As seen in her new novel, “The Trespasser.” I have loved TF since “In the Woods” came out in ’07. Her work’s a great example of how commercial writing’s intrigue and literary fiction’s finesse can live in one hell of a thriller. I’m a quarter of the way through this new book. While I typically re-read her paragraphs a couple times because I’m struck by how she manages to say so much in four or five sentences, this one is worth pointing out. It’s one of the freshest descriptions I’ve ever seen a no-bullshit female character.
Found Chicago-in-the-summer footage
Summer, can you hear me?! This is must-watch research material for anyone writing a story about Chicago during this time period. Everyone else, take a hit and hit play. 😉
Just when I thought I’d seen every spirits sandwich board sign in the books, this one shows up.
Love this trend of showing recipes right on the product’s package. It’s hard to see from this pic but there’s an arrow and copy that points to the Triscuit topping. “Top with cottage cheese, peas and mint,” for example.
Brute is my new favorite word! Although, points deducted for “raw”…. eeee….
Sure, she got her ass kicked swiftly and brutally by Amanda Nunes (who, whoa, will be fun to watch in the future), but Ronda’s still my girl. She’s a legend who put her sport on the map and single handedly proved that women and women’s sports can be top-billing, headlining acts. Big ups to her for getting back in the ring and not falling despite eating shot after punishing shot in this “comeback.” There’s quite a lesson to be found in the deja vu of this knockout and her last one–it’s like she learned nothing new about ducking in the 365 days that passed. Head up, though, girlfriend. It’s like poet Carolyn Forche wrote:
In our sojourn on Earth, we are presented a curriculum for the education of a human soul, comprised of lessons that seem mysteriously to repeat themselves as if not properly learned the first time, or as if they were lessons failed, but this curriculum moves in a spiral rather than a circle, never returning quite to the same instruction, and the fortunate few experience, I think, epiphanies in their late years, so that even failure is embraced and welcomed. It is a Samuel Beckett wrote: ‘No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ The final realization might be that we ourselves wrote this curriculum within the depths of our being.
Louis CK’s new year’s greeting
Louis CK sent out an email to his fans a week ago with information about what he’s working on, highlights of new shows, and a brilliant dose of perspective delivered in perfectly imperfect Louis fashion. An excerpt here:
Joe Rogan’s new standup special
Ok, he’s easy to write off as the once host of Fear Factor if you know literally nothing else about him, but Joe Rogan is a really interesting guy. I like listening to his podcast. He’s naturally very curious and gives all ideas, all people a fair shot at sharing. The new special has several bright spots, like when he’s talking about getting really high on California weed and having this unexpectedly inspiring thought:
What if everyone is exactly the same? We’re just living life through different bodies. What if that’s the secret of happiness? Treat everyone as if it’s you, living another life.
If you were high right now, your head would explode.
Full special (including the punchline to this joke) is on Netflix now.
Words on the street
I really should start a compilation of wonderfully fun copywriting I see in restrooms. I love 85% of what I find, including this one in a new Columbus pho restaurant. It doubles as a phonics lesson for how to actually pronounce the word.
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.
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.
I didn’t realize I had any expectations for Knoxville until I got there and realized it wasn’t what I thought it was.
Knoxville is spread out but small. One-note but diverse. Naturally beautiful but mechanically ugly.
Our second show on the road was at a small pizza shop in a strip mall just outside Knoxville. Great food, fun people, etc.
The next day, a friend recommended Lunch House for breakfast.
Lunch House is cash only and still has signs up stating that shoes and shirts are required for an exchange of food and money. This implies that enough barefooted and/or shirtless people show up frequently enough to warrant a sign about the whole awkward thing.
Roller-rink-yellow and liquid-ketchup-red walls and tables loudly accent humble art of idyllic country settings in Salvation Army frames. The food was outstanding, with not one but two biscuits and gravy served as a side to my ham and cheese omelet.
In the Midwest that biscuits with the business would have been its own stupid $7 meal. So obviously the south has its upsides.
After breakfast we drove about an hour to Pigeon Forge. This drive allowed for ample viewing of the mountains and the foliage hanging peacefully between life and death.
The billboards about heaven and hell and eternal damnation sprinkled in between took the life and death contemplation from thoughtful reverie to disconcerting reality.
But alas, when one is in creationist country one must chalk all that talk up to local culture if one is not to get increasingly annoyed by its unfortunate timing and mountain-view ruining. I think they’ve just got their guns out hard—literally and figuratively—because it’s election season.
