John Muir was a naturalist. An archivist. A tree-hugger.
In fact, he found so much purpose in these roles, he founded the Sierra Club.
He also said this: “When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.”
He viewed going out in nature as a way to “wash your spirit clean,” but can it wash our conscience? What do we do with the discomforting irony of seeing nature — primal-puncturing-jaw-to-the windpipe, moved-by-the-moon nature — in cages?
Well, we put lights on the structures around these cages and pat ourselves on the back for the job well done. We hold our mittened hands together and give thanks that we have to strangle no living thing to live free. Not anymore.
But it’s still kind of awkward to see the lioness 20 feet away drowsy eyed and dreaming of pate from a jar or a seal clinging to a plastic plant as if it were food, unable to spear a bite.
Or maybe he was just playing.
To not be so depressing — we are seeing holiday lights after all! — I decide to find pleasure in how the animals adapt to their sanctuaries, how they make them feel like home.
It’s like when we go to a hotel and claim the bed near the window and take all the pillows off but two; because that is most similar to where and how we fold into one another every other night.
The gorillas are my favorite for this. They are so smart and full of attitude.
Chest thumpers.
Ball scratchers.
Hand holders.
Nest builders. They form little individual mattresses of leaves and sticks on which to lay. If anyone can appreciate needing to make a space for oneself, a private place to put a head about to dream — it’s a human.
Other things about them are familiar, too. And away we tug, attached to all of each other.
The writing of Rush Oh!
It’s hard to imagine how a book can be both brutally sad and giggle-inducing, yet here were these reviews, saying “Rush Oh!” was exactly such. It’s the fictional memoir of a daughter of a whaling family in Australia’s Twofold Bay. Loosely based on a real family, it recounts the haunting 1908 whaling season.
Here’s my favorite passage example of how the author, Shirley Barrett, nails this uncommon voice.
I learned a lot about whaling too? Who knew I would find it so interesting, especially the personalities of the Killer whales who helped the human hunters (the Killers got first dibs in the water’s depths before the carcass gassed up to the surface). Turns out there’s a real museum dedicated to these cetaceans and this incredible, dichotomous era of violence and cooperation between man and beast at Australia’s Twofold Bay. One more thing to add to the bucket list!
Survival is weird.
Snowflakes!
Are we all over the “YOU ARE NOT A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE” retort yet?
Ugh, we should be.
Listen, you can find yourself to be special and not be entitled. You can recognize that a snowflake is one of millions but also, that when fallen into a snowy drift or peed on by a dog alongside millions of its fallen brethren, it is not so special. But does that lessen any of the fact that it has its own, made-just-for-it, swirling, spiked design?
That can still be freaking cool (it is!) and appreciated while admittedly part of a bigger picture in which one’s own personal needs or identity hold, well, a snowflake-size worth of importance.
From water to water ye shall return!
What seems more “special snowflake-y” in attitude is actually calling someone else a “special snowflake.” When someone else’s self-awareness or individuality personally offends you, I’d say you appear to be the one with deep, unwarranted entitlement issues.
The hypocrisy of the bully is never ending, though.
So to that statement, “You are not a special snowflake!”, I happily give a smile and a middle finger.
And, oh, what do you know? Look here! Staring back at me from my one finger salute to your self-righteous poo-pooing of my self-worth is my own, made-just-for-me swirly design.
Hello from Hawaii! I hope you don’t mind I’m still in my bikini. My goodness, it’s so balmy here I don’t want to wear anything else!
I’m sure I need no introduction. It is I who purr from your stereo every Thanksgiving through Christmas asking your main man of merriment for many an indulgence.
But in case you didn’t get the followup: Santa is a loyal lover, and my swooning did no swinging him over to my side.
He did bring me the 54 Convertible, though. Light blue. With a wink.
I like to think that, although he remained faithful (you try giving up Mrs. Claus’s cookies), he did applaud my audacity of asking.
After all, at least I was honest about what I wanted. Which leads me to the reason we’re here. I’ll make this quick. Despite what you think of me, I’m no tease. I have a pina colada and tanned pool boy to which I’d prefer to quickly return.
Here goes. Why are you all such haters on Ebenezer Scrooge?
See, Scrooge and I are on a long list of wintery villains meant to serve a lesson to the good little boys and girls of the world. And we’re sick of it.
The Abominable Snowman? Looking for a friend.
The mean magician stealing Frosty’s hat? A closeted gay man trapped in a suffocating world where snowmen are allowed be themselves but he is not. That would make anyone kind of bitchy.
The Heat Miser, a product of global warming. You did that to yourselves.
Thus, I beg this season you perhaps try to see the nice in the ways we were all naughty.
Through this lens, Mr. Scrooge takes on a warmer light.
He believed in hard work, making money, and screening someone for drugs before they got welfare.
