Zero Proof is a brand new biweekly podcast featuring me and my forever-friend/ former-editor Shelley Mann Hite. Read our story here.
On each episode, we read and discuss one book about sobriety, self-growth, or surviving—and then thriving—in spaces that profit when we numb ourselves, from ourselves.
First up (on episode two), we discuss “The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath” by Leslie Jamison and dig into our own varied approaches to recovery.
We’re also featuring Zero Proof drinks (get it) that pair with each book. After all, we know book clubgoers need something to imbibe. We just don’t think it has to be alcohol.
“The Recovering” pairs well with an Iowa Fog, considering all that time Leslie spent at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. ☕📝 It’s our take on the classic London Fog: Steep a mug of Earl Gray tea, add a drop of vanilla, then top it with steamed milk. If you don’t have a milk steamer at home (who does?), you can get the same effect by beating milk in a saucepan over low heat with your hand mixer. Beat for a few minutes till your milk is nice and frothy.
And, of course, this policy of denial is just another form of lying — a fanciful story we tell ourselves about our future even as we fight to free ourselves from the personal lies of our past.
Nancy A. Nichols, Memoirs of a Used Car Salesman’s Daughter
For David Abrams’ Sunday Sentence project, readers share the best sentence they’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”
This closing line from Nancy A. Nichols’ issue of True Story gave me a lot to chew on as I rode the train home (these mini magazines with one longform true story per issue are so perfect for commutes).
If you haven’t read On Writing by Stephen King yet, get a copy now. Stock up on cute highlighters while you’re at it. (He’s also hella feisty on Twitter.)
If there is any one thing I love about writing more than the rest, it’s that sudden flash of insight when you see how everything connects.
Stephen King, On Writing
I love this golden nugget quote in the chapter about theme. It’s so true, right? Even those of us who can only hope to be Stephen-King-quality after a couple lifetimes know this feeling. Hitting that sweet spot where things you didn’t even know were in you fall together into a cohesive story or paragraph or sentence? It feels otherworldly.
Saul Leiter was a pioneer of American color photography. His painterly images of 1950s and 1960s city life are so wistful. His work makes me see bad weather, stinky streets, and the humans who inhabit it all — differently. Better. More lovingly.
“A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”
Here are five of his most lovely snow-filled images that might make this seemingly never-ending winter snow a lot more bearable. At least more beautiful.
Dawoud Bey is a MacAurthur Genius Award-winning portrait artist whose most moving photographs are black and white images in urban settings; however, his exhibition currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago happens across a different landscape.
Titled, in a nod to Langston Hughes, “Night
Coming Tenderly, Black” is a compilation of 25 photographs taken of
places in Hudson and Cleveland, Ohio, that marked the end of the Underground
Railroad.
The large-scale images are darkened to mimic the blackness of night, a time of day when it was “safest” to run. The darkness makes it hard to see what you’re looking at, inducing a sinister terror that must, when you think about it, only be .01% (if that) of the sinister terror runaway slaves felt when approaching these final stops toward freedom—a term that feels especially meaningless when faced with the final resting stop, Lake Erie and sky. Canada’s freedom on the horizon, but at what cost? How did these people ever feel free or safe or whole? It seems as impossible as swimming in the dangerous choppy waves of the photograph.
Their reflective nature is particularly Bey-brilliant. With this effect, the viewer sees themselves in the image, in this situation, both long ago and in the modern world. At first, I thought about how alone these images made me feel, no human to be found, just the potential for danger that had to freeze you in your tracks. Seeing a shadow of myself in each image, I also thought about the ways white supremacy has shaped my own understanding of the world. How its effects linger today. I thought of Flint. Of Chicago police brutality. Of my own willful blindness that contributes to modern racism.
I was moved by the titles of his images, too. A forest. A marsh. These seem idyllic to me—because they can. But in light of the darkness of these settings and the truth behind them, I understand how these words and places represented a challenge, a cover, an enemy to the people who had to escape through them without the cover of peace… or even hope… or even, sometimes, other people.
