#500: Happy 10th Birthday, Article Club! 🎂
Reflection, gratitude, some favorite articles, and some next steps
Dear Readers,
Well, here we are: Article Club’s 500th issue. It’s been quite a ride. Thank you for joining me along the way and for making our reading community what it is today.
Happy 10th birthday to Article Club!
Today’s birthday issue is a letter from me to you. It’s equal parts reflection and gratitude. I’ll also share three of my favorite articles of all time, plus give you an inkling as to what I’m hoping to do in Article Club’s second decade.
In case we’ve never met, my name is Mark, and 10 years ago, I launched this newsletter in order to share the best articles on race, education, and culture. Even back then, the Internet was getting noisy and trending toxic. My promise was to skip the junk, look far and wide, and find you only the gems.
Some might say this is naïve, but my hope then is still true now:
If we read more of the best stuff, and if we connect with people about what we’re reading, then we might gain the knowledge and empathy to make ourselves a better world.
It’s dawned on me that most of you don’t know me at all. I’m just the guy who shows up in your email inbox or Substack app week after week. (Thank you for letting me in!) So even though I tend to be on the shy side (despite being a Leo), I figure this birthday issue might be the right time to (re)introduce myself.
I live in Oakland with my partner and our dog, Arlo. In case I’ve not made it clear, Arlo is Article Club’s mascot. He’s always up top when you open an Article Club email. (Here’s a real-life picture of him snoozing.)
My day job is serving as the assistant principal of a great high school in Oakland. Before that I coached teachers (so they wouldn’t quit this tough profession), and before that, I taught English and social studies for a long time, mostly in San Francisco. Way back when I was teaching, it became abundantly clear to me that reading is the thing.
You know this about reading, of course, because you subscribe to this newsletter. You know what reading means to you, what it has afforded you, how it’s part of your identity, how it can lead to connection and compassion and illumination. That’s maybe why you signed up for Article Club.
And I am so very thankful that you did! It’s clear that you are the heart of this endeavor. With your support, what began as a simple email newsletter has become so much more. For example: With the help of Heidi, we launched a podcast in 2017. Its first iteration introduced readers to one another and helped establish our reading community. Later that year, with the help of Abby and Elizabeth, we inaugurated HHH, our seasonal in-person gathering. From the start, what has distinguished HHH from other similar-type events is how kind and thoughtful everyone is. (Want to come tonight? There’s room for you.)
But HHH was just the beginning. With the help of Peter, we introduced monthly discussions of featured articles in 2020. This is where I met Summer and Elise and Bonnie and Toronzo and Carina, plus 150+ more of you! This is also where I got the gumption to invite famous authors like Jia Tolentino and Mitchell S. Jackson and Kathryn Schulz and Eli Saslow to come on the podcast to be interviewed. (They generously say yes.) More than anything else, these monthly discussions are where the mission of Article Club becomes most real.
Along the way, I’ve been overwhelmed by the enthusiastic engagement of so many of you, volunteering your time and talent — not to mention your hard-earned cash (thank you, paid subscribers, for keeping the lights on). Special thanks go to co-hosts Anne, Telannia, Sarai, and Melinda, whose contributions over the years have made Article Club exorbitantly better. They’ve led to incisive interviews, outstanding podcast recommendations, in-person gatherings, and most recently, Melinda’s Grief Corner, our beloved twice-a-month feature offering reflections and resources on grief.
Article Club’s people matter the most, of course. But coming up a close second are its articles. (Note: I was about to write pets, but I stopped myself.) I’d be remiss to publish an issue without a few great articles, so let me share three of my favorites of all time. If Article Club were a class (which it decidedly isn’t!), these pieces would be prerequisites to enroll. As your birthday gift to Article Club, I invite you to read one or all of them, then tell me what you think in the comments.
ON RACE
1️⃣ “Twelve Minutes And A Life,” by Mitchell S. Jackson (27 min) (gift link)
Mr. Jackson: Ahmaud Marquez Arbery was more than a viral video. He was more than a hashtag or a name on a list of tragic victims. He was more than an article or an essay or posthumous profile. He was more than a headline or an op-ed or a news package or the news cycle. He was more than a retweet or shared post. He, doubtless, was more than our likes or emoji tears or hearts or praying hands. He was more than an R.I.P. t-shirt or placard. He was more than an autopsy or a transcript or a police report or a live-streamed hearing. He, for damn sure, was more than the latest reason for your liberal white friend’s ephemeral outrage. He was more than a rally or a march. He was more than a symbol, more than a movement, more than a cause. He. Was. Loved.
➕ Mr. Jackson generously joined me and Sarai on the podcast to talk about another of his outstanding pieces, “Looking for Clarence Thomas.”
