Slug mode, and a call for pitches
Come for the run-in with law enforcement and an electric fence, stay for everything else.
Update 1/16/23: This pitch call is now closed. Future pitch calls will go out to newsletter readers first before being shared on social media and around the web.
I have regressed into full slug mode.
This is not to be confused with slugging, or covering your face in petroleum jelly to lock in moisture while you sleep.
No slug mode is more akin to bed rotting, only not necessarily in bed. It’s simply being extremely sedentary, inactive, lazy—in a word, sluggish. If I’m caught in the act, I might say, “I’m slug,” the same way someone else might say, “I’m baby.”
I like that it conveys that greasy feeling you get when you’ve gone a couple days without showering, too.
Bottom line, if I don’t leave the house soon—for something other than groceries—I will have to turn in the keys to this so-called “outdoorsy” newsletter.
On that note, I’m thrilled to say that I’m putting out a call for pitches for Pinch of Dirt! I’m looking for personal essays between 400 and 1,000 words about any of the topics that might be touched on here: outdoor adventure, urban nature, gardening, bird-watching, mushroom-hunting, or any interaction with the big, wide world we call Earth.
Weird and whimsical ideas are welcome. Some kind of climate or environmental connection could be nice but is not required. News hooks are not necessary. I’m envisioning this as a place for writing that wouldn’t necessarily “fit” at traditional publications, but that you (potential author) just want to see out in the world.
I can pay $200 per piece. It’s not a lot, but this is a small publication.
To give you a peek beneath the hood, Substack tells me my annualized income (what I’ll make over the next year) is a little less than $1,000, and that may be before fees. Having a full-time job allows me to put the money I make back into growing the newsletter, but you know, even with that, I can only afford about four guest posts right now.
But if there’s interest I would love to max those out! Pitch me (put PINCH OF DIRT in the subject line) at jsmckenzie@protonmail.com.
And if you’ve been around a while and want to throw a little something in the hat, there’s never been a better time to subscribe:
Reading list
Pedal-yaking California: Earlier this year Brendan Borrell and Tom Fowlks set out on a crazy mission: to traverse the floodwaters that swamped the San Joaquin Valley and temporarily brought back a lost lake and filled the dried beds of rivers, and follow them more than 200 miles to the San Francisco Bay-Delta. Ostensibly (and actually) a fun and adventuresome romp, it’s also a clarion call for rethinking water management, agriculture, and conservation in a oft-overlooked part of California. Come for the run-in with law enforcement and an electric fence, stay for everything else. [Outside Magazine]
Wilderness climbing under review: The Forest Service and the National Park Service are reconsidering the whether fixed anchors for climbing belong in designated wilderness areas. [Seth Boster for the Denver Gazette]
The end of green bins: New York City Mayor Eric Adams has proposed slashing budgets for police (fine by me), schools, libraries, and…the only functioning compost program in the city? Under the proposed budget cuts, the community composting sites at greenmarkets1 (where I’ve been taking food scraps recently since my Envirocycle is stuffed to the brim) will shut down at the end of the year. It’s not just the more than 8.3 million pounds of food scraps that will now go to the landfill—or, at best, be used to produce ‘biogas’—it’s the loss of jobs, and the complete and sudden dismemberment of a flourishing community service that engages people in the act of being better stewards of the environment. It fucking sucks, is what it does. [Samantha Maldonado for The City; Whitney Bauck for The Guardian; see also Clio Chang for Curbed on NYC’s composting boondoggle]
The great carbuncle2: This past Thanksgiving week was the one-year anniversary of the death of Emily Sotelo, the young woman—girl, really—who died trying to hike all 48 peaks taller than 4,000 feet in New Hampshire before she turned 20. In light of that, it’s worth revisiting this Boston Globe article on why so many people die in the White Mountains. (The weather, usually.) [Holly Ramer for the AP; Kevin Koczwara for the Boston Globe]
That’s what we call farmers’ markets in New York City, for some reason—I’m not sure why.
Comment below if you want to join a Pinch of Dirt book club and read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 fable “The Great Carbuncle” together.
There’s a Grow NYC Rally to save compost program on Wednesday at City Hall Park. At Noon. Unfortunately I can’t be there, but in case you didn’t know about it and can go…I hope it helps!
Ending the compost program is so idiotic and wrong. I don’t get it.