He didn’t pay his taxes because he was smart. He was trying to bring jobs to his countrymen. He had high standards and didn’t pay his workers if he deemed what they did a bad job, even if they put in their time and totally gave him a chance to tell them to stop before they were done. He wanted to build a wall to keep the ghosts out and make them pay for it.
I know how much you all love a blustery old business man with “balls”! Why not love Scrooge, pre-epiphany? The mixed messages you send are really quite atrocious, holiday hounds.
Perhaps with this newly opened mind you can also get behind my theory that The Nutcracker is a really strange story about an uncle who is a little too interested in imagining his young niece of Victorian-era marrying age.
I’m lucky enough to have a handful of academics as friends in my Facebook feed. As the post-election noise gets ever more urgent and confusing, I’ve turned to these friends for article links, books to read as I scramble to get a more careful background on some of these issues, or calm, reasoned takes on what is happening now and what we can do in the future.
With the scourge of fake news stories and the normalization of prejudice-through-language happening in non-fake news sources, I’m overwhelmed. I guess I’m craving to see where we are through the lens of education and history, because those are where I’m convinced the path to truth and answers can be found.
Apropos, then, that I turn to Austin McCoy, a very well-educated historian.
I originally messaged him to talk about the Black Lives Matter movement. I focused my questions on how white people like me, and most of you readers, can be participants and how can we educate ourselves to be better advocates for equality.
I think the most obvious thing we can do is listen to minority experiences and then, with compassionate self-criticism, ask how we, especially white liberals, act out our own systemic bias. Because we do. I do, too.
The racism, straight-up not stirred, hurled at Austin on Twitter recently has been outrageous. I’m always in awe at how gracefully Austin handles the hatred, amazed at his ability to peel the leeches off and stay standing, fighting for what he believes in in a way that is underpinned by the calm, compassion and consideration he encourages his opponents to employ. That resilient courage is inspiring, which is probably why he’s become a strong voice in the organizing he leads.
As for me, I’ll be heading to the library after work today to pick up one of his book recommendations. And I look forward to soon buying his own book.
Tell us about your background and the work you do now.
I study 20th Century U.S. history, particularly African American history, social movements, and labor and political economy. Currently, I am working on a book project that examines the progressive left in the Midwest and their movements around the 1960s uprisings, police brutality, the war in Southeast Asia, and economic justice. I serve as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
My background inspired my research. I grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, which is a small deindustrialized city. Initially, I was interested in how progressives responded to factory shutdowns because so many closed in Mansfield. The Mansfield area lost twelve manufacturing plants, including the Mansfield-Ontario General Motors factory, since 1971. I am a son of the black working class. My grandfather, father, mother, uncle, and aunt worked in factories in Mansfield. I was also an activist looking for guidance in how to organize for racial and economic justice.
I did some organizing work as an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University, Mansfield. I focused mainly on issues of race and diversity. I was one of a very few African American students on campus. I barely saw any other black students on campus and was typically the only one in my classes. Some of us also organized and started a little leftist magazine—we called it Spirit of the Nation. Since I have been at the University of Michigan, I have organized around issues of racial justice on campus, police killings (“Black Lives Matter”), and now against white supremacists, or whom some in the media have called the “alt-right.” I helped organize an all-night teach-in to support black undergraduate students at Michigan seeking racial justice. I also participated in Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Cleveland, and Chicago.
When and how did your family first talk to you about race?
I cannot recall the first time my parents first spoke to me about race. I remember my mom would talk to me about always having to be careful because black men were becoming an “endangered species.” This was probably during the late-1980s or early-1990s. I was really young, maybe around ten- or eleven-years-old. My mother worried about me because she believed that I would be a target, or a fall guy, if I got into a bad situation while hanging around white and non-black folks. She talked to me more about how to interact with police and other authority figures as I entered my teenage years. This “endangered species” discourse circulated among other black folks too. I always tell people that one of the primary examples of this is in hip hop. Ice Cube and Chuck D recorded a song together that appeared on Cube’s first album,Amerikkka’s Most Wanted, called “Endangered Species.” This was a gendered phenomenon, obviously. My parents were protective of my sister, but mom never spoke as if she was in imminent danger.
What makes you proud to be a black man?
First, I’m proud because of my family—my parents, my sister, my brothers, my grandparents—especially the struggles we have endured. Second, I’m proud of our extremely complex history. It seems cliché, but since I went to college and started studying history, I became more inspired. Black folks destabilized the slave system and overturned Jim Crow in the South and simultaneously challenged racism in the North and West. Hip hop culture also instilled a pride in my racial identity. I would name some specific artists, but there are too many to name. Nas, Public Enemy, X-Clan, Dead Prez, Ice Cube, Talib Kweli, Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Wu-Tang Clan are at the top of my list, though. Obviously, black history and hip hop culture are also crooked vessels. They are not perfect and can perpetuate problematic views of gender and sexuality. But, my point is that I had to learn how to hold what inspired me in tension with those problems.
