Peaches Are Back on the Menu
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Hello again, friends! Apologies for this edition being much later than I had planned. A lack of childcare, two separate illnesses, work demands, and household emergencies conspired to put me wayyy behind schedule. I hope you’ve all been doing well, though, and got to enjoy some rest and/or spend time with loved ones over the holiday.
I’ll start you off with some memes, shall I?
Memes!
Featured Creator: Francine Clouden
Scrapbookers and paper-crafters may know Francine Clouden from work she did in Creating Keepsakes Magazine, but these days, Francine’s Substack,
is drawing eyes her way.“The collective is a place for multi-passionate creative people who love making things, but might find that they never end up finishing anything. And while enjoying the process is a good thing, sometimes we actually want to have a finished object to be proud of,” Francine says (and boy, do I get it). “If you've ever vowed to only give handmade gifts, but always run out of time before you finish, and then have to panic buy from Amazon, you are my people. Collective members get help to prioritise their projects every month, so they can still have fun creating, but also get that sense of accomplishment.”
What do you look back on with the most nostalgia?
My mostly carefree childhood in Grenada: going to the beach every weekend, eating freshly picked fruit, reading as many books as I wanted.... they say you never miss it til it's gone, and that is so true - especially the beach thing.
Is there a pop culture figure that makes you light up just seeing them?
Lin-Manuel Miranda! I am completely obsessed with Hamilton and pretty much everything he has done. He's just so dorky, and intense, and funny and brilliant, and I am completely inspired by his work, and the way he shows up in the world.
Who’s your favorite comic?
Off the top of my head: Trevor Noah.
Do you have any tricks for cheering yourself up if you’re having a rough day?
Making stuff always makes me feel better, so when down in the dumps I make some art, do some knitting, or play with paper. Reading a good book also helps!
What song(s)/singer(s)/band(s) make you the happiest?
I'm from the Caribbean so some good soca music always makes me happy. But also anything from the 80s which is the best era of music despite what my husband thinks.
When did you feel the most relief in your life?
Around eight weeks pregnant I was at risk of losing the baby, but after going on bedrest for a couple months, all was well. There really aren’t any words to describe the relief my husband and I felt. That babe is now 14 years old, and keeps me laughing every day.
Where is your happy place?
The beach! Any beach, but particularly the beaches of the Caribbean. My family knows that whatever we do for summer vacation we need to find a beach so I can lie there and listen to the sound of the surf.
Do you have a favorite quote about joy?
“Joy is not in things, it is in us.” - Robert Wagner
In addition to her Substack, Francine runs a membership program for crafters and readers called The Modern Makers Collective. You can join here.
You can also find her on Instagram and TikTok.
Seven Happy Things!
Buckle up, because I’m going to do this a little differently this week as I talk about one happy thing in particular at length. (Or at length for a limited Substack post, anyway.)
This is a little story from my week about a TV show, a critic, and the joy of being a consumer of art and its criticism in its many forms.
I have long loved criticism of films, shows, books, and music; for years, my home page was Roger Ebert’s website.
Despite growing up in a small town in West Virginia - our whole county could only muster enough students for one middle school and high school - I got absurdly lucky and stumbled early into wonderful friendships with brilliant, funny, and loyal people – friendships that persist today. (In the words of Stephen King, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12 - Jesus, did you?”)
Though they are wonderfully nerdy people, there are slight differences to our specific brands of nerdiness. We might love the same band, but they like it for the music and I’m here for the lyrics. They might love to read, but we’re divided over the best genres. And as a 30-something adult, those little differences don’t mean much, but as a teenager, the lack of overlap felt isolating.
My favorite books, movies, CDs - I could loan them to them, sure, or burn them copies, but I wasn’t going to have the kinds of conversations I wanted to engage in about them. I wanted discourse. I wanted to learn. I wanted graduate-level analysis, and that was not something I had any idea how to facilitate or ask for at that age. And I didn’t know anything about the online communities that might’ve been available to me to work some of that out in - it was the 2000s and the internet was still figuring things out - but I did know that critics were a thing, and so I began searching for those whose perspectives resonated with me so that I could sort of commune with their ideas and opinions and try to work out my own from there.
These individuals and their words became very important to me. James Baldwin said, “It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” Books were that for me, too, as they are for so many of us, as were other art forms, and the criticism of that art became a crucial part of that staving off loneliness for me, as well, giving me what I didn’t know how to ask for from real live people back then. Eventually, I learned how and found people and spaces I could explore my interests in, but my love of reading criticism persisted.
Flash forward to 2012, I was sent an essay called “WHY YOU LOVE MOVIES.” It was by a film and television critic I’d never heard of, Film Crit Hulk, and it took my breath away. Set up as a list in a pattern of “Because __________,” it managed to touch on a vast number of aspects of filmmaking and viewing with a kind of tenderness and thoughtfulness that reminded me so fully and sharply of the things that I did indeed love about movies that it made me want to learn more about the things that I didn’t. I began following his writing, and when he started a Patreon, I was happy to become one of his supporters. He didn’t limit himself to films, though; television shows were up for consideration, as well, and I relished experiencing favorites such as Mad Men and Andor “alongside” him.
Then, a few weeks ago, the second season of The Bear came out. I had enjoyed the first season (though I came to it too late to really get to enjoy the inaugural wave of “Yes, chef” memes, more’s the pity) and I’d been casually looking forward to the second. Generally, I watch TV while doing something else – because ADHD – so I put the first episode of The Bear’s second season on one night while I was working on other things and planned to enjoy it as I could. By the end of the episode, however, I was completely hooked; what the first season had teased, this one had expanded upon with such care, ensuring every second counted. The second season was a work of art. And after finishing it by myself, I entered into that state so familiar to many of us in which we have just finished something we deeply loved and no have no idea how to move past because we are still living in the world of that creation.
Luckily, a few days after I finished it, a glorious Tweet appeared in my feed:
And a few days later, he delivered a THIRTY THOUSAND word post broken up into 25 sections.
Reader, I cried. A lot. I hoped for an essay; I got a novella. It was precisely this kind of thing that I desired as a kid, and it was mine for the reading for next to nothing. I parsed it out over the next couple of days, rewarding myself with a section or two whenever I completed some task, overcome with my love for the show and those words and not wanting it to end too quickly.
And it just made me feel very, very, very grateful for the creatives of the world and reminded me of how glorious it is to get to share in these performances and scripts and soundtracks and criticism and the thousand other things that go into the experience of art like that.
I would be remiss not to share a link to his Patreon after all that, so here you go.
In honor of the Glastonbury Festival, a care home nearby put on its own mini-fest for the residents! I love music festivals and hope with all my heart I’m lucky enough to spend my old age dancing to live music like those folks were.
For the first time in months, we have both a working washer and dryer in our home. Huzzah for modern appliances and the smell of fresh laundry!
Speaking of, a kid took it upon himself to create a laundry room in his school for his peers in need. My former-teacher-heart grew about three sizes reading about it, knowing what an impact something like that could have.
Threads launched! I know that this is not news that everyone cares about, but for me, having a short-form posting platform that easily integrated into my other platforms and that there wasn’t a waiting list to is a gift. Particularly since this gift has some serious rules about posting, the lack of which has really ruined Twitter for me over the last year. You can find me here.
My youngest son and I planted a little herb garden and it seems to be flourishing? Despite my long + established history of not being able to keep anything green alive?! Miraculous.
Finally, this incredible reel about a blind dad making braille kids’ books so he can read to his baby.
I hope you have the most fabulous week.
<3
Tara
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Thank you so much for the lovely feature. It was truly a delight!
Thank you for sharing the link to the post on The Bear!