Alan Townsend

I sometimes think about how the common ancestor of whales and humans crawled out of the ocean ~400 million years ago; but then ~50 million years ago, the whale ancestor said “screw this, we’re going back”.

Come on now, who else is giving us the mash up of top shelf climate insight with love is blind. #legend

👇👇👇

So enjoyed being part of the @latimes.com book festival. Brings me hope in a darker time to see so many people gather around the power of books and reading. Special thanks to @kategammon.bsky.social Susan Weiss Leibman and Lawrence Ingrassia for a great panel discussion. #latimesfob

Good lord stop what you’re doing and read this right now.

Grief Almanac For An Apocalypse To live long enough in this world means to learn to nestle the twins of grief and hope in your arms. I tuck the bottle of fertility medication next to the black dress I bought for my mother’s funeral....

Hey thanks so much. And for others, here’s one of the best essays on grief and hope and life I’ve read - written by Jacquelyn!
www.thesunmagazine.org/articles/250...

Oh hell, no need but thank you! Just enjoyed reading thru your recs.

Awesome, love it!

The irony of posting this from my phone aside, this from @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social is a dead on important read.

My bulldog has a keenly developed sense of irony.

Opinion | Our conversation about campuses is elitist and misleading. We can fix that. The conversation has nothing to do with preparing our country to compete in the coming century, much less helping most of our young people get ready for it.

Excellent piece on higher ed - and our misplaced societal focus - by UM president Seth Bodnar. Proud to work here.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

This was not an average delivery tonight. Absolute floods of joy, pain, love and history in this one box.

5 Calls Spend 5 minutes. Make 5 calls. Make your voice heard.

A reminder for Americans that the 5Calls app makes it trivially easy to call your representatives. I’ve been using it daily. 5calls.org

The laziest tendency, I think, of current US politics discourse is telling people who are harmed by political extremism to “just leave.” I took a road trip with Zooey Zephyr, who isn’t giving up on Montana but fighting back. Story out today in the Guardian. www.theguardian.com/world/2023/o...

That’s it, I’m hanging up writing. This from Rae Hodge can’t be topped.

Authors (current and hopeful), this newsletter from Anna Sproul-Latimer at Neon Literary is a terrific resource, and often highly entertaining to boot. Check it out.
neonliterary.com/glow

This Ordinary Stardust A compassionate, vulnerable, and transformative exploration of the nurturing and spiritual power of scientific wonder, as illuminated through the tragic dual...

Pre-orders of THIS ORDINARY STARDUST now available. This project has been a labor of many emotions, and the most important one of my life. Excited to share it with the world. #authors
www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/alan-...