What inspires you to do the work you do and face the hate you do on a daily basis?
Sometimes I do not know what motivates me besides the obvious—a desire to address and eradicate various forms of oppression and inequalities. I have been doing some sort of organizing work for a long time, so I often pull water from that well, and it runs deep. What keeps me going is knowing that the causes I believe in are just. But I also know that I do not have the luxury to be a bystander, especially now. In the last couple months, I have encountered racism more on social media since I have a presence. What also drives me now is the desire to help people organize themselves to change the world around them. I want to help anyone who wants to organize to be, well, better organizers than I. Watching folks develop the capacity to organize and resist is also inspirational.
How did these election results make you feel?
I felt terrible. I felt on-edge and on the verge of crying. I also felt physically sick. The thing that some Trump supporters clearly did not understand was that some of our feelings about the outcome of the contest actually transcended the election, itself. Many of us were, and are, not sad because a Republican won. Many of us are fearful because we have taken Trump at his word—about Muslims, undocumented folks, women, and Black Lives Matter.
Beyond the racist rhetoric and actions Trump has emboldened, are there any policies or actions the Trump campaign has promised that should have us on high alert?
The real question is where to start—the proposed Muslim registry, mass deportation, Trump’s demonization of Black Lives Matter and support for a national “stop and frisk” law (which would not be constitutional)? As I write this, social media and news outlets are reeling at Trump’s latest tweet suggesting that those who burn the American flag should lose their citizenship and/or be jailed. White nationalists and white supremacists see Trump as an inspiration and an opportunity to mainstream their ideas and influence policy. Trump’s rhetoric has emboldened many of these folks to harass people like myself on Twitter and social media, and, even more disturbingly, to commit hate crimes. Donald Trump and white nationalists are a threat to what little democracy we may have. What is good is that we are not sure what he will actually do, but we are wise to take him at his word, or tweet.
How is All Lives Matter counter-productive? What you say to people who come at you with that?
The counter-slogan, “All Lives Matter,” misses the point and is really a distraction from the problem that many people of color, particularly black people, face—disproportionate state violence. All African Americans, trans people of color, and Native Americans are more likely to be killed by police. Residential segregation, the poverty concentrated in these spaces, mass incarceration, and an unwillingness for Democrats and Republicans to devise policies that could address inequalities show a disregard for black bodies. Black folks, as well as many poor people, have become more disposable as inequalities have widened. So, the easy answer is there is no need for a black lives matter movement if all lives truly mattered. If all lives mattered, then there would never be a time when the state would circumscribe black folks’ civil liberties. We wouldn’t be criminalized by laws. We wouldn’t be racially profiled. We would not have to contend with negative racial stereotypes that suggests we are criminal, either due to biology, behavior, or geography. Our families would not have to contend with the negative racial stereotypes when loved ones are killed by the police. We would not be blamed for our own criminalization nor our own deaths.
What can white people who want to be agents of change do to help, especially in this oncoming environment of a Trump presidency?
First, white folks need to support the Movement for Black Lives’s platform. This needs to be a point of conversation among white folks. White and non-black folks should consider supporting and organizing around a political platform that doesn’t totally center on their own preferences, or what they consider a “universal” political vision. Then, as white folks voice their support for the Movement for Black Lives’s platform, they can continue to find ways to educate themselves about the history of structural racism, patriarchy, settler colonialism, Islamophobia, economic exploitation, and xenophobia. All of these phenomena are connected. These are the phenomena that obstruct unity, democracy, liberty, and equality. White folks, as well as all of us, have to think of the ways in which we are complicit individually and collectively.
Do you have any book or reading or even movie/ documentary recommendations for people who want to learn more about racial injustice? Where are good starting points for people who might not be educated on the complex history of racial injustice in America?
This is a tough question for an historian because there are so many!
Martin Luther King, Jr’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? has been formative in my understanding the challenge of attaining racial justice after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. In this text, Dr. King is extremely critical of white liberals and those who thought the movement had realized racial equality. He also offers his thoughts on the Poor People’s Movement and the prospects for democratic socialism in the U.S.
Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman: An Anthology is one of the first collections about intersectionality edited by a black woman. This text, published in 1970, provided necessary critiques of white liberal feminism, black power, and racist and sexist views of the black family and black womanhood. One cannot understand the history of the women’s liberation movement and black feminism without consulting this collection.
Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation and Jordan Camp’s and Christina Heatherton’s Policing the Planet:Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter are great resources for understanding the historical context of the Black Lives Matter movement. Taylor offers a concise radical interpretation of race, racism, black politics, and policing after the 1960s. Camp’s and Heatherton’s book is a collection of essays and interviews by intellectuals and activists. It examines the issue of policing and state violence from various points of view. I am teaching a class on resisting state violence next semester and I plan on assigning all of parts of both texts.
