July Newsletter

Hello there!

I hope you’ve all been staying cool this past month. It seems to have been hot in all of the places you live.

I completed the great pub ride of 2018 and visited a few pubs along the way. Less than I had expected, but I also didn’t expect to be in bed by 9 pm on so many occasions. It was a thrilling, humbling, and moving experience.

I started to write about it a little bit in this blog post and will write more about the experience in the near future. The days were full, and also long, so we did a lot but not much writing or processing.

Toward the end of the month, it started to feel like going home was going back to NYC, not Joshua Tree, but here I am and it’s good to be back.

Click on the photo below to see a few images from the trip! But just the bike trip, the week in Copenhagen is yet to come.

Maps and Borders

I’ve written a little bit about maps in a previous newsletter/blog post, and as we were traveling through so many different places so quickly, I was thinking about maps again.

One interesting thing was in the Netherlands. Because of land reclamation, the country looks (both in person and on a map) completely different than it did in the 1300’s, let alone the early 1900’s.

Traveling through these parts was a real contrast to the old churches and windmills and buildings you see elsewhere. Not much history in some of the newer towns we saw, which again, was a weird juxtaposition to the European experience as a whole.

There was also ease in border crossing in the EU that is, of course, a different thing entirely than that of the US/Mexico border.

More on Borders

I wrote about my experience of border crossing in Europe and also that of “crossing” our border and what reentering the US is like these days. You can read about that here if you would like.

I also think it’s a good reminder to take a look at the territorial evolution of the US and, in the grand scheme of things, remember how new we are and how we really look like a bunch of jerks right now. To put it mildly…

This month’s Patreon postcards are being sent to ICE Field offices which simply state “Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect.”

If you would like to support this run of postcards, there’s still half of July left to go! Please feel free to read more about my work through Patreon, and support the cause, here!

As I am still getting things together after a month away from home, I don’t have as much to share as I typically include in my newsletters.

When I first sent out my newsletter, I added a button for you to submit work, thoughts, etc. for me to share. I’m bringing that back, but in addition to sharing what you’re doing, you can simply click above to give me feedback or simply say hello.

I hope to hear about what you’ve been up to! xoxo

Final thoughts