Because no matter how hard it has been tried, it refuses to stay contained. It keeps breaking out of the tomb, breaking through closed doors, breaking into moments that have no business being holy. Moments of rubble and trenches and basement apartments with the curtains drawn. Moments when the state has said no, and the church has said anyway.

Easter has a way of surviving things. Not just theologically, though yes, obviously, that too. But historically. Practically. In the stubborn, quiet, sometimes desperate ways that ordinary people have marked the resurrection, even when doing so is at a cost.

So this Sunday, instead of a reflection on springtime and pastel tablecloths, I want to tell you three stories. They’re not the Easter story, exactly. But they couldn’t exist without it.

The Church That Wouldn’t Close

Somewhere in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s, a congregation collected money to keep their church open.

The authorities took the money. Then they closed the church anyway.

So on Easter morning, roughly 8,000 people gathered in the square in front of the shuttered building. The priests wore civilian clothes so they wouldn’t be identified. Someone started the hymn “Glory to Thy Passion, O Lord!” and the crowd joined in, improvised and unplanned and completely ungovernable. They did it again on Easter Sunday. Larger crowd this time.

The Soviet state’s campaign against religion was not subtle. Churches were demolished or converted into warehouses. Priests were arrested, exiled, and shot. An organization called the League of the Militant Godless held events they literally called “Godless Easter,” mass burnings of icons, anti-religious street theater, and the whole performance. The goal was to replace the Paschal celebration with something secular and triumphant. It did not work. It had the same energy as a middle schooler who insists they don’t care, loudly, repeatedly, to everyone.

What happened instead was quieter and more durable. The Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, driven underground by Stalin after World War II, developed what historians call “traveling churches.” Nuns kept the Eucharist in their homes. They coordinated secret times and places for worship, especially for Christmas and Easter. They served as sextons and deacons. Laypeople’s kitchens became altars. Homes became sanctuaries. The bishops and priests moved through these underground networks like water finding cracks in stone, adapting, reshaping, refusing to stop.

In Central Asia, one documented community of believers held daily liturgies before dawn, every single morning, before going to work. Not just on Easter. Every day. Meanwhile, I sometimes struggle to make it to an 11 AM Sunday service when parking is difficult.

This patchwork of secret communities existed out of devotion and need because there were no functioning churches nearby. Many believers slipped back and forth between underground worship and the official state-sanctioned church to protect themselves. But regardless of the conditions, they made the conscious choice to worship.

Which is, if you think about it, exactly what the first Christians did.

The state said the tomb was sealed. They went anyway.

Easter in the Ruins

On April 1, 1945, the world woke up to two things at once.

It was Easter Sunday.

It was also the day 60,000 American troops stormed the beaches of Okinawa — the largest amphibious assault of the entire Pacific War, and what would become the bloodiest battle of that theater. Over the next 82 days, nearly 50,000 American casualties. More than 12,000 dead.

And yet, Easter.

Two days earlier, on March 30, churches across the Allied world had marked the resurrection while the machinery of death was still running at full capacity. A contemporary editorial in The Living Church, published April 1, 1945, named the tension directly: “Easter 1945 finds the world rejoicing in Christ’s victory over death while the machinery of death roars unchecked all over the world.”

I keep coming back to that sentence. Written in real time, by someone who didn’t know yet how it would end. V-Day was still five weeks away. Nobody had surrendered anything. And yet there’s this editorial, holding the resurrection and the war reports in the same two hands, refusing to let either go.

The year before, in 1944, Signal Corps photographers documented American soldiers kneeling for Easter morning Mass on the Italian front. Helmeted. In their field clothes. In the dirt. Father Gregory R. Kennedy of Dubuque, Iowa, saying Mass for men who had left their foxholes to attend.

I think about those men a lot during Holy Week. The ones who climbed out of a foxhole on Easter morning because something in them — something the Army couldn’t regulate and the war couldn’t reach — insisted on marking the day.

There’s a particular kind of faith that only becomes visible under pressure. The kind you don’t know you have until you’re in a foxhole and you find yourself getting up for Mass anyway. Not because everything is fine. Not because the machinery of death has stopped. But because He is risen is a claim that refuses to wait for better circumstances to become true.

April 1, 1945. Easter Sunday. And 60,000 men on a beach who were not thinking about pastel tablecloths.

The Truce That Almost Wasn’t

Let me tell you what the history actually says, because it’s better than the myth.

You’ve heard of the Christmas Truce of 1914, German and Allied soldiers crawling out of their trenches on Christmas Eve, exchanging cigarettes, singing carols in no man’s land. While this event has been extensively romanticized, it’s a true story.

What’s less known: attempts to repeat something similar at Easter 1915 were largely ignored. By then, high command had made the rules quite clear. The war had turned uglier. Men who had shared a faith on Christmas Eve were killing each other with gas by spring. The grand Easter Truce, as a parallel to the Christmas Truce, did not happen.

But one man saw something.

His name was Friedrich Kohn. He was a medical officer serving with a Hungarian regiment on the Eastern Front in Galicia in 1916, where Russian and Austro-Hungarian forces faced each other in conditions identical to the Western Front. In a letter written decades later, preserved by historians Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton in their 1984 book Peace in No Man’s Land, Kohn recalled what happened on Easter Sunday morning that year.

About twenty Russian soldiers came out of their trenches at five in the morning.

And the shooting stopped.

What followed — the sharing, the silence, the impossible pause in a war that had no pauses — lasted a few hours and then ended. The war resumed. Friedrich Kohn survived the Brusilov Offensive that came just weeks later. He survived World War I. He later survived imprisonment by the Nazis. And he spent decades with the memory: “I have seen demonstrated in front of my own eyes that suddenly people who are trying to kill each other, and will try to kill again when the day is over, are still able to sit together and talk to each other.”

This is not a story about war being secretly nice. It’s not a story about enemies who were really friends. The shooting started again. The Brusilov Offensive killed hundreds of thousands of people. Friedrich Kohn knew exactly what the men across from him were, and they knew what he was.

But Easter Morning made them set down their rifles for a few hours. Not peace. Not resolution. A pause. A recognition. Something too old and too stubborn to ignore even in the middle of a war.

Kohn’s story is not a legend. It’s not passed down through generations. It’s a letter, written by a man who lived it, preserved in a published historical record. A true story of a moment of peace.

And the only reason it happened is that Easter was still Easter even in the trenches.

As we head into this Sunday, remember the resurrection has never required good circumstances. It doesn’t need the war to be over, the church to be open, or the state to give its blessing. It just keeps being true — quietly, stubbornly, in the square outside the locked church, in a foxhole in the Pacific, in the silence between two armies on the Eastern Front at five in the morning.

He is risen.

Even here.

Happy Easter, friends. Thank you for spending part of your Sunday morning with me.

It also means this edition of the Sunday Desk is a little rushed.

Rivera and Reeves UnFiltered LIVE!

In case you missed it! Also, make sure you check out the show notes for a discount code and join us for the next UnFiltered LIVE!

Rivera and Reeves

R&R UnFiltered LIVE! 03.28.26

Rachel just got back from CPAC—and what she saw behind the curtain is not the story you're being told. This month's Rivera & Reeves Unfiltered Live covers it all: low turnout, a boomer-heavy crowd, and a speaker who explicitly told attendees to stop listening to podcasters—while standing in a room full of them. Plus: the grifter class running the right-wing podcast space, why the GOP's "unity" push is really just midterm survival mode, the tin foil hat theory about foreign bots amplifying divisive content creators (that isn't actually a theory), and the Iran truth no one in podcasting wants to say out loud. Unfiltered, direct, and pulling zero punches…

Listen now

14 days ago · 39 likes · 1 comment · Meseidy and Rachel Reeves

Episode Highlights

• Rachel attended CPAC and witnessed a speaker directly warn the audience to stop listening to podcasters and social media influencers—the same conference that invited content creators to carry their message

• The “conservative unity” push at CPAC was less about principle and more about midterm survival: a scripted talking point delivered by multiple speakers, including Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec

• Tucker, Candace, and Megyn Kelly are playing a game—the hosts break down what that game is, who’s winning, and why their astronomical numbers may have foreign fingerprints

• The Iran operation isn’t the betrayal the podcast right claims it is: Trump has talked about Iran as an existential threat for decades, and the hosts make the strategic case that this is America First

• The CPAC crowd skewed heavily older—a sharp contrast from last year’s younger energy—and what that demographic collapse signals for the future of the movement

The Madison

I was on the Taylor Sheridan bandwagon when Yellowstone first came out. I did not miss an episode. Then the show started to get weird with the eco-activist girlfriend who could be John Dutton’s granddaughter, and Beth’s emotional irritants became abusive and annoying. Girl, trauma is not an excuse for terrorizing everyone around you.

Suddenly, everywhere I looked, there was Taylor Sheridan, 1883, 1923, Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness, and don’t even get me started on Landman. I am beyond weirded out by the mother-daughter dynamic in that show.

You know how we all became exhausted with the “Marvel Universe” — well, I have never watched Marvel, but you get my point. As soon as one series would end, another was on its heels, and they all were basically the same plot and characters repacked and dropped into sun-drenched scenery.

No more Taylor Sheridan for me.

And then I get SUCKED BACK IN!

I got baited while minding my own business scrolling when Kurt Russell and Michell Pfeiffer appeared on my screen. These are two of my favorite actors. Have you watched Russell recently on Apple TV+'s Monarch about Godzilla? You should. Anyway, I discovered they are together in the new series “The Madison,” a Taylor Sheridan series. UGH! I move on. “No more Sheridan!”

But everywhere I look, I see “The Madison.” It stalks me across my social media and streaming platforms, and finally, I break down.

I am four episodes in, and I am HOOKED! This show is an emotional roller coaster — sometimes a little cheesy — but it’s beautiful. Very different from his other shows, which are about conflict and bending the rules. The tragic loss of a long and faithful love is at the center of this series.

Think Manhattan meets Montana. The Clyburn family — polished, wealthy, New York to their core — finds themselves in the rugged Madison River valley in the middle of Big Sky Country. A devastating tragedy sends this family to the last place any of them would have chosen, and what unfolds is really a story about grief, love, and what holds a family together when everything falls apart.

It’s Madison Avenue versus the Madison River, and the contrast between those two worlds is just as much a character in the show as the people are. Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, who has a driver, a townhouse, and an opinion about everything. Russell plays her husband Preston, a man who loves that cabin in Montana more than Stacy will ever understand, or so she thinks.

Sheridan describes it as his most intimate work, and that tracks. This is his quietest, most dialogue-driven work to date — worlds away from the body counts and power plays of Yellowstone. No one is fighting over land or threatening anyone with a branding iron. It’s quieter than that. And even for a stoic broad like myself, I had to keep the Kleenex on hand.

Writing…

I am behind on my writing curriculum, but I wanted to share a little ditty from one of this week's assignments. If you are new here and have no clue what I am talking about, visit the two previous editions of Sunday Desk.

The Prompt

A character has received significant news before the scene opens. The nature of that news is never stated. The scene takes place in an ordinary setting — a meal, a drive, a task they’re completing alone or with someone else. The news is never spoken. The scene ends without it being revealed.

The Rules

• No interior monologue. Not one sentence about what the character is thinking or feeling. Remove every “she thought,” “she realized,” “she felt.” If the interior creeps in, cut it.

• No backstory. The reader enters the scene already in progress.

• The news must be present in the scene — it should shape every gesture and line of dialogue — but it must never be named.

• End on a physical image or action. Not a reflection. Not a summary.

Work

This exercise was hard! First, I focused on where the limitations are. What I couldn’t say or write about. How does one tell a story with nothing? My nature is to be direct. I do not beat around the bush. And while that may be appreciated by some in personal relationships — sometimes not by others — it does not make for good storytelling. If I were left on my own, my “stories” would probably fit on a post-it note.

Eeeek! This is a draft. Here is my short story. Be nice! 🤪

Counting in The Dark

She grips the steering wheel tightly and rolls her fists forward. A leather-pressed groan escapes from beneath her knuckles. Her hands hesitate over the wheel. She lifts her fingers, and the diamond catches the dashboard lights. Twirling her ring with her thumb, she stretches her arms out, pushing against the steering wheel, gripping it again, and letting out a slow, deep breath. The headlights of her car are the only light on the road, other than the occasional passing car. She reads a worn sign illuminated by a single overhead light at the side of the road, Wyatt’s Slaughtering. The road narrows between mountains, two-dimensional in the dark, as if to fold over on top of her like cardboard cutouts.

Checking her phone and still no signal, she sets it face down on the passenger seat and counts the dashes in the center lane. Shifting in her seat, she feels her back ache. She begins to count the dashes again, and they morph into a solid line. Looking at the speedometer, she eases her foot off the gas. The engine groans and shifts gears as it begins to gain elevation. On a sharp turn, the headlights catch the eyes of a doe on the side of the road.

Suddenly, the sky opens up on her right. The mountainside is close and jagged, pushing against the car. The road winds up the mountain, guided by a thin barrier cable. Below are constellations of light separated by gaps of darkness, and her fingers stiffen on the wheel as she pushes her back into the seat.

She reaches the crest of the mountain to a clear sky, no moon. A thumping rhythm is muffled by the tires. With her thumb, she turns her wedding ring, listening to the thumping of the road, and she gently nods her head to the beat. She approaches a bend, obscuring her view ahead, and slams the brakes. The tires screech, and her head rocks forward. Her back stabs at her, and the phone thuds on the floor between her feet. She groans and braces herself with the armrest, staring at the dark mound in the road glistening under the headlights. Stretching her leg, she searches for the phone and slides it closer to her. The pain stabs when she bends to grab it.

