Good afternoon! Sorry for the delay in getting the letter out to you these last two Sundays. My body has been playing catch-up, but my head is still in the clouds. I just really needed to reawaken, to hug a tree and walk with the moonrise, and swim with my friends, and drive home late into the night, and sleep in a living room fort with my husband.
Speaking of friends: today’s song feels like when a group of people pile like puppies onto a small settee, and each person is sipping on variations of the same drink, but still, you just have to try this. One conversation lulls into another until everyone’s voices mingle into a sort of low, harmonic drone while this hums along in the background.
Too Many Tabs Open
Did You See This
Scientists have discovered that horses “[…] have an awareness of the consequences and outcomes of their actions” and “think into the future” — something horse girls everywhere have always known. Next they’re going to tell us horses like eating peppermints as much as they do apples and hay.
Joy Williams reunited with Esquire for an interview looking back on her years working at the magazine, and her typewriter-written responses elicited a windfall of more and more for me to read. I audibly laughed when she said, “maybe some of them even had heart attacks,” referring to the “fools” who were outraged by her 1990 essay criticizing hunters for being “persecutors of nature who should be prosecuted.”
Anne Carson wrote so poignantly, penetratingly, and amiably of being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the London Review of Books that the ghost of her words enveloped me in a sort of lachrymose air for the rest of my day. The way she navigates the pooling consciousness of her own dislocation flows into a deeply affecting essay, and I believe it will resonate with anyone who lives in a body they frequently have to reacquaint themselves with, as well as touch anyone moved by her writing. I have twin tattoos inked across my shins — “even as a shadow” adorning one, “even as a dream” on the other — from Carson’s translation of Euripides’ play Herakles and now I think I’ll start journaling again too (something I do inconsistently), just to imbue a little more of her spirit in my days.
The Times profiled Dirt—“[…] a daily-ish newsletter that sends you the latest insights in digital pop culture and entertainment”—cofounder Daisy Alioto, and it offers a lot to chew on. Alioto strikes me as someone who is as intriguing and mindful as she is dedicated to her vision and persevering in her skillset. She is certainly one to watch, and I am very curious about and excited for her tireless expansion of the Dirt ecosystem.
The Los Angeles Review of Books released a preview of their upcoming Gossip issue, which features essays by Jamie Hood (if anyone has a copy of How to Be a Good Girl by Hood pleeeease may I borrow it ahead of the Pantheon reissue — I missed my chance to buy a copy during its initial release and I’m still kicking myself to this day), Sophia Stewart, and Hillary Brenhouse. Their essays explore their respective group chats and the universes that crystallize within them.
I am a part of several group chats but only semi-actively participate in a handful because I am also a chronically poor texter (a bad habit I managed to wrangle late last year but unfortunately fell off the wagon earlier this year for reasons unknown even to me, womp womp womp…). I love the language that a community of friends creates for itself, how something akin to lore can develop in a thread of texts, how a group chat of 30 people can all send pictures of the sky every single day and never grow tired of it, or how another is mostly just everyone trying to coordinate schedules for another night of dinner together. I love how a group chat formed as a vehicle for arrival updates during hangouts can grow into an intimate space alive with endearment, and how group chats allow for friends to become good friends. I also love that the term “group chat” has weathered the shifting language of time — like, no one calls it a “group text.”
A friend sent me this fascinating 2019 Sports Illustrated profile of Jim Bintliff, the man who “[collects] the mud that is used to treat every single regulation major league baseball, roughly 240,000 per season,” and it reminded me of the Worm Charmers piece I featured in the first Barn Sour letter.
A major league player was struck in the head by a baseball in 1920 and died. His death motivated the MLB to improve the sport by implementing safer practices. Time marched on as league continually tried and failed in their search for more invulnerability. In the 1930s, a third base coach for a Philadelphia team discovered that the mud near his childhood home in New Jersey was “special” — smooth, creamy, and viscous without being oleaginous. This mud coats baseballs with a thin sheen of stickiness that preserves their distinct white appearance, neither to the mud itself nor velocity. By the 1950s, this practiced was widely adopted across the league. From there, an unorthodox job emerged — one that, ostensibly, can only be performed by one person and has, to this day, been sustained through the decades that passed from one hand of modernization to the next, despite the MLB’s efforts to uncover and replicate its secrets.
A 2023 article confirms that Bintliff has yet to be put out of business by his own client base and a radio interview from March of this year features discussions of his family’s interminable history in the mudslinging business; he and the host also repeatedly refer to death as “getting beaned.”
In July, I shared an interview Bandcamp did with Seán Ronayne, an Irish ornithologist dedicating himself to capturing the sounds of “all regularly occurring bird species on the island of Ireland.” This month, I’m sharing an essay about Curtis Eckerman, a Texas ecologist who is photographing the thousands of moths that flit and flutter around him. With the help of the participatory science app iNaturalist (one of my favorites!), he’s already counted 550 species in his very own backyard. I raised luna moths as a kid and have always nurtured a desire to one day grow them again. Next time I’m in Austin, I really want to go on one of Eckerman’s mothing expeditions in the park.
