Hi friends.
Where are we this week? In such a dark dark place. I read this headline today and could only say “My God” aloud. It’s hard. It’s always hard sometimes we feel it more deeply.
We have a lot of places to go in today’s Sunday post but let me start here:
I read every single one of your comments on my birthday post last week. THANK YOU! From deep inside my heart Thank You.
That feeling that has us believe we’re friends who have never met? I think it’s real. I actually know it’s real because so many of you have come to a Bakehouse class and you literally walk in the door and WE’RE FRIENDS. It’s just that you need to remind me of your name and then there’s no stopping us. So – thank you for your friendship. I realized even more strongly this week that it really means so much to me.
In epically small news, Tron just used his paw to open the door to the bathroom and walked it. It’s such a funny thing… like he’s going in there to use the restroom but really he’s just going to lay his overly fury body on the cool tile. A sure sign that summer has arrived in New Orleans and I don’t have the air cool enough for his pleasure.
In more epically small news, I’m working towards a big Fall project you’ll have in your hot little hands come October 26th. From now until mid-July I’m working on Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes so my kitchen world continues to be topsy-turvy, my craving for Turkey Pot Pie is absolutely out of place, and I’m just rollin’ we all these punches and grateful for opportunities (and making sweet potato pie in May). I’m excited about this one, y’all.
The offering this week is below. It’s a lot of downs and a few ups. Take what you need and leave the rest for another day. We understand each other.
โข An Incalculable Loss. 100,000 deaths is hard to understand and overwhelming to feel and of course we haven’t properly mourned. (The New York Times, Medium)
โข Also an incalculable loss like so many TOO MANY before him: The Death of George Floyd, In Context. Friends. My heart is so heavy and so tired. This is the history we haven’t learned past. The trauma bred in our bones that we perpetuate. It’s our deep sin that we can’t cast into the fire. My jaw fell open earlier this week watching the video of Amy Cooper repeatedly and with increasing hysteria refer to the race of the man asking her to leash the dog she was choking. That’s it – this present maybe dormant racism that flares up so quickly, with such high consequences. My God – this is what we have to face about who we are. Have you listened to The 1619 Project. This is why we are who we are. We must to change it – but we’ve known that for a long time haven’t we? We have to take better care of each other. (The New Yorker, The New York Times)
โข Have you been to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Lynching Memorial. Have you read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson? (EJI, Indiebound)
โข A very strong list of Anti-Racism Resources. (Google Doc)
โข I need to say something about social media. I’ve had a handful of people on Instagram call me out for not Instagram-addressing all that’s going on right now. Wow – what an interesting fight to take up at this time. I think maybe those people don’t know me. I’m Joy, a mixed-race woman with a black father and family. These tragedies are not suddenly new to me. It doesn’t feel natural to me to post an anti-racist post on Instagram this week – stillness and mourning is where I am. These tragedies, these murders, have always been devastating, and unjust, and completely incomprehensible. Every single one of them. I’m also deeply sorry for the people holding their breaths through riots in their cities. My family and I also lived through the Los Angeles riots, my dad spraying down the roof of our house so it didn’t catch fire from the nearby businesses set ablaze. It’s so scary, I know. This is hard- every way you come at it. It’s all of our pain. None of us are separate from it.
โข Millennials: The Unluckiest Generation but like… with the coolest sunglasses? (The Washington Post)
โข This, from touring musician Rosanne Cash: I Will Miss What I Wanted To Lose. (The Atlantic)
โข We’re all gardeners now. My friend Kristin of Dine x Design is an incredible home gardener and she shares a lot of tips and enthusiasm in her Instagram stories. (Outside, Instagram)
โข Or you could make a houseplant that anyone can take care of. (House That Lars Built)
โข BOOK TALK: You read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, yes? I can’t wait to read her latest book: The Glass Hotel.(Parnassus, Amazon)
โข This week I’m listening to this POLLEN playlist on Spotify.
โข Best podcast episode of the week is The Daily’s Genie Chance and the Great Alaska Earthquake. The end of her story had me in tears. (The Daily)
โข You’re well into Brene Brown’s new podcast, Unlocking Us. Welp… she’s America’s therapist now thankyouverymuch. (Apple Podcasts and Texas Monthly)
โข Pretty sweet: Love At First Quarantine. (NPR)
โข I started grilling… like outside with actual charcoals, a few years ago and if you’re not into this – now is your moment. Gas grills don’t count, k? Everything You Need To Know About Charcoal Grilling. (The Kitchn)
โข The Sunny Project is a print sale of work by Florida-based photographers with 100 percent of proceeds split equally among three Miami-based nonprofits that support vulnerable women and children who are at especially high risk due to Covid-19. There’s some really lovely work here. (The Sunny Project)
I hope you enjoy this day.
My love to you.
xo Joy
46 Responses
Hi, Joy,
I just wanted to send you some love and comforting hugs.