Slowly, she sits up and looks around — no other vehicles. She covers her nose with the back of her wrist when she opens the door. The air is putrid and rotting. The asphalt crunches under her feet as she gets closer to the source of the stench. Black button eyes looking back at her. The head is grotesquely contorted with a hoofed leg caught in its large antlers. It is a mature buck, its broad chest edged with a noble coarse ruff of fur matted with blood. Staring at it, she touches her back. Lifting her phone, she takes a picture, framing only the head. The blood runs onto the asphalt, black. A flood of light washes over her, causing her to shield her eyes from the oncoming headlights. An old pickup truck slows down. A man cranks open the window.

He wears a tattered Carhartt cap, leathered by sweat. His eyes are kind and hooded, with deep creased corners. A mustache conceals his upper lip.

“Are you ok? Do you need any help?”

She pulls her spine in, arching her back slightly. Looking towards the buck, she says, “I didn’t hit it.”

The old door groans low and tired, cutting through the silence with a single, worn-out creak. The man echoes his groan when he steps out of the truck. “Looks fresh. I can get it out of the way. Dangerous leavin’ it there.”

She nods, still staring at it.

“Do you need me to call anyone for you?”

She looks at him, sucking on her bottom lip. She squeezes the phone in her hand. “No.”

“Okay, then.” He tips his hat toward her.

She turns back toward her car, watching her feet as she walks back, gently lowering herself into the vehicle. In the car, she watches the man as he trusses the buck with some straps, tight and contorted, like a parcel. Her hands are resting in her lap, fiddling with the pop socket of her phone. Watching as he takes his gloved hands, wraps them around the straps, and heaves it into the bed of his pickup truck, slamming the tailgate shut. He pulls forward, signaling her to roll her window down.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to call anyone?”

“You’re kind,” she replies as she nods her head.

He tips his hat towards her as he drives off. She looks back at the black stain on the road. It doesn’t catch the light anymore. Sitting up in the seat, she flips the visor down, and the small light reveals her eye darkening to a bruise. Her lip is split again, and she runs her tongue across it.

She looks at the phone: four bars and a voicemail. Looking at herself again in the mirror, she sees black button eyes looking back at her. Quickly flipping the visor closed, she presses her back against the seat and sets the phone face down on the center console. Her thumb finds the ring. She hits the start button and starts counting the dashes again.

History’s Greatest Funeral Crasher

Okay, I need to tell you about Andrew Jackson’s parrot. Because somehow, in all the chaos of American history — the duels, the bank wars, the Trail of Tears, the general unhinged energy of the man — I am fixated on the parrot.

Which tracks, because I am randomly obsessed with talking birds.

Have you seen that “bacon, pancakes” bird? Or the one that struts on the back of the sofa, pulls up close to the camera, and says, “Hey baby!” The sudden onset of cute aggression is too much.

My husband has now walked in on me — multiple times, and every time, without fail, he delivers the same verdict:

“We are not getting a bird.”

Deflated and disappointed I respond with "I know.”

But, enough about my bird brain, let's talk about Jackson’s parrot, because this bird, I thought. This bird understood the assignment.

Here’s what happened:

When President Andrew Jackson died in June 1845, the nation mourned. Dignitaries gathered at The Hermitage, his Tennessee estate. The mood was appropriately solemn. The minister prepared his remarks. And then — Poll, Jackson’s African Grey parrot, decided this was his moment.

The bird, who had spent years in Jackson’s company absorbing the vocabulary of a man famous for his volcanic temper, his absolute refusal to be polite, and his enthusiastic commitment to dueling, opened his beak at the funeral and let it rip. Profanity. Loud, enthusiastic, completely unfiltered profanity. The kind of language that makes mourners look at their shoes. The kind that made the minister have to physically pause the service.

Here is a quote from the Rev. William Menefee Norment, who was presiding at the service, and found in Volume 3 of Samuel G. Heiskell’s Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History:

“Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house.”

The Rev. Norment goes on to report that the presidential parrot was “excited by the multitude and … let loose perfect gusts of ‘cuss words.’” People were “horrified and awed at the bird’s lack of reverence.”

They had to remove the parrot from the funeral.

This story gave me a chuckle. I think about it the way I think about the Petticoat Duel of 1792 — with a specific, delighted awe at the fact that history is mostly just unhinged people doing unhinged things, and we just call it “the past” to make it sound dignified.

Poll didn’t mourn quietly. Poll went out like his owner lived — loudly, defiantly, and with absolutely no regard for the room.

Now. If you spend any time in political commentary circles, you’ve heard people describe certain politicians as “Jacksonian,” meaning they operate with that same populist fire, that same combative energy, that same general “I will fight you in the street and also reshape the entire federal government” vibe. The comparison to Trump gets made constantly, and honestly? Whether you love it or hate it, you can see why.

Imagine what a Jacksonian parrot in the modern era would look like.

Picture it: a gilded cage. Not just gold-toned. Not brushed brass. Gold. Ostentatiously, aggressively, unapologetically gold-gilded, probably with the bird’s name on it in large block letters. The parrot inside is enormous, well-fed, opinionated, and completely unbothered by your reaction to any of this.

And what does it say?

“You’re fired.”

That’s it. That’s the whole vocabulary. Every greeting. Every goodbye. Every time someone walks into the room. The housekeeper. The chef. Foreign dignitaries. The dog, if there is one. You’re fired. Delivered with the flat, unblinking confidence of a creature who has heard it so many times it now considers it a form of punctuation.

And when the day comes — as it does for all of us, presidents and parrots alike — and there’s a funeral?

That bird is going to walk right up to the microphone during the eulogy and say:

“You’re fired.”

And that is this week’s Sunday Desk. Sorry, this one is quick. I am literally finishing this up right before church. But we have a fabulous and short surprise visit, ahem, the best podcast live there is, two very different love stories, and a foul-mouthed parrot. And before you ask. Yes, of course, I still want a bird.

Till next Sunday!

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We’ve hit a speed bump, and her name is the ceiling.

The was the popcorn ceiling gets painted, panels go up over it, crown molding goes back on, beams run across the seams to create a coffered effect. Clean. Architectural. Exactly the kind of moody, intentional space I’ve been dreaming about. Easy, right? Wrong. It turns out you cannot simply strap decorative wood strips to a ceiling and call it structure; it requires a completely different approach. And the most upsetting part? It means removing the crown molding we already installed. The crown molding we spackled, caulked, and prepped to paint.

I am devastated.

We gave ourselves a weekend off after that discovery, which I needed and resented simultaneously. Because here’s the thing, the space is already pulling me in. It’s cozy in a way that feels earned, moody in a way that feels deliberate, layered with just enough warmth that it’s become the only room in the house I want to sit in. The gallery wall is mapped out in my head. The window treatments are calling my name. I’m ready. And I cannot do any of it until we sort the ceiling.

So for now, we wait. Grudgingly, impatiently, but we wait.

The $400 Char I Got for $40

Since the ceiling had me in a chokehold, I redirected my energy somewhere I could actually make progress: the lounge corner.

The chair I’d been using for the past five years — a tall, high-backed, mid-century modern piece I bought from Wayfair when we first moved in — has seen better days and no longer belongs in a room that has evolved into something darker, warmer, and more intentional than it was. It needed to go.

I started hunting for a lounge or club chair that felt right, and eventually found one on Facebook Marketplace for $40. When I did a reverse image search, it turned out to be the exact same chair I’d been eyeing on Amazon for $400.

I will not pay $400 for a chair off of Amazon. I will absolutely drive across town for $40.

The only catch was a wonky leg, which, if you have a handy husband, is not really a catch at all. He fixed the leg. And while he was doing that, I — a woman with no chill and no patience for waiting — decided to make an ottoman.

The Footstool I Made Myself (Because I Have Zero Chill)

The sensible version of me would have found a matching ottoman on Facebook Marketplace and waited. The actual version of me remembered that I had purchased some decorative legs with the intention of swapping them out on the chair, realized they weren’t structurally designed for a chair at all — better suited for a footstool or small table — and immediately interpreted that as a sign from the universe.

So I built one. And it is genuinely one of the most satisfying things I’ve made.

The project sounds more intimidating than it is. Here’s exactly how it came together:

Step 1: Prep the legs. My legs were pine, which needs to be conditioned before staining. Skip this step, and the stain will go on unevenly and blotch. I used a wood conditioner first, then finished with Deep Colonial Walnut stain for that dark, rich tone I wanted. If you’d rather paint them, skip the conditioner and use whatever paint you have on hand.

Step 2: Build the cushion. Spray-glue the plywood, adhere the 3-inch foam, spray the foam, and adhere the 2-inch foam on top. You’ll end up with a surprisingly satisfying stack that already looks like something.

Step 3: Wrap with batting. Staple gun time. Wrap the batting all the way around the cushion, pulling it taut as you go. This is what gives the final piece its soft, rounded edges.

Step 4: Add the fabric. Same process as the batting,

wrap and staple. The corners are where your patience gets tested, but take your time. The goal is flat and smooth. If you gather too much fabric at the edges, the staples won’t reach, so keep it even.

Step 5: Finish the back. Use your leftover fabric to create a clean backing on the underside. It’s a small detail, but it’s the difference between something handmade and something that looks handmade.

Step 6: Attach the legs. Hand this part off if you can. My husband installed the brackets; I supervised. It was a good system.

One thing I wish someone had told me: once everything is stapled, do a few small hand stitches along the corner seams where the fabric folds over. It keeps everything lying flat and tight instead of puckering at the edges. A small extra step that makes a big visual difference.

The whole thing cost a fraction of what I would have spent buying one, fits the corner perfectly, and I made it with my own hands in an afternoon. My dark, moody office now has a lounge corner that actually feels like a lounge corner, and that is deeply satisfying.

Supply List

From Home Depot:

• 2×2 ft., ¾-inch plywood sheet

• 9-inch furniture legs (pine)

• 4 leg mounting brackets

• Decorative upholstery tacks (optional but worth it)

From Hobby Lobby:

• Spray-on adhesive

• 15×17-inch, 3-inch thick upholstery foam

• 15×17-inch, 2-inch thick upholstery foam

• Polyester batting

• 1 yard upholstery fabric of your choice

• Staple gun + staples

Also needed:

• Wood conditioner (if staining pine legs)

• Stain or paint for legs
  

What I’m Reading (Or Trying To)

Let’s talk books, and specifically the small, persistent cloud of reading-related shame I’ve been carrying around this week.

I have been reading — or attempting to read — C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. I am on the second book, Perelandra, and I will be honest with you in a way that feels mildly embarrassing to admit: it is not going well.

Lewis builds worlds the way someone furnishes a room, layer by layer, with tremendous care and almost no urgency. And in its own right, that’s remarkable. He was imagining the cosmos well before humanity had ever left Earth, filtering it through a medieval theological framework that is genuinely fascinating to sit inside. I love what his mind was doing. I just cannot stay present long enough to fully appreciate it. The pace is slow in a way that loosens my grip on the story, and Perelandra, in particular, is giving me a kind of narrative motion sickness I was not prepared for. I’ll spare you the spoilers, but: bro. Something needs to happen.

So, I’ve made a decision.

I am officially pausing the Space Trilogy. I’m not ready to call it a DNF — I cannot bring myself to say those letters out loud — but I am shelving it for now, with what I choose to describe as “hopeful intentions” rather than denial. My actual goal was always That Hideous Strength, the third book, which is the one I wanted to read in the first place. I simply made the mistake of obligating myself to read the first two in order, as a person of integrity and principle, and now I am suffering the consequences of that decision.

We’re taking a break. The books will be here when I’m ready.

In the meantime, I’m moving on to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.

If you know Tartt, you know her from The Goldfinch, but The Secret History came first, published in 1992, and I’ve had it on my list for longer than I’m comfortable admitting. The premise: “Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path beyond human constructs of morality.”

The first sentence grabbed me immediately. Which, after the struggle of the last few weeks, felt like relief. I will probably open it the moment I finish writing this newsletter.

So: C.S. Lewis is benched, I’m in partial denial about it, and I’m cautiously — carefully — optimistic about what’s coming next. I’ll keep you posted.

Writing Curriculum. Here’s Week Two.

Look, this week broke me a little.

Not in the way Week One did, where it was mostly about shaking off the stiffness of not writing fiction in a while. This week was harder in a more specific, more personal way; it exposed something about how my brain is wired, and what it exposed surprised me.

The entire focus of Week Two was learning to not close the loop.

Don’t explain. Don’t answer the question your own words have already answered. Don’t be so obvious. Build the tension, put the reader in the room, and then stop, before the resolution, before the explanation, before the moment where you tie everything together neatly and make sure they understand. Let them sit with it. Let them feel it without being told what they’re feeling.

My analytical journalist brain looked at that assignment and said: absolutely not.”

Most of what I do on a daily basis requires me to clearly and definitively land the point. That is the job. State the thing, back it up, answer the question, close the loop, and do it without ambiguity, because ambiguity in my line of work is a failure of craft, not a feature of it. So being told to deliberately leave the door open, to trust that the reader will feel what I never named? That went against every instinct within me.

