Status Updates From At the Pond: Swimming at th...

The So Mayer essay is a beautiful reflection of the writer's relationship with the pond as a kid, and the difficulties of accepting their existence as a trans person. The visual parallel made between slave auctions and anti-trans women protesters wearing the pond's sign was well done and connected through a short historical lesson as well as connections between the writer and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It is finally spring.

Nina’s essay is a great start to the spring section. Her essay is a journey across the waters that she has swam in since her youth of relocating to 4 different places—always stuck in the middle and anchored to many places, strange and shifting. It ties life experiences such as her first period, an earthquake occurring ‘back home’, and the death of her grandmother to watery language.

I used to live right by these ponds!! This book made me grateful and nostalgic of my first year in London.