Bonjour-Bonjour!
I love Scott Dworkin as much as the next person and I’m grateful for all he does. His constant cataloguing of all things going wrong for the current regime is a balm and a pleasure… except, to what end? Countless things collapse, fail, are knocked down by the courts, but it’s never enough to topple everything. Epstein is disappearing from the news cycle. The war rages. More reckless spending on vanity projects while women’s access to healthcare erodes and voting rights vanish.
Don’t worry, I won’t continue. I’m just here to say, where’s my binky? Where’s my comfort? We all need rest. Psychic and physical. Below I’ve got some shows, a movie, and a few audio books to share. Also a cake that’s a lullaby!
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First, a quick interlude to share two opportunities:
A lovely diversion to keep you writing:
Please, message me if you’re interested, I’d love to write with you!
And:
You came to writing because you love to read. You know the feeling of being pulled completely out of your own world and into someone else’s. And you’ve probably also wondered - how do they do that? On June 10th at noon ET, Natalie Serber is going to show us. In this workshop, we’ll slow down and get close to the craft - studying the choices writers make to create that kind of immersive, magnetic storytelling. Then we’ll figure out what we can borrow for our own work. Join here!
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Onward!
watch:
We love HACKS. So smart and so funny. I love the social justice aspects (which lift the plot, rather than sink it in preachy weight). The show skewers AI, skewers Nepo babies, skewers misogyny and powerful men getting their feelings hurt. Funnily enough… it also skewers mediocre magicians! Yes. Yes. and Yes.
Plus oldster women slay!
If you’ve not watched, maybe save it up for the inevitable summer heatwave when you can binge all the seasons and sip an icy gin and tonic with loads of lime.
REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, starring my childhood fav, Sally Field. An absolute pacifier. If you don’t like movies that tie everything up in a delightful bow… don’t watch. If you are more interested in dark French cinema… stay away! Stanley, Joel, and I cuddled on the sofa, me with my easy-peasy knitting project, and passed a delightful evening. When the world is so damn hard, you just need to believe that yes, everything can work out. I’ve not read the novel, but maybe if you’d like the cozy feeling to linger, pick it up.
Same peace and comfort to be said of SHEEP DETECTIVES. We rode bikes to the cinema, had CBD beverages, popcorn (not buttered because of the post France cholesterol issue) and settled in. At one point I thought, sheesh… I might nap! But soon I was caught up in the charming story. The voices— funny and fun to try and guess who was who. Plus the joy of Cousin Greg from SUCCESSION, as a bumbling policeman. The film is a sort of Lion King do-over, with sheep in a meadow and a matriarch! The Ewe Queen! There was a children’s birthday party near us in the seats and at one point the entire theater burst into a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday to dear Emily. That’s the world I want to live in.
listen:
I’ve been trying to up my step count, and so in the last few weeks I’ve logged a ton of audio book hours. Here are four… three memoirs (which I didn’t exactly adore) and a novel which mesmerized me.
IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH I WAS TOLD WHAT IT WAS TO BE A MAN, by Tom Junod. The first third of this memoir is magnificent! Junod’s father, Lou Junod, a leathery leather goods salesman, is a force. So much beauty, so much narcissism. Once he enters the pages it is nearly impossible to look away.
Tom Junod narrates his own memoir and when he gives voice to his father it’s glorious. So funny. I found myself enunciating like Lou. The crisp consonants at the end of words.
The second third is awash in so many family names that have meant nothing to the story thus far and frankly don’t really earn the space on the page I was confused and turned up the narration speed to 1.6.
The final third throws both Lou and Tom into a different light… I found myself having a very difficult time reconciling the entire project with basic morality. I mean really? How many passes is this guy going to get? Where is loyalty to the injured? If you’ve read it, let’s hop on a zoom to discuss!FAMESICK, by Lena Dunham was another listen. I adored GIRLS. No apologies. Full stop. I think Lena Dunham is so funny and smart and has a clear view of girlhood in complicated times. When the show was made she was a girlboss, heavy on both the boss and the girl—so caught up in wanting everyone to like her. It was exhausting to read of her output and insecurity. Her burnout was my burnout.
Like Dunham, I too suffered from endometriosis and spent a fair amount of time in emergency departments with painful and heavy periods. I had sympathy and compassion for her mistreatment at the hands of the medical system that tends to look the other way with women’s health complaints.
Yet I read the book mostly wanting to rip her blinders off about the constant infantilization from her parents (particularly her father) which crippled her ability to make decisions and grow into fully formed adulthood. She has a throwaway line about an apartment she rented with her boyfriend as being “far too old for young twenty-five year olds.” 25? An apartment too old? Perhaps time to begin adulting?
She blames her sometimes outrageous blurting as the result of being born with, “endless souls of generations of tipsy provocative women inside me.” Of course it is a wonderful line, Dunham is funny… but she never accepts full agency and responsibility for her life in this book. Come on, she blurts because she blurts. As a fellow blurter, you just have to own it!
