As I continue to recover from my ailments, I’ve been forced to sit on my ass more than I’d like. But it has given me an opportunity to both binge-read and go hard on BritBox.

I typically read a bunch of books in a row until I get stuck. Then suddenly I’m reading like five books that I don’t love or finish, and I take a months-long break from reading books altogether.

The New York Times just published two articles on the popularity of people talking about books they DNF (did not finish). Some of DNF books include Orbital, This Other Eden, and The Emperor of Gladness. I’m currently working on adding Educated by Tara Westover, The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout, and How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay by Jenny Lawson to that list.

Here are a few I did finish during my latest reading jag that I think you may enjoy, too!

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

Do you love brilliantly crafted stories that weave together unique takes on historical tragedies and lesbian love-making? Then you’ll be head over heels for this novel. Though it takes place in a post-WWII Netherlands, it feels remarkably contemporary, which is my cup of literary tea.

My present to you telling you how great this book is without telling you anything about this book. That way you can find genuine joy after innocently peeling back the pages and layers on repressed Isa and the house she cherishes.

Another perk: You’ll breeze through this.

Olive Kitteridge and Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

If you’re like me and took your sweet ass time getting around to reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge, then let’s celebrate this masterpiece together like two babies tasting ice cream for the first time!

My mom described Olive as “not a nice person, but a good person.” Olive is fascinating for sure. The book is sequential, related short stories that reveal former schoolteacher and mother Olive and tell the stories of her friends and acquaintances in fictional Crosby, Maine. Strout does this thing where she often takes a moment to describe how the lighting plays off some object and also somehow manages to reveal a profound truth about humanity though a character’s most quiet moments. I ran to get Olive, Again. I miss Olive already.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

I almost DNF this book.

Everyone read it, so I did, too. It’s a book of letters either by or to Sybil, a former lawyer and divorcee who lives by the bay in Annapolis, Maryland. Like Olive, she is an older complicated woman, but I won’t compare the two books past that point. Halfway thorough, I thought to myself, I really hate Sybil and her wealth and her flippant, bold manner. I felt like she was more destructive than constructive.

Then I thought, I’m literally like 100 letters from finishing, so I powered through. My commitment was rewarded with a good cry at the end. I didn’t love Sybil or anything, but I did enjoy following her golden years through her correspondence.

Kin by Tayari Jones

Kin is a book about two motherless best friends, Niecy and Annie, one an orphan and the other abandoned. The book explores how each young Black woman navigates the world from after leaving their rural Louisiana hometown in the 1950s.

I liked this book and became quite attached to the main characters, specifically Niecy. I felt a little like some of the scenes and other characters were written in a way that was implicitly meant for a movie adaptation, like the Mississippi madam who runs a whore house-motel-farm. It stops too short of magical realism, which is unfortunate. It’s been a long time since I read The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, but it’s a little reminiscent of his approach to history, except Whitehead’s book was was a masterpiece.

I would, like Obama did this year, recommend Kin.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I was trying to force my child to read this first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series before he attended Camp Half-Blood, a Percy Jackson themed summer camp. I bought it then realized I had already picked up one from a Little Free Library. So I said, let’s both read it silently next to each other. And so we did! I think this is called body doubling.

Would I read this YA fantasy novel on my own? No, my friends, The Lightning Thief is no Hunger Games. It’s damn long and lacks a certain eloquence, but it was exciting and I’m happy to say, we both finished it and learned a little something about Greek gods.

I just realized I never properly suggested these books I read in the past year or so and also recommend.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

This is an engaging novel written by a poet, so it is for people who can handle novels written by poets. Cyrus Shams is a queer, parent-less aspiring writer whose mom died when he was a baby when the U.S. accidentally shot down a passenger flight from Iran. As a newly-sober grown-up, he heads to the Brooklyn Museum to see a dying Iranian performance artist with his special friend. Get through the first half and you will be rewarded with the second.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

I have much to say on this that I could write my own 900 page novel on it! This is my mom and brother’s favorite book, so I’ve had long-time pressure to pick up this beast of a Pulitzer Prize-winner.

The funny part is, a couple of years ago, my childhood friend (and incredible reader and children’s musician) Alina and I both had the idea to read it as adults at the same time. We wondered “why both of us and why now?” We were at indie D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose when we realized it was because The Atlantic had just listed it as a book you must read and posted a slideshow of these books on Instagram. This is the best way social media can control our decisions.

It is, in many ways, a middle aged woman’s right of passage since they made the Lonesome Dove TV miniseries in 1989. And because of that, I assumed it was a romance — talk about internalized misogyny. It is not. It’s a Western epic.

It took me a year to read because I read half of it then I took a long break and somehow successfully went back to it and completed it. It’s maybe the first time I’ve done that. I get very little time to read for enjoyment, but enjoy this, I did.

There are like a million characters in this book but you do fall for at least one of them and you care for all of them. I’ve said too much already.

I’m currently committed to another Pulitzer-winner, The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri — but taking suggestions, so please send some my way!

I have some good news! I wrote an article for National Geographic. It’s a profile on the 2025 grand prize winner of the Florida Python Challenge, Taylor Stanberry.

The goal of the hunt is to minimize the number of invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades and draw attention to the infestation of these nonnative snakes. I also spoke with other professional hunters about the tensions between professional and amateur hunters who take part in the annual hunt, so that drama is also included in the article.

Please read my article here!

Taylor is smart and fearless. To win, she caught 60 snakes by hand. Every night in the stormy South Florida summer months she heads into the sticky, buggy swamp with her husband Rhett and hunts barefoot. And if you’ve ever been on an airboat ride or driven down Alligator Alley, you know that’s the definition of fearless.

Here the link is again, in case you missed it above.

She’s also dedicated to educating the public about native wildlife and reptiles. The Stanberrys just incorporated their nonprofit, a backyard sanctuary for rehomed monkeys (including many that were Taylor’s pets), tortoises, and nonnative venomous snakes. There’s more on that in the article, too.

And something I learned that is oh, so Florida: While the hunt is hosted by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the South Florida Water Management District, the FWC contracts a leather company to run the state’s python removal program.

This year’s Python Challenge takes place July 10-19.

Subscribe now

I’ve been hesitant to publish about getting vitamin B6 toxicity since it’s a joyless topic and kind of embarrassing. I’m also still healing, so this is not focused and there are typos.

But I do want to get this out of the way so I can go back to complaining about PMS and my son’s musical selections. Mainly though, I want there to be more information on B6 toxicity online.

My friend Marco said I needed a content warning for this, so here it is. CW: miserable neurological symptoms

Subscribe now

I’m not someone who takes a lot of supplements, but several years ago, I took a daily multivitamin for women over 40 for about six months. That summer I got vertigo.

Then in February 2025, walking pneumonia was a bit of a plague at my son’s elementary school. It hit me when I was on vacation in Miami. I felt run down for a month, so I (cluelessly) started taking the same multivitamin. That summer I got vertigo again. It was just the beginning of my symptoms.

Now, a year and a half later, I’m three months into healing from being poisoned by the synthetic vitamin B6 that was in that stupid over-the-counter, run-of-the-mill multivitamin. Because, in excess, vitamin B6 is apparently a neurotoxin, which means it can attack, damage, and destroy your nervous system.

The limited medical research on this topic is focused on people who took megadoses, like 100 or 50 mg a day, but it can happen to people like me who took low doses for longer. There was only 4 mg in the Mega Food prenatal vitamin I took while pregnant and nursing and the Mega Food 40+ woman’s multivitamin I took that made me really toxic.

And while that’s a pretty low dose, it’s still 307% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for a woman my age. Most people just pee the excess B6 out, but one Dutch study shows that some otherwise healthy people continue to accumulate B6 in supplement form in their bodies. It then gets stored in their blood, muscles, and nerves. I guess that’s me.

After the vertigo, the shit really started to hit the fan when I got COVID in October. I took my mother’s suggestion to try Emergen-C — a bit of a misnomer since it includes 10 mg of B6. Along with the COVID, it caused neurological symptoms to pop off. We’re talking tingling, shooting pains, aches, weakness in my hands and muscles, vertigo again, and even hot flashes.

My health improved over several months only because my doctor encouraged me to work out, which I now know detoxified some of the excess B6. I still thought something was seriously wrong, that it wasn’t “just” anxiety — and guess what? I was right!

In late February, I didn’t drink enough water and instead drank a decent amount of champagne. Then I got a pain in my right toe, then in my left finger, then lancinating or stabbing pin-prick pains around my body. A first round of blood tests showed no issues. But then I felt like ants were running around in my mouth and the stabbing moved to my sinuses and eyelids and I got a twitch. So I went in for more blood work.

A couple days later, on Easter, I opened MyChart and saw my B6 levels were twice the top end of normal. I quickly Googled and saw this was probably causing my symptoms. I also cross-referenced the symptoms with the times I bought the vitamin from Whole Foods, and they lined up — starting with the prenatal vitamin and what I thought were pregnancy symptoms.

There’s no treatment for B6 toxicity. You just have to stop taking the supplement, let it first work its way out of your blood, muscles, and then nerves. And if you got nerve damage, it’s a painful, uneven process for them to grow back. Some people never fully heal. To make matters worse, most doctors have never heard of it, so people don’t get diagnosed. But awareness is growing. Even NBC reported on it.

In the first weeks of healing, I entered a state of withdrawal, as if from an actual fun drug. The comedown was awful. Waking up shivering, trembling, gasping for air as the adrenaline surged worse at night. There was nausea in the mornings. My blood levels went back to a normal quickly, but the muscle detox was maybe worse. I guess my nerves are healing now. Who knows? It’s more complicated since they don’t release the B6 evenly or heal in a predictable way. It’s kind of a guessing game.

My aggravated nervous system has to find its balance again, like a pendulum that swings back and forth. I have some OK days and some not OK days until it hopefully gets back to center. I had to change my B6-rich diet — no chicken, steak, chickpeas, potatoes or salmon — and drink a ton of salty water, topping it off with some warm blue Pedialyte before bed. Delightful.

If caught early, the damage may be fully reversed, but if not, it’s progressive and permanent — symptoms can include neuropathy with nerve pain and numbness, shooting pains, phantom sensations, muscle wasting, ataxia, severe chemical anxiety, dizziness, limbs that just fall asleep, internal tremors, histamine issues, and so much more. It produces similar symptoms to MS or ALS.