There was certainly a tension in the air, which may have been in my head because the closest I get to believing in a sacred heart is when I feel my own liberal bleeding one.
Regardless, I physically tightened everytime I saw the name TRUMP, because it wasn’t just a a sign or two cutely placed in someone’s front yard. It was, like, a giant handmade road sign the size of a tent. Shirts “playfully” threatening violence against our other potential future president for sale underneath (shirts shipped from China I’m sure).
Those sublime mountains can start to feel domineering and claustrophobic after a while if you don’t feel totally comfortable below, trapped in a red state that has no foreseeable future of turning blue unless you choke it.
Traveling during the 2016 election, I guess much like the 2016 election, has a very unique set of pain points.
ANYWAY.
We are heading to Pigeon Forge to see the Queen. Not Mother Mary or Beyonce but close. The one and only Ms. Dolly Parton.
And we did see her. Literally everywhere. Even the gas station miles away had a framed photo of her from her spiky hair years (inspired by Cher I’m guessing) near its cash register.
The town in which Dollywood is located is everything you think it is and it is perfect. Cartoonish in its colors and outrageousness, it features not one but two Christmas supply stores—nay, warehouses—as well as a car lot called Big Boys Toys, a restaurant called Rebel Dish, and an As Seen on TV outlet.
My favorite retail option was a massive building called Sexy Stuf. So sexy they’ve already slipped out of the extra f for you. Its giant sign included an illustration of Cupid in a big heart. From the outside, Sexy Stuf was a cheesy light-hearted display of sexuality that seemed to avoid fully addressing the mystery and complexity of it. A nod to the fact that it happens but we don’t really need to talk about it, y’all. Which reminded me, fittingly, of what makes Dolly Parton so appealing to me and a larger portion of the American population.
Also, I’m really regretting not hitting up the As Seen on TV store. Could have really used a Wonder Wallet and Woof Washer.
Lunch House. If you go and the front’s packed, don’t worry. There’s more room in the back.The Lunch House.Yes, please.All you need.‘Till next time.Required listening for driving into the Dollywood parking lot before you catch a trolley to the entrance.omgomgomg. Not pictured: My dumb smiling face.Was referencing “bust” at a theme park for Dolly Parton, who has one of the most famous bust lines north AND south of the Mason Dixon line, part of the joke or an innocent happenstance? This happened a lot to me here. I couldn’t tell if I should be laughing or not.As expected, Dolly’s image was everywhere here. It’s so fun. Right beside this theater front is Dolly’s tour bus that you can go into.The wannabe designer in me had to show you these color combinations. So many pinks and purples! Color crush for real.
You guys. This was the video that played before a really cool live show about rare and majestic birds. This video could very well be a spoof of American values from SNL. I have counted zero people of color in the whole thing and I love that it’s about the freedom of the birds… birds that we could then go gawk at in their tiny cages afterward. The strangest part about the experience of watching this in public was that no else thought it was remotely cheesy enough to clap for our sort of laugh about afterward. That’s when I knew I wasn’t in the Midwest anymore. This was normal viewing down here. It was so surreal. America deserves some new propaganda.
Dolly’s body and hair are Pamela Anderson-esque in their fakeness and potential for body issue/ beauty standards conversations. I usually scoff at this obscene level of beauty manipulation, but on Dolly it’s charming. Girl wears her male gaze so well! Maybe because it seems so clearly to be her decision and joy to look that way and be an object of obsession. She doesn’t come off as desperate. Ever. Maybe that’s because that body type seems kind of old school? It’s a little ridiculous now, categorized as a 10 out of 10 with Doctor’s Help edition. It’s not just part of the show, it’s the show itself. That body is just a branding tool. An identification marker. Which doesn’t make it seem dangerous, either to the most sex-shaming conservative nor the most sexy-shaming progressive. Or maybe it’s not a big deal to me because she’s older. She’s sweet and cute and safe and not one more thing my own body has to live up to. Her shape is so unattainable, it’s OK to not attain it. I don’t know. I haven’t figured this one out yet.If you go to Dollywood, you would be a fool out $65 if you did not go see the Dolly museum. It’s a veritable shrine to Ms. Parton.See? Shrine of stuff.My love for Dolly is about much more than her music or upbeat attitude. It’s personal. I too was born countryside with a strong case of wanderlust. I think anyone born different in a place where survival matters most can identify with her journey.Dolly’s super quippy. There’s so much wit on her she’s constantly dusting her shoulders off. She’s smart but she uses that Southern humility trick to get you underestimating her at first. Busty waters run deep. But she’s also full of shit sometimes, which I love. Maybe she doesn’t know she’s full of it, but anytime you speak in Pinterest quotes for a living you’re kind of full of it right? Dolly seems mostly genuine though and that’s what makes her so appealing. She’s Christian but loves the gay community that loves her right back. She’s country mouse who can hang with city mouse without seeming like she does’t respect herself. She works her tail off but knows how to have fun too. She talks in bullshit but also with brilliant and comforting insight. She’s special.
