January 31 Friday roundup

In this week’s “Next Comes What” podcast episode, I look at corruption in American life right now, from the relationship between racism and corruption to a brief history of presidential pardons and how our information sphere got trashed. (As always, the end-of-the-week episode is the live-action version of Tuesday’s written story.) You can watch the episode on YouTube or listen to it via Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Thanks yet again to Jason Sattler for doing all the bells and whistles on the podcast.

If you’ve been around for a while, you may have seen some earlier stories about my childhood in West Virginia (see, for example this or this). When I include those, they usually appear on a Thursday. And maybe you’ve experienced some whiplash from the back and forth between the Tuesday politics and history posts and the Thursday “here’s some wild stuff from my formative years” stories.

But to me, they’re very much related! As of today, you might have a better idea why.

I wrote a story for The Atlantic this week. Well, I didn’t write it this week, because it took a long time to write it. But the story made its way into the world this week. Originally titled “How I Lost My Mother” (which then, probably through some magic of A/B headline testing, became “The ‘Exciting Business Opportunity’ That Ruined Our Lives,” which also works). It looks at the way my mother fell hard for Amway when I was a child, and how she never really escaped the surreal universe she got pulled into. It’s very much about our MAGA moment, too—in literal ways that might surprise you. I hope you find it interesting.

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As promised last week when I was singing Tom Waits, I’ll try to include some real-world small thing I’m making and doing most weeks in the Friday roundup. Sometimes it will be related to events in the community; at other times, it might be more domestic. In either case, I’m trying to encourage you to do things that keep you going, connect you with others, and remind you that you can take action in the world.

I’ve been discussing a possible protest with a friend who wants to organize one where she lives. If that comes together, I’ll write about it here. In the meantime, here are cookies I made on a weird day last weekend. I had to put the dough into the fridge, because I got interrupted, and (because of that? who knows?) when I came back to finish, they ended up being the best cookies I’ve ever made.

There’s been a big upsurge in subscribers due to the Amway piece and to my prior writing about Guantanamo. So I’ll say welcome (!) to all the new people, all the regular crowd, and anyone who happens to read this.

Buckle up, it’s going to be an interesting four years. I’ll try to make them a little more tolerable.