falling down the rabbit hole | babblings report #012 nature nonfiction spring!, ditching music platforms, movie club & more!
Hi babblers!!! I hope everyone had a fabulous March, but I’m mostly excited to shed the final bits of winter this month and we’re one step closer to the best month, MY BDAY MONTH, MAY!!!!
March for me was all about getting back to basics, getting organized and focused so I can set out to be my best self the closer I get to 28. I also found myself wanting to get into and move my body more, so lots of solo dance parties and treadmill strutting happening over here. Which BTW have you guys listened to the new Slayyyter album??? So many adds to my treadmill playlist and this is for sure my album of the summer. It’s in your face grungy, sexy, dance music, that evolves after a few listens into a guttural and raw snapshot into Slayyyter’s relationship drama, imposter syndrome, and trying to make it in an industry full of fakes. (more about listening to slayyyter and youtube later…)
I was also conspiring how to keep making babblings and the babblings report even better. In this addition you’ll find the new reading club (more info below) for all of us looking to broaden our horizons and read more diverse books. Plus, just updated the ABOUT page. Check it out & let me know your feedback.
In this newsletter:
-april energy read
-movie club: The Godfather & Daughters of the Dust
-nature nonfiction spring | reading club
-how to transfer playlists for free & ditch music subscriptions
*play me*
recently…
๐the latest babbling podcast episode๐
๐ฎ April Energy Reading ๐ฎ
OVERALL: The Seed โ How beautiful to get THE SEED as our overall energy for April! We are once again at the start of the wheel and the ground is preparing itself for our seeds, literally & figuratively, to grow. This is a positive sign this will be a fertile month. Read card summary below:
TO RELEASE: Justice โ So justice??? This may not be what you want to hear but stick with me… The idea of justice or fair is a human, man made concept. Is it fair that the lion eats the gazelle? Is it fair butterflies don’t live longer than a week? Through the lens of our subjective metric system no it’s not fair, and despite our best efforts millions of unfair things happen every day. We cannot get caught up trying to control the how’s and why’s of justice. Now obviously I’m not talking about on a large scale injustices, there’s a difference between fighting evil in this world and being the judge and jury of your life, focusing all of your energy on making everything fair. When in fact life is never fair. We can’t get caught up in waiting for apologies, serving karma, or getting what we think we “deserve”
There may also be things in your life you’re trying to balance that are not meant to coexist. Maybe you feel you’re living two lives or you’re trying to make two different jobs work or bring together different friend groups, whatever it is you’re trying to make fetch happen and it just won’t happen. Trying to be a people pleaser is blinding you.
TO EMBRACE: Three of Cups โ Loosen up a little babe! This spring energy is telling us to open up, celebrate life, and connect with people that fill our cups. Celebrate your successes and small wins, find gratitude for what you have. Go out and dance, indulge a little, and open yourself up to new opportunities ๐ you never know what seeds you’ll plant!
TO LOOK FORWARD TO: Queen of Pentacles โ It seems if we can learn let go of some control and live in the moment, we’ll find ourselves in the center of a grounded, abundant, yet fulfilling life.
SPIRIT GUIDE: Rabbit โ Another special treat for the rabbit to appear as our spirit guide at the start of spring!! The rabbit symbolizes fertility, abundance, and prosperity. The rabbit is gentle yet vigilant. Look to the rabbit grateful itself for a new spring and be open to new beginnings.
CHARM: The Lucky Duck โ The lucky duck stays adaptable as he moves through air, earth, and water. His luck is here to guide you through uncharted waters.
SUMMARY: This reading is overwhelmed by spring energy. There is a real opportunity for renewal and to begin again. If you harness your energy towards what you can control and funnel it into new pursuits or fulfilling relationships you can play into this fertile momentum and prosper. Focus on what you have instead of what you don’t. P.S. beware there is lots of figurative and literal fertile energy going on so if you don’t want to get with child… be careful!**
๐ Movie(s) of the Month ๐
{family, tradition, independence, loyalty}
Daughters of the Dust (1991) & The Godfather (1972)
I wanted to mention that when I’m tying the movies of the month to astrological themes, I’m looking at archetypal energy of the two zodiac signs that overlap during that particular month. I’m looking at the archetype the signs represent, in relationship to the wheel of the year, characteristics of it’s ruling planet, and also themes from their corresponding tarot card. And often times I’m looking at the different sides of those main themes, how the overlap, or how I can twist them.
