| | | | Hey there sleepyhead,
A couple days ago, the Wall Street Journal had this article all about mornings — specifically, about those of us who practice sloooow mornings. Proponents of the slow morning spend hours "doing very little in the morning," the WSJ wrote. "Rising early, they relish beginning their day in quiet solitude, free of interruptions and deadlines." Ahhhh.
They featured several practicioners who — in the face of 3-in-1 shampoos, coffee pods, and overnight oats — view the early hours as a slow jam, not a sprint. One of them takes a cold shower or sometimes jumps into the frigid lake near his apartment. (Cool!) Another uses that extra time to market her essential oils online. (Wait!) Someone else wakes up by 3 p.m. to respond to emails, work out, and do laundry. (Oh no!)
We wanted to continue the conversation that the Journal started — and it just so happens that the OTM crew has its own life hacks and wellness regimens. Here's how the producers find our peace before work:
Asthaa wakes up before dawn so that she can meditate — but she doesn't meditate just anywhere. She's out the door by 5 a.m., usually running, sometimes sprinting, to catch the 197 from Jersey. There's something about that bus — the rumble? the stop-and-go pace? — that gives Asthaa the room to forget emails, tasks, and lists, and dig deep — you know, really gather her thoughts. Also, they have WiFi, so she can also tend to her emails, tasks, and lists.
Jon generally tries to stumble out his building's front door by 9:30 at the latest (still in his PJs, the ones with the bears) to practice Tai chi in the street. The honking wakes him up.
Alana does some stretching, and then she takes her dog out for a short walk. It puts her in touch with the earth and the animals around her, she says, to pick up a raw heap of dog shit. They return home, and she makes tea.
Micah picks up dog shit too, and he doesn't even own a dog!
Leah wakes up at 6:15am to log her dreams from the night before and begin her practice of "morning pages," a writing exercise wherein she purges the anxieties and mental clutter that have built up in her brain in order to make her mind clear for razor sharp media analysis to emerge. Generally, though, her mind's still not clear. By 6:45, she's doing alternate-nostril breathing and meditating, a further attempt to settle the racket of modernity. But it's loud in there, so at around 7:10, it's time for yoga. She rolls out her mat, starts her asanas, and monitors her breath. From sun salutations through the inversions, she sees her poses as an embodied prayer for a peace that never seems to arrive, so from there it's celery juice, intention setting, and some slow drumming. Then she bikes to work and reads about Trump for 8 hours. She wonders what's not working.
Onwards. | | [ In Case You Missed It ] | |  | "America Is Reaching Out For History" In May, Brooke and producer Alana Casanova-Burgess went to Alabama and came back with two episodes: The Worst Thing We've Ever Done and Africatown. We re-aired them over the holidays because it turns out that the themes of racism and erased history are still timely as ever. In our hour on Africatown, we explored the story of a small community just outside Mobile established by the last known enslaved people brought to America, illegally, in 1860. Africatown, also known as Plateau, is a living monument to America's past — but also reflects the modern challenges of environment injustice and poverty. Don't miss it. | |  | | A couple weeks ago we shared as a podcast extra an upcoming episode of the new WNYC podcast, 10 Things That Scare Me, featuring our very own Brookie G. We're re-upping that pod here now because you may have missed it (YMHMI, as they say here on-line) but aaaalso because 10 Things That Scare Me, beginning this week, will be featured on NPR's Morning Edition on Thursday mornings. AKA, probably, right now! Tune in! Don't be scared! Or do, since that's the point! | |  | | "For over a century, the frontier has served as the defining myth of the nation's identity, a wide-open threshold into the world and the future." Historian Greg Gardin has a piece in Boston Review this week connecting the idea of the American frontier with the brutal history of extremism at the literal margins of the country. "Now, rather than the frontier opening up, the border is closing in," he writes. And the horrors we hear about there (and there are so many these days) create the illusion of what Gardin refers to as "the hallucinatory collapse of historical time." Turns out, Gardin has a book coming out soon on the frontier, the border, and the idea of American expansion. Check out his essay here. | | | The President is going to the border to show the country what the migrant crisis looks like in McAllen, Texas. But what if McAllen doesn't really tell that story? | | | Thanks for listening, and for reading. We love feedback, so please contact us with any questions or comments. We're busy, but we read them all, promise. | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment