August comes in with chaos, personally speaking. The work of moving newsletter platforms, a new school year starting, and those mundane realities like needing to eat every day caught up to me, so today’s newsletter is a look back – and forward.
A year ago I was also overwhelmed and looked to my archive to find something to publish. I annotated an essay about Dario Mendoza, a farm worker who died from the heat in Yuma, AZ, in 2023. Two years ago I published the original essay, which I consider the genesis of this newsletter. Yesterday, I read through both versions. Not to edit, just to make sure the links work and formatting was fine. All looked fine enough, until I clicked on the link to The Washington Post article I mentioned in the opening paragraph. It took me to The Post’s homepage. Democracy Dies in Darkness under an ad for intermittent fasting with grotesque cartoons of creatures they might call women.
I Googled Dario Mendoza + Washington Post. I looked through Google image searches. Nothing.
I put the article link into the Wayback machine. There were two hits, but from 2024 and 2024, years after the article was published. And they wouldn’t load.
I’m no conspiracy theorist. There are many explanations for the article’s disappearance, most of them boring, administrative, or accidental. Although, with what is known about the censorship at The Post, I think some suspicion is warranted. No matter the reason, the article disappearing is another layer of the injustice of Dario Mendoza’s death. The only reason I know this article is missing is luck. How many other articles about people who died of the heat, or of a man-made famine, or by self-immolation have disappeared? They are countless. Where is there accountability? Digital media is slippery and malleable, such is the beauty and danger of it. The digital archive is fragile and dependent on people’s labor and goals. I wish back in 2023 I had a paper copy of The Post and cut out the article about Dario.
The Good Enough Weekly is beholden to digital platforms, people reading on phones and laptops across the globe, and the very boringly named WiFi network I use daily. Thank you, SetupB47d (not the real name)! As time passes and this newsletter becomes, more and more, the engine of my creativity, I also see the challenge of not becoming entirely enveloped by the digital. Parallel, my affinity grows for paper zines, cheaply printed and freely distributed. My hope with this newsletter is to do both — print more newsletters as paper zines, use the digital space to keep getting to know people who I’d never meet except in this online hellscape (affectionately.)
The only reason I noticed the article is missing is because I was paying attention to that specific story. Attention, whether it’s to print or digital stories, seems more necessary than ever. Noticing what’s getting the attention—and what’s disappearing.
Where’s your attention these days?
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The Good Enough Weekly comes out on Fridays, alternating essays, interviews, and blog posts on food, climate, and labor. Rooted in the Sonoran Desert.