Just Good Shit: 08.11.19

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

I’ve never really been a birthday person because pretty much everyone takes a vacation during the first week of August (seriously, it’s been this way my entire life), and also I just…don’t care that much! I usually just go to work on my birthday and, like, order my favorite takeout for dinner.

But I’m now dating a Birthday Person™, so this year, I had my first bona fide birthday week. It included breakfast at Miriam (my favorite), a manicure and pedicure at Paintbucket, a trip to Greenlight and Target, dinner at Allswell, McLeod Farms peaches with pals, an Instax camera and Catbird necklace, Good Genes (a gift from my mom that so far absolutely lives up to the hype), and birthday drinks with friends at The Springs. It was truly lovely and also I’m exhausted.

At Miriam on my birthday

My goals/hopes/dreams for my upcoming year are learning to use lay and lie properly in all writing and conversation, and visiting a national park!

Here’s what else I had going on this week…

On the blog

• Reading list: Gun violence in America

• ‘‘The Orange’’

• Extremely good shit: McLeod Farms peaches

Reading

I, like every other self-respecting Brooklyn millennial, am currently reading Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.

Also:

The Media Erased Latinos From the Story, The Atlantic.

A mother died shielding her infant in El Paso. The father died shielding them both, family says., Washington Post.

The End of Straight, GQ.
Make sure you read this one all the way to the end.

I Gained 20 Pounds Before My Wedding and It Was Still Perfect, Glamour.

How to Plan a Wedding. (Or, You Could Just Elope.), The New York Times.
Our girl Terri made her NYT debut!!!

My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy!, Ask Polly.

Why are there so many new books about time-travelling lesbians?, The Guardian.

Bad summer, Grief Bacon.

Everything We Learned About Women’s Anatomy from Male Authors, Electric Lit.

Great tweets

“Potatoes in literally any form”

“The full scene with sound is just the greatest scene I’ve ever watched.”

“If you don’t like it…MOVE”

“to all the girlfriends”

Have a great Sunday! 🦁

Sign up to receive these links each week in an email.

🍑

Extremely good shit: McLeod Farms peaches

As you may know, I’m not a fan of summer. But one way I’ve been making it more bearable in recent years is by ordering a box of peaches from McLeod Farms, a South Carolina operation that came on my radar several years ago when I lived in Houston.

These peaches are awesome in the dictionary-definition sense of the word. So juicy, so fragrant, so special. Every bit of them detaches from the pit so easily and cleanly, it’s genuinely remarkable. Getting a box of them delivered has become one of the highlights of my summer.

But you don’t have to take my word for it! Here are some of the things my friends have had to say about them:

“This is truly the best peach I’ve ever eaten.”

“I should have eaten that in the bathtub.”

“That was obscene.”

“I should not have eaten that in public.” (I heard this more than once!)

The peaches go on sale every year in the late spring. They are sold by the box; you can either buy a box of 14 (for $48) or a box of 28 (for $78), and when you order, you select the week you want them delivered. (They ship in June, July, and August. Also, shipping to NYC is free, but I’m not sure if that’s the case everywhere.)

These peaches aren’t cheap, which is, for me, part of what makes them so special; I make a point to really savor them (I always try to enjoy at least one while sitting outside), and to share them with friends who will appreciate them.

Oprah once said* something to the effect of “you can find God in a perfectly ripe tomato,” and I think about this whenever I eat one of these peaches. (And, yes, then I obviously have a minor existential crisis about climate change and my own mortality. It happens at the beach, too! Summer is great!!!) They are just…sublime.

*I am fairly certain it was on the final page of an issue of O Magazine that I read like a decade ago, but I have never been able to track down the exact quote, so this could be entirely made-up!!! But if Oprah didn’t say it, then I will: You can find God in a perfectly ripe summer fruit. ✨

🍑

‘‘The Orange’’

Image: Kotagauni Srinivas / Unsplash

Today is my 34th birthday! I’m eagerly awaiting a box of fresh peaches from McLeod Farms (truly the Platonic ideal of a peach, and maybe all fruit), which are due to arrive any minute, and which have me thinking about “The Orange,” a beautiful poem by Wendy Cope that I just love. Here it is:

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It's new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I'm glad I exist. ✨

🍑

Reading list: Gun violence in America

It’s another grim Monday in the United States. I woke up at 5:45 a.m. today after having a nightmare about guns, so I put together this list (which I’ll continue to update) of the best articles I’ve read over the past several years about gun violence and the gun industry/lobby/laws in America.

