October 21, 2021

> 166: Team quitting, birds for everyone, in praise of phone dates

Hi. Thursday! It's Thursday! Here's some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. Believing you can't quit something you started is a trap.

2. I am enjoying the new season of the Great British Bakeoff (Lizzie! Freya! Jürgen, for God's sake!) but this criticism of an encroaching trend resonated with me.

3. Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine is doing a three-month newsletter residency at the New York Times. I don't really know what that means but I'm intrigued!

4. An endorsement: Phone dates with friends. I've never been a Phone Person, but for whatever reason, a friend and I have managed to become and stay pretty close—despite not living in the same city for 10 years—through periodic phone dates. For us, phone is preferable to Zoom, hearing each other's voices is preferable to texting, and we send each other Google Calendar invites like nerds. But it works. And when we do manage to see each other in person, it's like the usual audio-only mode of our friendship just became 3D. Maybe it could work for you too?

5. Ways to tell stories, unpacked.

6. John Hodgman reading 700 hobo names.

7. Hand ballet and the Birdability Map, which describes in detail the accessibility of birding locations around the world.

8. Flower interpretations and museums making nude works of art accessible by starting OnlyFans accounts.

9. Looking forward to: the next season of The Great, feat. Gillian Anderson as Mother.

10. Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
    And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up
    
    waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
    It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

    the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
    For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

    I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
    wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

    I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
    Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

    What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
    whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

    But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
    say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

    for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
    I am living. I remember you.
    
    —Marie Howe, "What the Living Do"

Bye,

Laura