I Get All The News I Need From Michaela's Reports

Whelp, friends, I did it. I moved my newsletter off of Substack and onto a new platform, Ghost. Y'all, coding is not in my wheelhouse, and doing this felt like wading through foot-high mud with giant boulders chained to my ankles. After I successfully transitioned most of the crucial pieces I kept crowing to Chad that I couldn't believe I did that and how proud I was of myself.

And now that I'm here, now what?

Well, for one thing it gives me an excuse to play with a new format, one that is hopefully better for scrolling.

I'm also introducing a comic for paid subscribers, mainly because the content is sensitive. It's a comic about the year I tutored at MCI-Concord, a medium-security prison just outside Boston. The first installment is free to all.

But first, the news. Michaela watches CNN-10 at her school, and I love it when she recounts what she's learned, especially when it is literally news to me.

Comic Diary

Study Hall

This is the comic which will be behind a paywall in future newsletters. It will come out at least monthly, hopefully biweekly. Please let me know what you think. Your feedback is really helpful to me. You can just reply to this email; I love hearing from you.

That's all for now. Here are some things that kept me going this past few weeks.

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, a graphic novel by Mannie Murphy, may be the main reason I decided to leave Substack. The spread of white supremacy is so insidious and pervasive that I am constantly shocked by it and had trouble stomaching that my content was in any way connected with this vile subject matter. Murphy's book goes deep into Portland, Oregon's history and the way that filmmaker Gus Van Sant romanticized a certain alternative subset who happened to be white nationalists. It reminded me of Season 3 of the podcast Motive, which detailed the rise of Neo-Nazi skinheads in Chicago, and is also totally gripping btw.

Bobi Wine: The People's President, one of this year's Academy Award-nominated documentaries, which is about a Ugandan musician who grew up as an orphan in the slums and decided to run for political office in order to defeat the dictator who has been in control for over three decades. Come for the joyous music, stay to witness brave humans standing up to vicious oppressors. Take notes.

There was a thoughtful essay on Moomin creator Tove Jansson in a recent issue of the New York Review of Books and one quote from Jansson about living through WWII has really stuck with me: “Before the war I used to think the purpose of life was to act as justly as possible; after the war I thought the purpose of life was to be as happy as possible.”

I hope your pursuit of happiness is going well!

See you next week,

Claire