It was not in my nature. And it showed.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Assignment

Week Two is called Scene Architecture & Escalation, and it picks up exactly where Week One left off. If Week One was about learning to find tension in a piece of writing, Week Two is about learning to build it, deliberately, beat by beat, through behavior and environment, without ever naming what you’re doing.

The core instruction for the week is a single line:

When you feel the urge to explain — pause. Cut the sentence. See if the scene survives.

It will. Almost every time.

The objectives: understand how a scene escalates through behavior rather than statement, recognize and practice a three-beat structure of rising tension, write a complete escalation scene that ends just before resolution, apply that pressure to one paragraph from my journalism, and build a daily journaling habit running alongside everything else.

Five parts. Here’s how they broke down:

Part 1 — Reading. Two more Hemingway stories: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place (quiet, devastating — almost nothing happens, and yet you feel everything) and Indian Camp (brutal, strange, and shocking — Hemingway never explains the ending; he only describes what the child sees). The assignment was mechanics, not analysis: where does the emotional temperature rise? What does Hemingway withhold, and what does that withholding create? What’s the last image, and why does it land?

Part 2 — Craft Reading. The “Toolbox” section from Stephen King’s On Writing — a great book, by the way, if you haven’t read it — specifically on vocabulary and description. King’s argument is that description should feel inevitable, not constructed. The question to carry into the drill: what is the difference between a decorative detail and a load-bearing one? No written response required. Just read actively and let the question do its work.

Part 3 — Escalation Drill. Write a 700–900 word scene from a specific prompt — two people in a room, one wants to leave, one needs them to stay, no explanation of why — built across a strict three-beat structure. Beat One: managed tension. Something is slightly wrong, but no one has said it yet. Beat Two: the crack. Something small breaks the surface. Beat Three: the crack widens, and the scene becomes unbearable — but nothing has been said directly. End here. Not after. Do not explain. Do not resolve it. Trust the behavior.

This is the part that made me want to throw something and also the part I’m most proud of.

Part 4 — Journalism Application. Take one paragraph from a recent article — something explanatory, something that summarizes — and rewrite it as a scene. Find the physical moment where that information was happening. Same facts, completely different experience. I still have this one to complete 😉.

Part 5 — Daily Journaling. A new addition this week: five morning prompts designed to train observation without the pressure of craft. Monday was the anxious room — describe the one thing you’d notice if you were anxious. Tuesday was the unsaid thing — write a real conversation where something wasn’t being said. Wednesday was hands only — describe a person using only their hands, no face allowed. Thursday was the scene behind the story — take a moment from your journalism and write it as fiction. Friday was a free prompt with one rule: change your name.

I did everything except Friday. It’ll get done.

Want the full Week Two curriculum? I’ve linked it here: 👉 PHASE 1 – WEEK TWO | Scene Architecture & Escalation

This was a hard week. My loop-closing instincts showed up fully armed and I had to fight them the entire time. But something in Part 3 surprised me — and I think that’s exactly the point.

Paying subscribers can read all of my completed work below the paywall. ⬇️

The Time Australia Declared War on Birds. The Birds Won.

I need you to understand something before we get into this: the Australian government looked at a field full of emus and genuinely thought, we need to send in the military.

Not farmers. Not wildlife management. Not a very large fence.

The military. With machine guns.

And still lost.

This is the Great Emu War of 1932, an insane historical disaster, a startling example of human overconfidence meeting nature's complete indifference. Nature didn’t even blink.

Here’s the setup. After World War I, the Australian government did what governments often do after wars: it handed out land to veterans as a thank-you for their service. Settle down, farm some wheat, build something. The land was in Western Australia, out near Campion, and for a while, things were fine. Then the emus showed up.

About 20,000 of them.

Every year after breeding season, emus migrated through the region, and they had apparently decided that the newly cultivated farmland — with its fresh water and abundant crops — was an excellent rest stop. The farmers, who were already struggling through the Great Depression and could not afford to lose their harvest, appealed to the government for help.

The government sent Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, two soldiers, and two Lewis guns.

Take a moment with that. Two machine guns. For emus.

The operation launched in November 1932 with tremendous confidence and went sideways almost immediately. The first attempt to engage a flock of about 50 emus ended when the birds scattered before the soldiers got within effective range. The guns jammed. The emus dispersed into the scrub in small groups, which, as it turns out, is nearly impossible to pursue across open terrain in a truck. The few birds that were hit often absorbed the shots and kept running. What is happening with emus? Major Meredith later reportedly compared their resilience to soldiers in battle, perhaps the most unhinged compliment ever paid to a flightless bird.

After less than a week, the operation was quietly suspended. Not because anyone officially called it off, but because it wasn’t working and everyone involved was aware that it wasn’t working, and the whole thing was becoming embarrassing.

The media, to their eternal credit, had an absolute field day. The ornithologist who had been consulted on the operation suggested that the emus had functionally adopted guerrilla tactics, dispersing into smaller, harder-to-target units when threatened. There was a proposal in Parliament to award the emus medals. Major Meredith was quoted as saying that if a military division had the same resilience as these birds, it would face any army in the world.

They tried again in December. Same result. By the end of the month, the military withdrew. Again. Permanently.

The farmers eventually got their fences. The emus are still there.

This story exposes how the government has an extraordinary capacity to escalate before trying the obvious thing. The farmers needed a fence. What they got first was an army. The army failed. Eventually, quietly, they built the fence.

How often do we do that? Reach for the biggest, loudest, most impressive solution — the machine guns, the grand gesture, the dramatic intervention — when what the situation actually required was something far simpler and far more patient?

The emus never changed. They just kept being emus. And that, in the end, was enough.

That’s the week. An office ceiling that is actively humbling me, a $40 chair I would die for, a footstool I built with my own two hands and zero patience, a curriculum that is forcing me to fight my own instincts, a book I finally want to stay up late for, and the story of a government that lost a war to birds and then quietly built a fence like none of it ever happened.

See you next Sunday.

For paying subscribers only

If you’re a paid subscriber, everything from Week Two is waiting for you below: the Hemingway reading notes, the escalation drill that surprised me, the break room scene with the thumb drive I had no business writing, and the daily journal entries, including the one that turned into something I wasn’t expecting.

This is the part of Sunday Desk I actually had to earn. And this week, it cost me something, which I think means it’s working.

Not a subscriber yet? The curriculum is built week by week, and this is where the real work lives. Come along.

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My most recent obsession has been redoing my home office. I genuinely thought I could knock it out over a weekend, maybe a week at most. We are solidly two weeks in, and while I am back in my office, it is not yet complete. We had a few instances of mission creep, which delayed finishing the project — but honestly? I love how it’s coming along. It’s shaping up to be exactly what I envisioned.

The whole vibe I was going for was cozy, quiet, and intentional — a space where I could shut out the noise and actually focus on work, reading, and writing. So far, it looks like I’ve pulled it off.

By the way, I have included some affiliate links to the items we used. So if you click it and buy it, thank you for your support. ;)

The Color

I have drenched this office in Mountain Olive by Behr, and I am absolutely in love with it — walls, ceiling, trim, all of it. It’s my favorite tone of green. It’s dark. It’s moody. It’s comforting. It’s everything I wanted this room to be.

That said, the project did not start off well.

I made the mistake of confusing my paint colors and ordered from a leftover I had upstairs — a very bright green I’d used as an accent wall in one of the guest rooms. I didn’t catch the mistake until I came downstairs the following morning to find all four walls of my office painted a very vibrant, very wrong green. An entire day lost. I had to start over and repaint everything in Mountain Olive, which, again, I cannot express how much I love. Consider that my official endorsement.

The Built-In Bookcase

One of the bigger projects in this room is the built-in bookcase, which I’ll be honest — it’s a little jerry-rigged, and I mean that affectionately.

The original plan was for my husband to build it from scratch using hardwood. He has many projects on his plate, and I have zero patience to wait, so I purchased three bookcases from Amazon instead. (I know, I know — the Billy bookcase from IKEA is the standard move, but the Billy is too large for the space I was working with.) After a lot of digging, I found these three, and they fit the space perfectly. They’re not IKEA quality, but they’ll do for now, and it buys my husband some breathing room before he eventually builds me the real thing. Estimated time of arrival: three years, give or take.

I did a light sanding before painting them, though in hindsight I should have primed them first — the paint is a little delicate in some spots and has peeled where anything hard catches on it. With books, though, it’s holding up fine. As for the actual built-in installation, that was entirely my husband’s doing. I know he used some 2x4s, screws, and plywood. That’s all I’ve got. I handled the painting. I also swapped out the cabinet knobs for antique brass and added picture light fixtures above the bookcase, which my husband wired — another department I have no information on.

The Wallpaper

I found the wallpaper on the Home Depot website. It comes in two colorways — black and green — though the “black” version is really just a dark background with the detail rendered in green tones, along with the most charming red strawberries. It’s a genuinely lovely pattern.

This is a peel-and-stick wallpaper, not a glue-on, and the type I chose allows for adjustment during application, which I appreciated. It’s also more of a vinyl than traditional paper, so you can stretch it slightly to get the pattern lines to line up — a small but very welcome detail.

The Rug Saga

I also got a brand-new area rug for the room — though not without a detour.

My initial purchase was a burgundy red rug, which turned out to be a catastrophic mistake. Against the paint, the whole room looked like Christmas, it also clashed with the wallpaper. I have no idea what I was thinking. I returned it immediately and replaced it with a brown faded area rug, and I cannot overstate how much I love it. It doesn’t feel like a traditional rug at all — it’s velvety underfoot, it’s thin enough to fold and manage easily, and according to the packaging, it’s washable. As in, I can put it in a commercial front-load washer. When you have a home with five dogs, the words “washable rug” are genuinely life-changing. I haven’t tested that yet, but when I do, I’ll report back.

What’s Left

We still have quite a bit of finishing work ahead. The baseboards and crown molding aren’t done yet, and the ceiling — originally a popcorn ceiling, which I refused to deal with after past experience — is being covered with painted cabinet-quality plywood. My husband routed the edges of some 2x1s to create a grid pattern that will cover the seams and give the ceiling a more finished, intentional look. It’s going to be beautiful.

The bookcase still needs some trim added to it, and a slightly funny note, when we first installed the bookcase lights, we realized they don’t have switches. We assumed they would. They do not. So when we first wired them in, they could not be turned off. My husband got it situated after a moment of frustration.

Once all the finishing touches are done, I’ll install the window treatments, add artwork to the walls, and finish filling out the bookcase. I’m also on the hunt for a new leather club chair to replace the lounger I currently have in the corner.

It’s not done. But it’s getting there — and you’ll be seeing a lot of it in the background of upcoming podcast episodes. In the meantime, please enjoy the very unedited, very real, I-don’t-care photos of my unfinished office. You’re welcome.

Ink Tracing

I’ve discovered ink tracing, and I think I’m in love. At least for now. If you’re a fan of adult coloring books, you’re going to want to try this.

It was my long-time girlfriend who pulled me in. About a month ago, she sent me an IG reel of an account selling an ink tracing set, and I immediately bought the book and the extended pack of pens.

What I love about this particular book is the paper stock — it’s sturdy, and once you’re done, you have a frameable piece of art. I fully intend to frame this lady and hang her in my office. The one downside is that the book only has 10 images, and I can already see myself flying through them. I’ve found other ink tracing books on Amazon with close to 100 images, but I suspect those are designed for laying tracing paper over rather than working directly on the page like this one. I’ll report back once I inevitably cave and buy one.

Anyway, ink tracing is fun. Give it a try.

I Started a Writing Curriculum. Here’s Week One.

Remember a few weeks ago when I shared that I decided to be a student again.

Not in the enrollment-and-tuition sense. More like: I sat down, built myself a writing curriculum from scratch, and told myself to actually do the assignments. No skipping. No skimming. No convincing myself that reading about a technique counts as practicing it.

Week One is called The Engine of Story: Tension + Change, and if you’ve ever tried to make a piece of writing feel alive instead of just correct — something I struggle with — you already know why that’s the right place to start.

The objective for the week was simple on paper: recognize tension in any piece of writing, identify where change occurs in a narrative, write a short fictional scene that contains both, and apply it. Four parts, each about 20–30 minutes.

Here’s how it broke down:

Part 1 — Reading. Two texts. Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants (short, brutal, nothing happens and everything happens) and the opening of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (just the first 10–15 pages — the list section). The goal wasn’t literary analysis. It was mechanics. Where is the tension? What changes? How does the writer build it without telling you it’s there?

I was really surprised by how much these short readings struck me. They contained a lot of hidden tension and symbolism. Fantastic writing.

Part 2 — Analysis. Take one of the readings, answer four questions: What is the central tension? What happens if that tension disappears? Where does the emotional temperature rise? What changes by the end? The prompt at the bottom of the assignment sheet is blunt: If there’s no change, there’s no story.

Part 3 — Fiction Drill. Write an 800–1,200-word scene from a specific prompt, with a strict rule set designed to force you away from exposition and into the body, the room, and the subtext. No explaining. No speeches. End at the moment of irreversible choice. Not after. Don’t over-explain, something I do all the time.

Part 4 — Application. Pick one recent article. Find a paragraph that is informational. Rewrite it as a narrative. Same facts, different tension.

Want the full Week One curriculum? I’ve linked it here: 👉 PHASE 1 – WEEK ONE | The Engine of Story: Tension + Change

I did all four assignments. And I’ll be honest — Part 3 surprised me with what came out.

