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
Best New (to me) Books of 2023
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:
Readings on the Midwest Water Wars
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.
Indiana, the KKK, and me
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.
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.
Britney's Yellow Wallpaper
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.
Looming projects
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.
Southern creole sausage and cornbread dressing
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.
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.”
Sometimes rules are useful
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.
Need a brilliant bauble for the holidays? How about a beautiful box of blooming instant miso soup bombs? www.brooklynmisomaru.com/shop/p/mi…
Someone reminded me of the story of Charlie the goat, who played Black Philip in “The Witch,” and had two modes: sleeping or asshole. Method actor or brilliant casting? www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/gene…
🚨 Cat in a basket 🚨 🐱
This is a real life nightmare. Nobody deserves to live this way, nobody deserves to die this way. www.npr.org/sections/…
For the old heads, “No Alternative,” the 1993 AIDS benefit compilation album, turns 30 today. www.stereogum.com/1541231/n…
Made the mistake of telling my family I’ve had “Like a Rock” in my head all day, and now my family is streaming Bob Seger videos and old Chevy commercials.
“More than one-fifth of college students are parents, and about one-tenth are single mothers.” www.nytimes.com/2023/10/2…