Escapism

Dreams of saving the world.

Yum

I am new to the world of romance novels. 

Forgive me. 

I always thought that romance novels were uber-steamy, mostly-sex books. I am sure some (most?) are, but I am realizing that some (most?) are just rom coms in book form. And delectably easy reads. 

Don't mind if I do.

Believe

It's impressive that this trailer is so trite when this show is so good-- refreshingly and completely humane. Life right now needs a coach like Lasso.

Catharsis

I'm in quarantine after a Covid exposure and all arrows in my life are pointing towards a reckoning with betrayals of self... 

Alternating between a basement cocoon and walks in the sunshine, I am trying to listen. To others (specifically her and her and her) and to myself...

What facilitates a return to self? Where did this shame come from that suffocates joy?

Caste In The Classroom

 

This NYT podcast (a five part series) is simply excellent. It shines a much-needed spotlight on the role of nice, white parents in creating the segregated, broken education system we have here in the United States. 

 

It's A Whole New World

A functional deodorant with ingredients that won't degrade my health?! I never thought I'd see the day, but Each and Every is my new go-to and there's no turning back. Cedar and Vanilla, I love you forever.

And this miracle from France lasts all week. I use both because I can't choose one over the other.

Required Reading

 This book: 

It is utterly insightful and beautifully written. I believe this should be required reading for everybody whose life is connected to the United States. It is an indispensable guide when it comes to understanding power in America.

Of Octopi And Fungi

Immersing myself in the mystery, power, beauty, and magic of the natural world has felt especially soothing of late. Two organisms in particular have been popping up on my radar repeatedly. I have previously given little thought to either life form which reinforces for me that if you deep dive into anything, you will eventually be awed...

OCTOPI

1. The documentary, My Octopus Teacher, is wonderful.

2. RadioLab dropped my jaw with this account of deep sea motherhood.

 

FUNGI

1. The film, Fantastic Fungi, is a bit of a revelation.

2. RadioLab also put out an episode recently called Fungus Amongus 

 

that touches back to their brilliant episode on the end of the Age of Reptiles.

3. Which leave me wanting to try psilocybin despite my general distain for psychedelic culture.

Find The Joy Where You Can

1. Frog and Toad ride out the pandemic.

2. This article on RBG's marriage to her husband.

3. This article from a woman, once famously drunk.

Apocalypse Now

Um, bleak times. Bleak times.

This is might help makes things better.  

 

Back To School

 

So here we are. At least it's good for some laughs.

Put Black Authors On Your Bookshelf

When there was a call to "blackout" the bestseller list, the assignment was easy: look for and buy books by Black authors to read. Here are some of my favorites from the past month:

Chris Fischer Is A Gem

Chris Fischer is a wonderful sense-of-place writer. He also makes a perfect foil for his wife.

Pouch Of Douglas

Hannah Gadsby. So good and so true.

What Is Owed

Nikole Hannah-Jones offers up a concise and powerful history of systemic racism in America in her New York Times article, What Is Owed. It is masterful and makes a watertight case for reparations (Ta-Nehisi Coates did the same in his 2014 article, The Case For Reparations). It is time. It has always been time. Let it be time.

When Fact Is Stranger Than Fiction

A Bolivian pan flute orchestra has been stuck in quarantine on the grounds (600 acres) of a haunted 15th century castle, surrounded by 23 packs of wolves, outside of Berlin for two months. 

A troop of monkeys snatched the blood samples of suspected coronavirus patients at a government hospital in the Meerut district of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The Other Pandemic

The pandemic that concerns me far more than Covid-19 in the United States is systemic racism. It is an unrelenting and merciless killer. It degrades every American and bludgeons Americans of color.

The Acting! The Accents!

Wow. 

This show. 

So Simple

I think this is all anyone needs to know about wearing a mask...

100% of profits from the sale of these kid-designed masks go to NYC hospitals and health care workers...

So why wouldn't we wear one??

Huzzah!

The Great is actually great.

An Ode To NYC

I forgive you, New York. I forgive you your snarl, your aggression, your hustle and hassle. I forgive you LaGuardia and your summer stench of uncollected garbage. I forgive you no cabs in the rain. I forgive you the crusty, deceptive puddles of slush at curbside. I even forgive you the Mets and no place to park and delivery trucks in the bike lane. All is forgiven if you will only return: the subway soliloquies of the homeless, the trains that never come, the trains that stop in the middle of the tunnel, the traffic, the garbage trucks blocking cross streets, the jackhammering of construction, the hiss of smoke from a manhole cover, the idling stretch-limo S.U.V.s, the drone of a million air-conditioning units, the drivers leaning on horns, the city hum that never ceases, until it did.