To Keep and Bear Arms, The New York Review of Books.
This is probably the best thing I’ve ever read on gun violence in the United States, because it puts the Second Amendment in linguistic and historical context, and explains all the ways it’s been perverted by lobbyists. The article is currently behind a paywall, but I happened to save the entire thing to Evernote back when I first read it, which you can access here.

The Gun Industry's Deadly Addiction, Rolling Stone.

What Bullets Do to Bodies, Highline / Huffington Post.

The Gun Control Movement Needs Its Own Pro-Life Fanatics, Gawker.

The NRA Supported Gun Control When the Black Panthers Had the Weapons, The Root.

Thou Shalt Kill, Gawker.

A Drumbeat of Multiple Shootings, but America Isn’t Listening, The New York Times.

Stop Calling Children’s Gun Deaths “Accidental”, Slate.

How Credit Cards Are Used to Finance Mass Shootings, The New York Times.

The Florida Airport Gunman Shows How Domestic Violence Predicts Mass Killing, The Cut.

America’s gun problem has everything to do with America’s masculinity problem, Quartz.

Things More Heavily Regulated Than Buying a Gun in the United States, McSweeney’s.

🕊

Just Good Shit: 08.04.19

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

On Friday, I turned in the first draft of my manuscript — three days early!!!! — which felt pretty good. Here’s what else I had going on…

On the blog

• Anomia is my new favorite group game

• A cute little idea for your next birthday

Reading

This week, I read Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, which Terri recommended to me ages ago. As far as works of non-fiction go, it’s very good (and is a surprisingly fast read) but it’s also incredibly upsetting and tragic. Still, I’d recommend it.

Also:

Marianne Williamson's Democratic debate performance raised eyebrows. But she's no friend of the left., NBC News.

'These kids are ticking time bombs': The threat of youth basketball and Under the knife: Exposing America's youth basketball crisis, ESPN.

To Cheat and Lie in L.A.: How the College-Admissions Scandal Ensnared the Richest Families in Southern California, Vanity Fair.
This was fascinating, infuriating, and illuminating.

The Mosquitoes Are Coming for Us, The New York Times.

"I Had a Miscarriage", A Cup of Jo.
I loved this essay.

Lana Wood, Natalie’s Little Sister, Has Plenty to Say, The New York Times.

Money Talks: one spouse had student loans, the other paid it all off, The Goods / Vox.

Jia Tolentino Can’t Help But Love Fancy Skincare, Into the Gloss.

We Can’t Risk Losing to Donald Trump By Believing In Anything, McSweeny’s.

“PLOT TWIST, the world's first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!”

Best life

I’ve been living in these black bike shorts from Amazon ($32.99 for a pack of six, sizes S-3XL) this summer and I highly recommend them! (I have the size small.)

I went to Lemon’s on Friday night and really enjoyed it! It’s on the roof of the Wythe Hotel, and the drinks were great (as were the chips) and the overall vibe was so cozy. (BTW, if you want a great rooftop view of the NYC skyline, it’s probably worth it to reserve an outdoor table.)

If you love a good scam (who doesn’t???) and true crime, might I suggest American Greed? I recently rediscovered it on Hulu and was reminded why I liked it so much several years ago. It has everything you want from an hour-long true crime show, but none of the dead women.

And I don’t own this National Parks Polaroid camera, but I really wish I did!

Have a great Sunday! 🍒

Sign up to receive these links each week in an email.

🍑

A cute little idea for your next birthday

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

This morning I was thinking about the fact that it’s now August, aka the month of my birth, and I remembered a cute idea my friend Julia gave me a couple of years ago.

She said she uses any birthday coupons she receives (like the Madewell birthday discount, etc.) to order goodies for herself online, but she doesn’t open the packages as she receives them — instead, she waits until her birthday proper. Then on her bday, she opens these packages along with any gifts she receives in the mail from her friends/family all at once. (I learned all of this when I visited her one February, and she told me that was the reason for the big pile of unopened packages in her foyer.) So cute, right? I already do this with Christmas gifts, but I really like the idea of doing it for birthdays (and waiting to open any bday cards as well).

Speaking of birthdays, here’s a cute old Terri post you might like: 17 Fun And Different Birthday Ideas If You're Really Not Into Parties.

