Culture Gabfest

7 June 2026: I always wondered how I'd feel when the Culture Gabfest called it quits--which I could kind of sense coming?--but to have the news come right now? Well, I literally cried. 

So grateful for eighteen years (!!!) of top-notch entertainment. 

Home...

 6 June 2026: 

[Catch-up post...last one...]

Drove through blinding downpours in the homestretch, but made it. Grateful always to have this place to come home to. 

The Anna Karenina principle proven (again) in a single day

5 June 2026: 

[Catch-up post]

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

By the end of Friday, I couldn't get these lines out of my head. 

[Hospital] Room with a View

4 June 2026: 

[Catch-up post]

When I first noticed the view from my mom's hospital room, I almost gasped. 

An image of such peace and beauty from a perch that is anything but. 

(I was born here in this hospital, but can't remember being there since.)

A minor miracle...

3 June 2026: 

[Gotta get through a series of "catch-up" posts...]

This is a silly picture, but an less than an hour before it was taken, I was sobbing because I saw that this sweet dog would be okay. So much is awful, but the months-long dread and despair that I felt around all things Snow-related has lifted.

Internal timeline cleanse...

2 June 2026: So much on my mind, but it does my heart and head good to catch these glimpses of my girls, peacefully oblivious. 

"Salt Then Sour Than Sweet"

1 June 2026: Very, very hard days here. Finding comfort once again in Sara Bareilles, whose music always comes to me at just the right times. (That this is also a Brandi Carlile collaboration is a lovely bonus.)

American Rambler

31 May 2026: In American Rambler, which I am really enjoying about 100 pages in, Isaac Fitzgerald writes some lines that I could not more heartily co-sign. Writing about attending Easter services at a Swedenborgian church and thinking about the parishoners, he explains, "That devotion is something that still perplexes me--unless it's a devotion to art, or my friends, or walking. But in a way, as I grow older, I'm beginning to realize that it may all be the same thing, and that's enough."

Also appropriate musings for today, both Whitman's birthday and what would have been (well, still is) my parents' 56th anniversary.

Work Cited

Fitzgerald, Isaac. American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed. Knopf, 2026.

Finishing The Master

30 May 2026: I hadn't planned to, but last night I found myself finishing The Master. Echoing the pace and style of his subject, Tóibín's prose makes a reader take their time; you literally can't dash through these pages. To be clear, this is a feature, not a bug. 

So when I picked the book up last night with about eighty pages to go, I thought I would maybe get through forty. But I was so quietly captivated by it that I just kept going. 

I think I'll think about this one for a while: Henry's push-and-pull between the social and the individual, his quietly torturous repression, and his devotion to his work. None of these are easy to describe or classify. And all of that makes perfect sense to me.  

Three books...

29 May 2026: Working my way through three different "for fun" books, which I can't remember doing before: American Rambler (for my book club), that Thoreau biography, and The Master (those last two from my bedside table piles). 

My dad did this all the time. I can't say I saw the appeal--dividing my attention like that. But now that I have the time to do it (and am making the time to do it), I get it. Like, of course it's great. 

I didn't set out to do this as a little tribute to him, but I like that it is turning out to be--and I hope it's a habit I keep up (or at least, reading more than one book at a time).

Uncle Joe

28 May 2026: My Uncle Joe passed away today. It's been, quiet simply, a brutal six months in my family. 

Thinking tonight about all the fun times I had at his house, how handsome I always thought he was, and how the one time I ever rode a motorcycle, he was driving it and I had my arms around his waist so tight at first but then relaxed and felt both safe and exhilarated. 

5001

27 May 2026: So I just noticed that Blogger is saying this is post #5001, which is kind of wild. Been at this since 2007 and posting daily since 2016. 

Seems like that's enough for a post today--at least once I add a little groove: this song that's been in my head since I heard it on an episode if Ponies (which is a very fun show).

The Master

26 May 2026: Working my way through another book that has sat on a bedside table for nearly a decade: Colm Tóibín's The Master. Beautiful and haunting prose throughout so far. This passage stuck with me today, as Tóibín's fictionalized version of Henry James remembers meeting a wounded Civil War soldier at a Union hospital camp: 

"He wanted to hold his young frined, help him now that the worst was over, take him home to his family to be looked after. But he also know that, as much as he wanted to aid and console the soldier, he wanted to be alone in his room with the night coming down and a book close by and pen and paper and the knowledge that the door would remain shut until the morning came and he would not be disturbed. The gap between the two desires filled him with sadness and awe at the mystery of the self, the mystery of having a single consciousness, knowing merely its own bare feelings and experiencing singly and alone its own pain or fear or pleasure or complacency" (166-7).

Work Cited

Tóibín, Colm. The Master: A Novel. Scribner, 2004.

Memorial Day 2026

25 May 2026: Had a really wonderful time spending the day in Rockville with Tim, Kevin, and Amy. We watched the parade (so cool and diverse!) had lunch and then just talked and laughed. Awesome day. 

I Love Boosters

24 May 2026: A lot about this current cultural moment is awful and frustrating, but it really is a gift to get to watch a Boots Riley movie. I Love Boosters is a fun ride with a big swing of hope at the end. I'll happily take it.