-We're Back Baby!

I’m back from vacation, The Bear is back for its second season and Love Island UK is back on Hulu. Vacations have been few and far between since 2020, so my husband and I went all out. We drove from Tennessee to New Mexico and spent some time in Santa Fe before heading up to Colorado and then driving back home through Kansas and Missouri. 

I was talking to Joy about the trip and she said she loves the sky in the southwest. She’s right. The sky really blew me away. There’s just so much of it. The sky, the low humidity, the cool temps at night – I’m starting to understand why so many people want to move out there.

Thanks for being here. I’m glad to be back.

Kim

• I wrote a profile on Aura Mayari. Mayari was on the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race and she is one of Nashville’s beloved drag queens. We talk about Pride, Tennessee’s drag ban and what it was like being on Drag Race. Read it here. (Nashville Scene)

• If you’ve been around here for awhile, you may remember that I lost my mind over S1 of The Bear. Well, I just finished S2 and I may never recover. Sophomore slump? We don’t know her. Every episode in this new season is tense, tender and heart-breaking. The Christmas episode? THE CHRISTMAS EPISODE?! Yes. Chef. (Joy the Baker, Hulu)

• If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen very nice photos of me. Those were taken by Emily April Allen. Allen is a much sought-after photographer, as well as an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights. For the Washington Post, Allen wrote about and photographed a piece on trans visibility. 

• Friend of the pod, Lindsay Lynch wrote a book! Do Tell came out on July 11 and I wrote about it here. Lynch is the book buyer for Parnassus Books and a dear friend of mine. This is a book everyone is going to be talking about. Get your copy here. (Lady Land Podcast, Nashville Scene, Bookshop.org)

• Am I obsessed with the whales? Of course. Am I weighing the pros and cons of getting a whale tattoo? You bet your ass I am. Turns out, I’m not alone. Lyz Lenz wrote about all things whales, including how many of us think we want an orca permanently inked onto our body. (Substack)

• I love Lyz. Speaking of women whose writing blows me away, my friend Oliva wrote an essay on mothers, hormone replacement therapy and the lineage of womanhood. Read it and weep. (Nashville Scene)

• I don’t know what in the hell happened in the New York Times column “The Ethicist,” but it seems bad. I was on vacation and ignoring the news. Luckily, Ragen Chastain was clocked in and she breaks it all down in her Substack, Weight and Healthcare.

• A lot of news broke while I was on vacation, most notably the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision. Grateful as always for Roxane Gay and her words and insight on what this terrible precedent could mean. (Substack)

• While driving home from vacation, we passed the Laura Ingalls Wilder home and museum. I remembered that one of my favorite writers, Glynnis MacNicol spent all of last summer researching Wilder and made a podcast about it. I’m halfway through Wilder and I love it so much. (Bookshop.org, iHeart Radio)

• I’m going to assume we all have a copy of Camp Joy. Only Joy could write something that makes me gleeful to try something (camping) that I’ve never thought I had the constitution for (I hate to be hot, I hate bugs, and I don’t know how to use the bathroom outside), but this little zine has me shopping the REI sale and wondering if I can, in fact, make shakshuka in the woods. (Joy the Baker)

• An argument for going all in. (TikTok)