Here's Your End-of-July Care Package

No-one can strive this time of year. It’s impossible. Take a break and read something great instead.

Here in the northern hemisphere, we’re in deep summer, and I don’t know about you, but for me during this time of year I don’t want to do anything but pick berries and harvest tomatoes and swim in seas and float down rivers and lay in hammocks. Some of us are even lucky enough to work in sectors where there’s a bit of a don’t ask, don’t tell culture this time of year. Here in the U.S. we certainly don’t get August off, but employers might turn a blind eye to nobody really being available or getting anything done on Fridays, and deadlines might be quietly pushed to September. Wherever you are, whatever the conditions of your life, I hope there’s some gentleness and spaciousness available. I hope you get to walk slowly, and wander, and forage, and float.

And I hope you get to read some lovely content that feeds your mind, nourishes your soul, and maybe makes you laugh. To that end, it’s time for your monthly care package: a collection of writers and others communicating wise, compassionate, funny, insightful, surprising, and/or useful stuff.

Guest curator Samantha Paige Rosen kicks off this month with a bunch of excellent recommendations apropos of her area of expertise – communal living in all its forms – and then I’ll round things off with a bunch of my own suggested links to check out.

Among other things, this month I’m recommending:

• a surprisingly poignant open letter to the dead duck floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool
• a breathtaking animated data visualization of every World Cup game
• a bunch of smart pieces to help aunties better understand the lived experiences of the parents we love
• a truly excellent round-up of sci-fi novels, and
• a video of very silly, rather handsome Australian friends dropping heavy objects from a great height

I’ve included gift links where possible; reminder that gift links often expire after 30 days.

Make it to the end of the roundup to watch the cute kid video of the month, which this time happens to be one of my all-time favorites ever featured in the Auntie Bulletin. It is a kid who loves birds so much, and can imitate a great many of them perfectly, and I am just so charmed and impressed. Talk about an amazing special interest!

July Around The Auntie Bulletin

I wrote about how to support troubled youth and their families, and along the way I disclosed some hard facts about my own life and loved ones. A huge thank you to everyone who reached out to send me love, and huge love to everyone who needs this post right now.

I interviewed Sri Juneja about what it’s like when she takes her kid to visit her extended family in India. This picture she paints of actually having a village is lovely, clear-eyed, and complex. Many of my own loved ones reached out to tell me how much they loved what Sri had to say, which is my favorite personal metrics of a post’s success.

We premiered a new feature called “Ask the Aunties,” in which reader Annie posed a question to the collective about how to support a young relative going through mental health issues and when to disclose a kid’s struggles to their parents. The comments on this one are so wise. I just love you people.

For whatever reason, I had a bunch of notes this month that did really well on the Substack app. The algorithm there is exactly as mysterious as venture-capital-owned algorithms ever are, but this month they smiled upon auntiehood. Below is a screencap of my second-most-popular note of the month, and here’s the first-most (the comments on which are very worth a read).

Our Guest Curator for July: Samantha Paige Rosen

Samantha Paige Rosen has this new anthology out about communal living. It’s called Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection, and aunties, it is so cool. Being honest, when I first heard about it, I was like, “An anthology? Really? Are we still allowed to do those?” Apropos of no actual knowledge whatsoever, I think of anthologies as books that can’t sell, that publishers won’t want, that readers won’t buy.

And yet: 1) Living, Together is one of the better nonfiction books I’ve read this year and I’ve already recommended it to so many people, and 2) it’s officially an Indie Bestseller. In fact, Living, Together hit the Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers list at #25, right between Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to Relax and Ursula K. LeGuin’s Book of Cats, and I truly cannot imagine more august company. As Sam reflected, “This couldn’t be more perfect: I haven’t relaxed in 6-9 months and I have strong positive feelings toward cats.”

