My husband is at Burning Man along with his L.E.D. Zeppelin art car. (When I was a child, did I ever think I would write this sentence? I did not.) My husband does not have Ebola and has not, as far as I know, resorted to cannibalism or been eaten by dinosaur shrimp, but there’s still time. I do not know when he will manage to get home. Both kids are back at college. The cats and I are having a perfectly lovely time solo. I did just watch a video in which the Bad Marjorie (Taylor Greene) told Alex Jones that Burning Man attendees were going to come home and lie about climate change being a human-made problem, and also, “AOC wants to ban cattle.” Just as a parenthetical. Just hanging out there. 

As a palate cleanser, I will now recommend a lovely picture book called Marjory Saves the Everglades, about Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Unrelated to Marjories, I also read and loved The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen. Please someone talk about it with me! It’s about Rosen’s childhood best friend, who developed schizophrenia and spent months on a locked ward, but graduated from Yale Law School, was gushingly profiled in the NYT, got a massive book deal, and had his story optioned by Ron Howard (Leonardo Di Caprio and Brad Pitt were both interested in playing him) … before stabbing his pregnant girlfriend to death. It’s a harrowing, sprawling read (it’s about two boys, but also the suburbs, the history of how America has addressed mental illness, post-war Judaism, the perils of Hero’s Journey narratives, handmedown Holocaust survivor trauma, how universities have and haven’t supported students with disabilities. … ) that’s just SO well-written. And often darkly funny; Rosen’s sentence-level writing made me jealous. It’s kinda too long but worth the trip. 

I recently did a piece for Readers Digest on Weird Barbie and a post for SorryWatch on a good apology from Nooworks, one of my fave weird small clothing brands. Big companies could take a lesson. 

And so we head into autumn.