Friday Faves - Your Weekly Strong Towns Roundup
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Comment of the Week:
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Here’s what Strong Towns staff were up to this week:
Linda: Here on the South Carolina coastal island where I live, I know it’s spring when our local farm stand announces that the strawberries are ripe for picking. The bland grocery store varieties literally pale in comparison to the juicy, sweet, robust flavor of these just-picked berries. Though delicious on their own (and I consume quite a lot that way over the few weeks the crop lasts), I also look forward to making our favorite springtime salad of fresh spinach, sliced strawberries, and pistachios, topped with a strawberry balsamic vinaigrette. To make the vinaigrette, roast 1 cup of strawberries on a foil-lined baking sheet at 425 for about 15–20 minutes. Combine the strawberries (and any juices rendered during roasting), ¼ cup each of balsamic vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil, 1 tbsp. Dijon mustard, 1 clove garlic, and salt and pepper to taste in a blender, then puree until smooth. Simple and satisfying!
Michelle: One way we’ve tried to live strong wherever we are is by having a short commute to work (or not having a commute at all, thanks to my job at Strong Towns!). But even though we can technically walk our preschooler to school, we drive him because we are lazy and driving is just easier. This week the car happens to be unavailable so we’re walking out of necessity. It’s turning out to be one of my favorite parts of the day.
(Source: Twitter / @DrTBPanova.)
Jay: I am not a Twitter star. In fact, truth be told, I haven’t really figured out how to get people to read my stuff on there and my “ratio” leaves a lot to be desired. But I’m a devoted follower of many accounts. One of the newest and most interesting in my feed is from a brand new Strong Towns staff member, Tayana Panova, our new social community specialist. To us, she is Tayana (rhymes with Diana), but she has a professional life beyond the confines of our small, but mighty, nonprofit and our North American continent. On Twitter, you can find Dr. Panova trotting the globe and writing about third places and suburban design’s powerful influence on mental health and society. But I think one of the best aspects of her account are her amazing photographs. She’s got a good eye and she is a great traveler. So check it out! Come for the fascinating systems analysis, stay for the photos.
(Source: Unsplash.)
Rachel: My link this week comes a Midwestern publication called Belt Mag. It’s an article about the problem of casinos as a major source of income for Native American tribes, and how the pandemic shed light on the fragility of relying on one type of business for lots of important community revenue. In 2020, tribes in my home state of Wisconsin (which is the focus of this article) saw their collective gaming revenue drop dramatically as casinos had to shut down, and business was slow even after reopening. That’s revenue that goes to pay for basic infrastructure on Indian reservations—things like roads and schools. Some tribes are trying to use this as a wake-up call to think about diversifying their economies, but it’s a challenging road. This essay is a long read but well worth your time.
Lauren: I really don’t like to exercise. I don’t find it fulfilling, it hurts, it makes me tired. But I’m trying to get a bit more of it into my life by doing yoga in the mornings. The Boho Beautiful YouTube channel has been so helpful to me, a total n00b. There are plenty of sessions that are short (20 minutes or less) and easy (no unsupported handstands or unattainable contortions). So if you’re in a similar position and looking for a low lift for getting just a bit more active, maybe this is a good starting place.
Shina: One of the first "History-with-a-capital-H" books (as one of my old professors used to put it) I ever read was The Return of Martin Guerre, by Natalie Zemon Davis. You can purchase it here, but I recommend not reading the summary if you can avoid it, because trust me, you don't want the ending of this story spoiled. It's the fascinating tale, preserved through court records, of a 16th-century French peasant who deserts his wife to go to war, and returns later as a changed man...until people start to suspect he's a little too changed. And if reading History-with-a-capital-H books isn't your thing (I don't blame you), then good news: The movie adaptation is available in its entirety, for free and with subtitles, on YouTube. It's an extremely accurate adaptation, and does a great job capturing the feeling you get from the book—that real life is often stranger than fiction.
(Source: Unsplash.)
Chuck: I’ve shared a handful of articles here, and even did a podcast, on the COVID lab leak theory and how it intersects with the scientific process. While mainstream discussion has been quick to label the lab leak theory as “fringe” or, my favorite, “right wing,” and the assumption of a natural origin of the virus “mainstream,” that conversation—which claimed the mantle of being science-based—has been incredibly unscientific. The scientific process is pretty straightforward: theory, hypothesis, test, data, evaluation. It’s also pretty relentless; there might be a dark age for some ideas, but in the scientific world, the data ultimately prevails. This article doesn’t prove or disprove any theory, but it does lay out the shaky ground of natural origin absolutism and the really questionable motives of the parties pushing it. And, note, Vanity Fair is known to have a left-wing bias, and so the façade of this being a partisan line of inquiry is hopefully fading. We need the insights of science, but during the heat of the moment we often forget that scientists are human, that science + partisan politics = partisan politics, and data doesn’t care who you vote for, but theories often do.
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Finally, from all of us, a warm welcome to the newest members of the Strong Towns movement: Natividad Alvarez, Rita Bubniak, Luke Hanson, Alexander Karayanis, Connor Limburg, Zachary Miller, Sara Newstein, Jeremy Owczarski, Justin Plummer, Josh Quinn, John Slevin, and Matthew Tudball.
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What stories got you thinking this week? Please share them in the comments!