High Five + 1 for April
A monthly column featuring stories, products, and shenanigans I love
Hello to everyone who is also trying to survive the trauma of the American experience! And a late-ish Happy Easter to all who celebrate. This is a decidedly non-Easter-feeling year for me, with my kids away at college and me on the other side of the country from my friends who I used to brunch (day drink) with on this blessed day. But I still, somehow, persist.
A reminder that this new monthly column is a place to take one easy action and then hear about five things I found interesting, useful, funny, thought-provoking, or all of the above 🐰
+1 Easy Action to Take
SUPPORT LOCAL NEWS! SUPPORT JOURNALISM!
Jenn Romolini and I talked about this in episode 3 of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD WOMEN (you can catch that discussion at the 39:06 mark). We weren’t talking about what passes for local news in most markets now — papers and stations owned by giant (often conservative) conglomerates, but the kind of deeply local, community-based reporting that this country so desperately needs.
We also cited The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown (on Substack) as a reminder that investigative journalism is happening every day yet it’s easy for it to get lost in the sensationalism and overwhelm we’re regularly firehosed with. Brown broke the Epstein story more than eights years ago, along with her team at The Miami Herald. Just this past week, she did a live with Katie Couric and it left me in awe of not just her steadfastness but also her bravery.
Lastly, when I say “I want my local news local” I mean with a Boston accent (DOR-CHES-TAH), a track suit, and this much rizz (are the kids still saying that). I’m obsessed with Emily Sweeney at The Boston Globe. She’s flattih-ed that you like her accent.
Your one easy action: find the local news that matters to you (from where you grew up, where you went to college, where you live now) and please support it – subscribe, share and link to their work! We need to get back to understanding what’s happening and why in the places we love and where we live.
The High Five for April ✨🙏🏻✨
Introducing Free Time
Absolutely perfect, from McSweeney’s, of course:
From the innovators who brought you Taking a Nap and Just Chilling, Free Time is a luxury experience beyond your wildest dreams.
Free Time isn’t just a new product—it’s a total wellness optimization platform. It’s not an app but rather a mind-blowing vessel of unstructured time where you can do anything your heart desires, or nothing at all.
Your Free Time comes loaded with options that are as boundless as your imagination. You can lie on the couch and read a novel, or just space out and drool. Go for a walk if you want. Stop and stare at a bird and take dozens of pictures, if that’s your kink.
Read the rest here: Introducing: Free Time by Alex Baia
I make good money. Why do I still feel like this?
I’m going to need to read this piece by Hannah Horvath in Your Brain on Money several more times to absorb and process it. All I know is that it’s the only thing I’ve read that has helped me name how I’ve been feeling for a while now.
“Middle class” has become a psychological container that absorbs all of this anxiety — the gap between self-concept and lived experience, between what you were trained to expect and what the economy actually delivers. The term “middle class” holds a feeling. And right now, the feeling is dissonance. “I have what I was told would be enough, and it isn’t, and I don’t know who to be angry at.”
