As the Northeast faces catastrophic flooding, across the Southwest, we’re burning up. Death Valley could very well hit one of the highest temperatures on record ever. Where I live in northern New Mexico, we’ve been pushing and occasionally breaking the 100-degree mark, which, for a community of mostly adobe homes without central cooling systems, is hot. To make matters worse, the wind has picked up in my home state and Arizona, kicking off fire season with fury.
Historically speaking, monsoon season ramps up sometime in mid-June around Santa Fe, so even though temperatures soar, every afternoon we get a nice little splash of water that keeps down the heat and dust. Not this year. A month into what should be monsoon season, we were bone dry. Every day I’d track the radar on my weather app and watch as big, dark clouds rolled in overhead. I’d listen to the thunder and wait for the rain to fall, and then after an hour or so, the storm would pass right on by, and I’d still be sitting on my porch waiting.
But today, it finally happened! As I type this, I’m drenched after my lunch jog and listening to the rain pound down on my tin roof. The dogs are rolling around in the mud, the cats are huddled dry in the greenhouse, and our farm is getting a nice, long drink. At last, we got a monsoon. I hope we get another tomorrow.
What I’m reading
In her newsletter Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen summarized what feels a bit wrong about Threads for me all in one short phrase: “the vibes are off.” I couldn’t agree more. Like her, I hit “yes” without thinking when I signed up and the new Twitter competitor asked if I wanted to follow my Instagram follows. But the problem is that Instagram is where I go for pretty photos of the mountains, cute baby and puppy pics, and maybe a fun meme here and there. Twitter was where I hung out with the media crowd, mostly word-first people—decidedly not photo-first people—and now my feed on the new platform feels not quite right.
What’s happening early on with Threads is that these influencers are experiencing their own kind of context collapse, where their vague, sometimes vapid messages are traveling toward a different type of audience. This is pretty much what Threads feels like to me now: a place that’s ostensibly interesting (look, so many people are already here!) but is actually totally boring. It’s “fun,” but definitely not funny — save the people like my friend Katie Notopolous who are shitposting like it’s Twitter and bewildering everyone. It’s not entertaining or clever like TikTok. It’s just new and there, like a bowl of sub-par chips and store-bought guac at a party, asking “Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
Read “The Thread Vibes Are Off” here.
As a home-reno show junkie and real estate school dropout (it’s a long story), the moment I saw this headline trashing HGTV, I clicked. My husband and I spent the last three years finishing our adobe house that we live in north of Santa Fe, and have recently started renovating the small condo I still own in town that my mom resides in for six months a year. The gist of the story is this: When we follow design trends, we end up with cookie-cutter interiors that appeal to the general potential buyer and Instagram scroller but entirely lack personality—and worse, we’re ready to do it all over again the moment a new trend arises.
As someone who’s drawn to clean white counters, dramatic dark green cupboards, and those trendy board and battan accent walls, I beg to differ. (Plus, I’d like to point out that the study on which the story is based had a sample size of 17.) I do agree that there’s environmental harm to following the trends to a fault. But I’d like to think it’s possible to achieve both trend and personality, and to be happy with your refreshed home without immediately chasing the next upgrade.
Homeowners are “torn between two ideas of what the home should be,” says Grant. The common wisdom is that buying a home ideally has two main benefits: You can build wealth and modify your space to your unique tastes. Grant’s framework shows these two benefits in conflict with one another.
Read “HGTV Is Making Our Homes Boring and Us Sad” here.
I’ve loved every essay I’ve ever read by Pam Houston, so it’s not surprising that her recent piece on illness, life, and Icelandic horses stayed with me.
I have come to Iceland because two years ago I was so sick with long COVID that I could not go for a walk or read a book or stay up late enough to cook a proper dinner. My acupuncturist told me my kidney pulses were as weak as she’d ever felt on someone who was not in the hospital actively dying.
She sent me home to find a reason to live, and I chose Icelandic horses. I signed up for a seven-day ride into the Icelandic highlands to a place called Landmannalaugar, with a departure date exactly one year in the future, figuring that by that time I would either be mostly recovered or dead. This current trip to Iceland is the third on my reason-to-live plan, and what I want, more than anything in my life, is to be strong enough and sensitive enough to ride these horses well.
Read “My Health and Wellness Plan? Icelandic Horses.” here.
In an excerpt from her new book Eight Bears, Gloria Dickie tells the fascinating story of the conflict between humans and bears as grizzlies slowly return to where they once lived. It is, as she writes, “one of America’s unlikeliest comeback stories.”
At the time, Keane’s grizzly sighting was the easternmost in the United States in more than a century. He had heard murmurings around town that the bears were moving closer, “but you just don’t expect one to be in your backyard,” he told me. As the grizzly pulverized his poultry, Keane dialed up the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to report the animal. But before the officer could make it out to his farm to apprehend the grizzly, a neighbor drove by in a loud pickup. The bear took off, and Keane was left to assess the carnage.
Read “In the Northern Rockies, Grizzly Bears Are on the Move” here. Buy Gloria’s book here.
Last but not least
