Plot Points #76 💌
Sustainable Easter baskets, the attention economy, history lessons, and funny death
Plot Points is a weekly newsletter where I share my favorite books, links, words, and more. If you enjoy what you find here, please consider subscribing or buying me a coffee.
Hello friends and happy Friday!
We were driving home from Amelia Island this time last week; thus, the reason for my lack of email. But we had a great time at the beach, especially since our dear friends were visiting family in the area and we spent lot of time with them eating seafood, finding shells and shark teeth, and just generally having a grand time.
On the way home, we visited our alma mater—Georgia Southern University—and walked the kids around campus for a little trip down memory lane. I also had the chance to drive up to Saint Simons Island during the week to surprise one of my best friends for her 40th birthday. She’s a school resource officer and, since we live six hours apart, I was pretty much the last person she expected to see in the lobby that morning. The best moment was actually right before she came out when I heard her scream because she saw me on the security footage. The perfect surprise!
Thank you all for spending some of your time here today. I’m looking forward to Eastertide and I hope you guys have a beautiful weekend celebrating with family and friends.
Grace + peace,
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Pascha: (n.) Passover, an ancient biblical feast; Easter, the most important Christian holy day.
Point #1: Please, no more plastic grass.
I’m not perfect in my sustainability efforts by any stretch of the imagination: I still use Amazon from time to time; I still over-consume (even if its thrifted!); I still buy food that doesn’t get eaten; I still drive an SUV. But I’ve been working for years to not let the holidays become about more stuff, so here are a few ideas for your Easter baskets if you’re looking for options that aren’t fake plastic grass and aluminum chocolate:
Shred old documents/mailers for free recyclable Easter basket filler
Snag some cardboard eggs from your local craft store and paint them with your kids
Crochet this simple bookmark for a sweet handmade gift (I did it in twenty minutes and I have never crocheted in my life!)
Make your own white chocolate Easter bark
Thrift secondhand children’s books. I see The Jesus Storybook Bible and other religious stories at our Goodwill all the time!
Point #2: “But there is the Magic and then there is the Deeper Magic.”
Since Substack introduced reels a few weeks ago—to the chagrin of, well, everyone—a lot of words have been penned on why it’s such a bad idea to bring video to this platform. But it is
who writes about technology and the attention economy in a way that truly gets to the heart of the matter.Point #3: Some of y’all have never read about how the Third Reich came to be, and it shows.
Gut-wrenching. Let us be in continued prayer for the people in our nation who are being treated as little more than animals. This is not the way of the cross. It is not the way of Christ.
Point #4: Easter is coming.
At this time last year, we were on the tail-end of a 6-month odyssey that took us through the loss of our sole source of income and what we thought would be our forever home to watching our daughter be welcomed into the family of God and finding a house that was made just for us. I wrote about the beautiful, miraculous chaos of that journey here and thought I would share it again for Eastertide.
Reading in The Nook 📚
I just finished up the fourth book in Elle Cosimano’s hilarious murder mystery series, Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice. I felt like this particular piece of the story forsook its regular charm for the unbelievable plot device, but I’m enjoying book number five so far. Still, it takes a lot of work to sustain the quality of a series over time and I don’t know that I’ll read any more Finlay Donovan books after this one. It’s a solid series overall, though, if you’re interested in lighthearted macabre from the point-of-view of a SAHM just trying to avoid finding another dead body!
What are you reading right now? 👇🏻
(All Bookshop.org links are affiliates. Thank you for supporting The Nook with your purchase.)
“The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other, but that every one should have liberty, without hindrance, to be what God made him.”
—Henry Ward Beecher—
Follow along as we read my latest novel, The Bluestockings!
Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five |
Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight
