RED BERETS, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND 48 HOURS IN PARIS

LIFE OF A BOOKMAN

Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi that's me!!

The future: One of my besties recently asked for some book recs (my favorite request!!!) and after a few back and forths on what she was looking for, I suggest The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This sci-fi novel is a story that uses all of the latest research in climate change to play out what would happen and how humanity would act when the tipping point in the global climate crisis occurs. It's scary, but hopeful too. I'm constantly telling people about it, and realized I've never shared it with you!

WOMEN’S STUDIES

What gets passed down becomes our history. A few for the canon:

A former trad wife on what it takes to leave captivated me for a straight 55 minutes. This the nuanced and smart conversation about the trad (“traditional”) wife discourse that I'd been missing. Tia Levings lived the trad wife life and then escaped it. And after a lot of therapy and processing and rebuilding, she wrote a book about it: A Well-Trained Wife: My escape from Christian Patriarchy...which I DEF want to read. I kept thinking to myself, this woman is a brilliant explainer of a culture that is full of contradictions. She takes a systems approach to helping us understand trad wives' individual choices. I highly recommend this episode of the Culture Study podcast.

PASS IT ON

Stories are heirlooms. Here's one of mine:

On Thursday, the USA women's indoor volleyball team played one of the greatest matches I've ever seen. Their win meant that they were headed to the Gold Medal match against Italy on Sunday, which me and my galpals wished we could see.

But then I wondered...well, why couldn't we?

So I booked a flight for the next day to head to Paris and see the game. I figured that I'd figure it out: someone to watch Skye. A hotel. And a ticket to the game. These were all solvable problems.

Well, when I sent the confirmation of my flight to the group text (they thought it was a joke), I kickstarted what would become the best 48-hour trip – TO PARIS – FOR THE OLYMPICS – WITH MY BEST FRIENDS – that I ever could have conjured up, even if I'd been planning it for a year. I think we were awake for 46 out of the 48 hours there.

One YES to Paris turned into a YES to women's soccer final to watch them win gold, turned into a YES to dancing until the sun rose at what might as well have been the Olympic Village, turned into a YES to wrapping ourselves in flags and seeing the USA women win silver in volleyball, turned into a YES to buying red berets and visiting the Eiffel Tower like that didn't scream crazy Americans.

In our shared note we kept a list of wins from the weekend (I highly recommend this for your next girls' trip), but I think the ultimate win is girlfriends who are absolutely insane enough to say YES to Paris tomorrow, for 48 hours.

Book the flight. Figure out the rest.

Woman on xx