Greetings friends!
If you are here in the U.S., I hope you had a nice long weekend. If you’re not, I hope you had a nice normal-length weekend.
I kicked off the July 4th festivities with a raging migraine and a strong sense of doom. As I shared on social media, it felt gross to just go about daily life and celebrate with movies and barbecues and fireworks and all the summer fun when there are literally people being grabbed off the streets by masked men and taken in unmarked vans and put into places called “Alligator Alcatraz” or sent to countries they've never even been to, and meanwhile Etsy is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” t-shirts and Senators have agreed to decimate Medicaid because the former reality star president signed some merch for them.
But, then I remembered the wise words of author A.E. Osworth:
"Just because the world is on fire doesn’t mean we do not feel joy and we do not feel pleasure. I think it’s really important to remember that, particularly as a trans person living through this time, I don’t get to live through another time. I have to live my life right now. So, yes, it’s bad, but I can’t make that my whole life because I only get one."
So, although things are unbelievably awful and we should all fight as hard as we can against the injustices of the world, I realized after re-reading Austen’s words that we can also take a moment to enjoy the barbecues and fireworks and hug our kids and check in on one another and laugh and enjoy moments of joy.
That’s what I tried to do. I slept off the migraine (after ingesting a bunch of prescription drugs) and then hung out with my husband and kid. We did an escape room, played some arcade games, and took a boat ride to the middle of Lake George to watch the fireworks.
We also watched a lot of movies (Grease at the drive-in, Despicable Me 2, Nobody) and ate a lot of great food. By the end of the weekend I felt less gloomy, though I recognize that there is still a lot of work we all have to do in the coming years to fight against oppressive forces. Still, having to fight doesn’t mean you can’t also have moments of happiness.
I hope you were able to listen to the playlist I sent out on Friday. This week I’m back with regularly scheduled interviews. Coming on Friday is my chat with Ellis Rosen, a New Yorker cartoonist whose work makes me laugh every single time.
I’d also like to give a shout out to my husband for being the only person to answer last week’s question. So I’m going to ask a new one in the hopes that more people answer, if only so that my husband’s response doesn’t look so sad and lonely.
What book(s) are you planning to read this summer? Does your reading selection change based on the season? Leave your response in the comments!
Thanks, as always for reading! Hope you have a wonderfully creative week!
Oh so many I'd like to read but here's a couple.
"Naked Lunch" The Restored Text by William Burroughs
"Gone" by Chelsea Cain