#25 Museums Make Me Sad
why do I keep going to them?
Happy Wednesday (It’s Tuesday),
This edition of the newsletter reads a little bit like “Somebody Kill Me Please” from the seminal1 1998 film The Wedding Singer, which consequently is one of my favorite movies of all time. If you are unfamiliar, Adam Sandler plays aspiring songwriter and hopeless romantic Robbie Hart, who after experiencing heartbreak himself, is encouraged to perform an original song for his friend Julia. However, he warns her:
“I wrote the first half of it when I was with Linda, and the second half after we broke up. So it’s a little uneven.”
That’s how this newsletter feels. I wrote most of it during a week when I was discovering a lot of new music and riding a high after a weekend with my best friend in the desert, and I wrote the introduction after spending an afternoon in an emergency pet hospital after my mom’s dog lost his eye and reading a lot of news about genocide in Gaza, famine in Sudan, and police brutality in the US. So, it’s a little uneven. But I trust you’ll find your groove.
A few weeks ago I found myself in an all too familiar position — alone, sitting in the corner of the LGBTQIA+ exhibit at any given museum, in near tears at all the art and history I had witnessed in the past two hours. I should know, of course I should know, that museums make me sad. I should remember, of course I should remember, that I am not a casual consumer of stories. I will, without fail, separate myself from whomever I came with and find the exhibit with the deepest well of emotion and plunge myself in face first. I will not be able to make conversation afterwards. There are not enough towels that could dry me quickly from the grief I’m soaked in after leaving. In the words of Sasha Alex Sloan, I will be too sad to cry. And yet, I will always come back.
I’ve wondered about why this is, why I am so affected and why I choose to keep going to museums anyways. I think mostly, museums feel like places of loss for me — most of the people in the photographs are dead and most of the hands that made the art no longer can. I know museums aren’t cemeteries, and there is more to art than grief, but inside the walls I feel the same love and the same terror that I do at funerals. In museums, I usually end up thinking of people I can’t talk to anymore, of what they would say if I could, of what their lives would look like behind the glass, and if they would agree with the little plaques that describe why they made certain choices or which moments influenced their art the most. (I think my grandma would elbow me and snicker at how wrong they all were). I walk through the rooms like rows of headstones, a public honoring of whatever remains, knowing that these pieces are a fraction of a story I will never know completely.
Art museums are deeply political places and maybe that doesn’t feel obvious when you are on vacation and just want something to do and something to learn, but history, anthropology, and art can never be divorced from our current politics: the wars waged on the vulnerable, the violence enacted in the name of faith, the resistance born out of a will to survive. The subject, the artist, the donor, and the critic all converge in these halls for us to consume and contend with. Sometimes the people in the artwork are nameless, but the owner of the piece will always be labeled, engraved in bronze with more biographical information than sometimes the artist and often the subjects themselves.
“Andy Warhol silkscreens of Marsha sell for $1400 while Marsha walks the sidewalk outside, broke.” — Steve Wason, cultural historian
In New York City last week, the Museum of Modern Art made (not enough) headlines when it denied entry to visitors who had keffiyehs in their bags. Not unsurprising, the MoMA actually ran an exhibit in 2017-2018 called Items: Is Fashion Modern? wherein a keffiyeh was a focal point of the exhibition.
If you’re unfamiliar with the significance of the keffiyeh, Lina Mohammad of NPR published a piece in December called What is a keffiyeh, who wears it, and how did it become a symbol for Palestinians? that discusses not only its history, but also how it has come to be both revered and villainized in the court of public opinion in the west.
Allowing cultural artifacts in the museum as long as they are behind the glass and people are paying to see them but discriminating against visitors who actually wear them is a paradox so steeped in racist, capitalistic, colonial attitudes I’m not even sure where to begin. Especially since poor regulation of actual weapons has resulted in an alarming rate of gun-violence death in the US where mass shootings seem a dime a dozen. IYKYK.
As a response to MoMA’s actions last week, protestors, artists, and activists gathered this weekend for demonstrations at The Met in New York and The British Museum in London to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and a divestment from donors who actively support and fund genocide. As museums purport to be places of preservation and reverence for art throughout history, the fact that some of their funding comes from companies actively supporting the destruction of ancient art, literature, and architecture in Palestine is a contradiction that seems impossible to justify.