I’ve learned that other countries are working to prevent B6 toxicity. Australia has a mandatory warning on supplements containing more than 10 mg of B6. The UK requires a prescription for 50 mg or more per day. In 2018, the Dutch government made 21 mg of B6 the maximum daily dose in supplements.

What about the U.S., you ask? Where does this country play into a supplement industry worth $203.42 billion worldwide? Supplements in the U.S. are largely unregulated. In fact, companies often put in a higher amount of the vitamin than is listed on the bottles. And, I didn’t know this either, you can also accidentally poison yourself with a few other vitamins taken as supplements, like A, D, E, K, B3, and B9.

While my doctor, gyno, and urgent care doctors had never heard of B6T, thankfully, the neurologist had. Her guestimate was that I should be better in maybe around six months. We’re still checking to see if this was caused by something else. But I finally had a couple weeks with decent sleep and four days where I feel almost normal. The nerve pain comes and goes. I don’t know what tomorrow holds.

Right now, I’m mad at myself, at the wellness industry, with capitalism that allows this industry to remain unregulated, and with medicine for neglecting women’s health (many of the women who have this got it from prenatal vitamins) and summarily dismissing anecdotal evidence when there are no studies.

The most ironic thing is not that I was made significantly ill by something I took to make me healthier, it’s that the most helpful information I’ve gotten on dealing with this is from social media and AI.

The B6T support groups on Facebook let me know I’m not alone while also scaring the shit out of me with lengthy and miserable recovery stories. The groups were created by people who went through this with zero guidance and generously share their own healing experiences with others.

I turned to Claude after reading almost every medical paper on this I could access and it actually gave me more guidance than the neurologist. Claude doesn’t discount anecdotes or personal stories either. My family will be happy to know that Claude also thinks I’m deranged and begged me to lay off the internet. And on the good days, my newest robot doctor, Claude, gets its way.

The 2026 Super Bowl commercials were not only not funny, but they gave me heart palpitations and gas.

I saw super-celebrities touting various AI, trying to convince us we should hand over our work to the robots; Mike Tyson fat-shaming Americans in an ad paid for by “MAHA”; Elon Musk’s company Starlink — not sure why they needed a commercial; and an add for ICE that romanticized the U.S. gestapo.

These grotesqueries bookended the beauty and pride of Puerto Rican culture as presented by superstar Bad Bunny (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio), his eternally youthful countryman Ricky Martin, and even Lady Gaga. The football field transformed into a Puerto Rican sugarcane field through which Bad Bunny wove his way, interacting with people in brief moments of intimacy and joy — taking and giving a free snow cone, handing a man a ring to propose marriage.

Over the years, we’ve heard many reggaeton crossover songs. “Despacito” was a genuine sensation and “Gasolina” is always on loop in my head. But only with Bad Bunny did a Spanish-singing reggaeton-trap-rap artist cross over so entirely, so passionately, that the mainstream fell head over heels — including gringo actor Jon Hamm who follows him from show to show like a Deadhead, earning the nickname Jon Jamon.

In nine short years since his first hit, Bad Bunny headlined the Super Bowl singing songs solely in his native tongue during a time when federal U.S. agents are literally illegally arresting people who speak with an accent or look Latino — undocumented, documented, and citizens alike — and placing them in concentration camps.

With the Super Bowl show, Bad Bunny did what he does best: showed the beauty of Latin culture with scenes of joy and connection in context. An example was the wedding, which was an actual wedding apparently, complete with a little kid asleep at the raucous reception. Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance last year was a subversive work of art that spotlit Black creativity. Bad Bunny illustrated the value of his culture through those intimate scenes, at the bodega and barber, and through song. Like Lamar, he elevates culture at large while using his platform to showcase his own culture’s existing richness.

Bad Bunny boldly flew flags of American nations and called each out, holding out a football that said “Together, we are America” at one of the most conservative U.S. sporting events. The whole display reminded me of the Miami I used to know, its own amalgamation of Hispanic foods, dances, and styles, but tied together by a shared language, history, and tendency to show up at least an hour late to a party.

He was joined in his celebration by Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, and Jessica Alba. And in a moment that made me cry, he handed a little boy who represented a young Benito — but the internet thought was five-year-old Liam who was recently arrested by ICE — the Grammy he just won for Album of the Year.

The sign behind him read what he spoke at the Grammy’s: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” I would dare to add community to that sentence. Because in community, we recognize and respect the things that make us the same and the things that make us different. In community, we come together to protect ourselves, each other, our stories, and our futures. Being in community is hard, but it’s necessary for us to fulfill the potential of our humanity.

And humanity is what those commercials for AI and the ones with robots drinking vodka tried to minimize and mock. The ICE commercials honored an agency that systematically dehumanizes groups of people so they can enact inhumane treatment upon them. The MAHA commercial aims to squash our wholeness, our confidence, and shame us for being distinctly ourselves. It encourages us to fade away, to be small and sickly, to question the things we know through science and our own experiences.

I am tired. I am tired. I am tired. But tonight, I’m thankful for Benito’s big show. It was a spark that could be used to light a fire so hot it melts ICE. It’s clear from those commercials that they’re scared of our humanity, its power, and our sheer numbers. And even though we may not always feel confident, I think those back-to-back ads to counter Bad Bunny are evidence they, the ones with all the money and power, believe we, the rest of us, can reclaim and rebuild this nation and reimagine these oppressive systems that divide us.

P.S., I really miss the days of live blogging/tweeting. Can we bring that back?

Every evening since October at about 10 p.m. I pop on Outlander to check out of the horrors of the 21st century and bask in those of the 18th century from a safe distance.

The Netflix/Starz historical romance-fantasy premiered in 2014, so I’m about 12 years behind on this show, but in the last 4 months, I’ve watched nearly 91 of the episodes. The final season premieres in March and a prequel, Blood of My Blood, is out now.

The premise is painfully stupid, but the execution is intoxicating. Post-WWII, a British war nurse who is presumably on the spectrum, Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and her husband Frank visit Scotland to learn about his sadistic British soldier ancestor who tortured his way through the Jacobite rebellion.

Claire visits this Stonehenge-type place where she vanishes into the stones and finds herself in the 18th century. She quickly meets the Highlander handsome Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), the most perfect male character ever written. The thing about the show that’s so fun while also being so dumb is that their love for each other is literal magic with the power to create what I’m assuming is a wormhole that drags her through centuries all so that they can bump uglies a lot.

Jamie’s handsome, but oh, how he suffers

I spent most of the first season imagining how cold they must be. They’re out there in literally all weather on horseback in the Scottish Highlands, just breathing steam. Once they’re in North Carolina and Claire is presumably in menopause without a/c, I can’t fathom how hot she is in the summer.

But no one suffers as much as Jamie.

Jamie endures absurd amounts of pain — whipped nearly to death, tortured by Claire’s 20th century husband’s ancestor (played by the same actor, Tobias Menzies), nearly killed in battle, shot, snakebitten, and beaten with the butt of a gun countless times…

The list is LONG, yet, mostly thanks to Claire’s modern medical prowess, he doesn’t die. If that ain’t a reason to love a woman, idk what is.

Now, handsome Jamie looks like a He-Man action figure, but hot, human, and Scottish. He is truly the ideal male romance character: brilliant, kindhearted, ridiculously loving, deranged in his devotion, super strong, fierce AF, and often nude.

Most importantly, he’s mercifully, subtly, and consistently lol funny. Sam Heughan is the kind of skilled actor whose faces are whole dialogues unto themselves. The show would be nothing without them.

The reason I bring up how painful things are for Jamie is because when I started watching, I was going through it with covid. It seemed like it would never end. But watching Jamie suffer and then continue to thrive in his roles as laird, landowner, and badass, it was, idk, a little inspirational. It’s stupid, but so are most things these days.

Revolution then, revolution now

It’s also been a perfect time in history to watch the show.

Jamie and Claire in the colonies gearing up to fight the British again goes down easier than Ken Burns’ snoozer The American Revolution. Outlander seems, from my limited Wiki research, to follow historical events somewhat.

In many ways, people lived then as we do now: with fake news about health dominating the discourse, under the thumb of an oppressive control-hungry racist government, surrounded by simpletons who will believe or do anything for coin or power.

There’s the time when Claire tries to enlighten OG MAHA-types to keep them from getting pregnant or killing themselves with poisonous but commonly taken medicines. In the process, she gets herself kidnapped and just brutalized. Who tries to kill her? A gang of male vigilante ICE-types, armed fake cops looking to loot her home.

History repeats again and again. But there is still hope. And handsome Jamie.

Two sides to every story

At the same time we started Outlander, I rewatched my beloved Poldark, a British 18th century romance based on a book series on Netflix. If you’re on the fence about watching, know that Ross Poldark is no less handsome than Jamie.

While Outlander is full of horny scenes not fit for children, I let my 9-year-old watch some Poldark, and he grew to really enjoy it. Both shows touch upon the Jacobite rebellion and the American Revolution, but from opposite sides of the aisle or battleground or whatever.

Ross Poldark is a gorgeous, principled adventurer who fights for the Brits during the Revolutionary War. He returns to Cornwall to find his sweetheart Elizabeth engaged to his cousin. He eventually marries commoner Demelza who is also gorgeous. It’s a polished BBC production with a more romanticized version of the 18th century but the same amount of drama.

The bonds of war are highlighted in both and liberation is at their core. While Outlander is more about freeing Scotts and the Colonies from the chains of occupying England, Poldark is focused on Ross’s determination to liberate impoverished Britains from systemic poverty. It all also feels oddly relevant.

Jamie and Lord John, a bromance for the ages

The most powerful relationship in Outlander, if you ask me, is between Lord John Grey and Jamie.

I don’t want to get too deep, but basically, Jamie “saves” John’s life when he’s a teenager (i.e. doesn’t kill him), and later John continues to constantly save Jamie’s ass. An ass he’s hungry for, btw. And we get it, dude.

The latent homosexuality is palpable. In the case of Jamie, I think it’s bisexuality. And not because men can’t admire male friends without being horny for them. And not of what happened with his captor John Randall. And not because he offered John dat ass for caring for his illegitimate son. It’s those looks!

When John and Jamie decide to end communications because of the war, I was screaming at the TV: SMOOCH HIM, JAMIE! ONE SMOOCH. Like not even a hug even?

I still hope for a Heated Rivalry ending for Jamie and John. I also want to very much recommend the gay hockey smash hit to all adults. Check out Samantha Irby’s brilliant Substack on the show.

