martinimade

"Like a soda promising happiness, a beer promising machismo, or a cereal promising health, Megyn Kelly is promising apoliticism ..."

-- Slate's Willa Paskin on Megyn Kelly's morning show.

I’ve been traveling thither and yon all week so I haven’t had a chance to collect many links. However, I have a golden oldie that never, ever ages: It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers.

"The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs...."

(read the rest here)

• A man and his quest.
• What it's like to ride out a hurricane.
• I wondered if this existed about two seconds after I drove past a historical marker. The internet is full of wonders.
• What a good girl!
• Someday, this mystery will be solved and we will all be amazed.
• The data tells the tale.

"When Donald Trump was elected president last November, his elder daughter was portrayed as liberal America’s consolation prize, like a Christmas present from an absentee dad plunked on the doormat in February. Uh, this is what you Democrats are into, right? Women? Businesswomen? Your little woman projects? That’s still your thing, right?"

-- Lindy West on Ivanka in the New York Times.

• This seems nice.
• I want to party with this gal.
• Sure, it is great to get more underrepresented students onto college campuses. Admissions is only the first step.
• A thing I wrestled with constantly ... before I just gave up.
• Alton Brown goes to New Zealand.

"Writing: Relax. Take a deep breath. Just tell the story, simply and completely and with a sense of humanity."

-- the last in a series of rules issued by Martin Merzer, a former guru at the Miami Herald. It starts, "The main thing is, don't get overly stressed. You have to really work at it to get hurt by a hurricane these days...."

This is my (recently reorganized) yarn stash.

Why am I showing this to you? Two reasons: 1) it will likely not look this good for too long and 2) because I recently spent a great deal of time thinking about yarn stash because of Clara Parkes.

You might know Clara. You might not. She is, above all else, a lovely human who it’s fun to be around. She also writes and edits books. And her most recent project is A Stash of One’s Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn. It’ll officially be released on Sept. 12.

Yours truly just happens to have an essay in there, along with  Meg Swansen, Lela Nargi, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Amy Herzog, Ann Shayne, Gudrun Johnston, Kay Gardiner, Rachel Atkinson, Franklin Habit, Anna Maltz, Sue Shankle, Amy Christoffers, Clara Parkes, Jillian Moreno, Susan B. Anderson, Lilith Green, Rachael Herron, Kristine Vejar, Eugene Wyatt, Aimée Osbourn-Gille, Kim McBrien Evans, and Debbie Stoller.  I can promise you that at least a few of these will be funny and a few will be touching and all of them will be good, because that’s how Clara rolls.

If you’re a yarn-y type or a word-lover or both, you should pre-order.

As for my stash closet: I learned that I really do not need another tote bag ever. EVER. 

• Reader: I laughed so hard.
• The Waffle House Index in Houston.
• Weapons-grade plum.
• One small stone.
• There is so much I don't understand about sororities. 
• This confirms my theory that they shoot both the qualifying and the city finals during the same week. 
• The Hugo-winning Ursula Vernon is quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy writers.

I meant to plug this earlier but was distracted by the thought of a three-day weekend because that’s how I roll. So ...

You can hear Sarah Bowen Shea and I discuss pelvic floors with Julie Wiebe on this week’s Another Mother Runner podcast. I’m told it’s pretty funny. And, ya know, informative.

Also: 99 Percent Invisible re-ran one of my all-time favorite episodes last week and it is even more resonant now: Notes on an Imagined Plaque. You should give it a listen.