“Some 350 activists gathered on the steps of the Met at midday on Sunday to unroll a vast 30- by 50-foot quilt filled with colorful imagery and “free Palestine” slogans. It was the work of 64 artists and allies of Palestine from around the world who each shipped their contribution to New York.”
When hearing the news about MoMA barring entry to visitors wearing keffiyehs, I thought again about my day at the Palm Springs Art Museum earlier this month where I walked in wearing mine around my neck. As I walked up the steps, I wondered if security would make me take it off or if people would do a double-take, but no one mentioned it or made me aware of their feelings about it. Living in Oakland, I’ve seen keffiyehs everywhere — on Bart, on the street, at the farmers market, in the bookstore — but in conversations with my friends around the world, I hear how rare this is in other cities and how cultures of street harassment differ from one urban landscape to another.
My decision to wear a keffiyeh — especially to places where I doubt I’ll see others doing so — comes from listening to Palestinian people who have asked allies to wear them in solidarity and from knowing that any of my Arab brothers and sisters can, at any moment, be targeted with violence, harassment, and discrimination when having any marker of their Arab identity perceptible.
Because visibility and safety are racialized experiences everywhere, safety is less about what victims are wearing or what they look like, but to what extent a perpetrator feels threatened by someone else’s freedom. Just last November, three Palestinian college students studying in the US (Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad) were shot by Burlington resident Jason J Eaton in Vermont on a walk while speaking a combination of Arabic and English and wearing keffiyehs. Though all three survived, Hisham suffered a spinal cord injury in the shooting and is now paralyzed from the waist down.
In an interview at a local news media outlet in Vermont, his mother shared that after two months of rehabilitation, Hisham has returned to Brown where he is pursuing studies in both archaeology and mathematics. I highly recommend reading the piece, as she speaks about the motivations behind her son’s attack coming from “hateful, dehumanizing speech by elected representatives and media. And since he shot them, it’s become much worse. The actions of the U.S. government, both the Biden administration and elected officials in Congress, have shown over and over again, that Palestinian life is not valued.”
While I was at the art museum, I kept thinking of this poem by Ilya Kaminsky reposted by poet Warsan Shire in the past few weeks.
I know I am not alone when, as I walk down the street in the morning, I feel amazed and horrified that buildings around me still remain, because I saw so many crumble in air strikes last night. When I say “I’m hungry” and then swallow the feeling because how can this be the same word I read in the headlines daily. When I see children running and smiling and mothers chasing after them, and the only thing they are running from is duck, duck, goose. How do these worlds exist at the same time? So much joy and wonder, so much fear and so much pain.
My friend Lana says that the point of life is not to be happy, but to feel everything. So, though this introduction was far from happy, I hope it leaves you feeling something. I’ll let the poets do what they do best for now.
“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
―Rainer Maria Rilke
XO,
M
🎧 I Have No Milk (Spotify has categorized our podcast under ‘leisure’?)
In this follow up to episode 3, Lana speaks about her trip to California, and we both share our love of Irish art from Hozier to Marian Keyes. Also I am cackling that we (complete amateurs who know nothing about podcasting and are just having a silly goofy time) have got some haters on Spotify? So, without further ado, enjoy our 3.2 star rated podcast!
🎵Mudroom by Tiny Habits
I saw Tiny Habits this week in San Francisco and talk more about them in the Live Shows section BUT FOR NOW just listen to this heartbreaking/warming song about hesitation and uncertainty in new relationships. It makes me want to throw up in the best way.
Well, the last one was a shipwreck
When you drown once, it's scary to swim again-Mudroom, Tiny Habits (2024)
🎵 God is Love by Omar Offendum
I discovered Syrian-American poet Omar Offendum’s work a few years ago. He has been using his art to speak up for Palestinian liberation forever and just came out with a new song this week for Gaza. Even if you’re not religious (I’m not) I found this song coming out around Ramadan/Easter/Passover really apt.
If you want to watch a great interview with him and the founders of Community in Arabic, checkout his performance and his discussion of his own immigration story and art below.
