.