Dear Friends,

January opened with a roar, an avalanche, a beastly rash. It’s only day 7, the day after the anniversary of that THING that happened five years ago. Now I feel as if I live in a J6 fever dream. Toxic masculinity, weak ill-informed men who only seek to make themselves richer and yet somehow pull off this con. As of now, Greenland is still un-invaded, but it’s Trump so that could change in the next hour or so. 

It’s exhausting. 

I want to be loud. I want those fuckers to hear me when I shame them, when they are locked up and scorned. They have to be. Egos can’t hold a country together. It’s like being governed by 4-chan or incels or reddit pwns I don’t know the lingo but the scrubbiest dumbest parts of our internet have become sentient and now have the power to kill me by bringing back measles or dropping a nuke.  

I feel like my newsletters are always wow things are really really bad and here are a few ok things.

Like, a good thing right now, is that Lizzie is a puddle of floof next to me and she purrs so loudly, I can hear her through my ear plugs. She is food-obsessed, a bathtub pooper, and my bestest pet friend. When she gets angry while she eats she makes this noise that’s grroar-chompchompchomp-grroar-chompchomp… Like she won’t stop eating to yell at you. She’ll do both at the same time, thank you very much.

Another good thing is “Have I Got News For You” the US version, that is, on YouTube and it’s a delight. I mean, anything with Amber Ruffin is a delight. This is a news game show that’s funny and unpredictable (and ripped from a UK version). Apparently it airs on CNN which seems too cool for CNN. It’s a mystery.

It’s wild that I am writing at all, considering that I mostly feel like two-day-old oatmeal. I’m trying to remember to wash my face. I cut my own bangs. I pinched a nerve in my shoulder. I eat cereal for dinner. I want you to know that I’m trying.

I baked bread with actual air bubbles in it, which was a good thing. I finally realized that the yeast I had been using expired 8 days after I put it in the fridge a year ago and that’s why things were always so dense. This was after misreading a recipe I had halved so that I put in the original amount of flour and half the amount of water and then sat punching it for 10 minutes adding dribbles of water waiting for the thing to come together. So yes, with the right ratio of flour and water and with active yeast, I finally produced two loaves of bread that taste really really good.

Then at 11 PM in bed while thinking about that dough failure, I had the realization that play-doh really is dough that you play with. I know! I never put that together. I thought of it more as modeling clay or silly putty, not dough-dough. But did you know that it was originally made to clean coal residue from wallpaper? Yes – but then an enterprising woman said, let’s give this to kids instead.

Here are few other good things I have done/am doing:

My poem, “Two-Week Stay,” was published in Glint Literary Journal Winter 2025 issue. Please read it and share it!

I’ll be at the Maynard Public Library on January 15, to lead the Poetry Appreciation Society: Robert Hayden Edition.

Then The Notebooks Collective’s first In Conversation of the year will happen on 1/20: In Conversation with M. Soledad Caballero and Catharina Coenen. Soledad was a guest in May 2022 and I interviewed her about her book I Was a Bell. Now she’s back with her colleague and they will chat about how their books, while in different genres, overlap in theme.

Here’s an amazing thing. Lisa & I reached out and somehow, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, National Book Award Finalist, is going to do an event with The Notebooks Collective. How? Why? I don’t know, but I have long admired their work and they are going to be in conversation with the filmmaker Sasha Waters and will probably talk about Mary Oliver. All of which is the best of dreams.

Here’s a bad thing. My insurance changed and my therapy visits went from $30 to $150. WTH. There are so many things that I loathe right now, but the American health insurance industry has been a top villain for some years now. THE WORST. It fills me with such rage that I cry because I am so angry.  

Here’s another good thing. I am reading My Friends by Fredrik Backman. I can’t stop crying while I read it but that’s because it’s so touching and tender. I love what he says about art and fierce friendships and what we do for others.

It opens at a art auction where rich people see paintings as investments and don’t even really look at the art other than to match it with their interior decor and well, if you know you know I have experienced that very thing at a previous work place. And Mr. Backman managed to put in the right amount of pity and loathing and ridiculousness towards those people that I felt and it made me very happy. Although I admit I have to read it in bits because I can’t be sobbing all the time.

Sometimes I avoid overly-hyped books because surely they can’t be that good and mostly probably has some “Read with Jenna” BS attached to it, but this genuinely is a good one.  

What else? Today is a good day to tell people you love them and if you can’t tell them tell them, you could send them a cat gif. Today is a good day to take a deep breath and space out and imagine new worlds. Or read a good book.

The photos I pulled for this newsletter are from The Public Domain Review Image Archive. There are articles that explain the work and I put them here: Prophecies of apocalypse, Mesmerising Science, Wild Flowers of Palestine. In case you are interested.

As always, much love,

Becca

P.S. If you think someone might enjoy this newsletter, please forward and maybe they will subscribe. I know almost everyone on my list and it would be cool to meet some strangers!