Good morning! Sorry about the long delay between my last post and this one—didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m back though, and eager to try something I wasn’t initially planning with Barn Sour. More on that below.
I just finished an old Jane Fonda aerobics workout (does anyone else enjoy these…?) and am waiting for the morning to rub a little more sleep dust from its eyes before heading to the farmers market. On today’s checklist are big, juicy heirloom tomatoes for the burrata and stone fruit salad we’ve been repeatedly enjoying in my household, whichever stone fruit calls out to me to accompany the tomatoes, maybe strawberries for a sweet treat, the broccoli and radish microgreens my husband and I can’t get enough of, bananas to pair with the kefir I’ve been drinking every morning, lettuce and arugula and bay leaves and zucchini and eggplant, and a loaf of bread from one of my favorite local bakeries. I’ve been trying to manifest nasturtium flowers the last few weeks, but something tells me I won’t be finding them today either. Maybe I’ll luck out with some borage instead.
I hope you enjoy today’s post. Cheers!
Did You See This
I grew up an equestrian and spent much of my adolescence and teens working on farms to supplement my horse girl habit. What started at the behest of my parents grew into a sort of spiritual invigoration: I found that I enjoyed seeing the fruits of my hard labor and being surrounded and motivated by people who were working toward the same results as me (ensuring the health and safety of the animals in our care). Wrangling frightened cows ahead of thunderstorms rolling in, mucking stalls, scrubbing troughs, pulling bales of hay from precarious lofts, smoking out rattlesnake holes as horses darted frightened eyes about—it was grueling, but it was also enlivening, and is a part of my life I miss every day. I’d love to learn more about regenerative agriculture and how to build a fence. This piece on New Cowgirl Camp, a holistic land management course for women and non-binary people situated in a small Eastern Washington town stirred something innate within me.
A vinyl recording of Toro y Moi and Khruangbin’s show, Live at the Fillmore Miami—that my husband found at White Label Vinyl (a shop I suggest visiting if ever you’re in the area) when we were in Twentynine Palms to celebrate one of my good friend’s birthday’s earlier this year—was playing from the speakers in our living room while he made dinner, so I imagine at least some part of the buoyant atmosphere from our evening leant itself to how I perceived the story, but still, I enjoyed the sojourn we got to take with this piece on New York City’s alleged “bottom whisperer.” Side note: though the article doesn’t make mention of the book, it made me want to finally read Butts: A Backstory1—if you already have, let me know what you thought of it in the comments and if I should give it a go.
The escalating omnipresence of steroid usage in the zeitgeist is something I've certainly noticed cropping up over the last few years, and I’m sure you have too. An illuminating glimpse behind the curtain of how this trend has come to be and why it feels as ubiquitous as it does bleak. Also, does anyone remember when that one specific bodybuilding forum dominated Google during the 2010s, à la Reddit proliferating all our searches today?
Did you know we’re heading into National Pollinator Week? I love The Huntington Botanical Gardens. A, if you’re reading this, we should go on another double date there soon.
Despite being a New Yorker subscriber, I originally missed when Mary Gaitskill’s story of the briefly intoxicating and affecting and doleful relationship she and her once-best friend shared in their adolescence was printed in a February edition of the magazine this year. I’m so glad to have read it now. I think every woman has fallen in love with, had her heart broken by, fallen out of love with, and broken the heart of a best friend throughout her lifetime, her vision of the world expanded because of it. Easily my favorite piece of writing that I’m sharing this week.
I don’t drink raw milk because consuming unpasteurized dairy doesn’t interest me (I will admit, I would try a sip), but I know and love people who do, and I don’t judge them for it, but I do worry they’ll become sick from it. I found the clandestine air surrounding the reporter’s experience of buying the stuff particularly curious, as someone who lives in a city where I can run to the grocery store and buy half a gallon of raw milk as easily as any other beverage on the shelves. I never bat an eye at it appearing alongside cartons of goat, oat, and whole milk, but the price tag does strike me as a little egregious. Guessing my bemusement has something to do with those bubbles we all live in.
I remember discussions of pubic hair happening fairly often with friends when I was a teenager. Eventually, I think, the feeling of sophistication that came with talking at length about our grooming habits fell to the wayside. Now, mostly the only time this topic comes up is when someone sends a message in one group text or another asking if anyone knows the best place to get waxed, then a few weeks later we find ourselves laughing over drinks as the original inquiring party regales us with tales of never doing that again.
I don’t really understand why Annie Hamilton’s story ruffled so many online feathers this week. Maybe because it was published in GQ, an odd place for it to be. I can only imagine their average reader being confused by and unfamiliar with what was happening here. I like Tavi Gevinson but did not read her zine about Taylor Swift, because I am too indifferent to Taylor to want to read seventy pages about her (should I say sorry here?), but I am warm to Tavi and find Annie a singular character, so I read this.
M.F.K. Fisher’s explorations of memory and its attachments to the spaces food holds in our hearts, and the transformations it enchants our experience with, are rich, evocative, and inspiring. She wrote so adroitly of the pleasure we derive from even “just” a potato chip that it feels like I’m there with her, in 1968, craving “mayonnaise made with fresh eggs and lemon juice and good olive oil.” (How prescient!) The essay made me fantasize about everything I want to cook this summer—from the recipes stowed away in my mind for safekeeping to the ones I haven’t yet met. Thank you to my friend B for putting this on my radar.
We’ve come to know Florida as a hotbed of strange happenings, but I think the identity of the state often overshadows how bewitching and surreal and otherworldly it can be. I’m always appreciative of people who take the time to see its seemingly alien nature as something worth noticing.