🎵 Chamomile by Victoria Canal
If you have a best friend who carries half of your soul in her pocket, make sure you have tissues nearby for this one. VC wrote it for her best friend Lucy. Send it to your Lucy to make her cry!
🎵 The Girl Squad (playlist by discopig)
I saw Zinadelphia post this playlist to her stories on International Women’s Day as a tribute to some of the women she looks up to musically. Enjoy listening to women every day of the year!
Discovered this musician from Taylor Ashton’s stories, so you know it’s good.
🎵The Paper Kites with Bella White at August Hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
For most shows I go to, I try to keep a running setlist of the songs they’ve rearranged, performed with guests, or covered, but for this show I really did not want to be on my phone. Because The Paper Kites are one of my favorite bands, I just wanted to be in the moment. Good news for all of you is that a dude named Nate Bonney photographed and reviewed the band’s performance only the week prior in Utah and published it on Utah Concert Review. I agree with his takes! Read it here.
Lana and I spoke about this phenomenon on Episode 3 of I Have No Milk, but a few songs into the show, the band had to stop the set because someone lost consciousness in the crowd. I guess I’m just surprised this happens as frequently as it does at small venues where folk/americana/bluegrass bands are playing because I associate them with like…very chill swaying and crying?
Alas, The Paper Kites crowd had a lot of younger folks in it, and I was not prepared for how rowdy and at sometimes unpleasant and unsafe it became. Two younger people in front of us kept flailing around and crashing into us during (and I cannot stress this enough) acoustic renditions of music that make people cry quietly. I am all for people expressing themselves through movement (dance has been one of the major ways I’ve set myself free…duh) however I think spatial awareness in a public space is just sort of paramount to everyone having a good time? Maybe I’m just getting old. But like…check yourself?
Anyways the sets (separated by “the part where we sit down” and “the part where we stand up”) were brilliant per usual. The Paper Kites are a folk/rock band that can actually do both really well. I’m so impressed that they can go from “Bloom” to “June’s Stolen Car” in the same hour. Like…what? Also making an eight-piece band sound amazing on stage is so hard? But they freaking pull it off (with excellent sound tech assistance obviously). If you haven’t seen The Paper Kites live, I just really, really recommend you go. You’ll love it.
“On The Train Ride Home” is such an important album to me. I feel every age I’ve ever been when I listen to it. I’ll always remember where I was when I first heard “Nothing More Than That,” who I was on the phone with, what the sky was doing, and how lucky I felt to be on the same planet at the same time as this song. This song fell me in love with music and with my own life once again.
If you know me well, you know I often joke “it’s always The Paper Kites” because whenever I noticed I loved the song playing, I’d look to see who it was, and it was always The Paper Kites. It’s now extended to whenever I notice something beautiful—a piece of paper ripped out of a book lying wet on the concrete, a poppy opening its petals to the noon sun, old people kissing—I’ll think “it’s always The Paper Kites.” To me their music is magic. To me, they are love.
I caught the tail end of Bella White's set at August Hall a few weeks back, and was so relieved that Sam brought her back on stage to sing a duet with him in the show’s second half. If you want to follow Bella White’s tour, releases, merch etc. check out her linktr.ee
🎵Tiny Habits at The Independent ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ve spoken about Tiny Habits before in my “Ode to the Opener, Back Up Vocalists, and College Radio” spotlight a few months back, and I am so pleased to report that after supporting artists like Noah Kahan and Lizzy McAlpine, they are headlining their own North American and European tours.
Their songs feel like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s: there are so many unique little bites you can take. When they harmonize together, it’s smooth as honey; but then Cinya’s voice will emerge alone with the soft strings of her guitar, and it’s a surprise flavor… familiar but distinct from the group. Then maybe she’ll duet with Maya, and go back to harmonizing with Judah before his voice emerges from the trio with something just as different. Each solo, whether its Maya, Cinya, or Judah, is warm and haunting and steps forward from the trio in a way that feels like a gift; like oh, perfect, now we get to unwrap this one.
