This is not about what went wrong
Some reading for a long weekend of (temporarily) disassociating
My media habits (temporarily) changed in an instant this week and we all know what instant that was. I deleted every social media app and platform from my phone. I occasionally skimmed headlines on news sites, but read maybe five articles in total. I just cannot with this shit right now. I cannot with the circular firing squad and the finger pointing. Everyone just shush it.
I couldn’t even read books because so much of my current reading is non-fiction about abortion, poverty, and gender. When I looked at my book pile I was like not now bitch. I’ll get back to it all, of course. I’ll be back on social media next Tuesday, specifically. But taking a break has allowed me to read through a pile of print magazines that have been haunting me. I dug back into my TO READ folder in email and tiptoed through open browser tabs to finally read articles that had been waiting for months, if not years.
This post is free to all subscribers and readers — a compilation of pieces that landed with me and might just land with you, too. Not because you’re giving up (hell no) but because. Just because.
There *are* some election and political links below but those are at the very end if you want to skip that section. But please know I wouldn’t include them if I didn’t think they were actually of use right now. That use can be venting, that use can be action, that use can be putting a pin (as they say in corporate America) in a very visceral level of blood-spitting rage to be used productively. Soon. In the meantime, hug your dog. And buy abortion pills. That’s what I’ve been doing.
Aging
• “How to Grow Old Like Isabella Rossellini: ‘How do I fulfill the rest of my life? That question came to me very clearly at 45, and I didn’t have an answer.’” by Lulu Garcia-Navarro in The New York Times
• “Over 60, Single and Never Happier: Why some older people who have given up looking for romantic love say they feel self-assured and satisfied on their own.” by Catherine Pearson in The New York Times
• “At 93, Teaching Me About Possibility: When I abandoned ‘grayspeak’ — talking to elders as if they are toddlers — my conversations with my grandmother finally began.” by Richard Morgan in Modern Love, The New York Times
Design
• “A Cape Cod Beach Shack Where Charm Takes Priority Over Air Conditioning” in The New York Times
• “The Joys of Sketching Birds: Times readers were invited to share their drawings of the avian life around them. Here are more of our favorites.” in The New York Times
• “How Much Color Can You Fit Into 430 Square Feet?” in The New York Times
Culture
• “Why Are Celebrities So Bad at PR?” from Into It: A Vulture Podcast by Sam Sanders. I miss this excellent podcast so much. This is a great behind-the-scenes type of episode.
• One of the most thorough and critical, personal and vulnerable examinations of finding out ugly truths about the artists we admire: “what i'm doing about Alice Munro: why i hate art monster discourse” by Brandon Taylor in sweater weather
• I grew up surrounded by Great Danes. The cover of THE FRIEND is the reason I bought and read THE FRIEND. So I was pretty thrilled to see this article. I love a good behind-the-scenes piece, always. “An A-List Animal Trainer Prepares a Great Dane for His Film Début” by Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker
History
• “Chernow Gonna Chernow: A Pulitzer Prize winner punches down” by
in . This piece is 3 YEARS OLD and I finally got around to reading it. If you want to see a perfect example of women supporting women when a privileged dude who definitely could’ve opted to just keep counting all his Hamilton money and shut his yap, this is it. (Related: Jessie Serfilippi’s paper is here: “AS ODIOUS AND IMMORAL A THING: Alexander Hamilton’s Hidden History as an Enslaver”.Politics — Where It Gets Bad But a Place to Start
• “Five Things You Can Do Right Now: How to protect yourself and each other” by
in• This is correct: “What went wrong is everyone can fuck off” by Jennifer Barnett.
• “The Fury Gap: Young women were radicalized overnight” by Jessica Valenti in Abortion, Everyday. “After a lifetime of being expected to eat shit, waking up on Wednesday morning knowing that the men in your lives voted away your humanity made the decision to leave them behind pretty easy.”
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