What we do when the news feels too big

Also: A love letter to Facebook Marketplace [View in browser](    [❤️]( October 16, 2022 Dear Cog reader, What news did we cover this short (work) week? A lot. We had pieces about the fifth anniversary of #MeToo, the suit against Alex Jones, the first Native American woman in space and a provocative essay arguing we ought to tie carbon emissions reductions to federal disaster aid. We didn’t even get to the Jan. 6 committee’s vote to subpoena former President Trump, Russian aggression in Ukraine or upcoming Supreme Court cases. My point is: There’s more news each week than anybody can cover – let alone our tiny staff here at Cog – and so we’ve had to adopt a philosophy about what gets our attention. We wrote about [this approach]( in the second of four “essays by the editors,” reflecting on the section's 10th anniversary. Early on in Cog’s existence, Boston became the center of a rapidly unfolding international story: the Boston Marathon bombing. Without fully realizing it, our founding editor, Frannie Carr Toth, figured out a roadmap that’s become our guide to covering the news, when the news feels too big. Whether it’s a changing Supreme Court, or Trump’s election to the White House, the ongoing immigration crisis or climate change, it's a roadmap we've followed again and again these last 10 years. We are guided by a couple of important things: offering a lens that invites connection and holding space for the personal, even during – maybe especially during – times or events that feel too big to put into words. We think of story as a tool to lasso chaos, a way to put a perimeter around things that feel amorphous, and then to mold it, draft by draft, into something we can hold. Storytelling gives us a sense of agency. Before I go: we’ve got a piece all you Facebook Marketplace fanatics should love. It’s by the novelist Julia Claiborne Johnson – it’s part riotously [funny essay]( her quest to obtain an old-school NordicTrack and part sneaky-sad story about getting older. Julia’s in what she calls the "final quadrant of life," when life is more about letting go of stuff than acquiring it. Thank you for reading, Cloe Axelson Editor, Cognoscenti [Follow]( Support the news   Must Reads [Cognoscenti at 10: Making space for human voices when the news feels too big]( There’s been a lot of news in the last 10 years. Cognoscenti has tried to hold space for the personal, even — maybe especially — during times or events that feel too big to put into words. [Read more.]( [Cognoscenti at 10: Making space for human voices when the news feels too big]( There’s been a lot of news in the last 10 years. Cognoscenti has tried to hold space for the personal, even — maybe especially — during times or events that feel too big to put into words. [Read more.]( [Facebook Marketplace: A love story]( Reading through those listings, I can’t help imagining mini-soap operas, writes Julia Claiborne Johnson. I could stop anytime, maybe, but why should I? [Read more.]( [Facebook Marketplace: A love story]( Reading through those listings, I can’t help imagining mini-soap operas, writes Julia Claiborne Johnson. I could stop anytime, maybe, but why should I? [Read more.]( [Alex Jones' damage to society is incalculable. $1 billion for his Sandy Hook lies is a start]( It’s cliché to call our country polarized, as if we’re divided only by differences of opinion, writes Rich Barlow. What too often rends us isn’t disagreement over ideas but over reality and decency. [Read more.]( [Alex Jones' damage to society is incalculable. $1 billion for his Sandy Hook lies is a start]( It’s cliché to call our country polarized, as if we’re divided only by differences of opinion, writes Rich Barlow. What too often rends us isn’t disagreement over ideas but over reality and decency. [Read more.]( [Five years on, #MeToo shows that survivors are more powerful together]( #MeToo is not the sole measuring stick of progress, or an institution to exalt or blame, writes Leigh Gilmore. Instead we ought to think of #MeToo as a resource or tool — a common term that connects survivor credibility with accountability. [Read more.]( [Five years on, #MeToo shows that survivors are more powerful together]( #MeToo is not the sole measuring stick of progress, or an institution to exalt or blame, writes Leigh Gilmore. Instead we ought to think of #MeToo as a resource or tool — a common term that connects survivor credibility with accountability. [Read more.]( [Why sending a Native American into space is a big deal]( Indigenous people have lost far too much on Earth, and we need to prevent that from happening in space, writes Joelle Renstrom. [Read more.]( [Why sending a Native American into space is a big deal]( Indigenous people have lost far too much on Earth, and we need to prevent that from happening in space, writes Joelle Renstrom. [Read more.]( What We're Reading "The idea that life would simply churn on in the same way it always has only underscores the extent to which there have been two distinct experiences of the pandemic." "[Who's Left Out Of The Learning-Loss Debate]( The New Yorker. "What’s been surprising is how much is left between us when the conversation runs dry. The void has heft." "[Losing My Dad, Little by Little]( The Cut. "If there is anything good about this terrible experience that over six million of my fellow citizens (mostly women) and I are going through, it is only this: it is an exercise in learning to trust the world." "[On Life in Ukraine and the Pressure of a World that Never Feels Safe]( Literary Hub. "The cause of death should not render a loss any less significant ..." — Lynne Reeves Griffin, "[My sister’s death was hard enough. The silence afterwards was unbearable]( ICYMI [States like Florida should have to reduce emissions to get disaster relief]( There is a troubling disconnect between spending on climate resilience versus taking steps to slow down global warming. Especially in red states, writes Frederick Hewett. [Read more.]( [States like Florida should have to reduce emissions to get disaster relief]( There is a troubling disconnect between spending on climate resilience versus taking steps to slow down global warming. Especially in red states, writes Frederick Hewett. [Read more.]( If you’d like to write for Cognoscenti, send your submission, pasted into your email and not as an attachment, to opinion@wbur.org. Please tell us in one line what the piece is about, and please tell us in one line who you are. 😎 Forward to a friend. 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