Whoa I’m about to turn 28! To celebrate, David and I (and anyone else I can peer pressure) have been watching a kids show called Gravity Falls. The premise is two siblings who spend the summer with their great-uncle, who runs a tourist trap called the Mystery Shack in Oregon. Most of the mysteries in his shack are fakes, but the twins find real mysterious and surprisingly dark things (for a Disney show) in the town of Gravity Falls. It has a very satisfying conclusion and is affirming of siblings, friendship, adventure, and teamwork. And anyone who believes in Bigfoot or Nessie. I recommend it!

1. The Latest Online Craze is Submitting to the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, The Verge. David doesn’t get why this meme is funny but I love that line: “If we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” It’s also kind of wild to hear from someone whose turn of phrase has gone viral, untethered from the original and personal meaning and into something universal, comedic, and also kinda tragic.
2. The Great Everywoman Outfit Contest of 1915, Narratively. “They were drawn to the Polymuriel for the way it might make life easier for women of their class, allowing them to move between teas, concerts, meetings, dinners and other social engagements without the need for expensive and time-consuming costume changes. Mrs. Palmer, in particular, wanted an inclusive style that would suit women of all shapes, sizes and ages. A widely syndicated article about the contest quoted her requirements in detail: “Its silhouette should not too strongly suggest an umbrella, a knitting needle, an hour glass, a pyramid, inverted or otherwise, or other of the geometric forms into which women have from time to time tortured their bodies.” In The New York Times a few weeks later, she made a demand that still resonates today; when asked what she most wanted in the Polymuriel, she said: “Let’s have pockets.” This is an interesting story about women in 1915 trying to develop clothes that would be easy to move in, stylish no matter the trends, and take about as much time to think about and put on as a men’s suit would. People still talk about finding their “uniform” to free up mental space (which is kinda funny because if you actually wear a uniform for your job, they’re a little less of a romantic notion). “The question of how to balance professionalism and fashion, femininity and anonymity, has preoccupied working women ever since. Today, to walk through midtown Manhattan on a summer weekday is to be struck by the uniformity of men’s business clothing — shirts in 50 shades of blue. By contrast, womenswear is all diversity: subtle calibrations of formality, coverage and color. A work uniform for women is still elusive, perhaps because there is no outfit that will make a woman disappear. Equal treatment in the office, in the street, in politics, and in private life, is a matter of more than clothes.”
3. In Defense of Screen Time, Bjorn Jeffery. I thought this transcript of a talk was interesting, in part because I am naturally inclined to want to reduce my time looking at screens whenever possible. This is a short read and I encourage you to check it out, but here’s his 4 takeaways if you’re pressed for time, or don’t want to read anything else on a screen today:
   1. What matters is what is on the screen, not the screen itself. Help your kids find the right thing for them. There’s so much great stuff out there. Don’t assume that your kids have necessarily found it themselves. And if they have found something – help them to use it the right way. What matters is what is on the screen, not the screen itself.
   2. Consider the context. How are your kids playing? Are they doing it together with others – siblings, friends, online friends? Is the screen the main part of the activity, or actually a facilitator of something else? If you think Fortnite is about shooting each other, you haven’t been paying attention. Is there an opportunity for you to participate in the activity? You can probably add layers to any activity that is going on, creating both a learning opportunity as well as a shared space between you and your kids. Consider the context.
   3. Encourage variety. I think there’s much to be gained from Fortnite, but I wouldn’t suggest playing and streaming it for 8 hours straight everyday. But come to think of it – there are very few activities I would recommend for 8 hours straight everyday. Go beyond the screen and ensure that your kids have varied activities in all places – including with screens. Encourage variety.
   4. Treat the screen like you would anything else. When I was the CEO of Toca Boca and tried to explain my job to people, almost everyone said “ah, you mean educational apps”. It was precluded that if you make apps for children, their primary purpose must be education. There’s no other area in kids lives that you would hold to that standard. What if all food you served your kids had to have a specific nutritional formula? That’s interesting in theory, but anyone saying that has never been in a car with a hungry toddler. Different circumstances call for different solutions.”
4. You Too Can Have a Viral Tweet Like Mine, The Paris Review. Another “writing about internet phenomenon” pieces I read this week, but with some fun digging into poetic meter and the ways you can switch out lyrics or lines from poetry with each other (famously, singing Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme). My favorite example of conspicuous iambic tetrameter in speech is when Maude talks about the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, yes, “and PROUD we ARE of ALL of THEM.”
5. The Awkward But Essential Art of Small Talk, NYT. Whenever I start a new job or enter a new place I temporarily forget how to have a personality and make small talk. These tips are pretty good, including preparing a few anecdotes ahead of time (Mr. Bennet: “May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?” Mr. Collins: “They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.”), and remembering to ask questions of the other person. This article also introduced me to the “Shake and Fold” method of drying your hands with paper towels and it’s a real game-changer.

