I watched the documentary, Jim Henson: Idea Man yesterday. I found it incredibly moving. I re-read Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist frequently and just before watching the documentary, I was listening to the audiobook. One of the sections in the book urges you to “climb your own family tree,” picking a creative whose work you admire and learning about the work that influenced them. I often struggle with this part of things, with choosing who has influenced me.

But watching the documentary, I distinctly saw the influence of Henson and his collaborators, especially writer Jerry Juhl and performer/director Frank Oz, on my own artistic and comedic sensibilities. Here’s an example:

This structure, wherein Fozzie gives Kermit instructions that Kermit then follows far too literally, with Kermit increasing in his manic energy and Fozzie increasing in his frustration, is the bedrock of at least 50% or maybe more of my bits as an improv performer. A parallel structure:

Both of these are Henson and Oz, both with Oz as the straight man and Henson as the manic player. I adore this dynamic. So. Jim Henson. That’s the creative tree branch I’ll climb first.

The documentary itself is lovely. If you’re a Henson nerd (as I am), you’ll be delighted that there’s Sam and Friends and advertising footage that I don’t think you can find anywhere else. The narrative thrust is that Henson was a figure not unlike Lin Manuel Miranda’s interpretation of Alexander Hamilton, an artist with incredible drive and the sense that there would never be enough time to do everything he wanted to do, so he had to be doing work all the time. It does a good job honoring the importance of Henson’s work while honestly portraying the cost this had to his family. His son Brian Henson talks about the very different experience of being his son at home versus being his colleague working on Labyrinth.

A lot of the time narratives about Henson talk about the critical failure of Labyrinth destroying his confidence, but this documentary did a great job emphasizing that even in the face of that failure, his work continued: in the years after Labyrinth he created Fraggle Rock, The Storyteller, and The Jim Henson Hour.

Overall, I think the documentary does a good job of showing that Henson was an ambitious artist with an incredible legacy and was, at the same time, just a human. I found it incredibly moving.

Here are a couple of fun links about Henson’s Kermit Car:

• Breakdowns, Bank Robberies, and Other True Stories of Jim Henson’s Kermit-Looking Lotus Eclat
• Kermit the Car: Jim Henson’s beloved green Lotus

Here are a pair of blog posts that ended up in conversation with each other in my brain because I read them both this morning in quick succession.

CJ Chilvers asks, “What’s with the hostility towards personal publishing?

And it’s almost as if Seth Godin answers, “The Coney Island problem.”

Chilvers says:

our innate trust in individuals over brands will determine the winners of both attention and revenue. Everyone in media should be racing to become a trusted individual right now.

and Godin points out:

We’d like to believe that we prefer to walk down the picturesque street, visiting one merchant after another, buying directly from the creator or her gallery. We’d like to think that the centralized antiseptic option isn’t for us… And yet, when the supermarche opens in rural France, it does very well. It turns out that we respond well to large entities that pretend that they’re simply a conglomeration of independent voices and visions, but when masses of people are given a choice, they’re drawn to the big guy, not the real thing.

Where does this leave personal publishing and blogging? I’m not sure. But I think it’s an interesting question and an interesting thing to think about. I suppose a lot of it comes back to that old question, why blog? Are we doing it for ourselves or for our readers? I find that even when I don’t mean to, I tend to blog for my future self. And future me would rather hear what past me has to say from me, rather than an LLM trained to sound like me and everyone else. That said, I am intrigued by the idea of training an LLM on my own diary and journal entries and blog posts and then having a conversation with my younger self, like Michelle Huang did. In fact, I think I’ll try it now.

edited to add: I tried it, but because I don’t have a payment method in OpenAI it didn’t let me do it. Ah well. I guess I’ll just have to extrapolate from old blog posts and LiveJournal entries what a younger me would have said.

I’m typing this blog post in Google Docs, because of its autosave feature. There’s probably a better way, but oh well. I kind of want to just type it in the Micro.blog compose box but I’m so afraid of losing it.

