a short note.

+The Hunting Wives, indie band discourse, & more lists, links, recs <3

this lake has my whole heart.

Dear friends - 

This has been a wildly busy week, full of exciting things I’ll be sharing about soon, but for now I’ll keep it short n’ sweet. 

Reminders: 

• I’m leading a six week memoir container called EXCAVATIONS. We will read together, think together, write together. I will give some mini-lectures and lead discussion around all things craft, style, ethics, and more. We will have co-working days. We will have peer workshop time. I will be giving you personal written feedback on ~20 pages of your memoir chapter or personal essay. We will co-create a community that will combat alienation, which I think is the most important work to be doing in this time of great collapse. I am *so excited* about the six people who have already decided to spend their autumn digging deep into their stories. There are six spots left. Join us! Paid subscribers get 10% off! (Code is at the bottom of the page.) 

• Speaking of that: become a paid subscriber! It’s only $33 for the whole year, and I’ll be adding more bonuses for paid subs over the next couple months. The price for a yearly subscription will be increasing to $45 on September 1st, so now is the time! 

As always if you want access to the newsletter and can’t afford it, just email me to let me know and I will happily provide it, no questions asked.

 

Finally: there are groups who have connections with people in Gaza who are finding ways to get them funds and resources. Please consider a donation, especially if you haven’t yet taken action in response to this horrific ongoing genocide. 

***

Below! A reading roundup including a beautiful meditation on birding, a piece on the pleasures and perils of escapist television, and more. Also: My enthusiastic review of The Hunting Wives. Plus: a dreamy song for August & a recap of the indie rock discourse from the week. And of course, some joyful moments that kept me going.

I love you! 

love & solidarity,

raechel 

Reading.

Zeba Blay on the pleasure, distraction, and problems of our engagement with …And Just Like That (RIP) and The Gilded Age. 

A thorough and terrifying look at militarized AI. 

This interview with Catherine Lacey about her new novel/memoir, The Möbius Book, is really fun and insightful. (I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m looking forward to it.) 

Maria Popova’s gorgeous reflection on the process of creating her birding divination deck. The first lines felt special because it was the way P saw birds with such awe that first got me really into birding<3: “ I have found that the surest way of seeing the wondrous in something ordinary, something previously underappreciated, is coming to love someone who loves it. As we enter each other’s worlds in love — whatever its shape or species — we double our way of seeing, broaden our way of being, magnify our sense of wonder, and wonder is our best means of loving the world more deeply.” 

I’m also deep in syllabus prep for the course I’m teaching this fall, Writing Across Gender. For the first time ever, I am teaching a class that is not majority academic theory. It’s also the first time I’ll be teaching fiction! (A lot of the reading will be nonfiction, but not the academic kind. Though of course there will be some of that too.) Anyway, it is a strange feeling, but really exciting to pick so much popular press writing that I love! 

Watching. 

The Hunting Wives!!!!! Wow, was this a real treat in these trying times. This show was a ROMP. A campy, soapy romp about MAGA-coded MILFs in Texas who are disproportionately bisexual and who love their guns enough to use them, and on humans if necessary. I mean, that sounds bad, right, but somehow it is NOT BAD. It is the opposite of bad— it is SO GOOD. The plot develops through our fish out of water: Sophie, a New Englander transplanted to Texas because her husband got a job with an oil tycoon. They are East Coast Liberals™ but Hubs really wants Sophie to try to fit in. So, she does, by shtooping Margo, the oil tycoon’s gorgeous seductive wife. To be fair, Margo seduces most people around her, and Sophie is only human. Meanwhile, the teen girl dating the son of one of the women in the MILF crew is found shot to death in the woods. From there we are launched into a classic murder mystery, but one that is punctuated with deranged sex (not derogatory), tradwife-meets-Vegas clothes, and every Texan cliche you can think of (mechanical bull-riding! so many shot guns! cowboy hats!). The real thrill of this is that the script is actually good; this does not feel like AI Netflix slop, it feels like a substantive genre series, and I can’t wait for season 2. 

Listening. 

A song I love in August: 

Also, I’m glad I’m not on Twitter anymore, but this 2010s indie rock discourse was fun to get in summary on IG stories. FWIW, my two cents: I think “Home” is a super sweet, cute song; I was not romanced by Williamsburg electro-indie like MGMT, but I did love Passion Pit. And stomp clap hey bands have a soft spot in my heart, but they are very much post-Edward Sharpe. (Would love to know who finds this paragraph coherent lol). Many of the noted bands are worth a nostalgic re-listen! 

Joy & Attention. 

a very big deal thing that i will share soon (!!!!). ⇼heron friends & turtle friends & wood duck friends.⇼ the teeny tiny baby skunk i saw scurrying about.⇼ diesel & loretta sabine, my perfect bambinos. ⇼crisp local lettuce.⇼ binyamina’s CASH program, it is full of sooooooo much money magic/wisdom, and i’m grateful for every bit of it.⇼ friendship, thank goodness for it.⇼ daydreaming autumn plans. ⇼a very meaningful virtual gathering with my queerworld community, on the ten-year anniversary of the death of our beautiful friend. ⇼daydreaming new creative/work projects. water the balcony plants, inhaling the tomato leaves that smell like a mary oliver poem feels. ⇼cold seltzer. ⇼fresh nectarines.⇼ vinho verde & remembering our sweet portugal trip when i sip it. ⇼the EXCAVATIONS group! ⇼the full moon, my aquarius moon, and that all the witches are saying it’s about the messiness of community, and how much that tracks.⇼ +all of you for being here, thank you thank you. 

EXCAVATIONS DISCOUNT CODE: RADLOVELTR