Volume 2, Resources 11: Open Access Black Liberation Library & Free Guided Meditations
Hi friends! Last weekend we went cherry picking. Yes, I did something for fun! Yes, I did most of the planning but it was totally worth it. Nicole and I picked almost nine pounds of cherries. It was way too easy to just keep shoving them into our buckets because the trees were absolutely lousy with fruit.
We pitted and froze most of ours for future use; however, I did keep some fresh aside to make this Cherry Crumb Cake with Ginger-Lime Crumb Topping. It felt really good to bake something.
I could talk about fruit endlessly but I promise I won’t. It’s a resource week this week so let’s get to it!
Resource #1: JSTOR Companion to the Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List
If you’re not familiar with it, JSTOR is a digital library that used to have back-issues of academic journals but now offers a wider array of items like books and other primary sources. Access to some things on JSTOR are behind a paywall, though others are open access, like the JSTOR Companion to the Schomburg Center’s Black Liberation Reading List. The Schomburg Center that is mentioned is fully named the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. For 95 years it has been, “one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.”
That’s all very many words to say: the Schomburg Center made a Black liberation reading list and JSTOR created an open library to give access to resources on the aforementioned list.
Resource #2: UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center Guided Meditations
I think I learned about the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center Guided Meditations at the virtual group I’ve been attending and I wanted to share it with you all. On this page you’ll find short, guided meditations in English, Armenian, Farsi, Filipino, Mixtec, Spanish, and Vietnamese. There are also links to the Center’s podcast and apparently they have a mobile app, too! I haven’t been meditating AT ALL the past few weeks and coincidentally, my sleep has been absolute shit. So it looks like I’ll get back into that habit.
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That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
If you want to send me some snail mail, you can find me at P.O. Box 21481, Oakland, CA 94620-1481.
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