Tiny Habits feels unique because they are all incredible vocalists and met at music school, so the way they are able to catch each other, the ways in which they layer their sounds atop one another, just sounds so flipping beautiful. Most bands have one maybe two decent vocalists, but to have three feels miraculous. They spotlight and accompany one another brilliantly, and as is the case with younger, more recently formed bands, they are so excited to see one another shine. Like a tiny choir that sings sad-folk-pop.
Cinya, Maya, and Judah met at Berklee College of Music, and so much of their discography awakens a nostalgia in me from going to college in that same city ten years ago. I was a sad college girl on the Red Line, unable to feel things in any way but big. I think about the trains I sat on, and the people I fell in love with, the chill of the air and the solitude of the library stacks. The memory hurts but it does me no harm.
There is also such a strong folk scene that comes out of the colleges around the North East (Tracy Chapman went to Tufts!) that listening to New England folk-singers (à la Patty Griffin) always awakens something different in me than southern, Americana folk. I mean, one of the reasons I love folk music is because of how hyper-local it is, and when I hear New England in a song, my body experiences it from personal memory instead of my imagination. So, Tiny Habits elicits so many of these smaller memories that have been asleep for nearly a decade. And when they rise up, I’m surprised to find how time has softened all the painful edges. I can listen, remember, and smile.
🎵Angie McMahon at The Chapel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Okay, this was a very weird show and no offense to whomever attended and loved it, but I left feeling like I only narrowly escaped joining a cult. The crowd was really familiar with one another and would make similar noises synchronously at various moments of her songs that Pareesa and I couldn’t anticipate. There were also requests for taking collective breaths that I just wasn’t super prepared for? And though I appreciated Angie’s attempt at a land acknowledgement, I wish she would have said the words “Ohlone,” “Muwekma,” or “Ramaytush” when speaking about the unceded land that San Francisco resides on. Her website acknowledges the wurundjeri land her work is created on, however, and her statement felt compassionate and well-researched.
If you want to learn more about the Indigenous land you live on, you can check out Native Land Maps here.
If you live in Alameda County, you can learn more about and pay your Shuumi Land Tax here.
Was Angie’s voice incredible? Yes, without question. However, I had what can only be described as bad vibes from the moment I walked in. After looking up at the balcony and seeing the packed crowd awash in red light, I turned to Pareesa and said “do you remember Ghostship?” I can’t explain it other than I felt like there was something very non-compliant about the set up. Do I have any evidence to say that the show was unsafe? No. But the room was so poorly ventilated that I felt feverish, and I overheard other people talking about disasters such as fire and balcony collapse, which made me feel like I wasn’t entirely alone in this bad vibes situation. I decided to stand by and exit just in case, and Pareesa and I only stayed for three songs. (I need to stress that the show was fine, I just had personal alarm bells that it… wasn’t). On the plus side, Angie’s merch is really cool, and I left (really early) with an amazing shirt.
“Weird show, good shirt!” -Audience Member (Pareesa)
🎬 Fool Me Once (UK Crime Drama, 2023 on Netflix)⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was like, fine. Typical Harlan Coben with a hefty dash of copaganda and military worship. Michelle Keegan is so pretty though.
🎬 The Regime (Dramady, 2023 on MAX)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Literally what is this show? Read this New York Times feature on Kate Winslet to not find out!
Oooo new section who dis. This section is dedicated to Devon O’Regan who decided she wanted to learn how to play tennis a couple years ago, and each week since then has showed up to tennis lessons rain or shine. Then, wanting to connect with more casual tennis players her age, joined a tennis social club. And lo and behold my little champion headed to her first tournament in Palm Springs last week! Did I tag along and cheer her on despite not donning tennis whites in over fifteen years? Absolutely I did. Did we repeatedly tell people she was “competing in a tennis tournament” the same weekend the BNP Paribas Open was taking place and let them believe she was a semi-famous athlete? Also yes. Anyways, we drank, we ate, we merried. If you catch yourself in Palm Springs, check out these places!
🍽️ The Barn Kitchen (restaurant)
The Barn Kitchen is the restaurant inside of Sparrow’s Lodge, a beautiful hotel in Palm Springs with fabulously curated art all from owner Richard Crisman’s personal collection. The architecture, design, and decor were definitely my favorite part of the dining experience, with a close second being the friendly, down-to-earth service of the bartender and manager. Everyone seemed so relaxed and at ease but not in a creepy, vacant way.
