Searching for Bobbie Gentry by Sarah Kendzior

The story of Bobbie Gentry is frustrating and inspiring at the same time. The songwriter and performer behind the smash hit “Ode to Billie Joe,” the enduring triumph “Fancy,” and a big batch of other first-rate songs was undervalued and mistreated by a music industry that should have venerated her. So, she walked away from it all. She’s lived far from the spotlight for the past forty-plus years, rejecting any and all overtures to take part in showbiz pageantry. For her own Substack, Sarah Kendzior writes a fantastic, compelling piece about Gentry as an exemplar of empowerment. When others tried to confine her, she took charge of her own life instead.

There Will Never Be Another ‘WTF With Marc Maron’ by Diana Moskovitz

I often weeks behind on listening to episodes of WTF with Marc Maron, but I happened to have a long drive ahead of me on the recent day when a new installment with guest John Mulaney dropped. That’s how I learned the huge news that Maron was shutting down his trailblazing podcast after sixteen years. Maron’s work is a colossal achievement. It would be malpractice to write a scholarly work about stand-up comedy in the past several decades without consulting Maron’s stockpile of interview with major figures with career spanning from the nineteen-fifties to right now. And that’s only one part of what made WTF special. Diana Moskovitz does a tremendous job of capturing the greatness of the show. This piece was written for Defector.

A Ballerina and a Trailblazer In More Ways Than One by Gia Kourlas

Writing for The New York Times, Gia Kourlas offers an appreciation of ballet dancer Misty Copeland, who recently announced her retirement. I know practically nothing about the world of dance, but I know who Copeland is. That’s how far her reach was. The article does an exceptional job detailed the influence she had and the institutional obstacles she had to overcome to achieve her renown. Best of all, Kourlas makes it clear that Copeland was a talented dancer who deserved her fame on the basis of her artistry.

Some Notes on the City of Angels and the Nature of Violence by Rebecca Solnit

Everyone should be amazed at the continuing ability of the current White House and their craven GOP enablers to top themselves in abuses against the American people. The absolutely lawless usurping of the California National Guard and accompany insistence on creating chaos where there was none before stands as the latest full-on horror. For her own Meditations in an Emergency online shingle, Rebecca Solnit writes about the executive branch’s irresponsible use of violence to terrorize the citizenry. As a side note, I only came upon this exceptional article because Facebook banned it — and Solnit herself — from their site. It was reading about the despicable repression of Solnit’s work that led me to it, so good work, Facebook.

‘It Sounds Really Dire Because It Is Really Dire’ by Rachel Louise Snyder

It’s becoming almost impossible to catalog the number of ways the reckless governance of the Republicans is aggressively making the lives of people worse. One of the outcomes of their haphazard hacking at federal programs is grave harm to a host of organizations and government agencies that provide assistance to survivors of domestic abuse and other forms of partner violence. Writing for The New York Times, Rachel Louise Snyder tracks through the repercussions that comes from mere uncertainty over grants and additional federal funding.

You’re a Bunch of Cowards! by Hamilton Nolan

Because sometimes what I really need is some pure vitriol aimed directly at the heartless oafs in power and the patheticallty obedient wannabe warriors who are doing their bidding. Hamilton Nolan wrote this for his own shingle, How Things Work.