Bread and Circuses

     It's been a bad week to be in my general vicinity, y'all. I have been in all of the moods (none of them particularly pleasant), and my patience has been non-existent. Old me probably would have apologized profusely to everyone for this, but perimenopausal me? The best I can do is an impression of my narcissistic ex (R.I.P.):      I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt.       Yeah, I'm not too sorry about that, either. Because honestly, I really, really need everyone to step up and do better. By everyone I mean: The woman in the parking garage at work who never looks in any direction before attempting to back into a parking spot. That's cool. I love that I got to have a near-death experience on my way into the office on Wednesday morning.  Every dude in a white damn pickup truck who doesn't feel like the rules of the road apply to them. Y'all can't act right, which just means I need to slow down even more as you ride my bumper in ...

      The elder generations of my family love a remote location. My grandparents Tierney relocated from Denver to North Platte, Nebraska when I was in junior high school. My aunt and uncle followed them out there, as did my mother, some years later. My dad bought a house on some land in tiny Weldona, Colorado a few years back. Apparently, something in our DNA clicks over at some point, and we all decide that we need to move somewhere that has absolutely dire winters, and also takes forever to get to. The winters last eight months and there's nothing to keep the snow from drifting into seven foot piles? Awesome! It's at least two hours to a major airport? Perfect!      All of this is to say I went to visit my family in their new digs (southeastern Iowa) last weekend. And from the moment I landed, I could not figure out my cardinal directions, and therefore spent three days basically lost amongst the rivers, streams, and corn fields of Iowa. My people did wel...

       T.S. Eliot once wrote that "April is the cruelest month..." Oh, Thomas Stearns. You obviously never lived through an August in the south. If you had, you'd know that August is the cruelest month. Hotter and more humid than a lobster pot, and the best part? You can't even be truly excited that it is nearly September, because guess what? September is just second August. It's just another 30 days of the same hot, humid weather.      Not that you'd know that if you went into any clothing store. It's 90+ degrees and you walk into Belk and praise the fact that the air conditioning is set at "ice cold". And then they want you to look at all the beautiful sweaters. Be serious, y'all. I'm not going to need a sweater for another two months (maybe three). I came in here because if one more scrap of fabric touches too much of my skin, I might combust. I need shorts. I need further floaty items in linen.       A ll you have for me are acr...

       I woke up this morning, fully intending to write about Steven Spielberg's newest movie, Disclosure Day. Then I checked the news, and found out that Lindsey Graham died overnight. So we're going to take a quick current events detour, and then we'll get to the Spielberg of it all.      Lindsey Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina became a congressman in 1993, when I was 14 years old. When Strom Thurmond died in 2003, Graham took his seat in the senate. For those of you who are too young to know who Strom Thurmond was, you can learn more about him here . Those were some pretty huge, hateful shoes to fill. And, looking back, I think we can safely say that Graham tried his best.        A man with essentially no moral compass, in December 2015, he said "y ou know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He do...

     We need to be worried, y'all. And the reason we need to be worried is twofold: The Supreme Court shouldn't have a split decision on a very basic Constitutional question; and  The Constitution of the United States was never meant to be a static document.      On the first point, it very simply doesn't matter what Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch feels  about birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was very specifically drafted and adopted on July 9, 1868. A 91 page temper tantrum does not negate that two thirds of the Congress ratified this specific amendment. And the job of the Supreme Court is to decide "....Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution..." I guess we have to say the loud part out loud right now, but the 14th Amendment of the Constitution says this:  Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of ...

       I don't know, y'all. It's a billion degrees outside, and there is  no  breeze. This is my 21st summer in the deep south, so it's not like I don't know what to expect. It's going to be hot and humid and uncomfortable. I'm never going to be completely dry. My hair doubles in volume every five minutes I'm outside until I start looking like Sideshow Bob from the Simpsons. So I wear natural fibers in very loose configurations, and try not to worry about how sweaty I look constantly. I drink all the water I can get my hands on.        At least, that's how I used to cope. This summer is a completely different beast, because I'm deep into perimenopause now. I have hot flashes that make me feel like I'm a human volcano. I haven't had a good night's sleep in months. My new baseline is 'uncomfortable and cranky.' Add in a typical summer in the south, and I'm wandering around feeling vaguely homicidal all the time.       L...