Another thing that I can’t stop thinking about

So, a few months ago, I finally finished the Pulitzer Prize-winning Larry McMurtry Western epic Lonesome Dove (which inspired the famed miniseries you may have watched with your grandmother). I always thought it was a romance, so I was seriously confused when I cracked it open and the only woman you meet for like four hundred pages is the town of Lonesome Dove’s stunning whore, poor Laurie. But it’s such fast-paced sweeping saga that even with limited to no romance, all the mamas hitting menopause in 1989 loved it.

My biggest issue with the book was that the bazillion characters somehow traverse the entirety of the country and yet continue to, again and again, run into each other. From Texas to Montana to Arkansas, they run into former lovers and know the name of every outlaw.

The book is a favorite of my mother and brother, so I called the latter to complain about how in this vast landscape these same people remain in near constant contact. We have airplanes and I don’t see my friends this often.

Besides suspension of disbelief, he pointed out that the country was small and these people were traveling to the same few towns on well worn trails. But for a ton of the book, they’re just following the sun, no towns in sight! Granted, their tracking skills are off the chain. They’re like human bloodhounds. That can’t be real, can it? I have a good sense of direction and I still need GPS to get across town.

Anyway, early on in Outlander, Claire and Jamie’s godfather the wonderful Murdaugh (Claire and Murdaugh have a warm friendship like Jamie and John but with zero sexual tension) have to spend months trying to find Jamie who was in hiding in the Highlands. And, like you’d imagine in a time with no cellphones, it takes them for fucking ever!

But then the show changes and suddenly Jamie and Claire are traveling a lot and seeing the same goddamn people over and over. We’re talking from Scotland to Jamaica to North Carolina, and they address the absurdity by saying it’s a result of Claire coming through the stones and the magic it brings. I guess that’s at least some explanation.

By season 8 of Outlander, while they’re living in the Colonies, it does make sense that they might just see the same folks often. There were so few Europeans living in the area at the time. It almost made the many rendezvous in Lonesome Dove seem more feasible.

And despite my complaints, I am pleased every time they run into Lord John and Jamie gets that look in his eye.

Gramps is — at least for another week before it closes forever on Jan. 4 — still the best bar in Wynwood and one of the greatest creative spaces the Magic City has ever known. It’s been a cultural refuge, safe stage, and home base. It’s been precious.

I recently called it “distilled Florida,” and I meant that as the greatest compliment. It harnesses the wildness, innovation, and fragile beauty of a complicated place. And just like Florida, it’s a place I always feel at home.

Being part of a creative community in Miami with friends in the early part of the 21st century was such a ridiculously special time in my life. I cherish it. And I feel like Gramps was in many ways the zenith of that time.

Yes, we had Churchill’s Pub and other beloved venues, but with Gramps, owner Adam Gersten started from scratch and allowed his friends to give what we had to offer — our humor, our bands, our plays, our movie nights, every silly idea that came into our heads. All under his careful curatorial control.

I visited Gramps when it was just an empty warehouse, wrote the first article on it, threw joyful parties and made some questionable decisions there that still haunt me. So, I was thrilled when Oly Vargas, Gramps’ venue director and creator of Let’s Sang, asked me to fly to Miami to present a history of the bar during its final Nerd Nite event.

Here’s my presentation. If you want to, please share it with friends who also love Gramps!

And don’t despair, there’s still the delightful Gramps Getaway on the Rickenbacker Causeway where Let’s Sang, karaoke for music nerds, lives on the last Tuesday of each month.

This year, buying stuff for holiday gifts is definitely not the trend. I know we’ve all been talking about gifting “experiences” for a while, but this is really that moment. Everything is overpriced and, speaking for myself, I overdid buying things during covid 2020-21 when I had more disposable income and was deep in retail therapy.

I’m also trying to boycott the shithead companies that only benefit billionaires and (as always) spend my time and money locally and thoughtfully. And that’s what this holiday season is about, buying with intention and thinking about ways to laugh more and find joy.

Here’s a little list of gifts that I think lean into the ethos of 2025.

For anyone and everyone

• I’ve mentioned before that every year I get my son an animal from World Wildlife Fund. You get a stuffed animal and a certificate and your money supports the creature in the wild. I love to get this for young kids who can pick out an animal but before they can reject a stuffy.

  This year, my son is getting the sea pigs, a tiny hideous creature that lives in the darkest depths of the ocean floor. A couple of years ago, I convinced him that we should help the ugliest animals since the cute ones don’t need as much love. The message stuck: a holiday miracle.

• Save some money and the planet. Check out Bonnee, an app where you can swap clothing for free. This is the future of fashion — it’s sustainable, wallet-conscious, and you can definitely tap into Gen Z fashions. You can snag yourself some new duds, but I think it’s also really cool to gift secondhand right now.

• Heifer International is one of my favorite organizations. It supports food systems around the world by supplying farmers with things like livestock. Here’s how you can give the gift of clean water, honeybees, solar kits, goats, or even send a girl to school who wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

  

• Heirloom Art is, I think based in Utah, and I don’t know their politics, but they have such precious (specifically) Christmas items that I usually order a thing or two from them.

• I know I sound like a broken record, but buy people museum memberships or get them gifts from your favorite museum stores, in person or online.

A thing to give kids that you might not want to

• I think the Switch 2 is the big gift this year. It’s a stupid purchase, if you ask me, since it’s not that much different from the Switch 1, but if you already have a Switch, you can trade it in for a reduced price at GameStop.

Overpriced but worth the splurge

• I bought these Top Drawer slippers when they were nearly half what they cost now, and they are the best slippers I’ve ever owned. I usually hate putting warm or slippery slippers on my feet — I grew up barefoot in Miami. But these provide the perfect level of warmth and traction. They’re a perfect slipper.

  

• Buck Mason makes the best T-shirts for any gender. Hands down. Worth every penny. In fact, everything they sell is great.

• I’m going to spend extra on the few toys or games I do buy my kid by shopping at our local toy store. In DC, it’s Child’s Play.

• For my son’s recent birthday, friends and family leaned into sports tickets and little adventures as gifts. If it’s pricey to get tickets to professional sports teams, get nosebleeds or look at college sports or women’s teams who are undervalued and deserve attention. This really is a joyful present, even for people like me who are not sporty.

For those who like sparkly things

I still encourage you to buy Aiden Jae jewelry, which is sustainable, gorgeous, and gives back to organizations that help bees and other wildlife. Natural beauty is represented in all of the designs. You can still buy gold, but cheaper, because they offer lower karat options.

It’s woman-owned by my lovely friend Randi who has decades of experience working in the jewelry business. It’s delicate, stackable, wearable daily, and I personally love all my Aiden Jae jewelry.

Also suggest anything that sticks it to the Man

• I think a bold choice are these F&CK ICE earrings from Fashion Brand Company.

• Baking something at home, like cookies may not directly stick it to anyone, but it’s soulfully nourishing. This is the best chocolate chip recipe in the world. Just make sure you “cure” the dough for a day or two before baking.

  I finally can access the New York Times’ Cooking recipes thanks to a family subscription with my dad, so I’m going to try a few out and I’ll let you know which are the best.

• A subscription to your local news outlet or PBS or NPR station is the best gift ever, IMO. Spread the joy of factual information.

• You could also buy a loved one a subscription to this little publication or another Substack that’s aligned with their interests.

Hope you have a joyful and liberated holiday season!!

I got behind on everything this past month because I caught an unpleasant case of covid. I hadn’t had it this severely before and this round has a long, wagging tail.

In fact, it seems to have worsened some of my perimenopause symptoms that I had mostly under control thanks to hormone replacement treatment (HRT)/menopause hormone therapy that I started last year. Given the circumstances, I’ve been down some unfortunate Google rabbit holes. Did you know that lingering covid symptoms and peri symptoms are often similar? Ah, to be a middle aged woman in the end times! It ain’t easy, and so I thank Goddess for helpful hormones.

And just this week, there was big HRT news. The FDA removed the black box warning from HRT products, but in the process, continued to share misinformation about women’s health (more on that at the link below). Hopefully, this convinces more doctors to prescribe this essential health care.

The Vajenda

Reaction to the FDA Announcement on MHT

I watched the FDA announcement about removing the black box warning on estrogen…and it turns out it was not just on vaginal estrogen, but on all estrogen. In addition, both RFK Jr, and Dr. Makary spewed misinformation about menopause and menopause hormone therapy. I covered it all in the live. I also suggested resources and answered some questions. I h…

Listen now

10 months ago · 443 likes · 21 comments · Dr. Jen Gunter

Recently a family member told me that after telling her doctor about her peri symptoms he wouldn’t prescribe HRT, but suggested that she get an unnecessary hysterectomy. The man literally thought removing a part of her body was better than hormone therapy. I’d like to say “because men” here, but the truth is most doctors are just misinformed after decades of misinformation on HRT.

So, if you have an asshole doctor, and I’m betting you do, there are alternative options these days, like Winona, Midi Health, and Alloy, which allow people to access HRT or other non-hormonal treatments through virtual doctor visits. When it comes to perimenopause or menopause, since there’s no definitive test, it’s all about treating the symptoms.

Earlier this year, I pitched The New York Times an article about how out-of-date websites and AI drivel keep us from easily finding helpful HRT information online, so people are turning to TikTok and Reddit and doctor influencers. They ignored me, but recently published this article, “The Perimenopause Whisper Network.” This quote from the article was the gist of my pitch: “I find out more from the comments section on Instagram accounts or conversations with my friends than I do at a doctor’s appointment.”

When I started HRT, there was an adjustment period, and I found myself searching TikTok, especially, for clues on what to do if my patch falls off or whether estrogen dominance was really a thing or different progesterone delivery methods. It’s not information that’s passed down from mother to child nor has it been studied well. For most, it skipped a whole generation of people, so we’re relying on the internet for help.

I appreciate a mix of my informed doctor, doctor and non-doctor peri influencers, and convos with the moms at my son’s basketball games. I know the influencers are pushing their own supplements for personal gain, but they do have a lot of helpful and reassuring information.

The moment you’ve been waiting for: Does the HRT really help?

