This is Life Is So Beautiful, a weekly email from Hugh Hollowell, devoted to the idea that our hope for survival in this brutal world is rooted in finding the beauty that is everywhere, but sometimes hard to find.

​Click here to read this on the web​

Hey y'all,

In the late years of the 19th century, when my great-grandparents needed to travel to downtown Memphis to go shopping, it was a three-day round-trip journey. One day of travel, one day of being there, and one day back. Needless to say, this was not a frequent journey. My grandfather told my dad about making that tip when he was a small boy: Of dozing in the back of the wagon, of seeing strange sites, of the city's roar, and how it contrasted with the quiet of the family farm.

It was a treacherous journey in those days, filled with potential for disaster. Many of the roads you would travel on if you made that trip now have only been built, or at least paved, in my lifetime. Unpredictable roads, broken wheels and the temperament of the mule pulling the wagon all came into play.

By the end of my grandfather's life in 1958, he would often drive that route in his car. A quick search of Google Maps tells me it is just over a 50-mile trip today, with interstates and modern roads. These days. I know people who make that commute every morning as a matter of routine.

Today I must travel for work from the capital city of Mississippi to the north end of the state, a distance of some 200 miles. It is a journey that most people in my great-grandparent's day would have never attempted. It's far enough that the climate is dramatically different – last week's ice storm they experienced was just cold rain here. In some ways, it's a whole other world.

I will drive it in less than three hours. It's such a short trip as to be unremarkable. The people there are, like I am, so homogenized by the popular media that we all mostly dress alike, sound alike, and have similar interests.

I won't worry much while on the road, never far from cell signals and GPS and roadside assistance. Should an emergency happen, and I need to return home, I can be home in less time than it would take to watch Avengers: Endgame.

There is much less opportunity for wonder and awe in such a trip. What was once thrilling, marvelous, and noteworthy has become routine and mundane.

At the end of the day, that's why I write these letters: I don't want to lose sight of how marvelous it all is. How filled with beauty it all is. How great it is to be alive at this time and place, and how, thanks to the magic of technology, we can see things my ancestors never dreamed possible. And how, despite the technology, we still have access to the same birdsong and sunrises and flowers and laughter they did, and we too still have the capacity for awe, even if we have had our attention to that magical world hijacked.

I write these letters because I want to take that attention back.

Five Beautiful Things

• Max Mundie is a macro-photographer, taking pictures of fungi. It truly is another world all around us.
• Mary Delaney was a 16th century collage artist who made stunningly accurate botanical collages from paper. Delany labeled each specimen with the plant’s taxonomic and common names, the date, location of creation, creating an exacting record.
• ​Reuben Wu is a photographer whose work appears in, among other places, National Geographic, but the thing he does I find most stunning is his work with lights attached to drones. By attaching a light to a drone and then using, he makes something incredible.

• ​Joni Mitchell’s entire catalog is now on YouTube. #HolyCrap
• For us who live elsewhere, with our knowledge of England filtered through popular films and books, all of England looks like the Cotswold’s, that magical portion of South-Central England where Father Brown and Inspector Morse solve mysteries, and where films like Harry Potter and Downton Abbey were filmed. Here is a walking tour of five Cotswold villages, complete with thatched roofs, stone walls, taverns and markets. I love everything about this, and also wonder how they managed to film this without any passer-by interacting with he photographer.

On The Blog

Things I published on my blog last week.

​2005: I did a hard thing that took me 18 years to accomplish.

Not Beautiful, But Still Interesting

(If I ever have an online dating profile, that will be my tagline.)

• ​CatGPT: What if ChatGPT were a cat?
• ChatGPT relied on Kenyans making less than $2 an hour, traumatizing them along the way. (CW for mentions of extreme sexual violence)
• This short film was “created by an all-women team that speaks to the scarring experience of schoolgirl bullying - and the recovery that follows.”. More of this, please.
• ​How a bit of awe can improve your health. Based on the work of Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. (Amazon) (Bookshop). This book went on the wishlist with a quickness.

Thank You!

Thanks for the new members who joined last week. This newsletter remains free and ad-free because of the support of my members, who insist on my making it free for everyone else. Other ways to support this project include buying me a cup of coffee or forwarding it to your friends.

Take care of yourself. And each other.

Hugh Hollowell Jr

Publisher

soverybeautiful.org

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