Hey there!
First, an update on my quest to become friends with Mighty Mo. (For those who missed last week's email, Maureen, "Mighty Mo," is the 99-year-old Hall of Fame swimmer who is a regular at our local outdoor public pool.) Mollie and I saw Maureen on Thursday morning and told her we'd read the newspaper profile of her and that she was a legend. Maureen smiled, flattered, but waved us away, "Rumors, rumors, rumors." Then she told us that she uses the ladder to get in the pool. "I'm a Ladder Day Swimmer." We laughed and I said, "You're one of the Ladder Day Saints!" She shook her head. "No, no. Not a saint, just a swimmer!"
I will keep you posted on future updates as they come in.
This week’s list
GREAT:
As we head into Thanksgiving week, especially this very strange and different Thanksgiving week, it's only natural to be thinking about food and tradition. I've been reading about where these traditions and dishes came from and realizing how little I know. But the reasons we eat foods like sweet potatoes or bake with cornmeal come from complicated human histories. Michael Twitty, a food historian, wrote a book exploring these questions. He also gave a great talk on history and culinary justice. This Thanksgiving, as a lot of us are trying to figure out how to approximate a regular year, it could be a good opportunity to try and recreate a lost family recipe.
FUNNY:
I love when a comedian nails a hyperspecific element of a cultural touchstone and blows it out of the water. This piece, by Zach Zimmerman, made me laugh so much. It's really, really good. First Lines of Rejected "Modern Love" Essays
INTERESTING:
"The man on the trail went by “Mostly Harmless." He was friendly and said he worked in tech. After he died in his tent, no one could figure out who he was." This mystery, written up by Nicholas Thompson, the editor-in-chief of WIRED, has really stuck in my brain. How is it possible that no one can figure out who this person is? And what happened to him? A Nameless Hiker and the Case the Internet Can’t Crack
That's it for this week. Thanks for reading! If you're enjoying these emails, please forward to a friend or spread the word. If someone forwarded you this email but you're not yet on the list, you can subscribe here.
Heroically eating a family size amount of stuffing all by myself,
Chris