While HRT has helped alleviate my misery-making symptoms immensely it doesn’t get rid of all of them. As nature intended, my ovaries are lower functioning than they were a year ago, and I think I may need to adjust my dose. My night wakings, skin tingling, random and soul-crushing anxiety, heart palpitations, and rage are a little more frequent than they were three months ago. (S/O to one of the weirder ones that HRT did alleviate like severe anxiety driving long distances on the highway.) I’m starting to realize how important eating healthier, moving more, and reducing stress (lol) is to maintaining my well-being.

One thing I’ve learned is that my body cannot manage stress the way it used to without greater consequences. That stress isn’t just from working out too hard or job interviews or a screaming child, it’s also caused by little things, like how much caffeine I drink or bright lights. I — a long-time emotionally delicate, but resilient flower — have become a desiccated house plant in need of a lot of extra sunlight, fluids, and care. It’s a lot of work, and I’m already tired.

My friend summed the unease of the moment recently in a text (I’m paraphrasing): I want to come out on the other side of this, but before I look too old to enjoy it. In my 46th year, I finally am accepting that that may not be my situation. I do wish I could see this time of life as one of liberation or approach it gracefully, and if that happens, I’ll let you know how I got there.

Cut through the crap: some helpful resources

The National Health Service (NHS): From what I gather, HRT is commonly prescribed in the UK. The NHS has much better and more up-to-date information on perimenopause online. I also joined a Facebook group with hundreds of thousands of people in it, many from the UK, and it’s helpful to hear what their doctors say.

Dr. Jen Gunter with the Vagenda: Dr. Gunter is brilliant and worth following on Instagram. She is a true wealth of information and the real deal. My one sticking point is — as good doctors should — she dismisses anecdotal information quickly even though there just aren’t enough studies to dismiss all anecdotal evidence IMO. But what do I know? She consistently calls out and fact checks social media doctors who are hustling menopause supplements instead of sticking to science.

The Vajenda

The Menopause Gold Rush

Thank you everyone for tuning into my live video and welcome to everyone who is seeing it now…

Listen now

a year ago · 189 likes · 4 comments · Dr. Jen Gunter

Gloria: Gloria is actually great for everything midlife, from fashion to relationships.

Gillian Goddard is an endocrinologist and also very doctorly. She addresses issues others don’t, like common comorbidities and how to medicate with hormones. Her latest on taking creatine is a good read. A new study actually says it might help ya feel better.

Healthline and The 19th both have new menopause newsletters.

Let’s chat about our experiences and swap notes!

I know we need to protect our peace and joy right now, but I also know that any peace we have now is going to be short-lived if something doesn’t change soon.

From Trump posting racist deepfake AI videos and rambling about “two n-words” that “you can’t use” to the administration using federal websites and threats to workers to spread propaganda about the shutdown, this week was packed with some of the most deeply upsetting news since Covid was declared a pandemic.

We are f*cked, yes, but let’s talk about the spark of hope that burns softly on the lips of Democrats from shore to shore: The midterm elections.

I, like everyone in the world, have questions like: Will we even have midterm elections? Will they be fair?

So, here’s my answer: We no longer live in a democracy. Our elections will likely not be fair.

We’ll be able to vote, sure. Even Putin holds elections. And like Russian elections, ours will be manipulated in a variety of ways.

So what do we do? Just throw ourselves into traffic? Not yet, friends. Not yet.

Yes, those in power will probably declare a fake emergency, sending military out to scare and harass, just like they’ve done in L.A. and D.C., and will soon do in Memphis, Chicago, and “war ravaged” Portland.

But I think there’s (a lot of things, but specifically) something easy we can do to prepare for all the bullshit they’re already starting to pull.

We can help people make sure they’re still registered to vote both before the upcoming gubernatorial, state legislative, and local races in November 2025 and before the midterms next November.

These people will be disenfranchising voters in new and creative ways — I’ve outlined some below. It’s an all-out assault on voters’ rights. For instance, my cousin had to continuously prove residency in Texas to vote in the last presidential election. People are being erased from voter rolls in places like Texas and Virginia for things like having a Hispanic name. For Christ’s sake, citizens are being kidnapped and jailed for looking Latino and the Supreme Court is letting it happen. We live in a dystopian hellscape.

But I digress. Helping people make sure they can vote and that their ballot was received is simple and can at least provide some semblance of hope.

1. You can show folks how to check to make sure they’re registered in areas where there are election this November and again next year across the country.

2. Help them prepare to have their IDs or other paperwork at the polls, if necessary.

3. Help get them a ride to the polls or access to mail-in ballots.

4. Importantly, you can show them how to check to see that their ballot was received.

It’s all state-by-state, but here’s a tool you can use. If you want help finding volunteer opportunities, hit me up!

We’re in such a shitty spot. And I think the appropriate feeling of watching a civilization in its demise is hopelessness. But I’m still looking toward those who offer hope. I think working to protect voters’ rights is a way that we can easily and bipartisanially (not a word), take action to be a light for others.

If this seems boring, I get it! There’s plenty more to do that’s “exciting” right now.

I love protesting. I love it. (No Kings march is on Oct. 18!) But you can do other things that are more covert like make stickers and signs with your own messages, you can roll solo and write letters for candidates, you can post true news on social media, you can talk to friends and family. We just have to do what we can, and we cannot go silent.

@liztracy170These are scenes from #washingtondc today. This is about liberating DC from an unlawful occupation, giving it statehood, protecting neighbors from deportation and imprisonment, as well as speaking up for all of our freedoms. It’s past time to do what we can to protect democracy before it’s all gone. #freedc #endtheoccupationdc

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

Last election, I made calls for the dems, and it was really tough because on those calls, I could tell Trump was going to win. I don’t think I can do that again.

Now to wrap this up, here are some ways the elections will be rigged, so that we’re aware of what we’re up against:

1. The toxicity of social media and AI has hit new heights. We know this manipulation of “truth” can impact elections. We saw it in 2016 when Meta allowed fake news from Russian bots to flourish and spread.

2. Back to a fake emergency. They’re planning on coming after all of us Americans as enemies within, as mentioned in this week’s “Department of War” event. They’ll probably bring out troops to the polls to intimidate voters.

   

3. They may send militias, not just the military, to the polls to harass voters.

4. They already have experience going after poll workers and targeting recounts.

5. The redistricting/gerrymandering is underway. This is essentially, IMO, an act of war started in Texas. Thankfully, Newsom and other governors are taking this threat seriously.

6. The DOJ is weeding out voters from 19 states.

7. They will dispute and challenge states’ certifications.

8. He’s spreading conspiracy theories about voting machines.

9. He’s trying to “purge” feds who aren’t loyal to him and using federal governmental platforms for partisan fake news.

   

10. Big money sways elections. He may or may not have Elon’s money this time, but the propaganda is already spreading and poisoning minds. Last night, I saw an anti-Spanberger ad during late night TV. She’s running for governor in Virginia. The ad was VILE and perverted. I was horrified by the way they discussed, not her exactly, but trans people. What the f*ck is wrong with everyone? I’m still mad about it and that they show these ads on YouTube when my son is watching. He knows how to skip them.

11. You know who went after ActBlue, the democrats’ fundraising platform.

If you don’t want to do anything with your body, you can do something with your wallets — that includes boycotting and donating.

We truly are in this together.

Get in touch if you want help finding a local volunteer opportunity!

With no more And Just Like That plot lines or necklines to contemplate (or defend), and so much time until the next seasons of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, and White Lotus, here are some TV shows that I loved, enjoyed, and meh-ed.

Shows I loved

Somebody Somewhere: Somebody Somewhere takes normal people and their normal people problems in a normal place and elevates all of it to art.

This masterpiece shows the transformative possibilities of middle age. Sure you feel rudderless and like you’re shapeshifting, but there’s more life ahead, and some of it will be filled with quiet beauty. Somebody Somewhere shows how that works. It’ll break your heart and then you’ll laugh until you wet yourself.

Based loosely on the life of series’ star and writer Bridget Everett, I cannot overstate her brilliance. As Sam, she moves back to Manhattan, Kansas, to take care of her sister who dies of cancer and gets stuck there. But something amazing happens, she finds wonderful friends, and a true best friend in Joel, Jeff Hiller, who deserved and won the Emmy for his role.

Skip to the two minute mark for his speech. The reactions of the other nominees are just as life-affirming as this show. Watch it straight through to the end.

Pee-wee as Himself: Christmas 2019, I bought four tickets to see Paul Reubens tour with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. And then of course in March 2020, Covid settled its nasty virus breath all over the earth. I was glad at least that my money went to support Paul Reubens, a man who made our lives happier, funnier, and weirder.

Growing up, I understood that Pee-wee’s Playhouse was the coolest thing ever. After the show was off the air, my mom got us a beat-up Pee-wee’s Playhouse playhouse toy at a garage sale. And even though I was older and it didn’t have the figurines, it was a treasure.

This two-part documentary with Paul Reubens (shot shortly before his death) is just as much a treasure as that Playhouse. Subtle and hilarious, you see how he sacrificed his personhood and friendships for success. It’s undoubtedly a tragic tale. But there’s so much about his ambition that is as inspiring as his creative genius. He brought performance art to pop culture in a way that was so delightfully conceptual and entertaining (a hard combo to achieve). He deserves so much more than this documentary, but still, it’s a wonderful tribute to a truly special human.

KPop Demon Hunters: I put this on with my eight-year-old, and by the end, we were rewinding to memorize the songs. Every single one: a banger. And the story and characters are so perfectly packed with nuance and complexity. It’s a work of comic genius. I immediately said, “I know what I’m going to be for Halloween,” but then everyone else in my feed got the same idea, so my Rumi costume is going to have to wait. My child though may take on a Saja Boy.

The Decameron: Easily one of my favorite shows, The Decameron is based on an actual book of short stories written in the 14th century about a group of people sheltering-in-place outside Florence from the Black Death. Sounds hilarious, right?

But it is beyond funny — and sad and lovely. The character development is superb. You fall in love with this flawed cast who are mostly fated to meet an untimely demise. Also, Amar Chadha-Patel is just such a great actor, and a hunk! I first was like “I love this guy” in the Disney+ series Willow, which I also thought was awesome with the most amazingly crafted jokes that managed to be funny but also, idk, woke? Sadly, Willow wasn’t renewed and The Decameron is a mini-series.

Mo: Comedian Mo Amer’s series is wonderful storytelling. He stars as Mo, an undocumented Palestinian in Houston who consistently lives in a trauma spiral of bad decision-making. But he’s delightfully messy and hilarious.

