London life updates and a lot of things I think you should read

Hi, it’s been a while. We are settling nicely in London. This past weekend we finally moved out of our hotel and into our permanent residence, which has a nice big garden for the dogs. Six weeks in a shoebox European hotel with two humans and two dogs was too much.

Also, my arm is a lot better! I had a third and final surgery on January 2, and got my stitches out right before we moved. Hoping to start working out this week to regain some of my strength and mobility.

Okay, we got a lot to catch up on, let’s do this.

The story of a powerful spiritual alliance.

“We are not what the world would call beautiful women. We always wear the same clothes. The prisoners cannot be afraid of us. They cannot feel lower than us. There’s nothing in our appearance to make them feel not beautiful or not elegant.” — Sister Lydia Maria

For the 100th anniversary issue of the New Yorker, Lawrence Wright has written an achingly beautiful story about a group of Waco nuns who have forged an unlikely sisterhood with the seven women currently on Texas’s death row.

Wright, a former writer for Texas Monthly, wrote the definitive book on Al-Qaeda (for which he won a Pulitzer), an expose of Scientology, and a play about the making of the epic Elizabeth Taylor film Cleopatra. But “The Nuns Trying to Save the Women on Texas’s Death Row” is truly one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read in a long time. It delves into everything from the nuns’ lives before they became sisters, the backstories and sometimes dubious charges behind the women sentenced to die, and Wright’s own religious trauma. Recently, the nuns officially moved to make the inmates members of their order called oblates, laypeople who support the work of the Sisters, mainly through prayer. 

The nuns told the condemned women that becoming an oblate was a path toward a “sanctified life.” For an oblate, prayer was an occupation, both a way to fill the day and a mystical way of healing the world. Oblature also connected the prisoners to a worldwide network of believers who would be praying with them and for them. This would give the lonely inhabitants of death row an unaccustomed sense of power.

The story reminded me of one of the all-time great This American Life episodes, Act V, about a group of death row inmates who stage a production of Hamlet. You’ll need tissues for both the Wright piece and the TAL episode.

Meanwhile, at the nascent Texas publication The Barbed Wire, incarcerated journalist Kwaneta Harris writes about the importance of beauty products in women’s prisons, some of which are smuggled in tiny cling wrap packages.

““I wear eyeshadow to feel better,” she confides during our late-night talks through a shared vent. “It makes the inside feel like the outside looks.”

And The Londoner steps into a cloistered, mostly-silent community of nuns who live in the center of London, just north of Hyde Park (ironically, right next to Speaker’s Corner).

Health issues

The measles outbreak, which started in rural community in West Texas around Valentine’s Day, keeps getting worse. Last week it was reported that someone from the community visited San Marcos, a college town close to both Austin and San Antonio, and basically acted like a super-spreader.

Officials warn that anyone who was at Texas State University from approximately 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and at Twin Peaks Restaurant from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. — or up to two hours after those times — may have been exposed and could be at risk of developing measles...

The individual from Gaines County also traveled to multiple areas in San Antonio on Saturday, Feb. 15. They include the University of Texas at San Antonio main campus between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m, the River Walk attractions — Wax Museum, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Ripley’s Illusion Lab — between 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., and Mr. Crabby's Seafood and Bar in Live Oak between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The story goes on to note that measles was considered eradicated in the US in 2000 thanks to high vaccination levels and herd immunity, but you know how that story plays out. “Ninety percent of people who are not vaccinated or have not had a previous measles infection will become infected with the virus.”

I can’t believe we have to go through this again (yes I can). You know what else we’re doing again? Smoking. I can’t deny that smoking looks very cool but I refuse to believe that nicotine is "good" for you. Just look at this unhinged eugenicist shit from the “intellectual dark web”.

Now there is also the role of Twitter and other networked social platforms in reinforcing the dominance of the mass mind, and punishing dissenters from the consensus from which everyone else is making money.

A reason that is less well-explored, I believe, is the West’s war on nicotine. The massive brain outages we see throughout the West, and particularly in America, are in no small part due to the war on smoking, which both makes people smarter and kills them before they become senile.

My hot take is actually that the rise of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, “heroin chic” aesthetics, and current plastic surgery trends (dissolving filters, buccal fat removal, BBL reversals) are all tied to the resurgence of smoking and nicotine use as an appetite suppressant.

See also the resurgence of diet soda, which, as The Cut reports, has soared in popularity and cultural relevance in the past two years. Most of those “wellness culture” gurus were never about wellness in the first place, but about thinness.

Non-cooperation brick

Ravelry is a social networking site for knitters and crocheters. It’s extremely niche, a place for people to track patterns and projects, but is one of the better social media sites in terms of uhhh not supporting nazis. Right now, the most popular project on the site is a knitted brick.