Bonus features:

• Two Bears Brawl in the Middle of a Highway (in Canada)
• The Compendium of Awful Library Books, Made by Awesome Librarians – Warning: a non-zero amount of butt cheek at this link. My favorite is the Romance Writer’s Phrasebook, an excerpt of which reads like a surrealist poem.

I recently had the chance to re-pack my ~25 journals into a better storage system and came across this amazing list in the back of one of my notebooks. It had two columns, one with the title “Things Emily Likes” and one with the title “Things Timothy Likes.” My list included excellent things like “cheeseburgers” and “neopets” and “mulch.” My brother Tim’s list had “corn mazes,” “athletics” and “talking.” Basically what I’m saying is that it’s really fun to revisit records of yourself from childhood, in whatever form you might have them. I was a very tender and very sincere kid!

1. Underground Railroad Quilt Codes: What We Know, What We Believe, and What Inspires Us, Folklife. “At its center, a quilt is an assemblage of historical and creative cues in the form of fabrics, shapes, symbols, textures and colors. Quilts were often made to commemorate important family events such as marriage, a birth, or moving to a new place. Often made from scraps of old dresses, burlap sacks, and dish cloths, it gives physical, even functional, form to a family or individual’s past and present.” This is a super interesting discussion of whether or not quilt codes were used in the Underground Railroad, which is a conversation that a lot of historians are divided on. Either way, “Quilts allow Tindall to sustain a conversation about these men and women who were valiant, who fought slavery by taking the ultimate chance—running, and maybe even trusting the message on a blanket when everything was at stake—and encouraging others to do the same.” This also introduced me to the wonderful Quilt Index, an open access digital repository of images and info about thousands of quilts! Browse by year or other categories at this link.
2. How Mom Jeans Became Cool (Again),The Atlantic. “But McClendon suggested that there’s more driving the shift toward modest, comfortable, practical clothing than playful irony. After the 2016 election and the national reckoning with powerful men’s sexual misconduct sparked by the #MeToo movement, she began to notice a clear “shift away from extremely sexy clothes, toward a more unisex style,” she told me. She saw women ditch their stilettos for designer sneakers and their dresses for tailored suits. “The tight clothes, the high heels—there was this general sense of Why am I wearing these things?” As the national mood sobered, McClendon noted, the body-punishing, form-fitting extremes to which high-profile women pushed their looks in the 2000s (McClendon pointed to Lady Gaga and her famously tall heels as an example) gave way to androgynous shapes and looks that prioritized comfort. Today, the zeitgeist-iest young pop star of the moment is 17-year-old Billie Eilish, “who wears very large, oversized clothing that’s completely body-obscuring and unisex,” she added.” Interesting. I can relate to the idea that women/people in general are gravitating toward unisex and shapeless clothing as a result of gender dynamics and feeling objectified. For me, the thought process lately has been, “There is so much bad happening in this world! I have so much work to do! I cannot be squeezed into these skinny jeans anymore. I need room.”
3. The Hardest Stunt I Ever Pulled Off, Vulture. WOW the stunts described in this piece are cool and stressful to imagine completing. “I would never do that one again and I would never ask anybody else to do something like that again. In today’s world, we would do it with a much smaller explosion and enhance the fire in the background with CGI, and also put the guy on a cable so he can never really hit the ground. Back then, we didn’t have the safety. The way we did it was the only way to do it.” Dang!
4. Advice from Therapists on What to Do When You Feel Lonely, The Cut. My favorite piece of advice: “One thing to remember in our age of instant gratification is that friends aren’t found; instead, friends are made — crafted, really — over time. It takes between 6–8 conversations before someone considers us a friend. We wish we could walk into a party, instantly connect, and walk out arm-in-arm with a new BFF, but really it’s an incremental process. The good news is that the bar to start is low. It’s been shown again and again that, as long as we are mutually kind to each other, we become friends with whoever we see most often. Proximity and repetition are key. So put yourself in situations where you see the same faces again and again: a dog park at the same time each morning, a weekly writer’s workshop, or a co-working space.”
5. It’s Time to Let Meat Loaf into Your Embarrassing Little Heart, Electric Literature. On the 5 feelings that the first 10 minutes of Bat Out of Hell expresses: “Motorcycle—not classically a feeling, no, but what else can be said about the lyric “I’m gonna hit the highway like a battering ram/ on a silver-black phantom bike” except that it encapsulates the feeling of Motorcycle—that is to say, motorcycle-qua-motorcycle, the Springsteenian motorcycle, the emblem of masculine longing to get out?”  This look at that wild album is really sympathetic and cute and reminds me of David. “Meat Loaf offered his slobbering heart on a silver tray, and so did we all before we knew better, and thus did he violate one of the cardinal covenants of artistic maturity: as adult creators, we are never again to partake of the gasping desperation of those teenage years once they pass us by. If we only wrote what we felt, we’d be teen idols forever, enslaved and enfeebled by our emotions. If we said what we felt as soon as we felt it, what havoc we would wreak!” Also I like how often the author refers to the feeling of Motorcycle.

Markus Knöll

I’m just not feeling it this week, sorry friends. Here’s 5 small silly things, thanks for stickin’ with me.

1. Hubble’s New Portrait of Jupiter, NASA. Isn’t it wild that we can see clear photographs of planets across the solar system? That doesn’t really get old.
2. Questions people asked librarians before the internet, Minnesota Public Radio. “What percentage of all bathtubs in the world are in the U.S.? (1/27/1944).” See more of the question cards at this hashtag: #letmelibrarianthatforyou.
3. Cute video, Twitter: Little toddler taking steps on his forearm crutches while his dog watches. “I’m walking, Maggie!”
4. Brazen and the Beast, Sarah MacLean. You might not be a romance reader (HISTORICAL romance on top of that, with all those cravats and chemises), and I respect that. This book was one of the sweeter ones for me. Maybe I’m especially partial to it because the main character is explicitly described as being curvy/chubby, and so reading her love interest be all into that made it a positive read.
5. My Dogs’ Wedding, JennaMarbles. I’ve been watching a lot of JennaMarbles’ dog videos this week since I’ve found myself at home in bed more than usual. They’re surreal and tender and I find them supremely comforting.

Photo credit: bradley

Remember when Justin Bieber had conjunctivitis*? No? Well you must have been spending 2017 more productively than me. Also, that was an elegant segue into telling you that I have an ear infection! Poor me. Symptoms of an ear infection (in children) include: trouble sleeping, crying more than usual, and fussiness. Check, check, and CHECK. This is a pretty advice-heavy week because your girl likes advice columns (snooping into people’s personal lives + practical wisdom = what more could you want?).

*Don’t worry, there’s nothing gross at that link.