                I don't know if she's a mom. She for sure didn't know that I am not a mom. I can understand the instinct to make sure that any potential mom be included in the recognition of Mother's Day. For me, however, it felt like someone confused me for a military veteran. The stolen valor of it all made me cringe inside.       Being a mom is one of the hardest things anyone can do. The thought of being responsible for the complete well being of another human? That is an enormous burden for anyone to take on. I have nothing but respect for anyone who chooses to be a mother. In our world today, it is a thankless task (Hallmark holidays aside).        On this Mother's Day, I'm thinking about how we could make motherhood less burdensome and more rewarding for moms. Perhaps, instead of everyone panic buying a weird assortment of "gifts" (oh, yeah, I saw y'all at the store yesterday), we could...

       I was at The Health Nut this morning when I received this text message from my mom:      I was begging for someone to sell me some supplements that might alleviate even one of the perimenopause symptoms I'm currently experiencing. Seriously, any one will do. It will help me sleep all the way through the night? Sold! It will eradicate the hot flashes that turn my face as red as a tomato at random times throughout the day? I'll take it! It will help me stop wanting to breathe fire and rip someone's head off the moment they make a benignly stupid comment? I will buy five. Just point me in the right direction.     What I ended up buying: a bottle of Black Cohosh supplements, a bar of turmeric soap, and some Thai crystal roll-on deodorant. We'll see if any of this does what it's supposed to do. Then it was back out into the hot car and Saturday traffic to call Mom back about this nightmare text.     Here's what you need to know ab...

    We sprung forward one hour this morning, and to no one’s surprise at all, the future doesn’t look much different, just darker. This has to be one of the dumbest things we still do each year. Last week, Beanie and I were out walking every day before work, saying hi to the rest of the neighbor dogs before I had to leave for work. Now it’ll be another month or so before we can safely take those morning walks again. Good thing I’ll have an hour more of daylight at my…paralegal job.     Daylight savings is just a reminder of how the U.S. loves to hang on to policy choices that no longer serve the majority of us. Other notable holdovers include the Electoral College and a Supreme Court with only nine Justices. 15,000 U.S. farms declared bankruptcy last year, but we’re all going to keep springing forward and falling back to stay in line with an agricultural calendar that hasn’t been relevant since I was a child. Good times.     This blog serves as a place for ...

      Happy Bacchus Sunday/Joe Cain Day to all who celebrate! Here we are, on the last Sunday of the Mardi Gras season. Here in Mobile, there were fears that it would be a rainy day, but the storms rolled through overnight and now it's sunny and breezy- perfect weather for everyone going to the parades today. We'll be sticking close to home, getting chores done and making some ramen for late lunch.     Today, I'm basking in the peace that comes from having made a big ask that I've been dreading for a couple of months. A warning in advance: this is going to be pretty vague, because there's still a lot of details to work out, but what I want to focus on is the ask itself, rather than what I was requesting. If all goes to plan, I'll have awesome news to share soon!     Those of you who know me, know how much I hate to ask for help. For example, when I was moving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, my movers fell through, and I had to ask for friends and fami...

           It's been a weird couple of weeks, y'all. "Official" Mardi Gras season kicked off here in Mobile, and it has been one of the funniest, strangest experiences of my life. The people of Mobile will never hesitate to let you know that Mardi Gras "started here." They're very insistent about this, and they are correct. The first recorded Mardi Gras celebration in the United States occurred in Mobile in 1703. I'm not going to debate historical fact. Among the questions I have asked and have not been given satisfactory answers to: When does [name of parade] start tonight? What is the most popular parade? Which local high school has the best marching band?     No one has a firm idea of when the parades actually start here. You can ask five people and get five different answers. Answers also vary wildly about the most popular parade. Fair enough. New Orleanians also have their personal favorites, but people in New Orleans also are so particular i...

     What the actual fuck are we doing? I am so furious that I could, and have been, crying. While I was down here yesterday morning, taking pictures of flowers and making sourdough bread that would never rise, ICE agents were murdering 37 year old Alex Pretti in the middle of the street in Minneapolis. Because he approached the officers brandishing a gun and "wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement," according to Greg Bovino.     Or, you know, he had his phone in his hand and was recording the officers actively shove a woman to the ground and then put himself between the officers and the woman and attempted to help her. Same thing, right? I've seen the video. Alex Pretti never touched his gun (which he was carrying legally). He never had the chance, because he was pepper-sprayed, tackled to the ground by seven immigration enforcement agents, pistol-whipped, and disarmed. He was disarmed before they shot him at least ten times on the ground, and...