Paying subscribers can read all of my completed work below the paywall. ⬇️

Some of What I Consumed

• This Sixties Musician Died Mysteriously. Was He the Victim of a Serial Killer? - Rolling Stone

• A dive into the history of Iran - 60 Minutes Archive

• The Gray House (Series) - Prime Video

• Between the sheets at the college Excel championships - Washington Post

• James Talarico represents Christianity’s past, not its future - Washington Post

The Day Key West Declared War on America (and Won) - 1982

There are protests, and then there is this.

Most people, when pushed to the edge by federal bureaucracy, write a strongly worded letter or maybe a very angry post nobody reads. The people of Key West, Florida, looked at that option, folded it neatly in half, and chose chaos instead, and you all know I love a little chaos. In the most spectacular, sun-soaked, absolutely unhinged act of civic theater ever staged on American soil, they seceded from the United States, declared war on the federal government, surrendered immediately, and demanded foreign aid — all in under two minutes.

You guys, it worked.

Let’s back up.

In the spring of 1982, the U.S. Border Patrol set up a roadblock on U.S. Route 1 at Florida City, the only road that connects the Florida Keys to the mainland. The stated purpose was to intercept undocumented immigrants and drug smugglers. The practical effect was treating every single person leaving Key West like they were crossing an international border. Cars were backed up for miles. Tourism cratered. The locals, already a particular breed of sun-drenched, salt-worn, very-much-not-interested-in-your-federal-nonsense types, were furious.

Mayor Dennis Wardlow drove up to Miami to seek a federal injunction to have the checkpoint removed. The court said no. And here is where a reasonable mayor returns home, holds a press conference, and sighs deeply into the camera. Dennis Wardlow was not that mayor.

On April 23, 1982, he stood in Mallory Square — Key West’s famous waterfront plaza, the same spot where locals gather every single evening to collectively applaud the sunset like it’s doing something new — and announced that the Florida Keys were seceding from the United States of America, effective immediately. The Conch Republic, named for the beloved sea creatures and the longtime nickname for native Key Westers, was born.

They had a flag. They had a prime minister. They had a whole aesthetic.

Then, in a move that can only be described as inspired, they declared war on the United States. The entire military campaign lasted approximately one minute and involved breaking a stale loaf of Cuban bread over the head of a man in a U.S. Navy uniform. (I want to be very clear: this was consensual. He was a prop. The bread was the weapon.) Having engaged in sufficient hostilities, Prime Minister Wardlow immediately surrendered to the Admiral of the U.S. Navy base nearby, and then, in a masterstroke, demanded $1 billion in foreign aid to help rebuild the war-ravaged nation.

The federal government, to its credit, apparently had no protocol for this.

What followed was equal parts farce and political brilliance. The press ate it alive. The story spread. Tourists, delighted by the whole spectacle, flocked to Key West not in spite of the absurdity but because of it. And the Border Patrol checkpoint? Quietly dismantled. The whole thing worked precisely because it was ridiculous; you cannot argue with a man who has already declared war, surrendered, and is now applying for foreign aid while holding a conch fritter. There’s no regulatory framework for that.

The Conch Republic never officially rejoined the United States, for what it’s worth. Technically, it remains in a state of “friendly secession.” They issue their own passports (allegedly once accepted at a border crossing, though I would not personally test this). They have a national motto: We Seceded Where Others Failed. Every April, they celebrate Conch Republic Independence Days with parades, mock naval battles in the harbor, and exactly the level of commitment to the bit that you would expect from a place that has been doing this since 1982.

I really admire the spirit and creativity in calling out your government and getting things done. Sometimes the answer isn’t to fight the system on its own terms or to quietly comply and seethe. Instead, Key West decided the answer was to make itself so spectacularly impossible to ignore that the system simply found it easier to give them what they wanted and move on.

And they got a really good story out of it.

The Conch Republic still sells commemorative passports. Their website still refers to themselves as “the Smallest, Best-Natured Nation in the World.” And Key West still stops every evening to clap for the sunset, as if to say: yes, we see it. We know. We live here on purpose.

That's the week. A half-finished office I'm already in love with, a new hobby I didn't ask for but fully endorse, a writing curriculum that is making me think harder than I expected, and the most unhinged act of civic protest I've ever had the pleasure of researching. Honestly? Not a bad Sunday Desk.

See you next Sunday.

For paying subscribers only

If you’re a paid subscriber, everything from Week One is waiting for you below — the fiction drill, the Hemingway deep dive, the newsletter rewrite, and the instructor feedback that made me rethink the whole scene. It’s the part of Sunday Desk I actually had to earn.

Not a subscriber yet? This is the work — and if you want to follow along as I work through the curriculum, this is where it lives.

Subscribe now

Read more

My mind is a very busy place, running list after list. Lists of ideas, headlines, tasks, random thoughts — and sublists breeding beneath them. I need my workspace to be dark, quiet, soothing, and lit with lamps that cast a warm glow. I envision dark green walls and brass lamps with linen shades that cast warm light down towards the floor. As if I am camping in the forest, reading next to a fire. I want to feel like the room is giving me one of those bear hugs that releases all the tension in my body so I can relax and fall into my writing.

My current workspace does not hug me. Thankfully, it’s also not yelling at me to do high kicks. I do have elements of my dark, moody study, but I haven’t had the time to bring the vision to life. So I’m building my bear-hug office, one dark corner at a time, and I thought you would enjoy a peek at the first step, my moodboard.

A room flooded with my favorite green, accented with dark wood, dark cozy corners, and books. I want a wall of books and notebooks.

We are in the very beginning stages of this transformation, but I will bring you along in the process, and you might even get some sneak peeks in the podcast video.

What kind of space helps you think?

Annotation

I've Started Doing Homework Again (On Purpose)

We are about sharing, right? Yes? Cool.

Well, I’ve started something new, and I want to tell you about it—it feels a little weird, but I think some of you might enjoy it.

First, let me set the record straight. I am not in the midst of a midlife crisis, believing that I am suddenly going to pump out a magnum opus of my life. And this is definitely not a “I’m going to write a novel in a cabin” situation (though it could unironically be a possibility).

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know how much I think about narrative — the way it’s constructed, the way it persuades, the way it frames reality before a single fact enters the room. A lot of what I do is dissecting the stories being told. But there’s another side to that coin I’ve been sitting with lately: what does it look like to build narrative intentionally?

So I’ve started a structured creative writing discipline. Structured sounds stiff — it’s really just me, a notebook, and some very good material.

ChatGPT Study + Learn as my writing coach.

Yes, I know many have strong feelings about AI. But I don’t have time to enroll in a course, so I'm working through the curriculum, the text analysis framework, and the feedback on my writing exercises with AI assistance.

It’s not doing the reading or the writing for me. I’m still the one sitting with Hemingway and O’Brien doing the work. But having a tool that can help me build a structured learning framework and give specific, thoughtful feedback on my drafts on my schedule? That’s genuinely useful—and using it well feels like a skill worth developing.

We’re all figuring out what an honest working relationship with these tools looks like. This is me figuring it out in public.

Week One is all about foundations. Close reading. Structural awareness. Learning how tension is created without emotional hand-holding.

The texts I started with: Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway and the first fifteen pages of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Two very different writers, same essential lesson. Power lives in restraint. Not what’s declared, but what’s implied. What’s circled around. What never gets said directly but lands like a stone anyway.

Reading like a writer rather than a reader is surprisingly humbling. You slow way down and ask different questions. You are not just consuming, you are understanding. How is tension created here? Where does the emotional weight actually sit? How does dialogue carry subtext that the characters themselves won’t speak aloud? Where does the writer trust the reader, and where do they guide?

The Hemingway, especially. All subtext, almost no surface. Two people talking about nothing and everything at the same time, and you feel the whole weight of what they’re avoiding and the power shift. All done with no dramatic speeches. No, “she felt devastated.” Just cadence, body language, omission.

As someone who spends most of her days writing about politics — where rhetoric is loud and theatrical, and the subjects love the sound of their own voices — studying quiet storytelling is like encountering a different life form. Power doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes it whispers. And that’s worth understanding.

Narrative shapes culture. Culture shapes politics. If I’m going to critique the stories being told about our world, I should be equally serious about understanding how those stories are built from the ground up.

If you’re a paying subscriber, later this week I’ll share my actual writing exercises from Week One, the assignments themselves, and my attempt at applying what I’ve been studying. You’ll literally get to see my writing notes, not just a finished piece. It’s messier and more honest than anything I usually publish. Look, you guys, I am trying.

If you’ve been thinking about upgrading, that’s a good reason to do it. Just saying. 🙂

More soon.

Some of What I Consumed

• Astronauts Are Going Back to the Moon For The First Time in Half a Century - Time

• When Coyotes Threatened Livestock on Central Texas Ranches, the Solution Was to Unlock an Ancient Ability in Dogs - Smithsonian

• ‘Lolita,’ Jeffrey Epstein, and the Real Meaning of a Challenging Classic - The Free Press

• What do British Highschoolers know about America? - Jolly

• Nick Fuentes Is a Tool of the Left - Rufo & Lomez

The Duel That Started Over a Wrinkle

Picture this: It’s 1792. You’re a London socialite hosting a perfectly lovely afternoon visit when your guest — your guest — has the audacity to suggest you’re pushing sixty.

Oh, it is on.

That, according to legend, is exactly what happened between Lady Almeria Braddock and a Mrs. Elphinstone, whose ill-advised comment about Lady Braddock’s age sparked what history (or at least gossip) would come to call the Petticoat Duel.

Lady Braddock, who claimed to be somewhere in her thirties and was not taking questions, did not reach for a cutting remark in response. She did not write a strongly worded letter. She did not simply never invite Mrs. Elphinstone back for tea. No, she demanded satisfaction. The Georgian way.

The two women met at Hyde Park — classic duel territory — and squared off first with pistols. Both shots missed. Mrs. Elphinstone’s bullet, however, did clip Lady Braddock’s hat, which honestly feels poetic. Then, because apparently pistols weren’t enough to settle a dispute about crow’s feet, they switched to swords, at which point Lady Braddock nicked her opponent’s arm. Blood drawn, honor restored. Mrs. Elphinstone wrote a formal letter of apology, and — depending on which version you believe — the two may have reconciled over tea afterward.

Which is very, very British.

As much as I would love to tell you this is a true story, it almost certainly is not. The primary source is the Carlton House Magazine, a 1792 publication best described as the Georgian equivalent of celebrity tabloids, known more for satire and sensationalism than straight reporting. Some things never change.

A contemporary engraving titled “The Petticoat Duellists” ran alongside it that same August, which is either evidence or very committed illustrative fiction. No diaries, letters, or records corroborate any of it. The names themselves — Lady Almeria Braddock, Mrs. Elphinstone — remain unverified.

And yet, it has lived for over two centuries in the cultural imagination because, real or not, it captures something true: vanity can make you do some wild things, like a duel to the almost death.

Whether the Petticoat Duel was a real act of defiance or a satirist’s joke about society’s obsession with a woman’s age and beauty, it a story that has earn its place in history not because it happened, but because it should have.

For A Laugh

That’s the Sunday Desk. A moodboard full of dark green walls, a duel that probably never happened but absolutely should have, and Week One of me doing homework on purpose.

Three things before you go: Tell me what your workspace looks like — I’m genuinely curious. If you’ve read either Hemingway or O’Brien, reply and tell me what you noticed. And if you’re a paying subscriber, the writing exercises drop later this week. If you’re not, well, you know where to find the upgrade button. 😉

Subscribe now

See you next Sunday.

It also made clear that while you value the news and research here, many of you are interested in more opinion and personal perspective as well. Admittedly, that’s not my strongest area. I don’t consider myself especially reflective, but this year I’m trying to write more.

I spend much of my day online, scrolling social media, sourcing stories, and analyzing how outlets frame the news. I’m also making an effort to read more, write more, and be a bit more reflective. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t like to force things, so I’m making no promises.

That said, Sunday Desk is part of that exercise. I appreciate your encouragement and support. No promises, but I’ll do my best. ❤️

“Out of the Silent Planet” by C.S. Lewis

Sometimes you pick up a book expecting one thing and get something entirely different. I cracked open Out of the Silent Planet—the first installment in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy—anticipating vintage science fiction. What I got was something closer to a theological adventure wrapped in the trappings of interplanetary travel.

And honestly? It works.

The story follows Dr. Elwin Ransom, a philologist (think: language nerd with impressive credentials), on a walking tour through the English countryside. Needing a place to stay for the night, he approaches a remote estate—and this is where things take a hard left turn.

At the estate, Ransom stumbles upon something sinister involving two former school acquaintances: Dr. Weston, a brilliant but coldly amoral physicist, and Devine, his opportunistic financier. When Ransom intervenes in their plans, they decide he’ll make a fine substitute. They drug him, haul him aboard a spacecraft, and set course for Malacandra, what we know as Mars.

It’s a kidnapping plot that launches, quite literally, into the cosmos.

The bulk of the novel follows Ransom after he finds himself alone on Malacandra. He wanders the alien landscape, encounters its intelligent species, and slowly pieces together the planet’s social and spiritual order. If this sounds slow, well—it can be. The middle section lingers in exploration, and readers looking for pulse-pounding action might find themselves impatient.

But here’s what Lewis does beautifully: he builds a world that feels almost Edenic. Malacandra is a place of striking natural beauty, harmonious creatures, and an order guided by something higher than human ambition. There are clear biblical echoes here, whispers of paradise, of celestial hierarchy, of rebellion and its aftermath. Lewis isn’t subtle about his influences, but he weaves them into the narrative rather than preaching from a pulpit.

