Rain Perry

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

This is gonna be a quick one! In fact, over the next weeks these missives will be very brief because, I’m proud to say, I am slammed — we are in the thick of production for my new play!

You can check out the website for the show here. It would be my honor to see you there if you are in the Los Angeles area in June!

Tell Somebody

Over the next weeks I don’t want to drop the ball on this Substack, so these posts will mostly be me sharing songs with you. Once we get the play up and running, I can return to my regular format of longer essays about inspiring people!

The first song is one I can’t get out of my mind right now. It’s from the 2003 Rickie Lee Jones album The Evening of My Best Day, a vivid record written largely in response to the Bush administration and the Gulf War. With its refrain “tell somebody / what’s happening in the USA” this song could’ve been written about right now.

https://youtu.be/JlgkGCQl2f8?feature=shared

(And if you're having trouble seeing the video, I apologize! Not sure what's going on with the embed. You can click this link to watch it on youtube.)

A Habit of Hope

Reminder: I have something for you — a Habit of Hope Journal! Feel free to download it for your own use in a practice of optimism and joy. And feel free to comment in the chat about how it’s going!

Thank you, so much, for subscribing, and please feel free to pass this on. And if you’re interested in my work as a performer and songwriter, come visit my website!

xo Rain

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Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Living through this moment is like living in the Upside Down in so many ways. We’re engaging in a trade war with Canada? We’re supplying Russia with passwords and logins to sensitive government data? We’ve got masked ICE agents abducting students on the street in broad daylight?

On that last note, it’s unexpected and encouraging to see conservative thinkers Bill Kristol and David Brooks full-throatedly joining the opposition.

The other day Kristol shared an article on his substack about the brazen arrest of Tufts grad student Rumeysa Öztürk with this post on X:

And yesterday, David Brooks responded to all of it by straight-out calling for Americans to rise up against the government:

"It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement."

So here is something I did not expect to hear myself say: “Let’s join activists Kristol and Brooks in a nationwide protest!”

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Larger Than Life

I’m thinking a lot this week about the power of art. We just finished the first readthrough with music of my new play This is Water, which grapples (in song!) with how to push back against a looming dictatorship. I’ve seen it said that art and music are in and of themselves countermeasures to fascism. I do believe it.

I’ve also been thinking about artists I know, and it occurred to me that there’s one in particular I want to tell you about: the great X Montes.

Not many people are immortalized on a mural in their hometown.

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

First off: got your plans for today? Gut feeling: it’s gonna be big. Join us? I’ll be at the Ventura County Government Center, along with my hubby, my kid, possibly my mother-in-law, and at least five friends who don’t regularly go to protests, to say loudly and clearly:

Local Hero

This week’s story is going to start with Cory Booker, make its way back to Nordhoff High School in 1983 to meet our Person of the Week, contain not one but two references to Sen. Strom Thurmond, and veer back to the moment in which we find ourselves today.

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Some people have a big moment of political awakening, like our Person of the Week. For other people, like me, who grow up amongst the earnest hippie activists, knocking doors and attending political rallies are a regular part of life. For example, as a freshman in college I got arrested protesting UC investment with South Africa’s apartheid government. (If you look at the cover of UCSB’s Daily Nexus from April 1985, that’s my right arm!)

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Yesterday was the “Economic Blackout” and already the pontificating is thick. “It was a step in the right direction!” “It was naive!” If you thought it was gonna make a huge economic impact, you’re probably disappointed. If you thought it was a trial run for future action, you might feel, as I do, a stir of hope. Here’s what I have to say about it: a whole lotta people — not sure how many but gut feeling, at least a couple million — joined together to try using their economic power to impact US policy.

And that was the point.

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Before we get going, I want to alert you to an action that’s coming up. I hope you’ll participate.

It’s one thing to say “the people have the power,“ and it’s another thing to show it. So: whatever you need to spend money on, do it before or after February 28. And if you absolutely have to shop, shop local and with cash.

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Phew — every time I write a new essay, it seems like a year since the last one. Welcome back, and very glad you’re here. I’m very excited to announce that I have a new tool for you at the bottom of the page!

As Federal Government programs are cut, we find ourselves looking to our local communities in whole new ways. The adage “think globally, act locally” becomes not just a rallying cry but a necessity, as we face challenges in public health, food safety, civil rights, national security and much more.

But there is a very real silver lining, believe it or not.

Welcome to A Habit of Hope — a weekly practice of optimism and joy. We get inspired, there’s music, and use a set of tools for community and accountability.

Like you, I suspect, I’m finding every day newly overwhelming in the breakage of our norms and the breaches of our institutions. I’m no longer going to hold back from acknowledging that the United States is undergoing an attempted coup d’etat. Six mostly-too-young-to-drink hackers rolling in and accessing the most sensitive US Government computer systems at the behest of their billionaire overlord sounds like the plot of a Die Hard sequel, one that might be a little too over the top to be greenlit. And yet, that is exactly what has happened. I really can’t believe it.

Where’s John McClane when you need him?