This show is so important right now. Filmed before the current ICE situation got real, real bad, it shows how bad ICE already was! It goes deep to show the under-appreciated experience of displaced Palestinians, many of whom, like Mo, are nation-less. It also shows what life is like in the West Bank (and pre-siege Gaza) for a people who cannot claim their own land or history and are at constant threat of harm or death. While cruelty is on full display, the show is still a comedy, and the culture will be familiar to those of us with Arab relatives. Mo was canceled after season 2.

Only Murders in the Building: I don’t have to go hard on this one. It’s the fucking best. Steve Martin and Martin Short are two of my favorite people I’ve never met. I lie! I interviewed Steve Martin once and he was the kindest person ever. Just popped on the newest season last night.

Moving On: Netflix recently released this movie with earth goddesses Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. It’s no Grace and Frankie, but it’s a sweet, funny, and sometimes sad depiction of a friendship wrapped in a story of revenge. There’s so much that’s powerful about older women in their full humaness on screens — and these two always bring it.

The Great British Baking Show remains the best show ever. It’s on now. Don’t miss it.

Shows I enjoyed enough

The Gilded Age: This could go under the shows I loved category because I stayed up past 1 a.m. night after night to binge it. I am pretty attached to the characters, but I was also so happy when I was done bingeing it.

This is the American answer to Downton Abbey made by the same guy, Julian Fellowes. It’s packed with stellar acting. There’s so many funny one-liners delivered by Christine Baranski as hard-hearted Aunt Agnes, beautifully touching moments with Cynthia Nixon as soft-hearted Aunt Ada, and scenes that’ll have you fuming at Carrie Coon as social climber Bertha Russell. Truly did not know Nixon’s range until this. I can wait to watch season 4.

Black Doves: In this murder thriller spy show, Kiera Knightley plays some kind of superhuman (not actually) spy who portrays a perfect wife, married to a guy who’s nice and good at politics and has kids who she actually loves. She also has a lover who gets himself murdered. And despite having kids she loves, she still puts everything on the line to figure out who done it. The plot is full of holes and nonsense, but it’s amusing and entertaining enough. I’ll watch season 2.

Dept. Q: This is a British detective series on Netflix in which wet towel Detective Carl Morck (Matthew Goode — Henry Talbot from Downton Abbey) gets shot, survives, and is then assigned cold cases. His total lack of likability is kind of a problem for this show, otherwise, I’d maybe have loved it.

His looks only get him so far. They should have amped up the character’s charm a tiny bit! Anyway, his delightful colleagues in the new cold case department more than make up for what he lacks. I’m looking forward to season 2.

The Four Seasons: This mini-series is a remake of an old Alan Alda movie that you’ll want to binge. The cast is incredible as is the wardrobe of Danny (Colman Domingo) and his hunky, sweet-hearted husband Claude (Marco Calvani). I enjoyed this in every way, it just wasn’t my favorite.

Shrinking: Shrinking makes me LOL. The characters are all people I’d like as my friends, but the plot sometimes goes nowhere. However Derek (Ted McGinley) is one of my favorite characters on TV. He’s the happy, rich man I aspire to be. He needs a spin-off.

Shows I watched

Hunting Wives: Despite the decent cast, I kind of hate-watched this show. I can’t get into the plot here because of spoilers, but it’s about a woman who moves with her family from Boston to rural Texas and meets a gun-loving crew of moms and lipstick lesbians. Everyone in this show is the worst, and the main character Sophie O’Neil is truly the stupidest b!tch on TV. Her motivation is perplexing and infuriating. Like (I don’t want to ruin it) but she must not give much of a shit about her kid or husband, or even herself, if she goes and does all the stuff she does.

And I don’t know how they managed it, but they created the most unsexy lesbian sex scenes in the history of television. And not for lack of trying! This show is basically trash, but you may really enjoy it. I want to say I won’t watch season 2, but I am fan of trash TV and will likely tune in.

In HBO’s The Gilded Age, Marian Brook is a principled, independent young women who moves from Pennsylvania to high-society Manhattan to live with her two aunts in the late 19th century. She’s confronted by a whole new complicated and distasteful classist society where, in the scramble for power and social capital, the women do a lot of entertaining and networking through manipulation and striving.

Unlike Ms. Brook, I was a party girl in a party town who moved to a new city and into a quieter life. Now a middle-aged parent in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., many of my conversations here make me feel like a social pauper.

Just like Gilded Age characters’ literal fortunes were quickly lost with little or no hope of rebuilding, I have felt the acute sting of losing my social fortune in these past nine years since leaving Miami. For a long time, trips home would be the only time anyone recognized me joyfully on the street. In this newer environment, I’ve been ignored, overlooked, and talked down to in ways that I didn’t expect. It’s not all bad, but it’s been a change.

I wish I could say I don’t care, but I do. Also, I need a job, which in a place like this is contingent upon some sort of influence or connections. Unlike nouveau riche Mrs. Russell in The Gilded Age, whose life’s desire is social dominance, I just find the task of trying to build up clout at this time of life in this place as uninteresting and uninspiring as it is challenging.

As a kid, I was an outgoing, weird little girl who always had a “popular” best friend, so I benefited from that proximity to power. While I was bullied off and on, these friendships offered me some protection. And my commitment to myself, I think, inspired a bit of fear. Never interested in joining the popular crowd, I harshly judged them for either compromising their authenticity or living outside of their comfort zones to impress. I couldn’t have done it even if I’d tried.

I’ve always had my own sort of curatorial instinct which kept me afloat socially and led me to a community and pathway of influence as a younger adult. Covering Miami’s arts community for local and some national media outlets allowed me to leverage cleverness for what ultimately resulted in some respect (and a whole lot of internet hate).

I built then coasted on cultural capital alongside people who were also invested in pretty specific musical, artistic, and counter-culture interests and touchstones. Sometimes there’d be someone who had both the pull and the resources to create a larger movement that provided people with a platform or space for creativity. At one point, I worked with my talented friends Alesh Houdek and John Spain on an website for creatives called The Heat Lighting. The goal was to give artist-types a place to publish things they weren’t publishing elsewhere. I’m no expert, but this kind of structural social capital can engender relational and establish cognitive social capital — or at least that’s what I gather from what I read here.

I haven’t seen a way in which I can or want to build something like that in my new environment. My kind of cultural capital has little value here. Tired parents don’t want to have the kinds of discussions that make me more interesting. Youth and beauty have waved me goodbye, and the value of tastemaking generally has waned with the rise of influencers who are the kind of shitty people who steal from actual creatives to market their ideas for a mainstream crowd. Ryan referred to us as the Addams Family. I have to agree that my intensity is antithetical to the subdued energy and subtle striving that the suburbs demand.

I want to zoom back to my time at GW Carver Middle School in Coconut Grove, the first Bahamian neighborhood in South Florida that has been almost totally gentrified (I write for Coconut Grove Spotlight, a wonderful nonprofit outlet). The school is in a lower income neighborhood, but when Miami-Dade County Public Schools made it a pre-International Baccalaureate (IB) language magnet program, they edged out many of the neighborhood kids.

Instead, the international set and middle-schoolers like me, whose parents hustled for their kids, were bused in. At the top of the pecking order were older money Cuban kids who had preppy power while their parents had political power. And in 1992, that was it, just them at the top. But since it was a school dominated by neurodivergence and nerds, everyone else learned how to lean on their own cache: The drama kids drama-ed, the kids with French parents had their cool gridded notebooks, the mean nerds showed off how much more they knew than you, and the Grove kids were tapped into the cultural relevance of the neighborhood. Everyone had their own way to flourish despite the binary hierarchy.

I think in some ways, that environment reinforced my ability to see the diversity of social power. It didn’t just have to be moneyed or politically fortified. And that led me to explore my options. But then exploring my own options led me down a path less followed. That path less followed has nothing but a touch of novelty to add to the suburban conversation. And even then, people don’t know what to do with it.

In the suburbs people sometimes pull their power from wealth, but those who don’t have big money try to establish their footing in other ways: volunteer work, local politics, intensive parenting, or through the PTA. There’s way too much weight given to where people work and even where they went to school. Who cares where you went to college 25 years ago, we’re in the end days! To be fair, I did join the PTA board. What I learned is that I will never willingly match the Election energy of a PTA.

Having a kid who excels at sports or a musical instrument is another way for parents to power up on social capital. This is laid out in Linda Flanagan’s excellent book Take Back the Game: How Money and Mania Are Ruining Kids' Sports–and Why It Matters. She writes about how parents take on their kids’ wins as their own, and I know why they do that. It’s because it’s a sort of social currency in a cultural wasteland that comes from a stroke of luck and doesn’t require you to use your brain, but just your body to drive them everywhere seven days a week.

With the lack of support modern parents experience, they’re either able to build up their own social capital or build up their child’s, so this is their reward. But while you may have some control over your own personality or how you interact with the world, you have almost none over your kids if you are an even halfway decent parent. Using their interests or talents as social capital is a huge burden for them and unpredictable path for the whole social-climbing family.

Two years ago, I spoke with a therapist about my issue not fitting in in the suburbs. She said to try bringing a little more of what I have to offer to the neighborhood. I’ve tried and will continue to try because I want to have fun where I live. I want to feel like I have value in the community where I have a home. And frankly, I want to bring something to the table that people enjoy and want to hire.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

There was a scene in last Thursday’s And Just Like That, that, along with some powerful PMS and the knowledge that Michael Patrick King is ending the show, made me actually cry. Yes, I shed a tear for Carrie.

It was after she (predictably and disappointingly) bones the mutton-and-scotch-loving stereotype downstairs, Duncan Reeves, when his character is allowed a rare moment of sincerity. He delivers his own postcoital “And just like that” line (“I may have missed a deadline…”) but then he does something that hasn’t been done in awhile: He recognizes her worth in her defining but oft forgotten role of writer. And in that tiny, honest space, I felt a real sense of loss for this iconic, flawed, and goofy character and her ridiculous, gorgeous world (fantasy job included) that I’ve felt passionately about since I was 18 years old.

Sex and the City was my generation’s fairy tale — a modern day, amoral Pride and Prejudice — with “happy endings” galore but no like actual happy endings, so it was more relatable. In real life, every rejection, heartbreak, and other miserable relationship encounter was painful and dull. But in the cast of Patricia Field’s revolutionary style, shaped by the signature absurd, corny humor that left room for subtle societal critique, the four friends’ personal and romantic failures and slutty escapades let us feel ours as almost… glamorous.