 Lord, don't we have projects around here! Beanie and I got up early this morning so I could start my first loaf of sourdough bread with the starter I've been working on for the past couple of weeks. My first starter attempt was a bust, so I started fresh this week with much better results. Now, we have sourdough slowly rising in the kitchen as I type.  I can hardly feel three of the fingertips on my left hand, because I'm also learning to play B's tenor guitar. I have small, very inflexible hands, so four strings should theoretically be easier for me to master than six. We shall see. Right now, I'm trying to learn my open chords so I can play some very simple songs (looking at you, "Sweet Jane"). Apparently, this will get easier as I get some calluses on my fingers. Let's hope this is true.  Also, I'm trying to get better about taking pictures. We're considering a trip to Ireland in the fall, and looking through my photos from my last trip the...

 On the B-HAG and being my own worst enemy     When I washed up in Minneapolis after Hurricane Katrina, I ended up working for the Minnesota Medical Foundation for four years. The Foundation raised money for the medical school and medical research happening on campus. It was there that I learned about the B.H.A.G. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Around the office, people called it the B-HAG. Basically, the B-HAG was the overarching goal that all the fundraisers were working toward. In this case, it was funding for a cancer research center. As you can imagine, you have to hit up a lot of rich people to get together enough cash for something like that. Everyone in the office had a part in this.     In 2008,  we actually attained the B-HAG. There was a big fancy breakfast for us, where they announced that we'd hit the goal with what was the single largest gift the foundation had received to that date ($65m for cancer research from the Masons). It was a great mom...

    Hi! If you're here for a recap of some Ovid this week, you're going to be disappointed. I haven't picked up Metamorphoses  since last Sunday because apparently, my adult life will be lived entirely in unprecedented times. I've heard tell of times that weren't just one compounding crisis after another. That must have been awesome.      To recap the crazy of the first week of 2026: our president sent the military to Venezuela to extract their dictator president and his wife to bring him back to the United States to face charges of narco-terrorism. Nicolás Maduro Moros was a brutal dictator, and I'm not arguing that he should have remained in power in Venezuela. I do, however, find it hilarious that Trump would think such an intervention was necessary when he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez (former President of Honduras) last month. Hernandez, who was convicted of conspiring to bring cocaine into the U.S. in 2024, was pardoned less than two years into his ...

Well, it's a good thing that this translation of Metamorphoses has extensive notes, because I was flipping back there every other page. The spine of this book is going to be trashed by the time I'm through! Yesterday, I sat down and read Metamorphoses book one, lines 1-744. That's 30 pages in the physical copy of the book. I don't know that this is a sustainable pace for reading, but we will see. There are some absolutely beautiful lines from the very beginning of the poem. For example, this description of Earth before the gods:               Chaos they called this rough and knotted mass,               nothing but sluggish weight and battling seeds               of things just loosely joined in one big heap. [Lines 3-5] Or how about this quote from Deucalion to his wife, Pyrrha:               My wife, believe me, if the sea ...

As promised, here's the list of classics that I'll be tackling this year.  Dante Alighieri- Inferno Dante Alighieri- Purgatory Dante Alighieri- Paradise Octavia Butler- Parable of the Sower   Octavia Butler- Parable of the Talents Simone de Beauvoir- America Day by Day Fyodor Dostoyevsky- The Brothers Karamozov Fyodor Dostoyevsky- Notes from Underground George Eliot- Middlemarch Ralph Waldo Emerson- Self-Reliance and Other Essays F. Scott Fitzgerald- The Beautiful and Damned Homer- The Iliad Homer- The Odyssey James Joyce- Ulysses Franz Kafka- Diaries Franz Kafka- Letters to Milena Michel de Montaigne- The complete Essays Ovid- Metamorphoses Walker Percy- The Moviegoer Marcel Proust- Swann's Way (In Search of Lost Time Vol. 1) Seneca- Letters from a Stoic William Makepeace Thackeray- Vanity Fair Evelyn Waugh- A Handful of Dust Nathaniel West- Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of The Locust Yevgeny Zamyatin- We I am starting today with Ovid's Metamorphoses . In particular,...

…And frankly, I’ve been better. I feel as though I’ve been keeping my head down and praying for daylight since mid-January. I signed up for Substack sometime in February, thinking that I’d add some sort of pithy notes about life in America as things continued to devolve. What this looked like in reality? I opened that page approximately every two weeks for the better part of a year, and didn’t write a damn thing.  So what did I do instead? I doom scrolled. A lot. I relocated to Alabama with my tiny dog in the name of love. I learned to cohabit with another human after honestly thinking that would never happen again. I got a job with a national law firm. I protested. I had the honor of reading of two dear friend’s manuscripts and giving them some edits. I worked on developing my musical ear (a necessity if you live with a musician). I got to spend some time with my nephew. And I firmly retreated into the written word. I read 95 books this year, mostly about history and income inequa...