Program notes | LISB

Hey y’all. 

I have some news for you today, and so this issue is a bit different.   

The short version is, I have been depressed AF most of this year, and so getting this newsletter out has been a damned struggle. My goal has always been to get this out to you on Monday, baring Federal holidays. I have failed at that more often than not this year, and some weeks I haven’t been able to get it out at all.   

So I am changing some things. I don’t know how to not be depressed (I am not soliciting medical advice at this time) but I do know that it is easier for me to get it out later in the week rather than earlier, so I am going to move my publication goal to Friday. I already publish something for the members most weeks, and I deliver a 1500 (ish) word sermon most Sundays, so having all my public-facing work done at the end of the week seems to make sense to me. I can do what I do with the other two pieces, and work on it as I have energy and will.   

I have learned from looking at open rates that y’all are subject to opening the email at all sorts of times, so I’m hoping that sending it on Monday is just an “important to only me” thing.   

I’ve been putting this newsletter out for the last 11 years, and I don’t see that changing. I hope this move make it a bit more sustainable for me to keep doing it. As always, thank you for your support.      

“…so very helpful to me to keep my hands busy during times that they itch to destroy me.” As someone who lives with depression while also managing to get a lot done, I resonated so hard with this post from Jenny Lawson on depression and art.  

Check out this collection  at the Library of Congress of photos taken by photographer John Margolies, specializing in “roadside vernacular architecture: Think hot dog stands shaped like hot dogs, donut shops shaped like donuts, and gas stations shaped like everything from dinosaurs to pagodas to teepees.   

Matt Dixon makes pictures of robots. Damned adorable pictures, actually.   

Katie Farris gives us a poem on the wisdom of writing love poetry in a burning world.   

OK, hold on for this one. In 1920, Richard Samuel Roberts, a Black man, moved from Florida to Columbia, South Carolina and opened a photography studio. Self-taught, Roberts went on to take many thousands of photos of middle class Black folk until his death in 1936. He preferred to take photos on glass plates, rather than the newly emerging film, and when he died, his family put the thousands of glass negative plates under their house, where they sat for decades. In the late 70’s, they were recovered and printed and put in a collection at the University of South Carolina, giving us the largest archive of middle class Black life during Jim Crow we have. Here is a 30 minute documentary about how they were found again, his family’s reactions, and his immense skill at capturing Black skin on camera.      

The most clicked link last issue was E. B. White’s his inspiring, succinct reply to a reader’s note full of despair over the state of the world.   

A new podcast episode went up, with me telling the story of the 7 year old boy who marked up our house and our hearts.    

Over the last weekend, my paying members got a long (but yet incomplete) essay about my trip to Pennsylvania, how good it felt to be there, and how hard it is to live in a place you love but that does not always love you back. 

Membership starts at just $5 a month, and makes it possible for this email to be ad-free and AI-free for everyone. Members also get access to bonus essays, first dibs on things I decide to sell, and generous discounts, among other perks.

Thank You!

For 11 years this one-man labor of love has remained ad-free, AI-free, and financially free for everyone because of the generosity of my reader patrons. If you already support my work: I appreciate you more than you know.  

You can support this work by buying a book, sharing this link with your social networks, forwarding this email to a friend, by becoming a paid member or just buying me a cup of coffee.

If you have links to share, questions to ask or just want to say hi, just hit reply. I read al my emails, and try hard to respond.

Take care, 

HH 

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