Blood Harmony Vol. 48: Popcorn Letters
Food
I love popcorn. It’s a snack. It’s a meal. It’s a treat at the movies.1 I recently changed up my popcorn toppings game. I’m making it on the stove top in canola oil as per usual but then I’m spraying it with olive oil and tossing it with salt and this insanely good maple pepper with habanero. It burns so delightfully.
I’ve written about these scones (gift recipe!) before but I wanted to include a picture of them because I like how rustic they look. The recipe is so simple—you can use frozen blueberries and you don’t try to form the dough into anything but a delicious blob.2
Out-and-About
Someone (not me) seems to have spent Sunday morning putting up flyers around my neighborhood for the May Day protest. That person appears to have had the time of their lives living out their 90s teenage zine dreams by staple-gunning things to telephone poles.
Music
I went to see Bartees Strange play this week. His performance was captivating. Strange’s music is such an interesting mixture of genres and ideas. He did a Tiny Desk and it is worth a watch! Also, his band kicked ass.
Durham’s own Daughter of Swords aka Alex Sauser-Monnig has a new album out that was produced with the folks from Sylvan Esso3. I’m really enjoying it’s synth-y false optimism. Sauser-Monnig described it as “a happy-sounding record about the death of humanity on planet Earth". This video is fantastic.
Screen Stuff
So glad to have Andor back with its uplifting themes of extractive capitalism, authoritarianism and the persecution of immigrants! No really though, it’s still awesome.
All my best to the person in the comments who wrote “Many Bothans died to bring us this beat.”4
I didn’t love the section of the story with Cassian stuck on the planet with the group of rebel doofuses but I was happy to see that one of them was TRENT from Never Have I Ever.
Book
I have a sense that I’m curating my Substack well since I received not one but two recommendations for a book that was clearly written for me.5 Syme’s Letter Writer by
is a marvelous book full of stories of writerly correspondence, suggestions for upping your letter-writing game and an entire section on these books of letters that I was obsessed with as a kid called Griffin and Sabine.6 I’m looking to expand my list of pen pals so let me know if you’re interested!To Read/Listen
A group of artists and science communicators have built this beautiful website to share the stories of folks whose work has been affected by the federal budget cuts. Here’s one of them:
The NYT is doing a 7 day poetry challenge focused on Edna St. Vincent Millay’s wonderful poem Recuerdo. It’s very, very cool. Gift article!
I loved this recent post by
about the unexpected pleasures of going home.
The Culture Study Pod had a thoughtful and thought-provoking episode recently on plastic surgery culture that I highly recommend. I was particularly interested in the idea of all plastic surgery as gender-confirming. Big fan of the guest’s newsletter
.Mending
I did some serious work on two pairs of my sibling’s well-loved socks.
The Power Broker Progress Update: 51 hours and 5 minutes left.
My summer mix is in process but you can check out my B sides playlist which is ever-expanding and now clocks in at 24 hours in length.
Thank you so much for reading! I’m glad you’re here!
Especially if you smuggle in your own because the popcorn at your multiplex is bad! I know they make most of their money on concessions but if that’s the case, do better! Independent theaters have great popcorn and far fewer resources.
These are fun to share! Bonus points for passing them along when they’re still warm.
My friend’s neighbors! TBH at this point I assume I’m always standing next to someone in the music business when I’m at a show or on line at the Co-op.
May you live to be a thousand years old!
Niche stuff.
Thanks for the menchie!