Now for April I was looking at the combined or opposing energy of Aries & Taurus. Aries, associated with Mars, the start of the new year, spring, and the emperor can deal in the realms of leadership, independence, self identity, passion, and can be reckless in their pursuits. Taurus, associated with Venus, spring, and the hierophant is often talked about as stubborn or in the realm of beauty, but with the connection to the hierophant we see Taurus also encompasses tradition, learning, legacy, and family. The energy in the air is really feeling like the “eldest daughter” the golden child and the black sheep simultaneously. I wanted to look at the push and pull of tradition, legacy, independence, and self identity.
Thinking about tradition and family, I quickly thought of The Godfather, the classic 1972 mob movie that follows a crime family as the mob bosses youngest son joins the organization and through love and loyalty slowly loses himself to the corrupt business. And then thinking about families made me think about Daughters of the Dust, which has been on watchlist, and is about a family in the Gullah community navigating how they continue on their Yoruba traditions in the changing world and as the next generation looks to find themselves outside of their community. Daughters of the Dust was also the first movie with a black female director to have a theatrical release!
I thought this was a great pair as both movies deal with insular or closed communities holding onto their own cultural and ancestral traditions in different ways. Both deal with the next generation confronting the push and pull of loyalty, tradition, and the yearning to find your own path.
Strap in babes this is gonna be an emotional and visually stunning movie month!!!
๐ธNature Nonfiction Spring๐ธ
{new reading club!}
If you’re like me you’ve noticed that dumb is out and smart is in! I see a lot of “curriculums” or “book clubs” people are doing through tiktok and substack. And there are so many ways to learn and become the smartest person. So I decided to add “reading club” in addition with movie club to the monthly babblings report!
We’ll be following the seasons or quarters of the year, with each quarter focused on a specific theme. One book a month so that anyone at any reading pace can get through it and we can take our time to digest each book. I’ll also be including supplemental material like videos, podcast, articles, and additional books to go along with what we’re reading. My goal is also to cover a diverse range of books whether it be diverse authors, genres, topics, time period, etc.
I recently posted a tiktok video de-influencing people from booktok, and not literally but just calling to attention the intense over consumption we see within the book community. So I want this to also be a chance for people to intentionally and thoughtfully fill their libraries. I don’t want you to buy every book, PLEASE USE THE LIBRARY, or do audio. But this would be a good place to start if you are looking to build a good and diverse home library. (which is what I’ll be doing, I’ll probably chose 1-2 books a quarter to buy and add to my library) ALSO PLEASE DON’T USE AMAZON, I always suggest buying through THRIFTBOOKS or your local bookstore (if it’s not in stock they will order it for you).
Each month I’ll highlight the selected book and offer supplemental material. I’m still trying to figure out how I will follow up with my thoughts (same goes for movie club), eventually I’d love to have virtual meetings so we can talk about the book together and share thoughts. I’m thinking maybe to start I’ll doing extra posts (video most likely) breaking down my thoughts and offering discussion questions for you to think about.
For our Spring quarter (April, May, June) we’ll be focusing on nonfiction, specifically nonfiction about nature and our planet.
I have been wanting to challenge myself to read more nonfiction and have been thinking a lot about how we treat the planet, how I want to be better and work in relationship with the land. My end goal is to be on a large amount of land and grow my own food and take care of my own animals, so of course, Braiding Sweetgrass has been on my TBR for a while and was my starting point and inspiration for this quarter. Also, the dinosaur documentary has gotten me really into the formation of the planet and time yadadaada.
APRIL
Strata: Stories From Deep Time by Laura Poppick (click for more info)
โThe epic stories of our planetโs 4.54-billion-year history are written in strataโages-old remnants of ancient seafloors, desert dunes, and riverbeds striping landscapes around the world. In this brilliantly original debut work, science writer Laura Poppick decodes strata to lead us on a journey through four global transformations that made our lives on Earth possible: the first accumulations of oxygen in the atmosphere; the deep freezes of “Snowball Earth”; the rise of mud on land and accompanying proliferation of plants; and the dinosaursโ reign on a hothouse planet
Poppick introduces us to the researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding the events of deep time, including the worldโs leading stegosaur scientist. She travels to sites as various as a Minnesotan iron mine that runs half a mile deep and a corner of the Australian Outback where glacial deposits date from the coldest times on Earth. Ultimately, she demonstrates that the planetโs oceans, continents, atmosphere, life, and ice have always conspired to bring stability to Earth, even if we are only just beginning to understand how these different facets interact.
Strata allows us to observe how the planet has responded to past periods of environmental upheaval, and shows how Earthโs ancient narratives could hold lessons for our present and future.โ – good reads
MAY
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (click for more info)
โAs a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on โa journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wiseโ (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beingsโasters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrassโoffer us gifts and lessons, even if weโve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.โ
– robin wall kimmerer website
JUNE
Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard (click for more info)
โFrom the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest–a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery.
Simard writes–in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways–how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past; how they have agency about the future; elicit warnings and mount defenses, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies–and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.
Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them–embarking on a journey of discovery, and struggle. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey–of love and loss, of observation and change, of risk and reward, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world, and, in writing of her own life, we come to see the true connectedness of the Mother Tree that nurtures the forest in the profound ways that families and human societies do, and how these inseparable bonds enable all our survival.โ – goodreads
APRIL BOOK ~ Strata: Stories From Deep Time by Laura Poppick
For April we’ll be reading Strata: Stories From Deep Time by scientist and environmental journalist Laura Poppick (description above). This book peaked my interest when I found it on the new nonfiction shelf at the library last week. Poppick takes us on the journey of the planet and development of life starting 4.5 billion years ago. I’m excited to learn more about geology, paleontology, and the chemistry of our planet because I truly believe it can offer so much insight into ourselves.
What I’m Curious About:
- what is strata???
- what is deep time??
- how can we use strata to decode deep time?
- what mirrors to the present can we find in stories from deep time?
- what lessons from the past can we use to learn about ourselves?
- what lessons from the past can we use to navigate the future?
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL:
TALK NERDY PODCAST w/ Laura Poppick
THE VIEW FROM DEEP TIME – Laura Poppick Substack
PODCAST: Marcia Bjornerud Timefulness
ARTICLE: Experiencing Deep Time Through Visual Storytelling
BOOK: Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth By Marcia Bjornerud
BOOK: Sixth Extinction By Elizabeth Kolbert
BOOK: We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies By Tsering Lama and Tsering Yangzom Lama
โญ๏ธDitching Music Subscriptionsโญ๏ธ
So if you didn’t know, over the summer I got rid of ALL my subscriptions. (I give a whole dissertation in the November babblings report podcast episode, so check that out for the whole journey.) It was a pretty easy switch once I dedicated myself to it and got used to ads again, but figuring out what to do about music left me in the dark for a while.
Last year I was figuring out alternatives to spotify (which I’ve had my account since I was 15) and settled on Quobuz. If you are still wanting to pay for a subscription I highly recommend Quobuz it’s easy to use and the sound quality is EXTREMELY better. I figured out how to use Soundiiz to transfer playlists and I was all set with Quobuz.
Until…. I was getting rid of subscriptions and had to face the harsh reality of the unnecessary $16 charge for the app. Which is where YOUTUBE comes in! Somehow in the last decade I had forgotten that pre-spotify, I exclusively listened to music through music videos or by buying the digital or physical copy. Like hello Youtube started this all AND all the music of the world is still available on Youtube with or without Youtube Music subscriptions. You just have to listen to ads.
Boom problem solved, I was looking up music, made a secondary youtube account dedicated to it, and the high from listening to ads felt similar to the soreness after a good workout. But it was kind of exhausting also looking music up or listening to youtube’s mixes, I was missing my old playlists. For some reason I thought “wait, can i do playlist transfers through soundiiz???” and yes bitch you can! It so easy and if you don’t pay for pro it will take some time to go playlist by playlist, but it’s so much better than starting from scratch. Which is what I think is keeping most people from ditching their current music subscription for a better option. And if you’d rather pay than listen to ads, all power to you, but have you taken a moment to analyze what it might say about you that you don’t have the resiliency to sit through a 1-2 minute break??? When did we become such wusses???
Now I did get an offer for Youtube Premium one month free on my new music account, which I accepted, because I want to see if it really is SOOO much more convenient to not have ads… will report back ๐ซก
MY CURRENT TREADMILL PLAYLIST (not meant to shuffle): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR4XEipxttbLlxdo3U7PwKmiDtMzoPw8N&si=fCMb-Yqa2luVU7n1
Soundiiz how to:
