come inside! it's FARCHy out there.
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FARCH IS UPON US.
"FARCH" isn't cussin'...but it can be.
FARCH = the more often than not, "winter is real" cloudiness of February and March combined. One loooong yadda yadda yadda between now and...summer.😭
Here are several me-approved survival skills. Pick any one Just the One, day-by-FARCHy-day recommendation (or reply to this email with yours and whether I can share it):
take a nap.
stop doomscrolling.
break up with your parasocial celebrity-besties on social media (them people and platforms don't know you and they don't care about your life beyond the attention and coins you hand over).
“It doesn’t sound like there’s an adult in the room, steering the cult”. - Dr. Marina Cooley on brands handing their marketing over to TikTok, but really this is the best quote about the whole internet I’ve read in a while.
take a brisk walk and get yer cheeks tingling (doesn't matter which ones or how 😉).
listen to yur mum's house on Saturdays at the entirely reasonable GenX hour of 4pm! Es la verdad...👇👀
object to your tax dollars being sent to an ethno-religious death-state in its wholesale, premeditated destruction of Palestinians (take your pick! there are so many ways to protest, educate yourself, explore what solidarity looks like, and/or contact elected so-called representatives. Also watch the doc Israelism and empathize with the dissonance our American Jewish radical co-conspirators are experiencing. There's nothing more radicalizing for the youth coming to political consciousness (and saddening to think how we've failed them) than watching a genocidal ethnostate in action.
check out 2023's awe-inspiring Nature photos, including this photo of sugar 🤯
if you must travel the bailed out (but somehow still generating massive profits and losing whole-ass'd doorplugs) airlines, download FlightAware and sign up for alerts for each of your flight journeys. Is the flight ever really leaving? You'll know if/when the pilot files the flight plan. Flight delayed or canceled? FlightAware pings you right away, often before the airlines app notifies you and long before there's any announcement over those cacophonous speakers. You’ll feel marginally less like you’re paying to be abused.
explore and enjoy these archival insights into Rosa Parks’ life through her yoga practice and handwritten recipes:
“Self-care is too often discussed as selfish. I wanted to share the photos to underscore self-care as a black women’s public health imperative. I see meditation and yoga as helpful factors in race, gender, activism, and the sustainable struggle for human rights. Mrs. Parks is part of a larger story of black women’s sustainable self-care and stress management.” - Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans in YogaJournal
wallow, if you must, but know this: FARCHy feelings are temporary. You are loved. And as Fatha Time (my Dad’s nom de party) has been saying since December 26th, "Spring is on the way!"🌱
In high rotation
💿 Jamila Woods' Water Made Us except the skits/outtakes/poems because I cannot. I refuse. ⏭️ ⏭️ ⏭️. But an otherwise sublime album with lots of love-truths and great self-reflection about the variability of love and being in relationship:
So if I'm awkward just let me rock, let me be
...
It's not gonna be a big production
It's not butterflies or fireworks
I said it's gonna be a tiny garden
But I'll feed it every day, I'll feed it
from my favorite song, "Tiny Garden"
💿 Chicago jazz singer Penny Goodwin's Portrait of a Gemini and everything else she recorded in the 1970s. I first heard her when looking for versions of "Slow Hot Wind" and heard her featured on the soundtrack for The Handmaid's Tale. Just because she's brand new to me doesn't mean she's brand new periodt, but I love the unfolding.
💿 I enjoy everything from track #7, "Perdiste" through the end of Kali Ushis' ORQUEDAS. I'm. not sure why the first half feels like a different album to me.
💿 Prediction: Troye Sivan's Something to Give Each Other will go down in history as this queer era's It Album. It's giving All the Things++.
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Announcement
It turns out that by Friday night at 8pm, yur mum's house's previous slot on wbar, I wanna be in my jimjams savoring a low-dose THC-inflected gummy, eating popcorn, and clicking through movie trailers until I've watched approximately an entire movie's length of content.
Good news for my weary constitution and your Saturday errands, cleaning, napping, whatever: yur mum's house is moving to a friendlier, older person time slot!
Starting today (2.17) join me Saturdays from 4 - 6pm EST [use timebuddy to find your timezone] on wbar.org or listen later on mixcloud.
And ngl: wbar's online stream can be janktastic. All it takes is a bad aux cord or "someone" with big lil' yachty feet (🙋🏾🛥️🦶) kicking the streaming box to take the whole operation off the air or into a mono-stream. Still, I might actually get over myself and get on the mic this time, but there will definitely be some pre-recorded SPECIAL GUESTS this semester-season. Stop by Saturdays at 4pm EST for a tailor-made get-us-through-FARCH playlist just for YOU.
And remember:
"Paranoia, after all, is a kind of narcissism,"
says Sarah Jeong, from a hugely self- and Internet-world reflection on online harassment when she canceled on/by social media.
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Every Friday at physical therapy (wonky, middle-aged hips don't lie, y'all!), an elder who is a MAGICIAN brings a magic trick that he shares with us.