Can you offer any words of wisdom or hope to people and especially minorities who feel threatened by this new president?
There is not anything I can tell minorities, or folks marginalized in our society, something they do not already know. I think Trump supporters should try harder to understand why marginalized folks feel threatened. I am confident that the real defenders of democracy—justice-seeking students, community organizers, intellectuals, teachers, journalists, cultural critics, comedians, artists, and librarians—will challenge this new regime and make the president-elect feel uncomfortable with pursuing his program each day he is in office.My hope continues to lay in all of my friends, accomplices, and the folks that I don’t know, and their willingness to organize at the drop of a dime and put their bodies on the line. I do not have any words because there is no hope without us working and struggling together.
If you could invite three people to a dinner party, living or dead, who would they be and why?
Three people? Wow. I am going to name five — Frederick Douglass, community organizer Ella Baker, author Toni Cade Bambara, historian Howard Zinn, and Martin Luther King. I would want to talk to all of them about how we can resist the new administration. I work best with a large team.
Christmas is second only to Halloween in my book. It’s so sparkly! The best part, though, is the gift giving, which has become infinitely more fun since I became an aunt.
Right now my niece and nephews are in the sweet spot, that cusp of kid-ness, where they’re young enough to want things that are completely ridiculous but adorable and not self-serving or angsty.
Ie., I shelled out big time this year to buy my third-grader nephew a fluffy blue dragon toy he keeps talking about that animatronically blows fake fire to toast a fake plastic marshmallow on a fake plastic stick. Heavy duty batteries not included.
How many more years will he want something so innocent, so sweet, so dumb? How many more years will I be able to afford pricey Christmas gifts for the growing number of babies on my Christmas list?
Not long. So I have no shame. I love their little faces when they see they got what they wanted. The world will kick ‘em around a bit and forever soon enough.
My niece is into glitter and guts, which I adore. She wanted a doll that is a scientist, so of course I obliged. My sister teamed up with Santa to get the doll accompanying accoutrements for when Dr. Doll decides she wants to have it all.
Ie., baby stroller and party outfits.
To go with her science doll (which also came with a robot so it was hard to top), I got her this book by illustrator Rachel Ingotofsky.
It’s a charming, colorful and robust ode to the ladies who have made big impacts in science and engineering, like Jocelyn here.
I heard about the book watching this Broad and High episode that featured Rachel. Makes me want to get myself InDesign and Illustrator for Christmas… Hmm…
Joan Didion on self-respect and a notebook
This presidential election’s results were pretty brutal, and I tend to close myself off when I’m angry, thus, I’ve been in a state of introspection the past few weeks. Finding a way to lose with power led me to this essay by Joan Didion.
I’ve always been a fan of her writing, and this essay is one just one example of her capability to transform a new idea fresh, waving us over to look at it from her new-found vantage point. She wrote “On Self-Respect” for Vogue in 1961. Another Vogue writer who was supposed to cover the same topic flaked last minute so Joan wrote this to an exact character count.
I’m so glad she took the opportunity to save the space from being converted from editorial to ad. Decades later we’re still reading it. Here are some gems:
People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in a access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named corespondent. If they choose to forego their work—say it is screenwriting—in favor of sitting around the Algonquin bar, they do not then wonder bitterly why the Hacketts, and not they, did Anne Frank.
To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.
To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course we will play Francesca to Paolo, Brett Ashley to Jake, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we can not but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the necessity of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.
Didion’s essay “On Keeping a Notebook” is another one of my favorites. Rediscovering her work has led me to dust off the old habit of recording things I see every day in a notebook. I can do whatever I want with it, since notebooks are not a precious thing, like diaries or journals. Throw it out or laugh at it or use it in later days as a resource for story ideas, plot twists or character traits.
You can read it and get inspired to start your own here.
My notebook. Page 1. I love that Didion has always been her own woman.
Words on the street
As seen on my walk home. A greeting from the door of Four Sided in Chicago.
At Mariano’s. “Clash of the Pot Pie-tins.” The scenes this phrase led my imagination toward made grocery shopping much less terrible.
I’ve seen more and more branding in bathrooms this past year or so. This little reminder at the Cards Against Humanity office in Chicago proves words are never a waste of space.
Apple pie. There’s nothing I craft that makes me feel more rooted to the past. So rich is the story of the apple. Juicy too. From Eve and her temptation to Johnny and his journey to Martha Stewart and her perfect display.
“Of all the delicates which Britons try
To please the palate of delight the eye,
Of all the sev’ral kings of sumptuous far,
There is none that can with applepie compare.”
To William King’s doughy poetry in 1713. The apple pie of his apple-shaped eye.
I’m always amazed at how easy it is to make. How few ingredients it really takes to make something so beloved and iconic. You’d think something that evokes this much lore and longing requires flecks of gold and the tooth of a troll.
Everything now is so complicated.
But this? Sugar. Apples. Lemon, the secret ingredient. That’s all. Mostly.