Outside the gallery is a wall of framed photographs Bey curated from the AIC’s private collection. In addition to harrowing images of the murder that racism has justified on American soil are images of people who fought back and found strength in the darkness. Their courage is breathtaking.
The landscape portraiture Bey picked to include in the roundup is also meaningful. A particular Ansel Adams image of a tree, which, in a different context, I would have mused on romantically or in a rosy awe of nature, gave me chills instead. The photograph’s juxtaposition to a lynched murder victim evoked the trauma of a tree, how everything has been affected exploited in the name of “natural order.” It’s a devastating exhibit. It’s an important one. It’s on view through April 14.
As a longstanding diehard coffee consumer, I’ve
been asking myself the same questions.
A few weeks ago—three tomorrow, to be exact—I wasn’t
feeling very well. I had a coffee on my nightstand as I laid in bed, trying to
nap off whatever bug was bringing me down. The smell of the coffee, though,
kept waking me up and making me feel queasy.
I haven’t had a lick of it since.
Considering I quit drinking alcohol almost three years ago, I am still surprised at my ability to be surprised when I fully quit something that has been part of my everyday life for over a decade. But I was drinking five to six cups of the strongest coffee I could find a day, and now I’m… a tea drinker? It’s weird. Surprising. And weird.
There are several upsides, obviously, to cutting the extreme caffeine. I’m saving money not purchasing $4-a-pop pick-me-ups. My energy is way better, ironically enough. More consistent. Fewer crashes. Less dramatic energy surges and lethargic dips. I l-o-v-e that I don’t feel restless/ manic if I haven’t had my morning coffee. AND, best of all, the ritual of making tea is way more fun.
I’m not fancy. By ritual, I mean literally
just boiling water. But it’s like when you’re 16 and learn to drive and get a $300
janky, old, dump-destined beater that is a straight-up diamond in your eyes
because it represents freedom, delicious freedom.
That beater = boiled water for me right now. <insert heart eyes, hashtag EZ2PLZ>
Once I passed the two-week coffee-free threshold, Justin and I decided to get a new kettle for the house so I could boil water like a lady. (Technically we had one already but it was, well, a dump-destined beater that was ~16 years old itself.)
Here are some places I found awesome options, including a few unexpected locales. So many tea pots, so little time (and also counter space).
A sea foam green cast iron kettle ($24.99) with a stainless steel infuser on the inside, embossed Japanese-style grapevines on the outside.
The Etsy marketplace is often a go-to when I’m shopping for jewelry or décor, but I didn’t think of it right away for tea kettle shopping. Don’t make the same mistake. There are some really lovely options available, including punny pots like Mr. Tea, who pity the caffeine-fiending fool, and many vintage goodies, like this amazing Corningware cooker.
Yet another destination you might not consider right away, art museum shops often have a curated section of hip home goods. For example, The Art Institute of Chicago’s Museum Shop has a sparse but mighty selection, and MoMA has some seriously great stuff that will ensure your tea routine is a work of art. (PS. I bet your local bookstore also carries some tea related must-haves.)
Ah! Tumultuous love affairs aside, these Frida and Diego mugs = amazing wedding gift alert!
Ah, good old Amazon. Fun options abound, though we ended up getting none of the above and, instead, going for function over style, purchasing an energy efficient electric kettle that can boil water in mere seconds.
Le sigh. It’s cool in a practical way, but I’ll be in the market for adorable mugs soon. This, friends, is what kitchen-based compromise and communication looks like.
Debut author Stephanie Land takes a painfully honest look back at her years spent cleaning a lot of other people’s houses for only a little pay, while also raising two children alone. “Maid” has been billed as “‘Evicted‘ meets ‘Nickel and Dimed,'” which are two of my favorite nonfiction books about the cyclical challenges of rising out of poverty in America—no matter how hard you’re working at those bootstraps.
I think of reading books like this (and “Evicted,” etc.) as a civic responsibility. They help me understand how poverty in our country works (both in the past and today… because its causes and effects are constantly morphing), why it is so hard to climb out of, and how we all contribute to poverty’s brutal repercussions even if by simply misunderstanding what poverty can do to a person. Or in this case, one tough mother.
