Saying Goodbye to a Very Good Girl
Rest in peace, sweet Stella
This week, we said goodbye to the queen, Stella Luna, who picked me at the local shelter more than a decade ago. She was 15, give or take, and tough as nails, the alpha of our little pack, but also silly and sweet, until the very end.
When I first brought her home, everyone was afraid of her. She snarled at dogs at the dog park and nipped at anyone who tried to pick her up the wrong way. But I knew, deep down, she was just misunderstood. She’d had a tough life before we found each other, so I spent a lot of our time together trying to make up for her start on this planet. We went on backpacking trips in Colorado, SUPping on nearby lakes, and on more road trips than I can count.
She ushered me into motherhood and sat by my side while I recovered from giving birth twice, always happy to snore at my feet while the baby slept in my arms. She cleaned up after both of my babies as they learned to eat, dropping food on the floor. And when the younger dogs were too overstimulating for me in those early days of new motherhood, waking the baby and jumping all over, Stella was always calm and quiet, the exact companion I needed.
It’s still hard to believe she’s gone, and for me, grieving for a dog doesn’t happen all at once; it comes in spurts. It’s there when I reach for four dog bowls before realizing I only need three. Or when I let the dogs in to clean up food scraps after the baby, and she doesn’t rush in first. I feel a wave of it when I don’t hear loud snores from her bed at night, and when I expect to see her napping in her favorite sun patch in the afternoon, and she’s not there.
The very worst part about loving dogs is saying goodbye to them. But the best parts will stay with us always. A friend once told me, when my first dog, Teddy, passed a few years ago, that he had done a perfect job of seeing me into the next phase of my life and that he knew his job was done. I’d like to think the same of Stella. That she saw me into this next phase, made sure I was standing on solid ground after having baby Ruby, and understood that it was her time. I will love my snaggle-toothed girl forever.
What I’m Reading
The State of Our National Parks
Outside and RE:PUBLIC reporters went deep inside three iconic national parks to see how America’s public lands are holding up under pressure
Stories by Gloria Liu, Frederick Dreier, and Graham Averill
When we first started talking with the team at RE:PUBLIC about collaborating on a public lands package, we were circling the same question: What does it actually look like when America’s park system starts to crack? Not in abstract terms—budget lines or agency memos—but on the ground, where visitors and rangers see the effects firsthand.
That question sent three writers into three very different national parks: Yosemite, Great Smoky Mountains, and Rocky Mountain. What they found wasn’t always visible from the trailhead or a scenic overlook, but it told a deeper story about what’s really happening behind the glossy brochures and Instagram-perfect views.
Inside the Secret Machine That Shapes Your Opinion of Celebrities
The disinformation age has hit Hollywood, and the celebrity-industrial complex is armed to the teeth. Meet the crisis publicists, right-wing wranglers, and trolls for hire who are influencing what we think about today’s biggest stars.
By Anna Silman
The age of 24/7 gossip and round-the-clock surveillance had already taught us that private meltdowns could easily become front-page news—God forbid you wanted to lick a tray of doughnuts or fight with your sister’s husband in an elevator in peace. But that was before you had to factor in the bots. And the Reddit snark accounts. And Deuxmoi.
It might be the hardest time ever to be a celebrity—but hoo boy, it’s a good time to be in crisis PR. If you have the power to tame the influencers, game the algorithm, and turn the online mob into your private army, your services have never been in higher demand. As Emily Reynolds Bergh, who runs a Nashville-based communications firm with a crisis public relations arm, puts it, “When cancel culture entered the equation, my job honestly skyrocketed.”
Ballerina Farm Goes Full Wellness Brand
wtf is “HYDRATION THE WAY NATURE INTENDED”
By Anne Helen Petersen
Notice how each mini-vignette in the video ad for Farmer Hydrate intersperses a wholesome farm activity with the type of exercise a suburban or urban consumer might engage in. Daniel lifting bags of grain is the same actually as a ripped guy lifting weights in a moodily lit gym. Children running joyfully across fields is the same actually as going for a prosaic adult run. And of course, there’s The Mother (the most important iconographic figure within the nuclear family) as played by Hannah. Beautiful and [femininely!!!] strong. Nothing quite says feminine strength like ballet.
They’re quite literally communicating that drinking this electrolyte powder will imbue you with the magic of Ballerina Farm life. And what comprises the Ballerina Farm lifestyle? Family, physical strength, fresh air, natural beauty, American grit, American freedom, and American individualism. The European salt and moss is really just aesthetic frosting for Ballerina Farm Americana.
Last but Not Least
When wild bears visit the zoo.
