Hi Nora :)

Hi friends,

This week I compiled a list of the movies I haven't seen that, when I tell people, predictably get the 'What!?! You haven't seen X?' treatment. I think it's fun because I've got some weird gaps in my movie education and filling them is going to be a satisfying little homework assignment. To set the table for what to expect, I had never seen Titanic or The Devil Wears Prada until the last couple months.

• Our lovely rescue Nora is settling in nicely in her new home, coming out of her shell and showing what we suspect is going to be a gargantuan personality. She's sweet, caring, inquisitive - an intrepid explorer with a stubborn streak. We're in love and now trying to see a line of sight to figuring out how to curtail her propensity for digging holes, killing snakes (only one confirmed kill so far), and chewing anything she deems interesting to shreds. You meet rescues where they're at though and know it all just takes time. Ohh, Nora also came with a little bit of heartworm and we need to schedule an appointment to have the hair follicle she has growing on her eye - called a dermoid - removed. I'd only google it if you're not eating currently. We renamed her Nora as a nod to the fictional interviewer who wrote mine and Macy's story for our wedding zine. It's inspiring me to again watch the amazing 20 year anniversary performance of Come Away With Me.
• Reading an article from the August 1932 issue of The Atlantic written by Helen Keller reminds me that writing is the closest thing we have to a time machine. A larger than life figure using domestic life as a Trojan horse to discuss industrial economics - with real wit and bite - is a fascinating and fun read that doesn't feel fully like it's from ~100 years ago. It is also eye opening for its perspective that women in the depression - a bar we love to use as our benchmark for hardship and toil - had conveniences that made their lives much better than their mothers and grandmothers, and appreciated them as the modern marvels they undoubtedly were.
• The internet is really cool sometimes. This article from a linguist shows how language (in this case English) changes over the years and is completely altered over the centuries. The post highlights the work that linguists do for translations of older texts, and gives me my first and only experience reading English how it was written in the year 1000. "And þæt heo sægde wæs eall soþ. Ic ƿifode on hire, and heo ƿæs ful scyne ƿif, ƿis ond ƿælfæst. Ne gemette ic næfre ær sƿylce ƿifman" - you know what I'm saying?
• Song rec this week is 'Un Pañuelo' by Iseo & Dodosound. It's modern Spanish language ska music and it's incredible. Ska - by the way - gets a bad rep because of the fedora-donning commercial success of the 90's. Give yourself permission to listen to more ska (my playlist to jump in).
• Read The Will of the Many by James Islington this week and absolutely burned through it at an aggressive pace. Incredibly hard to put down, the story is rapid, and compared to a lot of contemporary fantasy I've read recently, different in the fact that the entire book is a first person perspective from the main character. Without jumping between characters, story lines, and different timelines that are common to similar books, it makes the whole thing feel like it's leaning on the gas and never letting up. Can't wait to dive into the second book in the series.

Til next week,

Joey