​Click here to read this on the web, or to have a link to share on social media

​

​

This is Life Is So Beautiful, a handcrafted weekly dose of hope and aspiration. It’s lovingly curated by Hugh Hollowell, and is devoted to the belief that our hope for survival in this brutal world is rooted in finding the beauty that is everywhere, but sometimes hard to find.

I hope you enjoy it. - HH

Hey y’all,

Born in the early 1970’s, I was surrounded by, and cared for by, people who had come of age during The Great Depression, and spent their twenties knowing the deprivations of wartime.

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” was their constant mantra. My great aunt would wash aluminum foil and reuse it. My neighbor would lay paper towels on her counter to dry, to be reused until they fell apart. My great grandmother would cut the front off of greeting cards, to be reused at a future date, along with the wrapping paper she had carefully taken off the presents she had been given.

If there was a greater sin than not eating all of the meat on your plate, I did not know of it. Protein was sacred among those people, and sugar was for celebrations and little else. That period when people starved in the streets and country people boiled the dirt under the smokehouse to get salt changed them.

My Facebook memories from 4 years ago are a reminder of the chaos we were all in during those early days of the pandemic. I was telling someone the other day that, at times, it feels like yesterday, and at other times it feels like a movie I saw once, long ago.

I’m convinced, more and more, that the pandemic changed us. I’m certain I do not like it, this new reality.The other day I read about how corporations are hiring “etiquette coaches” to teach social lubricating skills to people returning to the office. All that time isolating has let us forget how to be with others. For those who are in their early twenties, this might be their first time actually having to work in close contact with people they did not choose to be with.

I am not immune to this. I am scared of being in large crowds, and probably shall be until I die. I get agitated if people outside my bubble of safe people get within an arm's reach of me. I feel something approaching panic if we are down to the last loaf of bread or the last roll of paper towels. I trust the government less than I once did.

The cashier at McDonalds is a zombie, numb from doing work that in the before-times would have been done by three people. The contactless payment and ordering systems are still there, inserting a robot between me and sushi at my favorite Japanese restaurant. I miss talking to a server, asking her opinions on the choices I made, the small niceties that made eating out a celebration of community rather than a process to be endured.

I was in the small grocery by my house the other day, having run in to grab some onions I needed for supper. The lady in front of me was particularly rude to the cashier, a young Black woman, perhaps 20, who had no control over how well marked the prices on the bell peppers were. When it was my turn, she was still flushed and flustered.

“I think you are doing a great job,” I told the cashier, as she handed me my change. “I hope you have a great day.”

She froze, uncertain, and then a smile broke out. “You too, hun, You too.”

Connection still works, it seems.

Five Beautiful Things

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” - this is a line in the book When Women Were Birds, by Terry Tempest Williams. It was much shared on social media (often formatted as a poem) during March as a tribute to Women's History Month. I have not read the book, but think the line is brilliant, and after hearing this interview, where she also reads the first chapter of the book, I think I want to, despite the fact I am in no way the target market.

There is a toaster museum in Germany. What a time to be alive!

There is an Instagram account that showcases the weave patterns on chairs in Parisian bistros. I did not think this would be nearly as interesting (or as beautiful) as it is.

I love to see music out of context. Like George Sakellariou playing Desmond’s Take Five on a classical guitar, or Taylor Swift rapping Eminem’s Lose Yourself, while playing an acoustic guitar.

Check out this video shot with a camera that shows scientists how different animals (who see a different color spectrum than we do) see the world.

TCB

The most opened link (~ 12.5%) in the last issue was The Sadness Scale, as Measured by Stars and Whales.

Since 2003, I have written in public, mostly on blogs, sometimes in articles I was asked to write or of course, in this here newsletter. But I’ve never been a “writer”, even though sometimes, I wish I was. I talked about that last week on my blog.

A favor

Every time you send a mass email, someone unsubscribes. That’s just the nature of the beast, and that’s fine. Not everything is for everyone, and sometimes interests change, and so on. Thankfully, people also find this little newsletter, and some of them subscribe, and so my readership has hovered around the same number of readers (give or take a hundred) for the last two years.

I don’t know how to increase that number. A newsletter that encourages you to find beauty in the everyday might only have a readership potential of a bit under 5,000 people, and so maybe that’s it. It seems antithetical to literally everything I am trying to do to buy advertising. I mention it periodically on social media, and encourage you to share it in every issue I send out, but that’s really it.

The frustrating thing for me is that people like this thing. I have 65% open rates. I get replies to every email that goes out. People send me snail mail, for crying out loud. I get thank you notes. About 150 of you send money every month to keep things going as part of my Membership Team. My gut says that if more people knew about it, more people would like it.

I am not focusing on numbers, and am incredibly grateful for my readers. But I also do this because I think it’s useful, and I want it to be useful to more people.

If you have ideas on how to increase readership of this newsletter, please hit reply to this and tell me about them. I’m all ears.

Thank You

Don’t get it twisted: I’m grateful for every single one of you, including Kyle, who sent me a postcard from Hawaii this week to the address at the bottom of this email. In addition to the help I asked for in the previous section, you can support my work by buying me a cup of coffee, sharing the web version of this letter (see the link at the top of the page) on social media, send cash via a half-dozen ways, or just forward this email to your friends. But however you do it, I'm grateful beyond words for your support over the years.

Take care of yourself, and each other.

HH

PS: I love to get email (or snail mail!) from readers, so if something this week struck your fancy, I'd love to hear about it. Just hit reply and type away.