TueDo List: Midlife Travel + Happy Toile + Soft Hoodies
Plus, Succession and Yellowjackets are back!
THIS WEEK
📖 READ: What Pluto and GenX share. The explosive lost scenes from Gone with the Wind. How “please” stopped being polite. Why we need to share our direct knowledge of childbirth and pregnancy. The domestication of chickens “tiny dinosaurs.”
👀 LOOK: Chic women in children’s books. Thatcher-era Black feminist art star Claudette Johnson finally gets the big New York show.
🎧 LISTEN: St. Vincent and the Roots cover Portishead’s “Glory Box,” sad and slow, on Fallon. Cate Blanchett gives her best David Byrne in the video for the Sparks’ “The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte.” Everything But the Girl’s evocative latest. The music of collapsing ice shelves.
🤣 LOL: This sea otter getting its temperature taken.
🛒 ADD TO CART: Colorful middle-aged lady shoes. Edwardian tennis shoes. OK Boomer sandals. Gorgeous and affordable art prints. And a handheld portable mini fan, “for summer.”
😋 YUM: Rebranding a big ugly fish; “silverfin” recipes.
📺 WATCH:
Tonight: Wildflower. Kiernan Shipka, Alexandra Daddario, and Jean Smart in this coming-of-age story about a young woman with neurodivergent parents. (On Demand)
Wednesday. Waco: American Apocalypse. Docuseries about the Branch Davidians’ 1993 stand-off with the FBI, 30 years later (Netflix)
Friday: Yellowjackets. Season 2. Buzz, buzz. We can’t wait. (Showtime)
Sunday: Succession. THE FINAL SEASON. (HBO Max)
Anytime: The Martha Mitchell Effect. Oscar-nominated look at the Watergate Cabinet wife who was correct about Nixon — and gaslit for it. (Netflix)
STORY: The Awesome, Scary, Wonder of My Midlife Travel
By Jenny Douglas
One early afternoon about 12 years ago I took three left turns and two right turns along the dense streets of Hanoi, Vietnam — and promptly found myself unutterably lost.
I’d arrived for my first-ever visit to the city after a 24-hour journey from my home in Brooklyn late the night before — and as elegant women wearing conical straw hats pedaled past me on bicycles weighted down by flowers and produce, I stood on a street corner there possessed of no phone, no shared language, no context, no map, no prior understanding, no deep wisdom of the culture I’d found myself in, nothing to fall back on.
Who knew what might happen next?
I was at once a little scared and a whole lot delighted.
SPONSORED: Goodies From Get Bullish
We introduced you to our friends over at GetBullish last holiday shopping season – well, hold onto your britches, because now they're having their famous annual Warehouse Sale with discounts from 30-90% on hundreds of feminist gift items, home goods, swear-y pens, kitschy mugs, and other weird delights. Here are a few of our favorites…
We’re all tired of the patriarchy. Share how over it you are with this shirt.
Let your geek flag fly. Literally.
Mostly we’re all out of fucks to give. Except for this.
Be unabashedly proud of yourself by flaunting this mug.
Horny for food? This cute oven mitt is only $1.99 right now!
OBSESSED: How a Little Toile Can Make You Happy
By Anne-christine d’Adesky
I love it when friends confess their latest obsession to me. How some little discovery caught their eye and soon they found themselves like Alice in Wonderland, spiraling down a rabbit hole of curiosity and pleasure or desire that feels slightly out of control. Definitely addictive. I’m sharing one my newest: toile. Embroidered toile to be specific.
It was sometime in 2022 when one of Carolyn Handler’s toile scenes dropped into my Facebook feed. Bam! I felt a rush of pure delight. Carolyn is an old friend from my long-ago Barnard days. By day, she’s an attorney; by night, she happily stitches fun little narratives in toile, adding some color and movement there, magnifying small moments of life between characters. She’s new to toile, having taken an embroidery class from visual artist Richard Saja, her mentor, earlier in 2022.
I took to toile like a fish in water, she tells me happily. Toile gives me the same charge as a red car. If I see a sports car, I get the same leap of heart that I get looking at toile — it’s a very exciting thing.
#GENXAPPROVED: Question of the Week
This week in #GenXApproved, TueNighter Anne needs our help: She’s looking for a super-soft hoodie or sweatshirt.
🤔 ASK YOUR OWN QUESTION! If you’re a premium subscriber, you can learn how to submit your questions here or head straight to the new section to chime in with your recommendations.
Have a good one, TueNighters!
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American Giant has great hoodies.