1. Voting for the Woman Candidate Because She’s a Woman, Time. “In their book Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder to Stay in Office, political scientists Jeffrey Lazarus and Amy Steigerwalt found that women in Congress are generally more effective than their male colleagues. They point to the fact that Congresswomen tend to have more staff in their district offices, serve on committees for issues that are of most interest to their constituents and are more likely to co-sponsor legislation that helps their voters. Separate research shows that female lawmakers bring more federal money back to their districts.” It’s kind of like those findings that you have better chances with a female ER doctor. Interesting and maybe not surprising to many readers!
2. I Thought My Writing Career Was Over. A DIY Furniture Project Saved It, Bustle. Oh this is a beautiful essay about creative blocks, DIY projects, and the wisdom of our ancestors. This part made me tear up: “There are so many questions that I wish I could ask my father as an adult. Wandering through the aisles of that hardware store and feeling incredibly lost and out of place, I wished he was there to answer them: Why are there so many different kinds of nails? What am I doing with my life? How do you choose the right paint? Do I need a stud finder? Do you know that you have twin granddaughters? Do you know that one of them looks just like you? I worried that without him there to answer my questions, I would never be able to provide my characters with their own backstory, the knowledge of who they were.” On a casually unrelated note, I love you Daddy.
3. You Can Do This (Really) – Advice for New Graduate Students, Librarian Shipwreck. Here’s some great advice for the back to school folks, especially those in grad programs (thinking of you all this time of year!). But this advice is wise for anyone, about how to turn comparison and jealousy into motivation: “it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve been told not to compare yourself to others, you’re probably going to do it anyways. So do it right. Keep an eye on what your fellow graduate students are doing as a way of figuring out what things you should probably be doing. That someone in your cohort has recently published a book review in a journal should not fill you with envy, but it should make you think that maybe you want to try doing something similar. That a member of your department is running from city to city to present papers at conferences, should make you look into what conferences you might want to present at. That someone in your cohort has just won a prestigious grant, should remind you that you can and probably should be applying to those things as well. Yes, you might feel some pangs of envy, and yes, sometimes your fellow graduate students will be infuriating braggarts (if one of them is really like this, you might want to select them as your nemesis), but being aware of what your fellow graduate students are doing can help orient you to the types of things you should be doing.”
4. #1223: Feminist Wedding Etiquette Help, Captain Awkward. Honestly my mom could have written this advice (especially the fait accompli strategy, which is a perfect word for a perfect concept)! Even if the people in your circle are all supportive and reasonable, you can too-many-cooks yourself into wedding indecision so easily. “We did, basically, NOTHING that my mom envisioned a wedding would be like (a year before the thing she was pre-apologizing to relatives for how “rustic” it was going to be, cried on Mother’s Day because “all her children” had chosen non-Catholic weddings and did that mean she was a bad mom, worried that nobody would come if it wasn’t going to be “like a real wedding”) but on the actual day she came up to me right after and said, “It was a beautiful ceremony and the two of you are peas in a pod, I can see that.” She could see that I am surrounded by friends, she could see that people were relaxed and happy and having fun, she could see that I am loved, and that was enough. For some families that will never be enough, and there’s no wedding or script that could ever fix that and I worried that that was going to be us because some of the discussions got pretty rocky for a while. But here’s what was really going on: During the planning stages she couldn’t imagine it, she could only compare it to what was missing from the picture in her mind about what it should be. She was worried about looking silly in front of other people. On the actual day, I was happy, guests were happy, everybody had enough to eat, the weather was great, we were all happy to see each other, and she could finally see what we’d had in mind. What I learned that I’d really like to pass on to you: The less I explained and justified it and the more I just did it, the better it all went.” Also this piece ends with some seriously adorable wedding anecdotes like this one: “A friend’s dad is a composer, he wrote all the music that played at her wedding ceremony. It was incredibly beautiful music and also incredibly hilarious because the entrance music had a vibe of “Oh hey, the groom, that’s pretty good” for the first part and “THE BRIDE, MY INCREDIBLE DAUGHTER, IS COMING, I REPEAT, THE BRIDE IS COMING, BEHOLD THE BRIDE” for her entrance.”
5. Here’s the Thing: You Aren’t As Stuck as You Think, Sophie Benoit. This is an advice column I’m subscribed to as a newsletter, and I really appreciated this advice: “You need to give yourself chances to feel in control. I’m 100% sure that this is much easier (and cheaper) said than done, so don’t feel like this is supposed to come naturally to you. Like all of a sudden every weekend will be— or should be— packed with FUN. Fun isn’t the point, in fact. It’s The Point Adjacent. But the point is discovery. It’s looking for things to keep you fulfilled while you work toward going to a new city and a new job. Because if you don’t do some of this work to figure out what you like, what is fulfilling outside of a job—jobs are not sufficient for fulfillment!!!—before you move cities or change jobs, you will end up in the exact same spot you are now. The weirdest part of life is that wherever you go, there you are. You can’t get away from yourself (this is part of why I take so many naps; I’m exhausting to be around).” This advice is in response to someone who feels stuck in a job they hate and don’t know what they want to do next, and I really like that part of the recommendation is to explore what you do like, and reconnect with your passions, hobbies, and connections outside of work. I think that’s so healthy and a great inspiration for the fall: try new things!