I came of age at a time before the internet diversified opportunities for coolness. Moving to New York from your less interesting hometown was the goal for anyone with a modicum of sophistication, ambition, or taste. These women were living the dream that we could never, offering us a lifestyle conduit. We too could wear outrageous clothing, sip cosmos, and enjoy the perks of birth control. We could in little ways touch that sparkle.

Before I heard the news that AJLT was ending in a mere two episodes, I had a newsletter written about how the show was hitting its stride with relative social relevancy, humor, and (FINALLY) emotional maturity from Carrie. But then I started rewriting that one after the terrible Aiden breakup episode that had me screaming at the screen.

So, this is my third try in saying: I started to really enjoy AJLT, flaws and all.

In fact, the flaws were just one reason why I fell for it. I kind of loved the scenes where Carrie’s looking for Tums on the phone with Aiden who’s dropping Rogaine on his scalp. The ones where Charlotte gets vertigo and the young gallerist girlies are like “is that a real thing?” Yes, children, it’s a very real thing. And just like that, it may hit you like a ton of swirling bricks at, um, about 43.

Aging is a rude bitch, but it also gives you a break from the histrionics of youth. You might have to contend with adult male diapers, but now you’re not as quick to stress the small stuff. I was relieved when Carrie handled Aiden sleeping with his ex with some grace. And I was thrilled, oddly, that she was chillsies about his ridiculous but sadly not too unrealistic family dynamics.

It felt like Carrie was acting her age. And that age is one we rarely see on screen with such sexiness and complexity.

Truly it was a hard won, slow roll to maturity for her character. But it felt honest this season. I guess that’s why the sudden breakup with Aiden was so flimsy. I loved seeing her grow into her power in this odd way, and I was rooting for her relationship to slowly die down instead of implode in a stupid sidewalk blowup over the dork downstairs.

Setting my disappointment aside has been easier since season three is funny. After long last, Mario Cantone has gotten his due: a lot of airtime and a hot boyfriend. And that scene with the jerk-off Geppetto was the perfect only-in-SATC balance of raunch and camp.

AJLT was also embracing its age and relevancy with hilarious and age-appropriate comedian cameos. There was Tim Bagley, who’s always a hit but was incredible in the stellar HBO show Somebody Somewhere, and other scene stealers like Jenifer Lewis, Rosie O'Donnell, and Patti LuPone. They could have provoked a greater cultural conversation around aging and comedy. With so few cultural critics writing for major publications past a certain age, those moments of opportunity just sort of fade away.

Instead, I saw plenty of articles critiquing the show’s fashion choices. Sure, they leaned heavily on edgy or ridiculous designer looks reflecting the Clinton-era excesses we grew up with, but it was inspiring to see older women embrace being seen. When you’re young, everything looks good on you. That’s why teens can pull off mens sweats and Uggs. But when you’re older, you become invisible, the baggy jeans look stupid. Peacocking is kind of the only way forward. These old girls are living in their skin. Like Seema with her dirty-pawed, emotionally available lover — they let sex and wrinkles marinate comfortably in bed and then own their structured, overpriced looks in the streets.

We finally got some justice for Miranda who was not herself for far too long. I tried to not be a Che hater, but Che was an uncomfortable reminder of the first season’s humorlessness and desperation. I think the show came out at just the wrong time, when everything was so heavy-handed in trying to repair past white lady sins that it sometimes held a pillow of purity over the mouth of comedy. I think this season removed the pillow and let the characters breathe.

SATC was always bringing that over-the-top, absurdist dad humor that lightly poked fun at while embracing the excesses of pale New York at the turn of the millennium. That time has passed, but we still love these characters. The excesses of the current show — particularly Carrie’s absurd, unfurnished Gramercy Park home, Seema’s driver, Charlotte and Lisa’s ultrarich lifestyles — are gross, but also a fantasy flex that give us something shimmery to muse on in the minutes before we fall asleep. It’s like a moving glossy print fashion mag, which have also nearly all gone the way of the dinosaur.

Every day of my life, I miss the power in those magazines.

While I’m not ready to say goodbye to the series, I am grateful that I’ll never have to hear any more lines from Carrie’s tragic foray into fiction. I liked Duncan recognizing her vocation, but hearing all of that unwarranted praise lavished on her writing — which had less complexity than a fourth grader’s essay on their favorite cereal — had me asking out loud “DID I MISS SOMETHING?” A touch of literary pizzaz wouldn’t have killed them.

I guess “the woman” lives. But Carrie and her world will be snuffed. For now. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a third movie about their sexy, stylish, STD-laden retirement home with more than just a few minutes of Samantha, more Anthony boners, and a real last look at the ever glamorous, imperfect writer, Carrie.

Right now, I’m watching my son’s basketball practice. The second graders are in a line and they’re supposed to back-to-back shoot from the free throw line. The drill moves quickly, so they miss almost every shot. Just again and again, the ball bounces off the rim and not into it or it just flies somewhere in the general direction of the basket.

Finally, a kid sinks a shot. They look happy, and it makes me think of all the resumes and cover letters I’ve sent out over the past two years. All the chats with and DMs to strangers at places I’m applying in an effort to get ahead enough to get an interview in what is the worst job market I’ve ever experienced. And I realize that if I got a job right now, I would not feel an inkling of the joy that a child feels making a basket.

As a freelance journalist, I used to pitch editors ideas and get rejected regularly. I felt a sting. But after this much time on the job hunt, being mostly ignored, the sting is gone. It’s probably not a good thing, though it is a bit of a relief.

I used to have a good career as a freelance writer and editor, but now I’m just barely getting by on less consistent and lower-paying contracts. I’ve had to apply for full-time work in spurts when my workload is lower. But it’s almost necessary to take breaks from the rejection for ego reasons. Like I may not feel a sting, but there is a general feeling of worthlessness that persists.

While writing each cover letter, I have to convince myself I love this job, I want this job, because that’s the goddamn point of a cover letter. “And that’s why I want to work with you.” And then you never hear back. It’s such an exhausting manipulation. I’ve had multiple rounds of interviews — trying and sometimes failing to keep up my energy, round after round, speaking with like seven people over a video call. Answering the same stupid questions that require you to “remember a time when” demonstrates nothing about your ability to do a job. And then they don’t even write to tell you they hired someone else. Why would I want to work at a place that treats people so poorly?

Honestly, more than three rounds of interviews is absurd. You can interview someone night and day for weeks and they could still leave a year after you hire them. In fact, if you’re performing exhaustive interviews that go on and on, you probably suck and people won’t want to stay.

I’m actually excited by probably only one in every 10 jobs I’ve applied to, so I get that maybe I am not the right person for those other roles. Full-time work is not always appealing, and honestly I would have liked to just continue to work on steady, decent-paying contracts. AI has played a negative role in shifting the kinds of work that’s out there for writers, the expectations of these roles, the demand for contracted writers, and what they pay — it’s not sustainable anymore.

Changing careers at this point in the game is proving a way bigger challenge than I could have imagined. The market is crazy congested and no one wants to hire me for a role I’ve never done before but could do. New legislation, this big hideous bill, will close down a lot of options for people seeking work, maybe not today, but soon. I was looking at the healthcare industry, but no longer. I might have even continued the contractor hustle at lower pay if I thought Obamacare was safe. It allowed so many like myself to pursue less traditional career structures.

I am very grateful to have been able to do value-aligned work that I enjoy for so long, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. But I have hit every elder millennial/Xennial road bump along the way. When we saw the planes hit the Twin Towers, I was in graduate school for religious studies. It’s almost laughable now, but in 2001, the Clinton economy was still in effect, and there were jobs for people with religion degrees. Needless to say, it took me awhile to get a full-time job once I completed my coursework.

Then in 2008, I was laid off from Miami Children’s Museum because I made a whopping $35,000 as the grant writer, more than much of the staff. It took me 15 months to get another full-time job. I remember I was so worn down at that point that I felt no joy when I was hired at Miami City Ballet. It was not a wonderful gig, and I eventually left to work in journalism, a struggling industry where I was paid very little and less than the men.

The loss of my steady gigs two years ago really was a slow roll back into that sort of shocking liminal space of un- or under-employment. You’re mentally doing the doggy paddle in deep waters, waves of rejection slapping your inbox. Sometimes you just have to take breaks to float on your back and feel the rise and fall of the process. Then back to the hard, thankless work of trying to find work. It’s a struggle to not lose yourself.

But I am not alone. Many other job-seekers are out here doing our little mental gymnastics to get the cover letters in on time and convince ourselves “this is the one!” We’re trying to be strategic about what careers or industries to pursue next despite all of the changes in government spending and AI development that make it impossible to assess. I don’t know much about the future of work in this country, but I do know that whatever I end up doing it will reflect a larger trend for the people in my generation.

This summer, I’m planning to tan again. Not like I tanned as a teenager with olive oil slathered on and no drinking water in sight, but like a middle aged woman should: rarely, moisturized, and hydrated.

In 2021, after spending more than a year indoors, growing more and more sallow, I went to the beach in Miami without sunscreen. It was a terrible decision. And so stupid because after more than a year of wearing masks to protect my health (and the health of others), I likely doubled my chance of having skin cancer because my unprotected flesh got scorched.

I spent the rest of that trip with a painful, feverish second degree sunburn. Before that, I was a tan person with some freckles, after, I became a freckled person who sort of tans. It was the event that aged my skin.

I haven’t tanned properly since because I’m scared of sun damage. But this summer — the summer the U.S. bombed Iran unprovoked, the summer masked ICE agents kidnap and deport people without trials to third countries, the summer democracy was buried in America — I’m just going to let myself get at least one tan with my new dry, freckly skin.

Some of my happiest memories are laying out in the sun, crisping under swaying palm trees next to a body of water. Tanning is a multi-sensory experience: the Vitamin D feels great, but so does the sweat and heat, and I love the smells of a beach or pool day. It’s therapeutic, frankly.

I’ll be honest. I’m also going to tan for the same reasons I wasn’t tanning — superficial ones. The thing that got me to start using sunscreen was signs of aging. It feels sort of silly right now with the future so uncertain to be so cautious. Like, I use a tinted sunscreen to keep me from getting sun, but am adding artificial color back on my face. Every time I apply it, it kind of annoys me.

At the moment, not being able to age with a tan annoys me more. Let me turn into fruit leather if I want!

