From SundayStealing we get these questions:
When do I feel most authentically myself:
When I’m writing or taking photos.
What I’m thankful for today
Ooof. I’m not gonna lie here: Thankfulness has not had a good run of late.
A memory I hope I never forget
So many! But I’ll go with looking at the girl I was sitting next to at the local college bar, where we were celebrating a mutual’s birthday, and wondering why I hadn’t noticed how pretty she was. Later, we married.
Other ways I connect with long distant friends
Mostly social media these days.
How I reconnect with myself when I feel lost
I read and I listen to beloved music and I go to the woods or to the water.
What would be my signature drink if I owned a café
We’ll assume that by “Cafe” we mean “bar”, in which case I make some terrific Mojitos, if I do say so myself.
Something I’ve let go of, as I’ve grown older
The feeling that I need to treat American conservatives as though they have real and genuine insights about things that are based on facts about the world.
The things I’m most likely to lie about
Hmmmm. This one’s kind of interesting, innit…I find myself trending more toward blunt honesty as I get older, but what would I lie about? Probably something mainly harmless, like “Did I like the cake you made,” when in fact I wasn’t in love with it.
What’s something I wish I had more time to learn
Photography! And I think I’m doing fine. I just wish I’d decided to approach it more seriously years ago. I had no idea, folks!
Social media trends that puzzle me
Endless political content. You see this on Tiktok a lot: people who just make video after video after video responding to the latest talking points on the other side. Even I, who am firmly on the left side of things, wonder if it all feels pointless after a while.
Local phrases and terms I use often
“Go Bills!” Also, “wings” refers to Buffalo-style chicken wings, and nothing else. Zubaz is a pattern, not a specific brand of clothing. I also expect not too many other places refer to “Lake effect” this or that (mostly snow).
If I could only wear only three colors, I’d pick these…
Blue, white, and brown–thus preserving my ability to wear most of my overalls. (The black ones would, sadly, be ruled out…unless black is stipulated as being available because everybody needs something in black, right?)
Favorite books, music, tv, movies, and media this month
Well, The Great British Baking Show is winding down, so that’s a bummer. We’ve started a re-watch of Scrubs from the beginning, because after the latest instance of watching a Netflix series that only had ten episodes, The Wife expressed a bit of annoyance. (That was Nobody Wants This, in which a podcaster who focuses on stories about the dating life finds herself involved with a Rabbi. Recommended, by the way.)
Music? There’s an album out called John Williams Reimagined, in which a bunch of Williams themes are re-arranged for a piano, flute, and cello. The recasting of dramatic music as chamber music is fascinating.
Books: I’ve started Bystander, which is a history of street photography, and Ian Fleming: The Complete Man.
Movies…last night we watched Salt, a thriller from 2010 featuring Angelina Jolie is an FBI agent who might turn out to have a secret past she doesn’t know about. Very entertaining.
A few tabs to close….
Here’s some stuff that’s been languishing in open tabs on my browser:
:: Matt Zoller Seitz on Clint Eastwood’s current movie, both as a movie and as a data point in how movies are exhibited and marketed these days. The movie biz has always been a cynical one run by people who would steal the coins from a dead man’s eyes, but sheesh. Read the article for more. (The article has spoilers for the actual movie, but they’re forewarned and they come pretty late in the piece.)
:: There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of buzz in the fact that Americans are currently slated to launch a crewed mission to the Moon in less than two years, does there? But Swapna Krishna has thoughts on the likelihood of that mission launching as scheduled. Spoiler: she is not optimistic. (I highly recommend Ms. Krishna as a source for space science news. She’s excellent.)
:: I remember years ago when my mother had me read Roald Dahl’s Danny, the Champion of the World (still a favorite of mine), and one detail in that story (set in rural England sometime in the mid-20th century) that always stuck with me was when Danny and his father eat a couple of apples. The apple they eat is called a “Cox’s Orange Pippin”, which is apparently a very special variety of apple indeed. (To this day I’ve never had one.) See, at the time, the whole idea of special varieties of apples was alien to me: you had Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, and Granny Smith. That was it. Nowadays, the apple is an astonishing source of variety and joy. Here’s why.
:: Sometimes I have a tab open so long that I can’t remember why on Earth I had it open in the first place. Here’s one such thing: 11 places that have the same name in Britain and America. I assume this topic came up on one of the social media sites, but damned if I can remember the context.
:: Here’s a video. I’ve written on the subject of roundabouts before, but this video goes a bit into why Americans have been so slow to adopt what is clearly and objectively a superior way of managing traffic at intersections. I’ve come to rather cynically view roundabouts, train travel, gun control, and universal healthcare as my main Exhibits for the Prosecution when making my case that Americans are stubbornly resistant to obviously good ideas that clearly work better than what we’re doing.
:: I hate to close with a bitter pill about this past election, but here we are. Roxane Gay writes in the New York Times (I think this piece is unlocked, but it might be paywalled now, I’m not really sure how that works) about what the odious results of this election say about us. Spoiler: it’s nothing good.
I have nothing to add to this, other than to note my view that this election represents a collective failure of citizenship in this country. My thoughts are now increasingly tilted toward the possibility that America has entered her inevitable and irreversible decline.
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