joyous revolutionaries and epic failures
A friend brought me back what is now my fave whiskey (yes, apparently I’m a whiskey-drinker…for a few months now I’ve had a distinct craving for a splash over ice at the end of a long week) and I had to sample some even though I try not to drink during the week. So I’ll try to wrap this up quickly before the whiskey kicks in. If you ever find yourself in Chico, do check out Golden Beaver Distillery.
I’m going to London in a couple of weeks for work but not in time to catch this show at London’s Design Museum that I just learned about a few days ago, in which artist Ai Weiwei recreated a Monet painting entirely in Lego. Article via Mashable.
It’s National Drive Electric Week! A couple of song suggestions for a truly electric soundtrack for this week might include Electric Car by TMBG and Electric Boogie by Marcia Griffiths. Electric Boogie came out in 1990 so this—songs of the 90s—is becoming a bit of a theme. Alas, I don’t think Rob Harvilla has explored this song yet on his podcast (am I going to mention this podcast in every newsletter? maybe!).
I finished reading Ministry for the Future (might write a longer blog post about it later) and am now reading Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City by Andrew Alden. Listen to the June 8th KQED Forum episode with Alden here. There was an Oakland Public Library event with Alden and fellow Oakland-based author/artist Jenny Odell (I recently read her second book, Saving Time) last night, moderated by Oakland historian/librarian Dorothy Lazard.
I took a long lunch break last Friday to check out the Corita Kent + Lisa Congdon show(s) at St. Mary’s College Museum of Art in nearby Moraga. It is a truly stunning show. If you’re in the area you have until December 10th to check it out.
Sweet on Oakland is…not back. I epically failed at testing for the first time and veganizing my recipe for The Town Hi/Lo Coffee Cake. Too much vegan butter. Possibly too much liquid. We were able to salvage it a bit by basically frying up pieces to soak up some of that excess butter but it was pretty funkalicious. And in the spirit of this newsletter, I’m sharing my failures along with my successes, so here you go.
Marlee Grace on quitting Instagram (such a great quote from SATC to begin with!). Made me think of my own social media breaks from time to time, although I almost always return (to Instagram, anyway). Also made me think of this recent Onion headline. It me, as they say.
I’m an unapologetic Miranda July super fan and she just announced yesterday that she has a new book coming out about a woman in middle age (again, it me!) called All Fours. Unfortunately, we have to wait until next May to read it. In the meantime, you can read more about it in the Vogue interview with July here.
Jenny Odell, author of How To Do Nothing and Saving Time, as mentioned above, has a new essay in Pioneer Works, part of the 13 Ways of Looking series. Odell’s contribution to the series is about collage artist Jess. One of these days, I’m going to figure out where skeptical rock is (don’t worry, I won’t leak the rock’s location if/when I find it).
Finally for this week (coming up just short of my goal of 10 things to share with y’all each week), it’s interesting that Odell mentions the move Safe (1995) later in her newsletter where I learned about her new essay. She writes about how she and friends recently selected five movies “that together delineate the universe of what we each tend to like.” I think about that movie a lot lately and how you could apply Moore’s character’s response to environmental illness to climate anxiety instead. Fun idea for a remake, no?
