Weekend reading: on difficult monuments
Plus, testing out a Southlands chat
Winter travels + chat
This “weekend reading” edition is out two days early because tonight I’m headed to Auburn, Alabama, and want your advice. So I’ve decided to give a new Substack feature a try: chat.
Over in the Substack app, I’ve started a thread to solicit your favorite trails and waterfalls or really any other nature-y sites worth a visit near Auburn. If you don’t want the app, you can always chime in below, in the comments.
Any quick roadside stops between Auburn and New Orleans are welcome, too! Plus, later this month, I’ll be headed to Asheville, Charlotte, and Greenville, S.C., too — places I know a bit, but you might know better. Hope you’ll chime in!
Remembering the unthinkable
In a powerful cover story in the December issue of The Atlantic, Clint Smith recounts his visit to Germany to consider the various ways that the Holocaust has been remembered there.
What’s that got to do with Southern nature? Quite a bit, given who built our physical world here, and who owned the land before white settlers arrived. Smith considers what are known as “stumbling stones,” golden cobbles laid in the street to commemorate local Jews who were murdered by the Nazi regime. Were such stones installed to remember the people enslaved in New Orleans, he notes, “the streets would be packed.” Though Smith finds that even these stones are controversial: contrition is always a difficult task.