What resonated with me most was watching Ransom’s intellectual certainty erode. He arrives on Malacandra armed with the assumptions of his education and era. By the end, he’s humbled, not broken, but genuinely awed by something greater than himself. It’s a quiet transformation, and it positions him as the trilogy’s moral compass going forward.

At roughly 150 pages, it’s a quick read despite the slower middle stretch. The prose is accessible, the worldbuilding imaginative, and the payoff satisfying.

Lewis himself noted that the second book, Perelandra, can be read independently. But I’d recommend starting here. Out of the Silent Planet establishes the themes and characters that anchor the entire trilogy, and frankly, it’s worth the journey just to see Lewis apply his theological imagination to the stars.

If you’re looking for something that blends classic science fiction with deeper questions about humanity’s place in the cosmos, this one’s worth your time.

Next Up: Perelandra, C.S. Lewis

Currently: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, Eric Hoffer

Come Inside My Commonplace Book

A reader asked if I’d share a tour of my commonplace book. I’m happy to oblige—partly because I’m proud of it, and partly because explaining it forces me to understand why I do it.

First, the basics: I’m using a Midori MD Notebook, dot grid, A5 size. And a Kakuno fountain pen, which is my first fountain pen. I think I’m in love. There’s something about the weight of it, the way the ink flows—it makes the act of writing feel intentional. Which is probably the point.

One more tool worth mentioning: a book clip. You can see it in the photo, holding my copy of Out of the Silent Planet open. When you're copying quotes by hand, you need both hands free—one for the pen, one for steadying the notebook. A clip keeps your source book open to the right page without you fighting the spine. I can't remember the brand of mine, but you can find similar ones on Amazon or Jet Pens.

A commonplace book, if you’re unfamiliar, is an old practice. Writers and thinkers have kept them for centuries—notebooks where you collect quotes, passages, and ideas from what you read. It’s not a diary. It’s not a journal. It’s more like a personal anthology, curated over time.

I’ve kept quotes on and off for years, but this is my first proper commonplace book. I started it in January with a goal: read more and retain more of what I read.

Here’s how it works.

The Categories

At the front of the notebook, I have a key with ten thematic categories, each assigned a color:

• Human Nature & Psychology

• Narrative & Language

• Nihilism & Absurdity

• Wit & Humor

• Class & Society

• History as Warning

• Freedom & Coercion

• Institutions & Individuals

• Power & Incentives

• Truth & Narrative Control

I developed these based on my reading list for the year, which leans toward classic literature, philosophy, and political and cultural non-fiction—books that complement my work. The categories help me see patterns across books and make connections I might otherwise miss.

The Index

After the category key, there’s an index page. Each book I finish gets a line: the title, the date I completed it, and the page number where its entries begin.

But here’s the part I like best: next to each title, I add colored checkmarks corresponding to which thematic categories showed up in that book’s entries. So at a glance, I can see that The Stranger hit on Narrative & Language and Nihilism & Absurdity, while The Road to Serfdom touched nearly every category in the key.

It’s a small thing, but it turns the notebook into something searchable. If I’m writing about narrative control and want to pull from my reading, I can scan the index and see which books had something to say about it.

The Process

When I read, I annotate. Margins, highlights, the occasional post-it note when I need more space. I add a sticky flag to anything worth revisiting.

After I finish a book, I go back through everything I’ve marked. Not all of it makes the cut. I copy only the passages that still resonate—the ones that made me stop, or that I know I’ll want to return to.

Each entry gets the quote, the page number, and a color-coded tag linking it to one of my categories. At the bottom of each book’s section, I write a “Thoughts” paragraph—my synthesis of the book, or at least what I’m still chewing on.

Why Bother?

The obvious answer: retention. Writing things by hand makes them stick. But there’s something else, too.

I spend most of my day consuming information—scrolling, sourcing stories, analyzing how outlets frame the news. A commonplace book is the opposite of that. It’s slow. It forces me to decide what actually matters, what’s worth preserving.

And over time, it becomes a record of your own thinking. You can flip back and see what caught your attention six months ago, and ask yourself: do I still believe that? Would I still underline that sentence?

I don’t know yet. This book is only a few weeks old. But I like the practice. It feels like building something.

My Go-To Meatloaf

We like to buy a half a cow once a year, which means we get a ridiculous amount of ground beef. I have a handful of go-to recipes for our ground beef, and I will be sharing them over the next few editions of the Sunday Desk.

Today, let’s start with a trusty meatloaf!

Meatloaf

• 1 medium carrot, chopped

• 1 small onion, chopped

• 3 garlic cloves, minced

• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, minced

• 5 oz seasoned croutons

• 1/3 cup beef broth

• 18 oz ground chuck

• 18 oz ground pork

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 2 teaspoons paprika

• 2 teaspoons granulated garlic

• 2 teaspoons onion powder

• 6-8 strips of bacon (optional)

Sauce

• 1/2 cup ketchup

• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

• 1 tablespoon stone-ground mustard

• 1 teaspoon onion powder

Instructions

Heat oven to 325° F. Line a rimmed sheet pan with foil.

In a food processor, add carrot, onion, and garlic. Pulse until the onions and carrots are finely minced but not pureed.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and sauté the vegetables with the thyme until tender, about 5 minutes.

While the vegetables are cooking, add the croutons to the food processor and process until they become breadcrumbs. Add the beef stock to the breadcrumbs and process until a paste forms.

In a large bowl, combine cooked vegetables, breadcrumbs, ground meat, and meatloaf seasonings. Mix together until well combined.

Wet the inside of a 10-in loaf pan. Line the inside of the loaf pan with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap will stick to the wet sides. You can also clip the plastic wrap to the sides with binder clips.

Press the meatloaf mixture tightly into the pan. Using the plastic wrap, pull the meatloaf away from the sides.

Invert the meatloaf onto the prepared sheet pan, remove it from the loaf pan, and discard the plastic wrap.

If adding the bacon, arrange the bacon slices on top of the meatloaf, overlapping slightly and allowing the ends to drape down the sides.

In a small bowl, combine the sauce ingredients and mix until well combined. Spread half of the sauce over the meatloaf.

Bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until a meat thermometer reads 155 degrees.

Remove the meatloaf from the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. Brush remaining sauce over the meatloaf before serving.

The Near-Death of the Conversation Heart

If you grew up in America, you’ve eaten a Sweetheart. Those chalky pastel hearts stamped with “Be Mine” and “Kiss Me” that show up every February get tossed into Valentine’s boxes by elementary schoolers and then mostly sit in desk drawers until they’re thrown away in March.

They’re not anyone’s favorite candy. But they’re essential. Valentine’s Day without conversation hearts feels incomplete—like Christmas without candy canes, or Halloween without those little orange pumpkins nobody actually likes either.

So when Necco, the company behind Sweethearts, declared bankruptcy in 2018, people panicked.

Necco—the New England Confectionery Company—was one of America’s oldest candy manufacturers. The company traced its origins to 1847, when a Boston pharmacist named Oliver Chase invented a machine to cut lozenges. His brother Daniel later developed a way to print messages on the candy, and by 1902, the iconic heart-shaped variety made its debut.

For over a century, Necco cranked out conversation hearts—nearly 8 billion per year at their peak, all sold in the six-week sprint leading up to Valentine’s Day. The messages evolved with the times. “Fax Me” got retired. “Text Me” took its place. The most sought-after motto was always “Marry Me.”

Then came 2018. Necco announced it was going out of business, and candy lovers were devastated. The company shuttered its factory in Revere, Massachusetts, laid off hundreds of workers, and halted all production. Panicked fans scrambled to find remnants of Necco wafers and other candies at local corner stores and across the internet.

Valentine’s Day 2019 came and went without Sweethearts on shelves. It was the first time in over a century.

The rescue operation was dramatic in a way only the candy industry can manage. Spangler Candy Company—the Ohio-based makers of Dum Dums lollipops—acquired the Sweethearts brand and set about reviving it. They dismantled, moved, and reinstalled 60 truckloads of equipment from the old Necco factory, some pieces had to be lifted out by crane through the roof.

By 2020, Sweethearts were back. Sort of. The printer responsible for stamping the hearts’ famous sayings proved unreliable, so many of the hearts that year arrived blank. Silent little hearts with nothing to say.

There’s something almost poetic about that—conversation hearts that had lost their words, returning from the dead but not quite themselves yet.

They’ve since recovered. Spangler got the printers working, brought back classic flavors like wintergreen and banana, and Sweethearts have reclaimed their spot as the most popular non-chocolate Valentine’s candy in America.

But for one strange year, the hearts went quiet. And America noticed.

That's the desk. A book about Mars, a meatloaf, a notebook full of quotes, and a candy that almost died. Not a bad Sunday, if you ask me.

See you next Sunday!

On Friday morning at the gym, my coach—armed with his incredible talent for small talk—asked the 6:30 AM class, “Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl?” I thought, "Oh, the Super Bowl is this Sunday."

I had no idea the Super Bowl was happening. No idea who was playing. And judging by the lukewarm response in a class of 10, I wasn’t alone. Sure, a few die-hard sports fans discussed their predictions. But most people? Meh. The Super Bowl.

Someone asked about party plans. Silence. Special recipes? Nothing. The classic conversation about commercials came up, but even that was dismissed—yeah, but you can watch them online anyway. Nobody seemed excited. Nobody seemed to care.

It kind of made me sad.

The Feed vs. The Game

I went about my day, did some work, and late that morning opened X. As most feeds do, the algorithm immediately pushed whatever was trending, account after account—this time mostly left-leaning—all sharing the same screenshot, all saying some version of: “The President just posted this. This is disgusting and racist.”

The image showed what appeared to be an AI animation of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes. Without question, if that’s all there was to it, the post would be objectively racist and offensive in any context.

But my immediate reaction wasn’t “oh no, I was duped for all these years. Trump is, in fact, a racist.”

My immediate reaction was, “This is weird. This is offensive. Something is missing. I need to investigate.”

So I did.

Following the trail

I have a Truth Social account purely out of necessity—I never spend time there. But I scrolled through the President’s feed. Scroll, scroll, scroll. I couldn’t find the image of the Obamas as apes.

Then I saw a very short clip on X that appeared to be a screen recording. For a split second, you see Michelle and Barack Obama depicted as dancing monkeys, then a quick jump to what looked like a completely separate video, as if the recording had bounced back.

Curious, I went back to Truth Social and found a video that resembled the clip that followed that monkey image. (The post has since been removed.) I watched it, a minute-long video about elections and voting machines being hacked or something. Honestly, I can’t even remember the content because I wasn’t paying attention to the actual video.

At the very, very end, for a split second, another video auto-scrolled into frame, and the recording captured it: Barack and Michelle Obama dancing as apes, which was spreading across social media as a still shot.

I immediately suspected what had happened. The President posted a video without watching it all the way through, not realizing that it was a screen recording that, when it auto-scrolled to the next video, captured that auto-scroll. It’s a common mistake that many of us who create content online make. It’s an even less surprising mistake for a boomer to make while posting without discipline, which is exactly what the President is.

My questions were answered. It was exactly what I suspected. I sighed in frustration, closed the app, and moved on, because when you're in this business, you cannot let yourself be enraged by everything.

The story everyone wants to tell

By the time you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen multiple think pieces about this particular incident. Evidence of Trump being racist. Evidence of the problem with politicians on social media. The degradation of our political discourse. Media literacy. There are so many angles to take, and everybody was talking about the President's post.

Some dismissed it as frustration with his lack of discipline on social media. Others were frustrated that the initial White House response from Karoline Leavitt was dismissive instead of just admitting the mistake.

But there was also a clear motive from accounts on the left to remove all context from that video. Suddenly, none of these people—who live essentially on social media, who create content exclusively for social media to communicate, push narratives, share opinions—seemed to have any understanding of how auto-scroll and screen recordings work?

I can tell you that’s bogus. As someone who spends every single day on social media downloading clips (my preference, because you can avoid accidentally recording something inappropriate), I’ve made this exact mistake. I’ve forgotten to trim the end. I hate it when I forget to trim the end, even if it just shows my interface buttons, because it doesn’t look clean.

As a social media content creator, I immediately knew what happened. I also immediately knew what the left was doing. And I was equally disappointed in the White House’s initial response.

But then I had a different thought.

What we’re fed vs. What we have to find

You might be wondering why I mentioned the Olympics and the Super Bowl at the beginning. Here’s why:

It made me sad that I didn’t know the Super Bowl was this Sunday. That I was unaware the Winter Olympics started this weekend. But everyone seemed immediately aware of this social media post.

I thought back to my youth, when the Super Bowl was an event people gathered for, with friends, with family, just to hang out. Even if they weren’t interested in the game, even if they weren’t sports-focused like I’m not, they’d get together. It was time to be in community, to razz the opposing team, celebrate for your team, share recipes, and laugh at the ads.

Now? The excuse, “I go just to watch the ads,” isn’t a reason to go to Super Bowl parties anymore, because “Oh, I’ll just watch the ads online.” The halftime show has become politicized, turning people off from watching. Sports itself has become politicized, turning people away. What used to be an event that unified people—an American pastime where you’d have community and a good time—now gets a collective meh.

We’ve become balkanized. Compartmentalized. Separated from each other.

