checking in for May

This month has been whooshing by in a haze of good things (personal), distressing things (national/world), and above average temperatures here in the middle of the Mitten. As for the national/world stuff: do whatever you can to support libraries and trans folks and Palestine and on and on and on. Got a tribal library near you? They probably lost a bunch of IMLS funding (for basic operations as well as potentially for projects specifically designed to support their individual communities' needs) and while the court cases are seeing encouraging results, until the white house actually allows money to get to those to whom it was awarded, things are rough. Your state library also needs support in this context! And for the good stuff, the little side hustle of mine has been going well - more orders this month so far than I've ever had in any span of the same number of days! Mega thanks to any of you who've recommended my art to retailers in your area (let me know if this was you!). I've added ten new wholesale clients so far this month and I'm so grateful to get to share my art with so many people in so many places.

Are you watching this season of Top Chef? I am loving it! The trend in recent years on this show has been that the producers (or whomever) are no longer encouraging cutthroat competition and the chef contestants are really supportive of each other and all just seem to be trying their best to be their best. This is my kind of competition show! I don't need artificial drama, and I'm glad that the behind-the-scenes folks working on Top Chef have recognized that it's unnecessary and off-putting. If you want that kind of competition, there are A LOT OF OPTIONS. Here we get to celebrate people being great at what they love doing, and that is rad. Another thing making my Top Chef experience even better is listening to the TV Chef Fantasy League podcast. Part of the beloved Max Fun Network, this show is hosted by Ify Nwadiwe, Sierra Katow, and Mike Cabellon, all of whom are charming and smart and funny. You may already be familiar with one or more of them from all their other great work, and they really bring a perfect balance of being fans of the show and being actually knowledgeable about cooking/the industry that all these contestants are part of in their daily work. Highly recommend!

Have you noticed that there's misinformation and disinformation everywhere? And it's really distressing and hard to figure out how we got here and what to do about it? I sure have, and I highly recommend Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind by Annalee Newitz. Newitz is a favorite author of mine and is one of those rare writers who writes both fiction and non-fiction and does both of them well. Here they cover the history of how propaganda and disinformation campaigns came about and have been used for practically the entire history of what we call the United States. I highly recommend this one!

In other news I've been getting started in the garden for the season, finally! I had a cough for all of April and it's just now getting gone (note to those who go out and about unmasked while sick: STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT YOU ARE BEING A BAD PERSON). I wear a high-quality mask everywhere but even so, germs can get through. Not feeling 100% held me back a bit from getting out in the garden as early as I would have liked to but I'm happy to say that I got the backyard planter cleared out and the sugar snap peas sowed last weekend, along with some scarlet runner beans and a few zinnia seeds for good measure. I have some additional seeds that need to wait until it's for-sure done getting frosty (typically another week or two, though we've already had several days in the 80s F, so it's probably fine) and I want to get some starts at the co-op as well. Most of my garden is of the cottage variety and consists primarily of fruit trees and endemic flowering plants that require very little in the way of attention, but I do like to grow some edible stuff in that backyard planter where it's safe from bunnies. I considered adding a raised bed this year but opted to stick with the existing planter - it's already there, it's in the fenced-in-bunny-free zone, and it doesn't cost anything to create! What are you growing this year?

This Patreon reward is up for May - join if you'd like to receive this sticker in the mail!