🐝Lil Treasures #172: Ai and Bewitching Mason Bees
Plus we're talking about the secret to staying young and if running is worth it
It’s Friday, and I’m back to share with you the good links and memes to try and find a little happy in a week filled with sorrow. Monday’s school shooting at Covenant School in Nashville and the response that has ensued from so many of our lawmakers has me swinging from grief to rage and back again. Does anyone else feel like this? I’m so glad we have incredible writers like my friend David Gate who help put words to these feelings:
If you’re on that pendulum alongside me, a great way to take action today is to contact your lawmakers! I created this reel that uses the help of RESISTBOT to do so (thank you technology), so it’s very simple and effective. If you have suggestions for other ways to help, let me know in the comments!
Working through these emotions + turning 40 + spring break at the Long House have left me a little short on words, so I’ll let the treasures speak for themselves. I’m headed to Minnesota this weekend to freeze my buns off in dedication to one John Clayton Mayer and I hope your weekends are just as lovely and a lot less cold.
Here are the treasures!
🍝As a woman who has freshly entered her 40’s, I wanted to reveal the secret to keeping my youth.
😱 Jedidiah Jenkins wrote about moral panic and how we go through cycles of it every few decades. It can seem like the world is closing in around us (especially lately), but I think 30 years ago they thought it was too. To quote Jedidiah’s post: “We imagine fake monsters and embrace real ones.”
🍣Over here in my sushi era about to go crazy with this spicy tuna roll stack recipe from HBH.
💩In the midst of still processing your feelings from this past week, take some time to read this piece about things more important than the right to bear arms by Bess Kalb or Mary Laura Philpott’s account of Monday’s school shooting that happened a mile away from her house.
🧹My favorite poem from this week comes from the incredible Lindsay Rush, and is about bees that fly around on broomsticks to keep their babies safe and what motherhood is really made of.
📚My new hero is this 100-year-old woman protesting book bans in FL . May I live that long and be so bold.
⚽If you’re a Ted Lasso fan, you need to see this video of Toheeb Jimoh (who plays Sam Obisanya) reuniting with his former drama teacher. Cue the tears.
Twitter’s Cream of the Crop:
And this is why I don’t run
It was a pleasure providing these treasures for you this week, friends! There’s something cathartic about knowing that you guys will continue to show up here each week ready and willing to share your highs and lows, even in the most trying of times. I am grateful to have a moment of reprieve here with you. Have an excellent weekend and enjoy your start to Holy Week!
My sister and brother each have precious daughters at Covenant, one in preK and on in Kindergarten, so our family's world has been rocked by Monday. My sister shared this with me yesterday, "I am on the “Sunshine Committee” at Covenant which is the parents who set up meal trains or coordinate help when families are in need. This morning, I woke up to 39 messages on that thread — parents who are in the midst of all of this heartache but thinking of ways to support the teachers who live alone or planning special things to take to the 3rd graders. I’m so overwhelmed by the way this school is pouring out love and care despite being broken themselves. Truly the hands and feet of Jesus." I know that this Lil Swipes community is so generous in your love, so I thought I'd share this as encouragement, and I am also happy to connect this community with the Covenant Sunshine Committee if you would like to send things from afar for the third graders, the teachers, etc.
I just have to say, I didn’t think adulthood would mean contacting my congresspeople as much as it does. Anyone else surprised by this??