The same thing struck me about the Winter Olympics. As a kid, you had three channels. Whichever one was carrying the Olympics would advertise them well ahead of time. You’d see the buildup, the ads, the anticipation. We all felt it together because we were all consuming the same media, seeing the same commercials, watching the same channels.

To double-check it wasn't just me—someone who's chronically online and should theoretically know everything—I texted my "normie" friends in my normal group chats. Only two knew before Thursday that the Olympics were opening this weekend, much less that they were being held in Milan. But the Trump post? They'd all seen it. They all had opinions about it. And not one of them knew the full context until I explained what actually happened.

But why didn’t everyone know about the Olympics? Because we consume our media online, on streaming platforms, through algorithms that only feed us what we want to see, we can go about our lives without feeling that buildup of American pride. Without coming together as a nation to celebrate our athletes, engage in friendly competition—America versus Russia, Canada versus Australia, China, whoever. We just don’t have that anymore.

Friday night, I tried to figure out how to watch the Winter Olympics. I opened my Peacock app—NBC’s streaming service—and found it behind a paywall. Granted, I can probably watch it for free during specific broadcast windows, but nobody watches television that way anymore. Frankly, I’m not even 100% sure how to watch my local NBC affiliate live anymore.

The Olympics feel like something that should be freely accessible—at least the live events, even if replays cost money. I’m sure you can find it on YouTube if you dig, but you have to look for it. You have to work for it. You’re not automatically fed how we can come together to watch the Winter Olympics and root for our country.

But you’re immediately fed, for free, that picture from Trump. How racist he is. How horrible the United States is. That’s easy to find. All you have to do is open your phone. It’s one of the first things that shows up on your Facebook feed, your Instagram, your X feed—wherever your social media is, it’s the first thing you see.

You have to be purposefully and consciously offline to not see it.

But to see the Super Bowl? To see the Winter Olympics—positive, inspiring events that could unify people? I have to pay for it or dig for it.

What used to be free

It used to be different. You could just flip on the television and find the Olympics playing constantly in the background. As a child, we’d celebrate together watching people ice skate, do pair skating, speed skating, bobsledding, ski jumping. It would just play in the background for free all day long.

Now, for free, we sit on our phones doom-scrolling, getting fed something that immediately makes you either roll your eyes in frustration or get angry and feel justified in how horrible and racist this administration is.

Both reactions leave you thinking: We’re not meant for this.

The hard work of being informed

Look, I get it. This is the business I’m in. I participate in it too. But I try to be conscious that what I put out isn’t just to rage or upset people. My goal is to provide legitimate information, even though I’ll admit it sometimes filters through my biases. I do my best to inform, not enrage. And I try to teach people how to be informed without me, because you don’t need me telling you how to do this all the time. I want you to be able to do it on your own, at any moment.

Whether it’s from the left or the right, if something immediately raises your blood pressure, I’m telling you: go find the source. Get the full context. Get the story. Or at least follow someone like me who can do it for you periodically.

I’m a one-woman show. I can’t jump through every hoop, answer every question, fact-check every situation. I get many requests, and some I just can’t get to. Which is why I encourage anyone who follows me to learn to do it themselves—one of the reasons I’ve started writing my “Between the Lines” pieces. I want you to understand what’s being done to you so you have more control over being informed rather than just being enraged.

What we’ve lost

We’re no longer in the times of three television stations with rabbit ears that could play the Winter Games or Summer Olympics for free to the public all day long. Those neutral sporting events that were considered patriotic are now either hard to access or politicized. Even recently, Olympians have been asked to express whether they’re ashamed to wear the flag or represent the United States because of the current administration.

Can’t we just play a game? Look, everyone has the right to their opinion and to share it on the public stage. That’s fine. But it would be nice if what was being fed to us for free was bobsledding, football, figure skating, the United States winning a medal—instead of a boomer who isn’t disciplined enough to watch a video all the way through in the late hours of the night before reposting it, as if he doesn’t have more responsibility as the President than the average boomer poster.

That’s the world we’re living in now. And I think it’s worth asking: what are we losing when the things that divide us are effortless to find, but the things that could unite us require a paywall and a search bar?

Weekend reads

• Who Watches the ‘ICE Watchers’? (WSJ), An opinion piece examines a City Journal probe of Minneapolis “ICE watchers”—activists tracking agents via encrypted Signal chats, license plate databases, and deadly confrontations. Framed as community safety, these tactics blur the line between civil disobedience and interference.

• Inside Minneapolis’s ICE Watch Network (City Journal), Christina Buttons investigated “Defend the 612,” a Minneapolis group of ICE watchers, via their Signal chats. Her reporting uncovers encrypted networks tracking agents with license plates, interference trainings, and organizers framing two civilian deaths as recruitment chances. It questions where community organizing becomes dangerous obstruction—especially when untrained people face armed agents.

• Pizza Supreme (Slate) This piece recounts a visit to one of the last classic Pizza Hut diners, featuring Tiffany lamps, salad bars, and waitstaff. Beyond nostalgia, it reveals the loss of true third spaces for community, like first dates or kids’ birthdays. Today, everything prioritizes delivery and takeout efficiency. It ponders what we’ve sacrificed: division comes free, while connection demands a paywall and search.

• The Shrinking Space Between Home and Work (Washington Monthly) The disappearance of “third places”—coffee shops, parks, libraries, and bowling alleys where communities form. Surveys show 21% of Americans live in “civic deserts” without gathering spots, and those with less education are twice as likely to lack them. The result? In areas without third places, people are three times more likely to have no close friends. This shows what we lose when we prioritize efficiency over connection.

I love to ruin my books!

I don’t have a library card, and I RARELY lend out my books. Because I love to write in my books. There are some books that I will write in more than others. I will make significantly more notes on a non-fiction or philosophical book than on a fun, easy-to-read fiction book. But even if it is a “fun book” and there is a moment that I really enjoy or a quote that really stands out to me, I wipe out my pen or highlighter and mark it.

Later, I will then revisit the notes and highlights and copy them into my common book. Sometimes they will trigger me to reread the section and I end up adding more notes if it opens up more ideas. Think of it as a conversation with your book.

Anyway, earlier this week I posted a few stories in my IG sharing my favorite tools that I use to annotate my book. No worries if you missed it. Here you go👇

My favorite annotation tools

This list includes affiliate links

• Kanmido Fusen Clip Cocofsen - Sticky flags

• Pentel Pulaman Pen

• KIRE-NA Highlighter Set

• Book Darts

• KOKUYO Choi+ Sheet Connecting Stickers

The fabulous Mr. Burchett

In honor of the Super Bowl, Tennessee Congressman Burchett has some words about Bad Bunny's coming halftime performance.

That’s a wrap

So there you have it: paywalled Olympics, doom-scrolling instead of Super Bowl parties, shrinking third spaces, and activists who’ve confused surveillance with community safety. Just another week in 2026.

Look, I know this one leaned heavier than usual. But here’s the thing—I don’t write about this stuff to make you feel hopeless. I write about it because I think we can do better. We should do better. And that starts with being aware of what’s being done to us, what we’re losing, and what’s still worth fighting for.

The good news? You don’t need an algorithm to find a community. You don’t need a streaming service to connect with people. Sometimes it’s as simple as showing up—to a game watch party, to breakfast with a friend, to your church on Sunday. The third spaces are still out there if we make the effort to find them. Or better yet, create them.

Whatever your week holds, I hope you find a moment to put your phone down and be present. Mark up a book. Make plans with real people. Maybe even watch the Super Bowl—not for the ads, but for the excuse to gather.

And if you need a laugh, watch Congressman Burchett’s take on Bad Bunny. Sometimes the best response to cultural chaos is just to shake your head and smile.

See you next Sunday!

The dogs were thrilled. They spent the day darting in and out, absolutely convinced this was the most exciting development in months.

The only thing I was willing to brave the cold for? Bagels. We checked out Brother’s Bagels, a new local spot, and I’m here to report: it’s the real deal. Good bagels and good coffee, which is not always a given. I haven’t worked through the whole menu yet, but my current favorite is the Brooklyn sandwich—pastrami, Gouda, and deli mustard — I got it on a plain bagel. I also brought some bagels home, and the salt and everything are fighting for top billing.

If I have to choose between breakfast and dinner out, I will choose breakfast every single time. There are very few things I’ll leave the house for on a cold day, and a good breakfast is one of them.

The rest of the day? Fire. Warm sweater. A book. The kind of slow, cozy Saturday that reminds you winter isn’t all bad.

The Stranger, Albert Camus

I finished The Stranger this week, which is not usually a book I would pick up. But it’s short — only 124 pages — and I wanted to quickly get a book “on the board” before diving into something longer.

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian philosopher and novelist, born in 1913 in what was then French Algeria. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, became one of the most influential voices of 20th-century existentialism — though he rejected that label — and died young in a car accident at 46. His philosophy centered on what he called “the absurd.” The tension between our search for meaning and a universe that offers none. I am sure he was a blast at parties.

The Stranger was published in 1942, and it’s the book that made him famous. The plot is deceptively simple, Meursault, our narrator, attends his mother’s funeral, begins a relationship, gets tangled up with a neighbor’s messy domestic situation, and—without clear motive—commits a violent act that changes everything.

But what makes the book unsettling isn’t the plot or that there is a murder. It’s Meursault himself.

He floats through life indifferent to everything: the death of his mother, the woman who loves him, the absence of any true friends. There’s a murder—of an unnamed man who is never treated as a real person—and even that barely registers as meaningful. The only thing that seems to motivate him at all is the desires of his own flesh which are later taken from him when he is sent to prison.

An interesting detail I noticed is that Camus writes in a style that mirrors Meursault’s inner state. The first part of the book is written in short, clipped sentences, almost detached, like he’s drifting through life jumping from one action to the next with no purpose. Then, as circumstances change and he’s forced to reflect and the writing becomes more pensive, more layered. Like all he has left are his thoughts.

The consequences of Meursault finally come for him, but not because of what he did. They come because of who he is, or rather, who he isn’t. The people around him can’t stand his emotional blankness. His lack of tears, his failure to perform grief the way people expect—he doesn’t act right — that’s what condemns him. Not the facts, it’s the discomfort he causes by simply existing without the normal range of human feeling or show of emotion.

Sadness does eventually come for him. But only when he realizes how much he’s hated for the way others perceive him. And in a dark twist, he finds a kind of comfort in that hatred, because at least it means he’s not invisible. At least he’s not completely alone.

This is not a light hearted read. It’s downright depressing. Make me think Camus was depressed philosopher, and nihilistic even though reports are he hated that characterization. But it’s pretty obvious because in the end, Meursault finds relief in the declaration that there is no God and we all end up in the same place: dead.

It’s bleak. And oddly enough, I think it’s a good read for any Christian. Not because it’s anything you want to emulate, far from it. But because it provides an inside look at what an existence without God actually looks like. What it can be to be alone without the joy of God within you.

An unbeliever might read this as an affirmation, almost a resignation to what they see as the “reality of life.” Maybe even be “empowered” by it. But to me, it felt like a portrait of profound loneliness. And I felt a deep sadness for those who move through the world untethered from meaning, without the joy of God. To be so disconnected that you settle to find comfort in hatred to feel connection.

It’s sad. But it’s worth sitting with.

Next on My Reading List

I know I said this last Sunday, but I wanted to get one on the board. I didn’t realize it was going to be so depressing. Anyway, I finally got my three-in-one edition of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy—Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength—and after read two intense books back-to-back, I hope I’ll get through these with a little more momentum.

Here is a little tid-bit about me, I love a good dystopian fiction! I’ve read most of the classics: 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, We, Fahrenheit 451 and even The Handmaid’s Tale, . So I was very excited to discover Lewis’s dystopian trilogy. Particularly because it has a very different approach than other dystopian fiction.

Most dystopian fiction gives us the obvious villain. The mustachioed authoritarian with the big boot, the surveillance state, the overt oppression. Lewis goes a different direction. His warning isn’t about jackbooted thugs, it’s about the hubris of the sneaky intellectual. The technocrats. The planners. The people who are absolutely certain they know what’s best for the rest of us.

Given everything happening in the world right now, that feels... timely.

For Cathrine O'Hare

Welcome to the Public Domain, Class of 2026

Did you know that every January 1st, a new batch of creative works enters the public domain in the United States—copyrights expire, and suddenly anyone can use, adapt, remix, or build on these works without permission or payment.

This year’s haul? It’s a good one.

The original Betty Boop, the first four Nancy Drew books, and Greta Garbo’s first talkie are among the many works from 1930 that became free to use starting January 1st.

Literary highlights range from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying to Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage (her first Miss Marple mystery) and the first four Nancy Drew novels. Also entering the public domain: Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and music like “Georgia on My Mind,” “I Got Rhythm,” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me.”

On the film side, we get the original All Quiet on the Western Front (which won Best Picture at the 3rd Academy Awards), plus the debut of Disney’s Pluto (originally named Rover, did not know that) and Betty Boop’s first appearance in the Fleischer Studios cartoon Dizzy Dishes.

Did you know, Betty Boop started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo? She’s got a supporting role in Dizzy Dishes, performing a slinky song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She’s not named, but sings “boop boop, a doop.”

Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke University Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, calls this “an opportunity to look back at the history of these two incredible animation studios, Fleischer and Disney, and how their styles are imprinted in the DNA of today’s cartoons.”

And because this is 2026 and nothing is sacred, a Betty Boop horror movie is already in the works, following a string of 2025 scary movies starring villainous versions of the freshly non-copyrighted Peter Pan, Bambi, and Popeye. Also, a Minnie Mouse slasher is due for release in 2026.