Here’s what’s so great about Sam’s anthology: every chapter is a different account of how someone very cool has done or is doing communal living. There’s Dani McLain, who writes about the political power of Black motherhood, describing how she and her young daughter moved in with her own mother after a stroke. There’s Rhaina Cohen of The Other Significant Others writing about living with her partner, her friends, and her friends’ kids. There’s Imelda Glucose writing about drag houses, and Sarah Thankam Mathews writing about COVID-era mutual aid. There are people writing about polyamorous households, about aging in community, about Indigenous community before colonization, about artists’ residencies and chosen family and the interdependent support networks formed by military wives. There’s the great science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson writing about living in an intergenerational planned community with a preschool at the center. There’s Hannah Greico with one of the best essays on any topic that I’ve read this year (and I read a lot of essays). There’s Sam Rosen herself writing unapologetically about the many years of her adulthood that she’s spent happily living with her parents, and speaking as someone who also spent some happy adult years living with my mother and father and grandmother, I am so here for the normalization of the narrative that it’s cool to cohabitate with your parents.

Okay, paean over (for now). Anyway Sam has recommended some links for us this month, many related to communal living. They’re really good. I learned about a bunch of wonderful publications that I didn’t already know about. I suspect you’ll appreciate them as much as I do.

Over to you, Sam.

One of my favorite newsletters is thot pudding by Sarah Thankam Mathews. Some posts lean literary, others are political or cultural critiques, and all are written with Sarah’s distinctive heart and energy. (Admittedly, Sarah has an essay in Living, Together about her organizing work and all the beauty and mess of working closely with others. A favorite line: “I don’t know if people are the answer. But for me, they will always be the question.”)

Do you know writer Lane Scott Jones and her newsletter “Second Rodeo?” If you’re interested in honest, compelling essays about queerness (community, dating, all of it!), religion and spirituality, living without a lease, time and work, you’ll love it. This recent essay on queer time, aging, milestones, and adolescent joy really hit for me.

Another newsletter I enjoy: Michael Colbert’s “Referential.” Michael is always covering interesting topics from unique angles. Check out this piece about why we need third places, particularly the saunas of Maine!

I’m really enjoying Vox journalist Allie Volpe’s new-ish newsletter Mutuals about all things friendship-related. It’s voicey, fun, and full of advice. (Ed. note: I was going to recommend this one [gift link] from the same author this month, a Vox article which she outlines a truly great idea).

I can’t have an anthology out in the world and not recommend another anthology! I love the way this form offers a range of perspectives and voices. If you, too, get a little thrill from mixing critique and escapism, and you have strong feelings of any kind about The Bachelor franchise, check out Here for All the Reasons: Why We Watch the Bachelor, edited by Ilana Masad and Stevie K. Siebert Desjarlais. It’s smart, it’s fun, and I’m lucky enough to have an essay in it.

I was recently introduced to Emergency Contacts by Amrita Vijay and Andrew Stephens and I am so excited to read more of their insights into building nontraditional families.

Diana Lind’s The New Urban Order asks creative questions about cities, housing, tech, and more. A recent piece I enjoyed is actually a guest post from Kat Vellos on what different cities’ outdoor seating says about their values.

And finally, Courtney Martin’s The Examined Family always offers excellent insights around family, community, elder care, and more. I recently did a Q&A with Courtney and she asked such smart questions about the cost of communal living, overcoming early conditioning as I lived with my parents in adulthood, and more. She also ran an excerpt of Dani McClain’s wonderful Living, Together essay about matriarchy, care, and mutual aid.

Back to Lisa

Apropos of communal living, I loved, loved, loved Elizabeth Oldfield’s essay about the entree of a new community member into her intentional community: “Our smallest, newest housemate was born recently on the floor of our front room. I mainly shouted encouragement and made tea for the midwives. I also opened the door to three ambulance loads of (thankfully not needed) paramedics and generally confused everyone about how I was related.”

An expectedly beautiful (especially for McSweeney’s) open letter to the dead duck floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. (H/t to Ann Friedman for directing me to multiple great recs in today’s care package. Do you subscribe to AF Weekly? Because it’s great).

Are you aware that one of the sweetest, most loving places on the internet is a Reddit sub for balding people? It’s called r/bald and all it is is people (mostly men, but not all) posting photos of themselves asking if it’s time to shave their heads (the answer is always yes), and/or posting before and after photos of themselves having recently shaved their heads for the first time (they always look amazing). Everyone is so supportive. This is the kind of masculinity our society needs.

Slugs not drugs. A sweet and funny essay on the nervous-system-regulating power of the fiber arts.