Anyway, it’s August, I’m finally going to get my free Drunk Elephant gift at Sephora, and I’m going to wait and start using it on my birthday next week! 🎉

🍑

Anomia is my new favorite group game

I played a new-to-me game called Anomia ($14.39 from Amazon) for the first time with friends last weekend and I liked it so much, I ordered it for myself before I’d even left the party!

Here’s the high-level explanation of how it works: players take turns drawing cards; the goal is to be the first person to blurt out a word that fits the category on any other card that has the same symbol as your card does. So if you are holding a card with a yellow diamond that says “U.S. president,” and someone draws a card with a yellow diamond that says “something with wings,” then you want to shout out something with wings before the person with the other card names a U.S. president.

Anomia is mostly about concentration and creativity, and I really enjoyed it! It’s very portable (important!!!) and park-friendly, a single game goes quickly, and it’s just fun. It’s much easier to learn than Codenames (though I do love Codenames); it’s more fun than Apples to Apples; and it’s way more wholesome/SFW than Cards Against Humanity. (That said, if you do enjoy CAH, you might like Anomia X, a sold-separately version of the game that has “bad manners.”)

Per the product page, it’s for 3-6 players, ages 10+ (but there’s a kids’ version for ages 5+), and it’s possible to play it if you’re colorblind (because the colors on the cards don’t matter — only the symbols do).

Overall, it’s just incredibly low-maintenance and fun, and I’ll definitely be packing it for my family vacation next month!

Buy it from Amazon for $14.39. (There is also a “party version” that has four additional decks aka more variety for $24.) ✨

🍑

Just Good Shit: 07.28.19

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

It’s a light/late one this week! I didn’t have much time for Internet this week, and I spent the entire day today at Jacob Riis. (It was lovely!) Here’s what I’ve got for you…

Reading

I re-read Valley of the Dolls, as planned! And I’m currently reading The Island by Elin Hildebrand. I’m really enjoying reading so many books by a single author in a row like this…it sort of reminds me of reading The Baby-Sitters’ Club books when I was younger — like you see all the little quirks and consistencies across the books. (In Hildebrand’s case, there are a lot of Sancerres and Asiatic lilies, for starters.)

Also:

The Crane Wife, The Paris Review.
“There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.” This essay really is as good as everyone has been saying it is.

A woman's greatest enemy? A lack of time to herself, The Guardian.

“Is this guy constantly texting me after I told him not to because he ‘doesn’t understand’ boundaries or because he doesn’t care about them?”, Captain Awkward.

What Big Little Lies Got Wrong About Bonnie, The Atlantic.

Big Little Lies Is Drowning in Its Own Good Intentions About Race, Slate.

Why is everyone on Tinder so obsessed with tacos?, Vox.

Why Has Language Changed So Much So Fast? ‘Because Internet’, The New York Times.
Very excited to read this book.

Why I Always Spend 20 Minutes In The Bathroom When I Get Home, Apartment Therapy.
Terri!! 💛

Have a great Sunday! 🌊

Sign up to receive these links each week in an email.

🍑

Just Good Shit: 07.21.19

Image: Kiyana Salkeld / Just Good Shit

This week went by so fast. Here’s what I was up to…

On the blog

• Just good summer reading

Writing

The second installment of my SELF column is up! You can read it here: The Art of Saying No to Invites When You REALLY Don't Want to Do Something.

Reading

This week, I read The Rumor and Beautiful Day, both by Elin Hilderbrand. (I liked The Rumor a lot/better than Beautiful Day.)

Also:

It Was Never About Busing, The New York Times.

“No, black kids should not have to leave their neighborhoods to attend a quality school, or sit next to white students to get a quality education. But we cannot be naïve about how this country works. To this day, according to data collected from the Education Department, the whiter the school, the more resources it has. We cannot forget that so many school desegregation lawsuits started with attempts by black parents to simply get equal resources for black schools. Parents demanded integration only after they realized that in a country that does not value black children the same as white ones, black children will never get what white children get unless they sit where white children sit.”

If you read one thing this week, make it this Nikole Hannah-Jones article. (There is also an episode of The Daily about it.)

Confronting the Reality of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's Alleged Co-Abuser, Jezebel.

The Explicit Embrace of Racism Is Next, Splinter.
“It is easy to mock this all as hand-wringing over window dressing, given the fact that racism itself has been persisting just fine for all these years. But the public expectation that even racists would act as if they thought racism was bad had value: it was a sign that they thought that the weight of public opinion was on the other side.”