I know people have complicated feelings about their skin tone. I certainly did as a swarthy child in a mostly pale extended family. I decided to accept myself pretty early on because, then as now, I hated the false white supremacist notion that being fair is the ideal. Whatever your skin tone, it’s a good skin tone. Whether in nature or in culture, there is strength in diversity.

We’re literally on the brink of WWIII, can we not just love ourselves as we are?

I’m not trying to have another epic lockdown sunburn. I won’t go without sunscreen all summer, but I’m frankly tired of planning for the future of my body at this exact moment. I want to spend a summer in it, wearing a bikini, consuming chips and dip, lots of water, magazines, and enjoying my God-given melanin.

I was walking to get my son from school the other day and a neighbor’s babysitter passed by wearing a Pope Francis t-shirt. I thought, “what a cool shirt” — something I never thought I’d think non-ironically.

But here we are.

It’s 2025 and the late Pope Francis, who still believed women shouldn’t even take birth control, is a subversive, liberal pop culture figure for his stance on protecting P@lestinians, his compassion for immigrants, and acceptance of the existence of gay folks. The bar is low. But also Pope Francis did actually model loving compassion and kindness in ways we haven’t seen in most leaders, except like Jimmy Carter.

Now we’ve been granted a new “cool” pope. Pope Leo XIV is from Chicago, had a Haitian grandpa, posted anti-JD Vance tweets, and called for world peace and meant it. Dare I say: hallelujah?

I’m a cultural Catholic, a cafeteria Catholic. I pick and choose what I do with my religion. I’m someone who prays, but to Mary. I pray to saints like St. Anthony when I lose something that I need to find. I am a candle-lighting Catholic. I pray for magical and Santeria purposes.

I believe religion can be used for good. I’m a social justice Catholic. I believe in the creativity and purpose behind liberation theology. I’m a Catholic who, no matter what, knows abortion rights are human rights and everyone should be able to access birth control.

Because I’m this sort of Catholic, I wanted my son to do his first communion. I want him to have a spiritual anchor and familiar tools with which to discuss his faith with himself and the world. I figured this time-honored ritual could ground him in this moment while also acting as a marker in his childhood, something to look back upon with warmth.

So a couple of years ago, I started looking around for a church that didn’t openly advertise the March for Life on its website.

Everything in the suburbs felt too conservative. Then my brother found a church in DC about a half hour away that is very Catholic. They use so much incense you need a mask. There’s an organ, a choir, stained glass windows, and a priest who mows the lawn himself and uses the words “equality” and “justice.” So we signed up.

After months of classes, he just got his first communion. I’m glad he got this right of passage while the Church is under the leadership of someone who seems like a good guy. Yes, I would prefer a woman pope, but I know that climate change’ll get us before that ever happens.

And on the subject of “pope,” I saw something on the internet noting that the only way the Church would pick an American pope is if the U.S.’s political power is in decline. The U.S. can’t have all the power! But now that we’re in a weakened position internationally, they’re handing us one of the last untouched bastions of power for our people: the papacy.

Ever the optimist, I wonder if maybe the decline of the U.S. into dictatorship will be a great global equalizer? Maybe this is some other group of peoples’ time to thrive. Or maybe the whole world goes to shit now. Either way, it’s caused an inherently conservative religion to take on a more progressive leadership, and that’s amazing.

Obama’s presidency brought out the bigots and left us with a horrendous elected leader. But now, I pray, to Mary, St. Jude, every angel, saint, and God(s & esses), that the heartless, cruel, and plain evil displays we’re seeing in this country turn the world toward compassion, empathy, kindness, and peace (so yes, essentially progressive politics). I’m here for that. Let the Catholics lead the way so I can be proud of my faith for once.

As the kids say, LFG.

My drug of choice is British murder mysteries.

Sometimes I watch the same ones over and over and over again (on different days of course) for the purpose of sedating myself. And honestly, I often forget whodunnit before I watch again. I’ve checked my pulse and blood pressure while indulging, and it’s significantly lower than normal.

I watch them on PBS, even though I also have BritBox, because I love someone else making a decision for me. They’re dark, usually funny, they have outrageous characters with British accents that require subtitles. They feature lush gardens and sometimes they’re also period pieces — there’s literally nothing I want more out of television.

As the person in the WH decides to cut funding for public television, which gives me LIFE and educates and informs many other Americans, I’m putting out a semi-comprehensive list of British or British-y murder mysteries to preserve my experience.

Poirot: My late Aunt Nancy used to regularly call at 11 p.m., and we’d chat for an hour about my future and her obsession with Agatha Christie’s Poirot — the David Suchet Poirot of the ‘90s and aughts. She loved Poirot’s insistence that he’s Belgian, not French. Suchet is really the best and only Poirot that meets my standards. Though I love Kenneth Branagh and will enjoy him in any role.

Miss Marple: Obviously Christie series’ are the gateway drug. The Miss Marple shows are a delight (though I prefer one Marple, above, over the others). She’s an old bag but, man is she mentally running circles around the killers and cops. Her cleverness is as aspirational as her backstory is depressing.

Rosemary and Thyme: And in that same vein of older women who are still very mentally spry, there’s Rosemary and Thyme. Both post-menopausal girlies with big personalities, one is recently divorced and the other forever single. They exist in the British countryside where they work as like landscape architect/plant saviors or something. The only thing I hate about this show is that there’s not enough of it!

Side note: Bucolic Britain is a star of many of these shows. I’ve learned that since nearly all the money made in the country is made in London, the government plays up the appeal and fairytale of the British countryside to drive tourism and thus money from within the country to areas where there is less. I feel played by this, but also appreciate the fantasy.

Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries: Another older woman who is solving crimes is the gorgeous Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. While this is Australian, I’m leaving it in. You can cut the sexual tension between Phryne and Detective Inspector John Robinson with a bloody knife. And the show features the truly hilarious Miriam Margolyes (I’m forever working on a post of her show with Alan Cumming, Miriam And Alan: Lost In Scotland, a comedic masterpiece.) They also have a few seasons of Ms. Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries, which features another stunning actress, Geraldine Hakewill, in the role of Phryne’s niece.

Midsomer Murders: Obviously there’s no way to overlook Midsomer Murders, an absolute foundational effort in this genre. Since 1997, Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby — whether Tom or John — delivers on the tongue in cheek humor. I have to say, there’s definitely some latent anti-immigrant energy in the old ones, but I sometimes wonder if/hope it’s ironic? It’s not. Anyway, I now have an all-Midsomer Murders channel and I could commit to it for the rest of my life, maybe.

Death in Paradise: For a show that does poke fun at British colonialism, there’s Death in Paradise. When I was about six, I lived in St. Vincent in the Grenadines and it was heavenly because having the crystal clear Caribbean Ocean a block away from home is unmatched. Death in Paradise offers a different fantasy than bucolic Britain, it’s the guilt-free, post-imperial exotic island fantasy. You still have a Brit in there, but it’s always a too-quirky detective who outwits the murderers with his gorgeous local sidekick. I haven’t watched the spin-offs yet.

Father Brown: Now, the best of the best might be Father Brown. Mark Williams, of Harry Potter fame, is a subtle comedic genius. I want to live with Father Brown in his world and make him scones. Even my son enjoys this show because it is adorable. I thought I watched every season, then realized there’s a ton more with new sidekicks. I miss Bunty, Lady Felicia, and Mrs. McCarthy, but I’m just glad Father Brown remains.

Grantchester: Now Grantchester is the more moody, sensual, and Anglican version of Father Brown with really hot vicars. I mean where do they get these guys? James Norton has gone on to do a ton of other stuff, including Happy Valley, which I just couldn't get into. But he should literally be in everything on television all of the time.

Vera: I also enjoy the shows with less humor and more murder. For instance, Vera is the best show on television ever. Brenda Blethyn is a frumpy genius with daddy issues. Vera episodes are like hours long — it’s absurd — but once you’re watching, that’s it, that’s your night. The stories are complicated and so damn good — and emotional. Five stars.

Broadchurch: If you haven’t watched Broadchurch, please stop what you’re doing and go right now. But don’t let your kids watch Detective Inspector Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) solve the darkest of mysteries. This is an addictive, modern show that will have you by the throat minutes into the first episode.

Shetland: I love Shetland, and I haven't seen every single episode, so it’s always a pleasure to turn on PBS and find they’re airing one I haven’t seen. It takes place in the Shetland Islands which are like in the middle of nowhere in the North Sea between Scotland and Norway. Detective Inspector Jimmy Pérez (Douglas Henshall) has no sense of humor, but damn is this a show with a lot of atmosphere and truly sketchy characters.

Wallander: This is the second time I get to mention Kenneth Branagh in this list. He’s stellar as as a Swedish detective who’s losing his memory to dementia. He still manages to solve some real head-scratchers. This is a show I’ve called my brother on the phone to discuss in depth because it’s so engrossing. I don’t think I’ve seen most of it since Wikipedia says it was on for many years? Now, I’ve gotta investigate.

Lewis and Endeavor: So, Lewis is the main show, it’s got Midsomer Murders long-standing energy but with a lot less humor. It takes place in Oxford, which is real scene-stealer! Endeavor is the prequel and so damn serious. But worth watching if it’s on.

I wish I could do more research on these and keep adding to the list! I just saw an older version of Father Brown and a different Wallander. But that’s all I have time for today and this is the only way I can support PBS.

(I obviously also suggest watching Only Murders in the Building which is a dream show for an American British mystery show obsessive like me.)

You wouldn't know it to talk to me, but I was in a French magnet program. I took many years of French. At the time, I was scared to speak it and, frankly, I just thought I was “bad at languages.” Then, when I graduated high school, it suddenly clicked. I had a level of fluency that was minimal, but adequate. The brain works in mysterious ways.

But the best thing I got out of French class wasn’t my ability to kill it in 1st grade French on Duolingo 27 years later, but a love of international film during my teenage years that deepened my humanity and understanding of history.

As a way to process their experiences, Europeans became low-key obsessed with making WWII films. The arthouse movies with personal stories or creative approaches had a lasting impression and emotional resonance for me, more so than the bigger budget films like American-made Schindler's List (1993) and even Life Is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) (1997) with Roberto Benigni.

While the kids in the German language program at my high school watched Das Boot (a 1981 film that takes place in a submarine with some homoerotic undertones), the French students were encouraged by our wonderful teachers to rent 1987’s Au Revoir Les Enfants.