At forty it appears she has a bit more growing up to do (as did I, to be sure. And, I still do!). I look forward to her next memoir, perhaps in fifteen years, which I will undoubtedly read.BROKEN HORSES, by Brandi Carlile is a great listen if you’re a fan of her music. Each chapter relays a part of her story, followed by a song that was important to her at the time, or which she wrote after a particularly emotional moment in her life. There are many wonderful moments—her awkward teen idolization of Elton John and how she dressed like him for a talent show… feather eyeglasses and all! Her lack of appreciation for Joni Mitchell’s BLUE, which nearly cost her a relationship! Her take down of modern country music which mostly offers girls in the front seat of pickup trucks watching boys do things. Where are the songs of love and friendship and strength, Carlile laments. But the memoir doesn’t satisfy in the same way her songs do. Perhaps poetry, from which we extrapolate and feel her story, is more fitting than the wide brush of summary she uses in this memoir. When I put on my editorial cap and listen, the book is full of telling and little showing. I crave scenes, Brandi! Please, I just want to be in the room with all the joy you bring!
An audiobook you should rush to listen to? GOOD PEOPLE, by Patmeena Sabit. The novel is about the death of an Afghan American teenager and the mystery which surrounds it. There are many narrators, all with a different perspective about the accident that took the life of Zorah, a smart and thriving, though challenging to her parents, teenage girl caught in the suffocating weight of the communal gaze. The polyphony of outsiders who deliver us the story — neighbors, business associates, schoolteachers, friends, reporters — are all confined by their own smallness and prejudices. The reader (listener)slowly jigsaws together a portrait of a family the narrators never truly knew. It is an amazing feat of storytelling that exposes us to our own prejudice.
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What audio book have you recently loved? Please do tell, I have more steps to conquer…
Opportunities to engage in the r.w.e. community:
Mentor Book Group— in which we read memoirs, personal growth books and discuss what we might like to adopt in our own “work-in-progress” lives. THE CREATIVE ACT, A WAY OF BEING, by Rick Rubin, will be our May book, meeting on 31 May at 9a pacific time. Love to have you join us.
If you’d like to discuss books with me and a group of smart and lively readers, the r.w.e. book group selection for May is ACCIDENTAL DEVOTIONS, by Kelli Russell Agodon. And, best news of all? Kelli will be joining us! She is a bright light, loads of fizzy-good energy! We meet Sunday, 21 June, at 9a pacific time on zoom. Want to join in? The book group is a perk for paid subscribers. I’d love to get to know you better:
Thank you in advance for sharing your love!
snack:
When you feel soothed and ready to spit out your binky, make this cake. It is so delicious and almost feels healthy enough to call a vegetable! (GF!)
Blueberry-Zucchini Almond Cornmeal Cake w/Lemon Frosting
1 c fresh blueberries
2/3 c sugar
1 lemon
1 c grated zucchini
3 large eggs
½ c unsalted butter, melted
¾ t kosher salt
1½ c almond flour
½ c finely ground yellow cornmeal
1 T cornstarch
2 t baking powder
Position a rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Very generously butter an 9-inch round baking pan, line it with a round of parchment paper, and then butter the paper.
Zest the lemon into a large bowl and add the eggs and the sugar. Whisk until pale and foamy, about 1 minute. Add the butter and salt and whisk until smooth and emulsified.
Add the almond flour, cornmeal, cornstarch, and baking powder. Whisk until well-combined and smooth.
Add the grated zucchini and the blueberries.
Gently pour the batter into the pan, tap the pan gently on the counter to release air bubbles, and smooth the top of the batter with an offset spatula.
Bake the cake until puffed and golden, about 50 minutes, and a tester inserted comes out clean.
Let the cake fully cool before proceeding to the frosting.
Lemon Creamcheese Frosting
1/2 c unsalted butter (1 sticks), softened
1 c confectioners’ sugar
1/2 c cream cheese, room temp
2t finely grated lemon zest
Pinch kosher salt
4 to 5 T fresh lemon juice
Combine the butter, cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, lemon zest and a pinch of salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low until combined, then turn the mixer up to medium-high and stream in 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. Whip the frosting until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, adding additional lemon juice as necessary until frosting is smooth and spreadable.
Spread frosting over the cooled cake and place in the fridge. Honestly, I had the cake a little warm because I couldn’t wait! Then, yes, I had a second piece later, once the cake was chilled and it was ten thousand times better.
Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!
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It was our 36th Wedding Anniversary this weekend— would you look at these two babies!
Here’s a throwback to Stanley as a baby! This was the day we got him!
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i loved The Sheep Detectives! a good old mystery too. for memoirs i finally read Educated by Tara Westover (better late than never.) one of the most disquieting books i've read, but riveting. her writing is stellar.
OMG baby Stanley is 🥰 adorable! As are baby Natalie and baby Joel - congratulations 🎉