It was interesting how masculinity was addressed in such a feminized theme park. One of the roller coaster rides we went on was all about being a volunteer fire fighter and how being a fire fighter was such an honor. No doubt, but it was an odd choice for a roller coaster ride theme… unless you consider that that’s a huge value down here–committing yourself toward your community’s idea of the greater good and being an unquestioned hero for it. Also, it was cool to see giant manly men in Dollywood shirts with butterflies.It’s fun to get little peeks into the movie industry. The writer in me liked seeing the old scripts for movies she’s been in.As much as I adored this experience of Dollywood and will go back the next time I’m in the south, it’s so funny to have been to a whole amusement park based on a real person–a person who is still alive no less. I don’t know… do you think that could happen today? Could there be a Kanye park? It just seems so unnecessary and dated now. Because we can just Google all this. And, beyond celebrity, we all have our own mini shrines to ourselves on Facebook or social media now. Fame is not what it used to be, which is part of why this museum is so fascinating. Seeing old TV clips of her performing and photos of her with every celebrity from the sixties, seventies, and eighties seems like such a piece of American history. A type of history that will never happen again. Fame is fractured now and all of us get a tiny piece of it. Before, people like Dolly were how you consumed it. The fourth wall for fame hadn’t been shattered yet. The public looked on, didn’t participate. Dolly was grandfathered into this level of velvet painting stardom. That social underpinning alone makes this amusement park worth seeing.Bottom line though. Dolly seems cool as fuck. True to herself. Open-minded and kind… That’s all this country girl wants too.
The worst part about traveling for an extended period of time — at least in terms of physical discomfort — is not not getting to sleep in your own bed. Anything is a bed if you’re tired enough.
It’s not eating fast food 24/7. You can life hack your way to some fresh veggies from Subway and sprinkle some extra onions on your Wendy’s chili.
No, the worst part is the shower.
Every shower is different. Think of your own shower and imagine trying to tell someone how to turn it on. Here’s how my written note to a guest would go:
“OK, so the tub is really long so that’s why there are two shower curtains here. You could just open them from the middle where the shower curtains meet, but it’s better to open the curtain from the end closest to the water knobs. Because from that angle you can reach the water knobs in a way where you won’t get shot with water when you turn the shower on. OK, then, start with the hot water knob. It’s the one on the left. Turn it just a centimeter. The water pressure is low but that’s good because it’ll be crazy, like burn your arm, hot in about five seconds, which is why you need to then quickly go to the cold water knob, the knob on the right. Turn it hard and fast to the left but not all the way to the left or there’s no turning back. Why not turn on the cold water first? Well then the hot water never seems to have a chance to catch up and you’re screwed taking a cold shower. Again, no turning back. If you want to adjust the water pressure during the shower do not touch the hot water knob. I repeat, DO NOT TOUCH THE HOT WATER KNOB. Just kind of jiggle the cold water knob a little and you’ll get there. OK, so when you’re done, just turn them both to the right again and then take the dry washcloth on the sink and use it to turn them even harder to the right so they turn completely off… ENJOY! THANKS FOR STAYING!”
Yikes.
How many times have you prayed that you don’t have to ask the home owner to turn on your shower for you like a big baby?
Further adding to the awkward panic is the fact that you’re also naked at this point. You hadn’t thought about how you would turn on the water, just that you needed to get under its running stream.
Luckily my Airbnb shower in Louisville, our first stop on a 3-state Lo-Class tour, was one of those ones that required just a turn of the knob and an adjustment or two for perfectly kosher water temps.
But if my time in Louisville was any indication (and maybe it wasn’t; I was only there for a night) it wouldn’t have been a problem if the shower was temperamental. Because everyone was so nice.
