If you’ve found yourself wondering where all the good writing’s gone, I’ve decided to share some of my favorite links with you on a weekly basis! It might be short fiction, it might be news articles, it might be random blog posts from me and from others!
None of these links are sponsored. I really just liked them!
Don’t forget, you can check out previous weeks’ lists in the Fave Links Friday category!
I strongly encourage you to call your representatives and tell them you won’t stand for concentration camps, and that we need some goddamn gun control. You can use Common Cause to find out who your reps are and what they stand for if you aren’t sure.
I haven’t done much in the way of fun things this week, sadly. I did, however, have a very productive doctors appointment in which I got approved to do a sleep study next week! Hopefully, I’ll get some answers about why I’m so God-blessed tired all the time soon and be able to do something about it.
I’m also getting ready to start a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with some friends, which is exciting!
Black families once lived off their southern farmland. Their descendants are struggling to hold onto it.
Last month, I shared a link to an article about the descendants of James Monroe’s slaves living right where their ancestors were enslaved. This is related, but it is an entirely separate article in which the original reporter did an absolutely horrific job at getting these people’s history right. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many corrections in an article in all my years reading and writing articles for news outlets.
The actual article is actually well done now that it has been corrected by a WaPo staffer. It’s also right around the corner from me in Halifax County, Virginia, and it’s really important to look at these issues in a part of the country where agriculture is our bread and butter.
Writers, Protect Your Inner Life
This is an old article, but one that I needed to read this week. Writers and authors have to share so much of themselves, but we also need to take care of ourselves.
Lots of people are talking about this but I want you to think, for a moment, about how terrifying and ineffective the thought of a ‘mental health database’ is.
Some questions to ask yourself:
— s. e. smith (@sesmith) August 8, 2019
This is a thread that you need to read about all of the terrifying possibilities that come with creating a database of mentally ill people. s.e. is an amazing person and writer, so I highly recommend you read the whole thing and talk to your representatives about how big a problem it is.
Wonderful links, friend! I was so grateful for that thread from SE Smith, really REALLY laying out the issues with a mental health database. I also thought of the way the DSM criteria change over new editions! Like, someone who would have reached the clinical threshold for a given mental illness during the reign of the DSM-IV would absolutely not meet that threshold for the DSM-V, so what happens to those people? Do they get wholesale removed from the database? Or?
Exactly! It is SUCH a complicated issue and one that would require so much thought, which is something…. I do not trust the government to do. Especially This government.