Why am I so afraid of losing it? If I have to re-write a blog post, isn’t that kind of a feature rather than a bug? I don’t know. Maybe another day I’ll try typing directly into Micro.blog.

I thought about writing my blog posts over at 750words but some days I might want to write fewer than 750 words and I shouldn’t let the desire or need to write less get in the way of writing at all.

I look a three hour nap today. I lay down, set an alarm for when I needed to be awake to drive safely to pick the kid up from camp, and then told myself if I got up earlier, great, and surely I would get up earlier.

I did not get up earlier.

Lindsay Mack sent out a special email about Solstice Medicine with a Tarot spread for the solstice for artists, and I think I’ll do that spread in a little bit. I think I’ll use both the Moonchild Tarot AND the Ocean Dreams oracle deck maybe? I’m not sure.

I might just do it with Ocean Dreams, even though it’s not a Tarot deck. Maybe I’ll try that and then see if I also want to pull out the Moonchild Tarot.

I’ve decided that today is the day to handle All the Things related to my sister’s baby shower, which will be a week from tomorrow. I did a tour of the venue (which I’ve been to before both for a party and because it’s part of the site where M did preschool & kindergarten). I’m talking to my co-host and hopefully we’ll settle activities and food. I’ve got an Amazon cart full of decorations and tableware. The theme is Baby Dragons. The decor is adorable. I won’t be sad when it’s over. Party planning for more than 12 guests is apparently more than I feel good about these days.

It’s the summer solstice and tomorrow we’ll have a Strawberry Moon.

Here are some rambling thoughts on things that have captured my attention lately.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, whose book Blue Mind I purchased as an impulse buy in the South Carolina Aquarium gift shop. The book is great and I look forward to reading the tenth anniversary edition when it’s released. I can’t figure out where I put my copy of it.

Back in May I put a hold on the library copy of Adam Higginbotham’s book, Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. I picked it up today.

I’ll write a longer post about the book later, but I watched the failed Challenger launch out of my bedroom window. I was four years old. I remember the visual. I was in the habit of watching shuttle launches out of that window, and there were a lot of launches in the early and mid-80s. I lived about 34 miles away from Cape Canaveral as the crow flies. I don’t remember any other launch, of course.

That launch has shaped my psyche in ways I’m still unpacking almost 40 years later, and when I saw that this book had been published and was well-reviewed, I wanted to read it because I wanted answers, answers beyond the technical, about what contributed to this event that has so shaped my thinking. Spiritual answers, even.

About 30 pages into the book, I am seeing the beginnings of those answers, which tend to be the answers when we ask these kinds of questions about any human-made disaster: greed and hubris. Greed and hubris are the forces that bring about these kinds of disasters.

More on this and my memories of Challenger after I’ve read more of the book or finished it if I decide to finish it. (It’s a doorstop and my attention span for non-fiction is limited lately.)

I really like chocolate. I’m waiting to hear from some headache specialists that my doctor faxed a referral form to but it’s been many weeks, maybe even a couple months, so I might start looking for other options to discuss with her the next time we talk.

I love my kid, my heart is so full, and seven-year-olds have big, big feelings,

I feel like I’m only talking about stuff that isn’t the most fun here, but I am still loving reading romance, deriving great joy from the Fated Mates podcast and its Discord server, and I’m enjoying playing Harvest Moon for the SNES.

Austin Kleon introduced me to a newsletter issue in which director and writer Mark Slutsky talks about the feeling of being in good hands:

I’ve come to trust a certain feeling that comes over me when I first make contact with a piece of art. The opening lines of a book; the first 30 seconds or so of a movie; bars of a song, etc. It is a feeling of being in good hands, an intuitive sense that the author knows what they are doing and that the experience will be worth my time.

I felt this way as soon as I read the first sentence of Cat Sebastian’s We Could Be So Good:

Nick Russo could fill the Sunday paper with reasons why he shouldn’t be able to stand Andy Fleming.

