New website & democracy resources

When cooking lowers your temperature

I have a new website and am delighted to share it with you. Thank you to Lauren Cerand, Daniella Sinder, and Lila Rachel Becker for their help.

Last week I got a virus and was down for the count. One of the things I do when I am digging out of being sick is cook. I’m familiar with “feed a cold, starve a fever.” In my case, it’s feed Martha. In between sleeping around the clock (mostly), I made pasta with cheese, heirloom tomatoes, and homegrown basil.

I roasted summer squash and added sliced almonds.

And I made chocolate chip cookies for the first time in I don’t know how long.

Admittedly, cooking is also something I do when stressed. And I have found the last two weeks (well, actually a lot more than that!) to be very stressful.

First the good stress. DUET FOR ONE, my next novel, is in final edits before it goes to typesetting. I am excited for it to go out in the world. There’s a lot of detail at this stage, working with my wonderful editor, Jaynie Royal, as well as copy editing, writing the author’s note and acknowledgements, getting permissions for epigraphs, and drafting the dedication. Pub date is May 6 next year. Lots to do before then.

The bad stress is, well, you know what it is. I feel plenty of fear, but fear is paralyzing. Action and community are the way forward in times like this. The future of our democracy is on all of us.

I got 200 postcards from https://volunteerblue.org/ and had a couple of sessions with friends around my dining room table addressing notes to potential Georgia voters, encouraging them to register to vote. There are lots of opportunities like this, locally in your communities, and nationally. Postcards are a drip in a very big ocean, but it definitely helped address my feelings of powerlessness.

Below are a few resources, which I hope will get you to what you need.

• Jessica Craven’s Substack, Chop Wood Carry Water, a daily jolt of news, wisdom, and actions you can take to support our democracy.

• Black Voters Matter, founded by LaTosha Brown and Clifford Albright, doing highly effective organizing and voter engagement in the rural south.

• Heather Cox Richardson’s recording on Projecct 2025. Project 2025 sets out a vision for a Trump/MAGA presidency that is explicit in its aims to end democracy and impose a white, Christian autocracy on our country, ending rights for women, people of color, LGBTQ, and more. We need to understand just how extreme it is. As the head of the Heritage Foundation, the primary drafter of Project 2025, has chillingly said, “We are in the process of a second American Revolution which will remain bloodless, if the left lets it be.” If you would prefer to learn about Project 2025 from John Oliver’s potty mouth, please dig in—a little over 6 minutes into this program.

• Rebecca Solnit’s latest piece in Lit Hub, “It’s the Pundits Who Have Turned on Biden, Not the Party,” Solnit’s usual clear-eyed analysis.

• Anne Trubek, the brilliant publisher at Belt Publishing (focusing on books from the Rust Belt) on books that provide strong responses to J.T. Vance’s HILLBILLY ELEGY.

To quote my friend and revered activist/organizer, Heather Booth, “When we organize we win.”

Let’s work together. This is not a matter of political party, it’s a matter of making the future of our country a robust, inclusive democracy.

And by the way, it’s true that I love cooking. Let me know your favorite recipes, your favorite stress reducers, your ideas for strengthening our democracy, or anything else that’s on your mind.

Love, Martha

P.S. In case you missed my last newsletter, “Do you hear America singing?”, here it is.