Home Comforts & Science Yelling
Dispatches From The Heartbreads of A Dame & A Hottie
Hello, gently wafting fronds of Dames Nation! Yes, we’re mixing visual metaphors this week, strap in!
Darling Dame Margaret is off for a fun weekend away, so Dame Sophie has teamed up with Beloved DamesPal & Unfriendly Black Hottie Kamille to bring you both our links of the week and a fun li’l conversation about the activities and cultural products that bring us solace when we’re feeling ground down to a fine powder.
Next week: a full guest issue featuring the triumphant return of guest editors & Girl Gang convenor-instigators Ally & Amy!
Diving Right Into Self-Care
SB: Welcome back to TBD, KW, and thank you for joining me for this week’s entry in TBD’s continuing coverage of Taking Care of Oneself When Sad. My wonderful job ended this week and while I’m determined to let my feelings be whatever they are, I also want to give myself worthwhile things to do while I go through it.
One of my core self-soothing strategies that also doubles as self-care under the category of “activities Future Sophie will thank me for doing” is organizing stuff. When I run out of decision-making gas, the physical & digital consequences can pile up. I just uploaded at least 100 gifs to my Google Drive & cleared them the hell off my desktop. It feels so goooooood! I may never fully organize them by subject, but this is a very satisfying step in the right direction. I went to a clothing swap the other night and divested myself of six bags of clothes (and only brought home ONE bag of new-to-me items, containing a nearly-new pair of clogs!), and have grand plans of Konmari-ing my shirt drawer next week. The many stripey shirts & concert t-shirts currently threatening to spill out & colonize my underwear drawer aren’t going to sort, fold, and store themselves!
KW: Thank you for the warm welcome, starshine! And YES YES YES. I love the Konmari philosophy of keeping only those things that you really love. It works well when you’re organizing your closet, and even better when you’re sorting out your life. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I always find it valuable to take an honest accounting of the activities and people in my life (#scorpioshit). What brings me value? What brings me down? Quitting things is hard for me, but there are moments in this life when you just need a cull. And if something or someone I’ve cast off is actually meaningful, I always trust that I’ll find my way back eventually.
Cooking family recipes is another, less emotionally-taxing source of self-soothing for me. Conveniently, most Filipino dishes require some variation of the same four ingredients: protein, cabbage, carrots, and aromatics (garlic, ginger, onions). I’m prepping for a lot of exciting-but-stressful new beginnings at the moment, and I’ve found myself making a lot of pancit bihon to decompress. Pancit is a delightful little dish that anyone can make: you just toss some leftover odds and ends into a pan, stir-fry them for a bit, and add rice noodles and soy sauce!
SB: I can smell all of that from here & am both comforted & perked up! I sometimes feel like preparing comfort foods is at least as good as, if not even better than, eating them. I have a family reunion coming up next weekend and my organizing cousin asked me to bake something. Is it a coincidence that I’m going to be preparing my signature honey cake? Not really! It ages & travels well (same) but if I’m honest, I’m at least halfway making it for myself, as doing all the mise-en-place work for a procedurally easy & high ingredient-count recipe is enormously soothing.
KW: Strong agree re: the power of a good mise! There is something deeply satisfying about watching a mountain of well-prepped veggies slowly growing on a kitchen counter. It just feels good to chop and prep things, particularly if you’ve got a great podcast to listen to.
SB: Yes, how does time just disappear into a podcast like that? It’s magic. I’ve just started relistening to S1 of Slow Burn, prompted by rewatching All The President’s Men, and now I hear S3 is going to be about the still-unsolved murders of Biggie & Tupac, which is going to make me so sad and angry, and yet I will listen every week. I know me & my passion for super well-researched infuriating historical stories. Do you have some current favorite listens to buoy you up? Or just engross you?
KW: I always love a good back-and-forth between besties or collaborators, so The Cut’s recent episode featuring Nicole Cliffe and Daniel Ortberg was extremely my shit. And you know, The Cut’s podcast is solid all-around actually! It’s become the podcast that I look most forward to every week. Their “How X Gets It Done” series works even better as an audio interview than it does online. They recently featured Tamara Mellon, founder of Jimmy Choo and all-around BAMF, and how she began her professional life anew in her forties. The Cut also has a great series on how people spend their money -- the Abigail Disney edition was RIVETING.
SB: That episode was so so good! A podcast that may scratch that itch for you, though it’s a bit afield from the two besties concept, is Ashley Milne-Tyte’s Broad Experience. She bills it as a show about women in the workplace, and though that’s the jumping-off point, she often gets a little further into broader (heh) cultural conversations about work, generally, and how gender plays a role in things like ambition, power structures, and more. Like “How X Gets It Done”, it’s based around an informal but well-informed “tell me about this” conversational approach. I can dig up some especially good episodes to start with, if you’d like.
