1. It’s The Onion, but it feels right: Study Finds Owning Cool Leather Jacket More Rewarding Than Raising Children.

2. Not AT ALL related and no, I don’t feel personally attacked in the slightest, why do you ask?

ONIOCHALASIA is shopping or purchasing things as a form of relaxation or stress relief.

— Haggard Hawks 📚🦅 (@HaggardHawks) October 9, 2019

3. Useful information:

1. I’m always up for stories about opera. A Singer’s Journey: From Solitary Confinement to the Met Opera. (They’re doing Phillip Glass’s Akhnaten this season, btw!)

2. It has been a WEEK at work. This sums up my mood after the second rush project came through yesterday afternoon:

(Found randomly but here’s the artist)

1. More Twitter, which is accurate:

Tea:
– calming
– many flavours
– the answer to all problems

Coffee:
– Anxiety Juice™
– 3 heartbeats for the price of 1
– more than 4 cups and you can talk to electricity

— ruby🦎 (@roobeekeane) September 13, 2019

2. I am inordinately pleased by this:

1. Allow me to share my new favorite Instagram account, You Look Like A Man: “Things people say to (usually female) lifters but with these words over beautiful shots of nature because then it’s ok.”

2. Happy 200th birthday today to Clara Schumann, Renaissance woman of Romantic music.

3. A Marxist Hack to Spice Up Any Relationship. Saucy!

1. Have you thought about giving up Amazon Prime? We did, about a year ago, and wow does your ordering from Amazon decrease (that was the goal). Turns out that the “last mile” of Prime deliveries is all contracted for Amazon, which means it’s fraught with worker abuse, accidents, and a lack of regulations–and Amazon can claim zero responsibility. (Seriously. Stop giving this company your money.)

2. The soundtrack to “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” has been reissued on glow-in-the-dark vinyl. This is not a drill (this is also the first time the soundtrack has been available on vinyl).

3. Friday motivation from Lisa Congdon (go see her tonight at West Elm!):

1. I didn’t mention that the layoffs last week included the other writer on my team–that’s why things are so busy. I just keep telling myself I can do hard things.

2. What are you rehearsing?

“…our brain evolved to protect us from the threat of extinction, so it has a problem focused, negative bias and left to its own devices, you will most likely be unaware that you are “ rehearsing” whatever your attention rests on—problems and threats. Your mental activity is forming neural circuits that make it more likely you will return to that line of thought.”

3. Sign me UP:

(the replies in that thread are also glorious)

1. It has been a WEEK: There were layoffs at work, my gym schedule is interrupted, I’m not sleeping well, we have extremely bold rats under the front porch,  etc. etc. Looking forward to a workout tomorrow.

2. I came across this Jung quote yesterday and, based on the work I’ve been doing in therapy versus my past attempts to feel better with yoga or Zen quotes, I can say it is 100% accurate:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

1. I had no idea Maurice Sendak did set and costume design for opera and ballet in the latter part of his career. Some of his sketches and obejcts will be on view at the Morgan Library in NYC until October 6th–it looks wonderful.

Maurice Sendak, Design for Temple of the Sun, finale II (The Magic Flute), 1979-1980. © The Maurice Sendak Foundation.

 
2. This has been making the rounds, for good reason: Whole 60, or Laura Lippman talking about finally, at age 60, deciding she looks just fine.

I recently listened to an NPR show — NPR! — with a series of punchlines about granny panties, Angela Lansbury, and what was intended to be a gross-out image of an old woman in a crotchless thong. Every day, everywhere I go, the culture is keen to remind me how repulsive I am.

I thump the culture on the chest, push back and say one of the most infuriating things a woman can ever say: Actually, I like the way I look.

(The essay also includes this brilliant aside, to ponder for your weekend: “What would happen to the global economy if all the women on the planet suddenly decided: I don’t care if you think I’m fuckable”)

1. Austin Kleon on violence and Bach:

… I’m not just trying to raise “gentlemen,” I’m trying to raise gentle men, men who have a full range of emotions and expression available to them. But it’s just so hard. Even if they’re home with me all day right now, I can’t protect them. They were born into a country steeped in violence. A country where killing machines are sold in convenience stores. A country that has a longtime habit of dropping bombs on innocent children just like them. A country that sees kids their age shot to death in classrooms and won’t do a thing about it.

The only thing I feel like I can do is make my home a haven, a place where we celebrate things of beauty and rationality and love and peace. Bach’s music is one of those things.

2. From Buzzfeed (I know), 3 Anxiety Tips You’ve Heard, And 7 You Probably Haven’t. Number 7 is genius (“I keep photographic evidence of my [locked] door and my oven’s knobs when I leave for vacation“) but the suggestion to watch horror movies to channel anxiety is just right out for me.

1. It’s “max effort” time at the gym (they go in six-month cycles) and I got a new max for deadlifts last night–175 pounds!! Yes, I am telling everyone about it: friends, coworkers, people on the street.

2. It’s Lughnasadh, the Celtic beginning-of-the-harvest festival and the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. Just this week I noticed the evenings are coming a little sooner and the mornings are getting a little darker. (Throw the comb away…)

3. This is perfect:

(via a friend, by New Yorker cartoonist Will McPhail.)