Do You Enjoy This Amazing Newsletter? Here’s How You Can Help.

Every month, my friend Jodi Ettenberg sends out one of the best links roundups around, her *free* Curious About Everything newsletter. This month’s issue came out yesterday and there’s really so much good stuff in there — Spotify’s ghost artists, biofarming animals for live-saving chemicals, the history of risotto, and a look at how the Vatican picks saints.

This issue also includes a sad update on her health:

After two years of slowly making progress on my ‘uptime’ from my spinal CSF leak, I slid in the shower on Christmas Day when, unknown to me, my body scrub tipped over and oil dripped down onto the floor. The shower was very slippery even with shower slippers on — they’re no match for body scrub, apparently. I felt my the tearing at my leak site as my leg shot forward, and my heart sunk.

It’s now January, and many symptoms that had disappeared have come rushing back. The screeching tinnitus, the nausea, dizziness, and shakiness upright, the ‘brain sag’ at the back of my head yanking my skull downward the minute I stand, and the searing pain at my leak sites. Before I slid, I was averaging 7-8 non-consecutive hours upright a day. Now, I’m back to being almost entirely bedbound.

You can read more about Jodi’s disability in a piece she wrote for CNN.

As I mentioned above, the Curious About Everything (CAE) newsletter is completely free and Jodi relies on financial support from her Patreon members to fund her activities, which includes not only the newsletter but her work as the president of board of directors of the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation (I’m assuming not a paid position) and other projects as well (you might know her from Legal Nomads). And this is where you come in. If you enjoy Jodi’s newsletter, consider supporting her on Patreon today.

Jodi acknowledges that until she gets better, the CAE newsletter might be a lot shorter or might not be sent out at all. To which you might say, well why should I support now when I might not get anything from it? My response to that is that we need to stop thinking transactionally and in the short term about our support of the things and people we love. Jodi is a freelance creator, writer, artist, and activist and if we want her to be in the best possible position to produce work that enriches our lives and helps other people for years to come, we need to support her now. We’re her social safety net — our investment in times of rebuilding, regeneration, and rebirth can make a huge difference. Here’s that link to Jodi’s Patreon again if you’d like to help out. Thank you.

• disability
• Jodi Ettenberg