Link Love, no. 2
Megan Betz
Alright, here we are. Week 2 of the semester, week 2 of this link love series.
First off, I'm still sifting through my feelings for Dolores O'Riordan, who taught me how to feel melancholy, a feeling a truly lean into. She taught me that a voice can contain power, strength, & vulnerability--and that the vulnerability does not diminish, but rather emboldens that voice. She showed me the full depth of my self. I have vivid memories of sitting in the back of my parents' car while "Linger" and later "Zombie" played on the radio. The feeling of it, even at age six, filled me up. Her voice took the small core of my being--the one sitting at the base of my ribs, that I felt swirling in the center of my self, but that often felt like it was drowning in all the rest of me, in the emotions I didn't have words for yet--& inflated it. Her voice blew up that swirling bit of young me until my being fully inhabited my body. I'm thankful for her voice & for the depth of emotion she brought to the music of my youth & beyond. I think I have more to say on this, but for now I'll just say, let's all grab new copies of Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? and No Need to Argue & continue working on our emotional intelligence. And this is actually a link request: If you find them on vinyl at your local record store, will you let me know & share their online ordering system? Our town is, apparently, Cranberries bankrupt.
I took this morning to listen to this webinar to create a semester strategic plan, setting personal & research goals and making myself sit in the mess to find a path to those goals. The National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity has weekly newsletters that I find helpful, and their webinars & resources are helping me carve out a career path. Check it out--your institution may have a membership, which gets you a free account as a graduate student or beyond.
Finally, I'm trying to reduce my media binging & get back to the media I most enjoy--back to news in the morning & publications that have great narratives or concern for storytelling. This stems largely from me trying to find more time to write (so, cutting out media binging that doesn't energize me) & also to feed that writing time (so, filling up on good content to keep my own creativity moving & to inspire me). In addition to AM2DM for my morning news & 2 Dope Queens for my favorite go-to laughs, I'm trying to build regular listening of a few food-focused podcasts: Gastropod hits food history & science with top-notch production; Racist Sandwich gets to the intersections of race, gender, class, & food in truly beautiful ways; Earth Eats is everything we most love about the food moment (rather than "movement"), from recipes to discussions on ag & food policy (& has the added benefit of being a local production I've had a chance to contribute to).