How I'm coping

Reaching for resistance and resilience through community, culture, and creation

“Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.”

—Rebecca Solnit (link)

A few times a week I work at my beautiful neighborhood library. The vibes are outstanding. Teens do homework, toddlers run through the stacks, an unhoused man dozes, a young adult practices guitar in one of the private rooms. The mild afternoon sun is magnified through huge west-facing windows. Once, a patron brought her sewing machine in to work on one of the big broad tables. It feels big and broad and good to be in a space with so many books and so many people.

I need more of that big, broad feeling. For me, witnessing the destruction of US science is intellectually paralyzing. I’m not writing much, and what I do get down is constricted, circular, small-minded. I suspect my emotional range isn’t much different.

As a scientist who left academia just a few years ago, one of my particular challenges is that, in giving up my faculty position, I also gave up an obvious mechanism for resistance and mutual aid. I have no research to protect, no students to teach, no leadership positions that allow me to advocate for others, no institutions within which to act. Perhaps that seems to you like a privilege—and I know I should see it as an opportunity—but instead I just feel helpless, full of anger and energy that have too few places to go.

I have taken action where I can: I’ve been to marches, called my congresspeople, attended town halls, written an Op-Ed, attended a fund-raiser, stepped up donations to NPR, OPB, ACLU. But it’s not enough.

Coping with the News

“Look through the smoke for what is being taken, redefined, and reallocated.” —Tressie McMillan Cottom (link)

One thing that helps is getting my news from a few trusted aggregators. Historian Heather Cox Richardson posts to Letters from an American almost every day. Science communicator and personal crush Liz Neeley’s newsletter summarizes and digests science-related news every Friday. I’m so grateful to Heather and Liz for helping me feel less like I’m drinking from a fire hose of terrible news and more like I’m seeing and understanding patterns through the lenses of history and science communication. I also read Tressie McMillan Cottom’s and Jamelle Bouie’s newsletters. The other thing that helps? I set aside time to read these sources and I take notes.

Community

“So much of the magic of community-building lives in merely focusing on it.”—Garrett Bucks

Back in February, I attended a training on community-building by Garrett Bucks at The Barnraisers Project. I haven’t taken any great action yet, but just showing up to my book club, my writing group, my faith community, volunteer work, and even the community garden—it has been a tonic, every time.

I attended public conversations with Sarah Kendzior & Omar El Akkad, Masha Gessen, and Lidia Yuknavitch & Rebecca Solnit—all writers who understand what it means to be living in a society sliding towards autocracy, and on an earth that is constantly being ransacked for profit. I’ve loved to hear these brilliant people acknowledge the challenges before us, while still holding onto hope.

Culture

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

—Wendell Berry (link)

I try to pay attention to my consumption-to-creation ratio (I mean art & culture here, not chardonnay & carbs, though the latter might be worth considering, TBH). Since January 20th, I’ve been consuming far more than creating, an unhealthy imbalance for me. That being said, much of what I have been reading, watching, and listening to has been outstanding, and much of it speaks to the political moment:

Books
Wild Dark Shore: A drama set on an island between Tasmania and Antarctica that houses a seed bank. Hope and inspiration from plants in the face of climate change despair.
Braiding Sweetgrass: Poetic, humor-filled essays by a plant physiologist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. A good reminder that people have been studying nature and plant biology far before there was an NSF, and will continue to do so.
The Perfect Couple: The protagonist of this thriller is a biomedical postdoctoral fellow trying to reproduce data for a project she inherited from a past lab member.
Heartwood
Colored Television
All Fours

Poetry & Podcasts
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry
October by Louise Glück
The Woman Who Spoke Truth to Trump: Bishop Budde

Screens
Andor and Silo and The Hunger Games are futuristic TV shows about rebellion against autocracy.
I’m Still Here is the haunting true story of a woman who dealt with the forced disappearance of her husband during the military take-over of Brazil in the 1970s.

Creation

“How privileged you are, to be passionately
clinging to what you love;
the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

Maestoso, doloroso:

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.
Surely it is a privilege to approach the end
still believing in something.”

—Louise Glück

I made this post! I’m working, ever so slowly, on an essay about storytelling in science. I hope to have more to share in this space soon.

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Discussion Section

• I’d love to know how you are coping. Let me know, by DM or in the comments.