All the women I know are reading and gardening at a feral clip.
From the Garbage Day newsletter, my fav newsletter on internet trends and marketing, this blog post on looking for federated blog alternatives to Wordpress which links out to this handy dashboard measuring total users on federated platforms.
Girl in a Band
A quick read by a singular voice, heavy on descriptions of the New York art and music scene of the 90s. Like many punk memoirs, it’s a tribute to the many names that made the movement and a memorial for a city that no longer exists. Gordon’s voice is kind and bold, curious and smart. Her descriptions of growing up in LA and coming of age in New York are painterly and poetic.
Why are divorce memoirs stuck in the 1960s? A fair question, I say. www.nytimes.com/2024/05/2…
The relevance of these authors, imo, is about women’s buying power in the ex-evangelical and ex-Mormon movement. But I think it’s pretty difficult to think publicly about ideas like liberation or, say, bodily autonomy when you aren’t regularly entertaining trans politics or questioning carceral politics.
⚡ Bookshelves
The Bookshelves feature of Micro.blog is easily my favorite of this platform. It sits right at the intersection of medium and function: as a reader I want to keep track of things, but I don’t need so much infrastructure around it. Just some checkmarks and a place to dash off my immediate thoughts. I’ve been keeping my virtual bookshelf up to date while pushing myself to take on a bunch of literary fiction, but I’m tired, reader.
My posts from micro.blog are pushing to Mastodon but not Bluesky. Why?
Two new media publishers are looking to build out their presence in the Fediverse: digiday.com/media/why…
I very much enjoyed this book. Despite the heavy subjects, ultimately culminating in a reflection on the ongoing conflict in Palestine that can’t be missed, it was a compelling read that I’ve returned to many times as a reference. The mirror as metaphor for the inexplicable stories in the news.
Finished reading: Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein 📚
Currently watching how AI will affect SEO and search: www.forbes.com/sites/for…
It’s spring, so my lizard brain is locked on the excitement of garden-planning. The backyard is a blank slate, virtually untouched for ten years until we moved in and removed a wild grapevine so overgrown it looked like a hedge. I have my work cut out for me.
Just finished rereading “Station Eleven” for my beloved book club. It’s so well-written that I find myself annoyed and jealous by it, it’s that good. It makes me consider the legacy of art-making - grassroots, human-made art - and its role in crafting meaning and beauty out of the grind of living.
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.
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.
🧶 Craft Work: On a Joann's bankruptcy and the struggling retail craft market
The internet says Joann fabrics is going to declare bankruptcy, putting a huge market of individual crafters without access to in-person retail craft spaces into a tailspin. It’s likely they will ask their creditors to restructure their debt, making them able to keep some stores open. The whole market relies heavily on in-person shopping (it’s a textural and sensory shopping experience, which is the point!) and hasn’t pivoted well to e-commerce.
Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood
I’ve been waiting for this one because it’s a story I know well. It is an impeccably reported book covering how young women navigated a compromised, stigmatized, coercive landscape around unplanned pregnancies in the late 20th century. Sisson is a comprehensive writer whose reporting is deeply empathetic, based on her personal experience as an activist and academic working in reproductive justice alongside extensive research. She discusses the history of the adoption movement at length, connecting it to other institutional family separation movements, and considers it alongside the choice to abort unplanned pregnancies and against the decision to parent anyway, often in a deeply compromised social and political climate.
Embarking on a little side quest, which shifts my normal reading list from whatever it is now to a list of water metaphors.
Halloween quilt, finally
I finished my latest quilt on my birthday, a Halloween quilt made from precuts (no pattern) that I started in 2021? 2022? I don’t know how old it is. It’s been languishing. I don’t love shoving a huge quilt through my lil sewing machine, so I still hand quilt these puppies using 6-strand embroidery floss. It’s hard on my hands but gives the final quilt so much texture and weight.
Hidden Systems
My delightful book club pulled this YA graphic novel out of the 2023-24 “best of” lists and loved it. There is a remarkable amount of information on each page - truly, you could build a dynamic reading curriculum off of each section - between the written and visual communication. A triumphant example of quality science writing, a great gift book, suitable for just about any audience over the age of ten.