This week: Healing in cold water / Selena thrives on TikTok / The benefits of oak trees / Microaggressions / Low tech interventions for loneliness
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1. Women Are Instrumental To Latin Music
By Anamaria Sayre and Felix Contreras | Alt Latino :: NPR | March 2021
“Latin music has a history of disenfranchising women. They’re often placed behind the mic or in the background — assuming they’re allowed to participate at all.”
2. Cold comfort: How cold water swimming cured my broken heart
By Wendell Steavenson | The Guardian | March 2021
“I never in a million years thought I would be a person who would enjoy swimming in cold water. I swam when the weather was hot, or did laps in indoor swimming pools; I spent a lot of time in the bath. I loved the water, but I was like a cat, I liked being warm more.”
3. Selena Is Still Alive on TikTok
By Daise Bedolla | The Cut :: New York Magazine | March 2021
“Selena impersonations are particularly popular around Halloween when fans and celebrities … transform themselves into la reina de Tejano. … But scroll through the app, and you’ll find much more than just impersonations.”
4. Why You Should Plant Oaks
By Margaret Roach | The New York Times | March 2021
“These large, long-lived trees support more life-forms than any other trees in North America. And they’re magnificent.”
5. In Hotter Climate, ‘Zombie’ Urchins Are Winning And Kelp Forests Are Losing
By Lauren Sommer | NPR | March 2021
“Kelp forests provide a crucial ecosystem for a broad range of other marine life and animals, so their demise threatens the ecology across the entire stretch of California coast.”
6. How Animal Intelligence Helps Us Speculate About the Alien Mind
By Arik Kershenbaum | Lit Hub | March 2021
“Intelligence evolves all the time to fit specific needs — it is not merely an inherited trait from the dawn of time.”
7. Microaggressions: Death by a Thousand Cuts
By Derald Wing Sue | Opinion :: Scientific American | March 2021
“The everyday slights, insults and offensive behaviors that people of marginalized groups experience in daily interactions cause real psychological harm”
8. Operation Intercept
By Christopher Rose, Joan Neuberger and Henry Wiencek | 15 Minute History :: UT Department of History | 2014-2020
Also see: Seven Skeletons | The Search for Family Lost in Slavery | Rethinking the Agricultural ‘Revolution’ | How Jews Translate the Bible and Why
9. Loneliness Is a Public Health Problem: This Low-Tech Intervention Can Help
By Kasra Zarei | Scientific American | March 2021
“Phone calls may be integral to connecting with people who are lonely and isolated”
10. Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2011-2019
Also see: The Druids | Xenophon | The Anatomy of Melancholy | Islamic Law and its Origins
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stillness of heart 