I forgive you. I forgive you now and forever. How could I ever begrudge you your restlessness, your relentlessness, your lip, your effrontery, your appraising glance, your pushiness, your impatience, your disregard for social niceties, when I knew all along that your great secret was that an extreme degree of ambition coexists in your streets with the empathy every New Yorker feels for a fellow New Yorker?

Only come back and all is pardoned: the tourists meandering in the theater district, your roads pitted with potholes, your crazy prices, your dinner parties ending at 9:30pm because tomorrow is another New York day and there's money to be made, your awful basketball, your restaurants that have a table maybe in a couple of months, your overcrowded sidewalks, your iPhone addicts gathered at the exit of a subway station, your way of never ever relenting until you turn every one of your workers into a zombie by nightfall.

I forgive you the rats. Yes, even the rats and I'll throw in the roaches. The swelter of August, forgiven. The icy winter winds off the Hudson and the East River, forgiven. The impossibility of getting across town, forgiven. I forgive you the crowds, the craziness, the cruelty, the cursing, the complaining customers, the impatient merchants and the most uncomfortable cabs in the world.

I forgive you your kale salads, your restaurants that sell only oatmeal, your trends. I forgive you your street preachers, your sanctimonious parents who drone on about their children's schools. I forgive you Macy's during the Christmas season and Times Square always. I forgive you your ticket-holder lines, your throngs blocking out the paintings at MoMA, your rush-hour subways crammed with humanity.

I forgive you the holding of subway doors, your drunks peeing and puking on the street.

I forgive you Penn Station. I forgive you the Port Authority, yes, even that! I forgive you the brutal division of haves and have-nots. I forgive you the bus to the cabs at LaGuardia-in-construction and the recording that tries to persuade you that the bus is really great news.

Look, I’ll pardon the madness of having AirTrain JFK start in Queens rather than Manhattan. I forgive you the whiff of urine on a Sunday morning, the broken glass in Central Park and the way you persuade people that saying I may have a window next month is OK behavior.

I forgive you for driving me crazy at times, for making me want to scream, Get me out of here! I forgive you everything without exception if you will only promise to reappear.

Please, do not be proud. I know, we cursed you with irresponsible abandon. Forgive us, as I forgive you. We did not imagine the silence that could fall, the sirens that would fill the night, the sick and the dying, the doctors laboring on the 10th circle of the inferno, the ghostliness of shuttered stores, the empty skies, the canceled events, the post-apocalypse latex gloves scattered here and there. We took you too much for granted. Yes, forgive us for not giving daily praise for the miracle of New York.

I know I did not thank you enough for those clear winter mornings, for that dive I love on West 26th, for your tolerance, for your open arms, for the sun glinting on the Empire State Building, for your ampleness, for New York Noodletown, for your secrets slowly revealed, for your endlessness, for your boldness, for your churn, for the Met Cloisters, for your humanity, for your wit, for Coney Island, for the water towers, for the Staten Island Ferry being free, for banking over the city into LaGuardia or J.F.K. and seeing you and thinking this is home, for taking me in as no other city ever could.

Being a New Yorker, I was in a hurry. I was forgetful. You get that. Please forgive me. Please forgive us all. I'll throw in the pigeons. Forgive you for every one of those awful birds. Just come back, just return, please. I know we can make a deal.

by Roger Cohen in April of 2020

Historical Context

We aren't the first, nor will we be the last...

...taking the long view with one of my favorite journalists.

It's A Rainy Day

This is spot on.

Day Drinking

Responses to a pandemic world...

I. Kay Bradner's creatures

II. Kate Baer's poem

III. Jodi Cobb's soap suds

IV. Joseph Stroud's poem

V. A meme

VI. Zoom call

Coronavirus

The resources I have found most helpful so far regarding coronavirus...

1. The New York Times tracking map.

2. The San Mateo County Health Officer Statement.

3. This article in The Atlantic.

4. This article at Medium. 

5. Rachel Maddow's interview with Donald McNeil.

6. This series by Dr. Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris. 

7. This message from a doctor in Italy, where some degree of resiliency has been found in song. 

8. Seth Meyers on this moment in time. 

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

by Danusha Laméris

This Is How I Feel

1. I am voting for this girl: 

2. I am old. But not that old. 

3. I get your mediocre genius, parking chair.