They’d probably help no matter what. Even if you were half naked in their strange home sheepishly nodding toward the shower like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Gallery K & Coffeehouse in Louisville’s Germantown neighborhood.My coffeehouse work companion.Gallery K’s DJ delivering nothing but the hits… and hits of nostalgia.Cool art. Cool couch. Hot coffee.I liked the back of the sign better than the front.My heart may still be in Old Louisville.They’re serious about their nostalgia here. The first show on the tour was at this awesome little ’80-themed sandwich place called Slice. Lots of reading materials for visitors, like the VHS jacket for Valley Girl that beckoned shamelessly, “Introducing Nicolas Cage.”The Eggy Pop. (Did I mention it’s ’80s themed.) Deviled egg salad, tomato and spring greens on wheatberry.Heeeeeey, boys.Gotta put this on my “to Google search” list.Are we not men?!My girl made the cut.“My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.” That’s all for now, folks.
This spring I moved to Chicago and had the best, most revelatory summer ever. Here are some of the reasons why.
Me and 95th. Everyone who has been here a while makes fun of the CTA because it’s gross. It is, I guess, but what do you expect from public transportation? I love that it’s so easy to use and makes me less weird about going out. I wish this for every city — occasional pee smell and all.
Mermaids make good soldiers. This tattoo shows my friend who she is and what she fights for. It’s beautiful and so is she. Summer is the best. More inhibitions, cares, and clothes get shed.
Savage the muppet. Summer’s for the Marion dogs.
Capone’s bar. Justin performs at Green Mill, a cultural institution, where slam poetry was born and Al Capone partied. Every place in Chicago has some kind of gritty story turned glittery in the lens of time.
Caught in bed. This summer has been about rebuilding our friendship. These little moments of total comfort around one another and in each other’s spaces are my favorite. Those moments are the ones you don’t remember but wish you could. I plan to capture more of them as we move along.
Sox and 35th. The Cleveland Indians (the team I root for by hometown proxy) played the White Sox. Chicago won and there weren’t many people there, but we took a lot of selfies and got to bicker over who was eating more of the nacho cheese, thus ruining any chance of fair distribution for the chips.
Kid toss. My brother-in-law, niece and nephew nail farm parkour.
Mary’s room. I was home for my grandma’s funeral. After the calling hours, I went to the farm house where she had lived her entire adult life and where my dad’s family all grew up. Everything inside was frozen for a moment by the gravity of the day. Trinkets and totems covered this old dresser in my aunt’s room. She was recovering in the hospital after a brain hemorrhage that happened months before and couldn’t make it to the funeral for her mother, a circumstance that made the unpredictable cruelty of timing twist a quarter turn sharper.
Grandma’s room. The bed’s gone. A dresser and trunk and a rocking chair and lamp are all that’s left. The shell of the room is covered in reminders of their family, their faith or both.
Missy. I didn’t expect how sad I’d become inside the empty house. My sister and cousin were coming to join me but not soon enough. I headed to the barns looking for a kitten my dad had been telling me about, hoping to distract myself from what was coming up from deep inside me. But in the barn, I ran into one of the farm’s employees working that day — someone I was startled to see, I just figured I was alone. The surprise unraveled everything and I burst into tears. Dressed up in heels, sweating and sobbing inside the milk house. He was so patient as I gasped and sobbed gasped and sobbed gasped and sobbed trying to explain who I was and that I was looking for a “kitty my dad likes.” “Oh, that’s Missy!” he said. He took me to her. It was as if she had been waiting for me all along.
Dad and Honey. No one works as hard as my dad. His rough hands tell the working class hero story I worship, but he’s always so tender with animals. He’s got a farmer’s realism but respects an animal’s power. A few months after this was taken, he was thrown by several spooked cows and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from having his insides crushed, ribs snapped. He will always be the person I respect the most.
Chicago zen. There’s a circle of Buddha heads along Lake Shore trail. They’re part of the Ten Thousand Ripples project, an art-based program to spread peace in Chicago. They are there to remind passers-by to pursue calm and understanding, socially and psychologically. Lake Michigan geese love it as much as I do.
Spotted. I was shooting these photos from far away. This guy saw me though. He watched for a second to determine if I was a bringer food or if I was a threat. I was neither. He went back to pecking the dirt.
Concrete jungle. After a day at the Art Institute, I headed outside not totally knowing where I was or where I needed to go. Luckily, I exited the side that neighbors Millennium Park. There was a garden full of wild flowers going toe to toe with the skyscrapers for best scenery. As I kept walking, I happened upon an orchestra doing a dress rehearsal for a show later that evening. The city’s full of excellent surprises.