Of course, it’s not all horror reboots. Not all adaptations have to be dark: Think West Side Story drawn from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn in the 2024 book James, and the Wizard of Oz-inspired Wicked movies.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole, Duke Law has the full list: Public Domain Day 2026

On My Reading List

• The Harry Potter Generation Needs to Grow Up — Louise Perry in the New York Times argues that franchises like The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia may rise and fall with new adaptations, “but those franchises aren’t bound to a particular generation in the way that Harry Potter is bound to the millennials.” A thoughtful piece on why some adults can’t seem to move past Hogwarts.

• 23 Ways You’re Already Living in the Chinese Century — Wired’s special issue explores how China is shaping the future: “The robotics explosion. The energy revolution. The cultural takeover. It’s everything you wanted for the United States—but done better in China.”

  

• MAGA’s War on Empathy — And finally, Hillary Clinton has entered the chat. In a 6,000-word article published in The Atlantic, titled “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” Clinton argues that “compassion is weak and cruelty is strong has become an article of MAGA faith.” She takes aim at conservative Christian influencers, including Allie Beth Stuckey, whose book Toxic Empathy clearly struck a nerve.

Stuckey responded on X: “When Hillary Clinton is writing 6,000-word op-eds in the Atlantic attacking warnings against toxic empathy, you know you’re over the target. Keep. Going.”

When Hillary Clinton is writing lengthy theological critiques of your work, you’re doing something right, my friends.

That’s a Wrap

So there you have it: snow day coziness, a nihilistic French novel, public domain cartoons, and Hillary Clinton lecturing Christians about empathy. Just another week.

Whatever your week holds, I hope you find a moment to slow down. Read something that makes you think. Watch something that makes you laugh. Eat a good bagel if you can find one.

And if you’re snowed in? Stay warm. Make some stew. Maybe watch Betty Boop before Hollywood turns her into a serial killer.

See you next Sunday!

Unfortunately, much of my Saturday morning was consumed with the latest events in Minneapolis, which I will break down for you later. Eventually, I switched gears, and we enjoyed our evening in with a fire, some beef stew, and a marathon of James Bond.

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek

I finally finished this one, and let me tell you, reading Hayek is a must in 2026.

I will be upfront, this is in no way a light read. It took me time and focus, the kind of focus that requires a quiet room and probably too much coffee. Hayek is verbose. The man never met an example he didn’t want to explore from six different angles. But here’s the thing that kept me turning pages despite the density: it’s disturbing how relatable this book is to our current moment.

The Road to Serfdom was published in 1944. The war wasn’t even over yet, and this Austrian economist was already diagnosing exactly how free societies sleepwalk into tyranny. Not through dramatic coups or obvious villains — but through planning. Through well-meaning bureaucrats. Through “temporary” measures that never sunset and “emergency” powers that become permanent fixtures.

Sound familiar? It should.

Why do you need to read it? Because Hayek wasn’t writing abstract theory. He was watching it happen in real time. And his central argument is one that modern discourse has conveniently memory-holed.

We’re taught — relentlessly — that the Nazis rose to power on the back of nationalism. Far-right extremism. Full stop. That’s the narrative. But Hayek, writing as Germany burned, makes a different case: it was socialism that built the road. Nationalism just drove down it.

The collectivist infrastructure was already there. The normalization of central planning. The idea that the state should direct economic life “for the common good.” The intellectual class had already accepted that individual liberty was a small price to pay for the plan. The Nazis didn’t have to build the machinery of control — German socialists had done that for them. They just had to seize the wheel.

I mean, the party was literally called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Modern framing treats that word as incidental, almost embarrassing, a quirk of branding that surely didn’t mean anything. Hayek argues it was foundational.

Now, why does this matter in 2026?

Because “Democratic Socialism” is having a moment. It’s been rebranded as compassionate. Inevitable. Not that kind of socialism, we’re assured. Just the good parts — healthcare and education and equity — without any of that icky authoritarianism.

Perdoname, but Hayek would like a word.

His warning isn’t about mustache-twirling dictators. It’s about the slow creep. The language that shifts meaning. “Planning” sounds reasonable. “Economic security” sounds humane. “For the common good” sounds noble. “Empathy” sounds like compassion. But each step down that road requires a little more control, a little less liberty, a little more trust that the people in charge know better than you do.

The road to serfdom isn’t paved with malice. It’s paved with pamphlets and good intentions.

Is the book perfect? No. Some sections feel dated, and Hayek’s academic style can be dense. But the core argument is a gut-punch, especially if you’ve been paying attention to how quickly “emergency measures” become “the new normal.”

Read it. Make notes, then read it again.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ — Required reading for anyone who wants to understand how free people vote themselves into chains.

Next on My Reading List

Zero Hour! Airport or Airplane?

It’s cold outside, and depending on where you are in the country, you’re either snowed in or — worse yet — iced in. If you’re the latter, you might not have power, so you might have to stick to a book for entertainment, and PLEASE stay warm. But if you’re home with power and looking for something to watch, might I make an odd suggestion?

Depending on your age, you might be familiar with the 1980 comedy Airplane!, starring Leslie Nielsen, where landing the plane safely hinges on a pilot with a “drinking problem” who didn’t eat the fish dinner.

Well, did you know that Airplane! is a spoof of the 1957 film Zero Hour! mixed with the disaster series Airport?

And here’s where it gets interesting: it’s not just a spoof. It’s practically a shot-for-shot comedic remake.

The writing trio behind Airplane! — Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker stumbled across Zero Hour! while recording late-night TV to harvest commercials for parody material. They weren’t even paying attention to the movie at first, but then they started actually watching it and realized they’d struck gold. Jerry Zucker later called it “a perfectly classically structured film.”

How closely did they follow it? The main character in both films is named Ted Stryker. The food poisoning from the fish dinner? Straight from Zero Hour!. The little boy visiting the cockpit? Same. Even the line “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking,” that’s lifted directly from the 1957 original.

The Zucker brothers borrowed so much that they actually purchased the rights to Zero Hour! for about $2,500, just to make sure they were legally covered. They didn’t just use the script — they copied staging, camera angles, everything. Then they simply added jokes after the serious lines.

But wait, there’s more.

Zero Hour! was written by Arthur Hailey, a former RAF pilot who knew his way around aviation drama. A decade later, Hailey wrote the novel Airport, which became the 1970 blockbuster that launched the entire disaster movie craze of the ‘70s — Airport 1975, Airport ‘77, The Concorde: Airport ‘79. The Zucker brothers pulled from those too, including the singing nun (played in Airplane! by Maureen McGovern, who had actually sung the theme songs for The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno).

So Arthur Hailey essentially created the airline disaster genre twice — first with Zero Hour! in 1957, then with Airport in 1970. And then Airplane! spoofed both so effectively that it basically killed the genre entirely.

One man’s work spawned the template, the franchise, AND its destruction. That’s a legacy.

Here’s my suggestion for your snow day: Watch Zero Hour! First, it’s available on YouTube, and then immediately follow it with Airplane! on AMC+ or rent it on AppleTV. You’ll never watch the comedy the same way again. Every joke lands differently when you realize they’re not just parodying a genre, they’re parodying specific scenes from a movie most people have never heard of.

Then, if you are still snowed in, you can move on to the Airport disaster movie trilogy, available to rent on Prime Video or Apple TV.

Fair warning: once you’ve seen Zero Hour!, it’s impossible to take it seriously. The moment someone asks the little boy if he’s ever been in a cockpit before, you’ll be on the floor.

Stay warm. Watch something ridiculous. And don’t eat the fish. 😉

A Recipe

One of my favorite cold-weather stews!

Sancocho is a hearty stew with humble origins, found in various forms throughout the Spanish Caribbean and Latin America. It’s a satisfying dish made with beef tips, beef stock, and a variety of starches native to the islands and Africa. The most common starches are yuca, calabaza (auyama), green banana, potato, and plantain. But you can use other varieties that are available to you locally. And you cannot forget the corn! The stew is heaven, bursting with flavor, and it gets even better the next day.

Sancocho (Puerto Rican Beef Stew)

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbs olive oil

• 5 garlic cloves, minced

• 1 1/2 lbs top round beef, cubed into 1-inch pieces

• 1/3 cup yellow onions, chopped

• 1/3 cup green pepper, chopped

• 5 sprigs of cilantro, chopped

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

• 4 quarts beef stock

• 1 green plantain, peeled and slice into 1-inch pieces

• 1 yellow plantain, peeled and sliced into 1/2 inch pieces

• 1 medium sweet potato, diced into 1-inch pieces

• 1 medium yuca

• 1/2 lb butternut squash, peeled and cubed into 1-inch pieces

• 3 medium new potatoes, peeled and quartered

• 2 ears of yellow corn, cleaned and sliced into 6 parts each

Instructions:

1. In a preheated dutch oven or heavy pot over low-to-medium heat, combine olive oil, garlic, beef cubes, and onions, stir until beef is brown on all sides and onions begin to caramelize.

2. Add in chopped pepper, cilantro, salt, pepper, and 1 quart of beef stock. Cook down until the stock is reduced by half, about 20 minutes.

3. Stir the beef, then add all the remaining vegetables and the remaining beef stock. Bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes.

4. Uncover and simmer for 20 - 30 minutes or until the stock has reduced some, the meat is tender, and the vegetables are soft. Serve

I am sorry you are biking to where?

Every once in a while, you stumble across something on social media that reminds you why we built these platforms in the first place. Before the algorithm hijacked everything. Before the rage-bait and the perfectly curated lies. Back when the promise was: connect with the world.

Meet Ian Andersen, a guy on a bike, pedaling his way to Japan. And by “to Japan,” I mean through Iran —while it was being bombed — Afghanistan, Russia, Mongolia, and now China. On a bicycle. Powered largely by cigarettes, beer, and what I can only assume is an unholy amount of determination.

I binged his posts in one afternoon and haven’t stopped checking his stories since.

Here’s what gets me: this isn’t some polished travel influencer content. Some nights he’s in a hotel. Many nights, he’s taken in by strangers, families who don’t speak his language but feed him anyway. And some nights? He’s camping in abandoned buildings, alone with his thoughts and whatever wildlife decided to claim the place first.

Ride with Ian

Bringing you a weekly update on what it takes to bike across all seven continents

By Ian Andersen

The stories are wild and sometimes skeachy. He had to essentially escape Iran. He biked through Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. He raced across Russia against an expiring visa, pushing up frozen hills where the temperatures dropped so low his gears seized. He spent two months stuck in Mongolia, waiting for a Chinese visa, just... existing in limbo.

It’s exploration. It’s bravery. It’s also, if I’m being honest, inspiring.

He has implied that he has a challenging history, and it seems like he is searching for something. Or running from something. Maybe both, depending on the day. There’s a quiet grief underneath the adventure, a sense that this mission isn’t just about seeing the world, but about finding a reason to keep moving through it. The freedom is obvious. The loneliness, you have to read between the lines.

In a feed full of noise, Ian’s account is the real thing: raw, human, and deeply compelling. It’s the kind of content social media was actually made for.

Give him a follow: @ridewithian

That’s a Wrap

So there you have it, a little bit of everything this week. Some Hayek to make you think, some Airplane! trivia to make you laugh, a stew recipe to keep you warm, and a guy on a bicycle reminding us that the world is still worth exploring, even when it feels like everything is falling apart.

This is what Sunday Desk is about: slowing down, stepping back from the news cycle chaos, and remembering that life is more than headlines and hot takes. Sometimes it’s a fire, a bowl of stew, and a James Bond marathon. Sometimes it’s discovering that a comedy you’ve watched a dozen times is secretly a shot-for-shot remake of a 1957 drama you’ve never heard of. Sometimes it’s watching a stranger bike through Afghanistan and realizing the world is stranger and kinder than the algorithm wants you to believe.

Whatever your week holds, I hope you find a moment to breathe. Read something that challenges you. Watch something that makes you laugh. Cook something that fills your home with warmth and spend time with the ones you love.

And if all else fails, there’s always Waffle House.

Until next time — stay curious, stay warm, and say no to the fish.

In addition to having to prepare for the trip and driving 8+ hours to Northern Virginia, the technical challenges over the next few days would drive a person to drink. But we got it together and in the end produced a great episode. We even figured out how to go LIVE on Substack and still get a podcast episode out of it.

Rivera and Reeves

Ep. 202 | We Got the Playbook: Inside the GOP's Plan to Make America Affordable Again

Republicans have a second reconciliation bill ready—and we got four members of Congress to break it down…

Listen now

3 months ago · 18 likes · 3 comments · Meseidy, Rachel Reeves, and Rivera and Reeves

Anyway, if you are a paying subscriber to the Rivera and Reeves Substack, come hang out with us the last Friday of the month at 11:30 a.m. for Unfiltered Live!

If you want to hear details about our trip to meet and interview four members of the Republican Study Committee, I recommend you give the podcast a listen—you’ll learn a lot directly from the members. But after our whirlwind visit to The Hill, I promised myself that I was going to take it easy this weekend and get my life back in order. Which means an exciting weekend of laundry, cleaning, organizing my office, and reading. I’m in the homestretch of The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, and I am determined to get it finished.

