Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha omg.

https://twitter.com/AmericanGwyn/status/1669069073714380801

You guys. You guys. How many book clubs do you think were like, hey, this guy sounds great why don't we add a book in honor of his passing...

The private rescue groups (not public shelters) do often make it incredibly difficult! But that’s bc: 1) They are fostering animals already adopted and returned several times over. 2) They are doing so out of pocket. 3) They like animals better than humans. 🤷🏻‍♀️

https://twitter.com/HillaryMonahan/status/1668659458577162240

By the time we adopted Luna from a rescue group she had been removed from neighbors who intended to sell her to a puppy mill, adopted out to people who returned her for being too young and energetic for their older dog, and adopted and returned by people who had a baby/got busy.

Talked to a friend trying to enact imperfect but pretty good Covid safety measures at a conference. I congratulated her on getting past the hardest part—bringing up the subject and getting people to take it seriously. And she said: YES. And when you do everyone has FEELINGS. Everyone has feelings about it! They bring their different pandemic experiences and survival strategies and failures and denials and betrayals and abandonments and misinformation into the room along with the seemingly simple discussion about how to keep people safe.

Watching a Korean reality show where young people living together have deeply boring mundane exchanges of small talk with lots of silence and then a panel of hosts analyzes same with the intensity of thirteen y.o. at a slumber party reading a text from a crush. The panel of hosts just cheered on one of the participants as he got up and got a napkin for one of the young women. "Go! Go! Go!" As though he were headed for a touch down.

Reading a critique of Hannah Arendt and remembering a class I took in grad school in which I personally brought the news that the personal is political to a group of poets who were Not Having It. I tried to explain that I was merely repeating a well known maxim that had been around for, at that point, thirty years or so, but this woman named Cressida was very sure I was wrong and was ready to hold me personally responsible.

What I am mostly learning from today’s discourse is that we are deeply, deeply unready for the 2024 election cycle and all of its possible fall out and it is freaking me out a bit. Like, it is deeply unsettling to be in the middle of book bans and attacks on libraries and universities and have someone respond this way to a few hundred Goodreads reviews of an unpublished book. What is next.

It is me, once again reminding you that the CDC’s list of risk factors for Covid is nine miles long and includes depression, being out of shape (physical inactivity), ADHD, anxiety, being fat, and being over fifty. You can demand providers wear a mask.

https://twitter.com/Annatated/status/1655733612321337346

It absolutely sucks that it’s on the patient to make that demand! It should not be like that. And you are likely to face heavy resistance. But you can make the demand if you are up to it. I highly rec doing so by phone or email in advance rather than on the spot.

A blackberry! Is! Ripening!! This glory continues.

Trying to buy a car and this supposedly premium model (which I wasn't going to buy anyway, just comparing and contrasting) has no spare tire?? What the heck? That is not an option when driving across Texas. Is that standard now? What do people do when they are two hours away from the next town?

This summer I bought a pepper plant called Apocalypse Scorpion because it was on sale and also how could I not? I planted it. It thrived. (See: apocalypse scorpion.) It was then that I learned the beautiful peppers were the hottest on the planet.
pepperscale.com/apocalypse-sco… So now I had a huge crop of beautiful, lethal peppers. What to do? I picked them. I admired them. But I was afraid to eat them.

I have so much gorgeous flat leaf parsley and it will bolt in the heat soon. What to do. Pesto? I guess technically I mean gremolata? thekitchn.com/how-to-make-gr…

On the left: theguardian.com/education/2023…

On the right: theatlantic.com/health/archive… This is not normal, and I am willing to bet a lot that US charts would look quite similar if not worse.

Judith Herman’s 1992 book, Trauma and Recovery, which I read a few years after it was published and after working in a psych hospital, is one of my intellectual bedrocks. Thrilled to see she has another that sounds just as important. nytimes.com/2023/03/14/boo… Have not read the new one yet but this review is making me remember a scene I often think of from Trauma and Recovery where Herman interviews a groups of survivors about their fantasies of revenge and justice. 1/

Honestly proud of how cute my little winterized Covid-safer salon is. Heat lamp, camping blanket for each person, and you can’t see them but there are the large body version of those handwarmer packets. Honestly it’s very nice out right now but we are PREPPED for COZY. My desire to keep everyone safe regardless of their daily exposure was having a bit of a war with my longtime need to be a good hostess but now I feel like everything will be fine.