We have officially hit the six month mark of this newsletter! Wild that back in October, I was writing my first post to you about the story behind the woman above, surrounded by all those open drawers of birds. This is now my 25th missive and it’s been a real joy having a self-imposed writing deadline that’s outside of movie-making. Thanks for coming along for the ride — for reading, for sharing, for all the encouragements.
Last week on a long drive back from upstate, Jessie and Kira were helping me brainstorm where to take this shindig next. Two new expansions came out of it: 1. A dedicated Instagram page to help spread the word/up the visuals (mybrainisasieve) and 2. Turning on paid subscriptions as a way to raise money for the different causes that I highlight each week. Posts (past, present and future) will forever remain free but if you have the means and feel moved to help put your proverbial money where my mouth is, please know 100% of paid subscriptions will go towards supporting the different projects I write about.
Thanks to everyone who has already pledged to become a paid subscriber - now that paid subscriptions are turned on, your pledge will become a recurring paid subscription. At the end of each month I’ll divide up the $ raised and donate evenly between the various projects I will have written about over the course of the month. Stay tuned for next week’s post, which will include a tracker of where our first donations went…
This country loves a gun more than life itself. This week alone, Kaylin Gillis, 20, of Saratoga County, New York, and Ralph Yarl, 16, of Kansas City, Missouri, were both shot, over 1,000 miles apart, by men who felt threatened by them just for driving up the wrong driveway. No questions asked for making a simple mistake and arriving at the wrong address, just weapons drawn and shots fired. Ralph is now fighting for his life, having miraculously survived being shot in the head. Kaylin was murdered on the spot.
We are living in a country where everyone is armed to the teeth and in a deep state of paranoia, conditioned to see others as a threat first and foremost.
(who writes the incredible ) said it best: “So we are becoming a nation full of a distinct modern form of uncontacted tribes: at once hyperconnected and cut off, addled by propaganda and starved for human contact, convinced that the only good person you don’t know is a dead person you don’t know.”I knew you could get musical instruments, Wifi hotspots and free access to museums from the New York Public Library, but I just found you can also get plants… If you go to The Seed Library at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (diagonally across from Patience, the South side stone lion) and show them your library card, you can get up to three seed packets per visit along with instructions on how to grow them. They have non-GMO, heirloom, and/or organic seeds to grow vegetables, flowers, or herbs like lemon balm, basil, thyme, marigolds, zinnias, and peppers and more.
The first car-free community in the U.S. is being built right now in Tempe, Arizona and the first residents will be moving in next month. The development is called Culdesac and it will eventually house 1,000 people with zero parking spaces. It’s directly on the rail line to downtown Phoenix, but everything will be available to residents within walking distance - grocery stores, office spaces, parks, restaurants and cafes. Cars are an aggressive waste of space in cities, a point inadvertently made by this Saturn commercial from 2002.
I love
's writing via and her latest essay as a dairy judging teen at state fairs in the 1980s is a gem. She writes "Dairy judging is analytical, balancing the logistics of a body against the logistics of another body. You try to see the future of the heifer and the cow in her legs and udder attachments, maybe this is the start or continuation of a good line that will help your farm. That’s what it’s about, keeping the farm. It’s also not lost on me that this could be a feminist allegory about the gaze. Sometimes it is, but there’s an important element of utilitarianism, of trying to understand the body, that fascinates me."I just learned the origin of the word spinster via this soothing video on wool, delightfully narrated by Orson Welles (and commissioned by the American Sheep Producers Council!) England tried to disrupt the wool industry in North America, but sheep were successfully smuggled into the country and rapidly multiplied. In 1640, the Court of Massachusetts decreed that every family should produce its share of homespun cloth from flax or be fined. The eldest unmarried daughter was tasked with the spinning duties, hence the term spinster.
Fifty skeletons from the 2nd century AD were just found near the subway station where I grew up. As they expand the RER station of Port-Royal to add a new exit, a mass grave was uncovered, dating back to when Paris was Lutetia and the Parisii people were under the Roman Empire’s control. Women, men and children were discovered in this 2,000-year-old Gallic cemetery. One had a coin in its mouth, which is how they were able to date the bodies. It was a traditional burial ritual from the time called "Charon's obol" — the coin in the dead person’s mouth was meant to be a bribe for Charon, ferryman of Hades, to carry their soul across the river Styx.
A letter Greta Garbo wrote to her friend and former-MGM hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff during her 50-year self-imposed retirement from public life. She was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in one of Stockholm’s poorest neighborhoods. Over the course of her twenty eight feature films, she was able to negotiate a rare contract that gave her the right to veto scripts, co-stars, and directors. She left Hollywood at age 35, at the height of her fame. Moving to New York to live alone, she never married or had children and refused all interview requests.
Re: last week’s recipe, I received this great addendum from Krios who is in Beijing right now: “After finishing the noodles, it's customary to drink a bowl of the soup used for cooking the noodles. In Chinese, this is called 原汤化原食, which roughly translates to "the original soup will help digest the original noodle." It's somewhat superstitious, and locals do the same with dumplings – drinking the water used for cooking the dumplings after eating them.”
Till next time,
ASK
Wow, what a great read. I learned so much and am glad I took a break from editing to read it from start to finish. The recent shootings have also been weighing on me. Husband and I were talking about how in past we've pulled up to the wrong house or used a driveway (empty) to pull into and out of to turn around when turned around and the thought that a simple mistake can lead instantly to death or maiming is frightening. Although I am familiar with Charon, I'd never heard the phrase, "Charon's obol" so of course that is another rabbit hole I will willfully jump into! Ha!