Beauty & bloodshed

Heck of a week already. Here, some items of interest.

What's going on:

1. My birthday's coming up quick and this one has a whoa-nelly number on it—the kind associated with black balloons and existential crises. I'm actually pretty chuffed about it, though, and I'm spending it in Paris because I'm very, very lucky. Two itinerary items I'm most psyched about are 1) this mustard shop with its own condiment sommelier where you get to sample mustards on tap for free—I am dead serious about my level of excitement over this—and 2) seeing the Matisse and Goldin exhibits at the Grand Palais (thank you Alex for the rec!). If you haven't already, now's a fantastic time to get hip to Nan Goldin's revolutionary life and work; I, for one, am pregaming tonight by watching a documentary about her called "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed," and you can, too, and we can talk about it after if you want. Here's the trailer / here's where it's streaming right now.
2. Yesterday, I had the pleasure of introducing someone in her 20s to the music of Sade. Even if I do nothing else of merit in my life, I'll have at least done that. Here's half an hour of Sade deep cuts spun in someone's kitchen. Did I already share this months ago? Probably, but oops oh well.
3. Ecoversity is hosting what it calls "the world's largest garden party" online this week, with three days (today was day one) of zooms about growing your own food and learning how to engage in regenerative farming/gardening, even in a tiny apartment. You can sign up here to get on the mailing list (the event is free; just ignore the invitations for upgrades and memberships) and/or just watch the livestreams (in real time or after the fact) here.
4. On the topic of food, please enjoy this writing from Farhan Mustafa on home cooking, covered-dish church dinners, and small-town communities in southern states.
5. And while we're talking about community, unconscionable things are still happening in Minneapolis. Minnesotans are some of the best of us, the compassionate people of Haven Watch continue to do all kinds of critical work, and we can help them keep going.
6. If you're still high off watching nice people do difficult jobs well and be super capable at, say, traveling to the moon and back, and/or if you're just a person who likes people who like facts, ease your way through the comedown with this episode of "No Such Thing as a Fish." In case you're unfamiliar, it's a pop science podcast in which everybody involved brings one fact to the table and they all nerd out about it, cross-referencing their own knowledge about said facts and myth-busting as needed. This recent volume features my forever favorite pop-sci icon, the inimitable Mary Roach, who's happy to teach you about blood bank glory holes (sort of) in the early 1900s.
7. I wrote an essay about smells and memory and loss and love a couple of years ago, and it came out in print this week in The Masters Review Best Emerging Writers 2025. If you live in the US and want to support a small but mighty literary magazine and an independent press, you can order it here via Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon, though I'd love it if you chose Bookshop, which shares profits with independent booksellers. Word has it some UK bookstores should be adding it soon, and wherever you are, if you just want to read my piece (plus short stories and essays by nine brilliant fellow finalists in this year's book), you can do that here.

Thanks for reading. I see you. You're doing great, even if you think you're not.

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

—Albert Camus

14 April 2026

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