One Joyful Thing: Wild Things Edition

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Photo by Catherine Kay Greenup on Unsplash

Spring’s been shot out of cannon here where I live. Things are in bloom and life is busy.

Here’s what I’m looking forward to this week:

Yes, of course the eclipse! If you, like me, are near the path of totality, and haven’t snagged your eclipse-viewing glasses yet, here’s a video from NASA about how to watch it safely. (The tips come in at about 1:35).

Also, generous fertility benefits from the nation’s biggest employer! The federal government will soon provide a range of fertility benefits, some of which cover $25,000 annually for IVF.

And, childcare costs are about to drop for the folks who need it most! The Biden administration is requiring states to limit co-payments so that families who receive subsidies pay no more than 7 percent of their income on childcare.

Here’s what I’m enjoying:

This interview with tech writer Kara Swisher, in which she explains why it’s so hard to regulate tech companies (especially interesting for anyone looking to raise a phone-free child), and why tech billionaires are so frightened of lesbians with guns. Her new book is called Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, about the tech industry founders “who wanted to change the world, but broke it instead.”

I got an advance copy of Jessica Calarco’s new book, “Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net.” (pre-order it now!) and it delivers. Calarco has been writing and studying the impacts of our disastrous child care policies since well before the pandemic, and she documents so much of what many families have been experiencing with sensitivity and hard data. I’m talking to Calarco in a few weeks, and cannot wait to dig into the details with her. 

This meaty conversation about the long history of American Jewish dissent on Zionism. Turns out many of the arguments folks are having today about the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism were also going on back in the 1930s.

Finally: One Joyful Thing

Yesterday I took my kid to see, for the second time, Kung-Fu Panda 4. I probably should have been signing her up for a soccer clinic or teaching her something creative, like how to use a loom. But instead, we tucked into a bag of popcorn and settled into our seats.

And for some reason, amid the blasting of the movie trailers, and the chaos of this week, and the mania I expect in the weeks and months to come, this treasured Wendell Berry poem, “The Peace of Wild Things” bubbled up inside.

So here’s One Joyful Thing to keep in your pocket for when things get tough.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

MATRIARCHY REPORT is written by Lane Anderson and Allison Lichter.

Lane Anderson is a writer, journalist, and Clinical Associate Professor at NYU who has won several awards for her writing on inequality and family social issues. She has an MFA from Columbia University. She was raised in Utah and lives in New York City with her partner and young daughter.

Allison Lichter works at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. She has been a writer, producer and editor for radio and print, covering the arts, politics, and the workplace. She was born and raised in Queens, and lives in Brooklyn with her partner and daughter.

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