Today’s TTT is a “love freebie”, so I’m going to go with substacks I “love” reading. But first, the tease!

Polar ice can take almost infinite shapes as it crystallizes, moves, and melts. The area around McMurdo Station exhibits this diverse world of ice in microcosm. The mountain ranges near McMurdo look like a dessert that would have pleased Rendu; the ice covers the mountains like a pure white syrup, filling canyons and valleys as it flows. Elsewhere ice looks like glass that has shattered into shards, strips, or chunks ranging in size from a small car to an entire skyscraper. The nearby sea is covered by ice that looks like a layer of foam at one time of year, a quilt of polygons at another, and a folded blanket at still another. Part of the awe of seeing a polar vista comes from imagining how a chemical formula as simple as H2O can underlie worlds of shape and movement that are almost magical in their variety. (The Ends of the Earth, Neil Shubin)

So, substacks! I’ve developed something of a substack addiction in the last few years and could probably spend an entire day doing nothing but sipping coffee and reading there. It’s a fascinating platform, especially because it’s easy to find commentors’ blogs and the fact that substackers frequently write about thoughts inspired by others, creating an unfolding conversation. I’d like to use today’s freebie to share ten of them: not necessarily my top ten favorites, but an interesting cross-section.

(1) GIRLS, Freya India. GIRLS takes as its subject the effects of social media and the digital world on young women — Gen Z women like herself. She has written some of my favorite articles on substack, period, like “What’s Become of Us“. Her archives are really interesting stuff. Freya has done interviews with other substackers I read.

(2) Rod Dreher’s Diary. This substack began as Dreher’s musings on religion, beauty, and culture, and later began including political pieces after he left the magazine he edited to move to Europe. He’s an intense, thoughtful writer who I found fascinating twelve years ago when I first stumbled on his writing. Dreher has to be the best-value-for-money on substack, because he posts every single weekday and sometimes on a weekend if he’s reading something interesting and has to share insights from it. His posts can be long, with a reflection that incorporates multiple books: yesterday’s post, for instance, drew on Hannah Arendt, Robert Putnam, Mary Harrington’s substack, and The Triumph of the Therapeutic.

(3) Word and Song, Anthony Esolen. This one is unique in Esolen’s approach, which is not to sound off on things in the news, but rather contribute to the preservation and restoration of culture by sharing music, books, poetry, and films which are especially beautiful or have something to say to the human heart – and he reads the poetry! Esolen is one of my favorite authors because he is so saturated with western literature.

(4) The Abbey of Misrule, Paul Kingsnorth. Kingsnorth edited a collection of Wendell Berry’s essays, and is a fellow critic of the inhuman and unsustainable industrial system, and the culture it creates to maintain itself — something he calls The Machine. When I began looking into him, I found his most interesting substack, an ongoing critique of industrial modernity from an Orthodox perspective that’s very nature-oriented. Paul Kingsnorth recently was one of the guests at a conference in Birmingham called Resisting the Machine, and is featured on the left above, with Rod Dreher on the right — I was sitting in the back near the coffee machine, hence the muddled photo)

(5) Pilgrims in the Machine, Beth McGrew. This substack’s subtitle is “Being human in the age of acceleration”: it touches on culture and simplicity. (A….lot of my substacks have a ‘humanity vs modernity theme…)

(6) Mary Harrington, aka “The Reactionary Feminist”. Harrington is the author of a book called Feminism against Progress, which I need to reread and review; in it she scrutinizes and attacks the sexual revolution and all that followed from a feminist perspective.

(7) Urban Speakeasy, Andy Boenau. This one is all about human-oriented urbanism, transporatation, etc. His most recent post is an open letter to the next HHS secretary that points out the health minefield created by America’s awful awful awful awful awful awful auto-oriented urbanism.

(8) Aaron Renn. As with Kunstler, this is an author I began following long before substack was a thing: I’m not sure how I encountered him, but when I began reading him his principal subject was masculinity, modernity, and Christianity. That’s still the core of his writing though he’s expanded a bit over the years, and has recently published a book called Life in the Negative World.

(9) Sean of the South. Sean Dietrich is a southern humorist whose pieces are often heartfelt articles on people who find joy amid pain and suffering. He’s the author of numerous books, too, from novels to memoirs and essay collections.

(10) The Free Press. Started by Bari Weiss, this is a platform for a host of indie journalists that doesn’t skew toward one ideology or another. It’s nice to get thoughtful reportage, including critical or investigative writing, that doesn’t go into histrionics or exhultation over the subject.