Dear Marsha G,
I can’t believe we’re a week into 2024! Ursula Parrott always used the new year to reflect on the past, and I’ve spent a lot of this week thinking about the distressing state of the world. Watching the important but very disheartening documentaries Beyond Utopia and 20 Days in Mariupol certainly played a role in this. I highly recommend both of them if you want a better understanding of how difficult the situations are in North Korea and Ukraine today, and how much people are struggling and suffering.
In a January 1939 letter to her friend, the author Alec Waugh, Parrott looked back upon the decade prior to the year she published her first book and became a famous author:
“In spite of the beginning of the Depression there was not The Refugee Problem, The Unemployment Problem (at least not so permanently), the Rise of the Totalitarian State. Forty other things. The last years have grown increasingly like a melodrama in which the villains are always rewarded and the virtuous never rescued.”
It's rather stunning that Ursula could, in fact, be talking about 1939 or 2024—am I right?
As she would have advised, we have to carry on as we can. Even though I’ve slowed down with my Ursula events in 2024, I do have a few exciting things lined up—including a New York City-focused talk this Tuesday night at 6pm for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which you can register to stream wherever you may be! If you know anyone who lives in the Miami or Asheville areas, please let them know I’m coming their way this spring!