Sam Irby on how to stay married.

“Why do we need Disability Pride Month? Because you can’t even say the word.” Sara Novic (author of one of my favorite novels of the past several years) on the words we pick and the words we shy away from.

The data center backlash that’s uniting America.

“A Scottish schoolgirl has been named a ‘girl of the year’ by Time magazine after she invented a solar-powered thermal blanket to help rough sleepers keep warm.”

“It seems apparent to me now that I am being lied to regularly about the hearts and minds of midwesterners. What is true to me now is that America, as a concept, and as place run by the worst people alive, kinda sucks and is widely disliked by most reasonable people. But Americans, as a people, are mostly good. We are redeemable. We like other people. We are mostly nice. We want to know more about what goes on in Algeria. The efforts to close our hearts to the outside world have not fully succeeded.” When Meagan Hatcher-Mays has anything to say about the politics of anything, I click so fast. Her take on the politics of the World Cup is excellent.

Elissa Strauss has a lovely interview with Jordan Rathkopf, who, with his wife, has been documenting though the photographs the impact of his wife’s cancer on their family. The photos are just beautiful.

Virginia Sole-Smith and Corinne Fay had a very thoughtful conversation about Ariana Grande and other emaciated celebrities. They helped me better articulate the many subconscious thoughts and feelings I’ve been having on the subject.

Department of Better Understanding Parents’ Experiences

1. Is parenting hard?
2. “In the last two months a small domestic tragedy has unfolded. Our fourth grader has given up bedtime.”
3. “Across the parenting boards and the group texts, one can detect a certain restlessness. A fatigue is setting in: about the deference to a child’s every mood, the strict maintenance of emotional affect, the notion that trying to keep to a schedule could be “authoritarian.” Sometimes, the people are saying, a tantrum isn’t worthy of being placed upon a pedestal. Sometimes, they plead, their voices rising past a gentle threshold, you just need to put your freaking shoes on.” The often-compulsory ideal of gentle parenting begets many internal tugs-of-war for parents these days. It behooves aunties to know the terrain.
4. “Which regret do you want? Door number one: you have the second child, you get double the love, the photographs are unbearable in the good way, and the stress possibly kills you, or at minimum takes up residence. Door number two: you don’t, and you spend some unknowable number of moments for the rest of your life wondering what might have been, and whether you did right by your son, who never asked for a sibling but also never asked not to have one.” Shira Hoffman’s reflection on potentially letting go of having a dearly-wanted second child is wholehearted and real and funny and that’s my favorite combo. Her whole newsletter is like that.
5. “YES I WILL SEND HIM $100 VIA APPLE PAY TO TAKE HIS ‘FRIEND’ TO THE ARCADE because he will treat this ‘friend’ like the goddamn queen she is. Do not leave until you get that girl a nice inflatable sledgehammer and some petrified lemon Tootsie Rolls!” Shelly Mazzanoble on her 13-year-old getting his first girlfriend.

Over at Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen has been running periodic interviews with people who don’t have kids. They’ve all been great, but this one might be my favorite so far.

For my fellow sci-fi nerds (complimentary), Mike Sowden has a terrific roundup of science fiction novels he’d like to see adapted for the screen. TV or film adaptations aside, I added several books to my library queue. (Hop into the comments to add your own suggestions, as I did).

Watch the video below with the kids in your life. (I can’t remember what Auntie Bulletin reader recently tipped me off to this delightful crew of Aussie weirdos. If it was you, take a bow and let me know!)

I’m really excited for Taika Waititi’s film version of Kazuo Ishiguro’s sci-fi novel, Klara and the Sun. Starring Mia Tharia, Jenna Ortega, Rachel House (who is rightly in every Waititi production), Amy Adams (“You’re not the droid we’re looking for, honey”), Natasha Lyonne, and Steve Buscemi, soooooo.

And now, your cute kid video of the month. I am very into birds lately (thanks to Wingspan + a new birdfeeder + hanging out at my parents’ a lot), and I could not love this more.[[1]]

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[[1]]: In another video, the kid who does bird songs is knocking out a bunch of different songs one after another like he might as well be each bird, and then he’s asked to do a chickadee and he’s like, “Unfortunately, I can’t do that one.” Bless this child.