Issue #05: A tool to help you work together, better
It's useful at home, or at work. Plus, an absolute slew of links and recs.
Hi. You might notice that this Sunday newsletter is coming on Friday. That’s because I’m tired of checking on it Sunday mornings, and I want you to have these links for the weekend. Plus, it’s summer. Who is reading their email on a Sunday in the summer? (I hope not you.) I’m going to try this send day for one month. OK let’s get to it!
In this issue: A peek at our garden, a brief history of granges, what’s in your gut, dry texting, two lessons on listening across lines, and the most beautiful mode of transportation I’ve ever seen.
It’s garden season, which is a really big deal at my house. When I left the city, growing your own food, from an actual seed, was one of the things that brought me unexpected, immense amounts of joy. Then I met my partner, who is a horticulturalist, and things really got rowdy.
He lives on an island off the coast of Washington, and now I spend summers there, too. The first summer, we grew what we could on the porch in pots, plus a small garden bed we carved out of the lawn at our apartment complex. But we don’t get full sun, which limits what we can grow.
Then, last spring, we saw a post in the town Facebook group that the grange was starting a community farm. I know through the magic of data that most of you are in New York and DC, so let me explain: a grange is a rural agricultural club founded in the 1800s to support farm families. The first chapter was in DC, and they were the first national organization to require leadership roles for women, which you know I appreciate. Membership fell as people flocked to cities, but in 2022, the national organization saw its first net increase in membership in almost 70 years.
While we were the only two people under 50 at the info session for the community farm, it was very exciting: they wanted this project to make farming accessible to people who didn’t have land (us!), and it was going to be big and have full sun. The only downside was that it wasn’t going to open until 2025. So when we got an email a couple days later from a very generous man with the subject line: Do you want to farm this year…? we were thrilled.
After our visit to scout out the land, we grabbed tamales by the marina and decided on the selection criteria for this project.
This is because my partner and I both tend to operate at what we fondly call “an 11 out of 10.” For example, when I decided to learn to sew, I did not start with a tea towel. I decided to recover our couch. I don’t remember the exact details that led me to suggest this this, I do remember wanting some kind of guardrail so that we didn’t end up spending $1,000 on plants.