In my favorite episode (4) of my favorite season (2) of one of my Desert Island Top 5 favorite televisions shows (“Fleabag”)an acknowledged Hot Priest stops on a meander through a drunken crisis of faith to ask the protagonist if she’s a nostalgic person. He admits that he can hardly encounter Winnie the Pooh in the wild without turning into a sobbing wreck, and they share a moment of heartfelt reverence for Piglet. It’s hardly […]
Nana had a little three drawer chest by her bed that she used as a nightstand. On top she kept and ashtray and a little dish full of hair pins that she used to secure her sleep scarves. These were always chiffon, usually pink, yellow or lavender and lived in the drop drawer of the chest. The other drawers were also full of scarves, but silk, the kind you wore with a sweater or blouse. […]
Exactly one year ago and one day ago, I wrote the first plague diary. It was early on in the pandemic, back when there was no toilet paper and we were hoarding dried lentils, back when we were all pretty sure we would keel over and die if we fetched the mail or made eye contact with a neighbor at any distance of less than 100 feet. Everything was closing up and yet, much of […]
Yesterday was International Women’s Day, which a friend on Facebook reminded me was one of the only two Communist Holidays celebrated in the other states. This makes sense to me. Why else would they have color coded girls pink if not for our collective devotion to socialist revolution? Unlike many of the rest of you, I did not spend the holiday putting up pictures of my mother or the late RBG or resharing that […]
My birthday was over the weekend. I turned 45, an impossible seeming age. I was thinking doing some list of media–45 best records, books etc–but instead, I decided to be even more self-indulgent and share with you the 45 most important things I’ve learned in this first 45 years. If I’m still around at 90, I’ll consider an update. For now though, and without further ado, wisdom! 1. Only talk shit about your own mother, […]
: It’s probably bad form and almost certainly bad luck to tell you that I well and truly hit the low point on Covid/the 2020s/life on Wednesday. There are things beyond pale and places past the rock of the rock bottom. Personal nadirs, unlike the Alamo, usually have basements to spare. So let’s stick with the sidewise pop cultural references and instead say that we 100% reached a new low, but without the bouncy chorus. […]
So you know I’m not a big fan of Valentines Day. It’s a long-running thing. I even have a top flight Valentines Hater origin story that involves high school, embarrassing unrequited love and a traumatic head injury that maybe you’ve heard ( though honestly I pretty much hated Valentine’s Day well before that). I don’t like red roses or filled chocolates. I don’t think it’s an accident that most of the best songs are the […]
When I was a freshman in college, inclined to stomp around the idyllic campus of my toney women’s college in leather outerwear and combat boots like I might hit Thunderdome on the way to Art History class, I signed up for a psych study to test for Seasonal Affective Disorder, because they offered to pay me $15, which, in those days was enough to buy a carton of Camel Lights and cup of coffee+100% tip […]
Plague Diary, January 27, 2021: A few weeks ago, a presidential election and a failed coup ago, I drove over to Hillsborough, to sit outside on a cold day, in a winter brown yard, ten feet away from a friend, the way you do when you’re trying to survive a pandemic. I stopped on the way for a short walk around the historic center of town, so I could feel like a tourist, and shuffled […]
My parents got vaccinated yesterday. All three of them. They’re all over 65, and had been trying to get an appointment somewhere for days. Here, in my state, the various county health departments and large urban health care entities seem to have no functional system for handling the people that want a shot. There are theoretical appointment times, a theoretical waitlist for a phone call in which you might get an appointment time. But mostly […]
