Substack Reads: New digital nomads; the defining voice of golden-age pop; plus, the last days of summer
Hello and welcome to another installment of your weekly Substack Reads: a smorgasbord of great reads from across Substack. And we have a very special edition for you this week, made up of reader recommendations.
A heartfelt thank-you for all your suggestions last week. We whittled hundreds of submissions down to five standout posts to share this week. We hope you enjoy them!
Please leave a comment in today’s thread telling us about a post or writer you loved this week. Handy hint: paste the URL into the comment so others can read along too.
A parched land
This summer brought some of the hottest temperatures mainland Europe has ever seen, causing forest fires and rivers to dry up. Rhyd Wildermuth journeys into the historical events that warned of today’s drought
—Rhyd Wildermuth in From the Forests of Arduinna, recommended by Bill Bridges
The Rhine is so low that it may soon shut down to all shipping traffic. The Danube also. The Loire is so dry that you can walk across it. The Po has already been that low most of this summer, revealing sunken ships and bombs from World War II. Low waters have revealed hunger stones on the Rhine, the Danube, and the Elbe. All the grassland around our house is brown. Trees have died from the drought here, and almost all the nearby streambeds are dry. A significant part of one of my favorite forests in France has gone up in flames.
There are stories here, more stories than I know, more stories than I can tell. For most, these places and these events probably sound mythic and distant. They once would have for me, before I lived here. What is happening seems unreal still to me, even as I watch it happen, staring at the empty streams and parched land.
The forgotten queen of pop
Record collector and essayist Robert C. Gilbert considers jazz singer Nancy Wilson one of the most underappreciated voices from the 1960s music scene
—Robert C. Gilbert in Listening Sessions, recommended by Kevin Alexander
In the sixties, the last gasp of the golden era of pop singing as a popular medium, Nancy Wilson may well have been its defining voice. While firmly a jazz singer, she also had an authoritative ear for blues, pop, soul, gospel, and the Great American Songbook—a reminder that Wilson’s preferred sobriquet for herself was “the song stylist.”
Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1937, Wilson started her singing career at the age of 15, starred in her own local TV show, and made frequent appearances in clubs around Columbus. Hedging her bets on being able to make a living as a full-time singer, she entered college to become a teacher. Soon, uncertainty gave way to the impossibility of not giving her dream a shot, so Wilson left college for a spot in tenor saxophonist Rusty Bryant’s band. It was when Wilson was in New York with the group that she met the great Cannonball Adderley. Sensing her talent, Adderley implored her to say so long to Columbus and hello to the Big Apple, which she eventually did in 1959. What happened afterward is a great tale of how determination can help create one’s own deserved luck.
The real life of digital nomads
Not sure you want the vacation season to end? Neal Bascomb interviews a couple who are dispelling the idea that a life of endless travel is reserved for the young
—Neal Bascomb in Work/Craft/Life
Nomads have hubs throughout the world, where their community is strong in number and services. Primarily they are located in warm climates with affordable living expenses and boast a robust co-living/coworking center. Six key ones are Mexico City, Mexico; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Medellín, Colombia; Tbilisi, Georgia; Bansko, Bulgaria; and Bali, Indonesia. Nomads tend to be a tight-knit community, and it’s seldom Brent and Michael arrive in a new town without having a network there to tap.
Regardless, they are seasoned pros when it comes to moving to their next destination and making a quick home of it. They’ll arrive in town, preferably in the daytime, with an apartment or co-living space already booked. After checking into their place and unpacking, they’ll take a walk around the neighborhood and find the nearest grocery store, bank, coffee shop, farmers market, gym, hospital, and public transport. Michael makes sure he finds the closest shop selling roast chickens as well. They have a lot of self-imposed rules, a pair of which they enforce on themselves upon arrival.
First is the 72-hour Rule. As Michael describes, “We cannot pass judgment on a place, either positively or negatively, until we’ve been there at least three days.”
“If I’m in a wheelchair, at least I need good hair”
Continuing her quest to expose the “fucked-up history of beauty culture,” Jessica DeFino interviews disability advocate Jayne Mattingly
—Jessica DeFino in The Unpublishable, recommended by Ali Vingiano and Kamil
“There are times where I’m scrambling to try and make myself look ‘well,’ ” Jayne Mattingly tells me. “I’m like, ‘If I’m in a wheelchair, I have to be pretty. I have to cover up all my acne, or at least I need good hair.’ ”
I call this “cosmetic coping.” Mattingly calls this “body grief.” It is both. It is the intersection of ableism and beauty culture, and Mattingly—as a newly disabled and chronically ill eating-disorder recovery coach, disability advocate, body acceptance influencer, and the writer of the Body Grief newsletter—is uniquely suited to take us there.
How choosing your friends will shape your life
—Sarah in liminal space, recommended by Alexis
Three years ago I looked at my life and asked: Am I moving towards the life I want?
The answer was no.
Slowly, I started to change my environment. I left a job that was focused on achievement and a city obsessed with accomplishment. I spent much more time alone.
Naturally, my relationships started to change. I got closer to people who lived the way I wanted to live (peacefully, calmly, creatively) and drifted away from others. Friendships evolved. Some ended.
These conversations were not fun. I cried a lot. I felt like I was losing myself. Was I a bad person? Was I selfish?
But there was a whisper in my gut that told me to stay on the path I had started. What I had been doing for years had not worked, I needed to try to live differently. That meant showing up in a different way than I had before.
CARTOON
The last wave of summer
—Liza Donnelly in Seeing Things
It’s hard to say goodbye to summer.
I remember those long last days at the beach in Delaware, trying to get sunburned so your tan would last long enough for the start of school. Squeezing tons of lemon juice—and later Sun In—on my hair to make it more blonde. Finally, when home, Mother would wash my suit one last time and then put it in the bottom drawer until next year. Photos from the instant camera get taken to the drugstore and developed, then looked at once and put away in a box.
I can almost smell it all.
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray.
Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
Thrilled to be a Reader Recommend! Thanks Substack community. Brent and Michael, digit nomad extraordinaries, are inspiring…and envy-inducing!
Thanks so much for mentioning us! And Neal did a great job of capturing us in https://www.workcraftlife.com. He's a terrific writer.