Also an intangible civic duty: educating ourselves on the history of truth and democracy. I found this little pocket book at the Chicago Public Library branch that opened LITERALLY WITHIN A BLOCK FROM MY APARTMENT (!!!!). It features excerpts of Orwell’s most potent arguments about what truth actually is and how hypocrisy can manifest itself in even the most well-intentioned. His brilliant, astute critical observations about how language shapes our cultures and world views made him an enemy of both the left and the right. Which kind of makes him my hero.
“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” George Orwell
There’s so much I didn’t know about Orwell or appreciate about his work until reading this brief book. I was surprised at how modern his essay writing reads; though, I shouldn’t have been, considering that “1984” is perhaps the most prescient novel of all time. Nostradamus of the nine-to-fiver.
And, because it’s Valentine’s Day month, I’ll be reading this historical fiction novel from 2015 that I still see people raving about on social media. It gets so much love! I’ve been meaning to read Kristin Hannah’s book that came out last year, “The Great Alone,” but figured I should finish this tale first. A story of two sisters struggling to survive in WWII France, Hannah weaves together a big-hearted story about the power of love in a time of hateful power. I can’t wait to soar away with this one.
All my word finds this month look a little tipsy-turvy! Hmm… I blame weeks of near apocalyptic levels of hibernation. Still getting back my sea legs (and steady camera hands, I guess?).
This should, instead, say, “Just wipe your tail and wash your hooves.” 😉The wall to the left read, “No Parking.”Some excellent copywriting/ color naming finds on a recent snowy sojourn to Home Depot, a trip in which I did very little except enjoy these carpet color titles. Shoutout to my homeboy/house husband Justin for being a more rational, practical human being and getting what we actually needed on the visit. You are forever my “Sophisticated Dove.”“Black Ice and Oatmeal” is pretty badass. The silly decision to add “Stupendous” to this already sorta outrageous color name is everything a bored girl could ask for in the aisles of the hardware store. Thanks for that, Home Depot. And also for the sale on lightbulbs.
Showing (ie. I grabbed my back and fell to the floor. I was going to have to crawl from bed to bathroom.) not telling (ie. My back really hurt when I woke up this morning.) offers a better reading experience, whether you’re consuming a case study, a magazine article, or a new novel. But it’s surprisingly hard to do when you’re writing. (I always think first drafts are where you “tell” as you get the structure of a piece down. When you edit, you can find the places where “showing” would be better.)
“To bring your reader into your fictional world, you need to offer data for all the senses. You want to make sure your readers see the rain’s shadow, taste the bitterness of bad soup, feel the roughness of unshaved skin, smell the spoiled pizza after an all-night party, hear the tires screech during the accident.”
Chris Lombardi, “Gotham Writers Handbook”
“Show don’t tell” encompasses not only physical descriptions, but the way a story unfolds for the reader too. I think this is especially true considering how TV- and film-savvy readers are now. The omniscient narrator is so old-fashioned for a reason. We’d rather be in the moment, experiencing the situation with the characters, even if it’s a story in the past tense.
I’ve been binge-watching the TV show “New Amsterdam” during this #DeepFreeze, and the first episode is a great example. We see Max Goodwin wake up in a basically bare apartment. We don’t know his story, yet, so when a pregnant woman calls him and asks how the apartment is and how his first day at the hospital is going, our perception of him changes. He’s the father, clearly, and she asked about the apartment, so maybe he just moved to this city and she’s heading here soon? It isn’t until further on in the episode, through another “show don’t tell” sorta scene, that we realize they’re in the same city — they’ve just broken up.
“Show don’t tell” is a smart (not necessarily slow) reveal. And details enrich how you do it.
One of my favorite “show don’t tell” examples is one of thousands in Michael Chabon’s 2016 book “Moonglow.”
This simile has really stuck with me. Have you ever read a better description of what your elementary school smelled like than this?:
“He pressed his nose against her hair and breathed in her school smell, a smell like the flavor of a postage stamp.”
