Monthly Muse: 12/2025
And a new way to support Handful of Earth
Monthly Musings are published during the last week of every month. In each Monthly Muse, I recap content from the past month of Handful of Earth, offer some freewheeling reflections, and share a passage that I’ve found especially thought-provoking.
Here’s the December 2025 Monthly Muse.
Recapitulation: Published since last month’s Monthly Muse
Contemplation
As we approach the new year, I’ll be brief and give you a preview of what to expect from Handful of Earth at the beginning of 2026. But first, I’d like to share a new way to support my work.
All of my writing on Handful of Earth is accessible for free and I do not currently have the option for paid subscriptions activated. I will likely have a paid option in the future but, in the meantime, some of you have expressed interest in financially supporting Handful of Earth. You can now make a one-time donation to support Handful of Earth at the following link.
Any donation, however small, will help me continue to offer the quality of research, writing, and content curation you have come to expect from Handful of Earth. Your generosity is greatly appreciated! And if you are unable to make a one-time donation to bring in the New Year but still want to help the publication grow, please consider sharing it with your family and friends.
Back to next year: On January 2nd and January 9th, I’ll be posting “Excavations,” which will take the place of Weekly Groundings on both of these Fridays. These will be curated guides to the flagship content (essay and articles and reviews and interviews) published to date on Handful of Earth. These Excavations can be used however you see fit—as a reminder of content to return to, a prompt to read further, or a document to share with others who may be interested in Handful of Earth. Those of you who are recent subscribers will find the Excavations particularly useful. And if you like this kind of curated content, be sure to check out My 10 Favorite Substacks of 2025 and Best of Weekly Groundings: 2025, both published this month.
Provocation
In lieu of the usual written passage in this portion of the Muse, I’d like to share some music I made in 2020 during the covid lockdown. It’s entitled “New Beginnings,” so I thought it would be fitting to share with you to help ring in the new year.