Highlight of the week: ANOTHER bobcat encounter in my yard!!!
Looking forward to: doing some fiction reading this weekend
Stuff I did:
6.25 hours consulting
3.75 hours business development
5 hours writing
date night picnic and sunset stroll downtown
made sourdough pancakes — they didn’t taste sour but were good — I spent 45 minutes looking for a reputable source confirming that an overnight counter fermentation would be safe and finally threw up my hands and went for it on the theory that both buttermilk and sourdough are cultured 🤷♀️ We didn’t eat all the batter the first day so I threw it in the fridge overnight — and the culture kept working so they were just as airy on day two!
DH surprised me with donuts one morning because he wakes up so much earlier — man I love a plain old-fashioned 🍩 — I’m not into bouquets but baked goods are my love language 😂
pulled together a quick spending spreadsheet of the past year and a half, wondering if there were any easy spots to spend less (not really)
As a writer about and critic of education technology, I was often asked “what’s your favorite piece of ed-tech” – some sort of “gotcha” question, I reckon, in which I was supposed to confess that, in fact, I hate everything. I’d answer “the window,” which is, no doubt, some sort of “gotcha” response – even though, in truth, it is one of the most significant pieces of technology in a classroom and, no lies, truly one of my favorites. If you’ve ever taught or learned in a space without windows, you know the difference that natural light makes – the light that can come in and, of course, the glances and stares that can go out. And there’s a long history of the architecture of schools that’s worth considering too: the size of windows; where they’re placed – do you want students to be able to look outside? why or why not? do the windows open? do they have bars? whose classrooms are more likely to be bright and whose are more likely to be dark.
We’ve grown to think that technology must involve computers.
We think of buildings as boxes that we put technology inside, not as technology themselves.
Natural light is powerful for people of all ages, not just students.
Being able to bring in fresh air by opening a window made people a little safer during the pandemic.
This video talked a little bit about rethinking air (and windows) in tall buildings.
And in America, classroom windows *that open* are a portal to safety in the event of a mass shooting 🙃 Public shootings have become the most effective modern terrorism; it could be anyone, it could be anywhere.
Unpacking minimalism, plus thoughts on ballerina farm’s shiplap, the psychology of ownership, and the joy of living with less.
We are told to—all people are told this, but particularly conditioned women— to long for less in so many ways, to take up less space in so many ways. The control piece of this, there’s just a lot where it’s like, you are trying to sort of winnow yourself into this tiny, clean surfaces, very elitist, very Minimalist existence.
— Virginia Sole-Smith
OK, there are a lot of reasons behind being attracted to minimalism, but I hadn’t encountered this one before: the idea of Minimalism as performing “taste” while constraining or denying our own aesthetic preferences, thus putting less of our own personality or imprint on a space — minimizing expression of the self or molding the self to something less intense and more socially acceptable 🤯 Home decor as imposition of ourselves. That we (especially women and queer folk) can take up space (in a good way) by extending our aesthetic preferences to a space that others may visit or share.
What does it mean, if we put others’ preferences first in our homes — our private, personal spaces? The rise of performative and converging home aesthetics isn’t only because of Instagram — HGTV def has a role here too 😉 — but a lot of it comes from or was amplified by the normalization of sharing our private spaces on social media.
Christian Nationalism relies on wildly popular and beautifully-shot depictions of female subordination—broods of blonde children, painstaking and time-consuming home cooked meals, beauty queens perpetually pregnant and in the kitchen– to perpetuate itself and flourish. And that’s what Trad Wife brands give them.
What Mormonism, tradwife content and Republican politics have in common is normalizing the extreme sacrifice of women (and anyone, really, who is not a rich, straight white guy). There’s a common thread of normalization of women’s isolation, dependence on men, and extreme sacrifice of the female self and body, even into death or erasure, that should strike us as profoundly odd.
By making Juilliard part of the Ballerina Farm story, the life she’s living now is framed as the one she chose over the life she could have had as a professional ballerina. SHE TOOK A BITE OF THE FORBIDDEN (BIG) APPLE BUT THEN DECIDED TO GO BACK INTO THE GARDEN.
There’s an exciting opportunity to add affordable housing in my community that the NIMBYs are fighting (check out the vision boards from a public meeting 😮). I don’t live in the neighborhood, but am within biking distance and visit shops there regularly. To help balance the voices that City Council hears, I wrote in to support the project:
It was normal to be white. It was normal to be a Christian. It was normal to be a man with a job, and it was normal to be a woman who was a man’s property. It was normal for children to be viewed as property of the parents, which (see previous point) meant the property of the man. It was normal to be straight and cis. It was normal to be able-bodied and employed. More importantly, though, these were the only normal things to be. To not be those things was to be abnormal, and to be abnormal was to be at the mercy of The Normal Ones.
…It was perfectly normal to be racist, misogynist, a religious bigot, as a way of defending and maintaining normalcy, which was a way of defending who did and who did not have the right to make decisions about what identities would be permitted, and to what extent the permission would be allowed.
Why does walking feel so intuitive when we’re in a city built before cars, yet as soon as we return home, walking feels like an unpleasant chore that immediately drives us into a car?
To determine whether a facility is dignified, I propose a simple test:
If you were driving past and saw a friend walking or rolling there, what would your first thought be:
“Oh, no, Henry’s car must have broken down! I better offer him a ride.”
“Oh, looks like Henry’s out for a walk! I should text him later.”
baked plum crumb cake and terrible sourdough banana bread — turns out you should not use a blender to make banana bread, it makes it rubbery 😅 (I’d say lesson learned except I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before… 🤦♀️)
skipped gaming with my sister to binge read the new Courtney Milan 😄
hacked back blackberries for an hour and discovered another shrub hiding underneath 🦾
went to Homebrew Website Club
one virtual appointment
skipped my usual walk, we all decided it was too hot 🥵
wrote an email to city council in favor of an upzoning project but haven’t hit send yet
Whether meant for market maximization or as a sign of respect for the audience, 21st century artists seem more interested in speaking their fans’ pre-existing aesthetic languages rather than pushing them into new styles… And the more that things pull directly from canonized past artworks, the less they’re likely to end up as embarassing relics.
Lately, I’m inspired by friends who are pouring energy into ideas that benefit their immediate circle. Projects intentionally tight in scope, powerful but local, and that follow their heart.
Rather than just living inside of our single Big World, they are energized to put effort into creating smaller, simulations of worlds that they can call their own. They are not trying to make the Next Big Thing, but instead something small yet significant.
Since leaving my day job two years ago, I’ve been writing personal weeknotes. In short: once a week, I publish on my blog a set of notes about what I did the past week. I believe weeknotes started inside organizations (here’s a good primer on professional weeknotes), but I appreciate using the weekly checkpoint as a personal tool to steer my attention and action.
A couple friends and I day-tripped up to Bellingham, a small coastal city near the Canadian border, over the weekend. I went to college there, but haven’t been back in ages, and my friends had never been before. We explored around downtown and the Fairhaven neighborhood, ate a lot of food, and soaked up the sights.
Audrey Watters