I loved that book so much, so I was thoroughly psyched to get the chance to read an advanced reading copy for You Should Be So Lucky, a novel set in the same mid-20th-century America narrative world, about a grouchy, grieving arts reporter and the golden retriever/foulmouthed jerk baseball player whose slump the editor of Mark’s newspaper has tasked him with writing about. As often happens in a romance, these two knuckleheads learn, grow, and fall in love, not necessarily in that order.

What I loved: So much. Woof. Hard to even think of how to explain it all. I’ll start by saying that mostly, I love these two characters, and most especially I love Mark, who is a snarky reporter with a squishy heart, who simultaneously so appreciates the way his deceased partner William made him feel worthwhile and loathes the way William’s political ambitions meant that they could never seem even at all possibly queer. I just love him so much. I imagine him as a young Trent Crimm (from Ted Lasso, in case you’re not familiar).

I love Eddie, too, his inability to hide his feelings just ever. His willingness to throw caution to the wind and let his blossoming friendship with Mark just exist in the world without constantly looking over his shoulder about it. His beautiful relationship with his mother and his own bruised heart in the face of learning he was about to be traded to a team that would take him far from his home and everything he knew.

What I wanted more of: Let’s be clear. There is nothing that I’m like, “Cat Sebastian didn’t do enough of that,” because Cat Sebastian is awesome. But let’s also be clear. I will read more of whatever Cat Sebastian wants to write, and if she wrote a lovely Christmas novella about Nick and Andy (from We Could Be So Good) and Mark and Eddie all being at a Christmas party together, I would read it so hard.

What I need to warn you about: This book is about two dudes falling in love, so if you don’t want to read about that, skip it. There is some spice but the language isn’t very explicit. I’d say, medium-ish, maybe slightly less than medium spice? There are some of the kind of things that people usually want content warnings about: death of a partner before the book starts, period-appropriate homophobia, parents kicking a son out due to their own homophobia.

Who should read this: People who want a romance with a lot of interiority, minimal conflict between the two main characters, people who like baseball mixed in with their love.

My little sister M.E. is expecting a baby. Her due date is July 20. She’s 4 and a half years (and 4 days and 30 minutes) younger than me. She hasn’t had a baby before.

I’ve never been an aunt before.

When my mom was pregnant with M.E., I called my mom’s belly my belly. When the two of us lived with my dad for 6 months while he was working in North Carolina and my mom was finishing her undergrad at Florida State University, a lot of M.E.’s care became my responsibility by default. When our dad stayed in NC and the two of us returned to Florida to be with my mom while she did her Master’s coursework, I was still heavily contributing to M.E.’s care. During those years I was 8 and 9. She was 3, 4, and 5.

If she has her baby on her due date, I will be 43 and she will be 38. She is very grown.

I asked W. to help me remember that being a big sister and an aunt does not mean being a volunteer postpartum doula. I don’t trust that I won’t sacrifice my own health and my time with my own child in order to show up for her and her baby.

Postpartum time is one of the most isolating times of life and I forget that when she is postpartum, I won’t also be immediately postpartum. (Because once you’re postpartum at all you are always postpartum, but being immediately postpartum is different.) I have ingrained anxiety that I will have to relive that time alongside her.

The first few months postpartum were one of the most isolating times of my life and I don’t think I can take that away from her. Even if it were possible, I think it would be detrimental to my health to do so.

I hate this distrust I have of myself, of my ability to hold boundaries. I hate that I feel like holding my boundaries will mean hurting her.

It would be good for me to remember that I am not remotely the only person in her life who can show up for her. It would be good to remember that while I kind of was when we were kids, except for the things our parents did for her, I’m not now.

My friend Josh died last week. He was only 32 and had already given the world so much. I’m angry on the world’s behalf at all the decades of Josh it should have had and won’t.

We weren’t close but I love(d) him. When I announced to our improv team that I was pregnant, Josh started walking in front of me with his arms out whenever we were at the theater together, pretending to speak into an earpiece like he was my bodyguard.

