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Weāre also very into sending letters (as you can tell) and weād like to send you one too.
Dear Ali,
Good morning. How are things in Austin? Here in Palo Alto, the weather has turned. We had our first rain. It cleared up the air like a spell. Some of the trees have entirely turned: the maples especially, red as firetrucks. But some are sneakily biding their time, waiting for others to lose their leaves so their own colors look more glorious.
Inside, the heater whirs. The air smells like coffee. Upstairs, a dogās paws skitter over the hardwood. I pull the blinds so my dying fiddle-leaf fig can get sun. (I hope your plant is recovering after her tumble!)
As the day begins, information arrives. It coats my laptop screen like a film. It makes noise on my phone. It clogs social media. The voices of podcast hosts shake. In the United States, weāve surpassed 250,000 coronavirus deaths. Hospitals are placing patients in cafeterias and parking garages. Curfews and school closures have returned.
All day, the screens tell us whatās happening elsewhere. Elections in Peru. Violence in Ethiopia. Human-rights abuses in China. Protests in Thailand. In Denmark, the government slaughtered minks to prevent a new strain of the virus from spreading. The pictures are gruesome. Why should we see them? Knowledge tenses our muscles and grinds our teeth. Often, it makes us unhappy.
How much do we need to know?
Well: not everything. Being entirely informed is impossible. Plus, that kind of obsessive news-reading quickly becomes a bad habit, almost an addiction to despair. Itās easy to start taking twisted delight in the stories that affirm your beliefs: the delayed presidential transition, the climate disasters, the rising case counts, the governorās hypocrisy, or the restaurant closures. Of course itās bad, we think, almost smugly. How could it not be?
Information can also make you feel superior. I know about all of this sorrow; thus, Iām more worldly, more awake. I carry all the pain, on behalf of mankind! In reality, Iām staring at my laptop, getting amped up, getting blue-light headaches.
Still: I donāt think itās right to just turn off the news. Abdicating information is dangerous. How will we know whatās going on where we live? The news tells us which roads are being repaired, what the school board said, when snow is on the way, what fruit has been recalled, and (these days) when we need to wear a mask.
But knowing less about whatās going on elsewhere just because it makes us feel better also doesnāt seem right. In fact, it seems selfish. Sometimes, āfeeling badā is the right response to reality, as you argue in last weekās letter. Sometimes, āfeeling badā means having a conscience. Thereās a duty to understand and acknowledge hard thingsāhunger, disease, bloodshed, hatred, the abdication of political responsibility. Thereās an obligation to know what your place in the world costs. Thereās a duty to extend the bounds of your concern: materially, politically or even just mentally. Iām convinced that certain kinds of āthoughts and prayers,ā listing the names of the problems we see, actually makes an impact: subtle as a stone tossed into the sea.
I guess Iām recommending ānews in moderation.ā Not so much that it paralyzes, but not so little that I become entirely self-absorbed. The citizen of a war-torn country; the middle schooler trying to do algebra from home; the restaurant owner; the person who lives in a place Iāve never been. All of them exist behind the headlines. The details of their lives are as vibrant as my trees.
Love,
Kate
My book rec: The Recovering
I think youāll love this book. (Full disclosure: Leslie Jamison was my grad-school thesis advisor.) Iām finally reading it, and itās great. A blend of memoir and literary history, Jamison interrogates our idea of addiction (alcoholism in particular) as something that fuels artistry. Lots of great writers were drunk, yes! But is pain required for artistry? Or can sobriety be just as generative?
The book:Ā The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath
My rating:Ā š„š„š„š„š„
Read more:Ā āGrand Unified Theory of Female Painā
Donāt forget to enter to win a free plant!