It was also so fun for me to recognize the artwork of John Patrick McKenzie on the wall. My step-mom gifted me one of his more colorful pieces a few years ago after a Creativity Explored event, and its place on the wall remains my favorite part of my kitchen. I’m not really an art girl and have always been intimidated when my more well-read art friends are able to so readily recognize and reference the specific eras of architecture or the impact of creative movements, renowned composers and visual artists on any type of modern cultural landscape. So, being able to place the artist from his style alone and then chat about it with the manager who lugged out a giant binder of every piece of art in the hotel was a cool little moment for me and also made me feel connected to Carol and all of the art she has introduced me to throughout my time of knowing her.
Definitely check out The Barn Kitchen, but expect to pay $382190 for the tiniest piece of salmon you have ever seen in your life. (The extortionate price of the fish felt balanced out by the fact that the bartender comped our drinks for seemingly no other reason than friendliness).
🍽️ Seymour’s (bar, lounge)
Seymour’s Est. 2016 is a classic bar for drinkers. It transports you with its lush interiors, moody lighting and a sneaky unmarked side entrance-making it feel like a Palm Springs institution that has been there for generations. A neighborhood bar where “past meets present”; featuring key design elements salvaged from the original 1938 restaurant seamlessly merged with the modern and eclectic. The cocktail menu, conceived by Steen Bojsen-Møller is exquisite, unique, balanced, and seasonal with no pretense.
-Seymour’s Website
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t totally certain what would await me behind the heavy velvet curtain, but I’d say “1938” just about sums it up. I can’t recommend any drinks here since I didn’t have any, but I do recommend just chilling the hell out on one of those big ass chairs. Maybe head to the lounge after for a lot of red meat and french fries and then regret it later? That’s what I did. 10/10
🎾LVBL
Liveball is basically King of the Court on steroids with a decent number of LA influencers. It’s a fast-paced, doubles best-of-three with a champions' side and a challengers’ side. These dudes founded it in LA and have been hosting invitationals around SoCal (with NorCal and Miami on the horizon). They hosted the Deadball Tournament that Devon competed in at Mission Hills Country Club wherein participants played on grass, clay, and hard court. (How cool is that?)
There were two different brackets and two sets of finals, and I had a blast watching everyone play. The Mission Athletic Club, a relatively new tennis social club in San Francisco, made a great showing with one of their founders going to the B Bracket finals! I’m so proud of Devon and can’t wait to watch her in her next tournament (and maybe dust off my racket myself!)
Nan Goldin Selections from Naked New York, 1996
“How often I need a gentle reminder that life (art) is going on, not somewhere else but here, at hand. This is what people do is what I thought, this is how they live, reminding me I had and am, you have and are. Life has names like Siobhan, Brian, Millie, Scarpota, French Chris, Gilles, Gotscho, Geno, Amanda, Alf Bold, Ric and Randy, Kee, Inoue, Nyoro, Chisato, Tamika and Cee-lo, David, Dieter, Kiki, Cookie and Vittorio and Max, Suzanne, and Jimmy Paul. There is life and there is beauty, concepts most themselves when becoming one another.” - Bruce Hainley, writer. and critic
When I was in college, I took a photography class at the Cambridge Adult Learning Center run by a man named Remy Du Bois who looked exactly like the food critic from Pixar’s Ratatouille. Remy hosted the class in the attic of his personal home, and I’ll be honest the walk through his kitchen to his attic each Tuesday at 9:00 was strangely and darkly intimate. Clad in black pants, a black turtleneck, and the requisite scarf, Remy would teach us about a new photographer each week and ruthlessly critique our photos.
Because I wasn’t seriously pursuing photography and had only enrolled because “evidence of learning a new hobby” was required for one of my university courses2, I didn’t really pay super close attention to the artists we studied — until Nan Goldin.
Looking at her photographs gave me a metallic taste in the back of my throat, as if I could smell the blood in them, as if I were pressed up right against the skin of everything.
