Notes on May
Cedar swamps, Cronenberg, farm share time, jewelry purchases, Bar Rescue...
Greetings, dykes and dorks. Happy pre-pride! Have you heard that The Ultimatum: Queer Love is returning to a smudgy laptop screen near you on June 25th? Have you heard that I tangentially know someone on the upcoming season? Have you heard that
un-paywalled this recap post from last season? I am excited. The original season of The Qultimatum was one of the more confusingly-edited and poorly-produced seasons of reality TV that I’ve seen, but I loved the mess nonetheless. True to tradition, the Instagram post announcing the new season’s cast was flooded with comments critiquing the casting for not being diverse enough in various respects; fair enough, though I find it a little funny to argue for more inclusion in a dubiously-conceived televised “social experiment” designed to wreck any securely attached relationships among those who consent to participate. I’m sure there will be plenty more criticism to come as the ethics of this show (and most of its ilk) are absolute trash, but you will absolutely catch me watching every episode.All right, here’s some notes for you.
-I was honored that my essay “A Theory of the Sapphic” was extensively cited in this episode of the podcast Material Girls on the evolution of the word “sapphic.” I thought the episode was really smart, and if you’re interested in the history of “sapphic”/theories of feminist history/thinking about the role of labels in queer community, I recommend giving it a listen!
-I have so much admiration for the student commencement speakers who have spoken out onstage against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. These include Logan Rozos at NYU and Megha Vemuri at MIT, both of whom have faced severe censure from their institutions in response to their bravery. You can watch Vemuri’s speech here; she has been banned from walking at her own graduation. Rosoz’s speech is here; NYU is threatening to withhold his degree.
I was moved and horrified by “Hospitals in Ruins,” an article in the New Yorker by an American doctor who traveled to Gaza with a medical convoy and wound up touring and reporting on several bombed-out hospitals which had previously not been visited by international journalists, finding clear evidence of the IOF systematically destroying medical equipment in Palestinian hospitals. Absolutely devastating.
-For our fourth anniversary, Clover and I went to spend a day in the Pine Barrens. For the uninitiated, the Pine Barrens (or Pinelands) is an ecological region in New Jersey. You may know if of it from an episode of The Sopranos that takes place there. It has sandy, acidic soil in which pine trees and blueberries thrive, and lots of little swamps and wetlands with magical ferns and orchids. It was dubbed the Pine Barrens by European settlers because the soil was unfavorable for growing most of their crops, but, far from barren, it’s a region teeming with life. I absolutely love visiting the Pine Barrens; its ecosystem reminds me of Cape Cod, where I grew up going to the beach every summer and which is also characterized by sandy soil and pine trees. But the Pine Barrens has its own distinct magic. It’s a huge region with tons of undeveloped land, parks, and trails, many of which are about an hour from Philadelphia. There are some covert places where you can go swimming in either quarries or the Mullica river, and typically a Julia trip to the Pine Barrens also includes getting ice cream at the Dairy Bar or going to the Silver Coin Diner (somehow whenever I’m out there and get hungry, this place is always 15 minutes away).