Tuesday, January 2, 2024 • 4
After a stint as an English major and as a writer myself, I got into a habit of reading dozens of articles a day instead of longer form writing: books. I spent a lot of energy in 2023 getting back to books. Thanks to a great book club (you know who you are) and making space to settle in with a great book in a cozy spot, here are my favs from 2023:
Thursday, December 14, 2023 • 4
I’m following a new environmental drama in my Hoosier hometown. Some geniuses in the Indiana statehouse decided to court agreements to build gigantic computer chip plants in an area of the state that lacks one critical thing: there’s no water. Computer chip manufacturing apparently requires a ton of water. “No problem!” the intellectual giants said. “There is the large Wabash River aquifer to the north that we can just have piped 35 miles down to our site.
Monday, December 4, 2023 • 2
Currently reading: A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan 📚 Despite being from Indiana, I feel like I’ve heard very little about this book, which covers the rise of the Indiana KKK in the early 1900s. The book’s central story revolves around the Grand Dragon, a bad man whose bad acts finally land him in enough trouble that the powers that be couldn’t ignore his non-KKK activities any longer.
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 • 1
Finished reading: The Woman in Me by Britney Spears 📚 Come for the juicy tell-all, stay for the damning details on how Britney’s abusive father, codependent mother and opportunist sister ensnared one of the world’s biggest stars into an abusive conservatorship, and consider at length why we ask young starlets to run through these gauntlets in exchange for our attention. It’s neither the complete portrait of the artist nor the feminist manifesto I wish it was, but I came away from it with more empathy and respect for her and what horrors she’s weathered.
Thursday, November 23, 2023 • 1
I was invited to submit to the pop culture fiber craft show at Gallery 1988 again this year. Last year I sold a large Kris Jenner meme quilt. I was delighted to be included and nervous about how my work would be received, and was chuffed to be one of the first artists whose work sold. I immediately took that money and bought a rigid hettle loom. I had recently taken a class and loved it, and also needed a new way to use up some of my growing yarn stash.
Saturday, November 18, 2023 • 3
This sausage and cornbread dressing is one of my favorite recipes, a dish present on every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter table at my childhood home. The original recipe lives in a non-descript church cookbook from somewhere in the Middle South from the 1970s, and another iteration lives in an email from 2008, which is terribly inconvenient. I decided to record it here for posterity, with some of my own notes added.
Monday, November 6, 2023 • 1
Created some artsy fartsy rules for myself where I have to finish something old before I start something new, just to keep some momentum going on existing projects. I have several outstanding embroidery, quilting, knitting AND crochet projects, and a loom I refuse to assemble until I knock out one or two of these other ones. My two biggest priorities are a giant garter stitch shawl that I began pre-pandemic and really want to finish because it’s so beautiful - and so boring to knit - and a gigantic crochet mosaic blanket that is teaching me the ins and outs of crochet.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 • 1
Hilariously (sadly? regretfully?), since I’ve been writing online for public audiences since about 1997, I’ve been thinking about the art of posting, community building, and who benefits and how, for a very long time. All of this (https://blog.ayjay.org/the-three-paths-of-micro-blog/) sounds about right, specifically: “…it will — by design — never be a place for you to monetize your brand, troll, shitpost, or become an influencer. But hey, there are plenty of other platforms better suited for that kind of thing.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 • 1
Finished reading: Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann 📚 “For years after the American Revolution, the public opposed the creation of police departments, fearing that they would become forces of repression. “Only in the mid-nineteenth century, after the growth of industrial cities and a rash of urban riots—after dread of the so-called dangerous classes surpassed dread of the state—did police departments emerge in the United States.”