There’s a Richard Siken poem called “Wishbone” that starts: I’m bleeding, I’m not just making conversation. And that is how her art feels to me; her photographs aren’t talking, they are bleeding with grisly human experiences of love and violence. You can smell it, taste it, feel it as if it were all happening to you.
So how am I meant to carry on, then, with the rest of the museum? To meander through the textile art and glass exhibitions without thinking of how New York City smells with you’re in love and afraid at the same time? I mean. I guess I don’t really? I wear it like a film and walk outside knowing that in time, when I am ready, the art will make its way in or find its way out. But in the meantime, I carry the melancholia of the museum on my skin, in my hair, between the gaps of my fingers. And when the person I came with asks if I’m okay, I smile and nod from a thousand miles away.
In Nick Hornby fashion, I will do a round up of books bought and read this month
Bought:
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Sci-Fi)
This book was recommended to me THRICE now. What is taking me so long?
On Women by Susan Sontag (Essays)
Discovered in Calistoga’s Coopersfield Books and couldn’t resist
Heavy is the Head by Sumaya Enyegue (Poetry)
Discovered in Best Book Store in Palm Springs (many of their “staff recommendations” I did not agree with in the slightest…but it’s a cute enough shop and randomly has SO MUCH Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett for how small the space is?)
Read:
Crush by Richard Siken (Poetry) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Do not speak to me about this collection. Highly recommend having a bowl next to you while reading these poems so you can vomit every unsaid feeling you’ve ever suppressed into it. 10/10 no notes.
Nightwatching, by Tracy Sierra (Thriller)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The writing is beautiful and lyrical and really different from what I usually get in a thriller.
Her critiques of the criminal justice system and the medical industrial complex feel refreshing and different from this genre’s tired uses of their tropes.
Her non-linear depiction of a marriage can resonate with anyone at any stage of a relationship. The main character wonders if the things that initially drew her husband to her will eventually become the things he resents her for, if the endearing will inevitably become annoying or if it’s possible to find their way back to each other once resentment begins to build.
Sierra describes this woman’s internal monologue through the careful threat-assessment she performs in quotidian and unusual circumstances. The ways in which the main character second-guesses her instinct based on fear of being labeled paranoid demonstrates the insidious nature of patriarchy and the frustration women experience every day as they have to fight for a fraction of the credibility men create and bestow upon themselves. nOt aLl mEn etc. etc. but that being said….
I do not think a man could have written this, which makes me want to recommend it to everyone, and which also reminds me of my friend
’s hilarious 2019 tweet.
i think about this at least once a week.
📰 The Financial Influencers Women Actually Want to Listen To by Meg Zukin (Time, 2024)
Let’s keep the Meg train rolling. Read her article, published in Time last week, where she discusses the persistence of tired stereotypes about women and their ability to manage finances. I love her interviews because they cut right to the deeper questions, and despite who she is interviewing, her own voice is always so strong. Chronically online and a self-described internet kid, Meg’s always got her finger on the pulse of pop culture, which makes everything she writes very smart and very relatable without any pretentiousness. We love Meg. We miss Meg. We stan her moving the NYC but really wish she would move back to Alamo Square.
🧁 Blistered Broccolini with Charred Dates, Lemons & Sesame by Molly Baz
Disclaimer: I have not actually tasted this recipe, but Scallops Boy says it’s one of the best recipes he’s made this year. “I think I made it three days in a row when Calvin was in town.” So…there ya go! Recipe and instructions are reproduced from Molly Baz’s 2021 cook book Cook This Book here.
Ingredients:
1 pound of broccolini
1 lemon
1 garlic clove
½ cup pitted Medjool dates (about 3 ounces)
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
📱tatreezandtea (Palestinian dress historian, researcher, archivist)
Tatreezandtea is the work of Wafa Ghnaim who is a “Palestinian dress historian, researcher, author, archivist, curator, educator and embroideress who began learning embroidery from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, when she was two years old.” Holding a Senior Research Fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the same one at which 350 pro-Palestinian organizers gathered to unfurl the quilt this weekend), Wafa has had many different educational and curatorial roles and appointments in museums such as the Smithsonian Museum and The Museum of Palestinian People. According to a feature in The Observer:
“What I’m trying to do is challenge the way that we view Palestinian embroidery through a commodified lens,” she explains. “I am trying to raise questions about the representation of Palestinians in the museum system and the ethics of that, rather than the history of embroidery.”