And a flaky crust, but that’s something that people are scared of until they make their first one and realize how ridiculously easy it is. Like driving a stick. Or reverse parking. Or calling your grandmother just to say hi.
Crumble top. Even easier. Unless you don’t have a blender and have to slice through the butter with two butter knives. But it’s manageable. The recipe should say, “Slice the butter in the flour and sugar with the butter knives until desired crumbly consistency is reached. Usually the length of two Al Green songs. To bake, restart the whole album and listen once through.”
When you’re done making one you can look at it for a long time. It takes hours to cool enough to tickle the tips of waiting tongues. You can say, “I made that.” And write a poem about it like William. Promise to plant seeds more like Johnny. Present it flawlessly like Martha.
There comes a time in every man’s life that he must decide whether he is a victim or not. So goes the old saying.
For women, per usual, navigating to the answer of that question has a unique set of complications. One can seemingly be being walked on while really playing the long game in which she is crowned victor, not victim. Women can get away with a few more negotiating tactics than men, but I also think it’s a disposition we’re more inclined to — whether by nature or by nurture — not to be confrontational.
At first, anyway.
For example, one time I got my car washed and paid an extra $20 to have the mats steam cleaned. I never ponied up for little indulgences like this, so it was a big deal.
That’s why I was so let down that when my car made it to the end of the line, sudsy and steaming, and the gentlemen cleaners were whispering anxiously to one another, taking turns looking awkwardly inside.
“Miss,” they informed me. “We messed up.”
Instead of putting my newly crisp-as-that-$20-bill-I-paid-for-them mats in my Honda Civic, they’d put them in the Jetta that just jetted off. So sorry.
I’d typically decline to call these guys idiots straight out the gate, but with the way the story unfolded, I now hold no shame in giving them a walloping, judgmental, stinkiest-of-stink-eyes stink eye three years after the fact.
Instead of offering me an immediate refund, the head gentleman cleaner got my phone number and said they’d call me as soon as the guy in the Jetta brought back my mats. Because he would. There’s no way he wouldn’t notice those mats weren’t his.
Which, in hindsight, should have been the line of thinking that raised the first red flag. If it was that easy to tell they didn’t belong in the Jetta, how could his team have placed them in there in the first place?
What happened next was a five-month battle with this car wash company. After two weeks of not hearing anything from them, I called and inquired about my mats. No one knew what I was talking about. They took down my number and said they’d call me back.
They didn’t. I tried two more times to be polite with my followup. By the fourth or fifth call, though, I was mad. I felt taken advantage of. They didn’t take me seriously because I was being nice about it.
Clearly they were blowing me off, hoping I’d forget about the mats or just buy my own so as not to deal with them.
Clearly they didn’t know the desperate stubbornness of a 26-year-old living paycheck to paycheck.
I stopped being polite and tried a new tactic. I explained to the owner/manager that I had worked really, really hard to buy this car by myself. Getting my mats steamed was a treat for my hard work. I just wanted this thing I worked so hard for to be a complete set. This will definitely work, I thought. If anyone can empathize with the need to protect one’s small fruits of labor, it’s a small business owner.
Yeah, yeah, OK, he said. He didn’t call back.
A few weeks passed. I’m boiling by this point… this was your fuck up, not mine, and you owe me a refund and my mats… That’s the angry line of reasoning I hammered him with a few weeks later after he continued to ignore me. He yelled back at me, saying his family had been going through something or something and I should be more understanding. I might have, I said, if this hadn’t have happened five months ago and if I hadn’t have been put off this whole time like some annoying fly you needed to scrape off the radiator.
Also, wait what?! I thought I was the customer?! Why am I helping YOU feel better about this?
I killed him with kindness. That didn’t work.
I threatened him with a lawyer. That didn’t work.
I called the Better Business Bureau. There you go, girl.
Two days later after making a formal complaint, the prick “suddenly” found a supplier for my mats. Imagine that! They didn’t fit right, of course, but at least they were mine. I got my refund. My car, my symbol of independence, was shabby but whole.
My white steed defended!
Every time I drove by that car wash from then on, I stuck my middle finger out of the window, rain or shine. I also evil-eyed the inside of any black Jetta I happened upon, looking for ill–fitting floor mats.
They say cars teach you responsibility—how to take care of something. Mine taught me some people are just rotten, only looking out for themselves. But there are ways to fight them.
I just wish I had fought sooner. On a lot of things.
But mostly this car has brought me very happy memories. It made a lifestyle possible in my twenties that was full of family visits, journalism assignments, friend vacations and simple errand running that happens as I came to define my adult self. It was my physical transportation as I tried to figure out the messy internal traveling to figure out where exactly I belonged.
And it had a loud radio that was perfect for singing along to the oldies, which is probably what I did most in it.
I sold this baby, my car, this weekend and am still kind of sad about it.
