Compost #12
A February 2026 mix of consumption and creation
We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often our art, the art of words.
—Ursula Le Guin, 2014
Consuming
Podcasts & Newsletters
When We All Get to Heaven describes how the Metropolitan Community Church in SF navigated the AIDS crisis. An honest and unflinching view of a progressive religious community and how it helped its members through a terrible time.
Adventure Journal. If you like being outside and also like reading about it, this is the magazine for you. Great articles, book reviews and recipes.
Roxanne Gay, The Risk We Face in Opposing Trump. The title is confusing but the message is clear. “ . . . we don’t have to compromise ourselves, our values or our sense of justice to fight back.”
Hanna Horvath, Everything is Private Equity. My husband sent me this piece and it helped explain enshittification. Joann Fabrics, RIP.
Books
Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad. An entrancing memoir about surviving cancer as a young adult, and mediation on our conception of health and illness.
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld. This book of short stories about middle-aged women in middle America who are grappling with the past really hit home. Sittenfeld is such a clever and funny writer, penetrating but never mean. I love everything she writes. She used to live in our old neighborhood in St. Louis, and her children went to the same elementary school as my daughter, so we are practically best friends.
How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley. OMG I loved this book from the very beginning. A totally unique, funny, dark book. I don’t want to spoil a thing except to tell you that the main character’s sister is named Agatha Krishna.
The Bear by Andrew Krivak. A serene vision of the earth in a post-human future.
Movies
No Other Choice. It’s a crime that this was not nominated for an Oscar! I immediately wanted to watch it again. I wrote about this a bit in my last post.
Blue Moon. Ethan Hawke plays lyricist Lorenz Hart, who worked with the composer Rodgers in the 1920s-40s before succumbing to drinking and illness at the age of 48. Hawke is amazing, but I feel the real star here is the writer Robert Kaplow. What a script!
Resources
Please help us fight the new BLM plan to increase logging on OR public lands! Information and instructions here: BLM Announces Plan to Fell Oregon's Last Great Forests
Moss Appreciation Week. Mark your calendars for mid-February next year!
Creating
I wrote a piece about AI inevitability and am working on a few other items.
Gardening is a kind of creating, right? I planted kale, peas, yarrow, and leek seeds for germination inside; these won’t be transplanted to the community garden until after our last freeze date, which I think is April 15th. We bought four fruit trees for our backyard (a fig, a cherry, a 3-way espaliered pear, and a plum). I couldn’t resist this year’s official Rose Festival rose, ‘As You Wish‘.
I managed to get outside and take a photo 21 of 28 days in February. I visited a few new-to-me parks in east Portland, the Japanese Garden, and spent a weekend in Bend.
