Nothing makes my heart swell quite like people in the streets. I’ve been following the news in France and checking in with friends there but it didn’t quite hit me till I got inadvertently paraded around the protest in Paris yesterday (via Laure’s phone). I called to catch up right as she was getting off the subway to attend yesterday’s manif, which ended up gathering nearly 3.5 million people around the country. That’s impressive, even by French standards, where going on strike is practically the national sport.
As she got off the train to go to the departure point of République, she realized that the protestors stretched so far back they were already at the subway entrance. She turned her camera on and I got to take in the puppets, the banners, the people climbing the statues.
President Macron is forcing through the deeply unpopular proposal of raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, bypassing a parliamentary vote… not to mention the majority of the population. More protests are planned for Tuesday, and there is a very real chance this could usher in the creation of a Sixth Republic. The disruptions are loud and chaotic by design, a stark contrast to American protests I’ve been a part of that have been largely orderly (and still met by reprehensible force from the police).
In this same moment, teachers in LA are striking right now for increased wages and expanded healthcare benefits and have announced from the jump their strike will last exactly three days. It defangs the point of a strike if you already know when it will end, but one big reason behind this is so that children can rely on the cafeterias. Meals have become the responsibility of the school system in the word’s richest country.
We need more stories of collective bargaining and historic wins so we remember to keep exercising those muscles, lest they atrophy. I’ve been re-reading Mutualism by Sara Horowitz, who I had the pleasure of doing a panel with for the Brooklyn Public Library two years ago when her book first came out. She founded the Freelancers Union (which is how I had health insurance when I moved to New York) and writes how mutualism has always been the bedrock of society, well before government or business.
As Passover is fast approaching, I was struck by her writing: “Religious institutions have always been some of the most powerful incubators of mutualist activity. After all, religion gives us the world’s first labor story: Exodus. Pharaoh was the first bad boss, Moses was the first labor leader, and the Exodus was the first strike.”
She also points out examples of mutualism in the natural world, such as bees feeding off the nectar and pollen from flowers in exchange for pollination. Bees get to eat, plants get to reproduce and everyone wins in this reciprocal exchange. In the Bronx, the corpse flower is about to bloom! You can watch its grand reveal (minus the smell) via the Amorphophallus titanum livestream.
There are fewer than 1,000 corpse flowers left in their native home of Sumatra, mainly due to deforestation. 500 of the specimens are currently living in botanical gardens around the world. The one from the Chicago Botanic Garden below opened over a 24 hour period after growing for more than 11 years in September 2015.
The first day of spring coincided with the one year anniversary of my courthouse wedding to Mike, who I now refer to as my “state-sanctioned lover”. Cailin sent me this profile of philosopher Agnes Callard for a movie project I’m writing and it has really taken a hold of me (as well as a large part of the internet).
Callard’s constant interrogations of both of her marriages have been fascinating to me - she divorced her husband after falling in love with another man who she subsequently married. Her ex still lives with them and the three of them co-parent their children under the same roof. It’s brought on all sort of conversations: How to stay honest about desire in monogamy? What is owed to a partner? And what are the limits of a shared life?
As I enter my romance era, I recently rewatched ‘Before Sunrise’ and introduced Mike to it for the first time. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meander through Vienna over a 12 hour romance in Richard Linklater’s first installment. He was inspired by a real encounter he had with a woman he met in a toy shop in Philadelphia.
They felt a spark and spent the night wandering through the city. Linklater thought she might show up at a screening of the film and realize she was the inspiration behind it but later learned she had died in a motorcycle accident a few weeks before the shoot. Her name was Amy Lehrhaupt and the third installment of the trilogy, ‘Before Midnight’, is dedicated to her.
I have fallen down the rabbit hole of Les Lalanne, the husband-and-wife duo François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne, and it goes deep. They made funny, functional art inspired by animals and plants. Their Rhinocrétaire was a life-size rhinoceros that opened to reveal a writing desk. Table Pied de Cerf was a dining table resting on slender deer’s legs. Serge Gainsbourg was so inspired by Claude Lalanne’s sculpture L’Homme à Tête de Chou that he named his album after it and put an image of it on the cover.
is behind the excellent newsletter and recently wrote about her Mormon cowboy dad. When she asked him about his thoughts on trans people, he said “We’re taught gender is eternal. And the mechanisms of life are not very good at capturing eternity. It seems entirely possible that someone would be born into a body that doesn’t align with their eternal gender.” It’s the kind of long lens that goes beyond the binary and is a simple salve under the current hailstorm of anti-trans legislation.Trans Week of Visibility and Action is back and starts tomorrow. Chase Strangio and Raquel Willis have build a monumental platform of resistance for everyone to be able to take action, with each day featuring strategic steps against issues like healthcare access and drag bans.
(from the exquisite ) wrote about swimming naked in Mexico and it is an absolute slice of paradise. As someone who would always prefer to be submerged in a body of water, it was a euphoric piece to read and the accompanying photographs by Dumebi Malaika Menakaya will take your breath away.I don’t think I’ve ever read a book as fast as Stephanie Foo’s memoir ‘What My Bones Knew.’ Truly from the moment I cracked it open, I could not put it down. She was a radio producer for This American Life who was diagnosed with complex PTSD following a childhood of intense abuse at the hands of both of her parents. Her journalistic approach and rigorous curiosity balance out the rawness of her trauma as she finds a way towards re-parenting herself. At the end, she quotes a part of Eugenia Leigh’s tremendous poem ‘Gold’ which is a real knife/balm to the heart in its entirety.
Till next time,
ASK