PicoBlog

One of the most frustrating elements of living with a chronic illness is the unpredictability that we can have in our capacity. The range for a “bad day” and a “good day” can vary dramatically, leaving us confused and struggling to figure out what is a safe level of activity on any given day. During my lowest points, my baddest of bad days, it felt impossible to do anything. Turning over in bed, or trying to sit up, could feel like the biggest thing in the world.

I recently spoke with Eric Deming, a retired Navy SEAL who spent some time walking me through Operation Red Wings, better known to the American public as the events depicted in Lone Survivor, a No. 1 New York Times best-selling book that became a blockbuster movie starring Mark Wahlberg. Lone Survivor tells the story of former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, the only surviving member of a group of four Frogmen who were ambushed in 2005 in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Last week brought news that, for many child sex abuse survivors, was hard to stomach. The Kentucky Supreme Court sided with the Southern Baptist Convention to shut down the ability of child sex abuse survivors to seek civil justice against abuse enabling institutions. The SBC wasn’t even a party to the lawsuit—Jackman vs. Killary—but the SBC had deliberately inserted itself into the case by filing an amicus brief. That filing was a duplicitous action that squarely contradicted the “we care” public posturing of SBC officials and instead put the full weight of the country’s largest Protestant faith group on the side AGAINST justice for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Update: I knew this was coming and now it has just been posted to the New York Timessite, the story of how two of my friends, Marty Sherwin and Kai Bird, collaborated on their bio of Robert Oppenheimer that now serves as the source book for the Christopher Nolan movie (and is back on the bestsellers list). I happen to know something about this. For years in the 1990s, Marty and I both attended the annual October meetings in Wellfleet, MA.

These beheaded babies needed no verification. Their charred and headless bodies, dangling from the arms of a man shouting into the camera, affirmed what had unfolded only minutes before. Before the viral video raced across digital platforms and claimed a permanent plot in our minds, Rafah became the site of one of this genocide’s most gruesome massacres. A massacre not measured by scale of death or degree of destruction, but a metric far more sinister.

First things first: I have just created a new Reader Survey and would be extremely grateful if you’d take a few minutes to fill it out. I want to know more about who you are and what you want to read. Help me help you! Take my reader survey! Without further ado, let’s jump into today’s topic. I am not a big television consumer, so when two friends told me about the new ABC reality TV show “The Parent Test” last weekend, I had never heard of it.

I’ve been aware of Diptyque — which for years, I assumed was pronounced ‘Dipty-cue’ instead of ‘Dip-teek’ — for as long as I can remember. Like many other millennial women, the French luxury fragrance brand looms large in my mind thanks to The Coveteur, where the beautiful, well-appointed bathrooms of the it girls they interviewed typically held at least one empty Diptyque canister repurposed to hold beauty brushes or bedroom trinkets.

I think I spent about $19,000 on my wedding. I don’t actually remember the final amount, but it seemed like a lot! Nick and I were grownups (35 and 41) so it made sense to pay for it ourselves over the three months we planned it. Some of it came from my bank account and some from Nick’s. Regardless, I know for a fact that I threw one of the greatest wed…

I missed a lot of these back in the day. I'll be giving them a try. Some of my favorites were: Spy Hunter, Load Runner, Jumpman, Spy vs Spy -- although I never got very far, Archon. I also liked Impossible Mission, but again, didn't get very far. Expand full comment ncG1vNJzZmikpaOxtrfEZ6qumqOprqS3jZympmegZMGpsYxqZ2aalajBbq%2FOpqSonJ%2Bnsm6Ck2aemqWVqHqmwsSrZpynnaKyr8DS