IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Ilir Gashi writes about the informal courier network in the Balkans, where communities across the former Yugoslavia rely on each other over formal institutions.
(The Guardian, approx 19 mins reading time)
One specific person – driver, friend or acquaintance – takes care of the delivery. It is a person you either know or have at least met, someone you’ve shaken hands with at some point and exchanged a few words. It seems in those 30 or 60 seconds a level of trust is built that is so much greater than it’s possible to establish with any postal service worker, hidden behind the counter with their promotional stock photos of yellow vans that always arrive on time. Who would you trust more: a) a company with a slogan that guarantees your shipment will be delivered in the next 48 hours, and offers you the possibility to follow your shipment through a special code; or b) a driver who, when asked “When will it arrive, approximately?” – asked bashfully so as not to appear as if you are, God forbid, rushing him, because he has every right to get there whenever he wishes – first looks into the distance, inhales a smoke, and exhales: “It depends on the rush hour, but not before nine”? And they always give you a time that’s too early. Better for you to wait, than for the whole bus. Somehow, for an astonishingly high number of people in the Balkans, the answer is b.
Actors have joined writers on the picket lines in Hollywood. But what is it all about, and what impact will it have on the industry going forward?
(The Hollywood Reporter, approx 8 mins reading time)
Compared to the writers strike, film and TV production will be halted faster and at a much larger scale with actors joining the picket lines — though, thanks to the writers’ standoff, there is scant union production work happening in New York and Los Angeles. Still, all remaining U.S. physical production with union performers will likely be immediately impacted by the strike. Shoots on major films and on ongoing television series are all expected to be immediately shut down once deprived of their top stars. “In some ways, this is the most important strike in Hollywood history because it’s over existential issues,” says Jonathan Kuntz, a film historian at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. “We’re entering an era of scarcity. This is about a shrinking pie that’s now being divvied up.”
An article about trauma and healing which focuses on burial sites at Native American boarding schools in the US and Marsha Small, who uses ground penetrating radar to uncover them.
(WIRED, approx 29 mins reading time)
In the US, though, it wasn’t until 2021, when secretary of the interior Deb Haaland became the first Indigenous person to hold a cabinet level position, that the federal government first attempted to compile a list of the boarding schools it had operated or supported, as part of her Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. (Last summer, Haaland embarked on a yearlong “Road to Healing” tour.) Between the two countries, some 500 boarding schools for Indigenous children served as instruments of colonialism—not just in the distant past, but through the middle of the 20th century. Countless Native children were taken from their homes, forced to give up their languages and cultures, and in many cases made to suffer and die from neglect, abuse, and disease.
Katherine Rundell reminds us of the wonder of children’s literature, and why, as adults, they are still just as good for the soul.
(BBC, approx 13 mins reading time)
What is it like to read as a child? Is there something in it – the headlong, hungry, immersive quality of it – that we can get back to? When I was young I read with a rage to understand. Adult memories of how we once read are often de-spiked by nostalgia, but my need for books as a child was sharp and urgent and furious if thwarted. My family was large, and reading offered privacy from the raucous, mildly unhinged panopticon that is living with three siblings: I could be sitting alongside them in the car, but, in fact, it was the only time when nobody in the world knew where I was. Crawling through dark tunnels in the company of hobbits, standing in front of oncoming trains waving a red flag torn from a petticoat: to read alone is to step into an infinite space where none can follow.
In the US, where emergency-department visits for mental-health reasons have surged, some hospitals are exploring new ways to better treat psychiatric patients.
(The New Yorker, approx 21 mins reading time)
The mental-health unit where Mitlyng works is one of only a few dozen Empath units, short for Emergency Psychiatry Assessment, Treatment, and Healing. Such units, which were invented about a decade ago, vary in size, staffing, and design, but the core concept is that, instead of leaving patients to languish in an emergency room, caregivers offer them a calm communal environment where they can receive a comprehensive evaluation, start therapy, and, if needed, receive medication. Most patients stay for a day or two; the vast majority are discharged back home, instead of going on to a psychiatric facility. In its two years of existence, M Health Fairview’s Empath unit has cared for five thousand people. I turned to survey the room: patients sat placidly near one another, blankets pulled to their chins, munching on chips and watching TV. I thought back to my own experiences in the chaos of emergency departments. Was this what an E.R. for mental illness should look like?
Why so many of us get so attached to the small trinkets and treasures in our home that we just can’t get rid of.
(The Atlantic, approx 6 mins reading time)
Other objects are small tributes to the people I’ve lost. In the first half of last year, my father, my husband’s father, and my grandfather all died for unrelated reasons. Their possessions have since trickled into our home. We haven’t yet figured out what to do with all of them. So for now, the dress shoes my husband’s father wore to our wedding take up space in our closet. My husband plans to donate them, but not yet. Sometimes the sight of them catches me off guard, and I wonder whether they are helping us heal or stopping us from moving on.
A longread from four years ago explores the destructive impact of concrete on the planet and on human health.
(The Guardian, approx 21 mins reading time)
Taking in all stages of production, concrete is said to be responsible for 4-8% of the world’s CO2. Among materials, only coal, oil and gas are a greater source of greenhouse gases. Half of concrete’s CO2 emissions are created during the manufacture of clinker, the most-energy intensive part of the cement-making process. But other environmental impacts are far less well understood. Concrete is a thirsty behemoth, sucking up almost a 10th of the world’s industrial water use. This often strains supplies for drinking and irrigation, because 75% of this consumption is in drought and water-stressed regions. In cities, concrete also adds to the heat-island effect by absorbing the warmth of the sun and trapping gases from car exhausts and air-conditioner units – though it is, at least, better than darker asphalt.
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