FaceApp Is Everyone’s Problem, The Atlantic.

I found your data. It’s for sale., Washington Post.

The Rise of the Spice Girls Generation, The New York Times.
This is delightful.

The Best Sex Ed I Ever Got Was From Queer YouTubers, Man Repeller.

Orange is the New Black Made TV—and Me—Gay, TIME.

Birthday Blues Bulletin Board: Advice + Open Thread, Captain Awkward.
I love so much about this post, especially this: “‘How did you grow up celebrating birthdays?’ and ‘If you could celebrate any way you want, what would you most like to do?’ are two questions that can get a discussion rolling.” And also this: “If you want a Big Deal made about your birthday, it’s almost certainly up to you to make it (or explicitly tell people close to you what a Big Deal looks like to you and that you’d specifically like one).”

Have a great Sunday! 🍉

Sign up to receive these links each week in an email.

🍑

Just good summer reading

When I think about the best summer reading, I think of really entertaining books that you’ll enjoy enough to want to binge read (see also: this great NYT article). But I don’t think they have to be pure fluff! To me, a great summer read should feel less like eating a ton of candy, and more like eating a delicious meal made up of of assorted dips, juicy fruits, delicious crostini, a couple of amazing pasta salads, some great Trader Joe’s appetizers, and sparkling water. It’s satisfying and filling (even if/when it’s light), and consuming it brings real pleasure.

So with that in mind, here are some of my favorites!

Fiction

The Vacationers by Emma Straub

I haven’t read this book in a few years, but it’s one I think of as best in class when it comes to light summer reads. Reading it feels like watching a great Nancy Meyers movie; it’s entertaining and goes down smoothly and easily.

Buy it for $9.70+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Every summer, I get what can only be described as a craving to read Valley of the Dolls. The book is pure camp and I love it. It also has one of the best elements of a great summer novel: rich people and their rich people problems. I might actually start reading it again tonight because it’s been a few years!

Buy it for $7.99+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

The Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante

When I think about these four books — My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of the Lost Child — I just feel such genuine fondness and appreciation for them. (By the way, I actually didn’t really get into My Brilliant Friend until the last few chapters, but then I was all in.)

Buy My Brilliant Friend for $9.32+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginedes

The first time I finished Middlesex, I felt like I'd just read a memoir, not a work of fiction. It’s one of my all-time faves. Also, I had heard the audiobook was better than the book itself, which I found preposterous but…the audiobook is truly excellent.

Buy it for $9.99+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar

This was one of my favorite books of 2015, and reminded me just how good short story collections can be. (Also, short story collections feel very summery to me and I don’t know why.)

Buy it from Amazon for $5.10+ or find it at a local bookstore on IndieBound.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

Most of this book takes place in the summer and it has loads of “classic novel you read on summer break between junior and senior years” energy.

Buy it for $10.80+ from Amazon or find it at a local bookstore on IndieBound.

A Summer Affair by Elin Hilderbrand

I went back and forth on including this one because I think it’s fluffier than most of my other picks…but I also really enjoyed it (and The Rumor and Beautiful Day, two other Elin Hilderbrand novels I’ve finished this week) and I think Hilderband is so good at what she does that it’s worth your consideration!

Buy it for $7.99+ from Amazon or find it at a local bookstore on IndieBound.

Non-fiction

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I’ve read almost all of David Sedaris’s books, but Me Talk Pretty One Day is probably my all-time favorite; I think it has the highest concentration of David Sedaris lines/anecdotes that I think about a lot. Also: the audiobook version (which David Sedaris narrates) is fantastic — so good for road trips.

Buy it for $10.38+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

It took more than one recommendation from Terri for me to finally read this book, but once I did, I had to admit: it’s amazing. Like, couldn’t put it down amazing; I’m happy to report I’m now a James Garfield stan.

Buy it for $12.99+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyou

By now, you’ve surely watched or listened to or read something about Elizabeth Holmes, but this book is the OG for a reason. It’s gripping (and way better than the podcasts or documentaries have been) and totally worth it.

Buy it for $12.13+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound.

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott

This book reads like a novel and, despite being about the Civil War, is a bit lighter than you might expect (while still being very informative). If you’re the kind of person who’d prefer to spend their summer vacation taking trips to Gettysburg and the like, this one’s for you.

Buy it for $11.99+ from Amazon or find it at local bookstore on IndieBound. 📚

🍑