Five Quick Things 021

The Nerdy Link Edition

One: The Last Day of Butter Ridge (gift link)

I found myself shedding tears over this article. As someone who feels deeply loyal to family farmers, I felt the pain of this family as they had to make the very hard decision to stop farming and sell their cows.

“They had gone together to talk to a banker, who looked over the numbers and told them: “This is a hobby, not a business. How long do you want to pay for the privilege of milking cows?”

Isn’t that gut-wrenching? How awful it must have felt to be told their way of life was no longer sustainable. If you have a local farm in your community, please shop there before the grocery store. Their livelihood depends on it.

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Two: On Literature and Neuroscience

This is an older article from 2021, but I keep coming back to it - especially as I’m thinking more and more about what constitutes literature, what literature to teach, and how important stories are to the healing of our communities.

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Three: Ada Limon’s final talk as Poet Laureate

I have so many thoughts on this speech - many of which will be coming in future posts. For now, just go listen. If you’d rather read it, she published it as “Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry.”

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Four: The Daily Podcast: 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters

This week’s edition of NYTimes Magazine was all about these 30 American Songwriters. I loved the behind the scenes conversation about how the list was created as well as the conversation with Taylor Swift about how she wrote some of her biggest hits.

If you don’t get a print subscription, I highly recommend taking a look at the article online. It was the perfect glimpse of the diversity of America through music.

Bonus: If you follow me on Spotify, you can find a playlist I made that includes 10+ hours of music recommended in the article.

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Five: 10 Things From the 2000s That are Still Valuable

My husband laughed at me when I sent him this link several weeks ago. “There’s no way our devices will ever be worth anything,” he said.

Two weeks later, my 14-year-old found the cd player walkman and immediately asked to be taken to the library so she could get cds to jam out to.

A week after that, the almost-12-year-old found two old iPods. A first generation and an iPod mini. She’s thrilled to be able to listen to our old tunes when she goes to the gym. Or just walking around the house.

Good thing I never threw them out. They may not actually be worth money, but to my kids, they are worth more than anything in the world.

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What links are you loving this week?

Until next time …