It’s based on the experiences of famed director Louis Malle (he was married to actress Candice Bergen, AKA Murphy Brown) and tells the story of a French priest who sheltered Jewish children during the war. The priest and the children were caught and sent to death camps. Au Revoir Les Enfants — which is what the brave priest says as he’s carted away — is a gorgeous depiction of boyhood, friendship, and bravery that really drives home the horrors of gen0cide and ethnic cleansing through thoughtful storytelling. Another must-see film is Europa Europa (1991), a riveting story about a Jewish teenager who flees Germany and eventually has to pose as a N@zi Youth to survive.

I recently learned that there are people in the U.S. who aren’t being taught about the holocaust in public schools. (And we wonder why we’re in trouble.) So, a little background for those people: Around six million Jewish people and other groups like LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, Roma (gypsy) people, and political dissidents were tortured and killed in a variety of horrific ways by the Germany state from the early 1930s to 1945. How could schools omit this atrocity? It’s beyond me. It was less than 100 years ago!

I can’t say when I first learned about the holocaust, but I learned a lot about it. I read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank in middle school and grew up watching PBS in Miami where there’s a big Jewish community. In high school, I visited Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, on a family trip to the West Bank.

But I think the storytelling of cinema was the most effective teacher, and might be for an audience of kids who are growing up with nonstop screens at school and at home. At a time when U.S. schools are being targeted for inclusive approaches to teaching and books are being banned, movies can provide teens not only with critical historical information, but an emotional understanding of history so that they don’t repeat it.

For those paying attention, it may be too late or maybe this is our last chance to show the next generation what’s at stake.

I’m someone who consumes a lot of media.

Before November, I was feeling safe and secure and like the world had hope. But since, IDK, the third week in January, the media I consume has become less funny, less focused on ways to improve our lives, and more focused on how to keep our entire way of life from being destroyed by a few bad men.

The dismantling of the f3deral government isn’t just people losing jobs, it’s all of us losing security and health and comfort. I wish everyone in this country thought long and hard about what how the FDA keeps (kept?) us from eating poisoned food, how NIH was conducting and funding critical disease research, the necessity of the CDC in keeping infectious diseases at bay, the way NOAA lets us know if that’s a tornado outside or just rain, the FAA keeps planes from crashing into each other, USAID not only supported people’s health and safety overseas but fended off ter&orism through diplomacy, the way the Department of Education supported special ed, and the list goes on and on… Yesterday, they went after the Peace Corps. There are no words.

I actually thought about it all too much and a bunch of my hair fell out from the stress. So I get why people don’t want to think about how more deeply unsafe and unhealthy and poor this imperfect country is about to become.

Then I got scared. I got scared of talking about what’s going on — on the internet or in emails or even texts. I know fear is the tool of the oppressor. But fear comes and goes. Denial is a more effective tool for keeping the people down. Just because the U.S. hasn’t experienced fa$cism fully or a Great D3pression in nearly a century doesn’t mean that’s not the path we’re on. If you can convince yourself that you have enough resources to ride out a fa$cistic regime, then maybe denial is the place your brain goes to stay “safe.” We aren’t safe, we’re under attack.

If you know me, you know that I’ve been underemployed for nearly two years now. I’m a canary in the coal mine. There was a stalled jobs market, sure. And I’ve complained about the rise of ChatGPT. But The New York Times best explained why and how people like me who pursued creative careers and are now f*cked. Our skills are obsolete. I think they said it’s like being a candlemaker when electricity was introduced.

None of this is in a vacuum. It does seem like fa$cism is able to rise because people power can be replaced with robots. What the hell are we all going to do as robots do our jobs is beyond me. I guess the techn0crats will just let us die and the richest will enjoy the beauty of the natural world through their stretched M@r-a-Lago faces. Sounds extreme? I wish.

It’s hard to wrap our heads around why our leaders would want us to starve and get sick, and why they would halt public health or environmental protections — I mean they live in this world, too, right? — but they don’t think like us. They only want to put money in their pocketbooks at our expense. We are not humans to them, we are roadblocks. I don’t care if you’re a surgeon or a banker, you are “the help.”

We the people don’t want our kids to live in a very unsafe and literally hungry and sick world. We the people need to build our hopeful world together. This our moment.

I’m done lecturing. My hair is growing back. I am done living in the trauma space of realizing how terrible things are going to get. I am ready to get to get to work.

Years ago, I was at a cafe with my then three-year-old son. He laid down in a shared booth and slid back and forth cackling gleefully. The more I kindly asked him to stop, the louder he got. That’s because, like me, he doesn’t like being told what to do.

I didn't think he was being too disruptive, so I ignored him for a few seconds. Then, of course, an older man next to me said nastily, "Can you control your child? We're trying to have a conversation here and he's being very loud."

I’m sure many parents can relate to this experience, but here’s where maybe we differ.

My response was instinctual: "Are you kidding?" I turned to my kid and instructed him to be louder, but quickly changed direction out of shame. I edited my response: "Just because that man is rude doesn't mean we need to be rude." And guess what? The kid finally complied.

But then I got REALLY pissed that this stranger shamed me when I was trying to be a patient parent. So I cursed the guy out on the way out because, as it turns out, I am rude when other people are rude, especially when it’s some rando telling me how to live my life.

I am, in my soul, antiauthoritarian. Instead of mindlessly following someone else’s arbitrary rules, I believe in following them based on my values. I believe in questioning, in community, collaboration, and leadership. Because I value these things, it means I am setting myself up for the nearly impossible task of nurturing my child’s joy and strong spirit and being his parent — a default oppressor.

Parents like me, who maybe have a little bit of the ADHD and are maybe a bit oppositional, are often raising kids who say “no” a lot. As a parent, you’re not exactly a leader. You don’t get the respect of a leader, you get the intimacy of a protector, a confidante, a guide. You are an authority figure. For me, that makes me feel some self-loathing. I don’t like running around telling someone else what they have to do all the time. And then to be told “no” all the time can be angering, exhausting — it wears you down.

And it’s hard to hear those nos. His nos are a no to rules and structures that might give him the security he so craves if he just went along with them. His resistance makes me frustrated and question myself endlessly and sometimes means I am not a good mommy. So everyone feels anxious. Everyone is upset a lot. Everything feels big even when it’s just time to brush your damn teeth.

But resisting is not a bad thing. It’s a quality I want to preserve in him while also getting him to eat a vegetable and shut off YouTube without a protracted argument. Like this isn’t the time to resist. But how can you teach relativism to a little person without a fully-formed frontal lobe? How can you show emotional regulation when you feel disregulated about being “The Man”?

I often fail to rule with kindness but I do have my child’s trust. He knows he’s a small, vulnerable creature in a big scary world and his family is his safe place to act out and speak up. He expects a lot from me just like I expect a lot from him. I’m glad he holds me to a high standard even if I don’t meet it. He deserves the best mommy, even if I fall short all the time. I try to remember that he may defy me now, but that the guidance I give him will stick. One day, he will brush his teeth without being asked. One day he will remember what I taught him and vote with empathy and caring.

People like me who know parenting is political (check these folks out), we’re doing our best to “rule” with an open heart, sharing age-appropriate truths so that our kids can use their own personalities to join what are essentially generational, familial conversations and larger societal efforts for the greater good.

Recently, I linked up with another family and we had our kids write letters to leaders about how they felt about the things happening in the world, in our communities. Now more than ever, we’re attending events that are aligned with our values to say: “The world can be better.” My son needs to see how to stand up to authority when authority turns into autocracy. I seriously cannot believe we’re living through this right now, but this is when our contrarian traits are useful. Pushing back is the only way to maintain our space to live authentically and protect that space for others who maybe can’t fight back.

We need to make sure our kids can write their own stories in the running narrative that defines our families and communities so that they contribute to the world in a caring, thoughtful way with an eye toward justice, equity, and kindness not authoritarianism.

I just downloaded 5 Calls — an app that makes it very easy for you to call your representatives to tell them: “HALPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!”

That’s my script, but they have scripts you can use to beg them to do everything in their power to stop this takeover of the U.S. government by a South African and his five interns.

Download 5 Calls here and make some calls yourself.

I can’t keep up but in the past few days, they shut down USAID and are working on closing the Department of Education. AND ELON IS STEALING ALL OF OUR PERSONAL INFORMATION IN THE PROCESS.

He now has record of all the kids with IEPs and 504s (disability support for things like autism, ADHD, etc). Do you remember what the Na$is did to people with disabilities? This guy showed you who he is when he saluted.

I am only comforted by my Representative who actually represents me. Also my hero, Jamie Raskin. And was also glad to hear that unions and Public Citizen are suing the Treasury for letting that grifter harvest our info.

We need to stay in touch off-line and online because I feel like my algorithm is not doing what I want it to do. I didn’t see any info on the anti-ICE protests, for instance, which Meta knows I’m into. So, I posted a photo of me and Kendrick Lamar to reset it. GIVE ME WHAT I WANT Z(s)UCK. (Follow me on YouTube!)

My advice is to spend a few minutes searching the things you want to see and LIKE them. Then you post things you want to see. And then you post a photo of your cheesy face every once in awhile.

We need to control our narratives from the inside. The algorithm isn’t that smart.

Everyone is clueless right now. But here are some places you can get news or connect outside of the regular media sources (note the lefties you can turn to in this moment: Democracy Now and Mother Jones).

• Sign up now for the World Health Organization (WHO) newsletter. Without USAID’s critical funding, programs overseas that fight and track things like ebola or ISIS are not happening. So good luck to us!

• Follow your local health departments online, too.

Follow these folks on social:

• I love Baller Alert for the timely info and the comments. Love the comments.

• For updates on H5N1 bird flu, go to this former covid resource on Threads sars_cov.2_covid_19

• Shit You Should Care About is the best

• Working Families

• Indivisible Team

• Public Citizen

• and Raffi of “Baby Beluga” fame is bringing his internal narrative to the net

Follow these newsletters:

• Samantha Bee of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee and her beyond hilarious Plan Bee

• LIL Science is a news rundown of outbreaks and cases of H5N1 (now considered “widespread” by Massachusetts standards, millions of birds are dead from it)

• Essayist Roxanne Gay’s The Audacity round-up is solid

• Democracy Notes

I feel like the ACLU was the only place that prepared for this moment. Donate if you can! I think Elon will be very disappointed by what he finds in my bank account, so I cannot.

Know your rights.

Here are some protests in the coming days.