One time when I was working at UNC, I bumped into Josh running the campus cypher. I told him I’d just come from a conversation where I told someone my flow (as in, rapping) was passable. Josh, himself an incredible hip hop artist, scolded me. So I revised my self-conception: my flow is good enough for comedy.

I sometimes fantasized about running across Josh at the city cypher after a night out at the movie theater around the corner from where the cypher happens. I wanted to introduce him to W.

Josh was an educator and whenever I came across research on hip-hop pedagogy I would send it to him and he always made me feel like each time I did it I’d given him an exquisite gift.

When he was 25 and I was 35, Josh asked me what advice I would give my 25-year-old self. I have no idea what I told him. I do remember being floored by the wisdom he showed in asking the question.

I don’t have a conclusion to this.

March was a full month!

Our local historic cinema shows retro films. W & I went to This Is Spinal Tap together. It turns out it’s still hilarious.

We went as a family to My Neighbor Totoro. Totoro is M’s favorite movie. It was very special to see it on a big screen. I noticed some little things I had never noticed before, like how Mei echoes everything Satsuke says. ♥️ Little Sisters ♥️

I often focus on the part of a movie that resonates with me, sometimes to the point of having seen a different movie than everyone else. Some time ago I read a blog post or article that I now can’t find about how My Neighbor Totoro can be read as a story about an eldest daughter’s responsibilities. With Satsuke and Mei’s mom being sick and their dad being at work a lot, this really resonated with my experience growing up and now all I see is a movie about a big sister who is parentalized and cares for her little sister. It’s a beautiful movie and if you read it this way, one of the sweetest bits is how Mei shares Totoro’s magic with Satsuke.

We saw Adam Gidwitz speak at a local indie bookstore. I had a catch up call with a colleague from when I did my postdoc. That was lovely and if I’m smart, I’ll schedule more catch up calls and coffee dates.

I had a preliminary Zoom interview for the school librarian job at M’s school. I felt good about it and it went well enough that I was invited for an on-campus interview.

W and I saw Murder on the Orient Express at Playmakers Repertory Company. The set was a gorgeous art deco thing and the way they created the train was with these metal frames on wheels that the cast and crew could move around to indicate individual compartments or larger areas. The play itself was super fun. It’s a Ken Ludwig adaptation of the Agatha Christie story and definitely had a few moments where Ludwig’s voice popped up to remind you that this was by the same guy who wrote Lend Me a Tenor.

From March 21 to 29, we were traveling. We flew to London, where we stayed in a flat near the Portobello Road Market, ate delicious buns, saw Matilda the Musical in the West End, and played at St. James’s Park. Then we went to Cork, where we saw the beautiful rolling hills of Ireland on our way from the airport to the city center and explored the very cute city center including a toy store, an old-fashioned Irish sweet shop, and the English Market. It wasn’t very long to have gone so far, and because of how we did the travel, four of our nine days were travel days. I did learn a lot about travel, mainly that it’s worth the extra money for direct flights if you have it.

While we were gone, I developed a nasty productive cough, so when we got home I skipped our usual extended family Easter festivities.

And that was March!

Let me be clear, when I say “baby,” I mean “big kid.” We took M to his first author event a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. Adam Gidwitz has a new book out. It’s called Max in the House of Spies. It’s about a German Jewish kid whose parents send him to London in 1939 and he falls in with British spies while he’s there. Also a dybbuk lives on one of his shoulders and a kobold lives on the other.

We first encountered Adam Gidwitz because of his amazing podcast, Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest. (M’s favorite episode is Hans, My Hedgehog.) Gidwitz is a former teacher who now works as a storyteller and author. He’s written the A Tale Dark and Grimm series and the book The Inquisitor’s Tale, and he is the co-author of the Unicorn Rescue Society series. In that series, kids travel around the world saving different cryptids. For each book, Gidwitz teams up with an author who is a member of the culture that the kids are visiting. They’re super fun and a great way to learn about folklore around the world.

