Tag: podcasts
December 5
Greetings from here, where the three of us are still sick. Brandon told me that he counted it up in the bathtub this morning, and he’s now been sick for 27 days. I keep wanting to sit down and write a new post, but all that comes out is blah blah blah mug of hot broth, blah blah blah homemade vap-o-rub that smells nice and feels good and maybe helps or maybe it’s just the placebo effect, blah blah blah sneeze sneeze cough. Illness makes me boring.
Things that are more interesting than this post:
The great Rachel Roddy was featured in a three-part “cook residency” over at The Guardian, and like everything she does, it’s very much worth your time.
The best days of my life, pretty much, are the days when, a) a new New Yorker arrives, and b) Patricia Marx has a piece in it. “Pets Allowed” is perfect.
This isn’t my first mention of Anna Sale’s wonderful podcast Death, Sex & Money, and for good reason. Please, do yourself a big big favor and listen to her recent interviews with actor Ellen Burstyn and author James McBride.
This piece on our cultural obsession with food and identity gave me pause – and, I should add, I think John Lanchester totally nails it. (Also, his piece on the way we talk about money is BRILLIANT.)
I had no idea what went into becoming a London cabbie, and I also didn’t know that I would much care, but this is fascinating. Long, yes, and fascinating.
I had never heard of Theo Jansen before this past Sunday’s story in the New York Times Magazine, but by the time I was halfway through the article, I was feverishly Googling and mumbling aloud Wow wow wow. Then I showed it all to Brandon, and he went Wow wow wow too. I mean, watch this, and look at this. I mean!
Last but never least, my friend Brian came to visit in late August. It was his first time meeting June, and the weather could not have been better, and he captured it all so well. Come back soon, BWF.
I’m hoping to be back here with a little gift guide this weekend. Until then: hey, if you have any interesting reads, or anything, please chip in! Leave a comment! And be well, everybody.
P.S. Update: Several of you have written with concerns about our illness, and I want to assure you that we are being well cared for by a medical doctor – and an acupunturist and Chinese herbalist, too. It seems that we’ve been dealing with back-to-back viruses, and there’s little to be done for that. Thank you.
September 6
From the summer of 2006 until the early spring of 2011, we lived in a nondescript duplex on 8th Avenue that shared the block with some other nondescript duplexes and one notably terrifying exception that we referred to as Boo Radley’s house. I didn’t love the neighborhood, but it was mostly fine, and after we adopted Jack, I got to know it well, because Jack, being a terrier, needed a lot of walking. We found our habits. If the sun was out, we’d walk up to the P-Patch at 60th and 3rd and ogle people’s tomatoes and dahlias; if it was raining, I’d drag him for a quick loop around the block; and if it was evening, dark already but…
Read moreJuly 6
We spent half of last week on Lopez Island, staying with friends at the home of friends-of-friends, breaking in our sun hats, making buildings out of driftwood, wearing ourselves out so well that we were in bed before the light was gone, getting reacquainted with summer. Despite the fact that I seem to have filled my life with a lot of work and obligations and businesses and whatnot, I am not someone who enjoys feeling busy. I do not like to feel busy at all. I also do not like to set goals. But my goal this summer is to have a lot of days like the ones we had on Lopez, summer days like the ones I had as…
Read moreJune 27
Friday! It’s rainy here in Seattle, as it often is in June. I don’t mind, but I also wouldn’t mind being in a car on the road between Rome and who knows where in Italy, as I was on this day three years ago, when I went over for Luisa’s wedding.* Let’s go there for a minute. Maybe to a beach on the Adriatic. Ah. Earlier this week, I drove to Spokane and back, which is absolutely nothing like a beach in Italy but is still beautiful in its way, and because I was driving alone, I listened to Girl Talk “All Day” very, very loud and did a lot of “dancing,” by which I mean flapping my elbows wildly while…
Read moreCome on down
Hello from a plane somewhere between Minneapolis and San Francisco! I’ve been trying to write this post for a couple of days now, on trains and planes and more trains and planes, but then I wind up staring out the window or admiring the spectacularly bedazzled manicure job on the woman next to me or reading an entire Us Weekly over someone’s shoulder before passing out and suddenly coming to three hours later in a new city. Today, I will persevere! I will only read half of an Us Weekly over someone’s shoulder. I’m eight days into nearly two consecutive weeks on the road for Delancey. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be on book tour, even now that I’ve been…
Read moreWe tell stories
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about words, and about the way we tell stories. Today, I wanted to share some of the things that have been making me think. I started listening to Radiolab as a way to pass the time while I walk the dog, because he needs a lot of walking, and now I listen because I’m crazy for it. It’s part science, part philosophy, and part sound editing wizardry, but mostly, it’s good storytelling. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, its hosts, spin the kind of stories that lure you away to somewhere else, and when you drop back into yourself, you realize that you’ve been staring into space, grinning like a dope, through the entire show.…
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