I think it was too, because it gave me a funny little goodbye—a reminder to pay attention, even when singing at the top of my lungs.
I got the car detailed right before I sold it. A few days afterward I pulled the mats out of the trunk to put them back in the now-dry car.
I’ve been watching Donald Glover’s TV show for FX, “Atlanta,” through our Roku’s Crackle app, and I’m hooked. Donald Glover’s funny but it’s always been clear he’s also an artist, and “Atlanta” is a testament to his creative powers and their show-stopping ability to play with the topic of race. The first season’s one-off episode of commercial and radio parodies was my favorite. This Coconut Crunchos commercial brilliantly takes on the abuse of power and racial double standards in this country. It had my jaw on the floor.
“A Man Called Ove” takes a train ride
On a scale of one to already bought a conductor hat, how excited am I to know train rides are a thing?
Choo mother fucking choo!
I knew Amtrak existed and you could ride the train places. But hot damn I didn’t not realize how fun it was and how many places you could travel to with a beautiful view along the way!
I’d like to just live on a train now, please.
Justin and I were coming back to Chicago from Lafayette. We rode the Hoosier State Train. Tickets were cheap, the white tablecloth breakfast was delicious, and I got to imagine I was a sassy little lass in a wool peacoat and matching cloche hat heading somewhere out west to take care of a sick, mysterious great aunt but, unbeknownst to me, was embarking on the adventure and romance of a lifetime, and also was someone just murdered in the caboose?!
AT LEAST THE GREAT HERCULE POIROT AND HIS SILLY LITTLE MUSTACHE ARE ON BOARD!
So, what I’m saying is, really, everyone won.
It was the perfect setting to dig further into the new book I’m reading, “A Man Called Ove,” by Swedish author Fredrik Backman.
I have a feeling Ove wold have loved this Sunday morning train ride, though he never would have admitted it.
The story is about a suicidal old grouch, his new neighbors, a tough cat, and redemption.
I’m about halfway through and my favorite part about the book has been Backman’s writing style. It’s brief and funny with paragraphs like these sprinkled throughout. His way of writing about love and anger feel new to me, but they’re so right. That’s always what makes reading so fun.
Leonard Cohen
Bird on the Wire
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you.
Oh, so sad to see so many brilliant artists move on. You know it’s gotta happen sometime, but it still hurts. Leonard Cohen was such a wonderful introvert and I am so grateful he occasionally came out of his hard shell to share his lonely, soft inner world. May he rest in peace — finally. And may you listen to one of his last interviews with the New Yorker.
I was having one of those weeks where everything felt big except me.
I’d come home from work. Heat up some food. Pull out a TV tray. Eat. Lay in bed. Sleep.
I was adjusting, like so many, to a grimmer awareness of the world. It was like someone mowed the grass and I’m daunted to have discovered how many snakes were there all along as I sunbathed in cheery progressing warmth.
I’m also adjusting to a new living situation.
That pairing of words, “living situation,” politely implies that something heated and grotesque is boiling under a tepid surface — cohabitation out of necessity — but that’s not the case here.
We’re just settling in, Justin and I.
But, that week at least, it was too much for me. Too much changing. Too much not knowing. I needed to sleep.
On night three of 12+ plus hours of sleep, Justin asks what is wrong.
“I’m sick maybe.”
“Or you are sad.”
I am sad, so this comment makes me pull my mind’s curtain’s tighter with white knuckle anger.
“I want a couch. More furniture. All I have to lay on is this stupid bed that doesn’t even have a bed frame and so of course I fall asleep by 7 pm. I want to feel like a woman! How can I do that in this place?! What are we even doing with our lives?!”
What I’m really saying is that I feel powerless. He knows, and shields himself from my fire breathing with his knowing.
The next evening I come home from work and Justin is on the living room floor, screwing together a bed frame.
We don’t say much about it, but I know this him building a better cocoon for me to hide in when I don’t want to look outside anymore.
I go to bed early that night again. But the next night I don’t. And the night after that I don’t either. Quietly, he’s lifted me back up to where it is bright.
Love is simple, mostly.
Let’s remember that as we start to get to the work of tying the snakes into bows.
Today in Excellent Examples of Proactive Activism!
Check out this sign posted on Twitter from a bar bathroom in England. A county council started the Ask Angela campaign to help combat sexual violence on a local level. It offers women a code word to say to a bartender to help them get a ride home, no questions asked.
Here’s the copy:
“Are you on a date that isn’t working out? Is your Tinder or POF [Plenty of Fish] date not who they said they were on their profile? Do you feel like you’re not in a safe situation? Does it all feel a bit weird? If you go to the bar and ask for ‘Angela,’ the bar staff will know you need help getting out of your situation and will call you a taxi or help you out discreetly—without too much fuss.”