The Graze
I can’t remember how, but I discovered Danish artist Fine a few months ago and have since listened to her (woefully limited) discography every day, including her band CHINAH’s outputs. The dreaminess that envelops me as her almost hypnagogic, ethereal voice streams through my headphones has basically become that wick you gaze into during a candle meditation for me. My favorite song on Rocky Top Ballads varies too often to pinpoint, but I am continually enchanted by the drowsy tempo change that happens midway through Days Incomplete.
I remember watching the trailer for Janet Planet several weeks ago and stashing my anticipation of the movie away in that little corner of my mind where an interest in something goes to lie dormant until reawakened. Then, the other day, I read an interview in The New Yorker with the director, playwright Annie Baker—a fact I hadn’t previously noted (Baker being the director, I mean). The revelation inspired me to try reading all of her plays this summer. I think I’ll start with John. Wish me luck (kidding).
The interview also reminded me that I had, several months ago, begun but never finished the movie Monos, so I restarted and finished that this week. I love when a brief moment in time becomes a waterfall; one minute I’m reading something in a magazine, the next I'm on a kind of journey.
“It’s the goosebumps you get at the crescendo of your favorite song; the stupefying wonder that comes with witnessing a birth or a death; the astonishing mystery we feel when gazing at the vast night sky.” A friend recently shared how much this episode of The Pulse had touched them, so I listened to it while moving through my wind down ritual on Friday night.
Some more music I've been enjoying is The Doober by Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes, an electrifying album that is part of a growing series where the duo edits their live performances for distribution, rather than recording the songs in a studio. Put this on while running errands or working out or when you want to lift your spirits or after you’ve dimmed the lights, lit a candle, and are washing the dishes, maybe or maybe not after nibbling on a little edible.
I started a book and perfume club at the beginning of this year, and one of the books my friends and I recently read for it was Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü, tr. Maureen Freely. Full disclosure, this was my pick for the month we read it, so I had already intuited that I would likely enjoy it. Regardless, I found the book arresting in its depictions of the life our protagonist was living—was suffocated, discouraged, invigorated by—and was transfixed by how richly Özlü painted her world, despite it lacking color for the woman on the page. Hallucinatory and poignant and meditative, and motivating in my pursuit of learning Turkish so I can surprise my husband’s family by finally knowing more than “good morning” and “how are you?” and “thank you.”
Speaking of book clubs, this jaunt across the celebrity book club landscape was fun.
Sour Reflections
This post was initially meant to take the form of something else entirely, but I couldn’t quite get it to grow into the shape I was imagining. Before I knew it, time began stretching between my return to this platform (lol) and the daily motions of my life getting in the way. I could say more about this but I’d rather just—
“You’re like my very own newspaper,” my husband recently told me during a walk, smiling widely after I’d prattled on about yet another article I’d read earlier. I’m not sure why this particular remark elicited something of an inductive reaction from me, and it doesn’t really matter, but his comment reminded me of a time long ago when I used to post what I thought were interesting articles on my Tumblr. I enjoyed the conversations doing this sparked among friends and followers and my memory of it, having dislodged itself, now flit around my mind like a lightning bug.
Compiling pieces of writing and calling it a newsletter isn’t exactly a novel idea, but I’m already littering my browser with tabs of virtually everything I find even mildly interesting, so why not borrow from my own history and share a little of whatever catches my eye with you too.
Expect to see Barn Sour in your inbox on Sunday mornings, where I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve read online throughout the week with Did You See This, a selection of media that’s recently held my attention via The Graze, and maybe a little something extra in Sour Reflections. I hope you enjoyed this first offering, let me know your thoughts in the comments. I’m excited!
Before you go, I wanted to pass on this song that my friend—the same one who introduced me to the M.F.K. Fisher essay; we love and adore her—brought into my life this week. Thanks for taking some time out of your day to be here. See you next Sunday.
Heads up, I’m using an affiliate link for all Bookshop links in this newsletter
Firstly, thank goodness for the work of the editor-curator that is an internet list maker whose introspections are actually compelling because of digital notoriety not being attached to their irl identity. What gorgeous collection - The Worm Charmers was especially delightful as I plan a trip to Florida this November and the M.F.K. Fisher shared by B earlier this month sent me off on a food writing binge myself - I have some Jim Harrison and A.J Liebling on their way.
In that vein the relationship between digital and irl identity, I had no idea who Annie Hamilton was, but that Tavi piece made me feel like I was bemusedly reading a Tumblr post without the preexisting affection for the mutual typing incoherently on the other side and thinking to myself, isn't it great we all have this private space to be unhinged and have little held against us other than by anonymous assholes who we can write off as just that, rather open ourselves to any real critique because this isn't actually a "real" piece of writing or context that that requires it. However, I feel that this approach to expression of ideas and self derailed what could have been very interesting real writing careers of some women on there and I strongly dislike writing done in the style of the "girlies" with internet brain rot trying to legitimize it as a form or style - it feels like a persona to hid lazy writing behind, the way I used to beg off any real feedback on Tumblr posts, which when it makes its way to the wrong crowd (hello GQ readers) won't be as generous as to stop at bemusement. And I think the editors at GQ knew that and purposefully went for the rage bait when featuring it at their weeks "must-read", knowing their own crowd likely has little of the lived experience granting generosity understanding or insight to that style of self expression. There is absolutely room for real, profound work to grow from the rot - Patricia Lockwood and Melissa Broader being two examples that spring to mind - but growing would be the operative form. Attached as it is to Hamilton's irl identity, I hope she's able to keep spinning this performance art thing of hers too, as I am sure if you, Mars, find her singular there is work of hers worth admiring.
I absolutely adored this — I very much appreciate the weekly roundup of curiosities and recommendations and I added so many tabs to my browser. I also enjoy following along to retro aerobic fitness routines, I recently did Cher’s, so fun! thank you Mars ⭐️