I discovered You’re Wrong About through one of my workmates, Shannon. She listened to an episode about crack babies and really liked it, so I gave it a try. I chose the Shannon Faulkner episode for my first listen, as the plight of the first female to enroll in the Citadel was something I followed closely.
I really liked the conviviality and research skills of the hosts, Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbs, as well as their Pacific Northwest roots. I found them around the time that Michael Hobbs went off to do other podcasts (“Mike Lives in a Downtown Hotel,” October 11, 2021, but I scrolled back and started at the beginning, so I had a lot of podcasts to catch up with. They started podcasting in 2018. The badge of episodes remaining was at 99—the maximum displayed—for a very long time.
You’re Wrong About likes to debunk “common knowledge” about big events. Mike and Sarah met because Sarah wrote a complementary and nuanced essay about Tonya Harding. One of their taglines is “Revisiting the stories of maligned women of the ’90s,” of which Shannon Falkner is just one.
They also had book club episodes during the pandemic. Not where the audience read books, but where the hosts talked us through what happened in different books.
You’re Wrong About led me to Maintenance Phasewith Michael Hobbs and Aubrey Gordon. Their title refers to the part of the diet where you cease dieting and go into the “maintenance phase” where you supposedly begin eating normally again while not gaining any weight. Their tagline is, “Wellness and weight loss, debunked and decoded.”
There weren’t as many episodes of Maintenance Phase, but I also became a Pateron supporter, so that added to the podcast backlog.
Finally, Michael Hobbs also led me to If Books Could Kill, where Hobbs and Peter Shamshiri analyze, “The airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.” That added to the backlog.
But what a fun backlog! Over the nearly three years I’ve been catching up, I’ve learned so many things from these podcasts. And also had a lot of fun along the way. Now I can look forward to keeping up with them in real time.
My grandmother got to be a mother of the bride exactly once (her mother, by contrast, got to be mother of the bride at least 15 times). This was the dress she made to wear for the ceremony.
I. Love. It. I love the pattern, the simple sheath dress, and that it has a vest and a fun scarf or tie to go with it.
She tucked it away in the cedar chest, probably after wearing it the one time. So it’s in very good condition.
Mail came today addressed to a future friend. Though I can see that it was sent from Dallas, this friend did not include a return address. How will I find my future friend?
Ah, but it’s just proselytizing. I think my future friend won’t want to be my friend if I don’t come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
What do you want to bet the “false religion” the mother was practicing was Catholicism?
I do love a friendly letter that ends in a scary quote from Revelation.
But! I love these booklets. I used to come across them on a fairly regular basis at bus stops and the like, but it’s been some times since I’ve gotten to read one.
*Born Naughty: My Childhood in China by Jin Wang, Tony Johnston, and Anisi Baigude
Young Adult
*Break to You by Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
Grownup Fiction
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin The Measure by Nikki Erlick But How Are You, Really by Ella Dawson Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton Honey by Isabel Banta A Winter in New York by Josie Silver Need Blind Ambition by Kevin T. Myers The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra
Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner
With a decades-spanning plot and two instances where I gasped “No!” this was pretty much my perfect read.
The Women by Kristin Hannah
Sometimes the dial on historical fiction is turned too much to the side where we establish scene by naming songs and describing clothes and hairstyles. That was the case here. While Frankie’s story resonated with me, I kept getting pulled out of it by too many historical details that didn’t add anything to the plot.
Young Nonfiction
*Rising from the Ashes: Los Angeles, 1992. Edward Jae Song Lee, Latasha Harlins, Rodney King, and a City on Fire by Paula Yoo
Grownup Nonfiction
The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae
Letterboxd hooked me up with a free ticket to see Didi, a film I was planning on prioritizing. I got to the theater early as directed in the email. It was a little chaotic because the people with the list were nowhere to be found. It turns out they were at the Lloyd Center theater and had to make their way from Northeast Portland to Northwest Portland and then find parking in Northwest Portland.*
*There is off-street parking for Cinema 21 after hours, but people have to know to look it up on the website. Most don’t, and they circle endlessly looking for a spot.