This is a really smart move. I wonder how many women have used it or at least been reassured by knowing they are in a venue that will help them if they feel uncomfortable. Although, the campaign probably needs a new code word now since it’s gone viral…
Abbi Jacobson’s new book
I met Abbi Jacobson (aka Abbi from Broad City) last week at Harold Ramis’s alma mater (aka Senn High School in Andersonville).
“Met” is a strong word. I paid to hear her “In Conversation” with former Chicago writer (and badass) Samantha Irby about her new project, “Carry This Book.” It features Abbi’s illustrations of what she imagines famous people and characters carry in their bags. It’s bright and smart and a reminder to not overthink everything.
The best part of the evening, which was brought to us fangirls by Women and Children First book store <finger snaps>, was hearing how Samantha and Abbi met.
Janeane Garofalo (!) had gifted Ilana and Abbi a copy of Samantha’s book, “Meaty,” after appearing on an episode of Broad City. Janeane had heard Samantha at a reading in Chicago and was blown away. Abbi says she, too, was sucked in immediately by Samantha’s bold, funny voice.
Abbi imagined these essays could be a really funny TV show, so she emailed Samantha asking if the pair could meet next time Samantha was in New York. Abbi wanted to pitch her idea.
So basically, Samantha just had every under-the-radar writer’s dream come true, and what did she do?
Nothing.
“Yeah, when I’m in New York,” Samantha recalled thinking sarcastically. “We can get a green juice.” *
After six months of nada, Abbi had to spell out via email who she was (kind of a big deal). Samantha says she hates this story because it sounds like she thought she was too good for what Abbi was throwing down. But in reality…
“I was eating Lean Cuisine over my sink,” Samantha said.
That was last year, and now these two are working on a show pitch based on “Meaty.”
Later in the evening Abbi talked about how supportive Amy Poehler had been of her and Ilana before Broad City broke. These stories will be urban legend on day in the network of the sisterhood’s most talented.
#yasqueens all around.
* (quotes may not be exact. I was too excited to take notes. Also, who are you, my editor?)
That one perfect line
I can’t take credit for finding this one. It was spotted by a buddy of mine. (Actually, while we’re on the subject, that buddy and his kickass artist wife recently put together a book about her Aunt Doll, who is the kind of character writers only dream about. Check it out here. Yes, it’s really called Salami Dreamin.) Anyway, this Rolling Stone writer’s description about Scott Walker made me snort laugh out loud. It’s so good. You can totally picture this monster. I love when writers find new ways to show you an archetype instead of telling you someone is one.
Planet Money’s Wells Fargo coverage
Speaking of stereotypes, I’m just as guilty as the next human of making them, which is why I liked this recent episode of the Planet Money podcast so much.
It made me rethink how I look at the Wells Fargo employees who were fired for creating fake accounts for customers.
They were making these fake accounts because the pressure was so intense from the bosses to reach a quota every day. Many of these employees were young professionals, fresh out of college, competitive, eager and ready to do anything to prove themselves.
Usually those are great attributes for an employee but in a culture that placed numbers above people (colleague, customer or otherwise), it increasingly led to ethical bankruptcy. Once they were fired or let go, either for not succumbing to the pressure to commit fraud or for suffering from the physical side effects of the job stress, some of these young employees were blackballed from getting another job in the financial industry by Wells Fargo.
I have more empathy for these employees now. Isn’t that a young professional’s worst fear? How can we approach the conversation of work life balance better in our higher educational systems? If we didn’t place such a high value on financial and professional success, would corruption come as handedly? How can we better help whistleblowers in private institutions locked safely behind a vault?
It’s worth a listen, as is this followup about the shady U5 form and how Wells Fargo is blackballing ex-employees.
STRAYED: My definition of success has been developed over many years full of both successes and failures. My trajectory has not been failure, failure, failure, then success. The successes have been there all along, and all along, there’s also been a steady stream of rejections and disappointments. I imagine this will always be the case. It’s the writer’s life. It’s true that Wild’s reception, in particular, has been rather breathtaking, but it hasn’t made me measure success differently. I keep faith with the work. Wild would be the book that it is regardless of how many people read it. I’m very sure about that. When I say, “Success is a pile of shit somebody stacked up real high,” I mean it’s folly to measure your success in money or fame. Success in the arts can be measured only by your ability to say yes to this question: “Did I do the work I needed to do, and did I do it like a motherfucker?”
WILL HINES: Spend your days in love with what you’re doing as much as fucking possible, and thank the stars for your chances to do that. Be nice and honest and brave and hopeful, and then let it go.
There are three things that are always in the eye of the beholder:
Beauty
Walks of shame
Hoodoo
Hoodoo — like good moonshine and my spiritual belief system — is an amalgamation to some, an abomination to others.
I choose to believe the former. This came in handy when we visited Louisiana on our final stop of the lo-class tour.
