You know there is a virus on. You know there is a holiday season on. You know that life (breathing, eating and related cooking and drinking, sleeping etc.) continues. As we are finding, with all those and other items like politics and religion and aging and all, things get complicated. It is possible to wind up with too much in your morning email inbox.
I want to mention some items that come to my morning inbox that I like, that give me a lift, that you might appreciate, too. I can understand if you simply want to turn off the news of any kind, about anything. I am still interested in what seems an intelligent and brief look at items that affect the world. CNN puts out a newsletter Five Things and for national and international news in succinct form, it is a good source. Not too long, not too detailed and not overly pessimistic or optimistic - just information.
I am a fan of Num Lock News. It features newsworthy news items in terms of numbers. I actually don't care about the weekend harvest of a new movie out but that information is often included. As with any writing anywhere of any kind about anything, words are composed and decided on, chosen by somebody. It makes sense to note who composed items that interest and where their work appears.
I am also a fan of Popular Information, a newsletter composed by one Judd Legum, an "American journalist, lawyer and political staffer." His accomplishments are impressive. Of the items I am listing in this blog post, Popular Information is the only one I pay for. He knows how to tease apart the issues from the appearances, the images from the money.
I didn't used to be much of a follower of The Writer's Almanac, which features a poem and a list of important people and sometimes events that have an anniversary on a given day. The biographical and historical notes are great to read. They give real pleasure and also a sense that life goes on and others have experienced what is bearing down on me.
Finally, I mention news.google.com. After morning reading, I check to see what is mentioned in the Google news app. I continue to find that working on a laptop with an additional keyboard attached is faster and easier for me. The capacity of the machine, the amount of space on the monitor and the spacing of the keys make for an easier, faster, less error-prone experience.
