You may have noticed that last week there was no Leisure Time. Rest assured, I still did leisure time activities. I just didn’t release them in a newsletter, because I came down with a weird bug over the course of the two days I usually use to write the newsletter, and instead spent that time being feverish and miserable.

I considered sending out a newsletter anyway, and it probably would have had some sort of droll and meta subject line about how you shouldn’t newsletter while ill, and then the body of the email would have just been like, my head hurts. But then I thought two things: One, this is my dang newsletter and I don’t have to send it if I’m sick. And two, everyone gets enough email already and they do not need my non-newsletter gumming up their inbox. And then that made me kind of sad to think about, because of course back in my day (I guess my day was the early 2000s?), we used email to send long and emotional missives to distant loved ones about what was going on in our lives. And now everyone’s inbox is full of annoying marketing emails and customer service emails and no one sends thoughtful emails anymore, including me (apart from this august publication, of course).

I don’t miss writing them, exactly. Those things took forever! But I do miss receiving them, because you’d get this long note from someone you didn’t get to see too often, and it would sound just like them, and even though you were far away, you’d get this brief moment with them, and you’d know they were thinking of you while they wrote it. What a nice feeling! If you have time to send someone a nice “thinking of you” email soon, you should probably do it.

What I'm Reading Online

Someone must answer for why this take is the one they ended up using in the show. Also, this is a case where I’m very aware of what the actor looks like currently because he’s got a new show coming out, AND I think of him as older than me because he was a teen actor when I was a child, and altogether I can’t get over how young Joshua Jackson looks in that clip. Was he really that young on Dawson’s Creek?? Relatedly, just because it is important to brag when we can, several jobs ago I was a TV reporter, and at an industry event for CBS I saw him chatting with Stephen Colbert, and James Van Der Beek happened to be at the event because he also had a CBS show at the time, and he walked up and joined their conversation. I remember Colbert was smiling and I just thought, is that man also charmed that he gets to be part of that experience?

I had never heard the story of the people who founded PFLAG and this is just an incredible read. An astounding story of a woman who loudly and publicly loved her gay son in an era when prevailing attitudes about gay people were atrocious. It’ll break your heart; it’ll give you hope for how courageous and loving people can be.

Also, as a child of the ’90s, I must now admit that the first time I heard of the organization PFLAG was in a scene in Reality Bites where Steve Zahn practices coming out to Janeane Garofalo before talking to his mom, and he encourages her to join PFLAG, and Janeane, in character as his mom, goes, “puh-flag. I’m beginning to like the sound of that.” Tragically, the internet does not have an available clip of this moment, which is how you know this world wide web ain’t what it used to be, but I hope a certain subset of readers can all hear Janeane in their heads going “puh-flag!”

If you’re in the mood for a long and winding saga, try this Texas Monthly story about the man who tried to uncover the truth about the famous (and famously mysterious) bluesman Robert Johnson. It’s a lesson in the perils of feeling too much ownership of the story you’re trying to tell, and how hard it is to decide when the writing and reporting work is finished. It’s also a pretty maddening saga about how much can go wrong when reporters behave unethically.

This test about your level of food disgust is entertaining and also gross. For the record, my level of disgust was low, at 33.63%, and mostly centered on human contaminants, mold, insect contaminants, and animal flesh.

In the most Cambridge story I’ve heard in a long time, a mail carrier was attacked by some wild turkeys, then rescued by a famous Harvard professor. He had to have his hip replaced! Poor guy.

I have not really been following this case about Pras from the Fugees getting in legal trouble about foreign money, but he seems to have been advised to take the stand in his own defense, and well, it did not go well. Here’s NPR with some highlights of the “withering” cross examination if you would like to raise your eyebrows from the first word of an article straight through to the last.

What I’m Reading in Print

Oops, after our last get-together, I just re-read The Priory of the Orange Tree. But I’ve got a few books on tap and I promise to have a new reading recommendation for next week.

What I’m Watching

Currently I am watching HBO’s Gentleman Jack, which is a British costume drama about two women named Anne who are in love. Since it takes place in the 19th century, this is a complicated situation for them, but the amazing thing about this show is that it is based on real-life women, and somehow they were just a couple and actually got married? The main Anne, the one the show is named after, has basically just decided she’s going to live her life the way she wants to, and so she does, and ignores all sorts of cultural mores about sexuality and how women are supposed to behave. Other Ann has some mental health issues, and how people in her life respond to that is another fascinating glimpse of an earlier era—it’s this odd situation where everyone understands that she has this issue, but they have no concept of what it means, or how to help her.

I’m also watching the show Not Dead Yet, which stars Gina Rodriguez and is about a woman whose life falls apart at age 37 and then she has to start fresh, which she does by writing obituaries for her local paper. And then the subjects of her obits start appearing to her as ghosts and passing on life advice. It is a very low-stakes show, as these things go. She hangs out with her friends, she writes obits, she emotionally matures. The first couple of episodes are a bit rockier, when she’s still stuck in her old ways, but as she starts to improve, the show does, too. It’s on Hulu, if you need to pass a low-stress half hour of your life, and if you time it right, you can pair it with the latest episode of Abbott Elementary.

What I’m Listening to

One of my favorite musicians, Angel Olsen, just released a new EP, so that’s pretty much where my focus is at this time.

Until next week, friends.