Seems like it’s hot pretty much everywhere in the northern hemisphere right now, so I hope you are staying cool wherever you are. Here’s the roundup!
Quote of the week:
“Sometimes I think, I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.” —Sanober Khan, “Spare Heart,” in A Thousand Flamingos
What I’m reading:
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai. Really enjoying it.
What I’m listening to:
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls by Kathleen Hale. I thought I knew everything about this story, but I clearly did not. So interesting.
What I’m watching:
I’m still making my way through Season 1 of The Morning Show. I’m also watching The Bear on Hulu and really loving the characters.
Writing news:
I’ve been working on some poetry while waiting on next steps for my novel. The big news this week was that the People Who Knew Me podcast was listed as one of the best podcasts by Vogue UK.
Interesting things I learned this week:
- July 4 was the hottest day on Earth since recordkeeping began more than 40 years ago, and June was the warmest month overall
- The FDA has approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the US (it’s called Opill and will be available in 2024)
- By some estimates, we are now exposed to more information each day than a person living in the Renaissance encountered in their entire lifetime: As of 2020, we produce 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data per day. At that rate, roughly 90 percent of all the data in human history has been created in the last five years
- In the US, there is no minimum age for marriage in nine states
- 70% of wives take their husband’s name, according to a 2016 survey. Related: In the 1970s and 1980s, in an effort to combat gender inequality within the feminist wave of the time, laws were passed in Greece, Italy and Quebec, Canada that prohibited women from giving up their surname following a marriage
- As of 2017, only 1/5 of the marine mammals remain of all the aquatic animals that have ever existed
- The Portuguese word Saudade roughly translates to “a melancholic longing for difficult times,” “a time when everything was stripped bare, teaching us that meaning lies in the very things we take for granted. Sadness humbles. It cracks us open, allowing us to see others’ pain in ways that happiness can’t. It teaches us about the universality of suffering, but more importantly, the transcendent power of love. A love that is often overlooked without the presence of grief” (Steph Catudal, Everything All At Once)
Weirdest thing I googled this week:
“Longest living goldfish.” I attended my Great Uncle’s funeral this past week. He was more like a grandfather figure to me because my own grandpas died when I was really little. It was good to talk with everyone. At the reception, we somehow got on the topic of a family member’s 18-year-old goldfish and then had to find out what the record was for a goldfish lifespan. Turns out it’s 43 YEARS! Whoa.
What I’m grateful for:
A stream-of-consciousness list: my daughter (she has been quite the little buddy lately), sunshine, concerts in the park, mom friends, friends who read my poetry (you know who you are and I love you), hot tub time, a good hardcover book (Banyan Moon this week), hilarious memes on Instagram, pets doing pet things, therapy (I had a lot of grief come up at the funeral and felt a million times better after my therapy session).
Snapshots:
