PLANTCRAFT Mini: 3 Deer, 2 New Works, 1 Reader Poll
👁️ Cutting 004
Welcome back to PLANTCRAFT—a slow newsletter about people and the plants they love.
PLANTCRAFT Mini is back in your inbox!
A few minutes ago, while drafting this missive, I received the below text from friend and creative collaborator Kate Weiner, whom many of you likely know through her writing, editing, publishing, and world-building work with Loam. The text provided a welcome distraction:
A little context: Kate and I are currently in upstate New York, in neighboring cabins, for a Regenerative Retreat hosted by The Strange Foundation. Swaddled by a misty forest, baby birds, and a pond begging us to dip in for a late-evening cold plunge, Kate and I are taking time to decelerate and work on a series of personal projects, including a new iteration of our beloved Down to Earth Deck.
Distanced from subway arrival times, scheduled work calls, and calendared dinner dates, we’re also on retreat to surrender to things many of us consider distracting and unproductive—like observing a trio of deer—but which create pauses, gaps, and interruptions that puncture, for a moment, our global atmosphere of uncertainty, rage, and grief. In the pauses, gaps, and interruptions, Kate and I are finding several treasures to give our attention to: a renewed awe for all life, reenergized creative stamina and intuition, inspiration for using what we make to transform our oppressive material conditions. The three deer have provided us with a sort of map or orientation to something essential. Thinking about distraction, Keguro Macharia writes, “Distraction can turn us from what’s required to what’s needed.”
I can’t wait to share what Kate and I are brewing. In the meantime, wishing you all delightful fractures in your routines.
In today’s mini:
A reader poll
New print and digital pieces
-A 🪴
📰 Peace & Riot — Issue 3
When looking at our traditional media institutions, one would think that the defining and only narrative of our times is one of total collapse. As communities on the frontlines continue to rewrite the story of our people and planet, what new narratives to challenge, mobilize, and inspire can we uplift right now?
It was beyond sweet to interview Shilpi Chhotray—a media strategist, storyteller, and movement-builder who recently launched one of my new favorite Substack newsletters, Narrative Edit—to dive into the above question for Counterstream’s third issue of its Peace & Riot zine. In our conversation, Shilpi and I discuss the need for greater investment in narrative justice and how media-makers can partner with communities in reciprocal acts of story-sharing to create narratives for a world fated for more than disaster.
🌌 Chutney — Issue 4
How can one outmaneuver the terrestrial trouble of the death-seduced forces that govern our lives? That’s a question our species has long tried to answer, with equal parts benevolence and brutality: architecting utopian counter-communities, disputing the divine right of monarchs by dislodging their heads, clogging the flow of productivity.
Among Black folks, we’ve often turned to something as dark, capacious, and thinly understood as we are to forge pathways to otherwise realities: the cosmos.
Sending big love to Chutney for the opportunity to write “Black Liberation and the Cosmos: An Incomplete History”—a taxonomy of histories that uplift how Black communities caught in hotbeds of earthen racial terror turned heavenwards to make our freedom dreams real.
🗳️ Reader Poll: What More Do You Want From PLANTCRAFT?
I started this newsletter with only one objective: establish a space where I can nerd out over all things plants with brilliant botanical minds I love. A little over a year later, it’s a bit surreal to see the PLANTCRAFT community grow to over 600 (!) readers. I’m so grateful for each of you.
This platform has already gifted me so much—opportunities to write for gorgeous publications, connections with folks thinking of vegetal life in surprising and expansive ways—and I’m committed to evolving this space to ensure it’s always gifting you something in return. PLANTCRAFT will continue to prioritize interviews with people about the plants they love, but I’m excited to explore and play.
So, if you have a minute or two, use the above poll to let me know what else you’d like to see from PLANTCRAFT moving forward. Have an idea not listed above? Leave a comment below.
Thank you for the shout Amirio!! Hope you and Kate are having a lovely time in nature. Excited to hear more about Down to Earth. You two are the best. xo