Hi, y’all!

It’s Hugh here, and this is a rainy day edition of The Hughsletter. I’m glad you’re here.

So, before I share the links, I want to let you know about something new.

Sunday, June 5th, is my birthday. I will be 50 years old. Yes, I know, I seem young and sprightly, but trust me, that is just the Tylenol talking. In any event, the last year has been my most creative year ever.

Over the last year, I launched a new blog, Humidity and Hope, on which I have published 186 articles just since October, consisting of more than 152,000 words. I published my weekly newsletter, Life is So Beautiful, where every Monday morning I send a short (previously unpublished) essay and five links to beautiful things to thousands of subscribers. And I launched The Hughsletter, my personal newsletter, where I share what I’ve written that week and links to cool things I’ve found (ahem, you are reading it right now).

And now I’m launching something new: A membership program to support my work.

Figuring out how to monetize this sort of work is hard, especially if you have scruples. I don’t want ads everywhere, scraping your privacy. I don’t want to limit access to only people who can afford it, like a paid newsletter. And all of this *waves hands* costs a lot of money to do – my email service alone is hundreds of dollars a month, whether I send anything or not.

I’ve had a Patreon account for years, but we are transitioning from it to a simple membership program: People who want to support my work, who want to keep my public work free and ad-free, and who want more of my work in the world can contribute as little as $5 a month, and help keep this work in the world can learn about how to do that here.

One more thing, related to this: Just like there is Pledge Week at NPR, June is “Membership Month”, because of my birthday. I will be making a big announcement next week about a secret project that is for members-only, for example. And I will each week, highlight more of the creative work I do, made possible by the members who support this work.

And to the existing members who all kick in $5 a month or more to keep this train going: Thank you. Seriously. I could not do this work without you.

I wrote this:

Nouns and Verbs: Do the verb, rather than claim the noun.

The Giddiness of God: I put on my minister hat for a moment, and tell you about Tony.

The Dreambook: 6-year-old me could get lost for days in a Sears and Robuck catalog.

Rocks: A short post on Saturday after I moved a ton and a half of rocks several times, and was exhausted.

I found this:

NYC removes the last public payphone from the streets. Where will Superman change into his costume? Sigh.

It’s from 2014, but Susan Vega doing an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, including Tom’s Diner and Luca. I sat in Toms Diner a few years ago and heard the cathedral bells, and the songs has hit different since then.

A newsletter I started reading pretty religiously during the pandemic was Your Local Epidemiologist. Katelyn Jetelina is an epidemiologist who uses data and science to explain the news, first about the pandemic but also about other public health issues, like monkeypox and, recently, gun violence. Highly recommended.

Foredge painting is astonishing to me.

This newsletter, like all my projects, is a reader-supported publication, paid for by my members. I can only do it because people like you buy me a cup of coffee or forward this letter to someone else. And if someone did forward this to you, you can get your own subscription here.

Take care, 

Hugh Hollowell

PS: Just a reminder that you can read this newsletter in your browser, link to it on social media, or leave a comment at this link.

Disclosure: Some links may be affiliate links that provide a small commission to me and help run the site and newsletter. I never link to anything I do not recommend and use, however.