Y’all, this weekend I randomly ran into TWO Tufts alums at a wine bar in San Francisco, which was closed for a private event (that I had no business being at), and I might be a tiny bit closer to joining an IN REAL LIFE book club. Scallops Boy had a co-worker’s birthday party to attend, and I tagged along knowing full well I would know absolutely zero people in attendance. Yet, as soon as we walked in, I heard “Montana?!” and when I turned around DOS JUMBOS were behind me. I promptly ditched the boy (sorry!) and spent the next 1.25 hours catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a decade.
Turns out Marissa is in a real-life book club and teaches third grade (bless), and Daniel and I randomly went to the same graduate school and studied in the same department a year apart and never knew it. AND he plays tennis!
They’re also getting married this year(!!!) Guys, if you are reading this, please don’t move back to New York for the love of all things holy. I need more bi-coastal Bay Area-based homies to read books and play tennis with.
📕 I Have No Milk Book Club (virtual)
Find Discussion Threads on Chapters 1-27 here
Zoom Registration Link for our live discussion on April 7 will be emailed next week to I Have No Milk subscribers
As Israel continues its genocide in Palestine, and the US continues to send the money and weapons that allow it to happen, aid to people in Gaza facing bombardment and starvation remains paramount despite a temporary ceasefire resolution. Jenan Matari’s linktr.ee remains one of the best I’ve seen when it comes to relief resources and educational materials.
Shout outs to:
My mom for being so brave and strong while her dog underwent and recovered from surgery and for taking me on a fun girl’s weekend
Lana for always having a pulse on what people need and ORGANIZING TO SUPPORT THEM
Pareesa for absolutely crushing tax season (I love you JerBear)
Devon (#68) for competing in her tennis tournament!
Sharon for putting together an awesome podcast episode — I’m so excited for your listening party!
Tessa’s gorgeous hair cut
Ray for being an incredible friend to her friends during an incredibly difficult time
The essayist Susan Davidson at SF MoMA whose biography of Robert Rauschenberg included this hilarious line: “When Rauschenberg was thirteen he believed he would become a preacher, but he decided against it when he realized that his family’s fundamentalist denomination forbade dancing, one of his personal passions.”
Meg for starting up her reading logs on Substack and being all published and sh**
Amanda for an exciting new move (!!) with a backyard!
Colleen for giving birth to an actual human child (still mind-boggled)
My therapist for taking a much-needed vacation (I promise I’m okay without you!)
but please don’t leave like…indefinitely
Katie for getting engaged and planning a massive, international wedding in less than 11 months
Alan for disposing of my e-waste (3 AA batteries) responsibly
Em for being the most enthusiastic book club participant & friend ever
My dad who is making pozole tonight
To anyone who received an e-mail from Stuff & Such asking them to subscribe or upgrade or gift my newsletter to someone I did not send these emails?? Substack does it automatically so please literally ignore them if they bug you. I promise I am looking into it…
Ending Note:
Turn to your poets. Lean on one another. Be safe and love hard. <3
XO,
M
(of a work, event, moment, or figure) strongly influencing later developments BUT ALSO SOMETHING I NEVER REALLY PUT TOGETHER UNTIL RECENTLY relating to or denoting semen.
It was an intellectual development course heavy on conceptual frameworks where we had to apply the theories we learned in class to the new learning we were doing in our hobby classes and do a project on our metacognition — it was honestly pretty cool, but I almost dropped out of college because of it…. but that’s a separate point.
This was a heavy one indeed but I can't thank you enough for educating me always about the current issues and atrocities affecting Palestine. I knew of keffiyehs but did not know how deeply the culture impact of them ran. I also have mixed feelings when visiting art museums - but I think it says something about the emotional capacity of folks who do feel the big feelings. Anyways thanks always for being so informative and sensitive yet assertive. Thanks for all of the resources as well! This was a great one, Montana!