Dive in. A free beach volleyball tournament near my neighborhood.
Land ho. All summer long I’ve run along the lake. I’m alone here in a way I needed and sought; I’m making space so I can ask myself questions I need to answer so I can set the course of my life. This has been the perfect place to stop running from myself. Also, the view is unfailingly interesting. To one side you have a dangerous blue blanket covering secrets and seaweed. On the other you have a great American city’s towering skyline pulsing from the heat. It all makes chugging through two miles in 85 degree sludge feel not so silly. I always take an intermission at one of the beach houses and watch the water. (I still am giddy about the concrete stadium seating and open spaces for the public to use.) Seagulls fight for food or bob along the waves, a picture of peace. Sail boats dot the horizon in lonely, sunny succession. Each remind me of things I want to remember.
Perhaps it was because I was grieving, but I couldn’t stop giggling about the sign outside Happy Acres Kampground.
Happy Acres is located just north of the Illinois state line in Bristol, Wisconsin. It has everything you’d expect from a campground that spells campground with a K.
“Planned Activities” is the amenity that caught my attention. It seems like such a funny promise for people looking to get away from structure and back to nature.
Let us all line dance like Lewis and Clark!
But I guess that’s camping in 1970 and onward.
At Happy Acres, the 1970’s influence abounds. That’s when it was founded. It smells of bonfires and kitsch, which is really all they would need to put on a sign to get me to go there.
“Putting the camp in camping since 1970” is the slogan of somewhere I’d want to go always.
There’s putt putt golf and a fenced-in “zoo” of lady peacocks who just chill all day. There’s a pool and a horseshoe court. A paddle boat shaped like a pirate ship and one like a giant swan. A miniature merry-go-round and the co-opting of totems from cultures who worked these grounds long ago.
It also has those giant concrete tubes laid out in an L-shape. They’re the playground accompaniment to a swing set and plastic elephant slide. But those concrete tunnels look like a Millenial parent’s worst nightmare, conjuring images of wayward children of yesteryear surviving under bridges alone or being kidnapped by a former wayward child who grew up to be a man who really, really liked clowns.
I’m sure I’m reading into them too much, letting my imagination run away into the darkness. But that’s pretty standard for me, and my daydreaming is especially amped up here, where I have nothing to do but relax and the visual time warp beckons from every corner.
I feel like at any moment Jessica Fletcher is going to walk by in sensible kitten heels and a neck scarf.
“I found a body in the pond,” she’d say cheerfully as she passed, waving from the wrist.
Those tunnels were cool as a kid but they always gave you scraped knees, the kind of scrape made of a hundred intersecting, strawberry-red abrasions reaching down the full length of your knee. Like a lifeline of summer.
This thought takes me to a time about 24 years ago in a campground not so different from Happy Acres. The Fox’s Den on Put-In-Bay island. My Grandma and Grandpa Mantey stayed there during my childhood summers. The campground was all trailers transformed into makeshift summer homes, and its layout was in a little circle, an excellent landscape for me and my siblings to ride our bikes around.
There’s one summer I particularly remember because of the glasses I was wearing. It would have either been between kindergarten and first grade or first grade and second.
I had these thick plastic glasses that were a nearly nude shade of brown. They were super trendy in the eyes of my parents, probably, who wore those giant rims for style points. But to me they were unwieldily and ugly.
Whatever summer it was, I was riding my bike around the campground and I crashed. My glasses went sprawling in the opposite direction of my little body. My knee was gushing blood but all I could think about was those damn glasses. They had broken in my fall. I thought about how mad my mom was going to be. I didn’t know much, but I knew glasses were expensive.
I limped back to the campsite crying, handing the pieces to my mom and apologizing. She didn’t even notice. Everyone ran to look at my knee, cooing over me to see if I was hurt, if I needed stitches. There are many glasses, mom said, but only one Jackie.
Grandma with Dad.Dad with me (and my glasses).
I’m rubbing my knee now. At age 30 I still have a scar from that fall. I didn’t get stitches and I’m glad. The bump is a reminder of that story, a reminder of how loved I am.
Justin and I are visiting Happy Acres on vacation, one thats timing worked out well. The week before, we buried my grandma, the one who lived on Put-In-Bay for half the year.
My grandpa, her husband, had died last year. He was the first of my grandparents to pass away. (Again, how lucky I am. To have had all my grandparents around for such a big portion of my life.)