But they got to the right place and we got to see a fine film about the summer before high school. The woman playing the grandmother looked familiar to me, and it turns out the director of Didi, Sean Wang, was also the director of the short film Nai Nai & Wài Pó, which was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary short for the 2024 awards. The grandmother was Wang’s own grandmother (Nai Nai, in the short film).
Thanks, Letterboxd and Cinema 21 for this good movie outing.
The trunk originally had a bunch of clothing in it—mostly favorite dresses—but in the mid-aughts, I took them to the high school youth group at First Unitarian and let them take home anything they wanted. The t-shirt from my first concert, however, remained tucked away.
Here, from Bon Jovi’s New Jersey Tour, is the concert t-shirt that I complained cost more than the tickets (about $30 when the tickets were about $18-19). T-shirts are probably cheaper than tickets currently, but that’s because tickets have increased in value, not that the shirts have gotten cheaper. (I just checked and Olivia Rodrigo tour shirts are $45.00; tickets are something like $99 to $450 at their original price.)
Anyway, from my perspective today, the skull iconography is odd. It seems more in keeping with Guns and Roses etc. than Bon Jovi. But this might have been before they got full into western iconography.
This shirt was worn twice. I knew when I bought it, I wasn’t going to make it out of the house with the back visible. The word “ass” was a no-go for public display. The same went for the school dress code.
I bought it anyway. I wore it to school the day after the concert with a jean jacket I never took off even though it was early may and past jean jacket weather. There was one other time I wore it, but I do not remember what it was.
18-year-old me felt it was important to keep all my check stubs from Pizza Hut. I’d like to say I find that kind of dumb, but I enjoyed looking at them. I find it interesting that the stubs don’t list my rate of pay.
My very first pay stub, ever! (My previous job paid me under the counter, which I didn’t love. I wanted to pay taxes and get things like check stubs!) Rate of pay here: $4.25, which was minimum wage at the time. For most of the time I worked at Pizza Hut I worked 10-ish hours a week, maybe a little more in the summer.
My last pay stub from Pizza Hut before I headed off to college. My rate of pay had increased to $4.70, though only because I found out that I was training people who were hired at $4.50 while still making $4.25 myself. Important lesson learned about advocating for a raise on a regular basis. The summer before I left for college, I worked as many hours as I could. They always kept me below 40 hours, though.
These notecards were a fun find because I have wished, now and again, that I had saved them. Turns out I had.
When I started to receive regular paychecks, I dutifully deposited the money and assigned it to categories. It turns out I wrote about this in an essay about money. The percentages are still hazy. But here are the records.
Savings DNETS meant “do not ever touch savings.” This was my pile of money to be saved for, something I wasn’t entirely clear about. I knew I just needed to save money.
Savings SUFSG meant “saving up for something good.” I also kept some of my paycheck for spending money, so SUFSG would be for things that cost more than my spending money.
It looks like I took out the following amounts from SUFSG: $70, $30, $40, $63.62 (a very exact amount), $20, $50, $45.76, $100, $20.
I think there is another 3×5 card that would reflect the money I earned the summer after high school. As I recall, I took about $2000—the DNETS amount—with me to college. I offered it up to defray tuition, but my mom said I should use it for spending money as I wasn’t going to have a job straight off. I blew through $1000 in the first semester—those catalogs had a lot of cool stuff in them—and then reformed my spendthrift ways.
So that was my early earnings history. Thanks, growing-up trunk, for holding that information for all of those years.
Being the reader I was and am, I made sure to stock my growing-up trunk with important books from my childhood and adolescence. In no particular order:
I was given this Little House set when I was still a baby, so I got the yellow box edition. My friends who had their own set usually had the blue box edition. I liked the yellow one better. But then the next iteration was a nice gingham theme. I would have gone for that one too.
You can see that these books were read many times. First they were read to me, then I read them on my own, then I read them every summer. Sometimes I started at the end and ended at Little House in the Big Woods. When that happened, Mary regained her sight, rather than lost it.
