A Post About Nice Things
We've made it to March, so at least we've got that going for us
The world continues to be almost unimaginably dark. We dropped a bomb on a girls school, which would be an incomprehensible evil even if there was a just cause for this war we started without provocation, but of course there is not. The amount of destruction and chaos this government has carried out in the past year is staggering, and the midterms (which might provide a meaningful check on what’s been happening) still feel a long way away. It feels like a real sackcloth and ashes time for our nation, and writing anything that isn’t a long indictment of our current moment feels like ignoring or downplaying the horrors. But, truly, if we focus solely on the darkness we’re not going to make it. So, I’m sharing a few things I’ve found joy in over the past few weeks, in the hope that they might bring you joy (or at least pleasant distraction) as well:
In Praise Of
I generally enjoy seasonally themed writing projects, both as a contributor and reader.1 But I also recognize that lots of people — myself included! — have gone through that period of life where one signs up for a fair amount of emails from various listserves and/ or website digests, gets overwhelmed by all the things not actually getting read, and then vows to never sign up for anything again. But I must say that the Jesuit Media Lab’s Lent series, In Praise Of, is the best project like this I have ever subscribed to. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been starting each weekday reading the latest in this ongoing series of short odes to the mundane. There have been essays about cleaning out the birdbath, emptying the dishwasher, making pesto, and (perhaps my favorite so far) walking around in an inflatable dinosaur costume. It’s five minutes of joy each morning. You can — and really should! — sign up here.
Good Trailcams Bluesky Feed
I took social media off my phone for Lent, and while I have missed reading all the posts during big sporting events, it has, on the whole, been great. I have felt less informed about what’s going on in the world, since I get most of my news via links and posts, but I also probably don’t actually need to be as informed as I had been. I can still access bluesky and Instagram on my laptop, but I never find myself scrolling endlessly like I did on my phone. In any event, if you are on bluesky, I want to recommend one particular account: https://bsky.app/profile/goodtrailcams.bsky.social
They post delightful pictures of animals taken from random trail cameras. I have no idea who is behind it, or how they find the pictures, but whoever is doing the curating is a wonder. The chosen pictures are a mix of sublimely beautiful, entirely silly, or both. Here are a few faves:
TV Shows
Lauren and I just finished the series How To Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix), a sort of mystery set (mostly) in Northern Ireland, from the creator of Derry Girls. It’s about 3 middle aged women who learn that their former friend from high school has died suddenly; they go to her wake, where they discover that the friend might not be dead after all. We soon learn that there’s a shared tragedy in their past (of course), and over 8 episodes we discover both what happened when they were teens, and how it relates to their adult lives. Lauren and I both found the mystery plot itself to be just so-so, but as a ‘hang out in Ireland with three hilarious friends and lots of quirky Irish secondary characters’ show it was top tier.
My high schooler and I are watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO), and it’s fantastic. This short and self-contained show set in the Game of Thrones universe is the best thing to come out of that world since like season 5 of the OG show (our whole family loved Game of Thrones (at least until the end), and tried and bailed on House of the Dragon).
Books
The best book I’ve read so far this year is The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans. This is a novel told in letters and emails. I am, in general, a fan of the form of the contemporary epistolary novel — Julie Schumacher’s “Dear Committee Members” remains a recent favorite, but this is a much richer text than that one. It does have its funny moments, but at its heart it's about aging and mortality and grief and the messiness of families and all of the things that make a life worthwhile. I really can’t recommend it more highly. (Also, it’s a great reminder/ encouragement to send real mail! What a joy it is to get a real letter, or even a postcard. Shoutout to the irl correspondents out there.)2
One other book I really loved was Braving the Truth, by Rachel Held Evans. It’s a posthumous collection of Evans’s blog posts, interspersed with reflections on her life and influence from her friends and fellow writers. I wrote about why this book resonated so strongly with me for the Jesuit Media Lab:
“Do I want a church that fits me, or a me that fits the church?”
—Rachel Held Evans, “Braving the Truth”
I initially made a little checkmark annotation next to this line (my shorthand for “good point!”) and kept reading, but then I paused — literally put the book down — and asked myself the question out loud. What do I really want from my church? Do I want it to change, or do I want to change myself? It is easy (and probably accurate) to simply say “both” and keep moving, but particularly in this season of Lent I found it worthwhile to let the question simmer for a while. Could I honestly say I was willing to change, to conform, in any meaningful way? Or am I really just waiting for the church to finally come around to my (obviously correct!) view? I’m not entirely sure.
You can read the rest here (please do!)
Other Small, Random Joys:
Opening a pack of Allen and Ginter trading cards. These packs contain standard baseball cards, but also ‘mini cards,’ which are exactly what they sound like, and cards of random things like state birds and lighthouses. I bought two packs and I felt like the dad in A Christmas Story, preparing to open the Fragile (“Must be Italian”) crate: “Why, there could be anything in there!”
The World Baseball Classic. I miss the Olympics. I love having sports on at strange times throughout the day, and I love international competition (even as I feel deeply conflicted about rooting for team USA); the WBC promises to deliver on both fronts. It just started, and I probably won’t watch much of the early rounds, where the few good teams (USA, Japan, Dominican Republic) beat up on countries that don’t really care about baseball (Great Britain, Czechia, Brazil), but the last final featured Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout to win it for Japan, and I’m looking forward to other future Hall of Famer on Hall of Famer competition in the knockout rounds.
What about you all? What has been bringing you some light in these dark times?
Shameless plug: I just wrote a post about The Transfiguration for the Catholic Artist Connection’s Lenten Series.
Other books I’ve read so far this year that I recommend:
North Woods, by Daniel Mason — it focuses on a plot of land in western Massachusetts, from the colonial era to the present day, tracing out the people (and plants and animals and insects and ghosts) that inhabit the spot. It feels pastoral but then keeps tilting into violence and madness.
Gliff, by Ali Smith — it follows two kids living in a near future, where the government is obsessed with rounding up and disappearing people deemed illegal (upsettingly timely!), who get separated from their adults and have to figure out a way to get by. I really liked the style, which handled this heavy subject matter without feeling oppressive.
Football, by Chuck Klosterman — it is about, well, (American) football. All the chapters touch on it in some big picture, theoretical way (it’s not a “these are the best players” kind of book), which is very much my jam. Klosterman loves to make bold, sweeping, often counter-intuitive claims — most of which I disagreed with both before and after reading the chapters on them — but he writes in a compelling and engaging way on the subjects, which makes for a consistently good time.
Vigil, by George Saunders — this is not top-tier Saunders, but even mid-tier Saunders is worth checking out. I wrote about it for America.
I needed this list of positive things today. I also miss the Olympics. Trying to read a book, mostly failing and watching love is blind on 2-3x speed. It’s trash, but i deleted TikTok for lent, so i think I’d call myself net even.
I appreciated reading this today, sitting in my car for a few moments before heading into work. The world has felt so heavy this year and reading your simple joys brought me back to earth so thank you for sharing. Little joys I’ve found lately have been learning to use a DSLR camera and daydreaming of Appalachia. Kindness and warmth to you, friend.