But something about my grandma dying was harder. That’s not to say I loved one more than the other, but there was something about the fact that they were both gone now that I was having trouble processing. To me, grandparents came in pairs. So when one was gone but one was still alive, the first death didn’t seem absolute. Life didn’t feel like it had shifted to a new plane.
Now it did. A new perspective and understanding of the world without my grandparents in it was settling into place. And it was kind of a relief to do it in foreign territory where there were so many manmade things shaped like animals.
These play things were so gaudy, and the dissonance that their being around created — in a place whose whole purpose is supposedly rooted on celebrating the natural — made me feel more comfortable about feeling so uncomfortable in my understanding of the world. Happy Acres Kampground’s absurdity is exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
I’m sad my grandparents never got to meet Justin, my camping/life companion. He packed almost everything for this trip. Planned and booked it. Made all the food. Brought what we needed, and emailed me a list of what I needed to bring (like, only two things) the day before we left.
This is how we work as a couple. I’m good at making a living. He’s great at living.
Really, this kind of stuff is effortless for him. He picked all the playlists (“In My Room” by Jacob Collier, “Black Messiah” by D’Angelo, “Guapaspasea!” by Gecko Turner, and “Classic Hip Hop: The Samples Radio” on Google Play). All of which he played at the perfect moment to set whatever mood required.
He’s exactly what I didn’t know I needed, too.
At night, we sleep in a tiny cabin the size of a closet. It’s hot but I still curl helplessly into Justin, afraid of the bugs that might eat at me or lay eggs in my ears. Afraid of so much I can’t see in the dark.
It’s the not knowing that he’s so good at navigating. It’s the not knowing that makes me feel so helpless.
If I were to write a review of Happy Acres, it would say to definitely go on the trails. They’re a wooded area in the back of the grounds with a few benches and several unhelpful maps, but all the short trails walk you in a circle, so you can’t really get lost.
Justin and I did this on our last day at the campground, smacking at mosquitos on the other’s back in between holding hands.
The morning we left, Justin took us to a pancake place up the road. Whenever we travel together he always finds little local places to hit up, and this one had the interior that was like a set of “Grace Under Fire.”
My grandparents would have loved it. There was straw hat decor, pink vinyl booths, family pictures hung about, and plastic tabletops that bore the art of an eagle in front of an American flag. It was so country, but also a clear clash of time periods and personalities and ideas of what happiness looked like.
After breakfast as we headed back to Chicago, I secretly wished that we could stay for the weekend’s “planned activities.” Riding and walking around in circles, knowing we were safe.
Friends stayed at my house on Friday night. I was a stopping point for their trek to a wedding further west the next evening.
We did what one should do in Chicago — eat. After a subpar experience at a restaurant with too-kind Yelp reviews and duck fritters that might have just been chicken maybe(?), we decided to walk around and wing it.
That’s always when the best things happen.
We ended up at a Thai restaurant that we smelled a block away. The weather was lovely, so the place had its sidewalk-to-ceiling windows open and the scent of spicy chili noodles, curried meats, and delicate fried crab drew us toward it. I don’t even know if we walked there or floated on the fumes, mouths agape.
The only reason we made it out of there with leftovers was because we had eaten beforehand. The next morning, I packed the cartons into a brown paper bag for my friends to take with them on their drive. I included some fruit, a few donuts, and plastic silverware I’d saved from long-forgotten takeout trips.
Before they drove away, they thanked me for taking care of them. It was nothing, I said. And really it wasn’t. It was just love by way of clean sheets and a packed lunch.
I thought of all this today as I tried to write a few lines for my grandma’s obituary, the use of which is quickly approaching.
It’s comforting that my family, like me, turns to getting work done in moments of sadness or overwhelming emotion; one might consider preparing photos for the funeral and an obituary for the newsmen before my grandma actually passes as morbid or denying in-the-moment grief, and maybe it is a little bit.
But I prefer to think we’re proactive. Realistic. Farmers. Doing this work now makes logistics easier when the real loss hits. Work is where we find solace — it’s the only thing we can control. And taking control of our own lives and experiences is a way to honor the lives of the family who worked so hard before us.
I get my callous work ethic honest.
As I do my enjoyment of hosting.
A line I wrote for grandma’s article (one of only a few I could actually muster):
“Carolyn was as quick with a comeback as she was a homemade sandwich for your journey home after a visit.”
