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I’m feeling unproductively earnest this week; everything seems a little too tender. Let’s hope it’s the weather. Last night, I heard Peter Carey speak at Hunter College, and he said, “Compassion is the key to good writing.” So there’s that.

Here are some things to read and see:

• My delightfully irreverent friend M works at the National Council of Jewish Women, and created a series of hilarious children’s book covers ahead of the election, like this:

• The Rolling Jubilee is here! Let’s bail each other out.

“Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.”

• Anya Ulinich (author of the gorgeous novel Petropolis) and Anya Yurchyshyn have two very different accounts of being in Brooklyn during Hurricane Sandy up at n+1.
• This essay is about motherhood, ambivalence, honesty and fear.
• Another season of Teen Mom 2 has either started or will start really soon. Madeline Schwartz’s essay at the New Inquiry examines teen motherhood and its threat to patriarchy.