ON EDUCATION
2️⃣ “An American Education,” by Eli Saslow (23 min) (gift link)
Mr. Saslow: A boy was chewing on the collar of his shirt. A girl was taping pencils to each of her fingers and then pawing at the boy next to her. Two boys were playing a version of bumper cars with their desks. A girl was pouring water from a cup into another girl’s mouth, and that girl was spitting the water onto the student next to her. “Ugh, miss teacher lady? Can I go wash off this spit water?” the student asked. A boy was standing up and intentionally tripping over his friend’s legs. A girl was starting a game of hangman on the whiteboard. A boy was walking up to the front of the classroom, holding out a piece of paper rolled into the shape of a microphone, and pretending to interview Obreque. “So, what do you think of life at Fox Creek?”
➕ Mr. Saslow generously joined me on the podcast to talk about his piece.
ON CULTURE
3️⃣ “When Things Go Missing,” by Kathryn Schulz (27 min) (gift link)
Ms. Schulz: When we are experiencing it, loss often feels like an anomaly, a disruption in the usual order of things. In fact, though, it is the usual order of things. Entropy, mortality, extinction: the entire plan of the universe consists of losing, and life amounts to a reverse savings account in which we are eventually robbed of everything. Our dreams and plans and jobs and knees and backs and memories, the childhood friend, the husband of fifty years, the father of forever, the keys to the house, the keys to the car, the keys to the kingdom, the kingdom itself: sooner or later, all of it drifts into the Valley of Lost Things.
➕ Ms. Schulz generously joined me on the podcast to talk about her piece.
So now that I’ve (re)introduced myself, shared my reflection on this newsletter’s first 10 years, expressed my gratitude for you and your readership, and recommended a few articles, what’s next for Article Club?
After all, isn’t reading ending? What’s the point, if the extinction of reading is nigh?
If you’ve been following my article selections lately, certainly I’m concerned about the state of reading. You know what I’m talking about: Parents are reading less to their kids. K-12 students are way worse at reading now. College students can’t make their way through a book. Famous people say reading is a waste of time. ChatGPT will do the reading for you. In a few years, human reading will be passé, a relic, a leisure activity reserved only for the elite. As the techies say, the future is inevitable. Our only choice is to adapt.
I say no to this! I say that we must resist!
That’s how I am envisioning the path for Article Club in its second decade. Yes, I’ll keep excavating the Internet to discover the best articles on race, education, and culture. My prediction is that as time goes on, they’ll be harder to find, as the line between human and robot writing will blur.
And yes, I’ll keep encouraging you to read these articles and to share your thoughts on them in community with other kind and thoughtful Article Clubbers. I’ll redouble my efforts to invite you to our existing discussions, as well as to come up with more opportunities to connect, human to human. It is true that for many of us, reading is a solitary activity that brings us personal rewards. But it’s also powerful in the collective.
Perhaps most importantly, where I see Article Club going in the next 10 years is unabashedly promoting the benefits of reading and helping us to create the conditions so that we will actually read. This is easier said than done. So many of us, after all, are aspirational readers. We want to read more deeply, but the distractions of our daily lives deter us. We want to read with more purpose, but let’s face it, no matter what we do, we’re addicted to our phones and the dopamine (and anxiety) they bring.
(It certainly doesn’t help that this newsletter espouses the reading of essays and articles that are found online, read with digital devices.)
The answer, dear readers, is not to live with the moose in the mountains of Montana. (Though by the looks of the picture below, it might be nice.)
So what then are we to do? I am excited to announce that I have some ideas that I will be sharing with you soon and over time. They won’t be anything revolutionary or earth shattering. But I think you might appreciate them, and I will invite you to try them out. My hope is that little by little, we’ll be able to carve out the time and space to do what we all subscribed to Article Club to do: to read the very best articles in order to spark our thinking, expand our empathy, bring us joy — and from time to time, to help us pause a bit, nudge us to reflect, and urge us to think about the bigger things in life.
Thank you for coming to Article Club’s 10th birthday party! And here’s to our reading community’s next 10 years.
Happy reading,
Mark
Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀
To our 8 new subscribers — including Yair, Erica, Antton, Ofelia, Alexis, Mary Lou, and Abby — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠
If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and have come to trust that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. Big thanks to Alexis and Monica for taking the plunge!
If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee for $3 (so I can read more articles).
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Congrats again Mark and Happy Birthday AC. Artical club is by far the most interesting and in my opinion the best newsletter on Substack. Keep on Truck’n.
i cannot believe it's been 10 years! i hope to make it to an HHH one day and certainly wish i made it out when i was living in the bay. highlighter/article club has been such a gift. thank you.