I got to eat at my first Michelin star restaurant this weekend, Kasama in Chicago, which you may recognize from The Bear. We braved the line during the day to try their daytime menu, including a hearty breakfast and a selection of lovely, delicate pastries. Beautiful food, worth a wait.
Microposts
Light and clever enough for an easy read, while serious enough to hold my attention. Love the demonstrations of mutual care on the margins of polite society.
Finished reading: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride 📚
A couple of years ago I was featured on the LGM podcast, as a speaker on the oral history of the blogosphere. Posting it here for posterity: www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/07/o…
Also in arts and crafts: On the revival of blacksmithing in Kentucky.
Embarking on a little side quest, which shifts my normal reading list from whatever it is now to a list of water metaphors.
The new provost is an interesting person and an ultra-charismatic speaker, which makes for a p good podcast. madison.citycast.fm/podcasts/…
I had a great birthday yesterday.
- The kiddo and I have been going to the gym together. We could do most of these workouts at home, but she likes the novelty of going to work out in public, people watching, and noodling with electronics while you’re on the elliptical. I enjoy her company there and it’s an incentive for me to keep going. Plus it really does elevate my mood (annoying).
- I leveled up from walking to jogging yesterday. Time well spent.
- I finished my Halloween 2021 quilt, which used the spooky darlings prints from Ruby Star Society. It’s not my best work, but she’s cute anyway.
- I felt loved.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
I don’t need a WYSIWYG editor on micro.blog, but some buttons for linking and styling on new posts would be a no-brainer addition to this app.
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
This is the kind of book that connects the dots on some big ideas, primarily how traditional gender roles intersect with capitalism to produce the economy, and in turn, how these systems, tensions and behaviors then reproduce inequality. It’s also, at the root, about how ideas form reality. By reframing some of the feminist classics - and the Marxist ones, too - the writers recast some of our old stories about how the world works, and set up a framework for future scholarship across a number of disciplines.
This is an intensely academic and dialectical book by some of the best thinkers who work at the intersection of Marxism and feminism, and worthwhile for anyone thinking about how work, labor, gender, sex, and culture press on the individual and the collective alike.
If this feels too heavy but you like the subject, check out the editor’s prior book, “Feminism for the 99%.” It’s similar in form to bell hooks’ classic “Feminism is for Everybody” but with a clear collectivist and activist call to action.
Finished reading: Social Reproduction Theory by Tithi Bhattacharya 📚
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
The (very decorated) author (his first novel) spent time on the faculty in my Big Ten hometown. I already recognize some of the side characters. 👀 Currently reading: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar 📚
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
Escapist and breezy. Finished reading: Seven Days in June by Tia Williams 📚
Wednesday, February 14, 2024 →
This smart graphic novel zooms in and out on engineered systems happening all around us: electricity, water, the internet. Fascinating and clever. Currently reading: Hidden Systems by Dan Nott 📚
I’m divorcing my Apple Watch because I’m in love with my Oura ring. I need fewer CTAs and notifications in my life, and more reminders to prioritize sleep and mindfulness. Plus, you can pay for one with your HSA.
V proud of myself because, despite going to the quilt store yesterday and getting everything BUT what I went there for, I found enough batting scraps to put together a quilt sandwich and began hand quilting it last night. She’s going to be cute.
Nicki does party songs, Megan does praxis.
The latest You’re Wrong About podcast about the pro-life movement is an excellent primer for anyone who knows a little but doesn’t feel like an expert. Covers the history of the movement, where they came from ideologically, how they organize and why it’s effective. yourewrongabout.com
Finished reading: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid 📚
I liked this one mostly because it asks nothing of the reader, save for enduring the completely unnecessary side story about the biographer.
I’m looking for some lightness in my reading list for the next couple of months. Found this list of funniest novels from the Booker library: thebookerprizes.com/the-booke…
Devastating, bleak, relentless.
Finished reading: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan 📚
❄️ big, fat snowflakes ❄️
Currently reading: The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan 📚
Dystopian, but not so far away.
First real snow today.
🍿 Saltburn, baby.
I am enjoying the Twitter/Tumblr feel of micro.blog and feel like I could settle in here. But it would be cooler if there was a quick reference for markdown near the input field to better format our posts.
The local story is ripe with corruption. Indiana likes to spin up private “growth” orgs to bypass legislation, after a long history of treating the state’s water resources like something between a highway and a sewer. Indiana’s Plan to Pipe In Groundwater for Microchip-Making Draws Fire
“The able and the disabled aren’t two different kinds of people but the same people at different times.” My Unraveling, by Tom Scocca for NYMag
The trailer for the next Mad Max movie, “Furiosa,” is out now: www.youtube.com/watch 🍿
Finished reading: The Forgotten Girls by Monica Potts 📚
Potts brings her reporting background to this memoir about coming of age in Arkansas, one of the poorest, reddest states, with lengthy explorations of the economic and social policies that create conditions in which women struggle to thrive. I really enjoyed this read for so many reasons, and was pleased that Potts’ voice is empathetic, smart and searching. Very recommended.
I’m v excited about the PJ Harvey Tiny Desk concert out today. 🎵
PJ Harvey is one of my favorite musicians because she is a weirdo and an artist in the same vein as a Kate Bush, or even a Bob Dylan, who concentrates on mythology, atmosphere, artistry and sense of place. For a lot of my life, my fav album was “Rid of Me.” It was present in a lot of formative moments as a kid and still resonates for me as an adult, despite some of its flourishes not aging well. As an adult, “Let England Shake” genuinely moved me. She draws on music and poetry traditions to explore what it means for England to be an empire, sitting atop a throne of bones and bloodshed. It’s ambitious and dark and sounds incredible, in part thanks to her use of the autoharp (yes, seriously).
She’s also among the artists who made a hard left in my musical interests as a kid, when she and John Parish released “Dance Hall at Louse Point.” This album was called career suicide when it came out because it is so atonal and avant garde. As an album, listening from beginning to end, it’s delightfully sinister. It could be a sister or a cousin album to Nick Cave’s “Murder Ballads.”
Need a brilliant bauble for the holidays? How about a beautiful box of blooming instant miso soup bombs? www.brooklynmisomaru.com/shop/p/mi…