KW: That would be grand! This isn’t exactly on topic, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the calm that online shopping brings me in times of crisis. Even if I’m not actually going to commit to making a purchase, the act of carefully combing a website for deals (sorting first by price and then by category) is deeply therapeutic for me. My digital window shopping has recently led to the discovery that I love Scandinavian fashion. I’ve only purchased a few pieces so far, but each one makes me smile. To my eye, the primary components of Scandi-style are bold prints, modern but modest cuts, and a sense of whimsy that is daring rather than twee.
SB: Browsing without intent to purchase is such a good activity. Honing one’s eye is always worthwhile, and if one can do so while finding items you’ll get a lot of use & joy out of, at a reasonable price? Heavenly! As a longtime devotee of Dansko clogs & sandals, I salute this Scandinavian discovery of yours and the specificity of daring whimsy vs. twee-ness. Obviously, I would love to see more of what you’re describing!
KW: HONORED to oblige. I think of Marimekko as the line from which most Scandinavian style originates. The brand is known for its bright poppy prints and stripes, both of which are lovely but not totally my style. It’s also wayyy spendy for my budget. My favorite Scandi brand, Monki, comes at a much more affordable price and has an edgier, more “downtown” vibe. They’ve got dresses covered in sensual line drawings, swingy tops with unexpected color combos, and jumpsuits that make me squeal with delight. There’s also Cos, a brand with the ease of Eileen Fisher but slightly higher visual impact. They’ve got some dresses and tunics that are absolutely divine.
SB: oooooh, lovely! I’m going to take a browse through that Monki line for moiself. As you know, I gravitate strongly towards quite structured clothes, but that blue & white swingy top is singing my song. A related shopper’s alert for you: my recent browsing led me to a collection on the Sanita shoes website called Scandinavian Lifestyle & feel this may speak to you at a deep level. Bonus: many of these items are on sale!
To wrap up, I have some Scandinavian literary & fine arts suggestions to follow up on your FASHIONS, including a Scandinavian design exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and of course, The Moomins.
Kamille Loves Brie Larson And Is Trying To Be Cool About It
She’s perfect, quite frankly.
There’s too much good Avengers: Endgame content to link all of it here, but my current favorite is this exhaustive and profoundly stupid list of MCU hairstyles. “My bangs go all the way around” and “Crisis Brony” are but two points on the list that reduced me to helpless giggles. Sadly, no photos of Captain Marvel’s deeply gay and important haircut are currently available. Thank you for your support at this difficult time. Relatedly: I saw a tweet that envisioned Hawkeye as a butch lesbian and now I can’t stop thinking about how vastly that would improve the character. Honestly, Hawkeye is at least halfway there already -- we just need Marvel to commit. A lesbian Hawkeye might also have made me less resentful about [ENDGAME SPOILER REDACTED]! Where is the justice, I ask you?
Like everyone else with a pulse, I’ve been watching Beyoncé’s Homecoming on a loop since it dropped. The evil geniuses at Netflix know this, and have very savvily promoted a short docuseries from 2018 about the Bethune-Cookman University marching band called Marching Orders. The show gives black marching bands a touch of the Dance Moms treatment, highlighting the drama around auditions while taking seriously the hours of labor required to put on a great halftime show. It’s a great primer on HBCU band culture. Plus, as a former band geek, it’s cool AF to see a bunch of flutists and flag girls who have full faith that the objectively dorky thing they are doing is the coolest thing ever.
Black marching bands go all the way back to the Civil War, when all-black regiments of the Union Army had their own brass bands. The tradition carried on into World War I, when the Harlem Hellfighters’ band became famous. When the war ended, those musicians ended up at academic institutions. And so, a tradition was born, one which Drumline made great and which Beyoncé Knowles-Carter made even greater.
Earlier this week, Roxane Gay announced the start of her new online publication, Gay Magazine. I’ve been loving all of the pieces in Roxane’s “Unruly Bodies” series, so I was delighted to see that Gay Magazine’s first two pieces continue the variations on that them. One is by the lovely Grace Lavery, about alcoholism and the cyclical trap of new beginnings. “God’s most sustaining gift to mankind,” she writes, “is a new morning each day, a fresh jolt of vigor every morning, a new hope in each jolt, a new delusion in each hope.” Witty, heartbreaking, and hella relatable. The other piece comes from Athena Dixon, who writes about the ways women of size try to make themselves invisible in a world that never welcomes them. I’m so grateful to Roxane Gay for making more space for this kind of writing -- beautifully written personal stories that get inside of you and make you feel.
So you know how banana candies all taste weird because they’re based on a banana species that doesn’t exist anymore? WELL, there is even more intrigue to be found in banana history! During the Blitzkrieg, the British rationed imported foods, including the beloved banana. Rather than just accept that there would be no ‘nanas on the breakfast table, people made mock bananas out of… wait for it… WAIT FOR IT… parsnips. They would boil or roast them, add some sugar and banana essence, and call it a day. I am both baffled and troubled by this. Like, wouldn’t you just eat a parsnip regular-style at that point??! Just hit it with a little adobo or something?? Whew. History is amazing and disgusting, my friends.