From pattern-maker Hannah Roderick: 

This is a project for anyone who wants to throw something at the wall every time an article comes out about how more of our rights are being stripped away but also doesn’t want to break their fish tank/flower vase/television/porcelain cat figurine in the process. Make yourself a Non-Cooperation Brick to work through some anxiety and frustration while crafting. Make someone else a Non-Cooperation Brick to help them process their own emotions. Make many Non-Cooperation Bricks until the world is covered in nothing but Non-Cooperation Bricks.

Yes, the brick is knit to the approximate dimensions of an actual clay brick.

I’ve written before about how I got back into knitting after a very long hiatus in part due to the first Trump presidency, as a way to keep both my hands busy so that I couldn’t doom-scroll. At that time, during Trump’s first impeachment, the resistance pattern du jour was a knitted peach, the proceeds of which (at the time) went to RAICES, a Texas-based immigrant advocacy org. I never knit the peach but I have done a lot of knitting in these 6 years, more than I ever did as a kid.

We all scoffed at the pussy hats, but there is a long history of knitting as a form of resistance, from handmade goods allowing the colonies to exert independence from expensive British imports to messages being encoded in fiber works during the first two world wars. Community care is resistance, and that applies to mittens and blankets knit for newborns in the NICU and handmade hats gifted to unhoused folks.

Knitting is also an extremely meditative act, one that is both relaxing and mentally stimulating. For me, it is a form of joy and self care. Being able to wear something I’ve made gives me both a sense of pride and self-resilience that we’re all going to need in the next few years (or longer).

It’s difficult to explain, but back in 2019, before I picked back up my needles, I was craving knitting. My body was actively telling me to restart the hobby in the same way your body knows when you need to move or eat. Now I am asking you to listen. What is your body telling you to do in order to survive this regime, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally?

Today is Mardi Gras

One of my favorite films depicting the cultural of New Orleans is Always for Pleeasure, an hour-long documentary made in 1978 by Les Blank that delves into crawfish boils, second line parades, the history of Mardi Gras indians, and includes a stunning performance by Professor Longhair. 

Les Blank’s film archives share a building with the archives of Arhoolie Records and Down Home Music in the El Cerrito neighborhood of San Francisco. Arhoolie founder Chris Strachwitz died in 2023, and his estate, which owns the building, is currently being litigated. It is expected that his heirs will sell the building, leaving the three archives without a home.

Blank died in 2013, but his son Harrod Blank now runs a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of his films. That nonprofit has launched a GoFundMe to fund the purchase of the building to keep the three archives intact. It’s currently at 90% of its goal and is nearing the home stretch. Maybe make a little Mardi Gras magic and throw some coins their way.

Fascinating reads for your perusal and edification:

• Speaking of Mardi Gras, have you heard about outlaw New Orleans dog Scrim? Scrim cannot be caged. FREE SCRIM.
• Re: dogs that are cool, Muppy is a scrappy little sled dog mutt who doesn’t know she’s not a husky. I sent this story to so many people I know who needed a pick-me-up after the past few weeks of political fuckery. Blair Braverman, who wrote this story, has also written an excellent memoir about moving to the Arctic circle to learn how to raise and race sled dogs. She’s a great follow on social media.
• The first Black architect in Texas helped pioneer an entirely new style of home design, “Houston’s first modernist house with a true interior courtyard.” I’ll have to visit this house next time I’m home.
• You probably know about the conjoined Schappell twins, or at least recognize photos of them. They died earlier this year. In 2007 one of the twins, George, came out as transgender. The Atlantic has a nice little remembrance of them. Throughout their 62 years, the twins rebuffed suggestions that they should have expensive, potentially fatal surgeries to be separated. “Their physical bodies did not fit easily into the structures of a world that was not designed to receive them.”
• Houston/London crossover: When the Space Shuttle Flew Over London
• A 100-year old woman from North Dakota has been journaling every day since she was 10. You know I’m a huge advocate for journaling but damn bitch!

Almost everywhere she has traveled, her diary has gone with her, she said, except during hospital stays when she gave birth to her children or was admitted for an illness. “I wrote on scrap paper then and transferred it to the diary when I got home,” Riski said. “There was really no excuse for me not to write in it.”

• Maybe niche but “AITA for pretending to think beans in chili are "woke", to prank my cousin who is obsessed with being "anti woke" and who loves chili?” For the record I put beans in my chili because I LOVE BEANS.
• just over here photoshopping muppets onto the cover of elle magazine
• My Brilliant Friend Compelled Me to Get a Landline. I loved this, having just moved into a Victorian flat with a ton of obsolete features. 

Almost immediately, I heard the sound of an angel — a dial tone. Pressing the buttons elicited all the proper beeping noises. Not only could I call out; the phone also rang when someone called me. I was transported. I was delighted. Is this what stillness felt like? There was only one thing left to do: Find the perfect vintage Rolodex.

• And finally, RIP to David Johansen/Buster Poindexter/The Ghost of Christmas Past

That’s all for today. I love you, thanks for reading. Next time won't be so long ❤️.