Friday Inspiration 535
the best free restaurant bread in the U.S., planting pocket forests, all-female Indonesian Muslim metal band
Martin sent this to me last weekend with the subject line “Indonesian, Muslim, female, Hijab wearing, metal band” and I was pretty sure I was going to like it. I was correct. Wait for the bass solo at about 4:40. (video)
You’ve probably heard some version of the oft-quoted saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” Well, if you want to up your game a little bit, maybe the second-best time to plant a Miyawaki forest (or a “pocket forest”) is now. (via Kottke)
A few years ago I read Brad Balukjian’s book The Wax Pack, in which he opens a 29-year-old pack of baseball cards and tracked down each of the 15 players represented on the cards to find out how they’re doing—which is just a brilliant idea for a book. So when I saw this story about a 1998 baseball card with two rookies on it, one of which was seven-time All-Star Matt Holliday, and the other a guy who never played a Major League game, my interest was of course piqued. [GIFT LINK]
My friend Alex sent me this Atlantic story titled “I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America” and I could probably bestow upon it one of many descriptives saying it’s great writing that is exhaustively researched, but I will just say it is the funniest goddamn thing I have read in a long time, and I get the feeling that Caity Weaver probably had as much fun writing some of these sentences as I had reading them. [GIFT LINK]
I loved this thoughtful illustrated essay on cars and youth and scars and aging and machines, especially the last page (thanks, Hilary).
Legendary photographer and verified nice guy Mikey Schaefer is giving away free prints of a few of his iconic photos of Dean Potter to raise money for The Access Fund and Friends of YOSAR (the bigger your donation, the bigger your print) until May 12th or until he gets overwhelmed.
This was a fun and touching thread of replies to scroll through: People responded to the prompt “Question: how rich are you? You can’t mention money.”
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Next month is Pride Month, and if you’d like to donate to your local LGBTQ+ organization, that’s a wonderful idea. If you’d like to indirectly donate to MY local LGBTQ+ center, you can do that by purchasing one of these t-shirts—100 percent of the profits are donated to The Center in Missoula.
Thanks for the link to the metal band. I'll watch closely later, when it is Grimdark outside. But watching what I did I'm compelled to say I was reminded of my early days in the rock trenches, back when I was in high school. The drummer of the first band I was in was a real dick, entitled because his grandparents basically bought him whatever he wanted, and it all manifested in a huge drum kit, PA gear, etc. He used to harangue our guitar player over the make/model of his guitar, and strongly suggest, "You should get one of those really big guitars, you know like AC/DC play!" not knowing that those guitars only looked "really big" because Angus and Malcolm Young, Titans of Rock that they are, are/were wee tiny men.