A PeaceLinks Compilation Album

A quick year in review

PeaceLinks launched last May as an archive of links I wanted to remember about peace, cooperation, and common ground.

As I announced last month, this post is the last issue of PeaceLinks. More and more, my other newsletter,

Quiet Reading with Tara Penry

, has become a place of cooperative writing adventures and absorbing experiments. I have also returned to work at last on a book project — something I set aside in 2020 when COVID changed everything about home and work. These ventures need time and attention.

To close this year of PeaceLinks, I’ll leave you with something of a selected shorts album, though there’s plenty more from both Substack writers and Other parts of the Internet in the archive.

Cooperative Writing

For the last month, the cooperative project at the forefront for me has been the memorial of Substack writers for Canadian short story writer Alice Munro, who died in May. The post contains annotated links aplenty to help new and familiar readers of Munro appreciate her more:

The Alice Munro Substack Virtual Memorial

*

Activism

In the year since I came across

John Lovie

’s

Mostly Water

and

Beth Shelburne

’s

Moth to flame

, I’ve admired the commitment of both to research and writing with a sharp focus on universal human needs: clean water, justice and humane institutions, and community. Here is my original post about their newsletters from last June:

Nobody Said Peace Work Was Easy

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Ways of Seeing

It’s hard to believe it was also almost a year ago that I started enjoying the humor and humanity of

Elizabeth Beggins

at

Chicken Scratch

and

Sal Randolph

at

The Uses of Art

. Elizabeth’s reflection on community and common ground last Fourth of July seemed a clear PeaceLink to me, and Sal captivated me with her introduction to “ways of seeing.”

Suspending Judgment

*

Body Work

Other Substack writers that I found while alert for the themes of PeaceLinks were

Kimberly Warner

of

Unfixed

and

Andrea Gibson

of

Things That Don't Suck

. Last July, I encountered one of Andrea’s powerful cancer monologues about the same time I watched Kimberly’s 6 1/2 minute video about her research for a documentary film exploring “the messy, uncomfortable journey of being alive” in a body beyond one’s control. I linked both amazing videos here:

When Pain Becomes a Poem

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History’s Answer to Political Stalemate

When Substack erupted last winter over Nazism and other forms of hate speech on the platform, my contribution to the conversation was this investigation of Ben Franklin’s commitment to both free speech and civil discourse. No, “free speech” did not mean “absence of moral behavior” to the signers of the Constitution:

Free Speech and Moral Boundaries

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Recovery

In February, I celebrated my one-year anniversary at Quiet Reading with a Five-Word Reading Party. A theme that emerged from many posts was recovery from various spiritual shocks and lifequakes. I gathered several of those posts together as PeaceLinks:

The Other Side of a Hard Time

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There are many more excellent authors and posts featured in the PeaceLinks archive, organized by common themes. The PeaceLinks home page and archive will remain accessible, though I have no plans for additional posts at present.

If you are not a Quiet Reading subscriber, I invite you to jump to that home page and take a free subscription to the publication where I will continue to post on Mondays.

Coming up there in the next month: Two short summer interludes between bookish posts, one more collaborative writing announcement for late summer, and another famous author who made it through disappointment and dark times.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting PeaceLinks!

🙏 ✌🏼

Tara