the Weekly Framework: a look back on memorial weekend
hello, friends 💖
Here in the U.S., we’re midway through a three-day weekend. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, which is meant to be a solemn day of remembrance, on which we honor and decorate the graves of fallen U.S. military service members.
That isn’t how Memorial Day is observed anymore, because … [gesticulating broadly at late-stage capitalism, not to mention our current profoundly unserious government administration, which is nearly bereft of actual grown-ups]. But that was the intent behind the day.
In that spirit, I’m urging all of us to pause for a moment this weekend and reflect about the sacrifices others have made that have allowed us to be where we are. None of us has achieved anything worthwhile alone; we are deeply and intricately dependent on everyone around us, and everyone who came before us, for nearly everything we know and do.
If you’re scoffing a bit at this notion, try this exercise. The next time you sit down to a meal, stop to look at what’s in front of you. How did that food get onto your plate?
a random picture of my breakfast: scrambled eggs with mushrooms, goat cheese, and sprouts, served with a massive slice of homemade bread with butter and raspberry jam. also yes, I use china and sterling silver for most of my meals 🤣
For this breakfast, someone raised the chickens who laid those eggs. Someone collected those eggs and packaged them carefully. Someone then shipped them to the local farm store, where someone stocked them in the fridge before I bought them. Someone rang up my purchase for me. Someone raised the goats who … you get my point, I think. (Also I’m realizing I don’t know how goat cheese is made, so I can’t really walk us through that process.)
And the bread, y’all?? Someone grew the wheat, someone harvested it, someone milled it into flour, someone (a friend of mine who’s probably reading this!) used her carefully tended sourdough starter to turn that flour into delicious bread.
The point is that we are all unfathomably reliant on others, and that’s worthy of recognition, and remembrance, and appreciation.
At any rate, I haven’t written a proper newsletter this week because about half of my audience won’t read it anyway 🤣
What I’ve done instead is something I’ve meant to do for aaaaages—I’ve put some of my favorite posts from this newsletter on my website. (I meant for this to be only a few posts, but it turns out that I like quite a lot of these, and y’all, it is my blog and I can have a zillion newsletter posts on there if I want to.)
Take a look and see what you think. Are there some on here that you missed the first time around? Did I leave out one that you loved? Please let me know! I’m happy to add more 😁
Have a lovely week, friends 💖
Enjoying this newsletter? I’d be so grateful if you could forward it to a friend who might also appreciate it! If you’ve received this as a forward, you can subscribe here.
