Hello, Friends. How are you? How was your week?
We are starting to feel the wind down of the school year. Oscar and Betty finish next Friday the 26th, and Flora June’s last day of school is the 30th. The government has been phasing a return to school over the last several weeks, and part of that included keeping classrooms half full, but for the last week of school, all the students will return and they’ll have their usual class size.
In related news, borders have started reopening among European countries, and for the first time, we are starting to think about our summer travel plans. As we started planning, we’ve concluded we should try to keep our travel within France’s borders — we’ve read there are some countries where American passports are not welcome because Covid-19 is not under control in the States. And we don’t want to risk booking plane tickets to somewhere like Greece and then not being allowed in the country.
What’s summer travel looking like where you live? Are things opening up? Do you feel safe to travel? Would you prefer to stay close to home this summer?
Ready for the link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share with you:
-It’s Juneteenth! An important day I was not taught about in school at all. Here is a small history of the day, by Henry Louis Gates.
-Did you hear about #BlackoutBestSellerList? The idea is for all who are able to to buy two books written by Black authors anytime this week (which means through Saturday), with the goal of “blacking out” the NYT bestseller list.
-I love this idea so much, so I decided to host an Instagram giveaway for books by Black authors. Twelve winners get to choose the books they want. You can check it out here (sorry, its Instagram-only, and you have until tonight, Friday at midnight PST, to enter).
-Related: The black women who launched the original anti-racist reading list.
-Also related, the history of Black women’s activism and organizing in the U.S..
-Need some armchair travel? The World’s Biggest Collection of Vintage Airline Posters.
–Rubber bullets are still bullets. Researchers examined injuries from 1990 to 2017 and found that over 71% of all injuries from rubber bullets and similar projectiles were severe.
–From the archive of The Atlantic, 163 years of writing on race and racism in America, including pieces from writers like Frederick Douglass, Julia Ward Howe, and Martin Luther King Jr.
-Some good news: good news. Dexamethasone, a cheap corticosteroid, greatly reduced death rates for people on respiratory support—35% for ventilator, 20% for O2—in a randomized trial. The first drug to improve survival.
-Six eBay Executives And Employees Charged With Sending Threats, Bloody Pig Mask To Natick Couple. This story is so bizarre.
-What was the best summer job you had as a teen?
-Were you ever taught about the 1921 Tulsa massacre? An unknown number of people died during the massacre. Six thousand newly homeless African American survivors — whose houses were destroyed in the massacre — were forced into internment camps and released weeks later.
-San Francisco police officers will be replaced with trained, unarmed professionals to respond to calls for help on noncriminal matters involving mental health, the homeless, school discipline and neighbor disputes.
-I want to get coveralls for working over at the Tall House. I was thinking Father’s Day would be a good excuse to pick some out for Ben Blair. I like this pair from Dickies. And here’s one for women.
Here are some tweets I saved for you:
-A 2-min video of Soho in 1959. A fascinating glimpse.
-Why is mask-wearing political?
-What did you think was fancy as a kid? The responses to this tweet are fantastic (and very nostaligic).
-Watchmen is available to watch for free this weekend. I haven’t seen the series yet and will be watching.
-Hahahah. Made me laugh.
-I won’t be reading Bolton’s book.
–What do they think their job is?
-An interesting thread that I keep thinking about.
-Have you ever heard of “the Wide Awakes”? I hadn’t. This is a fascinating thread.
–Not every company is struggling in the pandemic.
–He reported officer misconduct, so they abducted him and institutionalized him.
-A radical undercount of Covid-19 deaths.
–We should all be abolitionists.
-We deserve more elegant metaphors.
I hope you have a good weekend. Keep up that protesting energy! Will you be celebrating Father’s Day this weekend? (It happens on a different date in France, but we’ll still celebrate.) I’ll meet you back here on Monday. I miss you already.
kisses,
Gabrielle
P.S. — I’ve continued to share tons of tweets in my Instagram stories. You can see them as highlights labeled #BLM. There are currently four highlights.
