Favorite books, essays, podcasts episodes, and more that I enjoyed in the month of March, plus recent political news that I’m paying attention to…
Books:
Memoir: Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
This beautiful and haunting memoir traces the days immediately following Geraldine Brooks’ husband Tony’s unexpected death from a heart attack alongside her own time of grief a few years later. Brooks gives us permission to grieve, to love, and to keep living.
Podcast Episodes:
Episode 88: An Alternative to Body Positivity with Leah Case
Yet again, so much beautiful wisdom from Katherine Wolf and Leah Case about how to live and live with hope and purpose in these very real, aging, beautiful, and broken bodies of ours.
A Poet and a Preacher: A Conversation with David Whyte
“Most people think their burnout comes from being tired when it often actually comes from being brokenhearted.” In this beautiful conversation, Russell Moore and poet David Whyte discuss faith and burnout and wholeheartedness. It brought peace to my soul just to listen to them talk. “The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness…”
Department of Education
I’m also paying a lot of attention to what’s happening with the Department of Education, and I’m concerned that moving oversight of special education and disability services to Health and Human Services will harm people with disabilities both by taking away recourse for civil rights abuses and also by treating disability as a medical issue rather than a social one. Here are a few places to learn more:
- The Lucky Few podcast: 292. What’s going on with the Department of Education? (w/guest host Ashley Barlow)
- CNN: Dismantling the Department of Education will strip resources from disabled children, parents and advocates say
- The ARC: Why Moving IDEA to HHS Could Harm Students With Disabilities
- ProPublica: Massive Layoffs at the Department of Education Erode Its Civil Rights Division
This recent essay I read by ProPublica is concerning. The Trump administration has closed 7 of 12 Offices of Civil Rights for the Department of Education. These are the offices that receive complaints by disabled students when schools refuse to make proper accommodations, and over half of the 12,000 complaints that were under review had been submitted by disabled students and their families. I’m concerned that there are important voices missing from the tables where those decisions are made.
Essays:
Article: “The Trump Administration Said These Aid Programs Saved Lives. It Canceled Them Anyway.”
Here’s one more article that describes—in pretty devastating detail—the repercussions of our abrupt freeze on all foreign aid.
NYT: “Americans Are Unhappier Than Ever. Solo Dining May Be a Sign.”
I’m so struck by how much we need each other, as the recent data around the United States’ place on the global happiness index demonstrates. Short version is, we need to eat meals with each other.
Movies/Shows:
Movie: The Perfect Date
Penny chose this recent Netflix movie for us to watch together. It was sweet, clean, and entertaining with a good message about learning to be yourself instead of who other people want you to be.
Movie: Ezra
I loved this film about a family affected by disability. Ezra is autistic, and his divorced mother and father aren’t in total agreement about how to care for him. There’s also his grandfather (played by Robert De Niro). All of them are learning to love each other, and themselves, better. The plot is a little fantastical, but Ezra’s ability to unearth the deeper truth within the humans he encounters rings very true.
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