My friend Cindy had a tiny book called the Paper Bag Princess, and I loved it so much (despite being in high school and thus “too old” for it) that she made me my own copy one Christmas.
She had fun adding the commentary on the back, which she adapted from actual blurbs on books in her possession. “Now a spectacular film from Orion!!” cracks me up.
My favorite Little Golden Book to read at my Grandparents’ house. It was originally my Aunt Carol’s book, and the paper dolls aspects had been lost years before I found it. I looked for my own copy for years before finding one in the toy store in Seaside during this trip. I did not include the book in my chronicle of the trip, and I have no idea why as it had been a decades-long quest. Anyhow, this was the original one.
Oh, Alice. This book, so many feelings. It was fun to listen to the series of episodes the podcast “You’re Wrong About” did, starting with Go Ask Alice Part 1. I also read Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries, so it’s been a big year for Go Ask Alice.
This might have been my entry into Chris Crutcher. I loved how the descriptions of cross country running made me want to be a runner.
I read a lot of Cynthia Voigt, but these two made the cut. This is a loose sequel to Jackaroo, and I didn’t know how to pronounce the main character’s name Birle, so I stopped in a jewelry store in the mall and asked. Because we didn’t have the internet to pronounce things for us back then.
And here’s Jackaroo. My historical fiction preferences are quite clear.
When I watched the film The Princess Bride I had no idea there was a book! When I found this, I loved it so much I read it aloud to my family.
Fannie Flagg was a favorite author once the movie version Fried Green Tomatoes was released, and I read the book. But the description of the Miss America pageant in this book was hilarious, so I went with Daisy Fay over Fried Green Tomatoes.
Who the heck wouldn’t count the Outsiders as an important book from their youth? Probably kids now, as I’ve recently reread it and found it a bit stiff. But I sure loved it then. I also like this cover. It’s very of its time.
This is the book in my collection I find most cringeworthy. I really, really, really liked it though when it was released. At least my bodice ripper entry has a classy cover on it.
Here’s the book that probably no one has heard of. I loved the New York City immigrant 1940s experience. And it was also really sad. This one, I’m holding onto. Will I read it again? Maaaaaayyybeeee? What if it’s not that good?
A book I always thought of as a good companion to this one, though contemporary, was Walk Through Cold Fire by Cin Forshay-Lunsford. It’s too bad I didn’t track down a copy for the trunk as they seem to be scarce. There are currently three copies available on Thriftbooks and the prices range from $112 to $129. I’ll keep my eye peeled for it to turn up somewhere for a normal price.
I was a huge fan of The Secret Garden, but A Little Princess has always been my favorite Frances Hodgson Burnett book. And one MUST read the version with Tasha Tudor illustrations.
More historical fiction. This one took place in Hungary, pre-WWI.
And this sequel took place during the war. I’m pretty sure my mother read these as a child, and thus they came into my life. Good choices.
And another classic. I read this book several times, both as assignment and on my own.
And that’s the tour of my books. I hadn’t realized how few would be contemporary. Really just Running Loose. I’m a diehard historical fiction fan and have been since I was a child.
Back when I was still an only child on the precipice of becoming a big sister, my Aunt Fran sent me a doll to distract from the fact that there would be a new baby in the house.
She came in this trunk, and her name was Katy, though I quite liked the K-k-k-katy song, so sometimes she got a few extra Ks added to her name.
Here she is with her eyes closed and her original outfit.
And here she is sitting up with her eyes open. Her shoes had ribbons, but I cut them off at some point.
And here are the handmade clothing items I dressed her in.
I love both of these prints.
Here’s a fancy dress and a robe (I think?)
Cute top and pants ensemble with polyester coat. (Matching lace collar!)
Knit poncho with hat and another cute dress.
Some flowery choices.
More tops. I especially like the one with cherries.
Here’s the front of the blue shirt. All sorts of fun patches.
I had a great time with growing up with Katy and these clothes. I’m not sure how successful she was in distracting me from a new baby in the house. But points for trying.
