Gold Star for Robot Boy
concentrates airflow along the floor for a deeper clean
Hola, Casita
I apologize in advance for the Pollyanna-ish quality of this newsletter, which is an attempt to subsume some of the inexorable grief and rage into something lighter. Things are very bad, but I was recently in Louisiana, where I got to help a sister pro-vaccine organization run its first day of advocacy. I want to quote Mr. Rogers here and tell you to look to the helpers, but you’re probably tired of that one, and the one about how joy is a radical act, so I’ll just say that showing up matters, and it can even fill your heart with hope, and I expect to see you in our state house the next time there’s a hearing on gun legislation or access to abortion care, and you should wear comfortable shoes, because those marble floors are unforgiving as hell.
I got to send an email to someone named Shultzie today.
Tadpole is learning to swim. He has the floaty chest support thing and a green sparkly tube, and he spent Saturday kicking around a pool yelling “I’m not stable! I’m NOT STABLE!” which is 100% the zeitgeist, good job, kid.
Stuff I’ve Bought That I Love
Mindy Kaling had this blog about stuff she bought and loved circa 2002, when I was working at my first office job and reading blogs all day long while drinking free coffee in a spinny chair. I was fired from this dreamy scenario after six months for not doing the one thing I was supposed to do, which was file papers. It’s sad, because now hole punching things and filing them in binders is my favorite part of the day, sorry, trees, and I would fucking crush that job as Administrative Assistant for Popp Telecom1 in Golden Valley, Minnesota now.
Anyway, capitalism is almost unequivocally demonic, but also, shout out to the blessed narcotic effects of thinking about and buying stuff at a time when purchasing is both an exceptional privilege and a socially acceptable anesthesia, one that, unlike bourbon, could even be considered a means to self-optimization. Read Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, especially her essay on why we’re conditioned by The Algorithm to work hard in order to buy the things that will help us work harder, which I read while sipping a bottle of water with a caffeinated Nuun tablet in it on a work trip. Optimized! Thriving! Fuck me up with that sweet magnesium!
Anyway: These masks are cute, they wash well, and they have the most important thing, which is cord locks.
After a rigorous process of research that was not at all about procrastination on other projects, I plugged my nose and purchased new luggage for my new life as a road warrior. I had an idea that I might be a ruthlessly efficient one-bag backpack traveler and borrowed an eBag from a friend of a friend, then purchased the Topo Designs backpack, but it had too many straps and pockets and kind of felt like lugging a gimp suit around—fancy and exciting, but a pain to get in and out of and too much the performative drag of the well-appointed, adventuresome person I will never be.
I landed on the Away Carry On, which is super lovely but probably not any better than a less expensive hardside2 bag? The real MVP is the Away Everywhere Bag. I was worried it was too big, but it fits my tech case, a cashmere wrap that is currently 50% off and a travel MVP, laptop, snack, travel mug, paperwork, book, and makeup bag without being super clunky, and it opens all the way so you can actually see inside and grab your stuff. I packed everything I needed into it, including work stuff, for a night in Massachusetts, and felt improbably chic in the mildly skanky lobby of the Red Roof Inn Deerfield.
Read This
RED COMET
The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
By Heather Clark
Did we need another book on Syl’s life and work? If you’re me, the answer is yes, because I’m also the kind of feminist completist who has listened to all of Joni’s albums, even the boring ones from her cultural appropriation era. This is especially well researched, delightful to read, and a level-headed analysis of a working writer—less focused on the histrionic portrayals of her marriage and subsequent suicide. If you’re not down for 1,000 pages, Diane Middlebrook’s Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage is so good, I’ve read it three times.
I just picked up Ted Hughes’s “Crow” at the Montague Book Mill (“Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”) and was thrilled by the phrase “unspeakable guts” in his poem “Examination at the Womb-Door.” Reading grumpy goth Ted Hughes while eating mango Fla-Vor-Ice pops is my best anachronistic summer mood.
Eat This
My sister recommended Bower Bar while I was in New Orleans and it was exactly what my weary team needed. I’m still thinking about the pickled watermelon rind, which will be my new summer snack with a cold glass of rosé. I also had a Vieux Carré on a working carousel at the Hotel Monteleone because New Orleans doesn’t ask why; it asks how.
We Love a Good Print
Poemies for my Homies
Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev by Adrienne Rich
Ugh just the best poem about a bunch of badass women doing a thing.
Joy Division
I know we were supposed to quit Spotify because Joe Rogan is the worst thing to happen to this country since I failed to dickpunch Tucker Carlson at JFK, but my dad uses my account and I have 9,000 playlists curated for highly specific feelings, so if you’re also hoping that recycling and voting have provided you with enough karmic offsets to still listen to Spotify, here’s a playlist for walking home down Bryant Avenue from Bryant-Lake Bowl after seeing a show, feeling cinematic and expansive and pleasurably melancholic.
Tell me their logo doesn’t look just like a butthole.
The hardside/softside question was answered after extensive research. Wirecutter basically says that you’re an idiot if you buy a hardside bag because they crack, but I like being able to scrub the thing down with Lysol wipes while I’m doing my forensic crime scene cleaner-level germ murdering after entering a hotel room.