Happy spring, dear POMEs: Saturday’s equinox marked the start of a time of transition, a time for planting seeds both literal and metaphorical! Kick back with this little taste of the things giving us hope for future growth. ????
Last week’s mass shooting in Atlanta targeting Asian-American spa workers has brought the particular oppressions faced by AAPI women, often obscured by model minority and racialized gender stereotypes, into the spotlight. In the spirit of solidarity, we are challenging ourselves and our peers to work harder to support these communities, and found this list of invaluable AAPI organizations accepting donations, compiled by Bitch Magazine, a very helpful starting point.
In nearby Bessemer, Alabama, the fight for a union at one of Amazon’s massive fulfillment centers continues, as the currently ongoing union vote enters its final week. This coverage by Truthout digs deep into the nuts and bolts of organizing such a groundbreaking union campaign, led by longtime Black factory workers.
For The Nation, Kathryn Jezer-Morton reflects fondly on her childhood growing up in a non-culty, legit real-life commune (which still exists!) in Vermont, and why our current atomized ways of living make that kind of life near-impossible to imagine now.
I’ve always wanted my own space more than I’ve wanted to share. I’m a fair-weather friend to commune living—I want the good parts (community interdependence) without the bad parts (the community never goes home). My parents ultimately made the same choice; they both left the commune before I became a teenager. If you’re ready to commit to the life, I commend you, and I counsel you to invest in the biggest dishwasher your money can buy. (I’ll help you research it online!) But whether or not you’re living on a commune, community interdependence requires us to give up our stubborn belief in the myth that we have complete autonomy over how we spend our time.
If the thought of community interdependence makes you long for reunion with your friends and found families, you’re not alone. What could friendship look like once we can all see each other again? For The Cut, writer Saeed Jones imagines a future where friendship can be as sublime and simple as letting your head rest on another person’s shoulder.
Comics twitter was chock full of really helpful pro tips last week, from a comic book script template the writer Emmett Hobbes kindly shared on Twitter, to resources for adapting comics for blind and low vision readers! You can sign up for a free workshop on the latter subject taking place tomorrow, March 23, by using the link in the twitter flyer below!
Writer and academic Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote an incredible long essay on an eternal source of inspiration, Dolly Parton, which delights us to no end. But we also cannot recommend highly enough a short follow-up she wrote cleverly titled, “Sleep Around Before You Marry an Argument,” in which she not only provides the most concise and accessible breakdown of the research portion of the writing process we’ve ever seen, but ALSO blesses us with a big chunk of the Dolly reading list she undertook for “The Dolly Moment.”
If there is anything positive to be said about late-stage capitalism, it’s got to be the extremely amusing, tireless lengths people will go to score an amazing deal and/or free food. In this particular case, Taiwanese officials are once again urging its citizens to stop changing their name to “salmon.”
That’s all for this week, POMEs: may you enjoy nothing but refreshment and renewal until next time!
