Nightingales and Nightshades

Greetings 🖖🏻

Here in Tucson, the datura plants are flowering and hawk moths are excited about that. I’ve gone into a semi-hallucinatory state reading about this fetching nightshade.¹

Mostly I just want to share aaaall the news. I come across far more gleanings that I could ever post here, but that doesn’t stop me from trying! So here you go.

🩻 Am I crazy or do Conservative extremists have a real problem with pretending they’re doctors and thinking they get to decide what’s public health. They want to play doctor and dictator, but of course they’re just playing a poisonous power game, and we all pay for tickets to their shitshow.

“The Human Psyche Was Not Built For This.” How Republicans in Montana hijacked public health and brought a hospital to the brink. ProPublica

Abortion bans like Lindsey Graham’s say they have rape and incest exceptions — in practice, they don’t work. The 19th News

🛑 Stop it with the book bans and the harassment of teachers and librarians already. Book bans primarily target books from writers of color and the LGBTQ community. Not cool.

Banned in the USA: Rising School Book Bans Threaten Free Expression and Students’ First Amendment Rights PEN America

😱 To escape from the real horror of life, I have watched several good horror movies lately. And I also watched the movie Men. I advise you to skip it (I just…don’t need a movie made by a man that tries to tell me how women feel about men). Instead, read a review comparing Men to the far superior and more devastating movie The Nightingale.² I wrote about watching Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale in a prior newsletter.³

✊🏽 Dorothy Roberts Tried to Warn Us. This article about Roberts from The Intelligencer gets personal, and it was riveting.

🙌🏻 Let’s hear it for young people who know how to take charge.

These Tennessee Teens Are Fighting Abortion Bans and Helping Their Peers Learn About Sex Teen Vogue

Idaho’s Far Right Suffers Election Loss to 18-Year-Old Climate Activist The Intercept

🎥 One of the best movies I saw recently is an action-horror flick (just released on Shudder) called Saloum, about a trio of bandits on the run who end up at a supernatural coastal resort in Senegal. Of course a lot more than that goes down, and you can have the pleasure of reading a ✨Roxana Hadadi✨ review⁴ for more nuance.

Saloum is ripping good. I tried to follow along with the French dialogue, and the soundtrack led me to Reksider,⁵ Keleketla!⁶ and KOKOKO! I love that these musicians are so cool they punctuate themselves with exclamation points‼

Carrie This 🥁

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium

2. https://defector.com/men-is-bad/

3. You And I

4. https://www.vulture.com/2022/09/movie-review-of-senegal-set-horror-film-saloum-on-shudder.html

5. https://www.youtube.com/user/reksider/playlists

6. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/03/keleketla-review-ninja-tune