Speaking of books, a video recently came across my feed about the dystopian novel by C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. It is the third part in a space trilogy about how the intellectual and technocratic class seeks total control through science, bureaucracy, and occult forces, aiming to transcend human nature by abolishing the body and organic life. I immediately added them to my shopping cart. But I need to know—has anyone read this series? I had no idea that C.S. Lewis had written dystopian space fiction!

I Recently Watched

Have you seen the show Pluribus on Apple TV? I have come to realize it triggers some strong responses—love or hate—from viewers. Spoiler: I loved it. Although I failed miserably when I tried to explain the show to my friends. Because, well, it is weird.

Pluribus is created by Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The protagonist is played by Rhea Seehorn, the same actress who portrayed Saul's attorney friend/girlfriend. (I can never remember the character’s name.)

Pluribus stars Rhea Seehorn as novelist Carol Sturka, one of only 13 people immune to an alien virus that turned humanity into a peaceful hive mind called the “Others.” She resists assimilation while grappling with isolation and moral dilemmas. The show is set in Albuquerque, like all of Gilligan’s shows.

The show is funny, legitimately entertaining, and if you are a fan of the cinematography and framing that Gilligan’s shows have become known for, this show delivers. While it’s entertaining, it’s the commentary that I was most intrigued by—especially considering the time we are currently living through.

The “Others” are a hive mind that cannot hurt anyone and live and work together as a collective. Any and all individuality and autonomy that these people once had is gone, taken away by the alien virus that has infected all but 13 people on the entire planet. But 11 out of the 13 show little interest in finding a solution to restore humanity to the world's population, including their loved ones, because they now live in a world where everything is provided. They no longer have to work, and there is no danger or violence.

Only two of the 13—including the protagonist, Carol Sturka—oppose the “Others,” holding on to their independence and individualism even in the face of extreme loneliness.

Remind you of anything?

What I’m Making

I don’t know how the weather is where you are, but it is freezing here. While normally on a cold day I make a simple whole-chicken soup, I was craving something more comforting—so, obviously, it needed to be chicken and dumplings.

Instant Pot Chicken and Dumplings

Soup

• 2½ lbs chicken thighs

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 1 large onion, cut into large chunks

• 4 cloves garlic, sliced

• 2 celery stalks, trimmed and cut into ½-inch pieces

• 2 bay leaves

• 2 chicken bouillon cubes

• 4 sprigs fresh thyme

• 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

• Salt to taste

• 2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch pieces

• Ground black or white pepper

Dumplings

• 1½ cups flour

• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• ½ cup coarsely ground cornmeal

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1¾ cups heavy cream

Instructions

1. Heat olive oil in pan over medium-high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper and brown. Arrange chicken in a large kettle or pressure cooker.

2. If you are using the kettle, place the chicken, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaves, bouillon, thyme, and sherry vinegar in a large pot.

3. Add 4 quarts of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

4. Simmer the chicken until it is tender and the thigh juices run clear, about 2 hours or until chicken is very tender. Add carrots during the last hour.

5. If you are using a pressure cooker, place all soup ingredients in pressure cooker, add enough water to cover chicken and vegetables, bring to 15 pounds pressure, cook for 35 minutes, and let pressure fall naturally before removing lid.

6. When chicken is cool enough to handle, remove meat from bones and shred.

7. Meanwhile, mix the batter for the dumplings. When chicken is cooked, place dumplings over the top of the chicken and vegetables, turn on heat once more, and cook covered for 12 minutes or until dumplings are puffed.

Went to See a Man About a Bridge

You would be amazed at the things you can find on Facebook Marketplace. Seriously.

Regular followers on my IG know that the husband and I have some off-grid acreage up on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. The only way to access our tent site is to four-wheel our way through the woods and across a creek. We have been four-wheeling across this creek for four years.

But on Saturday, we bought a 34-foot bridge on FB Marketplace made of I-beams and wood planks. I am currently trusting the process. Husband says it will work, even though I am not sure exactly how we will get it set up.

We are headed up to drop it off this morning. Stay tuned, because I suspect it will be an adventure.

Yes, I will absolutely take pictures.

My Current Obsession

I have discovered Japanese stationery, and I may never recover.

With the start of the new year, I needed a new “thinking notebook.” This is a notebook I carry around as a second brain. It holds everything from random lists to reminders, content ideas, and whatever else is occupying space in my brain.

I have long used a Moleskine or Leuchtturm notebook as my “thinking notebook” out of habit and not love. Then I stumbled upon a cute little store here in Chattanooga called I Go Tokyo. Think gift shop, but everything is from Japan. Their Japanese stationery in the back corner of the shop is my current obsession—and it was also where I discovered my 2025 “thinking notebook,” the Midori MD Notebook Journal.

In my search for more Japanese stationery, I discovered JetPens and have been on a constant algorithm feed of Japanese stationery content. It’s a problem. Please tell me I am not alone.

Thankfully, I have only gone on a very small shopping spree, which included highlighters with “training wheels”—and yes, I love them.

My wishlist is growing.

That’s a Wrap

If you’re new here, welcome to Sunday Desk.

If you’re used to my news coverage and media analysis, think of this as the other side of the coin—the slower, more personal stuff. Sunday Desk is where I share what I’m reading, where I’ve been, what I’m cooking, and whatever else is on my mind that doesn’t fit neatly into a news cycle. It’s the newsletter equivalent of a long Sunday morning with a good cup of coffee.

My goal is simple: to create a space where we can step back from the chaos of the week and just... be. Talk about books. Share a recipe. Recommend a 34-foot bridge on Facebook Marketplace that you absolutely have to see.

If this sounds like something you want in your inbox, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next one. And if you’re craving comfort food for a cold day or need a new show to binge, save this post—you’ll thank yourself later.

Thanks for being here. See you next Sunday.

Most people, when they think of Puerto Rico, immediately think of relaxing on beaches, but did you know that in the center of the island is “la cordillera central,” which translates as the central mountain range? Right in the center of this tiny island is an impressive mountain range. The highest point is called Cerro de Punta, which sits on the boundary between the municipalities of Jayuya (Ha-yu-ya) and Ponce, reaching 4,390 feet above sea level. Interestingly, it occurred to me how these two towns, which share the highest point on the island, also reflect the story of Puerto Rico.

Ponce is a large, historic port city on the southern coast and the most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, named after Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the great-grandson of conquistador Juan Ponce de León. It was a major port during Spanish colonization. Jayuya is one of the highest—second to Aibonito—and most secluded towns on the island, named after Taíno chief Hayuya. In Taíno, Hayuya is commonly explained as meaning “lugar de guayo,” Spanish for “place of the grater,” likely referring to a site where cassava (yuca) was grated using a guayo.

All of that to say: if you ever visit the island and can withstand heights and curving narrow roads shared with oncoming vehicles, ditch the beach, and you will be rewarded with stunning views and delicious food. Also, if you’re prone to carsickness, take some Dramamine—you’re going to need it. This is an all-day trip. Don’t think you are going to drive up that mountain and be home a few hours later. This is a full-day adventure.

Where to Visit in Jayuya

• Café Tres Picachos (Tres Picachos coffee roasters) is a coffee farm and café in the Saliente sector of Jayuya, Puerto Rico, that grows, roasts, and serves its own coffee under the Café Tres Picachos brand. Here we got breakfast, and the coffee was so good we brought a few bags home. Only open Friday–Sunday. Get here EARLY—it fills up, and parking is limited.

• Coming from Ponce to Jayuya, you will pass El Chorro de Doña Juana, a roadside waterfall in Orocovis along PR-149 near kilometer marker 41–42, in the Toro Negro area between Orocovis and Villalba. There is a small area off to the left where you can pull over, take photos, and even bathe in the water.

• La Piedra Escrita is a large boulder covered in Taíno petroglyphs located in the Río Saliente in the barrio Coabey of Jayuya, Puerto Rico. It sits just off PR-144 around km 7.3, at a small riverside recreation area accessed by a boardwalk behind roadside restaurants near Jayuya’s center. The boardwalk makes the boulder easy to access. If you have time, you can go for a dip in the river.

• Visit Museo El Cemí and the nearby hacienda, Museo Casa Canales. They are one dollar each to visit.

  • Museo El Cemí (Taíno museum) – This is a small history/anthropology museum dedicated to Taíno culture, housed in a building shaped like a cemí, the three-pointed idol that represents Taíno deities and spirituality. Inside are Taíno artifacts such as pottery, tools, carved stones, petroglyph reproductions, and exhibits on daily life and beliefs of the island’s Indigenous peoples.

  • Museo Casa Canales (the hacienda) – A restored late-19th-century country house of the Canales family, founders and early political leaders of Jayuya. The house museum interprets Puerto Rican political and social history (including the 1950 Jayuya uprising) and gives a glimpse of rural hacienda life through its period architecture and furnishings.

• When heading back, stop at Café Terra Vida on PR-531 km 1.6, Barrio Hoyos Planes in Jayuya. Enjoy the AMAZING view, a coffee, some wine, and order the sampler of mini “frituras” (fried foods) such as alcapurria, empanadilla, sorullitos, and tostones.

Puerto Rico has some of the most beautiful beaches, but take a day and venture into the mountains—you won’t regret it.

A Recipe

I have a whole archive of Puerto Rican recipes on my food blog, but my favorite dinner option is Fricasé de Pollo. It is my top comfort food on a gloomy day, and it’s easy to make for anyone. Enjoy!

Fricasé de Pollo

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs. chicken pieces, bone-in, skinned

• 3 teaspoons adobo spice seasoning

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 3 tablespoons garlic, mashed

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 onion, diced

• 1/2 red bell pepper, diced

• 1/4 cup minced cilantro or culantro

• 1 cup red wine

• 1 (14 oz) can diced tomato

• 2 tablespoons tomato paste

• 2 bay leaves

• 12 olives stuffed with red peppers, halved

• 6 petite golden potatoes, halved

• 3 large carrots, peeled and sliced

• Salt to taste

Instructions:

1. Combine chicken, adobo, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and garlic. Toss until well combined, cover, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

2. In a large heavy pot, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add chicken and brown evenly on all sides. Remove from oil and set aside. In the same pot, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil, onion, bell pepper, and cilantro. Sauté for 4 minutes or until translucent.

3. Add red wine to deglaze the pot, scraping up all the brown bits at the bottom of the pot. Stir in diced tomato and tomato paste.

4. Return the chicken to the pot with the rest of the ingredients. Raise heat to bring to a boil, lower to a simmer, and cover.

5. Cook for 45 minutes or until chicken is tender. Uncover and simmer for 15 minutes or until the sauce begins to thicken.

6. Serve over white rice.

In Cold Blood, Truman Capote

Are you a reader when you travel, or a reader in general? While on my trip, I finished In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

If you’re unfamiliar with the book, it’s widely considered the first narrative true-crime work. Capote reconstructs the brutal murder of the Clutter family in small-town Kansas and follows the killers before, during, and after the crime. The murders occurred on November 15, 1959, in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote traveled there shortly after with his close friend Harper Lee and followed the case through its full investigation, eventually publishing the book in 1966.

What struck me most is that the book doesn’t read like a mystery to be solved. Instead, it lingers on the psychology of the killers, the fear that quietly spread through the town, and the loss of innocence—both personal and cultural—of that era. It’s less sensational and more unsettling for that reason.

It’s a classic for a reason. My only complaint: Capote’s enthusiastic use of parentheses, especially early on. I get what he’s trying to do—add context and detail—but for me, it pulls you out of the story. Enough already, Truman. Let the sentence breathe.

On the Reading List

• The Technology Brothers Have Silicon Valley in Their Thrall. Now They’re Coming for You – Vanity Fair

• To Understand Minneapolis, Look to Somalia – Compact

• Can the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Make South America Better Off? – The Free Press

• Erika Kirk Is Walking a Fine Line in a Glittering Pantsuit – WaPo

Creating

One of my goals for the new year is to have more purposeful, dedicated time and less doom scrolling with my coffee in hand. I actually started before the new year, slowly stacking new habits like journaling, bricking my phone, and dedicated reading time. With the new year, I’m adding a new habit I call the “Create Block.” Rumor is that we’re most creative first thing in the morning, so instead of “starting my day slow”—which is what I’ve done for ages—I hit the ground running, focused on creating. This is when I write, but not elegantly and not focused on errors or grammar or sometimes even specific facts. It’s just about getting it out on paper. Later in the day, I work on the details: editing, proofreading, fact-checking, and deciding “does that comma really need to be there?”

The news cycle is so wild that sometimes I get option paralysis and feel like I have to have it together before I can put words on the page. I am a perfectionist after all in my natural state. But by just taking the time to write down what I want to share or research, ideas seem to bubble up and take shape more naturally. It’s my first week, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s a Wrap

And with that, welcome to the very first edition of Sunday Desk.

If you’re used to my news coverage and media analysis, think of this as the other side of the coin—the slower, more personal stuff. Sunday Desk is where I share what I’m reading, where I’ve been, what I’m cooking, and whatever else is on my mind that doesn’t fit neatly into a news cycle. It’s the newsletter equivalent of a long Sunday morning with a good cup of coffee.

My goal is simple: to create a space where we can step back from the chaos of the week and just... be. Talk about books. Share a recipe. Recommend a waterfall in the middle of Puerto Rico that you absolutely have to see.

If this sounds like something you want in your inbox, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next one. And if you’re planning a trip to Puerto Rico anytime soon (or just want to bookmark that Fricasé de Pollo recipe for a rainy day), save this post—you’ll thank yourself later.

Thanks for being here. See you next Sunday.