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Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. ~Doris Lessing

June is the month of Juno - the daughter of Saturn and mother of Mars. She's known for her fullness of vital energy and as the goddess of growth. In this summer of re-entry, we wish you her strength and her buoyancy.

Speaking with the Dead - Almost 1/3 of Americans say they have communicated with someone who has died. These numbers are reminiscent of the late 19th century, when somewhere between 4-11 million people identified as Spiritualists in the United States alone.

The dread of mortality has always inspired the dream of immortality. The quest is eternal - to bridge the divide between ourselves and those we have lost...

This deep dive article cites several fascinating books.

You can read it here.

Maya Lin is the brilliant architect who designed the Vietnam Memorial.

For the last decade she has been involved in the What is Missing project which documents ecological loss. For the Ghost Forest she transported forty-nine dead Atlantic White Cedars to Madison Square Park and installed them as silent witnesses to the vast swaths of their elders that used to grow up and down the Atlantic coast.

As the saying goes, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

You can read it here.

s.e. smith takes a comprehensive look at how grieving is portrayed in our culture through books, movies and television. She highlights the American penchant for moving on as quickly as possible and the first glimmerings of some more realistic reflections including those outside of a default white perspective.

She looks for the stories that know Grief is not an illness, mourners are not broken...

You can read the article here.

Ed Yong has been one of the most respected chroniclers of the pandemic. In his latest article for The Atlantic he brings his comprehensive perspective to the reality of our current collective moment which many of us are finding disorienting. He writes, If you've been swimming furiously for a year, you don't expect to finally reach dry land and feel like you're drowning.

We are all needing some recovery now and Yong gives us the context to engage this new chapter.

You can read it here.

Dead to Me is a dark comedy on Netflix that goes for the weirdly funny things about grief without sacrificing the tragedy of loss. The first two seasons are available now with the final third season expected early 2022 so binge-ing this cliffhanger show will be an option.

You can find the trailer here.

And the official site is here here.

Brooke Jarvis gives us a vigorous review of a conversation that is on the rise in American culture. Now that human life expectancy has risen significantly in the 21st century, how do we address those new found years?

Many have found a new goal: a good death.

Jarvis points to Katie Engelhart’s book The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die as a remarkably nuanced, empathetic, and well-crafted work of journalism. It explores what might be called the right-to-die underground.
Engelhart says that the world of people who would like doctors to help them die is far larger, and much more complex, than what current laws cover.

You can read the review here and find the book here.

Excavation in the 1800’s revealed a sacred burial site of warriors from 338 B.C. known to be among the most fearsome undefeated fighting forces, until they were wiped out here by Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. This final battle was the death knell of the Classi­cal Era of Greek history. Known today as the Sacred Band, this group of men were 150 pairs of lovers, whose valor in battle the Greeks believed was directly related to their love of one another.

Look closely and you’ll see arms linked, and even hands held.
Read the New Yorker article here, and the book, The Sacred Band here.

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, the Covid-19 pandemic has made it painfully obvious that our lives are entwined with the lives of other animals. Repairing our world in peril means realizing our fate is tied up with the rest of the animal kingdom - there is an interconnectedness underpinning our existence. We are left with no other choice than to think and act accordingly now.

You can read the article Species Solidarity: Rediscovering Our Connection to the Web of Life by Michelle Nijhuis here, and find her book Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction here.

Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you feel might benefit from these resources and articles.

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