Hence the mass exodus to newsletters, which are... about as reliable as pitching (at least in terms of paid subscribers) 🫠

Oh! And bc it's #SmallBusinessSaturday, if you like what you're reading at my site, please subscribe! If you can do paid, even better. Best of all: paid subs AND buy one of my books (I have links on the "Books" page once you get there). Thank you! #supportindie #independent

How might I have negotiated for help w/o fearing my neighbors would believe I, a single mother, was trying to take advantage of their goodwill? (I've written about this too: trauma-disaster-healing-recovery.ghost.io/do-you-reall...)

That's the rub: w/o the intervention of FEMA, its state counterpart, & the emergency management apparatus they put in motion, would we in fact have been able to organize as effectively?

So, while to some extent it's true that we need to put our crap aside in service to others' needs, it's also true that we can't organize disaster responses without first forming and building relationships.

In writing for a more mainstream audience, Solnit may have glossed over the inclusivity I've found inherent in other works of anarchist literature. Indeed, just because disasters bury or wash or blow or burn away the vestiges of "normal" doesn't mean that core parts of who we are don't remain.

Thus, those of us who have either never felt a sense of belonging, or whose sense of belonging has been eroded or even collapsed completely following layoff, divorce, disability, or other personal catastrophe, may be more cautious or even cynical about community and self-governance.

Reading A Paradise Built in Hell had me feeling hopeful and yet, sad. The idea of "cooperation, negotiation, and mutual aid" is fraught for those of us whose "normal" includes coercion, manipulation, & power imbalances – the same dynamics on display in The Walking Dead's most memorable antagonists.

I forgot about that! When I saw that I had just watched Dune 2 so it was extra adorable!

Also bc I forgot the alt text:

A fluffy black cat sitting on a concrete patio stares imploringly back at the photographer from behind window glass

I blame Mercury retrograde for all of it

(Except the cat. Sweet spoiled baby is pure.)

#Caturday even

Stupidly overzealous autocorrect

These feel like complex subtleties I can only see now, decades later. #randommusings

Bc a good chunk of the program, not just my class, consisted of evangelicals who were studying the language expressly so they could go evangelize to the poor godless ex communists. So surely discussions abt power vacuums would & should've included any Orthodox influence?

Thinking more about this... the department head & her husband, an instructor, were both native born Russian & never had anything to say abt it; bc as defectors they genuinely had no idea, or didn’t want to think / talk abt it?