Gidwitz talked about a family friend who had been one of the children sent away from Germany ahead of World War II and how the story of that friend inspired him to write this book. He said he felt it was an important book to write now because he thinks it’s an important time to look at Germany before the Nazis came to power and ask, what is it that makes the people of a country vote for leadership they know is wrong? What makes them willing to sacrifice justice for the promise of security? I think he’s absolutely right that these are key questions for our time.

Gidwitz shared the story of how he became a writer: he wanted to teach his students about ancient Egypt and couldn’t find a book to go with the lessons, so he started to write one. He’d write a chapter, share it with his students, and then they’d say, “Then what happened?” He’d tell them, “I don’t know!” and go home to write the next chapter. With a lot of positive reinforcement from his students, Gidwitz decided to quit teaching and write full-time. He didn’t get an agent with the Egyptian book. (He called it a “burner book,” explaining that many authors have at least one book they write and learn a lot from but don’t get to publish.) But he did when he started digging into Grimm’s fairytales.

Gidwitz is super entertaining and a great storyteller and doesn’t look anything like I imagined him. (I imagined him looking like Joshua Malina’s character, Jeremy, from Sports Night. I have no idea why.)

After he talked about his books and answered questions for an hour, there was a signing. When we got up there, he told M., “You’re a lot younger than most of the kids here and I wasn’t sure how you would do while I was talking, but you did great.” (M. is average height but tiny with giant eyes so it’s easy to mistake him for younger than he is.)

Last May, I read Mr. and Mrs. Witch by Gwenda Bond, and it made me so happy that I decided to try exclusively reading romance for a while. From May to October, I read 16 romance novels. In October I took a break to read some gothic but quickly came back to romance, finishing out the year having read 22 romance novels and one romance anthology. This year, I continued the pattern. So far, I’ve read 17 romance novels this year. I talk about romance and think about romance a lot of the time. So why?

First, social factors:

Last June, The Good Trade published an article called What Romance Novels Taught Me About Taking Pleasure More Seriously and then in December a follow-up, How to Get Started Reading Romance Novels. This led me to the podcast Fated Mates and I joined their Patreon and Discord because I needed people to talk to about romance besides two of my friends and W.

But that was after I’d already started to read romance more heavily. So why? Why romance?

The obvious reason is that it’s an optimistic genre. Even in dark romance, the author or publisher has, by virtue of calling the book or story romance, promised that the characters who fall in love will end the book either living happily ever after or happy for now. Any problems on the horizon at the end are problems you know they will solve together. (And if you read something that the author or publisher has called romance that doesn’t have this feature, please let everyone know, so they won’t pick that book up expecting a HEA or HFN.) The world is big and scary and full of bad, and it can be comforting to know that you are going into a story where the people will end up with someone(s) who will support them.

Another reason is that romance contains an immense variety of subgenres, which means if you’re a mood reader that you can probably find something you’re in the mood for. You’ve got contemporary, paranormal, historical (with its own subsubgenres based on period and geography), dark romance, fantasy romance, sci-fi romance, romantic suspense, romantic mystery, and many more. Likewise, romance is full of tropes that give books a flavor that make it easy to know if you’re likely to find it interesting: friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, billionaire, forced proximity, sibling’s best friend or best friend’s sibling, second chance, fated mates, fake dating, and again, many more.

It’s also because, like sci-fi and fantasy, romance lets you tackle difficult topics in a way where you know that characters will be supported in working through these. Here is an incomplete list of difficult topics the romance I’ve read since last year has touched on:

• anxiety
• depression
• gang conflict
• family illness
• chronic illness
• homophobia
• truly awful parenting
• arranged marriage
• transphobia
• top surgery (difficult because of medical processes described in detail)
• war
• anti-Muslim harassment
• well-meaning people being casually super prejudiced
• the cost of a bad reputation

And I tend to read stuff on the lighter side.

And then there are things that are unique about romance: its focus on interiority and emotion, on women’s and non-binary people’s pleasure, the way it places relationships at the heart of stories.

I’m sure there are more reasons, too. Do you read romance? Why?