A partial list of things that have brought me delight in the past two months
Hello!
I continue to watch the year in retail with a combination of head-shaking resignation and eye-popping incredulity; I continue to watch Americans simultaneously talk about how hard it is to work while there's no child care and to fail to address this in any systemic way; I continue to marvel at what it's like to live during what is shaping up to be a real inflection point in my country's sense of what it means to be us.
But! Living through interesting times is exhausting and occasionally dispiriting. Examining big stories like the toxic fruit from the corporate-feminist tree can also be exhausting and occasionally dispiriting. Sometimes we just need something that reminds us that things aren't uniformly terrible.
Here is an incomplete list of things that have delighted me since last we met in your inbox. I share them in the hopes they might delight you too.
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The Pioneer Woman's recipe for hot fudge sauce -- Dead simple and exquisite on ice cream. I like getting my cocoa from Penzey's but I'm sort of intrigued to try the recipe with some of the King Arthur Flour Black Cocoa, as I've been dying to use that stuff since the Strategist review last summer.
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Six: The Musical -- Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived. And tonight, we are …. Live! This musical has been a gateway into English history, the Reformation, the history of medicine, and a few talks about how the similarities between modern girls who go through the Disney star-making machine and Howard girls who go to the chopping block. The soundtrack's on Spotify; you can read an explainer article on it here.
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DK Publishing's assorted books -- So I ripped through The History Book, The Classical Music Book and The Ecology Book, and they're all delightful -- reading one is like taking a AP high school class in the topic, only without having to be a teen in high school, and your note-taking is purely optional. I've got The Astronomy Book, The Shakespeare Book and The Philosophy Book on deck.
My daughter's gotten into fashion as an art form -- her mind was blown when we watched The First Monday in May -- so we splurged on Fashion, a luxurious visual encyclopedia. I knew it was a good investment the day she came storming into my office complaining that the illustration in a Geronimo Stilton book was wrong because it was supposed to feature mice dressed for a Roaring Twenties party and at least two mice were in outfits that weren't popular until the thirties.
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The board game Clue, classic version -- We now have a standing dinner-and-Clue night, attendance mandatory for all three generations sheltering here. We've started doing voices for the different characters, so when you play as Colonel Mustard, you're required to harrumph like something out of a Kipling short story. All of us have gotten very good at logical deduction, even as some of us (me) persist in mixing up the library and the study.
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Rice with spinach and pistachios, kale salad with apples, dates and pepitas and watermelon relish salad with caracara oranges and goat cheese -- So we eat meatless meals three days a week, and these have all been great both freshly made and as leftovers. All of them balance bright and robust flavors, creamy and crunchy textures. The watermelon radishes are out of season now but keep this recipe in your back pocket for winter.
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Dan Stevens' performance in Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga -- As I tweeted, he's channeling Simon LeBon's cheerfully unrepentant loucheness, circa the Rio era, and it's a hoot. And his musical number! Bear in mind I am a person who paid for a VPN so I could stream Eurovision last year, so I am in the tank for florid, flashy Europop numbers but this is just a screaming delight.
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Antonio Flanderas -- This one takes some explaining but I have the permission of everyone involved.
So for a bit, every Friday, the YouTube channel The Shows Must Go On was airing a new, full-length Andrew Lloyd Webber production. As a result, our family began making a thing out of watching, and my daughter was quite taken by the Antonio Banderas/Sarah Brightman duet of "The Phantom of the Opera," which had aired in 1999 as part of Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Royal Albert Hall Celebration, and she also got into the musical Evita, in part due to this number which also features Banderas.
At this time, we also began introducing our daughter to The Simpsons. Revisiting that show now is a wild lesson in how cultural attitudes shift over 30 years, but that's a newsletter for another time. Kiddo has her opinions on which characters are awesome and which ones are not, and hearing her explain why she does or doesn't connect to different characters is another wild lesson in how people acquire internalized norms via ambient culture, also for another time.
Anyway, our terrible Life-game-playing habit persists and my daughter started naming her compulsory spouse in the game "Antonio Flanderas." I honestly thought the last name was a tribute to the Spanish custard; Kiddo knew that Banderas is Spanish, she knows a bit about Spanish culture because it pops up on the Rick Steeves page-a-day calendar we have, she had been workshopping her one-liners and quips, it all fit.
One morning over breakfast, I mentioned how amusing I thought the name "Antonio Flanderas" was and my daughter responded in a Spanish accent, "¡Hi-diddly-ho, neigborrrrrrrrriño!"
"Wait. Antonio Flanderas is named --"
"Because he looks like Antonio Banderas but he's really Ned Flanders on the inside," my daughter explained.
"So he's Ned Flanders except … extremely handsome?"
"Ned Flanders is the real hero of The Simpsons," Kiddo explained. "He sticks to his principles, even when it's hard and lonely, and his principles include being kind and forgiving, even when Homer is terrible to him. He's a great dad and he tries hard at things and he's not mean to anyone."
"And he looks like Antonio Banderas."
Kiddo looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Yes. Who wouldn't want to marry someone who acts like Ned Flanders and looks like Antonio Banderas?"
And thus was Antonio Flanderas willed into the world. I giggle every time I imagine 1990s-era Antonio Banderas saying, "¡Hi-diddly-ho, neigborrrrrrrrriño!" I feel lucky that my daughter has decided that real heroism means kindness even when it's not reciprocated. And I feel hopeful for her future if this is her standard for who gets to ride in her little Life car now.
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Your turn! Tell me what's delighted you these past two months and if it's okay to share with everyone. Hit me up on Twitter (@lschmeiser) or here.
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FOOTER TEXT, BECAUSE THIS IS THE END OF THE EMAIL: Thank you all for reading! It is delightful to know you're all out there -- now add to the army of readers by telling your pals to subscribe! Talk to me via Twitter because I love hearing from you. And I have at last noticed that you can send me email via TinyLetter, so I'll finally answer those emails! What a time it is to be alive.