Anjelica Huston’s conversation with Vulture and Oprah Winfrey’s interview for The Hollywood Reporter have both been open in tabs on my work computer for three days straight. Even though Anjelica and Oprah have beef that dates back to 1986, they have plenty in common. First of all, they’re basically the same age -- Anjelica Huston is 67, Oprah is 65. Yes. Stew on that. Anyway, despite being well past the age when our society typically throws women away, they are unapologetic about their choices and totally comfortable taking up space. I don’t get the impression that either of them is particularly concerned with being liked. And they’re both out here advising women to demand what they’re worth, whether that’s a job with dignity or an appropriately beefy paycheck. FLEX.
Sophie Discovers That Her Loathing of Tree Pollen Is Scientifically Justified
A living nightmare, dear god where is the Silkwood shower I need???
As I sit here with streaming tear ducts and a light post-nasal drip, reading about how botanical sexism (who knew?) is to blame for all of our allergies getting worse every year, I want to burn everything to the ground. Literally. Not figuratively literally, actually literally. Here’s why: Way back in 1949, the USDA categorized the nuts & seed pods dropped by female trees as botanical litter, and recommended that cities & towns select “cleaner” male trees for their civic plantings. If you can’t see pollen, it can’t hurt anyone or be a nuisance, right? This was, to use the technical term, stupid, but it wasn’t catastrophic until a Dutch elm disease epidemic of the 1970s wiped out the stately old trees lining many of our streets. Guess what they were replaced with? On the advice of the USDA? Yes, you got it, pollen-producing male trees! As these trees have matured, their increased pollen production has spelled increasing misery, allergy, and asthma diagnoses, especially for children and women. But wait, there’s more! “Women who have airborne allergies have been found to be at increased risk from leukemia, ovarian cancer and breast cancer, according to a 2010 study published in Cell Biology. It is time for a less sexually discriminatory planting strategy.” BRB, just off to the Army/Navy surplus to buy a flamethrower.
I miss The Americans. I’m very happy for Keri Russell’s success on Broadway, and for Matthew Rhys’ much-deserved Emmys win this year, but I do feel cheated of a plotline about KGB-trained sea mammals. This is a real thing reported in the Washington Post! A Russian-trained spy whale (a beluga, my favorite of the toothed whales. Look how smiley they are! Has any other cetacean been memorialized in song by Raffi? I think not & rest my case) has been chilling in a Norwegian port city for the better part of the last week and I would absolutely watch a 6-part miniseries on the training of his elite squad and the humans who work with them, just saying, HBO, this is a free idea, you’re welcome!
I’m going to do a hard right turn into something very sad here & will wrap up with some pure joy. Hang on, or skip it, as needed. Lyra McKee, a 29 year-old journalist who made her name covering the complexities of life in a post-Troubles Northern Ireland, was murdered two weeks ago during a riot in Derry. Her death is under investigation and is exactly as fraught as you’d imagine, with governmental authorities offering anonymity to potential witnesses, while Republican paramilitaries in Derry assure those same potential witnesses that they’ll be shot as informers. McKee has been eulogized as an especially diligent and incisive journalist, with an eye for the stories of marginalized people. Her Letter To My 14 Year-Old Self, an It Gets Better from a queer kid from Belfast, was adapted into a moving short film, and her book Lost Boys, about the at-risk & often forgotten teen boys of Northern Ireland, is still slated for release in 2020. This isn’t an original insight on my part, but I do find it bitterly ironic that McKee was likely felled by a bullet from a gun shot by one of those lost boys. I’m not sure what else to say about this, but having read Say Nothing and being waist-deep in Milkman, I can’t stop thinking about McKee’s death in its historical context, and how it can’t be for nothing.
No, I haven’t yet begun to delve into the cascade of new Carly Rae Jepsen features being released in advance of her forthcoming album, Dedication, but it’s on my radar, I promise. I offer instead the single greatest video of the week, of this newsletter’s favorite Basketball Fellow Joel Embiid’s beautiful basket-sinking & ensuing celebration, scored to CRJ’s perfect song “Cut To The Feeling”. There’s so much to enjoy here: Embiid’s grace & élan as a player; the way the clip captures his decision to swap the flash of a possible three-pointer for the very achievable, if slightly less flashy, quasi-dunk from the side; the Raptors’ decision not to attempt to guard him at all; the entire thing capped by his exuberant delight in his own physical & tactical prowess. This is what keeping it fresh looks like to me: one of the best players in the league, at the height of his powers, continuing to experience surprise and joy when a play goes just right, and doing an utterly charming I’m A Little Airplane bit with a teammate before cupping his ear to better hear the roar of the crowd celebrating with him.
The energy I want to bring into Q3 & Q4
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