Hello and welcome to familiar friends and new subscribers who found their way here last month when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s ideas of free speech. I am so grateful for all the feedback and shares of that post!
What I usually do here at PeaceLinks is start a little blaze fed by a theme and then invite you to come closer and warm your hands. The talk always touches somehow on peace, cooperation, or the middle ground, with every month a unique approach to it.
If you enjoyed the research-based post last month, you can find more of that at my other newsletter,
. For example, subscribers at Quiet Reading enjoyed digging in to the mystery of who wrote the famous Christmas poem that begins, “Twas the night before Christmas.” There’s a new series starting about writers from the past, and the first is a Ben Franklin contemporary.Here at PeaceLinks, I typically keep my own contribution short, and then I turn the spotlight on some other authors whose writings keep the fireside warm and convivial.
This month, I’m thinking about the various meanings of the phrase snow load, and the writers who keep it light and beautiful. They know something about the art of digging down for moving water and inner peace.
In my part of the U.S. Intermountain West, we have had enough snow this month to strain the juniper trees. They lean like dominoes and bend like hooded devotees of a silent faith. I used to knock the snow off the branches, but last year, they outgrew my reach. They’ll have to manage their own snow load now.
Snow load. Now there’s a phrase!
The Oxford English Dictionary has nothing to say about it.
Construction and insurance companies know it well. “Snow load is the downward force on a building’s roof exerted by accumulated snow and ice,” explains one of them. This kind of pressure also poses a risk to airplane wings and spindly foliage.
You might apply it to the spirit of a person who carries too much of anything. This month, PeaceLinks has been on the lookout for posts that lighten the winter load.
Speaking of photographs, in Substack Notes, I’ve been enjoying the images of
of , who accompanies her photography with reflections in her newsletter:Thanks to another post in Notes from
, I read this week on writing a “Not-to-do List,” and it was as though someone had knocked a block of ice from my branches: writes “a weekly dispatch about something beautiful.” Last month, his “Winter Light” started with a soothing Monet painting and ended with this sense of expansive space:In my corner of the world, writing “Scenes of Quiet Reading” at my other newsletter has been giving me little bursts of winter levity.
For those of us gestating changes this winter — maybe change in the direction of simplifying or asking, “What’s the lighter way to do this?” — two of my favorite inspirations are
, who just finished a series and a workshop on change at , and , new to Substack and slaying it with this Title of the Week:Any more would not be small or light. I sign off wishing you a warm mid-winter with those you love, and countless small beauties to knock the weight off your branches.
Until next month, Peace.
Thank you so very much @Tara Penry! I really appreciate you including my post in your wonderful Peacelinks roundup! I'm so happy to know you enjoy my photos!
This issue of PeaceLinks is chock full of goodness, thank you Tara. I appreciate being included and look forward to diving into the other pieces you showcased. You are right that Chris wins the title of the week, I love it!!