Good Monday morning. Spend time creating something just for the pure joy of creating. Our agenda this week:
Conversation Starters
The Dialogue (Social Justice)
Future of Higher Education
Best of the Rest
How to Help Texans Recover From the Winter Disaster (Texas Monthly)
Conversation Starters
START YOUR WEEK HERE:
You’re not imagining it, nobody seems to want to talk right now.
Messages are brief and replies late.
Talk of catch ups on zoom are perpetually put on hold.
Group chats are no longer pinging all night long.
It’s not you.
It’s everyone.
We are spent.
We have nothing left to say.
We are tired of saying ‘I miss you’ and ‘I cant wait for this to end’.
So we mostly say nothing, put our heads down and get through each day.
You’re not imagining it.
This is a state of being like no other we have ever known because we are all going through it together but so very far apart.
Hang in there my friend.
When the mood strikes, send out all those messages and don’t feel you have to apologize for being quiet.
This is hard.
No one is judging.
~ Donna Ashworth (h/t Jess Wilke)
Related: If Winter Feels Extra Hard This Year, You’re Not Alone (NYT) (h/t Marilee Lindemann)
BEYOND BURNED OUT
Apparently assignment editors can’t get enough of the burnout/loneliness/despair angle. Here are a few “highlights” from the last few weeks:
Recommended: includes tips for managers and employees. Beyond Burned Out (HBR). Today’s level of burnout is the result of an existing problem made exponentially worse. Yet despite how massive the problem is, it’s never too late to fix it.
More than 700 people have been keeping digital diaries as part of Pandemic Journaling Project. It may be the most complete record of our shifting moods in this isolating year. “Right Now Feels So Long and Without Any End in Sight” (NYT)
“Mental health pandemic”: Despair Deepens for Young People as Pandemic Drags On (NYT)
Teenagers during the coronavirus pandemic: The loneliness of an interrupted adolesence (WaPo)
The pandemic is terrible. It can also be tedious. And that tedium is shaping what people buy and how productive they are. The Boredom Economy (NYT)
POLARIZED VORTEX
Despite the political games, there is really only one clear lesson to be drawn from Texas: in an era of climate change, extreme weather disasters are getting more common and more costly. Since this newsletter launched last May, we’ve had to upgrade our vocabularies (and eventually our infrastructure) to include: 2021 Texas “Snownado,” the 2020 California “Firenado,” and the Iowa derecho.
Texas Blackouts Point to Coast-to-Coast Crises Waiting to Happen (NYT).
As climate change brings more frequent and intense storms, floods, heat waves, wildfires and other extreme events, it is placing growing stress on the foundations of the country’s economy: Its network of roads and railways, drinking-water systems, power plants, electrical grids, industrial waste sites and even homes. Much of this infrastructure was built decades ago, under the expectation that the environment around it would remain stable, or at least fluctuate within predictable bounds.
POLITICS IS RUINING EVERYTHING
Politics Is Seeping Into Our Daily Life and Ruining Everything (Reason)
People's partisan identities influence the range of people with whom they are willing to have relationships, the brands they purchase, and the jobs they take. In an era of public health concerns, people often choose positions on matters such as vaccines or mask-wearing not based on a rational assessment of the issues, but on a plug-and-play adoption of their tribe's stances. This sort of politicized decision-making can stand in the way of rational choices and healthy connections.
Related important read (from 2020): Political Hobbyists Are Ruining Politics (Atlantic)
AS WE APPROACH ONE YEAR...
500,000 dead. Here are three ways to visualize the monstrous death toll in this country: 500,000 coronavirus deaths visualized: A number almost too large to grasp (WaPo)
Super helpful visual with multiple models: When Could the United States Reach Herd Immunity? It’s Complicated. (NYT)
Powerful photojournalism and stories. Three days in the deadliest month in the covid pandemic (WaPo)
A welcome note of optimism for summer? Our Second Pandemic Summer Could Be When Everything Changes (Atlantic)
The Dialogue (Social Justice)
CROWDSOURCING: BUSINESSES AND ORGS TO HIGHLIGHT?
Getting to know the community and shining a light on where you can volunteer and spend money wisely. Based on a great idea from several readers, I’d like to feature local and sustainable Black-owned, Indigenous-owned, women-owned businesses and other community-based organizations like Mutual Aid funds. Please let me know of possibilities to highlight. Thanks!
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
How Parents Can Help Their Kids Make Lasting Interracial Friendships (HuffPo)
Reimagining Black Masculinities (video). Panel curated by Nana Brantuo and designed for Black men to reflect on and engage in conversation on the beauties, complexities, and possibilities of Black masculinities.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Recommend spending time with this project about American history, Black life, and the resilience of memory. “Inheritance” (Atlantic)
Meet The Two Women Working To Make Inclusive Spaces For Black Joy (Buzzfeed)
Heather McGhee: The Way Out of America's Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth (NYT)
The Voting Rights Act Hangs by a Thread (Atlantic)
ON WHITENESS
Dear Nice White People (Austin Channing Brown) (h/t Jess Krenek)
AMPLIFYING VOICES
How to support Asian American colleagues amid anti-Asian violence (CNBC)
This Is What It's Like For Men With Eating Disorders (Buzzfeed)
LGBTQ people face higher covid-19 risks. But no one knows the true toll on the community. (WaPo)
This Photographer Documented The Positive Impact Of A New Supermarket That Opened In A Food Desert (Buzzfeed)
Future of Higher Education
Developing situation: UMD classes online, students asked to sequester for a week amid rise in COVID cases (DBK)
HOT TOPICS
UMD: Resident assistants, campus housing staffers push for access to coronavirus vaccines (WaPo)
Could Fall Bring Some Return to Normalcy? These Colleges Say Yes (Chronicle)
“We’re in a period of increased momentum, but also reckoning and of recognizing the magnitude of the issue.” The Antiracist College (Chronicle)
The land-grant universities still profiting off Indigenous homelands (High Country News)
Student Loans Feel More Precarious In Covid Economy (Buzzfeed)
RESHAPING HIGHER ED
The Pandemic Will Obliterate The Traditional Academic Calendar. And It Can't Happen Fast Enough. (Forbes)
Student Affairs Post-COVID: Restoring, Evolving, and Transforming Higher Education (Student Affairs Now podcast)
The Trends Report 2021 (Chronicle)
The racial consequences of defunding public universities. New Diversity. Striving for Prestige. Limited Money. Meet the ‘Broke’ Research Universities (Chronicle)
TEACHING AND LEARNING
What We've Lost in a Year of Virtual Teaching (Chronicle)
‘Distressed and tired’: Remote students worry more than peers in the classroom, study shows (NBCNews)
Best of the Rest
WELLNESS
How Covid-19 could make Americans healthier (Politico)
UNDER THE RADAR
Trump Hotel Employees Reveal What It Was Really Like Catering to the Right Wing Elite (Washingtonian)
Some evangelical Christians say covid vaccine is the mark of the beast (Post)
FUN
“Bridgerton” Is Inspiring Couples To Get More Romantic And Rev Up Their Sex Lives (Buzzfeed)
TIME100 Next 2021: Meet the Emerging Leaders Shaping the Future (Time)
Until next time, be strong and be well.