Joy, your comments about the LA riots took me straight back ~20 years – and brought up the intensity of those emotions once again. Our experience was very similar. I enjoy following your posts and look back fondly on your friendship with my daughter, Elisabeth, at LACES. FYI, she would love to reconnect with you.
My daughter is a social worker. She is self employed but contracts with an organization in Denver called the Alternate Defense Council. The work she does for them is a position that was created in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative. She works with her clients, who are in the prison system and awaiting trial, and cannot normally afford a lawyer, to make sure they get appropriate sentencing and any help they need. Most of them experienced trauma as children, often, and have never gotten any sort of help to deal with it. She works to get them that help. She often has to testify in court. (in fact it was her testimony in court on a case with the previous organization she worked for that caused the ADF to reach out to her and ask her to become a contractor for them.) She sees inequity in sentencing all the time and the ADF like the EJI is working to try and solve that.
In the meantime, tonight, the diverse suburb I live in was rocked by Rioting. There is such pain right now and it breaks my heart. This afternoon there was a very productive protest outside the police station, and our chief, a wonderful woman, came out to hug and pray with the protesters. Unfortunately after that, some groups split off and headed to a different area of town where the problems ended up occurring. As I sit here tonight, heartbroken by all these events the past month and years, unable to sleep, because my city, the place I have called home my entire life, has been hit hard by unrest, I try to understand how it would feel to go through life feeling oppressed and trivialized. I think back to when my son learned to drive. I remember him asking me why I didn’t have the “how to behave if the cops pull you over” conversation like some of his minority friends had with their parents. It was because I never even thought to. It never even crossed my mind that he might get killed by a police officer during a traffic stop. I never had to worry about him going out for a run through nearby neighborhoods and not coming back. I never had to worry about him or my daughter being treated differently in the mall or a restaurant because of the color of their skin or ethnicity. The truth will always be that I can try to imagine but can never understand what others who go through this feel and experience and how that can build up inside until it just explodes in anger and frustration and more. All I can do is try not to contribute to the problems and examine my own attitudes and bias (everyone has some sort of bias) and be aware of them so I can try to work on them and not act on them. I can also know that I have two kids who are trying to solve some of these issues in the areas they work in. And I can hope that their generation continues to make a difference and does better at this than those that came before them. I truly hope that this all will become a catalyst for change, for the better. Because change does need to happen.
Hello, Joy. I really like your posts “Let it Be Sunday”. Keep up the good work, and this delicious blog deserve to be shared.
This comment could ramble on forever, so I’m going to keep things short. Thank you, Joy. For your willingness to share, be vulnerable, open, and confront all of the things we’re facing in life. …and I’m sorry – that you have to explain to folks that you get it. You have a black dad. That you have to divulge your personal life to people on the internet who clearly don’t follow you here and pay attention, or they’d already know you get it. I’m glad you’re taking time for you. Thank you for continually also taking the time for all of us and sharing these links. <3
Thank you most of all for being you and for sharing with those of us who visit this space. It’s truly special, and I admire the way you’re able to combine the weighty with the lighter stuff.
And thank you too for your thoughts on social media. It’s good to have this reminder that social media platforms can have a place in teaching and processing pain, but they don’t tell the whole story of our complex, beautiful human lives.
Since when does social media have to be a person’s whole life? Just because you haven’t posted about an issue, does that mean you don’t care or sympathize or mourn? You may even be out there as an activist Not posting on social media is not the same as not speaking up when someone is being victimized. While social media can be powerful, terrifyingly so at times, that doesn’t mean it is the right outlet for all of us and there should be no unwritten requirement to post on every social matter. Bless you, and your family, and Tron. I understand the need in troubled times to just find a cool place to lie down.
I agree with you. Just because a person isn’t posting about what is going on doesn’t mean you don’t care and sadly just because many are posting doesn’t mean they will discuss racism or any issues in the future. I have found that over the last 6 years these seems to be a hastang mentality for activism but only when that issue is in the news.
This week I feel as if so many are disingenuous in their posting, I could be wrong, but I feel like they are only posting because they are getting so much pressure to post. I also have found that no matter what you do or post there is someone that doesn’t agree with what you are posting. I have seen so many nasty comments on peoples posts about how they expressed themselves, what quote they posted and more. It is sad.
Girl, you are the bees knees. Thank you. xo
Thank you for this gift each week. I look forward to it. I appreciate it. I wait to open it until I can sit down, alone, and savour it. Thank you for what you do and sharing it with us.
Joy, you are a bright light in a dark world, by that I don’t not just mean these difficult times but every week. I have been reading your blog for ever, I have your books and bake your treats but it is your Sunday posts that I enjoy the most.
You have opened my eyes to things I did not see, I’ve read about subjects I would never have because you posted about them, thank you for your JOY, your honesty, your loveliness and most of all for just being you.
It’s hard to read what’s happening there in US from Italy without the chance to act phisically for the cause and not just with some posts written on social media.