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I’m Hugh Hollowell, and this is Life Is So Beautiful, a lovingly curated, hand written, AI free collection of links to things I thought were beautiful. I hope you like it - I made it just for you. - HH

Hey y’all,

Her name was Monteree, and she and her husband Doc lived just down the road from us when I was a boy. They were retired farmers, and lived in a small frame house my uncle had built for them after my grandmother sold them the land. They had a garden out back, and a few hogs and a thicket of wid plums. You could not have convinced 8 year old me that she was not the best cook in the entire world.

She didn’t have much in the way of decorative plants - most of their attention went to the vegetable garden, but she had Chinese holly bushes along the front of the house and a bed of bearded iris - she called them flags - by the steps and over on the side of the house, where it got lots of sun, was the rose bush.

It was the only rose I ever saw in real life as a kid. We didn’t have any roses, and nobody I knew had any. Which made her all the more special. It was a deep, deep red, with thorns galore and smelled delightful. It was one of the old China style roses that existed before the fiddly hybrid tea roses came into fashion, which require sprays and pampering and have no smell.

When Monteree and Doc died, we wanted to buy their house, but their son sold it to some folks from the city, and they cut down the plum thicket and the holly bushes and ripped out the flags. They got rid of the rose bush too. 35 years later, it still makes me sad to drive by that house.

I think sometimes I have spent the rest of my life looking for that rose bush. Red roses were the first thing I planted when we bought our last house, but I didn’t know much about roses back then, and while the ones I bought were durable and red, they had no scent.

I’m redoing our front flower beds, and just bought two old China roses - repeat bloomers that smell - to flank the walk to our door from the driveway. Last month I built an arbor that will have a climbing red china rose on it, chosen not only for its deep red color, but also for its scent.

I’ve written before about glimmers - the opposite of triggers - things that when you encounter them, put you in a good place. Red roses that smell good are one of those things for me, and I’m glad my front yard is going to be full of them.

Five Beautiful Things

​This video is a palindrome. I recognize the skill it took to make this, but man, it hurts my brain thinking about it.

Collé is an email newsletter where each issue celebrates a different collage artist and their work, You don’t have to subscribe - you can see their archive here. Collage rarely gets the attention it deserves - this stuff is first rate.

Rob MacInnis is a photographer who takes farm animal family photos. (At least once a month, I write a sentence and think - nope, nobody has ever wrote that combination of words before!)

This short animated training video made by Disney in 1945 on how to use common hand tools is not the most obvious inclusion to this newsletter, but what I love about it - other than just how damned useful it is - is that it treats the viewer with respect. It was a different world, indeed.

So, it’s in Japanese, so I am sure I am missing some context, but there is apparently a line of cat feeders out in the world that have cameras attached, so you can watch your cat eat. And there is a website where you can “tune in” to different cameras, so you can watch different cats eat. I love this so much.

The most clicked link from the last issue (~12% of all opens) was to this Instagram account which collects Swiss posters.

Thank you!

Guys - it’s been a rough year over here. I’ve struggled with like three jobs, plus this writing gig, and I’m tired. I appreciate your sticking with me, and sharing this letter with your friends. I’m grateful to my members who keep this going, for my readers who write back to almost every damned email I send, and all the people who share the links with people they care about. Y’all are the best. You can learn more about being a member, or buy me a cup of coffee, or just forward this email to your friends.