"a kind of apocalyptic cloud"

Hello,

I'm trying something new and routine: seven things on my mind as the week winds down.

Friday Seven // 001

// 1. That David Lynch's life may have been shortened by the fires in Los Angeles. As his Twin Peaks collaborator Mark Frost told the Guardian this week, "All this happened in a kind of apocalyptic cloud that feels like it’s enshrouded all of southern California, a place where I’ve spent the majority of my life. And I do believe that fire contributed to our losing David. He had emphysema. He was not in great health, and the last thing you need is something that’s going to make breathing more difficult. I’m sure it contributed." I've been listening to the records David made with Chrystabell (who is also Agent Tammy in Twin Peaks: The Return) all week. Cellophane Memories was the last. It is big and quiet. (Also recommended: Manjula Martin's The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, which was just named a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.)

// 2. Organ grinding women of the 1890's and 1900's. I learned a few days ago that my great grandmother was one of them. Or at least told a census taker in Shropshire that she was. (I did find one lady journalist of the time who went "undercover" as a Southern Italian immigrant organ grinder, in what appears to be a relatively early piece of stunt journalism; she is of no relation.)

// 3. It's very dry. The steam heat is unkind and it's hard to sleep. My tin of this rose-scented balm is stuck shut.

// 4. "Building infrastructure for cooperation." Something Margaret Killjoy said in a recent episode of "Live Like the World Is Dying."

// 5. I was in the right place at the right time to have seen Redd Kross on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in 1994. But I didn't until the new doc about them came to New York this week. (I am in whatever generation is "old enough to recognize the name of something/someone from seeing them constantly adored in Sassy but too young to have done more than that about it.") That collective turn, from cold grey days flannel time to sunny hip who-cares 90's-does-late-60's-and-early-70's, though. They were already there.

// 6. How many weeks I have to germinate seeds before last frost. I started my garden in 2021, the first time I had space for one where I live. Last year it hit its stride: these dramatic windowpane coleus I planted grew until they were 3 feet high, the midnight gold petunias that were a little thin and leggy at first but ended up numerous and tangled lazily, all through August. Taking time to map the sunlight over the garden in the late winter to spring helped. We were still sitting in its last gasp on election day, the last of the lemon verbena scratching against my sweater and trying to climb on to be taken inside. (Sorry, annuals.) This year I'm trying to start some of the thrivers from seed inside, and do more herbs that could maybe overwinter indoors this time.

// 7. Slowing down despite the pace of executive orders. Or how I tried to do my first story of the second Trump admin.

Thanks for reading. You are still here.