Link-a-loo

Before we get to the links —

As you know Bob, I’m a member of the Otsego County (NY) Board of Representatives and the chair of the Human Services Committee, which means I’m in a lot¹ of meetings about housing. Also in the meetings most of the time is our County Administer Steve. He and I have a longstanding call-and-response we do to break up the bleakness.

Me: I know how to solve homelessness, Steve.

Steve: How?

Me: Give everyone a house.

And then we all just laugh and cry simultaneously.

Many communities are discovering that giving vulnerable folks housing is the way to get those folks on solid enough footing to deal with the situations that caused their homelessness in the first place.² But giving “those people” something is a hard sell in this country, where poverty is seen as a only character flaw³ rather than a structural one as well.

No matter where you live in the U.S., the systems designed to help work at cross purposes most of the time, as P.J. Voigt explains in this episode of his new podcast. While the exact details are different in New York,⁴ the mechanics are the same.

Moving on:

• I feel like I’ve mentioned how much I enjoy Craig Mod before? If I haven’t, let me make it clear now. Mod goes on long walks⁵ and takes us along with him. But there’s so much more going on than just the walking:

  What I’ve learned from my walks is that every day — every step — on the road is a chance for self-renewal, to cast off some small micron of a past, shittier, scared, low-self-worth, less-kind self, and replace it with a more patient, more empathetic, higher value bizarro self⁶. Someone you could have been earlier in life, given a different set of circumstances. Micron by micron, atom by atom, it adds up (one hopes!).

  Most recently, what it’s added up to now is a book.⁷ Even if you’re not in the market for a book,⁸ sign up for his newsletter. Seriously.

• If you need some light amusement — we all need light amusement, imo — Jo Firestone’s podcast Murder on Sex Island is an absolute hoot.⁹

• Ultrarunner John Kelly wrote up his attempt at the FKT¹⁰ on the Vermont Long Trail and it’s worth a read if only for the opening sections about mud.

• If you are also interested in both the Iditarod and gender expression, the short documentary Apayauq is now streaming.

• No lies detected.

• Lisa Horstman has a new project for us. This one has a local connection for me: the Eva Coo case, which is one the county’s claims to fame. Look. It can’t all be cold cheese pizza and baseball.

• The Go Fug Yourself chicas “visited” one of my favorite gift shops/museums.¹¹

• One of the older dorms at Allegheny College was demolished.¹² This is likely of interest only to the school’s alumni.

  

  This is where Caflisch Hall once stood. Now we shall sow this ground with salt.

  What might be interesting to a non-Allegheny audience is the time capsule from 1928 that was found in the cornerstone. Usually, these boxes of trinkets are destroyed by time long before anyone in The Future sees them. Not this time. While nothing in there was mind-blowing — like Amelia Earhardt was not within — some of the items prove that the more things change, the more they say the same.¹³

• So much is going on in this piece and I #cosign it all: Invisible Pie Labor.

1. a lot a lot

2. A recent example.

3. which isn’t to say there isn’t some personal responsibility/free will at play but the entire situation is waaaaaay more complicated than that.

4. our state subsidy for housing is about $300 and is supposed to cover rent and utilities. Finding a place for that is, in a word, impossible.

5. mostly but not always in Japan

6. FWIW - this is why I run

7. Really, it’s two books. This one is the fine art version; the other version will come out in 2024 from a traditional NYC publisher. They are different but the same, sorta.

8. Which, okay, I guess?

9. Funny story. I recommended it to friends on mine with the caveat “it’s not for kids.” One of said friends replied, “thanks for the warning. I totally thought something called ‘murder on sex island’ was child friendly.'“

10. Fastest Known Time

11. Whenever we’re near Corning, I stop in. It’s fun just to walk around the shop and their cafeteria food is much better than it needs to be.

12. Honestly, few will miss it.

13. like this quote from one of the newspapers, “One Dr. Stanley S. Swartley published an article in “School and Society” lamenting the lack of interest in reading among college students. ‘More than ever before, the American student body is recruited from homes with commonplace and materialistic interests. Go into the average college student’s room and what do you see? A talking machine, a radio, still-assorted pictures and a pitiably small row of dull and drab textbooks.’”