- The City Where Cars Are Not Welcome. This is a kind of dream – to live in a place where I could walk to run my errands and take public transit to work.
- OCD is not a joke.
- Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. Instead, stop being racist and sexist.
- Feed Your Moths and Hide Your Trousers. Aka, how to take care of your clothes.
Friday Shorts
- Charting a future of child care, post-covid-19 and beyond. Childcare is a huge deal.
- It’s about time: valuing child care in a post-pandemic world. This is very optimistic, and I hope it’s not wrong.
Thursday Shorts
- Figure skating is on thin ice. Here’s how to fix it. Overall a good article, though I don’t agree with the idea that the new scoring system is confusing.
- How Black Girl Hockey Club emerged as a player in the push for diversity. Black Girl Hockey Club is the best. They do great work and I’m super-happy to support them.
- Ancient Trees Show When the Earth’s Magnetic Field Last Flipped Out. Science is amazing.
- Without this SF duo, some of the Bay Area’s most famous landmarks could be lost to time. It’s about clock repair. My favorite story is that when they service the clock tower at Stanford, it’s where people can come up and talk to them, and so they trade winding help from the tourists/students/whomever for stories.
- 50 million Americans are unpaid caregivers. We need help. There was a quote I read a couple of months back. “Other countries have safety nets. America has women.”
- Texas Failed Because It Did Not Plan. This is rage-inducing.
Reynard the Fox
Reynard the Fox is a retelling of the Medieval tales about the wily fox and his adventures in Flanders. They are short stories arranged into a longer narrative – so if your pandemic brain can’t deal with a lot of text, these can be good. They’re short enough that you can read one or two before falling asleep at night, if that’s your thing.
The stories themselves are anthropomorphized animals arranged like a local lord and his court, with various characters trying to get into power or keep their power; all of it compromised by the fact that some animals need to eat others as a regular part of their diet. Imagine office politics, but with appetites and murder (though, can it be called murder if it’s a fox eating a hen to survive?). It’s enough to turn you into a vegetarian.
That might make you suspect: these stories are not for young kids. It’s like Grimm’s Fairy Tales with Cinderella’s sisters cutting off parts of their feet so they fit into the glass slipper. Teenagers might enjoy the stories, but don’t get this thinking you can read it to your five year old.
I enjoyed it, and would recommend to anyone who likes an adventure story.
Tuesday Shorts
- Capturing the relentlessness of online life. I didn’t need another book to read, but I apparently have another book to read.
- A Bohemian’s Guide to Greenwich Village, a Century Ago. I miss exploring weird little stores.
Monday Shorts
- Curt Flood Belongs in the Hall of Fame. Or, how free agency in sports became a thing.
- She Ruled Paris from Her Bed. A light bit of 19th century French history.
- A bit about Edward Gorey, who seemed to have been quite a character. If you’re interested in knowing more, Stuff You Missed in History Class did an episode about him, too.
- Reverse engineering knitwear from various movies, tv shows, and other pop culture. I’m not a knitter, but I do like process stories.
- Stop dismissing love stories. They’re exactly what we need to survive covid-19. Look, all I want right now in my life is some joy. Let me have it!
- I hate talking about the Pandemic Wall. This was good.
Friday Shorts
- Stories of slavery, from those who survived it. About the Federal Writers Project, who aimed to capture the stories of former slaves, before they died.
- Islamic 12th century bathhouse, uncovered in Seville tapas bar.
Thursday Shorts
- Florence Griffith Joyner Taught Me What It Means To Be Unapologetically Black And Fabulous. This article shows, I think, that it’s just about time for me to paint my nails again.
- Zoom style. This is actually how do you dress a celebrity for a zoom press tour, but that doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention for my own personal use.
- President Biden, appoint a fashion czar! This is the article about the environmental impact of fashion I was looking for earlier in the week.
- Netflix’ Bridgerton is leading a romance novel renaissance. Good. We need more women-centered stories about love and friendship in this world.
Headliners
Headliners is the latest published book in the London Celebrities series of romance novels by Lucy Parker. I find all of these books adorable; this is the first one that isn’t about a stage actor in London, though Sabrina, leading lady, has a sister on the stage (she was the protagonist from the prior book in the series) and is a television presenter. It’s an enemies-to-lovers romance story between her and a rival presenter, Nick; there are no surprises here. It’s a pretty straight-up romance.
Lucy Parker’s leading ladies are always warm and inviting; the men always seem to be a bit gruff and maybe demanding, but they all have hearts of gold. I will say that, as this is the fifth book in the series, it does help to have read the fourth book for a bit of background on the enemies part of the story, though I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. There are cameos from most of the couples in the previous books in the series (after all, they all have plays that need promoting on Sabrina’s and Nick’s morning television show).
There is another book in the series planned, and I’ll probably read that one too. Like I said, these are charming and warm and a nice bit of escapism as we finish off the first year of the pandemic.
Tuesday Shorts
- A Forgotten Black Founding Father.
- Rain. A short story about mothers and daughters and being who you are.
- The Secret Essential Geography of the Office. “I once worked for a few weeks at a big, busy company, and one day I asked, jokingly, ‘Where do I go to cry?’ An hour later, I was taken aside and told in seriousness about a specific stairwell. Another person there led me on a five-minute walk through the skyscraper to a tiny, hidden conference room, and then made me promise to keep the location a secret, a vow I have kept.”
- Who was I before the pandemic? And who am I now?
- A Priceless Archive of Ordinary Life. This hurts my heart. I want to know where to donate and how to set up a library that will be a proper resource for these materials.
- When I want to feel strong, I turn to Eartha Kitt.