Voodoo is a religion. But Hoodoo is a practice meant to allow an individual to reign in supernatural forces to improve their lives. It’s about personal power, like setting an intention or meditating but, sometimes, with burning herbs thrown in. There are no Hoodoo priests or priestesses. Just people. I like that.
I bring this up because before our trip started, Justin proposed to me! Yes, marriage! My dowry of goats and pickled yams is in the mail as we speak!
It was awesome and everything it should be and followed by a fancy dinner and excited texts and phone calls to our families and friends. I knew it was coming but his timing was still a surprise and his performance grade-A-you-complete-me romantic.
But there was the issue of the ring.
It’s not that I didn’t love it. I did. In fact, I picked it out.
I didn’t want a new wedding ring so I needed to be involved in the ring-picking process lest I end up with something like a ball and chain wrapped around my ring finger for the rest of my life.
Why did I not want a new ring? Why did I end up going vintage?
Simple. I, like many a Millennial woman, watched the movie “Blood Diamond” in college and was traumatized by it. And I, like many a Millennial woman, believed I could make a difference in this world’s atrocious legacy of being terrible to one another.
The irony is that I probably ended up with a blood diamond but it’s like wearing old fur maybe? The diamonds are already out in the world so… ?
My ring is from the 1940s. I thought about getting a stone other than a diamond and was, in fact, searching for those when I stumbled across the listing for the one I ended up with. I got a weird feeling when I saw it — locked in and sure. I knew it was mine. Immediately.
Everyone I’ve shown it to has said the same. “Wow, that ring is so you.” “That ring is definitely yours.”
But it wasn’t. Someone else had worn it before. Maybe several someone else’s.
Here’s a photo I took while doing some writing work at The Bean Gallery in New Orleans. Because my self worth often is tied to my job performance (I’m working on itttt!), I crammed some freelance into our tour so I could worry for a few days about a deadline. 🙂 My sly attempt to get the ring in this photo is as obvious as this plug for you to follow my Instagram account.
Luckily, we knew a guy in New Orleans.
He’s a friend of ours and many other of our other friends’ “I Know A Guy” Guy. Other realm-y. Memory like a fly trap.
He knew exactly what to do with the ring.
I can’t share the exact process (because I don’t remember and also it felt more sacred than silly and I want to keep it that way), but it involved, among other things, burning sage and sandalwood and a salt water cleanse.
Justin and I took turns holding the ring as the ceremony, we’ll call it, progressed. We thought about who may have worn it before and who may still be emotionally holding on to it — in this life or the next. Don’t worry, I told them in my mind, I will take good care of this. Thank you for taking care of it until now. Thank you for bringing it to me. I will respect its past the same way I will respect you… and him, my love.
The ring looked brighter, felt lighter.
And that’s how we said goodbye to the spirits in my engagement ring. On an 80-degree New Orleans day. On our southern friend’s patio. Beneath a disco ball.
Just as the good lord(s) intended.
And the greatest was love.First up: Food. We went to Parkway Bakery and Tavern for po’ boys.Baby’s first po’ boy! (But not her first poor boy.)Mardi Gras beads were used like Christmas lights.Chilling. You must when it’s this damn hot. Fall does not exist on the bayou.One of my favorite things about New Orleans was all its architecture (below), word usage (like “boogaloo” below) and accidental color mixing (above and below).
Pro-tips: Get the cannoli and gelato and don’t look Angelo’s ghost in the eye.I also loved how spooky Louisiana felt. And not just because it was Halloween time.
The Ruby Slipper is so named because, for the owners, coming back to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina felt like a fairytale. There’s no place like home.The food culture in the south is wild. That’s a fried green tomato and cane sugar peanut butter with my breakfast.We did some shows in Baton Rouge. You should definitely check out Spanish Moon if you’re ever in the area. It’s here you’ll find my favorite bathroom graffiti ever.
Another one of our favorite Baton Rouge spots was Atomic Pop Shop record store. Here we went home with a fresh copy of Latin Booty Party Jams.Some very specific candles at F&F Botanica in New Orleans. Worth a stop! If I win the lotto with my candle, it was nice knowing ya, suckas!
Luckily these were the only alligators we saw, and we even went kayaking through City Park’s sculpture garden. (That line was just a clever way to work in the fact that we went kayaking through City Park’s sculpture garden. I don’t think the water actually had alligators to begin with…)LOOK AT HIM GETTING HIS LITTLE ANIMAL-PEOPLE PHOTO TAKEN!Word.The spirit of New Orleans captured in rare bike form at the French Quarter.As seen on our walk to the French Quarter. A reminder as one struts through their French Quarter walk of shame back to their car.Nods to Nola’s musical culture and history are everywhere.
The spirit of New Orleans captured in rare Christmas nativity scene form in the French Quarter.The gumbo at 801 Royal in the French Quarter may have changed my life.My favorite photo from the whole trip. This is such a great visual of what we saw in Louisiana. A mix of old and new and a love and respect for both. Amalgamation indeed.