This story about a Finnish tech startup exploring the use of microbes and renewable energy to invent novel protein sources in an alleged effort “toward healthier end-products that will support climate and sustainable development goals” is undoubtedly fascinating, but I couldn’t help think about how surreal it is to read about the exceptionally lavish process of developing macarons made with Solein while nearly 300 million people around the world are suffering from acute famine conditions. The world we live in is sometimes just very… otherworldly.
This evening will bring into our lives a rare super blue sturgeon moon, the only full moon of August and the first supermoon of the year! And on its heels will follow three more supermoons throughout fall. How will you gaze upon the considerable glow looming over us tonight? I think I want to have dinner under the trees and, for dessert, put my own twist on a blue moon float: sub beer with lavender earl grey and mix some blueberries into a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Yum.
New Titles I'd Be Drawn to at the Bookstore This Week
✴ An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work by Charlotte Shane, published by Simon & Schuster. “Shane uses her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships--with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband--she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual ‘other woman.’"
✴ The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager, published by Dzanc Books. “The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of becoming a radio astronomer struggles to raise the triplets she gave birth to as a gestational surrogate, whose parents were killed in a car accident. Surrounded by characters who wear wings, memorize etymologies, and build gigantic bird nests, and bound to this town in which young adults must decide between two binary worldviews--either YES or NO--the woman is haunted by the old fable of the Girl in Glass Vessel, a cautionary tale about prying back the façade of one's world.”
✴ The Stepdaughter by Caroline Blackwood, reissued by McNally Editions. “J is a lonely woman without even the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, but he's left J not only with their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but with the sulky cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage. The presence of a pert au pair, Monique, serves only to make J feel more isolated and self-conscious. What she'd like is someone to blame.”
✴ The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya, published by Pantheon Books. "August 2020. Sophia, a young playwright, awaits her father's verdict on her new show. A famous author whose novels haven't aged as gracefully into the modern era as he might have hoped, he is completely unaware that the play centers around a vacation the two took years earlier to an island off Sicily, where he dictated to her a new book. Sophia's play has been met with rave reviews, but her father has studiously avoided reading any of them. When the house lights dim however, he understands that his daughter has laid him bare, has used the events of their summer to create an incisive, witty, skewering critique of the attitudes and sexual mores of the men of his generation.”
✴ The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm by Rosamund Young, published by Penguin Press. “We talk a lot about sheep: following the herd, counting sheep to fall asleep and looking out for wolves in sheep's clothing. But, just like people, animals don't always follow the pack. Some are affectionate while others butt heads; some follow the leader while some guide the whole flock home. With startling beauty and tenderness, Rosamund Young reveals the remarkable emotional and intellectual complexity of the animals she lives with on her family farm, and the story of her life's work, with the intimacy of a personal diary.”
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What I’ve Recently Been Grazing On
After the Khruangbin show at the Hollywood Bowl last week, my husband said he had something to play for me and put an acid jazzy trip hop album called Flying Away by Smoke City on for our drive home. We’ve been listening to it practically everyday since. ꩜ After learning of Gena Rowland’s passing on Wednesday, I watched Woman Under the Influence for the first time in quite a while and fell in love with the film all over again. I think I may try to watch at least one of her movies a week in honor of her eminent legacy. ꩜ This Casual Archivist post of magazine subscriptions cards ranging from the 70s to 90s is so good and inspiring. ꩜ This song makes me wish I were, like, doing cartwheels and sifting for seashells and running away from waves on the beach with friends; the sand is a little cold beneath our feet but a fire is ablaze, marshmallows are melting onto beds of chocolate, the sun is setting, time has stopped moving for just this one night.
A lot of good music has come out this month, but this week I’ve really been sinking my teeth into…
𑁍 A Decoration by Torres and Fruit Bats. Torres always reminds me of an energetically really good time in my life, and this collaborative release from her and Fruit Bats feels like wading into an inlet carved out by the warm waters of those years.
𑁍 Quantum Baby by Tinashe. I listened to a lot of Tinashe’s 333 album while lingering in the desert a few years ago so now her music always arouses feelings left over from that very sweet, very sentimental period for me. I love the way she melds sorrow into something playful and coy, and I love those languid la la la la la la la’s in Getting No Sleep. I’m glad more people are discovering her music.
𑁍 Love, Other by Rosie Lowe. Lowe’s Paris, Texas, off her 2021 album Now, You Know, played a big role in the early days of love between my husband and me, and I am fully convinced she is crazy underappreciated.
𑁍 Fossil Cocoon: The Music of K. Yoshimatsu by K. Yoshimatsu. One of the songs on this Japanese ambient retrospective album reminds me of one of my best friends. I can’t wait to tuck it inside a little dinner party playlist just for her to hear later in the year.
Sour Reflections
Another apology, but this time for not keeping up with bookish discussions in the chat! I’ve been flitting my way through the book, though, and am looking forward to our conclusive discussion this upcoming Sunday. How is reading going for anyone else participating in this month’s book club?
Don’t forget to journal under the moon tonight. Promise to see you this upcoming Sunday. XO
June Jordan saying “Bridle your fucking arrogance and let a little reality into your mouths” will live inside my head forever now. That piece about her and Audre Lorde’s relationship was illuminating and stirring.
Is there anything better than a living room fort? ❤️ Can’t wait to dig into your treasure box of finds this week 🌟