Oh hey,

One thought that keeps me going is that a ton of crazy and unlikely bad stuff has happened over the last 10 years; who’s to say crazy and unlikely stuff that’s good can’t happen over the next 10?

Here’s some art, ideas, and internet for you:

1. “In​ 1606 a devastating pestilence swept through London; the dying were boarded up in their homes with their families, and a decree went out that the theatres, the bear-baiting yards and the brothels be closed. It was then that Shakespeare wrote one of his very few references to the plague, catching at our precarity: ‘The dead man’s knell/Is there scarce asked for who, and good men’s lives/Expire before the flowers in their caps/Dying or ere they sicken.’ As he wrote, a Greenland shark who is still alive today swam untroubled through the waters of the northern seas.”

2. An iOS app that shows you every movie screening in your city. It’s kind of crazy this never existed before. (Yes, probably most helpful if you live in a big place!)

3. “You are not creating a community or holding a container from nothing: you are becoming a vessel for something that already wants to exist” and 23 other lessons for building community.

4. A new BBC podcast about Putin’s rise to power, including the evidence that he orchestrated the bombing of apartment buildings as a Russian version of a Reichstag fire; a new podcast from Blair “that awesome lady with the sled dogs” Braverman sharing tales of survival.

5. My household agreed that these crispy fennel cutlets from The Lost Kitchen are the best chicken cutlets we’ve ever had. Yes, the recipe calls for the ingredient “fennel pollen” and you’ll use all $11 of the vial you special-order for this recipe but occasionally buying a ridiculous food accoutrement can be an important way to maintain some whimsy. (Also, all the dish’s other ingredients are pretty cheap.)

6. This month’s “Science, Holy Shit” Corner: There are finally some treatments available for variants of two of the nastiest diseases out there: pancreatic cancer and ALS.

7. There’s a new season of the show about Stanley Tucci eating food around Italy wearing really snappy jackets; my household is enjoying the fifth and final season of Hacks. (Meg Stalter hive alert: She’s doing a run of Oh, Mary starting in July.)

8. Portraits of mothers with sons; portraits of fathers holding hands with their sons.

9. The psychology of fossil fuels as “reliable” is finally shifting. Hell yeah.

10. You tell me to live each day
    as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
    where before coffee I complain
    of the day ahead—that obstacle race
    of minutes and hours,
    grocery stores and doctors.

    But why the last? I ask. Why not
    live each day as if it were the first—
    all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
    her eyes awake that first morning,
    the sun coming up
    like an ingénue in the east?

    You grind the coffee
    with the small roar of a mind
    trying to clear itself. I set
    the table, glance out the window
    where dew has baptized every
    living surface.
    
    — “Imaginary Conversation,” Linda Pastan

Later,

Laura

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