Lots happening right now which is to say the man who is arguably the most powerful in the world is throwing a destruction party and only billionaires and despots are invited while the rest of us are left to gawk and tremble and bathe in stress hormones like mice roaming a herpetarium.
So I’m not gonna add to your horror. Instead, we’re gonna go upbeat for a change.
Here are some recent things I’m grateful for in my life:
My cousin-in-law (Olufunke Grace Bankole) just published her first novel and had a reading at Green Apple on the Park and 11 family members showed up to cheer her on. Buy her book, The Edge of Water. Recommend it for your book club. Support local bookstores. Support new authors. Read.
My niece (WM) got cast in her first play at university. Woohoo! Break a leg, kiddo!
I went for a walk with my dog and my friend Zoe yesterday down by the bay. What could be better than old friends, happy dogs, and a Philz Mocha Tesora?
My pickleball game is improving. Slowly, but noticeably.
We got rain. Our yard’s little avocado tree and rose bushes are ecstatic.
Tonight my D&D game meets for the first time in almost two months. I’m due for a good dork-a-thon.
Coffee forever and anon.
So far, I’ve successfully switched from 4mg nicotine gum to 2mg nicotine gum. What caused the change? Watching a documentary about a husband who killed his wife with nicotine poisoning. Who knew?
My dog cut her paw open chasing her ball in the park. It was a ¾ inch gash. Nasty. I cleaned it, applied antibiotic ointment and bandaged her up. She’s a perfect patient, totally willing to let me roll her over and mess with her wound. The cut is healing very nicely. No infection. And she’ll have a badass battle scar. Home vets unite!
Apple and Google have caved to the Trump administration and renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in their map apps. Sorry…I couldn’t get to 10 good things. Upbeat caveat: Smartasses on the internet have renamed the Gulf yet again to The Gulffuck Yourself.
Apologies for the lack of riveting drama. My life is pretty quiet. I like it that way. I’m blessed.
Recently Read Books I Recommend:
Small Things Like These: Quiet. Short. Simple prose. Devastating story about small acts of heroism.
The Mountain in the Sea: A smart, near-future treatise on corporate greed, human frailty, and conscious beings be they human, cephalopod, or AI. Also, kind of a thriller. A smart, well researched thriller.
H Is For Hawk: A beautifully written memoir about grief, animal husbandry, and the history of the art of flying hawks. Totally weirdly wildly engrossing.
Heat: If you haven’t read Bill Buford’s Among The Thugs I highly recommend it. But if you’re more interested in how high end restaurant kitchens work and the traditional practices of Italian cooking, then read Heat. Buford’s willingness to be a curious fool gives us access to spaces we aren’t likely to ever experience.
Lost Christianities: This one I just started but so far so good. It investigates the early Christian Church and the many writings that were considered scripture at the time, but were not canonized into the Bible we know today. If you’re interested in how Christian dogma evolved - get you some of this book.
Alright. Hopefully this little jaunt through my simple pleasures has bestowed a mild, but needed serotonin boost for you. If not, make your own list of things you're grateful for in your life. We all need some rose colored perspective these days.
Internets of the Day
Quote of the Week:
“The great and terrible thing about humankind is simply this: we will always do what we are capable of.” – Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good
– Beans: See above. I’m all out of Good for this week. But I’ll put coffee here as a placeholder. Coffee is good. Coffee is the bourbon to Tea’s gin. Keep your dumb drinks England. We’re America and we’ve never truly been great but we do have a history of striving for it and that effort is worth celebrating.
The Bad:
– Youth Horror: I watched The Substance last weekend with a good friend and we groaned and fussed and belittled it the whole way through. I’d heard good reviews. Those reviews were pure mendacities. What a shallow mess of a movie. I mean there’s some good stuff - the production design is pretty awesome. The paeans to past films are a smart element of its critique. And the general topic – our culture’s demand that women remain youthful and fuckable to satisfy the male gaze – is worthy of criticism. The problem is, as anyone older than 40 should quickly realize, is that on the scale of The Horrors of Aging, fuckability is pretty low on the totem pole. Which is to say, that in its attempt to critique the male gaze, the film spends all of its time BEING the male gaze and pretending that we should be horrified by crows feet and sagging skin and titillated by tight buns and perky breasts. Anyone who has an intimate relationship with real aging recognizes that loss of agency, acceptance of death, and the indignities of bodily functions (not forms) are far more difficult to wrestle with than balding pates or sagging boobs. It is a horror movie only for those who worry about the aesthetics of aging rather than the realities of aging. I’m sure the 20 somethings find it terrifying. Us olds find it laughably thin. Finally, the character development is so lean that the main actresses might as well be mannequins. I struggle to find compassion for shallow people critiquing shallowness.
The Ugly:
– Constitutional Crisis: It is looking ever more likely that Trump and his administration are going to ignore court orders. If the Executive refuses to accept the check and balances of the other arms of our government, then we no longer have a constitutional republic. It’s potentially real bad, folks. For want of cheaper eggs, the American people have signed over their democracy to a boorish king and we aren’t even getting cheaper eggs. Never before have I been more disappointed in the incuriousness of the American people. Our reverence of ignorance may well be our demise. Dumb motherfuckers done fucked around and are now finding out.
Finally:
