Okay, loves. Here's the big one. 🕊️

Today, I have an explainer.
It covers 30 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the Oslo Accords to now.

I wrote this to illustrate why peace is and will be hard:
namely, because peace attempts have never been implemented in good faith, or with sufficient regional consensus.

But this isn't the first time we've needed to heal from deep violence.

We have to remember that healing is complex. Time is what we need to get it right.

https://onlysky.media/mclark/from-oslo-to-october-7-and-beyond/

As a quick research aside:

Never trust the numbers you see cited from another source on their own. Look for the original article referenced in the one you're using!

Today I spent a tedious amount of time hunting the origin of a figure that had a bibliographic entry, but no trace of that entry in direct searches for the author or title elsewhere.

I finally found the darned thing on Wayback Machine, but boy, am I annoyed that many scholars just copy-pasted a dead link from each other for years!

👌

Okay. Almost there.

The post-Oslo explainer is very long, but it has to be, and I think I've done as right by the balance of material as I can.

Time for a walk in the dreary grey, then some squinting at links and numbers (good grief, do they ever keep rising), and then...

30 years of regional politics and the implications we need to consider, whenever we in the West feel an urge to go around shooting off about what "should" be done to secure Middle Eastern peace.

(a.k.a., always 🙃) #Soon!

All right--

Time to organize these rogue pieces of research into an article: histories, restorative justice pathways, and difficult facts to include carefully.

Now comes the "fun" part: testing premises as I assemble a 30-year timeline and argument for a readership primarily of outsiders, without oversimplifying anything to the point of inaccuracy.

A challenge, but also a responsibility.

Set high standards for the journalism you read, eh?

There's been so much bad coverage this past month.

And now for classes, a good stretch, and... getting back to the heavy as heck next explainer for OnlySky.

As if the complex minefield of antisemitism wasn't tough enough, next up is... everything post-Oslo Accords that can help us to think about what could come next--if the region doesn't devolve into a broader war first.

It's funny that I've been worried I might have a neurological disorder, when there's a perfectly logical reason for all my stress headaches and internal tremors as of late! 🙃

This is the last of my "catch-up" newsletters for paid readers (this week's freebie next!).

I'm posting it here, though, because the first part is free-to-read and addresses a sense of despair I suspect a lot of fellow creators are feeling right now, while trying to sustain enough cognitive dissonance amid the terrible state of the world to keep believing in the value of our creative work.

It's okay if that myth is difficult to sustain right now.

It is not your fault.

https://mlclark.substack.com/p/monthly-reading-and-viewing-roundup-667

In these very difficult days, I keep coming back to a simple question: What conduct do I want to be known for?

Religious folks sometimes frame this as asking how they will answer for their actions at the pearly gates - but we're all asking ourselves the same thing.

When the confusion, anger, and agony have passed, and we're left with what they've wrought, how will we make our peace with who we were & what we did in the thick of it all?

Our answers will differ.
But it's a good question to ask.

Also... good morning! 😅

Hope your own day is starting with less of a jolt! Off now for a late run.

Woke to a message from my nephew.

Poor kiddo's been kicked out at 16.

Still waiting for details, just sent him love so he knows he can talk to me.

There are times when history repeats itself - his mum ran away from our violent home at 16, had him at 19; his two aunts (including me) were driven out as teens, too - and the only thing I can lean on for difference is the fact that he's got extended family rooting for him. We didn't have that.

Some cycles are harder to break.
But we keep trying.

Also, @th3j35t3r?

I'm not a big fan of routine glow-ups of prominent figures, but I really appreciate

a) the space you've created here,
b) your honesty about your own humanity while developing this platform, &
c) your honesty about balancing your role as a service-provider with that aforementioned humanity (which has limits!).

I don't doubt you've been put in many tough situations in recent years especially.

Thank you for doing your best through them all.

I hope you're well supported, too.

(Tomorrow I'm going to start an extreme regimen for my health, because I have no idea how else to get rid of the stress I've been living with this past month - the routine internal tremors, the constant stress headaches - but I appreciate your presence with so much of it. I'm not doing well right now, in part because the world isn't doing well right now. But I am grateful - oh, am I grateful! - I'm not alone in either this precarity or this grief. Thanks for being along for the terrible ride. 💙)

#CoSoMusic

This is the WEIRDEST song for when the world is messed up, but it soothes me every time.

I don't even pay attention to the main lyrics. I'm here for the chorus and the melody. The chorus especially reminds us how small all our problems are, in the grand scheme of things.

And sometimes?

Sometimes that's exactly what one needs to hear.

All of this will pass.

We are not magnificent.

But the sheer gift of existence... is.

Good night, CoSo. 🌙
Go gently, ok?
https://youtu.be/TWcyIpul8OE

#CoSoMusic

And while I'm focussing on brilliant women's groups...

"Canción Sin Miedo" (Song without fear) is a modern Colombian resistance classic, in which women from every walk of life--Indigenous, Afrocolombiana, rural, trans--stand together against violence.

Because you can bet your bippy that every group, however righteous it feels in its own demographic cause, perpetuates harm against feminized people at home when frustrated at its lack of external process.

https://youtu.be/dTzx6gV5LdQ

#CoSoMusic

When I wrote THEN RAISE THE DEAD MAN HIGH, I listened to a great deal of old Soviet music (as befits a story set from 1920s to 1950s USSR), but also Laboratorium Piesni - a group committed to reclaiming traditional songs from Eastern European contexts, including Belarus, the setting of Part II in my grim story.

When war broke out last year, this was the group's response:
"Sound moves and touches in us both what is painful and what is full of hope and love."
https://youtu.be/z2RDVnXtn3I

#CoSoMusic

A good chaser to Leon Bridges, by the by, is Michael Kiwanuka. His "Cold Little Heart" is even better with the video, because it shows the tension we live with, day by day - the hurt we carry, and the life we try to build around it.

Life is so fragile.

If you follow the news, it's just stats.

But it's fragile - and *loved*.

The people we've lost this last month?

All loved.

"Bleeding. I'm bleeding - my cold little heart! Oh, I... can't stand myself."

https://youtu.be/nOubjLM9Cbc

#CoSoMusic

And although I am 100% atheist?

I am SUCH a sucker for a good "take me to the river" song.

It is the human ache - across cultures, religions, contexts - to do something that could wipe away all our wounds, our scars, our failings, our transgressions. OH if it were so easy!

Leon Bridges captures so beautifully the weariness of that shame, blending the spiritual dimension (for some) with the everyday living in which we *actually* have to work to feel reborn.

https://youtu.be/0Hegd4xNfRo

#CoSoMusic

How have I gone this far without bringing Nina Simone into the picture?

She's so famous for "Mississippi Goddamn", but her heart pours out in so many pieces. This one, I love because of how universally relevant its longing is.

"I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart
I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free"

https://youtu.be/inNBpizpZkE

#CoSoMusic

Where it all began for me, though--the song that really woke me to my humanism--was Oliver Mtukudzi's "Todii". It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. So impossible to sit still to!

But this Tuku classic is about helplessness in the face of an African AIDS epidemic spread by men forcing unprotected sex on their wives, passing on infection to the babies. It's the quintessential "when answers are not easy, let us at least be in harmony with our grief" jam.

https://youtu.be/dHMjH2LbNSA